Saturday, August 31, 2024

Made in 2002

Barbara Astman
Dancing with Che
2002
giclee print
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Richard Avedon
Self Portrait, New York City
2002
gelatin silver prints
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Stephen De Staebler
Figure Column XXI
2002
painted terracotta
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Peter Doig
Guest House 3
2002
watercolor on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Drissen
Good Afternoon
2002
tempera on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Marco van Duyvendijk
Mamaia, Romania
2002
C-print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

David Elliott
Egyptian Painting
2002
oil and acrylic on canvas
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Casey Keeler
Blooms on Red
2002
latex housepaint and acrylic on board
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Anselm Kiefer
The Secret Life of Plants
2002
painted lead plates
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Maria Lassnig
Untitled
2002
oil on canvas
Hall Collection, Schloss Derneburg, Germany

Kenneth Noland
Mysteries: Primal Blue
2002
acrylic on canvas
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Miklos Pogany
Fontis Nymphae
2002
vitreograph print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Neo Rauch
Gebot
2002
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Chris Rush
John with White Pumpkin
2002
conte crayon on paper
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Collier Schorr
Joachim, Pear Tree, Reitprechts
2002
C-print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Wolfgang Tillmans
Arctic
2002
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Dover

Steep roads, a tunnel through chalk downs, are the approaches,
A ruined pharos overlooks a constructed bay;
The sea-front is almost elegant; all the show
Has, inland somewhere, a vague and dirty root:
          Nothing is made in this town.

A Norman castle, dominant, flood-lit at night,
Trains which fume in a station built on the sea,
Testify to the interest of its regular life:
Here dwell the experts on what the soldiers want,
          And who the travellers are

Whom ships carry in or out between the lighthouses,
Which guard for ever the made privacy of this bay
Like twin stone dogs opposed on a gentleman's gate.
Within these breakwaters English is properly spoken,
          Outside an atlas of tongues.

The eyes of departing migrants are fixed on the sea,
Conjuring destinies out of impersonal water:
"I see an important decision made on a lake,
An illness, a beard, Arabia found in a bed,
          Nanny defeated, Money."

Red after years of failure or bright with fame,
The eyes of homecomers thank these historical cliffs:
"The mirror can no longer lie nor the clock reproach;
In the shadow under the yew, at the children's party,
          Everything must be explained."

The Old Town with its Keep and Georgian houses
Has built its routine upon such unusual moments,
Vows, tears, emotional farewell gestures,
Are common here, unremarkable actions
          Like ploughing or a tipsy song.

Soldiers crowd into the pubs in their pretty clothes,
As pink and silly as girls from a high-class academy;
The Lion, The Rose, The Crown, will not ask them to die,
Not here, not now: all they are killing is time,
          A pauper civilian future.

Above them, expensive, shiny as a rich boy's bike,
Aeroplanes drone through the new European air
On the edge of a sky that makes England of minor importance;
And tides warn bronzing bathers of a cooling star
          With half its history done.

High over France, a full moon, cold and exciting
Like one of those dangerous flatterers we meet and love
When we are utterly wretched, returns our stare:
The night has found many recruits; to thousands of pilgrims
          The Mecca is coldness of heart.

The cries of the gulls at dawn are sad like work:
The soldier guards the traveller who pays for the soldier,
Each prays in a similar way for himself, but neither
Controls the years or the weather. Some may be heroes:
          Not all of us are unhappy.

– W.H. Auden (1936)