Ancient Divas - V

Luigi Garzi
Omphale with Lion Skin and Club
and Hercules with Spindle and Tambourine
ca. 1700-1710
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Giambattista Tiepolo
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1743-45
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Doccia Manufactory (Florence)
Ariadne Dancing, attended by a Panther
ca. 1780-90
porcelain
Detroit Institute of Arts

Gavin Hamilton
Death of Cleopatra
ca. 1767-69
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Anton Raphael Mengs
Augustus and Cleopatra
ca. 1759
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Jan Steen
Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra
ca. 1673-75
oil on canvas
Leiden Collection, New York

Leonello Spada
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1618
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Giovanni Baglione
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Simon Vouet 
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1620-25
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

attributed to Elisabetta Sirani after Guido Reni
Lucretia
ca. 1655
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Caspar Netscher
Lucretia
ca. 1665-67
oil on panel
Leiden Collection, New York

Luca Giordano
Death of Lucretia
ca. 1675-80
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

workshop of Rembrandt
Salome receiving the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1640-45
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

David Teniers the Younger after Palma il Giovane
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1651-56
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Onorio Marinari
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1680
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Wilhelm Trübner
Salome
1898
oil on cardboard
Milwaukee Art Museum

High Talk

Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher,

Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.

Because piebald ponies, led bears, caged lions, make but poor shows,
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs upon his timber toes,
Because women in upper stories demand a face at the pane
That patching old heels they may shriek, I take to chisel and plane.

Malachi Stilt-Jack am I, whatever I learned has run wild.
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt, from father to child.

All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all. A barnacle goose
Far up on the stretches of night; night splits and the dawn breaks loose;

I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on;

Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.

– W.B. Yeats (1939)

Made in 2012

Mark Ryden
Wood Lincoln
2012
screenprint on wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Ann Craven
10 Moons (Cushing, Maine)
2012
oil on linen
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Mélanie Rocain
Floating #2
2012
oil on canvas
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Nina Katchadourian
If Youth But Knew
(series, Once Upon a Time in Delaware)
2012
C-print
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Charles Avery
Untitled (Smoking Idealist)
2012
acrylic paint and gouache on paper
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Andrea Baldeck
Card Catalogue Drawers
Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
2012
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Katherine Bradford
Shadows
2012
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Tom Carment
Fire Escape, Oxford Hotel, Taylor Square
2012
watercolor and ink on paper
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Nathan Bond
Optimist
2012
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Wayne Koestenbaum
Jeff within Proscenium
2012
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Wayne Koestenbaum
Jeff with Torqued Wrist
2012
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Jacob Collins
Figure
2012
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Comme des Garçons
Dress
2012
cotton and polyester
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Kiki Smith
Earth
2012
woven composition in cotton jacquard
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Kiki Smith
Sky
2012
woven composition in cotton jacquard
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Kiki Smith
Underground
2012
woven composition in cotton jacquard
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Our Hunting Fathers

Our hunting fathers told the story

     Of the sadness of the creatures,
Pitied the limits and the lack

     Set in their finished features;

Saw in the lion's intolerant look,

Behind the quarry's dying glare,

Love raging for the personal glory

     That reason's gift would add,

The liberal appetite and power,

     The rightness of a god.

Who, nurtured in that fine tradition,

     Predicted the result,

Guessed Love by nature suited to

     The intricate ways of guilt,

That human ligaments could so

His southern gestures modify

And make it his mature ambition

     To think no thought but ours,

To hunger, work illegally,

     And be anonymous?

– W.H. Auden (1934)

Ancient Divas - IV

Luca Giordano after Bartholomeus Spranger
Omphale with Lion Skin and Club
and Hercules with Spindle
ca. 1660
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giovanni Battista Pittoni
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1730-35
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Guido Reni
Death of Cleopatra
ca. 1626
oil on canvas
Bildgalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam

Giovanni Giacomo Sementi
Death of Cleopatra
ca. 1625-26
oil on canvas
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Claude Vignon
Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Hendrik Goltzius
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1586-90
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Fede Galizia
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1600
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Cristofano Allori
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1610-12
oil on canvas
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Max Liebermann
Samson and Delilah
1902
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Simon Vouet
Lucretia
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Artemisia Gentileschi
Lucretia
ca. 1627
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Guido Reni
Lucretia
ca. 1638-42
oil on canvas
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Jakob Philipp Hackert
Dido and Aeneas sheltering in the Cave
1804
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Palma il Giovane
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1599
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Joseph Heintz the Elder
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1600-1605
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Strozzi
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

from A Bronze Head

Or else I thought her supernatural;

As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave,
And wondered what was left for massacre to save. 

– W.B. Yeats (1939)

Seeley - Piccinini - Kauffer - Penn

George Henry Seeley
Girl in Flowered Hat
ca. 1910
autochrome
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

George Henry Seeley
The Burning of Rome
1907
photogravure
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

George Henry Seeley
Eurydice
1903
photogravure
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

George Henry Seeley
Orpheus
1903
photogravure
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
Eulogy
2011
silicone, fibreglass, clothing, human hair
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
Psychogeography
1995
C-print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
Sky Whale
2013
hot-air balloon
(nylon, polyester, nomex, hyperlast, cable)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
The Stags
2009
assemblage
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
Soaring to Success!
1919
lithograph
(poster advertising newspaper)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
With Best Wishes for 1936
1936
lithograph
(greeting card)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
Journey of the Magi
1927
lithograph
(illustration to poem by T.S. Eliot)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
A Song for Simeon
1928
lithograph
(illustration to poem by T.S. Eliot)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Irving Penn
Elsa Schiaparelli, New York
1948
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Irving Penn
Georgia O'Keeffe
1948
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Irving Penn
Gypsy Rose Lee, New York
1948
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Irving Penn
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor
1948
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from Through the Looking Glass

Yours is the only name expressive there,

And family affection speaks in cypher.

Lay-out of hospital and street and square

That comfort to its homesick children offer,

As I, their author, stand between these dreams,

Unable to choose either for a home,

Your would-be lover who has never come

In a great bed at midnight to your arms.     

Such dreams are amorous; they are indeed:

But no one but myself is loved in these,

While time flies on above the dreamer's head,

Flies on, flies on, and with your beauty flies,

And pride succeeds to each succeeding state,

Still able to buy up the life within,

License no liberty except his own,

Order the fireworks after the defeat.

Language of moderation cannot hide: –

My sea is empty and its waves are rough;

Gone from the map the shore where childhood played,

Tight-fisted as a peasant, eating love;

Lost in my wake the archipelago,

Islands of self through which I sailed all day

Planting a pirate's flag, a generous boy;

And lost my way to action and to you. 

Lost if I steer. Tempest and tide may blow

Sailor and ship past the illusive reef,

And I yet land to celebrate with you

The birth of natural order and true love:

With you enjoy the untransifugred scene,

My father down the garden in his gaiters,

My mother at her bureau writing letters,

Free to our favours, all our titles gone.

– W.H. Auden (1933)