Thursday, November 14, 2024

Notables of the 1980s

Alois Mosbacher
Figure
1981
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Victor Honig van den Bossche
Portrait of Simone de Beauvoir
1986
drawing (colored pencils)
Museum Gouda

Peter Wehrens
Untitled
1983
oil and acrylic on board
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

Elisabeth de Vaal
Torso
1982
acrylic on paper
Museum Gouda

Victoria Crowe
Portrait of psychiatrist and writer R.D. Laing
1984
oil on panel
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Gunter Christmann
Untitled
1984
drawing (colored chalks)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Constance McClure
Figure on Exotic Bed
1987
drawing
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Georg Eisler
The Red Restaurant
1981
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Leon Golub
Blue Sphinx
1988
acrylic on linen
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Philip Pearlstein
Two Models - One seated on Floor in Kimono
1980
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Maria Lassnig
Atlas
1985
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Christos Bokoros
Naked Couple on Bed
1989
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Sarantis Karavouzis
Indoor Statues
1987
engraving
National Gallery, Athens

Louise Lawler
Gallery in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
1988
C-print
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Georg Baselitz
Saint Veronica
1984
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Elaine De Kooning
Bacchus #19-0
1983
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

The harlot sang to the beggarman.
I meet them face to face,
Conall, Cuchulain, Usna's boys,
All that most ancient race;
Maeve had three in an hour they say;
I adore those clever eyes 
Those muscular bodies but can get
No grip upon their thighs.
I meet those long pale faces,
Hear their great horses, then
Recall what centuries have passed
Since they were living men,
That there are still some living
That do my limbs unclothe,
But that the flesh my flesh has gripped
I both adore and loathe.

Are those things that men adore and loathe
Their sole reality?
What stood in the Post Office
With Pearse and Connolly?
What comes out of the mountain
Where men first shed their blood?
Who thought Cuchulain till it seemed
He stood where they had stood?
No body like his body
Has modern woman borne,
But an old man looking back on life
Imagines it in scorn.
A statue's there to mark the place
By Oliver Sheppard done.
So ends the tale that the harlot
Sang to the beggarman.

– W.B. Yeats (1939)