Sedentary Pursuits - II

Louis Jean Müller
La Lecture
ca. 1899
color etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Heinrich Wägmann
Woman Reading
1595
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

Gerard ter Borch the Younger
Young Man Reading
ca. 1680
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Arts

Jusepe de Ribera
St Jerome
1646
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Carl Larsson
Interior
1900
watercolor on paper
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

August Krafft
Portrait of jurist Jacob Wilder
1819
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Salomon Koninck
Hermit
1643
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Philipp Klein
On the Beach at Viareggio
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Man Reading on an Omnibus
ca. 1865
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Carlo Maratti
Young Woman Sewing
ca. 1670
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Carl Albrecht
The Embroiderer
1910
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Giovanni Boldini
Young Woman Crocheting
1875
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Camille Pissarro
Mère Jolly Mending
1874
oil on canvas
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Vilhelm Hammershøi
Girl Sewing
1887
oil on canvas
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Wilhelm Tischbein
Young Woman with Flowers
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

George Dunlop Leslie
Arranging Roses
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

from Translations

The world in my window is a color the Greeks called chlorol.
When I learned the word I was newly pregnant
and the first pale lichens had just speckled the silver branches.
The pines and the lichens in the chill drizzle were glowing green
and a book in my lap said chlorol was one of the untranslatable
words. The vibrating glow pleased me then, as a finger
dipped in sugar pleased me then. I said the word aloud
for the baby to hear. Chlorol. I imagined the baby
could only see hot pink and crimson inside its tiny universe,
but if you can see what I'm seeing, the word for it
is chlorol.      

– Kathryn Nuemberger (2011)

Thin Lines

Norman Hartnell
Court Presentation Dress and Jacket
1939
bias-cut silk-satin with embroidery 
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Madame Grès
Evening Gown
1945
silk jersey
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Adrian
(Adrian Adolph Greenburg)
Evening Gown
1945
printed rayon crepe
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Emilio Pucci
Ensemble
1965
printed cashmere-nylon knit (dress)
printed nylon knit (tights)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Gérard Pipart for Nina Ricci
Dress
1968
printed silk, silk-chiffon, ostrich feathers
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Manuel Pertegaz
Evening Gown
ca. 1968-69
screenprinted silk jersey
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Emilio Pucci
Dress
ca. 1970
printed silk knit
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Gaston Berthelot for House of Chanel
Suit
1972
wool will
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Patrick-Kelly
Dress
1985
wool knit
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Patrick-Kelly
Dress
1986
wool-spandex knit, plastic buttons
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jean-Paul Gaultier
Bodysuit
1988
cotton knit
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Calvin Klein
Pantsuit
1988
wool crepe
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Calvin Klein
Dress
1992
cotton knit
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Issey Miyake
Dress
1994
polyester taffeta
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Giambattista Valli for Emanuel Ungaro
Pantsuit
2004
wool blend (jacket), printed silk chiffon (blouse)
printed silk twill (trousers)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Yohji Yamamoto
 Dress
2007
printed silk crepe
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Parable of the Hostages

The Greeks are sitting on the beach

wondering what to do when the war ends. No one

wants to go home, back

to that bony island; everyone wants a little more

of what there is in Troy, more

life on the edge, that sense of every day as being

packed with surprises. But how to explain this

to the ones at home to whom

fighting a war is a plausible

excuse for absence, whereas

exploring one's capacity for diversion

is not. Well, this can be faced

later; these

are men of action, ready to leave 

insight to the women and children.

Thinking things over in the hot sun, pleased

by a new strength in their forearms, which seem

more golden than they did at home, some

begin to miss their families a little,

to miss their wives, to want to see

if the war has aged them. And a few grow 

slightly uneasy: what if war

is just a male version of dressing up,

a game devised to avoid

profound spiritual questions? Ah,

but it wasn't only the war. The world had begun

calling them, an opera beginning with the war's

loud chords and ending with the floating aria of the sirens.

There on the beach, discussing the various

timetables for getting home, no one believed

it could take ten years to get back to Ithaca;

no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmas – oh unanswerable

affliction of the human heart: how to divide

the world's beauty into acceptable

and unacceptable loves! On the shores of Troy,

how could the Greeks know

they were hostage already: who once

delays the journey is

already enthralled; how could they know

that of their small number

some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure,

some by sleep, some by music?

– Louise Glück (1996)

Sedentary Pursuits - I

Fritz von Uhde
The Busy Family
ca. 1885
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Hans Thoma
The Siblings
1873
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Édouard Vuillard
Interior with Women
1902
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

James McNeill Whistler
The Music Room
ca. 1880
etching and drypoint
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ewald Thiel
In the Study Room of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett
ca. 1900
autotype (carbon print)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Auguste-Antoine Masse
Interior of the Studio of Antoine-Jean Gros
1824
oil on canvas
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Ernest Meissonier
Chess Players
1856
oil on panel
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Comparison
1892
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki
La Couture
1781
etching
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Abraham Delfos after Abraham de Strij
The Scholars
1798
watercolor
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

John Doyle
Vacation Amusements No. 4 - Celebrating the Fine Arts
(Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Lord Melbourne
drawing and painting, supervised by an instructor)
1840
hand-colored lithograph
Wellcome Collection London

Joseph-François Ducq
Couple Studying Prints
ca. 1800-1805
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Henry Ericsson
The Fazer Bar
1931
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Ancient Greek Culture
Achilles bandaging the wounded arm of Patroclus
kylix
500 BC
painted terracotta
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ancient Greek Culture
Woman handling Jewels from a Casket held by a Slave
grave stele
410-400 BC
marble relief
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Wolfgang Heimbach
Gentlemen in a Studiolo working by Candlelight
cs. 1645
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

The Mermaid (from The Sea Cabinet)

Between the imaginary iceberg and the skeletal whale
is the stuffed and mounted mermaid in her case,

the crudely-stitched seam between skin and scale

so unlike Herbert Draper's siren dreams, loose

on the swelling tide, part virgin and part harpy.*
Her post-mortem hair and her terrible face 

look more like P.T. Barnum's Freak of Feejee,
piscene and wordless, trapped in the net of a stare.

She has the head and shrivelled tits of a monkey,

the green glass eyes of a porcelain doll, a pair

of praying-mantis hands, and fishy lips

open to reveal her sea-caved mouth, her rare

ivory mermaid-teeth. Children breathe and rap

on the glass to make her move. In her fixity
she's as far as can be from the selkie who slips

her wet pelt on the beaches of Orkney

and walks as a woman, pupils widened in light,

discarding the stuffed sack of her body.

Without hearing, or touch, or taste, or smell, or sight
she echoes the numb roll of the whale

in a sea congealed with cold, when it was thought

no beast could be as nerveless as the whale.

– Caitríona O'Reilly (2005)

*Herbert Draper - sentimental Victorian illustrator of classical myths

Passing Silhouettes

Anonymous English Makers
Dress
ca. 1760
printed taffeta of Spitalfields silk
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Anonymous English Makers
Robe à l'anglaise
(with fichu and apron in cotton gauze)
ca. 1780
cotton chintz imported from India
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Anonymous American Makers
Hoop
"Bradley's Patent Duplex Elliptic Spring Skirt"
ca. 1867-68
steel and cotton
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Anonymous English Makers
Dolman Jacket
ca. 1887
embroidered and beaded silk faille
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Anonymous Burmese Makers
Court Costume
ca. 1890-1915
cotton embroidered with sequins and glass
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Marie-Louise Bruyère (Paris)
Evening Gown
1947
silk
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Antonio del Castillo for House of Lanvin
Hat
ca. 1960
wool felt and silk faille
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Norman Norell
Evening Gown
1971
silk-satin, silk-chiffon, plastic sequins, fox fur
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Kansai Yamamoto
Ensemble
(cape, blouse, culottes)
1971
synthetic satin and wool-knit
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Laura Ashley
Dress
1974
cotton
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Roberto Capucci
"Fumo" Evening Gown
1985
slubbed silk
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Christian Lacroix
Dress
1988
silk and cotton
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jacqueline de Ribes
Evening Gown
1990
silk satin
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jean-Paul Gaultier
Kilt Trousers
1993
wool tartans
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Comme des Garçons (Japan)
Dress
1996
cotton and polyester
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Iris van Herpen
"Alchemy of Light" Dress
2016
silk tulle, thermoplastic polymer, transparent liquid polyurethane
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Telemachus' Detachment

When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also

insane. Also

very funny.

– Louise Glück (1996)