Last Light

Henri Le Sidaner
House at Gerberoy, Evening
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Caspar David Friedrich
Evening
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum Hannover

Caspar van Wittel
Colosseum in Rome from the Southeast
ca. 1700
oil on canvas
Harvard Art Museums

Charles de La Fosse
Clytie turned into a Sunflower
1688
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

François Gérard
Belisarius
1797
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Karl Blechen
Three Fishermen on the Gulf of Naples
1833
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

John Trumbull
Gelchossa and Lamderg
(scene from Ossian's Fingal)
1792
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Joseph Wright of Derby
Peter Perez Burdett (with telescope) and his first wife Hannah
1765
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Adriaen van de Velde
River Landscape
ca. 1660-70
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Franz Xavier Karl Palko
Departure of the Angel from the House of Tobias
ca. 1744-45
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Pyke Koch
Florentine Garden
1938
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum

Thomas Gainsborough
The Road from the Market
1767-68
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Caspar David Friedrich
The Lone Tree
1822
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Arnold Böcklin
Isle of the Dead
1883
oil on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Gothic Church on a Rock by the Sea
1815
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Trumpets doe you with thunder of your clange,
Drive out this changes horror, my voyce faints:
Where all joy was, now shrieke out all complaints.
Thus cryed she, for her mixed soule could tell
Her love was dead: And when the morning fell 

Prostrate upon the weeping earth for woe,
Blushes that bled out of her cheekes did show,
Leander brought by Neptune, brusde and torne

With Citties ruines he to Rocks had worne,

To filthie usering Rocks that would have blood,
Though they could get of him no other good. 

She saw him, and the sight was much much more,
Then might have serv'd to kill her; should her store
Of giant sorrowes speake? Burst, dye, bleede,
And leave poore plaints to us that shall succeede.
She fell on her loves bosome, hugg'd it fast,

And with Leanders name she breath'd her last. 

– Christopher Marlowe, from Hero and Leander (published 1598)

Uta Barth

Uta Barth
Ground #5
1992-93
C-print
Princeton University Art Museum

 

Uta Barth
Ground #38
1994
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Uta Barth
Ground #42
1994
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Uta Barth
Ground #46
1994
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Uta Barth
Untitled (from series, In Passing)
ca. 1995-97
photo-lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Uta Barth
Untitled (from series, In Passing)
ca. 1995-97
photo-lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Uta Barth
Untitled (from series, In Passing)
ca. 1995-97
photo-lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Uta Barth
Untitled (from series, In Passing)
ca. 1995-97
photo-lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Uta Barth
Untitled (from series, In Passing)
ca. 1995-97
photo-lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Uta Barth
Field #23
1998
acrylic lacquer on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Uta Barth
From Nowhere Near
1999
C-print
Princeton University Art Museum

Uta Barth
Untitled (NW-6)
1999
C-print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Uta Barth
Untitled (AOT-5)
2000
C-print
San Diego Museum of Art

Uta Barth
White Blind / Bright Red (02.5)
2002
C-prints
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Uta Barth
Untitled (11.1)
2011
inkjet prints
Milwaukee Art Museum

Uta Barth
Ground (95.4)
1995
C-print
Denver Art Museum

Uta Barth
Untitled (05.1)
2005
C-print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Stars

I'm awake; I am in the world –

I expect

no further assurance.

No protection, no promise.

Solace of the night sky,

the hardly moving

face of the clock.

I'm alone – all

my riches surround me.

I have a bed, a room.

I have a bed, a vase

of flowers beside it.

And a nightlight, a book.

I'm awake: I am safe.

The darkness like a shield, the dreams

put off, maybe 

vanished forever.

And the day –

the unsatisfying morning that says

I am your future,

here is your cargo of sorrow:

Do you reject me? Do you mean

to send me away because I am not

full, in your word,

because you see

the black shape already implicit?

I will never be banished. I am the light,

your personal anguish and humiliation.

Do you dare

send me away as though

you were waiting for something better?

There is no better.

Only (for a short space)

the night sky like

a quarantine that sets you

apart from your task.

Only (softly, fiercely)

the stars shining. Here,

in the room, the bedroom.

Saying, I was brave, I resisted,

I set myself on fire. 

– Louise Glück (2001)

Raking Light (from the Right) - IV

Salomon de Bray
Study of a Young Man
1635
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Benigno Bossi
Head of a Youth with Feathered Turban
1760
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jean Raoux
Girl with Bird
1717
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Gerrit van Honthorst
Liberation of St Peter
ca. 1616-18
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Félix Fossey
Study of an Oarsman
1855
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Girolamo Curti (il Dentone)
Recumbent Figure Foreshortened
ca. 1600
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jan Philip Reuthel
Académie
1799
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Derk Anthony van de Wart
Académie
1789
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacques Stella
Solomon sacrificing to Pagan Idols
ca. 1640-50
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

attributed to Aert Schouman
Self Portrait
1730
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adamo Scultori after Michelangelo
Ignudo (Sistine Ceiling)
ca. 1585
engraving
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Gianlorenzo Bernini and workshop
Louis XIV as Marcus Curtius
ca. 1670-80
marble
(carved in Rome)
Château de Versailles

Andrea Boscoli
Académie
(after wax mannequin)
ca. 1590
drawing
Biblioteca Reale, Turin

Carl Friedrich Lessing
Model posed as Rider
ca. 1840
drawing
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Michiel Sweerts
Man with a Pipe
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Harvard Art Museums

Paolo Veronese
Baptism of Christ
ca. 1580
oil on canvas
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

But here nought serves our turnes; O heaven and earth,
How most most wretched is our humane birth?
And now did all the tyrannous crew depart,
Knowing there was a storme in Heros hart,
Greater then they could make, and skornd their smart.
She bowed her selfe so low out of her Towre,
That wonder was she fell not ere her howre,
With searching the lamenting waves for him; 
Like a poore Snayle, her gentle supple lim
Hung on her Turrets top so most downe right,
As she would dive beneath the darknes quite,
To finde her Jewell; Jewell, her Leander,

A name of all earths Jewels pleasde not her, 
Like his deare name: Leander, still my choice,

Come nought but my Leander; O my voice

Turne to Leander: hence-forth be all sounds,
Accents, and phrases that shew all griefes wounds,
Analisde in Leander. O black change!

– Christopher Marlowe, from Hero and Leander (published 1598)

Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky
Singer
1903
color woodblock print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

 

Wassily Kandinsky
Lady with Fan
1903
color woodblock print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Pond in the Park
ca. 1906
oil on board
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Blue Mountain
1908-1909
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Group in Crinolines
1909
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Landscape near Murnau with Locomotive
1909
oil on board
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Landscape with Rolling Hills
1910
oil on board
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Improvisation 28
1912
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Landscape with Rain
1913
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
White Cross
1922
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Wassily Kandinsky
Pointed and Round
1925
oil on board
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Three Sounds
1926
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Upward
1929
oil on board
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Wassily Kandinsky
Striped
1934
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Yellow Painting
1938
oil and enamel on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Wassily Kandinsky
Around the Circle
1940
oil and enamel on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Solstice

Each year, on this same date, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate light: we plan for it,
the day we tell ourselves
that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference is given
to the celebratory, the ecstatic.

There is in these rituals something apart from wonder:
there is also a kind of preening,
as though human genius had participated in these arrangements
and we found the results satisfying.

What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.

But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening –
why should we look either forward or backward?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things.

– Louise Glück (2001)