Conjunctions

Alejandro Cañedo
The Dioscuri
1934
watercolor and gouache on paper
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Don Freeman
Tender Exit
1936
hand-colored lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Douglas Gorsline
On Leave
1944
engraving
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Charles Hoffbauer
Scènes de la vie des Arrageois au XVIe siècle
1932
oil on canvas
(detail of mural)
Hôtel de Ville, Arras

Francis Picabia
First Encounter
1925
oil on panel
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Thomas Rowlandson
Bachelor's Fare
ca. 1800
ink and watercolor on paper
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Theo Scharf
The Lovers
1923
etching
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Reynaldo Rivera
Untitled
1990
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Joan Semmel
Touch
1975
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Karl Struss
Forrest Stanley and Agnes Ayres in Forbidden Fruit
1921
gelatin silver print
(publicity image for silent film)
Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Louis Stettner
The Caress, Grand Boulevards, 1998, Paris
1998
inkjet print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Arthur Tress
Teenage Runners, New York NY
1975
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jimmy Wright
Lighting a Joint, Club Baths
1975
gouache on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mike Disfarmer
Two Sailors
ca. 1945
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Allen Frame
John West, Dan Mahoney and Darrel Ellis, NYC
1981
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jeff Koons
Made in Heaven
1989
lithograph (poster)
Tate Modern, London

Unpainted Door

Finally, in middle age,

I was tempted to return to childhood.

The house was the same, but

the door was different.

Not red anymore – unpainted wood.

The trees were the same: the oak, the copper-beech.

But the people – all the inhabitants of the past –

were gone: lost, dead, moved away.

The children from across the street

old men and women.

The sun was the same, the lawns

parched brown in summer.

But the present was full of strangers.

And in some way it was all exactly right,

exactly as I remembered: the house, the street,

the prosperous village –

Not to be reclaimed or re-entered

but to legitimize

silence and distance,

distance of place, of time,

bewildering accuracy of imagination and dream –

I remember my childhood as a long wish to be elsewhere.

This is the house: this must be

the childhood I had in mind.

– Louise Glück (2001)