White Garments - II

Anna Dorothea Lisiewska-Therbusch
Young Lady in Negligée
ca. 1769-70
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon,
duchesse d'Orléans
ca. 1789
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

François Gérard
Portrait of Alexandrine-Émilie Brongniart
1795
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Marie-Geneviève Bouliard
Portrait of painter Adélaïde Binart
1796
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Eulalie Morin
Portrait of Juliette Récamier
1799
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Juliette Récamier
1800
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

John Hoppner
Portrait of Mrs Dottin
ca. 1803-1804
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet
Girl eating Cherries
1817
oil on canvas
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Hiram Powers
Diana
1852
marble
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Auguste Renoir
Lise with a Parasol
1867
oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Édouard Manet
Le Repos
ca. 1871
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Edvard Munch
Summer Night - Inger on the Beach
1889
oil on canvas
KODE (Art Museums Complex), Bergen, Norway

Isidor Kaufmann
Hannah
ca. 1890
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Antoine Calbet
Reader
ca. 1890
watercolor and gouache on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Isaac Israëls
Portrait of Jacqueline Sandberg
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Signe Scheel
Profile at the Window (Lilli Scheel)
1914
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Tout cela vous l'avez lu aussi, dans les encadrés de l'antichambre. Vous vous êtes même arrêté devant la reproduction de l'esquisse à l'huile de Géricault qui n'est pas ici au Louvre, qui dort parmi les Girodet dans le musée de Montargis: Corentin en ventôse reçoit l'ordre de peindre les Onze. Le titre donné après coup est approximatif, le tableau est à peine ébauché, il y a de grands pans de blanc, car Géricault l'a peint quand il avait la mort sur l'épaule. Mais il est tout à fait conforme à ce que j'ai dit. 

Il ne pouvait en être autrement.

C'est que, Monsieur, l'esquisse de Géricault n'a d'autre valeur que d'avoir inspiré à Monseigneur l'Après-coup en personne, Michelet, Jules Michelet de son nom complet d'état civil, les douze pages définitives qui traitent des Onze, qui mettent en place Les Onze et les dressent devant la tradition historiographique pour les siècles des siècles.

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)

Hand-Colored

Robert Gibbings
The Retreat from Serbia
1916
hand-colored engraving
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Erich Heckel
Three Women by the Water
1923
hand-colored woodcut
Art Institute of Chicago

Walford Graham Robertson
We Three Kings
ca. 1925
hand-colored woodcut
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Don Freeman
Forty-Second Street Calamity: Farmers drop a Crate
1938
hand-colored lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
Geometric Motif
1958
hand-colored transfer print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Clarence Millet
Brulatour Court
before 1959
hand-colored woodcut
Dallas Museum of Art

Jim Dine
Wrench
1973
hand-colored lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Bat Spinning at the Speed of Light
1975
hand-colored lithograph
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Cottingham
Patte's
1980-82
hand-colored lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sigmar Polke
Untitled
1984
hand-colored lithograph
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robin White
Three Broken Shells
1985
hand-colored woodcut
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Robin White
Two Shells called Nouo
1985
hand-colored woodcut
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Roger Medearis
Family Reunion
1990
hand-colored lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Motherwell
Burning Elegy
1991
lithograph on hand-colored paper
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
Delos
1991
lithograph on hand-colored paper
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
Hollow Men's Cave
1991
lithograph on hand-colored paper
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

William T. Wiley
In the Garden
1996
hand-colored linocut
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

The Pelican

Squatter on water, ingenuous fisherman,

        Behold the pelican

Slapped by a wave, all grinning or aghast

At the enormity of his habitat,

The famous pouch, half stomach and half chin,

        Quick to show off unguessed

    Capacities: few things do that. 

Always the postures foolish yet severe

        Of Empire furniture

Assist him in a courtesy nowadays

Only among artists fashionable, who like

Being in public each a caricature

        The world may recognize

    And still be free to overlook.

 

Like great men he already is in part

        A myth or work of art

Sparing the watcher as it spares itself

By an apt gaiety, gay ineptitude,

Who floats, no evident concern at heart,

        Above the bluest gulf

    Upon the wind as on a tide.

But when the human fishermen can cast their bait

        At times they see too late

The ponderous bird avail of it in midair,

And are made to witness by their stratagem

Hurt and embarrassed over the pleasure-boat

        A creature of desire

    As crude as theirs, involved with them. 

Yet, lacking food, this bird must be, to feed

         His offspring, flesh and blood,

Himself his own last supper, and die then

Fattened upon the sense of how they thrive.

Almost one fancies charity is not greed,

        Seeing the pelican

    From air to emptier water dive.

– James Merrill (1951)

White Garments - I

Anonymous French Artist
St Michael Archangel subduing Satan
ca. 1400
fragment of limestone statue group
Bode Museum, Berlin

Bastiano Mainardi
Penitent St Jerome
ca. 1495
tempera on panel
National Museum, Warsaw

Antonis Mor
Cornelius van Horn and Anthonis Taets van Amerongen,
Canons of Utrecht Cathedral
1544
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Philippe de Champaigne
Portrait of Antoine Singlin
ca. 1646
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Katharina Pepyn
Portrait of Abbot Norbertus van Couwerven
1657
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

John Hoppner
Portrait of William Henry Meyrick
ca. 1805
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Johann Friedrich Overbeck
St Sebastian
ca. 1813-16
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Francesco Scaramuzza
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
1828
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Theodor Hildebrandt
The Robber
1829
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

"Erroneous notions of activity and power, an exuberance of strength which bursts through all the barriers of law, must of necessity conflict with the rules of social life. To these enthusiast dreams of greatness and potency it needed but a sarcastic bitterness against the unpoetic spirit of the age to complete the strange Don Quixote whom, in the Robber, we at once detest and love, admire and pity."

– Friedrich Schiller, preface to The Robbers (1781)

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of painter Auguste Hesse
ca. 1870
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Charles Lebayle
Claudius proclaimed Emperor
1886
oil on canvas
Musée de l'École Nationale Supérieure
des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Kristian Zahrtmann
Seated Draped Figure
1894
oil on cardboard
(study for painting)
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Roar Matheson Bye
The Sculptor
1924
oil on canvas
Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway

Ola Abrahamsson
Arne
1926
oil on canvas
Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø

Andrew Wyeth
Albert's Son
1959
tempera on panel
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Jeff Wall
Torso
1997
gelatin silver print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

 

Corentin ne rit pas. Peut-être qu'il n'écoute pas Collot, mais il le regarde. Il se dit avec une sorte de joie que le zèle compatissant pour les malheureux et la plaine de Brotteaux, la table hospitalière et la lande de Macbeth, la main tendue et le meurtre, nivôse et avril, c'est dans le même homme. C'est dans Collot, un de ces onze hommes qu'il va peindre. Qu'il lui est donné de peindre. Il se dit encore que tout homme est propre à tout. Que cela peut se peindre. Décidément non, il n'écoute pas Collot. Sa joie grandit. Sa joie sonne. Il écoute le souvenir des cloches. Il les entend quand elles s'ébranlent, quand elle croissent, quand elles sont à leur plein, quand elles décroissent. Quand elles s'arrêtent. Ses larmes de joie Collot ne les voit pas dans le noir, ou il croit que c'est de froid. Il est trois heures de la nuit. Allons, il est temps de se quitter, Collot déjà va seller l'autre cheval. Il l'amène sous la porche, il tient la bride: le cheval, les deux hommes, parmi les cloches enclouées. La lanterne, ils l'ont éteinte. Ils s'embrassent. Ils ne se reverront plus. 

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)

Mala Suerte - II

Conrad Felixmüller
Soldier in Madhouse I
1918
lithograph
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 

Leslie Machinist
Riot
1988
acrylic on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Mitchell Siporin
Winter Soldiers
1946
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Kiki Smith
Untitled (from Lot's Wife)
1993
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Rockwell Kent
Wreck of the D.T. Sheridan
ca. 1949-53
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Edward Hagedorn
Depth Bomb
ca. 1930
etching and drypoint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Howard Finster
There Shall Be Earth Quakes
1976
enamel on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Hans Ulrich Franck
Scene of War
ca. 1643-56
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Wim Wijnman
Traffic Safety: Danger Threatens You
ca. 1925
lithograph
(poster in Dutch)
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Tim Rice
Memorial Day: Kimberly, Megan and Shane
34 Rumler Road, Linfield PA
1996
gelatin silver print
Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Peter Saul
Criminal Being Executed
1964
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Friedrich Philipp Reinhold
Semira and Semin in Deluge
(illustration to narrative by Salomon Gessner)
ca. 1816
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Oliver Madox Brown
Silas finding the Body of Godfrey Cass's Wife
(illustration to Silas Marner by George Eliot)
1872
watercolor and gouache on paper
Manchester Art Gallery

Jacob Becher
Kneeling Model expressing Horror
ca. 1850
drawing
(study for painting)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Clare Leighton
Bread LIne, New York
1932
wood-engraving
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Rosalyn Drexler
Marilyn pursued by Death
1963
acrylic paint over photograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

William Rimmer
The Falling Gladiator
1861
plaster modello
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Joel Sternfeld
Ruins of the General Assembly Hall, Llano del Rio, Antelope Valley, California
1999
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

from Foliage of Vision

As landscapes richen after rain, the eye

Atones, turns fresh after a fit of tears.

When all the foliage of vision stirs

I glimpse the plump fruit hanging, falling, fallen

Where wasps are sputtering. In the full sky

Time, a lean wasp, sucks at the afternoon.

The tiny black and yellow agent of rot

Assaults the plum, stinging and singing. What 

A marvel is the machinery of decay!

How rare the day's wrack! What fine violence

Went to inject its gall in the glad eye!

The plum lies all brocaded with corruption.

                    *            *           *

I think of saints with hands pierced and wrenched eyes

Sensational beyond the art of sense,

As though whatever they saw was about to be

While feeling alters in its imminence

To palpable joy; of Dante's ascent in hell

To greet with a cleansed gaze the petaled sphere;

Of Darwin's articulate ecstasy as he stood

Before a tangled bank and watched the creatures

Of air and earth noble among much leafage

Dancing an order rooted not only in him

But in themselves, bird, fruit, wasp, limber vine,

Time and disaster and the limping blood.

– James Merrill (1951)