Pairings

Hans Holbein the Elder
Portrait of the artist's sons Ambrosius and Hans
1511
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Francis Cotes
Double Portrait
1757
pastel on blue paper, mounted on canvas
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Anonymous Artist working in India
Caricatures of Europeans
ca. 1760-1800
gouache on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

John Flaxman (designer) for Josiah Wedgwood & Sons
Chess Pieces
(pawn as warrior and pawn as jester)
ca. 1785
jasperware
British Museum

Carl Leopold Hollitzer
Study of Catalan Military Uniform of 1806
ca. 1910
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Frances Jocelyn
Pair of Portraits
ca. 1860
albumen silver prints mounted within watercolor surrounds
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin
Still Life
ca. 1880
oil on board
Princeton University Art Museum

Ilse Bing
Detailing on a Dress by Elsa Schiaparelli
1934
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Alexander Girard (designer)
Carolus Magnus Dinner Plates
ca. 1956
porcelain
Denver Art Museum

Lester Johnson
Two Self Portraits
1965
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ben Shahn
Unexpected Meeting
1968
lithograph
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

José Luis Cuevas
Borgia
1968
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Allen Frame
Dan Mahoney and Bob Gover, NYC
1981
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Barbara Tisserat
Produce
1984
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Manuel Neri
Ventana al Pacifico
ca. 1988
plaster relief
(maquette for courthouse sculpture installation)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Mapplethorpe
Double Jack-in-the-Pulpit
1988
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

David Mecalco
Pedro & Juan give Thanks to the Virgin for their Happiness
ca. 1990
ex-voto painted on metal
Fowler Museum at UCLA

 

Jeff Gibson
Batavia
1997
screenprint
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Elad Lassry
Men (055, 065)
2012
gelatin silver print
Gugenheim Museum, New York

The Cure

The doctor recommended cortisone,

Diathermy, vitamins, and rest. 

It worked. These months in Athens, no one's guessed

My little drama; I appear my own

Master again. However, once you've cracked

That so-called mirror of the soul,

It is not readily, if at all, made whole.

("Between the motion and the act

Falls the Shadow" – T.S. Eliot.)

Part of me has remained cold and withdrawn.

The day I went up to the Parthenon

Its humane splendor made me think, So what?

One May noon in the Royal Park, among

The flora of l'Agneau Mystique –

Cypress, mimosa, laurel, palm – a Greek

Came up to name them for me in his tongue.

I thanked him; he thanked me, sat down. Peacocks

Trailed by, hard gray feet mashing overripe

But bitter oranges. I knew the type:

Superb, male, raucous, unclean. Orthodox

Ikon of appetite feathered to the eyes

With the electric blue of days that will

Not come again. My friend with time to kill

Asked me the price of cars in Paradise.

By which he meant my country, for in his

The stranger is a god in masquerade.

Failing to act that part, I am afraid

I was not human either – ah, who is?

He is, or was; had brothers and a wife;

Chauffeured a truck; last Friday broke his neck

Against a tree. We have no way to check

These headlong emigrations out of life.

Try, I suppose, we must, as even Valéry said,

And said more grandly than I ever shall –

Turning shut lids to the August sun, and all

Such neon figments (amber, green, and red)

Of incommunicable energy

As in my blindness wake, and at a blink

Vanish, and were the clearest hint, I think,

Of what I have been, am, and care to be.

– James Merrill (1966)