Sinuosities - IV

Konrad Klapheck
Ballade
1984
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Melchior d'Hondecoeter
Flamingo
ca. 1680
watercolor
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Gisbert Combaz
Maison d'Art à la Toison d'Or, Bruxelles
1895
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Alexander Calder
The Forest is the Best Place
1945
painted iron
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Tore Aarholt
Figure
1989
color woodblock print
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Irving Penn
Vionnet Dress with Fan
1974
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Early Christian Artist, Roman Empire
Jonah Swallowed
AD 280-290
marble
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Per Krohg
Centaur
1924
oil on canvas
Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø

Paul Signac
Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez
1893
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Federico Barocci
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1579-82
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Werner Rohde
Mannequin Arms
1934
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Leonetto Cappiello
Maurin Quina
1908
lithograph (poster)
Milwaukee Art Museum

Richard Cosway
The Heliads at the Tomb of Phaeton
(scene from Ovid)
ca. 1770-80
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Gherardo Cibo
Plantago Major
ca. 1584
watercolor
(illustration to De Re Medica of Dioscorides)
British Library

Imogen Cunningham
Magnolia Bud
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Robert Mapplethorpe
Jack in the Pulpit
1988
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

And Menelaos said, "Oh, have you ever seen an elephant?"

"I have indeed," said Charmides, "and I have heard experts describe its incredible gestation."

"We have never yet seen one," I said, "except in pictures."

"I'd be glad to tell you all about it; we have plenty of time.  The mother conceives and carries her offspring for the longest period –  a full ten years of intrauterine development.  Finally, at the end of this long decade, she gives birth, when the fetus is almost senile.  From this fundamental fact we can explain its great size, its nonaggression, its long life span and tardy demise.  They claim that it lives longer than Hesiod's fabled crow."

"The elephant's jaw is the size of an ox's head, and to look at it you would think it had two horns growing in its mouth: these are its curved tusks.  Between them grows the trunk, something like a long trumpet in shape and size, a multipurpose tool of great value.  It forages for food and any edible that comes within reach.  The trunk reaches out to the staples of his diet, plucks them, and curls up from below and offers them to his mouth.  When he spots a delicacy, he lassos it with a tight knot of his trunk and lifts it up whole above his head as an offering to his master, for an Ethiopian keeper rides on his back – a strange sort of pachyderm jockey.  The elephant's behavior is ingratiating and timorous; he attends to the intonations of his master's voice and patiently endures the goad, which is an iron ankus."

"Once I saw an incredible thing: a Greek man inserted his own head right up into the head of an elephant, who had opened wide his mouth and was breathing around the human intrusion.  Both were quite amazing – the man's courage and the elephant's tolerance.  The man said that he had given the creature a reward, for the following reason: its exhaled breath is almost indistinguishable from Indian spices and is an excellent remedy for headaches.  Now the elephant is aware of the value of his services and does not open its mouth gratis, but like a quack doctor insists on prior payment.  So if you give it to him, he agrees and keeps his part of the bargain, opening his jaws wide and waiting as long as the man wants.  He knows he has bartered his breath."

– Achilles Tatius, from Leucippe and Clitophon (2nd century AD), translated from Greek by John J. Winkler (1989)