Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Sinuosities - V

Martin Kippenberger
Fighting Bedsores
1986
screenprint (poster)
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Carl Jacob Malmberg
Untitled
ca. 1875
albumen print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Max Pechstein
The Green Sofa
1910
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Théodore Géricault
Study for Raft of the Medusa
1818-19
drawing (figure)
Musée Bonnat Helleu, Bayonne

Sebastiano Mazzoni
Painting crowned by Fame
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Abraham Constantin
Penitent Magdalen
1825
enamel on porcelain
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Giovanni Baglione
Mocking of Christ
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Ivar Arosenius
Portrait of sculptor Gerhard Henning
1907
tempera on panel
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Annibale Carracci
Venus at Rest
ca. 1602
drawing
(study for painting)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Andreas Denker
Mythological Scene
ca. 1720-30
gouache on vellum
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Dorothea Tanning
Tango
1977
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Emanuel Vigeland
Couple
ca. 1920-30
drawing, with watercolor
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Master FP
Virtue triumphing over Vice
ca. 1530-50
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

François Gérard
Portrait of Juliette Récamier
ca. 1803-1805
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Gustave Courbet
Le Sommeil
1866
oil on canvas
Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

The mighty Nile is everything to them: a river, a land, a sea, a lake – affording to the eye novel conjunctions of ships and spades, paddles and plows, rudders and sickles, where sailors consort with farmers and cattle are neighbors to fish.  You sow where once you sailed, and the field you sow is a sea brought under cultivation.  The river, you see, keeps to a schedule of visits, an Egyptian may sit and wait for the river's arrival, counting the days.  The Nile never forgets its obligations, but watches for deadlines and measures out its water.  It is a river unwilling to be found unpunctual.  River and land can be seen to strive in friendly competition, the river turning so much land into a sea, the land in turn absorbing so great and sweet a sea.  Their victories show perfect equality – neither is ever the loser; the water and land are always coterminous.

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