Friday, July 18, 2025

Orange Elements

Hilde Honerud
Gym #16
2021
inkjet print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Edgar Degas
Le Bain
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of Suzanne de Boubers de Bernâtre,
wife of Balthasar Keller

1686
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Robert Skala
Still Life with Oranges
ca. 1920
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Robert Rauschenberg
Tree Frog
1964
screenprint and oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Britt Juul
Untitled
1999
acrylic and oil on canvas
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Giorgio Glass
Vesuvius in Eruption
1805
gouache on black paper
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Albrecht Dürer
The Virgin in Prayer
1518
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

David Hopper
Artist's Model
1991
glass
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Barbara Hanrahan
Anatomical Study I
1966
color etching
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Tor Hörlin
The Music Room
1942
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Andy Warhol
Electric Chair
1967
screenprint and acrylic paint on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Kerstin Abram-Nilsson
Scene from We (and They)
ca. 1965
color etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anthonie Schotel
Still Life with Oranges in a Bowl
ca. 1920
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum

Louis Rhead
Read The Sun
1894
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Julius Klinger
Die Woche 
(film based on novel by Georg Engel)
1913
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Kalasiris repeated to Charikleia all that the old woman had said, and together they moved away.  After stepping over the corpses for a short distance, they found a little hillock, and there Kalasiris stretched himself out, pillowing his head on the quiver, while Charikleia sat, using her pouch as a seat.  The moon had just risen and was bathing the whole scene in bright light, for it was the second night after the full moon.  Kalasiris, naturally enough for an old man, especially one fatigued by his travels, lay fast asleep, but the anxieties that beset Charikleia kept her awake; and thus she found herself witnessing a performance which, abominable as it may be, is common practice among the women of Egypt.

Supposing herself now secure against any intrusion or observation, the old woman began by digging a pit, to one side of which she lit a fire.  After positioning her son's body between the two, she took an earthenware bowl from a tripod that stood beside her and poured a libation of honey into the pit, likewise of milk from a second bowl, and lastly of wine from a third.*  Then she took a cake made out of fine wheat flour and shaped into the effigy of a man, crowned it with bay and fennel, and flung it into the pit.  Finally, she picked up a sword and, in an access of feverish ecstasy, invoked the moon by a series of grotesque and outlandish names, then drew the blade across her arm.  She wiped the blood onto a sprig of bay and flicked it into the fire.  There followed a number of other bizarre actions, after which she knelt over the dead body of her son and whispered certain incantations into his ear, until she woke the dead man, and compelled him by her magic arts to stand upright. 

*this scene is intended to recall the episode in the Odyssey (11:24) when Odysseus summons the spirits of the dead:
I, drawing from beside my thigh my sharp sword,
dug a pit, of about a cubit in each direction,
and poured it full of drink offering for all the dead, first
honey mixed with milk, and the second pouring was sweet wine,
and the third, water, and over it all I sprinkled white barley.

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)