Saturday, August 23, 2025

Expectedness (Sixties)

Betty Parsons
Bright Day
1966
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC


Larry Rivers
Duo: Head of a Woman and Woman standing at Foot of a Tree
1968
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Mark Rothko
Blue Orange Red
1961
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Deborah Remington
Saxon
1966-67
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
#4A
1965
acrylic on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
#1D
1965
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
Inside Out
1966
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
Interchange #2
1966
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
#8
1963
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
Barcelona
1969
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Reed
26B
1964
acrylic on canvas
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Clayton Pond
My Grandmother's Fan Without Everything Else Around It
1968
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Clayton Pond
Flower Man
1969
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Clayton Pond
The Other Chair
before 1969
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ednah Root
Sound Barrier
1964
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Joseph Francis Plaskett
Van Gogh's Asylum, St Remy, Provence
ca. 1960
casein and pastel on paper
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Eduardo Paolozzi
Metalisation of a Dream
ca. 1964
screenprint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

LONG and SHORT – are words which, until comparatively recently, have been taken as the bases of all prosodic analysis.  They represent two values which, though no doubt by no means always identical in themselves, are invariably, unmistakably, and at once, distinguished by the ear; and the combining of which, in ordinary mathematical permutation, constitutes the feet, or lowest integers of metrical rhythm.  This nomenclature – which presents no initial difficulties, is sufficient for all practical purposes, and commends itself at once to any unprejudiced intelligence – seems first to have excited question and suspicion towards the end of the seventeenth century.  It is disagreeable to both accentual and syllabic prosodists, and it appears to disturb some who would not class themselves with either.  It is indeed quite possible to work either system with "long" and "short," applied uncontentiously to the natural values of rhythmed speech in English poetry.  But a punctilio arises as to the definition of the words.  "Does length," some people ask, "really mean 'duration of time' in pronouncing?"  This question, and others, seem to the present writer unnecessary.  We need not decide what makes the difference between "long" and "short" – it is sufficient that this difference unmistakably exists, and is felt at once.  Whether it is due to accent, length of pronunciation, sharpness, loudness, strength, or anything else, is a question in no way directly affecting verse.  The important things are, once more, that it exists; that verse cannot exist without it; that it is partly, and in English rather largely, created by the poet, but that this creation is conditioned by certain conventions of the language, of which accent is one, but only one.

– George Saintsbury, from Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910)