Thursday, August 21, 2025

Modernistic Expectedness

Louise Bourgeois
Maquette for Facets of the Sun
1978
wood
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC


Giorgio de Chirico
The Nostalgia of the Poet
1914
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Giorgio de Chirico
Il Trovatore
ca. 1924
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Man Ray
Sotheby's Sale from the Estate of Juliet Man Ray
2014
offset-lithograph
(cover of auction announcement)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Man Ray
Still Life
ca. 1912-16
lithograph
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Seguidilla
1919
gouache, colored pencil and graphite on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Promenade
1967
(artist's replica of work created in 1916)
mixed media on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Shakespearean Equation: Twelfth Night
1948
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Shakespearean Equation: King Lear
1948
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alexander Calder
Portrait of Man Ray
1974
lithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alexander Calder
Violin
ca. 1960
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

René Magritte
Empire of Light
1953-54
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Joan Miró
Landscape (The Hare)
1927
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Joan Miró
Two Figures and a Dragonfly
1936
gouache and watercolor on paper
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Joan Miró
Seated Woman II
1939
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Joan Miró
The Red Sun
1948
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Joan Miró
Painting
1953
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

EPANAPHORA ("referring" or "repetition") – The repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive lines.  This, originally a rhetorical figure, becomes, especially with some of the Elizabethans and with Tennyson, a not unimportant prosodic device; and, in the hands of the latter, assists powerfully in the construction of the verse-paragraph.

EPANORTHOSIS ("setting up again," with a sense also of "correction") – Also a rhetorical figure and meaning the repetition of some word, not necessarily at the beginning of clause or line. This also can be made of considerable prosodic effect; for repetition, especially if including some slight change, is necessarily associated with emphasis, and this emphasis colours and weights the line variously. 

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