Monday, August 4, 2025

Singular Objects - II

Xaver Fuhr
Still Life (Rubber Plant)
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Ton Kraayeveld
Ostsicht
2013
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum

Linda Lothe
Untitled
1999
porcelain with applied photo-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Anne Poirier and Patrick Poirier
Antiquités du Louvre
1980
gum bichromate print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Roman Empire
Winged Phallus
1st century AD
bronze
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Roman Empire
Cinerary Urn
AD 20-40
marble
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Severo da Ravenna
Candlestick on Clawfoot
ca. 1520
bronze
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Vladimir Tatlin
Model for Monument to the Third International
original built 1919-20, replica executed 1976
wood, metal, plastic
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Eilif Amundsen
Chair
1992
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Anonymous French Artist
Ovula Gisortiani
ca. 1860
albumen print
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Amalia Årfelt
Potato Eyes
2008
etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hans Bellmer
Les Jeux de la Poupée
ca. 1938
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Harry Callahan
Weed against Sky
1948
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Christo
Study for Otterlo Mastaba
1974
drawing (colored pencils)
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Jean-Jules Dufour
Russian Bird
1915
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Lee Friedlander
Nashville
1963
gelatin silver print
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Going through the woods, about six hundred yards from the shore we saw a bronze pillar with a faded, worn inscription in Greek that said "Hercules and Dionysus reached this point."  Nearby, on a rock, were two footprints, one a hundred feet long, the other smaller.  The smaller I supposed to belong to Dionysus, the other to Hercules.*  We made our obeisances and went on.  Before we had gone very far, we found ourselves beside a river running wine very like Chian; it was of some size and depth, even being navigable in some places.  We were led to put much more confidence in the inscription on the pillar when we saw this evidence of Dionysus's visit.  I decided to find the source of the river.  Going upstream I found, not indeed any spring from which it issued, but a great many large vines loaded with grapes.  By the root of each of these flowed a trickle of wine, and it was from these that the river was formed.  We could actually see a lot of fish in it.  Their flesh was vinous both in color and taste; anyway, we caught some and got drunk eating them.  Of course they were full of wine lees when we cut them open.  Later on, though, we hit on the idea of mixing them with water-fish and thus diluting this strong wine-food.  

*Herodotus speaks of a footprint three feet long left by Hercules in Scythia. 

– Lucian, from A True Story (2nd century AD), translated from Greek by B.P. Reardon (1989)