Acid Tones - I

Anonymous Printmaker
Meteorite Crater near Winslow, Arizona
ca. 1930
postcard
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Stephan Bundi
Macbeth
2002
screenprint (poster)
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Alban Chambon
Decorative Tile
ca. 1905
glazed ceramic
Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Brussels

Richard Diebenkorn
Berkeley No. 38
1955
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Espen Gleditsch
Faded Remains (Ilioneus)
2017
pigment print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Paul Graeb
Biedermeier Interior
ca. 1885
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Wil Howard
Künstler Redoute
1914
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Henri-Gabriel Ibels
Figures in a Meadow
ca. 1905
oil on cardboard
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

Fernand Léger
Composition with Profile
1926
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Koloman Moser
Venus in the Grotto
ca. 1914
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Simon Saint-Jean
Still Life in a Landscape
ca. 1850-60
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Paul Outerbridge
Party Mask with Shells
1936
tricolor carbro print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Andy Warhol
Marilyn
1967
screenprint
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Jan Wiegers
Portrait of Anton Constandse
1924
oil on canvas
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Ventura Salimbeni
Holy Trinity with St Peter and St Bernard
ca. 1695
oil on canvas (altarpiece)
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Johann Georg Platzer
Samson's Revenge
ca. 1730-40
oil on copper
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Chorus:

The talk of the citizens, mixed with anger, is a dangerous thing:

it is the equivalent of a publicly ordained curse:

I have an anxiety that waits to hear 

of something happening under cover of night.

For the gods do not fail to take aim

against those who have killed many, and in time

the black Furies enfeeble him

who has been fortunate against justice,

reversing his fortune and corroding

his life, and when he comes

to the land of the unseen, he has no protection.

And to be excessively praised

is dangerous: a thunderbolt

is launched from the eyes of Zeus.

I prefer a prosperity that attracts no envy:

may I neither be a sacker of cities,

nor myself be captured and see

my life subjected to another. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)