Organic Forms

Barbara Crane
Coloma to Covert: Murmurs: Fleshy Fungus
1997
platinum palladium print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Otto Scholderer
Still Life with Blue Vase and Mushrooms
1891
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Ina van Zyl
Darling Buds
2015
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

William Sharp
Opening Flower
1854
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Séraphine
Cherries and Yellow Leaves
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Karl Struss
Pink Carnation
ca. 1910
autochrome
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Ger van Elk
Green Blood
1993
screenprint
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Magdalena Wiecek
Study (Abstract Plant Motifs)
1961
gouache on paper
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Stig Sundin
Rowan
1986
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

attributed to Johann Melchior Füssli
Vertebral Column with Dissection of Nerves and Blood Vessels
ca. 1730
drawing
Wellcome Collection, London

Roman Empire
Garlands Motif on the Sarcophagus Caffarelli
AD 40
marble relief
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Varvara Alexandrovna Rodchenko
Photogram
1985
photogram
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Per Formo
Overgrown Order
2009-2010
acrylic on canvas
Sogn og Fjordane Kunstmuseum, Norway

Charles Hoguet
Pumpkin on a Chair
1853
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Albrecht Altdorfer
Design for Lidded Cup with Shell-Shapes
ca. 1520-25
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Ingun Bøhn
Crime Scene
2004
drawing
Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø

Chorus of Persian Elders: 

Royal lady, first in honour among the Persians,

while you send the drink-offerings down to earth's inner chambers,

we in song will beseech

those with power to send up the dead

to be kind to us in their home beneath the earth.

[During the rest of this chant and song by the Chorus, the Queen is pouring the drink-offerings at Darius' tomb, with appropriate ritual actions.]

Now, you holy divinities of the underworld,

Earth and Hermes and you, King of the Shades,*

send that soul up from below into the light;

for if he knows any further remedy for our troubles,

he, alone of mortals, will tell us how to end them. 

Does he hearken to me – the blessed King, equal to a god –

as I send forth clearly in Eastern speech

my variegated, grief-laden,

cries that tell of woe?

Let me try to reach him, voicing loudly

our wretched sufferings:

does he hear me from below?

– Aeschylus, from Persians (472 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*Pluto