Thursday, January 1, 2026

Recumbent

Harold Stevenson
The New Adam
1962
oil on linen (nine panels)
Guggenheim Museum, New York


Eva Gonzalès
Morning Awakening
1876
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Bremen

Anonymous Printmaker
American Master Drawings and Watercolors - Whitney Museum of American Art
1976
offset lithograph
(exhibition poster reproducing watercolor by Winslow Homer)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Philippe Halsman
Martha Graham
1946
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Gustave Klumpp
Relaxing Nudist
1972
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Paul Resika
Nymph and Poodle
1961
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sam Taylor-Wood
Soliloquy III
1998
C-print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Sam Taylor-Wood
Soliloquy I
1998
C-print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Francis Bacon
Sphinx III
1954
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Study of a Woman from the Back
ca. 1717-18
drawing
British Museum

Cigoli (Lodovico Cardi)
Figure of Christ
ca. 1596
drawing
(study for painting, Feast in the House of Simon)
Morgan Library, New York

Eikoh Hosoe
Man-and-Woman-#24-
1960
gelatin silver print
National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC
 
Jan Gossaert
Adam and Eve
before 1532
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Kees Timmer
Felis onca
ca. 1953
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Elmer Bischoff
Study of a Woman
ca. 1950
charcoal on paper
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Benedikt Thola
Foreshortened Corpses
before 1572
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Robert Barnes
Macbeth's Visitor
1999
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

from Hecuba

Ilion, o my city,
no longer will you be named among the cities
never taken: lost in the Greek stormcloud,
speared, sacked,
your wreath of towers hacked
from your head: sorry, fouled,
in the smoke and the ash strain,
sad city
I shall not walk in you again. 

Ruin came at midnight.
We were in our room, sleep-eyed, happy,
tired, with the dancing over
and the songs for our won war,
everything over, my husband resting,
his weapons hung on the wall,
no Greeks to be seen any more,
the armed fleet
lost from our shores and gone.

I was just doing my hair
for the night, and the golden mirror
showed me my own face there
calm and still with delight,
ready for love and sleep.
And then the noise broke out in the streets
and a cry never heard before:
'Greeks,
Greeks, it is ours.' (They said.) 'Finish the war:
break kill burn:
end it, and we can go home.'

Out of our bed, half naked
like any Dorian girl
I ran for the sanctuary
of Artemis' shrine. No use, I never made it.
I saw my husband die. 
They have taken me over the sea.
I look back at my city.
Greek
ships hasten for home, taking me
with them, foredone
with sorrow and pity.

Curse Helen, curse
Paris, the fatal pair
whose love came too dear,
who married to destroy
my people my marriage and me,
whose marriage burned Troy,
May she never tread Greek ground.
I hope she never makes it over the sea.
I hope she is wrecked and drowned.
She ruined me.

– Euripides (485-406 BC), translated by Richmond Lattimore (1966)