Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Verticals

Robert Melee
Her Curtains
2002
painted wood and plaster
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York


Barry Dalgleish
Interior with Still Life, New Year's Day
1981
oil and acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

George Murphy
At the Back of the Atheneum I
1980
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ivan Chermayeff
American Museum of Immigration
1974
offset-lithograph (poster)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Henry Peterson
Poster of a Pole
ca. 1972
screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Ilya Bolotowsky
Diamond - Blue, Black, Red, White
1971
acrylic on linen
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Richard Anuszkiewicz
Greeting Card
1971
screenprint
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Gene Davis
Zebra
1969
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

John Opper
Blue and Yellow Verticals
ca. 1968-70
acrylic on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Claes Oldenburg
Scissors Obelisk
1968
lithograph
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Guido Molinari
Oppositions
1961
acrylic on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Alice Trumbull Mason
Suspension Points (Surface Winds)
1959
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Josef Hoffmann
Design for Textile
ca. 1950-55
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Morning Glory
ca. 1930
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Wiener Werkstätte
Regenbogen
1919
block-printed silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Emily Carr
Indian Totem Pole
Hazelton, British Columbia

1912
oil on board
Art Gallery, New South Wales, Sydney

Antonio Beato
Egyptian Temple
ca. 1870-80
albumen silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from The Imaginary Iceberg

We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.

We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship;
we'd rather own this breathing plain of snow
though the ship's sails were laid upon the sea
as the snow lies undissolved upon the water. 
O solemn, floating field,
are you aware an iceberg takes repose
with you, and when it wakes may pasture on your snows?

                        *        *        *

This iceberg cuts its facets from within.
Like jewelry from a grave
it saves itself perpetually and adorns
only itself, perhaps the snows
which so surprise us lying on the sea.
Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off
where waves give in to one another's waves
and clouds run in a warmer sky.
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1946)

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Masked

Anonymous French Sculptor
Mask of Satyr
17th century
marble
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts


Henri Matisse
Open Window, Collioure
1905
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Franz Antoine
Family Group in a Garden
ca. 1860
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joe Zucker
Octopus 2
1981
acrylic and resin on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
Head of a King
ca. 1225-50
limestone
(detached from statue during the French-Revolution)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Matisse
Pot of Geraniums
1912
oil on linen
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Franz Antoine
Hermine and Marie Antoine
ca. 1862
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Larry Zox
Decorah (Single Gemini Series)
1968
acrylic on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous French Sculptor
Head of St Peter
ca. 1130-60
stone
(detached from lost statue)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Matisse
Reader on Black Ground
1939
oil on canvas
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

Franz Antoine
Hofrat Raymond
ca. 1855
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thornton Willis
Sharon's Dream
1980
oilstick on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
Head of a Knight
ca. 1300
limestone
(detached-from tomb figure by Protestant rioters)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Matisse
Romanian Blouse
1937
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Franz Antoine
Mathias Häusermann
ca. 1860
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jack Youngerman
Delfina
1961
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
Ornamental Mask
ca. 1580
painted terracotta
(fragment from chimneypiece)
Musée du Louvre

On the Lady Mary Villiers

The Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
If any of them, Reader, were
Known unto thee, shed a tear;
Of if thyself possess a gem
As dear to thee, as this to them,
Though a stranger to this place,
Bewail in theirs thine own hard case:
        For thou perhaps at thy return
        Mayst find thy Darling in an urn. 

– Thomas Carew (1595-1640)

Contour - I

Jacob Binck after Jacopo Caraglio
Hebe
1530
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum,
Braunschweig

Aristide Boulineau
La Glycine
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Rochelle

Alexandre Cabanel
Nymph and Satyr
1860
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio after Perino del Vaga
Venus and Cupid
ca. 1520-40
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giovanni Battista Casanova
Study of a Cast of the Apollino
ca. 1750
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Cavaliere d'Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari)
Figure Study
ca. 1590
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Marco Dente
Bacchus with Panther
before 1527
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Eugène Dodeigne
Study of Torso
ca. 1960
drawing
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
St Sebastian
ca. 1605-1610
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Luca Giordano
St Sebastian
ca. 1660
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Giovanni Giuliani
Atlante
ca. 1692-97
sandstone statue
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Ferdinand Hodler
Student at Jena in 1813
(mobilising to resist Napoleon)
ca. 1908
oil on canvas
(study for fresco)
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Marcel-Paul-Maurice-Stéphane Mangin
Académie
ca. 1905
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Francesco Montelatici (Cecco Bravo)
Académie
ca. 1630
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Jean-Joseph Perraud
Childhood of Bacchus
1863
marble
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lons-le-Saunier

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar
Académie
ca. 1800
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Epidamnus is a city situated on the right hand to such as enter into the Ionian Gulf.  Bordering upon it are the Taulantii, barbarians, a people of Illyria.  This was planted by the Corcyraeans; but the captain of the colony was one Phalius, the son of Heratoclidas, a Corinthian of the lineage of Hercules, and, according to an ancient custom, called to this charge out of the metropolitan city.  Besides that, the colony itself consisted in part of Corinthians and others of the Doric nation.  In process of time the city of Epidamnus became great and populous; and having for many years together been annoyed with sedition, was by a war, as is reported, made upon them by the confining barbarians brought low and deprived of the greatest part of their power.  But that which was the last accident before this war was that the nobility, forced by the commons to fly the city, went and joined with the barbarians and both by land and sea robbed those that remained within.  The Epidamnians that were in the town, oppressed in this manner, sent their ambassadors to Corcyra, as being their mother city, praying the Corcyraeans not to see them perish but to reconcile unto them those whom they had driven forth and to put an end to the barbarian war.  And this they entreated in the form of suppliants, sitting down in the temple of Juno.  But the Corcyraeans, not admiring their supplication, sent them away again without effect.

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)