Monday, January 26, 2026

Mixed Thirties

Mark Rothko
The Party
1938
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC


Pablo Picasso
Glass, Vase and Fruit
1937
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Walker Evans
Portrait of artist Anne Harvey
1937
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Platt Lynes
Mr and Mrs Russell Lynes
ca. 1939
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pavel Tchelitchew for Steuben Glass Works
Vase with Acrobats
1939
glass
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Sophie Tauber-Arp
Le Vase
1935
painted wood relief
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Wolfgang Suschitzky
Charing Cross Road
ca. 1936
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

August Sander
Farmer
1936
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Brassaï
La Colonne Morris dans le brouillard
1932
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Man Ray
Arm
1935
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Albert Renger-Patzsch
Lepiota procera
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Theodore Roszak
Study for Airport
1934
gouache and ink on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Konstantin Somov
Russian Ballet
1930
gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henry Tonks
Study of Pollard Willows on Riverbank
before 1936
drawing
British Museum

Humphrey Spender
Women with Children, Glasgow
1939
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Ancell Stronach
Portrait of designer Peter Wylie Davidson
1934
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Elsa Schiaparelli
Jacket
1937
silk taffeta, leather appliqué, plastic
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations and spells are not Witches or, as we term them, Magicians.  I conceive there is a traditional Magicke, not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second hand from his Scholars, who having once the secret betrayed are able and do empirically practice without his advice, they both proceeding upon the principles of nature: where actives, aptly conjoined to disposed passives, will under any Master produce their effects.  Thus I think at first a great part of Philosophy was Witchcraft, which being afterward derived from one to another, proved but Philosophy, and was indeed no more than the honest effects of Nature.  What invented by us is Philosophy, learned from him is Magicke.  We do surely owe the honour of many secrets to the discovery of good and bad Angels.  

– Sir Thomas Browne, from Religio Medici (1642)