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| Lyubov Popova Untitled ca. 1915 oil on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Alexander Calder Untitled 1928 painted metal and wire Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina |
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| Georges Valmier Untitled before 1937 gouache on paper Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Harry Bertoia Untitled ca. 1943 monoprint Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Janet Sobel Untitled ca. 1946-48 enamel on board Menil Collection, Houston |
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| Serge Poliakoff Untitled 1959 gouache and watercolor on paper Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC |
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| Asger Jorn Untitled ca. 1959 oil on canvas Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC |
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| Cy Twombly Untitled 1964 oil stick, crayon and graphite on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Menashe Kadishman Untitled 1970 screenprint Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC |
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| Giuseppe Capogrossi Untitled before 1972 lithograph Dallas Museum of Art |
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| David Salle Untitled 1980 acrylic on paper Dallas Museum of Art |
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| Jasper Johns Untitled 1987 oil, encaustic and charcoal on linen Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC |
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| John Walker Untitled 1996 oil on canvas North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh |
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| Charlotte Schleiffert Untitled 1999 mixed media on canvas Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| Leonard Brooks Untitled 2003 collage on paper McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas |
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| Jon Pylypchuk Untitled 2003 mixed media on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Rob van Koningsbruggen Untitled 2017 oil on canvas Kunstmuseum, The Hague |
In the Waiting Room
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead men slung on a pole
– "Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came on oh! of pain
– Aunt Consuelo's voice –
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I – we – were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
– I couldn't look any higher –
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities –
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts –
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How – I didn't know any
word for it – how "unlikely" . . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
– Elizabeth Bishop (1971)