Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1945)

Weegee
VJ Day Parade in Little Italy
1945
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Ángel Bracho
Victoria
1945
linocut and letterpress
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Nikolai Fedorovich Denisovskii
Victory!
1945
stencil-print and letterpress
Art Institute of Chicago

Dmitry Baltermants
Agfa, Berlin
(Russian officer posed with mannequins)
1945
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Pablo Picasso
Still Life with Skull
1945
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Robert Motherwell
Untitled
1945
watercolor and ink on paper
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Josef Albers
Kinetic V
1945
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Anonymous Photographer
Woman and Girl posed on Front Walk
1945
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Milton Avery
The Card Players
1945
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Gerald Brockhurst
The Basque Boy
1945
lithograph
Frye Art Museum, Seattle

Serge Charchoune
Fourchettes
1945
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Marshall Glasier
The Boat Ride
1945
oil on board
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Albert Gleizes
Composition
1945
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Georgia O'Keeffe
Cebolla Church
1945
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

David Smith
Classic Figure III
1945
bronze
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Rockwell Kent
Endless Energy for Limitless Living
1945
oil on canvas
(advertising image for the coal industry)
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              IV

It would not be enough that I should believe that what I had written was true: to satisfy me, the truth of this poem must be self-evident. It would have to be written, for example, in such a way that no reader could misread I love You as "I love you." 

                                                               V

If I were a composer, I believe I could produce a piece of music which would express to a listener what I mean when I think the word love, but it would be imposible for me to compose it in such a way that he would know that this love was felt for You (not for God, or my mother, or the decimal system). The language of music is, as it were, intransitive, and it is just this intransitivity which makes it meaningless for a listener to ask – "Does the composer really mean what he says, or is he only pretending?"

                                                               VI

If I were a painter, I believe I could paint a portrait that would express to an onlooker what I mean when I think the word You (beautiful, loveable, etc.), but it would be impossible for me to paint it in such a way that he would know that I loved You. The language of painting lacks, as it were, the Active Voice, and it is just this objectivity which makes it meaningless for an onlooker to ask – "Is this really a portrait of N (not of a young boy, a judge or a locomotive in disguise)?" 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Derivations

attributed to Simone Bianco
Idealized Classical Head
ca. 1540
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Carl Friedrich Lessing
Study of Classical Head
1825
drawing
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Annibale Carracci
Classical Figure with Vessel
ca. 1595
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Arvid Fougstedt
Classical Motif
1931
etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Baccio Bandinelli
Frieze of Classical Figures
ca. 1519-25
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Marcantonio Raimondi after Francesco Francia
Bathing Scene with Classical Frieze Figures
ca. 1510
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Augustus John
Four Figures in Antique Dress
ca. 1891
drawing
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Wiltshire

Johann August Nahl the Younger
Two Women in Classical Draperies
before 1825
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Agostino Musi after Giulio Romano
Classical Couple holding Hands
ca. 1515-30
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Printmaker after Franz Ludwig Catel
Roman Woman applying Cosmetics, assisted by Slave
ca. 1798
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Salomon Gessner
Classical Vignette for Winckelmann's Letters
ca. 1802-1803
etching
(posthumously printed)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Ciro Ferri
Classical Scene before Enthroned Figure
ca. 1675
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Federico Zuccaro
Classical Scene
(unidentified narrative)
ca. 1580
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Auguste-Barthélemy Glaize
Study for Classical Figure
ca. 1870
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Francisque Millet
Classical Landscape with Water-Carrier
ca. 1660-70
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Étienne Allegrain
Classical Landscape with Ruins
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

There is another famous passage in the writings of Pliny that also concerns an incomplete figure, but this time the appeal to the imagination is even greater: we hear that Timanthes painted the sacrifice of Iphigenia and expressed the grief of those around her in such a masterly way that when he came to represent her father Agamemnon, he had to suggest the climax of sorrow by representing him with his cloak drawn over his face, an enclosed world within the picture's world, which excited the admiration of the classical orators.  

There is a painting on one of the walls of a Pompeian house that reflects this motif.  It is not a great work of art, and the same criticism applies to many other copies of Greek works found in Italy and elsewhere.  But such criticism has tended to obscure the most astounding consequence of the Greek miracle: the fact that copies were ever made at all to be displayed in the houses and gardens of the educated.  For this industry of making reproductions for sale implies a function of the image of which the pre-Greek world knew nothing.  The image has been pried loose from the practical context for which it was conceived and is admired and enjoyed for its beauty and fame, that is, quite simply within the context of art.  For this is the final consequence of that great "chain reaction."  The creation of an imaginative realm led to an acknowledgement of what we call "art" and the celebration of those rare spirits who could explore and extend that realm.

It may sound paradoxical to say that the Greeks invented art, but from this point of view, it is a mere sober statement of fact.  We rarely realize how much this concept owes to the heroic spirit of those discoverers who were active between 550 and 350 B.C.  For the history of these years as it is reflected in Pliny or Quintilian was handed down like an epic of conquest, a story of inventions.  When Quintilian called the contorted attitude of Myron's Discobolos "particularly praiseworthy for its novelty and difficulty," he codified a standard of criticism that linked art with the solution of problems.  The names of the artists who discovered new effects to increase illusion and lifelikeness, the names of Myron and Phidias, Zeuxis and Apelles, lived on in history and have retained their magic despite the fact we do not know one work from their hands.  The legend of their triumphs remained as potent in the history of Western art as did the actual works that were recovered from the soil.  The writers of the Renaissance echoed the anecdotes that extolled the powers of painting to deceive the eye – the very character which made Plato disapprove of art and prefer the immutable laws of the Egyptian canon. 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Charity

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Confident
1954
oil on panel
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Robert Frank
Charity Ball, New York City
1956
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Achille Etna Michallon
Taormina - Ruins of Ancient Theater
1820
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Caricature Studies
ca. 1840
drawing
British Museum

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Silent Hall
1961
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Frank
Georgetown, South Carolina
1955
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Canaletto
Capriccio with Classical Ruins, Rome
before 1768
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Henry Tonks
Next please!
(caricature of Herbert Henry Asquith hypnotizing Lloyd George)
1915-16
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Starting
1968
oil on panel
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Robert Frank
Man resting aboard the Congressional Limited
1955
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John Sell Cotman
Ruined House
1808
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alfred J. Frueh
Caricature of Jack Dempsey
1920
drawing
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Two Whites between Two Yellows
1958
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Frank
From the Bus, New York
1958
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous German Artist
Ruins on the Palatine Hill
19th century
oil on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Alfred J. Frueh
Caricature of silent film star Alla Nazimova
ca. 1910
drawing
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: White Monument
1951
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from In Time of War

He looked in all His wisdom from the throne

Down on the humble boy who kept the sheep,

And sent a dove; the dove returned alone:

Youth liked the music, but soon fell asleep.

But He had planned such future for the youth:

Surely His duty now was to compel;

For later he would come to love the truth,

And own his gratitude. The eagle fell.

It did not work: His conversation bored

The boy who yawned and whistled and made faces

And wriggled free from fatherly embraces;

But with the eagle he was always willing

To go where it suggested, and adored

And learnt from it the many ways of killing.

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1944)

Milton Avery
The Baby
1944
oil on canvas
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

Eugene Berman
Backdrop Design for Danses Concertantes by George Balanchine
1944
watercolor and gouache on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Arshile Gorky
How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life
1944
oil on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Hans Hofmann
Untitled
1944
gouache on paper
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Walt Kuhn
Acrobat in White and Silver
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Jacques Lipchitz
The Road to Exile
1944
etching, engraving and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Barbara Morgan
Berenice Abbott with a Cat
1944
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Max Weber
Woman Carrying Picture
1944
oil on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
The Painter
1944
oil paint, crayon and collage on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Isamu Noguchi
Remembrance
1944
bronze
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Carl-Henning Pedersen
Untitled
1944
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jackson Pollock
Untitled
1944
drawing
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Birger Sandzén
Autumn (Smoky Hill River, Kansas)
1944
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Tacoma Art Museum

Houghton Cranford Smith
Near Los Andes
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

William Sommer
Portrait of Miss Eunice Merton
1944
watercolor on paper
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Paul Bough Travis
Still Life
1944
oil on panel
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              I

Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought – I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.

                                                              II

Of any poem written by someone else, my first demand is that it be good (who wrote it is of secondary importance); of any poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine, recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for better or worse, by me. (When it comes to his own poems, a poet's preferences and those of his readers often overlap but seldom coincide.) 

                                                              III

But this poem which I should now like to write would not only have to be good and genuine: if it is to satisfy me, it must also be true.

     I read a poem by someone else in which he bids a tearful farewell to his beloved: the poem is good (it moves me as other good poems do) and genuine (I recognize the poet's "handwriting"). Then I learn from a biography that, at the time he wrote it, the poet was sick to death of the girl but pretended to weep in order to avoid hurt feelings and a scene. Does this information affect my appreciation of his poem? Not in the least: I never knew him personally and his private life is no business of mine. Would it affect my appreciation if I had written the poem myself? I hope so. 

– W.H. Auden (1959)