Points

Ree Morton
Untitled
1977
watercolor, crayon and graphite on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Adolph Gottlieb
Descending Arrow
1956
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Weegee
Pennsylvania Hotel
ca. 1948
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Henri Lucas
Flux
1992
offset-lithograph (magazine cover)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Elena Semenova
The Industrial Leatherworker
(poster advertising magazine)
1930
lithograph
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Sigmar Polke
Untitled
2003
oil and resin on textile fabric
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Bonifazio de' Pitati (Bonifazio Veronese)
Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl
before 1553
oil on canvas
Galleria Palatina, Florence

Bernardino Luini
Sibyl
ca. 1515-20
detached fresco
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Bill Cunningham
At the Save the Children Party
1981
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Man on Ladder with Horse's Leg
ca. 1880-90
glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Roy Lichtenstein
The Warrior
1951
wood and metal
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

George Nelson Associates
Ball Wall Clock
ca. 1952
chrome-plated steel and lacquered wood
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Gesturing Figure
ca. 1760-61
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Gregório Lopes
Martyrdom of St Sebastian
ca. 1536-39
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon

Master of the Housebook (German printmaker)
St George and the Dragon
ca. 1470-1500
drypoint
British Museum

Jean-Baptiste Roman
Death of Euryalus and Nisus
(warrior couple in the Aeneid)
1827
marble
Musée du Louvre

William Orpen
Self Portrait
1925
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Last week we embraced on the dunes and thought they were pleased;

Now lakes and holes in the mountains remind us of error,

Strolling in the valley we are uncertain of the trees:

                Their shadow falls upon us;

                Are they spies on the human heart

                Motionless, tense in the hope

                Of catching us out?  Are they hostile, apart

                From the belovèd group? 

For our hour of unity makes us aware of two worlds:

That one was revealed to us then in our double-shadow,

Which for the masters of harbours, the colliers, and us,

                For our calculating star,

                Where the divided feel

                Tears in their eyes

                And time and doctors heal,

                Eternally sighs.

Yes, the white death, friendless, has his own idea of us;

We're something far more exciting than just friends.

He has his private saga he tells himself at night,

                Which starts with the handsome couple

                Estranged by a mistake,

                Follows their lifetime curses,

                Ends with the fruitless rescue from the lake,

                Their death-bed kisses.

Then lightly, my darling, leave me and slip away

Playful, betraying him nothing, allaying suspicion:

His eye is on all these people about us, leading

                Their quiet horrified lives,

                But if we can trust we are free,

                Though alone among those

                Who within earshot of the ungovernable sea

                Grow set in their ways.

We ride a turning globe, we stand on a star;

It has thrust us up together; it is stronger than we.

In it our separate sorrows are a single hope,

                It's in its nature always to appear

                Behind us as we move

                With linked arms through our dreams,

                Wherefore, apart, we love

                Its sundering streams.

– W.H. Auden (1932)