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| Berenice Abbott Solitary Drinker, Lafayette Hotel, New York 1948 gelatin silver print Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts |
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| Josef Albers High Up 1948 woodcut Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina |
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| Jean Fautrier The Watering Can 1948 mixed media on paper Menil Collection, Houston |
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| Philippe Halsman Alexis Smith 1948 gelatin silver print Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami |
-1948-oil-on-canvas-Wichita-Art-Museum-Kansas.jpg) |
| Walt Kuhn Neapolitan (Bread with Knife) 1948 oil on canvas Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
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| Toni LaSelle Funeral in July in Bright Sunlight 1948 oil on canvas Dallas Museum of Art |
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| Todd Webb Sixth Avenue between 43rd & 44th Streets, New York 1948 gelatin silver print Portland Museum of Art, Maine |
-1948-gelatin-silver-print-Madison-Museum-of-Contemporary-Art-Wisconsin.jpg) |
| George Platt Lynes Francisco Moncion and Nicholas Magallanes in Orpheus, choreographed by George Balanchine 1948 gelatin silver print Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin |
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| Alden Mason Winter 1948 tempera and casein on cardboard Seattle Art Museum |
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| Roberto Matta Marzana #4 - Llium of Longing 1948 oil on canvas Menil Collection, Houston |
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| LeRoy Nieman At the Milliner 1948 oil on board NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida |
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| Irving Penn Ballet Society, New York 1948 platinum palladium print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Irving Penn Child of Florence 1948 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| W. Eugene Smith Joan Diener backstage during a Broadway rehearsal 1948 gelatin silver print Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York |
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| Harry Sternberg Bound Man 1948 aquatint and etching Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas |
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| Graham Sutherland Maize 1948 lithograph Dallas Museum of Art |
from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)
XIV
The poetic dramatist makes his characters speak in the first person and, very often, in a high style. Why does this not disturb us? (Doesn't it, though?) Is it because we know that the dramatist who wrote their speeches was not talking about himself, and that the actors who deliver them are only play-acting? Can inverted commas make acceptable what without them would disturb?
XV
It is easy for a poet to speak truthfully of brave warriors and cunning rascals because courage and cunning have deeds of their own by which they manifest their character. But how is he to speak truthfully of lovers? Love has no deed of its own: it has to borrow the act of kind which, in itself, is not a deed but a form of behavior (not a human deed, that is. One can, if one likes, call it a deed of Aphrodite's or Frau Minne's or Dame Kind's).
XVI
One deed ascribed to Hercules was "making love" with fifty virgins in the course of a single night: one might on that account say that Hercules was beloved of Aphrodite, but one would not call him a lover.
XVII
Which is Tristan? Which Don Giovanni? No Peeping Tom can tell.
– W.H. Auden (1959)