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| Max Beckmann The Pompeii Clowns 1950 oil on canvas Seattle Art Museum |
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| Sonia Delaunay Composition 1950 screenprint Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami |
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| Robert Doisneau Madame Colette 1950 gelatin silver print Portland Museum of Art, Maine |
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| Max Ernst Inspired Hill 1950 oil on canvas Menil Collection, Houston |
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| Robert Frank London 1950 gelatin silver print Institut Valencià d'Art Modern |
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| Petr Golub Great Stalin - Best Friend of the Latvian People! 1950 lithograph (poster) Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina |
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| Fernand Léger Deauville, August 1950 lithograph Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Felix H. Man Fernand Léger, Montparnasse 1950 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Rollie McKenna Central Park, New York 1950 gelatin silver print Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York |
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| Hans Namuth Jackson Pollock in the Studio of James Brooks 1950 gelatin silver print Dallas Museum of Art |
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| Irving Penn Coal Man, London 1950 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Irving Penn Kerchief Glove (Dior), Paris 1950 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Pablo Picasso Vase 1950 glazed terracotta Kunstmuseum, The Hague |
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| Kurt Seligmann Clio 1950 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Charles Sheeler Family Group 1950 oil on canvas Orlando Museum of Art, Florida |
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| Charles Sheeler Skyline 1950 oil on canvas Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)
XXI
The poets tell us of heroic deeds done for love: – the lover goes to the ends of the earth to fetch the Water of Life, he slays ogres and dragons, he scales a glass mountain, etc., and his final reward is the hand and heart of the girl he loves (who is usually a Princess). But all this is in the social realm, not the personal. It is quite in order that the girl's parents (or public opinion) should say: – "Such-and-such a quality is essential in a son-in-law (or a King)," and insist that every suitor submit to whatever test, be it scaling a glass mountain or translating a passage of Thucydides unseen, will show whether he possesses it or not: and any suitor who passes the test successfully has the right to demand their consent to the match. But no test is conceivable which would make the girl herself say: "I could not love any suitor who fails it, but I shall love the suitor, whoever he may be, who passes it"; nor is any deed conceivable which would give a suitor the right to demand her love.
Suppose, too, that she doubts the quality of his affection (is he only after her body or her money?), then no deed of his, however heroic, can reassure her: in relation to her personally, all it can prove is that his motive, noble or base, is strong enough to make him submit to the Test.
XXII
To give another a present is a deed of generosity, and the epic poet spends almost as much time describing the gifts his heroes exchange and the feasts they give as he spends describing their deeds in battle, for the epic hero is expected to be as generous as he is brave. The degree of generosity is verified by the market value of the gift: the poet has only to tell us the size of the rubies and emeralds set in the scabbard, or the number of sheep and oxen consumed at the feast. But how is a poet to speak convincingly of gifts made for love ("I will give you the Keys of Heaven," etc.)? The market value of a personal gift is irrelevant. The lover tries to choose what, from his knowledge of his beloved's tastes, he believes she would like most to receive at the moment (and receive from him): this might be a Cadillac, but it might equally well be a comic postcard. If he is a would-be seducer, hoping to buy, or she a would-be prostitute, hoping to sell, then, of course, the market value is very relevant. (Not invariably: his intended victim might be a very rich girl whose sole interest in life was collecting comic postcards.)
XXIII
The anonymous gift is a deed of charity, but we are speaking of eros, not of agape. It is as much of the essence of erotic love that it should desire to disclose itself to one other, as it is of the essence of charity that it should desire to conceal itself from all. Under certain circumstances, a lover may try to conceal his love (he is a hunchback, the girl is his own sister, etc.) but it is not as a lover that he tries to conceal it; and if he were then to send her gifts anonymously, would not this betray a hope, conscious or unconscious, of arousing her curiosity to the point where she would take steps to discover his identity?
– W.H. Auden (1959)