Emphatic

Anonymous Dutch Artist
Never Work Haphazardly - Work Safely!
1957
offset print (poster)
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Anonymous French Artist
Spitting on the Ground endangers the Lives of Others
1916
lithograph
(public health poster against tuberculosis)
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Anonymous German Artist
The Red Dragon
(scene from the Apocalypse)
ca. 1460-70
 hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Carel Blazer
Demonstration in Paris
1936
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Christo
Iron Curtain
(on rue Visconti, Paris)
1962
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Giambattista Tiepolo
St Fidelis of Sigmaringen and
St Joseph of Leonessa stamping out Heresy
ca. 1750-60
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Domenico Maria Canuti
Three Head Studies
ca. 1650
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Max Klinger
Fears
(from series A Glove)
1881
etching and aquatint
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Leonard Freed
New Year's Eve
1979
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Max Ernst
Sea Anemones
ca. 1926-28
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Anonymous German Artist
The Apostle Paul
ca. 1510-20
hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Sebastiano Ricci
Cincinnatus
ca. 1700-1710
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Joseph Anton Koch
Macbeth and the Three Witches
1834
watercolor on paper
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

Léonce Schérer
Souvenirs de La Commune
ca. 1872
lithograph
Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg

Anonymous Artist
Pressmark of Sebastian Henricpetrie of Basel
1559
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

 

Silvestro Chiesa
Job
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki

from Country Words

What is it that my feeling seeks?
I know from all the things it touched
And left beside and left behind.
It wants the diamond pivot bright.
It wants Belshazzar reading right
The luminous pages on his knee,
Of being, more than birth or death,
It wants words virile with his breath.

– Wallace Stevens (1942)