Proles

Vincent van Gogh
Woman planting Potatoes
1885
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Dutch Artist after Jan Saenredam
Adam tilling the Soil
ca. 1650-1700
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Adam Elsheimer
Excavation of the True Cross
before 1610
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Tiburzio Passarotti
Youth lifting a Rock
ca. 1590
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anna Ancher
Harvest Time
1901
oil on canvas
Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Lolland, Denmark

Franz Xaver Reinhold
Corn Harvest
ca. 1840
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Hieronymus Hopfer after Marcantonio Raimondi
Harvesters overseen by Silenus and the Pope
ca. 1540
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Anton Romako
Peasant Girl in the Roman Campagna
1873
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Adriaen van de Velde
Study of Farm Woman
before 1672
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Adriaen van de Velde
Peasant on Horseback
before 1672
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Sebald Beham
Farmer going to Market
1520
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

August Sander
Young Farmer
1912-13
gelatin silver print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Daniel Steudner after Matthias Scheits
Winter
(series, The Four Seasons)
ca. 1515-20
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Daniel Steudner after Matthias Scheits
Spring
(series, The Four Seasons)
ca. 1515-20
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Leopold Kalckreuth
Sunday Afternoon
1893
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Ludwig Johann Passini
Pumpkin Seller in Chioggia
1876
watercolor on paper
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

The next winter, Aristides, the son of Archippus, one of the commanders of a fleet which the Athenians had sent out to gather tribute from their confederates, apprehended Artaphernes, a Persian, in the town of Eion upon the river Strymon, going from the king to Lacedaemon.  When he was brought to Athens, the Athenians translated his letters out of the Assyrian language into Greek and read them; wherein, amongst many other things that were written to the Lacedaemonians, the principal was this: that he knew not what they meant, for many ambassadors came, but they spake not the same thing; if therefore they had any thing to say certain, they should send somebody to him with this Persian.  But Artaphernes they sent afterwards away in a galley, with ambassadors of their own, to Ephesus.  And there encountering the news that king Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, was lately dead (for about that time he died), they returned home.   

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Contact

Balthasar Denner
Head of an Old Woman
1742
oil on copper
Musée du Louvre

Jan Cossiers
Portrait of Jacobus Cossiers
1658
drawing
British Museum

André Derain
Madame Derain in Green
1907
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret
Breton Woman
1886
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Albrecht Dürer
Self Portrait at age 28
1500
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Imogen Cunningham
Michael Holub
1966
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Alexandre Cabanel
St Monica
1845
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Félix Bracquemond
Portrait of artist Alphonse Legros
1861
etching
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Claude Cahun
Untitled
ca. 1929
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

George Engleheart
Miniature Portrait of Sir Charles Burrell Blunt
ca. 1775
watercolor on ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Antonio Ciseri
Portrait of Felice Ciantelli
ca. 1870
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

Johannes Eillarts after Pieter Feddes
Illustrissimo Generosyssimoque Principi Ambrosio Spinolae
ca. 1612-13
etching and engraving
British Museum

Julia Margaret Cameron
Portrait of Charles Norman
ca. 1868
albumen silver print from glass negative
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Aleksandr Bryullov
Portrait of Marie Amélie, Queen of France
ca. 1860
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alonso Sánchez Coello
Portrait of Elisabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain
ca. 1560
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

François Clouet
Melchior des Prez, Seigneur de Montpezat
ca. 1560
drawing
British Museum

Mary Lloyd Estrin
Untitled
ca. 1974-77
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

from Statement

    One slips on crag, is buried by guides.  One gets cramp in the bay, sinks like a stone near crowded tea-shops.  One is destroyed in his bath, the geyser exploding.  One is arrested for indecent exposure.  One suffers from an intestinal worm; men remark on his paleness.  One believes himself to be two persons, is restrained with straps.  One cannot remember the day of the week.  One is impotent from fear of the judgment.  One pays for foolishness with the loss of land.  One loses his job for an error in long division.  One drinks alone in another country.  One repels by unsightly facial eruptions; one is despised for wearing stiff collars.  The wife of one is unfaithful with schoolboys.  One is bullied by his elder sister; one is disappointed in his youngest son. 

– W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1927)

Berenice Abbott
Portrait of Princess Marthe Bibesco
1927
gelatin silver print
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Max Beckmann
Still Life with Telescope
1927
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Pierre Bonnard
Flowers on a Mantel at Le Cannet
1927
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Gerald Brockhurst
The Black Silk Dress (Anaïs)
1927
etching
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Ludwig Hohlwein
Summer in Germany
1927
offset print (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hasui Kawase
Tennoji Temple in Osaka
1927
color woodblock print
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Julius Klinger
Japanese Art
1927
watercolor and gouache on paper (print study)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Oskar Kokoschka
Giant Tortoises
1927
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Anton Kolig
Self Portrait in Blue Jacket
1927
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

André Lhote
Portrait of a Lady
1927
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean Metzinger
Still Life with Green Head
1927
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Piet Mondrian
Composition with Yellow, Red and Blue
1927
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Dirk Hidde Nijland
Rotterdam Dockyard
 1927
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Alexander Rodchenko
Lilya Yuryevna Brik on Balcony
1927
gelatin silver prints
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 
Poughkeepsie, New York

Rudolf Schlichter
Portrait of writer Egon Erwin Kisch
1927
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Franz Sedlacek
The Flight into Egypt
1927
oil on panel
Leopold Museum, Vienna

I Am Not a Camera

Photographic life is always either trivial or already sterilised. 

                                                   – Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

To call our sight Vision

implies that, to us, 

all objects are subjects.

          *          *          *

What we have not named

or beheld as a symbol

escapes our notice.

          *          *          *

We never look at two people

or one person twice

in the same way.

          *          *          *

It is very rude to take close-ups and, except

when enraged, we don't:

lovers, approaching to kiss,

instinctively shut their eyes before their faces

can be reduced to

anatomical data.

          *          *          *

Instructive it may be to peer through lenses:

each time we do, though, we should apologise

to the remote or the small for intruding

   upon their quiddities.

 

          *          *          *

The camera records

visual facts: i.e.,

all may be fictions.

          *          *          *

Flash-backs falsify the Past:

they forget

the remembering Present.

          *          *          *

On the screen we can only

witness human behavior:

Choice is for camera-crews.

          *          *          *

The camera may

do justice to laughter, but must

degrade sorrow.

– W.H. Auden (1969)

Ornament

Heinrich Aldegrever
Panel with Putto and Mermaid
1528
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous German ARtist
Printer's Ornament
18th century
woodcut
(excised from printed book)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Barthel Beham
Ornamental Panel
ca. 1530
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jean Bérain the Elder
Ornamental Design
1703
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Niccolò Billy and Pietro Cerini
Acanthus Ornaments
1725
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Niccolò Billy and Pietro Cerini
Acanthus Ornaments
1725
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Niccolò Billy and Pietro Cerini
Acanthus Ornaments
1725
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Niccolò Billy and Pietro Cerini
Acanthus Ornaments
1725
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Raphael Custos after Lucas Kilian
Ornamental Panel
1632
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Angelo Falconetto
Panel with Acanthus Scroll and Satyr Family
before 1567
etching
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Peter Flötner
Panel with Grotesque Ornament after the Antique
before 1546
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Agostino Musi (Agostino Veneziano)
Acanthus Ornament
in Basilica San Silvestro, Rome
caa. 1510-20
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Georg Pencz
Ornamental Panel with Satyress and Satyr
ca. 1535
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Susanne Maria von Sandrart after Jean Le Pautre
Variations on Architectural Ornaments
1678
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jörg Seld
Panel with Pomegranates and Acanthus
1514
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Antonio Tempesta
Panel with Grotesque Ornament surrounding Apollo
before 1630
etching and engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

But Nicias, seeing the Athenians to be in a kind of tumult against Cleon, for that when he thought it so easy a matter he did not presently put it in practice, and seeing also he had upbraided him, willed him to take what strength he would that they could give him and undertake it.  Cleon, supposing at first that he gave him this leave but in words, was ready to accept it; but when he knew he would give him the authority in good earnest, then he shrunk back and said that not he but Nicias was general, being now indeed afraid and hoping that he durst not have given over the office to him.  But then Nicias again bade him do it and gave over his command to him for so much as concerned Pylus and called the Athenians to witness it.  They (as is the fashion of the multitude), the more Cleon declined the voyage and went back from his word, pressed Nicias so much the more to resign his power to him and cried out upon Cleon to go.  Insomuch as not knowing how to disengage himself of his word, he undertook the voyage, and stood forth saying that he feared not the Lacedaemonians, and that he would not carry any man with him out of the city but only the Lemnians and Imbrians that then were present and those targetiers that were come to them from Aenus and four hundred archers out of other places; and with these, he said, added to the soldiers that were at Pylus already, he would within twenty days either fetch away the Lacedaemonians alive or kill them upon the place.  This vain speech moved amongst the Athenians some laughter, and was heard with great content of the wiser sort.  For of two benefits, the one must needs fall out: either to be rid of Cleon (which was their greatest hope) or, if they were deceived in that, then to get those Lacedaemonians into their hands. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)