Forties (Composed)

Diego Rivera
Portrait of Mrs Carr
1946
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Georgia O'Keeffe
In the Patio I
1946
oil on paper, mounted on panel
San Diego Museum of Art

Ralph Balson
Painting
1941
oil on board
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Arthur Dove
Formation I
1943
oil on canvas
San Diego Museum of Art

Henri Masson
Sketch of Jacques Masson
1946
drawing
Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario

Gerome Kamrowski
Membrane no. 239
1942-43
oil and pastel on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Carlos Mérida
El Oráculo
1944
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Piet Ouborg
Two Figures
1946
gouache on paper
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Melville Price
Night Scene
1945
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Alma Duncan
Theresa
1943
oil on panel
Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario

Wyndham Lewis
Portrait of Mrs R.J. Sainsbury
1940-41
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Amalie Sara Colquhoun
Rosie
1949
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Sidney Nolan
Figure
1945
enamel on board
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Erle Loran
Myth and Memory II
1944
watercolor and gouache on board
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Vance Kirkland
Clouds and Mountains
1943
oil on panel
Denver Art Museum

Paul Delvaux
La Ville Rouge
1944
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Exile

He did not pretend
to be one of them. They did not require
a poet, a spokesman. He saw
the dog's heart, the working
lips of the parasite –

He himself preferred
to listen in the small apartments

as a man would check his camera at the museum,

to express his commitment through silence:
there is no other exile.

The rest is egotism; in the bloody street,

the I, the impostor –

He was there, obsessed with revolution,
in his own city,
daily climbing the wooden stairs

that were not a path

but necessary repetitions

and for twenty years

making no poetry

of what he saw: nor did he forfeit
great achievement. In his mind,
there could be no outcry that did not equate

his choice with their imprisonment

and he would not allow

the gift to be tainted.

– Louise Glück (1985)

Forties (Vernacular)

Jack Delano
Second-Hand Plumbing Store, Brockton, Mass.
1940
dye transfer print
San Diego Museum of Art

Jack Delano
Barker at Vermont State Fair, Rutland
1941
dye transfer print
San Diego Museum of Art

Dorrit Black
The Wool Quilt Makers
1940-41
color linocut
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Emmy Lou Packard
Frida's Dresser in Coyoacán
My Face reflected on Mirror
1941
platinum print
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Olive Cotton
City Rooftops
1942
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

John Perceval
Shearer shearing
1942
drawing
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Henry Koerner
Save Waste Fats for Explosives
1943
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Fred Leist
1943
painted in 1943
oil on board
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Harry Mayerovitch
I was a victim of Careless Talk
1943
offset print (poster)
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Harry Mayerovitch
1944 - Year of Decision
1944
offset print (poster)
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

James Bingham
Next! - Japan - 6th War Loan
1944
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Keith Vaughan
A Worker
1945
drawing
Beaverbrook Art Gallery,
Fredericton, New Brunswick

Ruth Bernhard
Eighth Street Movie Theater, New York
Frederick Kiesler, Architect
1946
gelatin silver print
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Wolfgang Sievers
French Fashion Models
at Geiger's Shop, Collins Street, Melbourne
1946
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Noel Rooke
Flowers of Marsh and Stream
by Iolo Williams
1946
offset print and letterpress
(Penguin book cover)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Peter Blake
Conversation
1948
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Swans 

You were both quiet, looking out over the water.
It was not now; it was years ago,
before you were married.
The sky above the sea had turned
the odd pale peach color of early evening
from which the sea withdrew, bearing
its carved boats: your bodies were like that.
But her face was raised to you,
against the dull waves, simplified
by passion. Then you raised your hand
and from beyond the frame of the dream
swans came to settle on the scaled water.
The sea lay mild as a pool. At its edge,
you faced her, saying
These are yours to keep. The horizon burned,
releasing its withheld light.
And then I woke. But for days
when I tried to imagine you leaving your wife
I saw her motionless before your gift:
always the swans glide unmenacing across
the rigid blue of the Pacific Ocean, then rise
in a single wave, pure white and devouring.

– Louise Glück (1980)

Presences of the 1940s

Ilse Bing
Self Portrait
1945
gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Italo Cremona
Interior
1941
oil on canvas
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Diamantis Diamantopoulos
Plasterer
1949
screenprint
National Museum, Athens

Yannis Tsarouhis
Figure on Bed
1940
oil on canvas
National Museum, Athens

Max Beckmann
Odysseus and Calypso
1943
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Mother and Daughter
1945
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Giovanni Colacicchi
St Sebastian
1943
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Jared French
Evasion
1947
tempera on canvas, mounted on panel
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Keith Vaughan
Nude in Landscape
1948
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Philip Pearlstein
Double Portrait of the Artist's Parents
1943
oil on masonite
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Asger Jorn
Plunk
1940
oil on board
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Hans Arp
Head with Claws
1949
bronze
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Henry Moore
Three Figures
1948
drawing, with watercolor
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Willem Hofhuizen
Self Portrait
1940
oil on panel
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

Anton Kolig
S'Ottole
1941
oil on board
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Henri Matisse
Asia
1946
oil on canvas
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

For this one thing above all I would be praised as a man,
That in my words and my deeds I have kept those laws in mind
Olympian Zeus, and that high clear Empyrean,

Fashioned, and not some man or people of mankind, 

Even those sacred laws nor age nor sleep can blind.

A man becomes a tyrant out of insolence,
He climbs and climbs, until all people call him great,
He seems upon the summit, and God flings him thence;
Yet an ambitious man may lift up a whole State,

And in his death be blessed, in his life fortunate.

And all men honour such; but should a man forget
The holy images, the Delphian Sibyl's trance,
And the world's navel-stone, and not be punished for it,
And seem most fortunate, or even blessed perchance,
Why should we honour the Gods, or join the sacred dance?

– Sophocles, chorus from King Oedipus (429 BC), translated by W.B. Yeats (1928)

Visual Relics (1947-1951)

Frederick Sommer
Untitled
1947
gelatin silver print
Denver Art Museum

Clarence John Laughlin
Receding Rectangles
1947
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Gjon Mili
Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch
1947
gelatin silver print
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

W. Eugene Smith
Singer Robert Merrill disheveled and unhappy
after making a poor recording
(series, Recording Artists)
1947
gelatin silver print
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

W. Eugene Smith
Jean Pearson, New York
(series, Theatre Girl)
1949
gelatin silver print
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Jerome Liebling
Union Square, NYC
1948
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Jerome Liebling
Larry Hirsch and his Painting, Camp Taconic
1948
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Vilem Kriz
Paris
1949
gelatin silver print
Denver Art Museum

Louis Faurer
Women in front of Billboard, New York
1949
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Fritz Henle
Central Park South
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Brooklyn Museum

Ben Rose
Dancer
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Brooklyn Museum

Robert Doisneau
Fernand Léger
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

N. Jay Jaffee
Furriers
1950
gelatin silver print
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

N. Jay Jaffee
Woman with Paper Bags (Blake Avenue)
1951
selenium-toned gelatin silver print
Brooklyn Museum

N. Jay Jaffee
Two Women on Subway
1951
gelatin silver print
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Irving Penn
Portrait of actor Richard Burton
1950
bromide print
National Portrait Gallery, London

"Go then, before the winds, to Italy.

Seek out your kingdom overseas; indeed,

if there be pious powers still, I hope

that you will drink your torments to the lees

among sea rocks and, drowning, often cry

the name of Dido. Then, though absent, I

shall hunt you down with blackened firebrands;

and when chill death divides my soul and body,

a Shade, I shall be present everywhere.

Depraved, you then will pay your penalties.

And I shall hear of it, and that report

will come to me below, among the Shadows."

– Dido curses Aeneas, from Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum (1971)