Showing posts with label Bohemians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bohemians. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Peter Hujar

Peter Hujar
Palermo Catacombs #6
1963
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago


Peter Hujar
George Osterman in Eunuchs of the Forbidden City
at Ridiculous Theatrical Company

1973
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Hujar
Susan Sontag
1975
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Peter Hujar
Rug
1976
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Cow at Night
1978
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Self Portrait in the Baths (IV)
1979
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Woman Asleep Backstage
ca. 1980
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Ethyl Eichelberger as Carlotta, Empress of Mexico
1980
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
David Wojnarowicz's Hands with Snake
1981
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Hujar
Canal Street Piers - Fake Men on Stairs
1983
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Hujar
Hallway - Canal Street Piers
1983
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Greer Lankton's Legs
1983
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Hujar
Dean Savard Reclining
1984
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Hujar
Grass, Port Jefferson
1984
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Hujar
Portrait of the Furness Family, Thanksgiving
1985
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Woman's Feet Walking
before 1987
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Carin Goldberg (designer) incorporating photo by Peter Hujar
Dust Jacket for Death Kit by Susan Sontag
1991
lithograph
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

from The Third Satyre

What ev'ry day thus long? fie, fie arise:
See how the cleare light shamefully descries
Thy sloth: and through thy windows shining bright
Stretcheth the narrow chinks with his broad light.
We snort till the Fift shadow touch the line,
Enough ev'n to digest stronge Falerne wine.
Now what dost doe? The furious dog-stars heat
Upon the parched corne hath long since beat
With its fierce scolding influence, and made
The beasts to seeke the spreading Elmes coole shade.
    Thus the companion of some slothfull youth
Does freely chide him. Then said he, in truth
And ist so late? indeed? some body then
Come presently and reach my clothes: why when?
If then no body come: Oh how he swels,
And breaks with glasse-like choller; and then yels
With such a foule loud noise, that you would say
Surely some great Arcadian asse did bray. 
    At last, with much adoe he doth beginne
To take his booke in hand and some faire skinne
Of smooth two-coloured parchment he takes then
Some paper and his knottie reed-like pen. 
Then he complains how that his inke doth sticke
In clots at his pens nose, it is so thicke.
Powre water then to his blacke Sepian juice,
He cries, now tis too white. He's a device
For ev'ry thing. So Sometimes he doth plead
His pen writes double, or his inke doth spread.
    Wretched unhappy man! yet growing still
More wretched! Think'st wee're borne to take our fill
Of sloth? Why dost not then like the soft Dove
Or great mens little children, rather love
In delicatest wantonnesse to lappe
Some soft sweet spoone-meate, as a little pappe?
Or angry with the teat, why dost not crie,
Refusing to be stilld with Lullabie?
    Why, can I studie, sir, with such a quill?
Alas! whom does thou mocke? why pleadst thou still
Such vaine ambages? wretched man to flout
Thy selfe! Th'art broken! loe, thou leakest out!
And know thou shalt be Scornd! strike but a pot
Of some raw earth halfe-boild, and will it not
Tell its owne fault, yeelding a dull crazd sound?
Well; Yet th'art soft moist clay, and mayst be wound
To any forme: Now, therefore, now make haste
To vertue: Present time must be embrac'd.
Now like the potters clay, now thou must feele
Sharpe disciplines effigiating* wheele.

– Persius (AD 34-62), translated by Barton Holiday (1616)

*this translation, as cited by the OED, contains the only known appearance of the adjective effigiating, though the transitive verb to effigiate was relatively common in the 17th century, meaning "to form as an effigy" and so by extension "to shape or adapt"

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Hujars & Morrisroes

Peter Hujar
Portrait of painter Paul Thek
1967
pigment print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

 
Peter Hujar
Loulou de La Falaise
1968
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Peter Hujar
Cindy Lubar as Queen Victoria
1973
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Peter Hujar
Candy Darling on her Deathbed
1974
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Peter Hujar
Divine
1975
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Peter Hujar
Diana Vreeland
1975
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Peter Hujar
West Side Parking Lots NYC
1976
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Peter Hujar
Charles Ludlam Backstage
1984
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Messopotamia
1982
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Fascination (Jonathan)
1983
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
I Dream of Jeannie (Stephen Tashjian's head)
1983
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
At Home with Michael Walsh
1985
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Figure Study: Artist at Home
1985
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Lonely Bird
1985
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Untitled
1985
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Untitled
1985
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Morrisroe
Sweet Raspberry, Spanish Madonna
1986
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

from Afterword

Reading what I have just written, I now believe
I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been
slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly
but in a kind of artificial mist of the sort
sprayed onto stages to allow for difficult set changes.

Why did I stop? Did some instinct
discern a shape, the artist in me
intervening to stop traffic, as it were?

A shape. Or fate, as the poets say,
intuited in those few long-ago hours –

I must have thought so once.
And yet I dislike the term
which seems to me a crutch, a phase,
the adolescence of the mind, perhaps –

Still, it was a term I used myself,
frequently to explain my failures.
Fate, destiny, whose designs and warnings
now seem to me simply
local symmetries, metonymic
baubles within immense confusion –

Chaos was what I saw.
My brush froze – I could not paint it.

– Louise Glück (2014)

Monday, February 10, 2025

PaJaMa and Environs - IV

Jared French
Ted Starkowski
ca. 1954
drawing
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York


Jared French
Study of Model
ca. 1930-40
drawing
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Chuck Howard and Ted Starkowski
1953
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Charles Daugherty, Paul Cadmus, Jared French
1938
gelatin silver prints mounted together
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
George Platt Lynes and Jared French - Fire Island
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
George Platt Lynes
1941
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Glenway Wescott - Fire Island
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Donald Windham
1938
gelatin silver prints mounted together
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Arthur Dunne
1938
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Arthur Dunne
1938
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

George Platt Lynes
Tex Smutney and Buddy Stanley
1941
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

George Platt Lynes
Blanchard Kennedy
1936
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Aaron Copland rehearsing Billy the Kid
1938
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

George Platt Lynes
The Firebird
(Maria Tallchief and Francisco Moncion)
ca. 1949
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

George Platt Lynes
Balanchine's Bourée Fantastique
(Tanaquil Le Clercq and Jerome Robbins)
1949
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Platt Lynes
Tanaquil Le Clercq
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

George Platt Lynes
Tanaquil Le Clercq in Balanchine's Metamorphoses
ca. 1950-51
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Arboretum

We had the problem of age, the problem of wishing to linger. 
Not needing, anymore, even to make a contribution.
Merely wishing to linger: to be, to be here.

And to stare at things, but with no real avidity. 
To browse, to purchase nothing.
But there were many of us; we took up time. We crowded out
our own children, and the children of friends. We did great damage,
meaning no harm.

We continued to plan; to fix things as they broke.
To repair, to improve. We traveled, we put in gardens.
And we continued brazenly to plant trees and perennials. 

We asked so little of the world. We understood
the offense of advice, of holding forth. We checked ourselves:
we were correct, we were silent.
But we could not cure ourselves of desire, not completely.
Our hands, folded, reeked of it.

How did we do so much damage, merely sitting and watching,
strolling, on fine days, the grounds of the park, the arboretum,
or sitting on benches in front of the public library,
feeding pigeons out of a paper bag?

We were correct, and yet desire pursued us.
Like a great force, a god. And the young
were offended, their hearts 
turned cold in reaction. We asked

so little of the world; small things seemed to us
immense wealth. Merely to smell once more the early roses
in the arboretum: we asked
so little, and we claimed nothing. And the young
withered nevertheless.

Or they became like the stones in the arboretum: as though
our continued existence, our asking so little for so many years, meant
we asked everything.

– Louise Glück (2001)