Morris Kantor

Morris Kantor
Society of Independent Artists
ca. 1918
linocut (exhibition poster)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Force
1921
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Synthetic Arrangement
1922
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Reclining Nude
1927
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Captain's House
1929
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Woman Reading in Bed
1930
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Still Life with Dogwood
1930
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Interior
1931
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
The Brothers
1934
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Baseball at Night
1934
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Tension
1936
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Consuelo  Kanaga
Morris Kantor in his Studio, Cape Cod
1938
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Girl with Cigarette
1940
oil on linen
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Untitled (Monhegan Series)
1944
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Untitled (Monhegan Series)
1944
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Seashore
1953-54
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Morris Kantor
Triptych
1963
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Chorus from Oedipus

Fate is the master of everything    it is vain to fight against fate

from the beginning to the end the road is laid down     human

scheming is futile    worries are futile    prayers are futile

sometimes a man wins    sometimes he loses

who decides whether he loses or wins

it has all been decided long ago elsewhere

it is destiny

not a single man can alter it

all he can do is let it happen

the good luck the bad luck everything that happens

everything that seems to toss our days up and down

it is all there from the first moment

it is all there    tangled in the knotted mesh of causes

helpless to change itself

even the great god lies there entangled

helpless in the mesh of causes

and the last day lies tangled there with the first

a man's life is a pattern on the floor    like a maze

it is all fixed    he wanders in the pattern

no prayer can alter it

or help him to escape it    nothing

then fear can be the end of him

a man's fear of his fate is often his fate

leaping to avoid it    he meets it

– Seneca (4 BC-AD 65), translated by Ted Hughes (1969)

Adolf De Meyer

Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
ca. 1913
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
ca. 1913
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
ca. 1913
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
ca. 1913
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
ca. 1913
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
ca. 1913
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Adolf De Meyer
Vaslav Nijinsky in the Ballets Russes
production of L'Après-midi d'un Faune
1912
palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

 

Adolf De Meyer
Vaslav Nijinsky in the Ballets Russes
production of L'Après-midi d'un Faune
1912
palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

Adolf De Meyer
Vaslav Nijinsky in the Ballets Russes
production of L'Après-midi d'un Faune
Nijinsky-
1912
palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

Adolf De Meyer
Vaslav Nijinsky in the Ballets Russes
production of L'Après-midi d'un Faune
1912
palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

Adolf De Meyer
Vaslav Nijinsky in the Ballets Russes
production of L'Après-midi d'un Faune
1912
palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

Adolf De Meyer
Maenad in the Ballets Russes
production of L'Après-midi d'un Faune
1912
palladium print
Princeton University Art Museum

Adolf De Meyer
Evening Gown
(fashion shot for French Vogue)
1918
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adolf De Meyer
Tunic and Skirt
(fashion shot for French Vogue)
1918
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Clarence H. White
Portrait of Adolf De Meyer
ca. 1911-12
platinum print
Princeton University Art Museum

Clarence H. White
Portrait of Adolf De Meyer
ca. 1912
platinum print
Princeton University Art Museum

from Metamorphoses [Medea continues her invocation]

By charmes I make the calme Seas rough, and make the rough Seas plaine,

And from the bowels of the Earth both stones and trees doe draw.

Whole woods and Forestes I remove: I make the Mountaines shake,

And even the Earth it selfe to grone and fearfully to quake.

I call up dead men from their graves: and thee O lightsome Moone
I darken oft, though beaten brasse abate thy perill soone.

Our Sorcerie dimmes the Morning faire, and darkes the Sun at Noone.

The flaming breath of firie Bulles ye quenched for my sake

And caused their unwieldie neckes the bended yoke to take.

Among the Earthbred brothers you a mortall war did set,

And brought a sleepe the Dragon fell whose eyes were never shet.

By meanes whereof deceiving him that had the golden fleece

In charge to keepe, you sent it thence by Jason into Greece.

Now have I neede of herbes that can by vertue of their juice

To flowring prime of lustie youth old withred age reduce.

I am assurde ye will it graunt. For not in vaine have shone

These twincling starres, ne yet in vaine this Chariot all alone

By draught of Dragons hither comes. With that was fro the Skie

A Chariot softly glaunced downe, and stayed hard thereby.

– Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), translated by Arthur Golding (1567)

Modernistic Expectedness

Louise Bourgeois
Maquette for Facets of the Sun
1978
wood
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Giorgio de Chirico
The Nostalgia of the Poet
1914
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Giorgio de Chirico
Il Trovatore
ca. 1924
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Man Ray
Sotheby's Sale from the Estate of Juliet Man Ray
2014
offset-lithograph
(cover of auction announcement)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Man Ray
Still Life
ca. 1912-16
lithograph
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Seguidilla
1919
gouache, colored pencil and graphite on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Promenade
1967
(artist's replica of work created in 1916)
mixed media on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Shakespearean Equation: Twelfth Night
1948
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Shakespearean Equation: King Lear
1948
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alexander Calder
Portrait of Man Ray
1974
lithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alexander Calder
Violin
ca. 1960
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

René Magritte
Empire of Light
1953-54
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Joan Miró
Landscape (The Hare)
1927
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Joan Miró
Two Figures and a Dragonfly
1936
gouache and watercolor on paper
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Joan Miró
Seated Woman II
1939
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Joan Miró
The Red Sun
1948
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Joan Miró
Painting
1953
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

EPANAPHORA ("referring" or "repetition") – The repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive lines.  This, originally a rhetorical figure, becomes, especially with some of the Elizabethans and with Tennyson, a not unimportant prosodic device; and, in the hands of the latter, assists powerfully in the construction of the verse-paragraph.

EPANORTHOSIS ("setting up again," with a sense also of "correction") – Also a rhetorical figure and meaning the repetition of some word, not necessarily at the beginning of clause or line. This also can be made of considerable prosodic effect; for repetition, especially if including some slight change, is necessarily associated with emphasis, and this emphasis colours and weights the line variously. 

– George Saintsbury, from Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910)