Upright

Joseph Cornell
Paul et Virginie
ca. 1946-48
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolas Coustou
God of Health revealing bust of Louis XIV to France
(marking the King's recovery from illness)
1693
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
Naples
1942
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guillaume Coustou the Younger
Vulcan
1742
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
Celestial Navigation - Night Version
1956-58
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guillaume Coustou the Elder
Hippomenes pursuing Atalanta
1712
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
Grand Hôtel Bon Port
1954
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guillaume Coustou the Elder
Hercules on the Pyre
1704
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
Paolo and Francesca
1943-48
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolas Coustou
Daphne and Apollo
1714
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
L'Humeur Vagabonde
1954
wood, glass, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolas Coustou
Hunter at Rest
ca. 1707
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
Medici Prince
ca. 1952
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolas Coustou
Julius Caesar
1696
terracotta
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
Abeilles
1940
wood, glass, printed paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolas Coustou
Julius Caesar
1722
marble
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Cornell
A Parrot for Juan Gris
1953-54
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

I am he who feels. I love you always.

I want you, you. I want you, you. I am yours always.

I am always within your own self. I am always within your own self.

I love you always. Rockabye, Rockabye.

You are not asleep, I am not asleep, you cannot sleep always.

I love your sleep's growing. I grow like your sleep.

I love your sleep within you. I wish you good.

I love your powerful sleep. I want love for you.

I do not know what to say, I do not know what to be silent about.

I love you always, I want to love always.

I wish you good. I do not know what always is. 

I am always, always, always. I am everything, I am everything.

I wish you good. I love you always.

– from The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, written in Russian in 1919, translated by Kyril FitzLyon and edited by Joan Acocella (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999)

Dance Indications

Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham in Letter to the World with Merce Cunningham
1940
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Barbara Morgan
Knee (Dancer)
1940
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Joseph Cornell
Homage to the Romantic Ballet
1941
assemblage (box, fabric, printed paper, found objects)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

George Platt Lynes
Pas de deux
1941
gelatin silver print
(program cover for American Ballet Caravan)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Platt Lynes
Maria Tallchief in Orpheus
1948
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Irving Penn
Arthur Murray Dancers, New York
1951
platinum-palladium print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Irving Penn
Rockette, New York
1951
platinum-palladium print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Platt Lynes
Tanaquil Le Clercq and Todd Bolender in Metamorphoses
1952
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Grace Robertson
Bermondsey Women's Pub Outing
1954
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Grace Robertson
Bermondsey Women's Pub Outing
1954
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Garry Winogrand
El Morocco, New York
1955
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Garry Winogrand
El Morocco, New York
1955
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Philippe Halsman
Maria Tallchief
1956
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Diane Arbus
Lady in a Tiara at a Ball, N.Y.C.
1963
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Phillip Leonian
Carmen de Lavallade Turning
1968
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Phillip Leonian
Carmen de Lavallade Turning
1968
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

André Kertész
New York Circus Ballet
1969
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

George Segal
The Dancers
modeled 1971, cast 1982
painted bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

    The books I was thinking of had something more in common than eccentricity, single-mindedness, a willingness to risk tedium, and a willingness to lose readers, and that was the care and interest of the writing.

    This must be one of the things that saves the books from tedium or allows us to forgive it.  But doesn't that leave out – or does it? maybe not – the intelligence behind the writing?  Can there be really fine writing without high intelligence?

    So there is the passionate commitment to the peculiar subject combined with the close observation, the intelligence of the writing mind, and the high quality of the writing.  But perhaps that list leaves out the heart – warmth, compassion, affection.  

– Lydia Davis, from Into the Weeds (Yale University Press, 2025)

Beethoven Häuser

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Title Page
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Schwarzspanierhaus
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Schwarzspanierhaus
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Nußdorf Kahlenbergstraße 26
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Mödling Hauptstraße 79
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Mödling Hauptstraße 79
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Heiligenstadt Probusgasse
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Heiligenstadt Probusgasse
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Heiligenstadt Pfarrplatz 2
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Heiligenstadt Pfarrplatz 2
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Heiligenstadt Grinzingerstraße
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carl Moll
Beethoven Häuser - Eroicagasse
1902
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

"Il était petit et trapu, de forte encolure, de charpente athlétique.  Une large figure, de couleur rouge brique, sauf vers la fin de sa vie, où le teint devint maladif et jaunâtre, surtout l'hiver, quand il restait enfermé, loin des champs.  Un front puissant et bosselé.  Des cheveux extrêmement noirs, extraordinairement épais, où il semblait que le peigne n'eût jamais passé, hérissés de toutes parts, "les serpents de Méduse." Les yeux brûlaient d'une force prodigieuse, qui saisit tous ceux qui le virent: mais la plupart se trompèrent sur leur nuance.  Comme ils flambaient d'un éclat sauvage dans une figure brune et tragique, on les vit généralement noirs; ils ne l'étaient pas, mais blue gris. Petits et très profondément enfoncés, ils s'ouvraient brusquement dans la passion ou la colère, et alors roulaient dans leurs orbites, reflétant toutes leurs pensées avec une vérité merveilleuse.  Souvent ils tournaient vers le ciel un regard mélancolique.  Le nez était court et carré, large, un mufle de lion.  Une bouche délicate, mais dont la lèvre inférieure tendait à avancer sur l'autre.  Des mâchoires redoutables, qui auraient pu broyer des noix.  Une fossette profonde au menton, du côté droit, donnait une étrange dissymétrie à la face. "Il avait un bon sourire," dit Moscheles, "et dans la conversation, un air souvent aimable et encourageant.  En revanche, le rire était désagréable, violent et grimaçant, du reste court" – le rire d'un homme qui n'est pas accoutumé à la joie.  Son expression habituelle était mélancolique, "un tristesse incurable." Rellstab, en 1825, dit qu'il a besoin de toutes ses forces pour s'empêcher de pleurer, en voyant "ses deux yeux et leur douleur poignante." Braun von Braunthal, un an plus tard, le rencontre à une brasserie; il est assis dans un coin, il fume une longue pipe, et il a les yeux fermés, comme il fait de plus en plus, à mesure qu'il approche de la mort." 

– Romain Roland, Vie de Beethoven (1903)

Narrative Tendencies (1808-1843)

Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard
Fury of Oedipus
(scene from Sophocles)
ca. 1808
gouache on paper
Princeton University Art Museum

Théodore Géricault
Study for The Revolt in Cairo
ca. 1809
drawing, with added watercolor
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Pietro Benvenuti
Ghost of the philosopher Athenodorus Cananites
appearing to Pliny the Younger
ca. 1810
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Charles Meynier
Death of Atys
ca. 1810-20
drawing
Musée Magnin, Dijon

Wolfgang Adam Töpffer
Wedding Party Embarking
1814
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Pierre-Henri Révoil
Joan of Arc imprisoned in Rouen
1819
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Marriage at Cana
1819
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Joseph-Désiré Court
The Deluge
1827
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Anton Dräger
Moses at the Well defending the Daughters of Jethro
ca. 1827-28
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ary Scheffer
Women of Souli
1827-28
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum

Carlo Arienti
Scene of Roman Dissipation
ca. 1830
oil on canvas
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Félix Auvray
Last Days of Pompeii
ca. 1831
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Marie Adelaïde Kindt
The Fortune Teller
ca. 1835
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Elder
Cimbrian Women resisting the Romans
ca. 1836-37
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus Munich

Jean Béraud
Altercation at the Paris Opéra
1889
oil on panel
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Eugène Delacroix
The Bride of Abydos
(poem of Byron)
ca. 1843-49
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Being ready, she went into the Garden Woods, where shee saw Antissia sadly walking, her eyes on the earth, her sighes breathing like a sweet gale claiming pitie from above, for the earth she said would yeeld her none, yet she besought that too, and at last passion procured alteration from mourning, she began to sing a Song, or rather part of one, which was thus.

Stay mine eyes, these floods of teares

     Seeme but follies weakely growing,

Babes at nurse such wayling beares,

     Frowardnesse such drops bestowing:
But Niobe must shew my fate,

She wept and griev'd herselfe a state.

My sorrowes like her Babes appeare

     Daily added by increasing;
She lost them, I loose my Deare,

     Nor one spar'd from woes ne're ceasing:
She made a rock, heaven drops downe teares,

Which pitie shewes, and on her weares.

Assuredly more there was of this Song, or else she had with her unframed and unfashioned thoughts, as unfashionably framed these lines.

– from The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, by the right honourable the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter to the right noble Robert, Earle of Leicester, and neece to the ever famous and renowned Sʳ Phillips Sidney knight, and to ye most excellant Lady Mary Countess of Pembroke, late deceased (London: John Marriott and John Grismand, 1621)