Avid of Elseness

Andrew Moore
Zumi Crabapple, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Andrew Moore
Winterberry Holly and Flowering Crabapples, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Andrew Moore
European Beech, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Andrew Moore
Eastern White Pine, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of sculptor Pierre Le Pautre
1689
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of la comtesse de Bemareau
1713
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of Jacques-Antoine Arlaud
making a copy of Michelangelo's Leda
1714
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of a Man wearing a Cuirass
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Satanic Ballet
ca. 1922
gouache on paper
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Othello, Act II
1930
pochoir
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Molière's Don Juan
ca. 1929
gouache on paper
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Ballet
ca. 1925-28
oil on panel
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Pasture with Two Goats
ca. 1865
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ravine in the Morvan near Lormes
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Mantes (Le Matin)
ca. 1865-69
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Rebecca at the Well
ca. 1838-39
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

from Part One of The Age of Anxiety

Malin suggested:

                                 Let us then

     Consider rather the incessant Now of

     The traveller through time, his tired mind
     Biased towards bigness since his body must

     Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope,

     Acquisitive, in quest of his own 

     Absconded self yet scared to find it

     As he bumbles by from birth to death

     Menaced by madness; whose mode of being,

     Bashful or braggart, is to be at once

     Outside and inside his own demand

     For personal pattern. His pure I

     Must give account of and greet his Me,

     That field of force where he feels he thinks, 

     His past present, presupposing death,

     Must ask what he is in order to be

     And make meaning by omission and stress,

     Avid of elseness. All that exists

     Matters to man; he minds what happens

     And feels he is at fault, a fallen soul

     With power to place, to explain every

     What in his world but why he is neither

     God nor good, this guilt the insoluble

     Final fact, infusing his private

     Nexus of needs, his noted aims with

     Incomprehensible comprehensive dread

     At not being what he knows that before

     This world was he was willed to become. 

Quant approved:

     Set him to song, the surly old dodger.

So did Emble:

     Relate his lies to his longings for truth.

So did Rosetta:

     Question his crimes till his clues confess.

     The radio attempted to interrupt by remarking

          And now Captain Kidd in his Quiz Program

          HOW ALERT ARE YOU

But Quant pointed a finger at it and it stopped immediately. He said:

                                          Listen, Box,

     And keep quiet. Listen courteously to us

     Four reformers who have founded – why not? – 

     The Gung-Ho Group, the Ganymede Club
     For homesick young angels, the Arctic League
     Of Tropical Fish, the Tomboy Fund
     For Blushing Brides and the Bide-a-wees

     Of Sans-Souci, assembled again

     For a Think-Fest: Our theme tonight is

          HOMO ABYSSUS OCCIDENTALIS

                                     or

          A CURIOUS CASE OF COLD FEET

                                     or

          SEVEN SELFISH SUPPERLESS AGES

     And now, at Rosetta's suggestion, they left their bar-stools and moved to the quieter intimacy of a booth. Drinks were ordered and the discussion began.

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Deaf Deeps

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Gertrude Vanderbilt at age five in Paris
1880
oil on canvas
Newport Mansions Preservation Society,
Rhode Island

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Portrait of a Lady in Black
1887
oil on panel
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, Spain

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Portrait of Federico de Madrazo
1875
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain

Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Portrait of a Lady in Blue
ca. 1897-1905
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain

Martin Schongauer
St George and the Dragon
ca. 1470-80
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Martin Schongauer
St Martin dividing his Cloak
ca. 1470-80
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Martin Schongauer
Baptism of Christ
ca. 1470-74
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Martin Schongauer
The Taking of Christ
ca. 1480
engraving
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Claude-Marie Dubufe
Regrets
ca. 1826-27
drawing
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Claude-Marie Dubufe
Regrets
ca. 1826-27
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Claude-Marie Dubufe
Remembrance
ca. 1826-27
drawing
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Claude-Marie Dubufe
Remembrance
ca. 1826-27
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

François-André Vincent
Draped Model
ca. 1788
drawing
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

François-André Vincent
Portrait of Pierre Jean-Baptiste Choudard
(dramatist, known as Desforges)
1789
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

François-André Vincent
Portrait of Youth with Portfolio
1791
oil on canvas
Pushkin Museum, Moscow

François-André Vincent
St John the Evangelist
1793
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

from Part One of The Age of Anxiety

And Emble thought:

     High were those headlands, the eagles promised

     Life without lawyers. Our long convoy

     Turned away northward as tireless gulls

     Wove over water webs of brightness

     And sad sound. The insensible ocean,

     Miles without mind, moaned all around our

     Limited laughter, and below our songs

     Were deaf deeps, denes of unaffection,

     Their chill unchanging, chines where only

     The whale is warm, their wildness haunted

     By metal fauna moved by reason

     To hunt not in hunger but for hate's sake,

     Stalking our steamers. Strained with gazing

     Our eyes ached, and our ears as we slept

     Kept their care for the crash that would turn

     Our fears into fact. In the fourth watch

     A torpedo struck on the port bow:

     The blast killed many; the burning oil

     Suffocated some; some in lifebelts

     Floated upright till they froze to death;

     The youngest swam but the yielding waves

     Denied help; they were not supported,

     They swallowed and sank, ceased thereafter

     To appear in public; exposed to snap

     Verdicts of sharks, to vague inquiries

     Of amoeboid monsters, mobbled by slight

     Unfriendly fry, refused persistence.

     They are nothing now but names assigned to

     Anguish in others, areas of grief.

     Many have perished; more will.

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Slice

Adolphe Valette
Portrait of painter Annie Barnett
1917
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Kristian Zahrtmann
Head of a Woman
ca. 1878
oil on panel
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Adrien Ysenbrandt
Adam and Eve
ca. 1520
oil on panel
Kunsthalle Bremen

Eduard Veith
Académie
ca. 1875-80
drawing
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Adriaen van der Werff
The Entombment
ca. 1705
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum. Vienna

Félix Vallotton
Turkish Bath
1907
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Georges Valmier
Still Life with Geometric Forms II
1920
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1627-32
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Yva (Else Simon)
Model wearing Adornments
from the Museum of Ethnology
1933
gelatin silver print
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Lucian Zabel
Sinalco
ca. 1928
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Vincent van Gogh
Landscape from Saint-Rémy
1889
oil on canvas
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Diego Velázquez
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1623-30
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Anders Zorn
Emma Zorn reading the Newspaper
1887
oil on canvas
Zornmuseet, Mora, Sweden

Wallerant Vaillant
Portrait of Prince Rupert, Count Palatine
ca. 1665
mezzotint
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Gabriel Constant Vaucher
Antique Head of Isis
ca. 1780-90
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Luigi Valadier after Anton Raphael Mengs
Portrait of Johann Joachim Winckelmann
ca. 1770-80
bronze
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

The artistic value and significance of a theory exclusively concerned with the objective dimensions of bodies contained within definable boundaries could not but depend on whether or not the representation of such objects was recognized as the essential goal of artistic activity.  Its importance was bound to diminish in proportion as the artistic genius began to emphasize the subjective conception of the object in preference to the object itself.  In Egyptian art, the theory of proportions meant almost everything because the subject [i.e. the viewer] meant almost nothing; it was doomed to sink into insignificance as soon as this relation was reversed.  The victory of the subjective principle was prepared, we recall, by the art of the fifteenth century, which affirmed the autonomous mobility of the things represented and the autonomous visual experience of the artist as well as the beholder.  When, after the "revival of classical antiquity" had spent its momentum, these first concessions to the subjective principle came to be exploited to the full, the role of the theory of human proportions as a branch of art theory was finished.  The styles that may be grouped under the heading of "pictorial" subjectivism  – the styles most eloquently represented by seventeenth-century Dutch painting and nineteenth-century Impressionism – could do nothing with a theory of human proportions, because for them solid objects in general, and the human figure in particular, meant little in comparison with the light and air diffused in unlimited space.  The styles that may be grouped under the heading of "non-pictorial" subjectivism – pre-Baroque Mannerism and modern "Expressionism" – could do nothing with a theory of human proportions, because for them the solid objects in general, and the human figure in particular, meant something only in so far as they could be arbitrarily shortened and lengthened, twisted, and, finally, disintegrated. 

In modern times, then, the theory of human proportions, abandoned by the artists and the theorists of art, was left to the scientists – except for circles fundamentally opposed to the progressive development which tended toward subjectivity.  It is no accident that the mature Goethe, having abandoned the Romanticism of his youth in favor of an essentially classicistic conception of art, devoted a warm and active interest to what had been the favorite discipline of Leonardo and Dürer: "To work away at a canon of masculine and feminine proportions," he writes to J.H. Meyer, "to seek the variations out of which character arises, to examine more closely the anatomical structure, and to seek the beautiful forms that mean exterior perfection  – to such difficult researches I wish you to contribute your share just as I, for my part, have made some preliminary investigations."

– Erwin Panofsky, from The History of the Theory of Human Proportions as a Reflection of the History of Styles (1921)  

Hand-Held

Master of the Holy Kinship (German painter)
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1490-95
oil on panel
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Draped Philosopher
ca. 1495-1505
drawing
British Museum

Master of the Brandon Portraits (Netherlandish painter)
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1510-15
oil on panel
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Draped Woman carrying Vessel
1524-25
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Quinten Metsys
Portrait of a Canon
ca. 1525-30
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Paolo Pino
Portrait of a Man
1534
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Callisto Piazza
St Catherine of Alexandria
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Matthys Naiveu
Portrait of a Young Woman
1628
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Adriaen van Ostade
Peasant cutting up a Pig
ca. 1670
ink and watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anna Piattoli
Self Portrait
1776
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Jean-Jacques François Monanteuil
The Old Soldier
1852
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Henri Meunier
Pollet et Vittet - Chocolaterie de Pepinster
ca. 1896
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Willard LeRoy Metcalf
The Convalescent
1904
oil on canvas
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Nickolas Muray
Frida Kahlo with Olmec Figure
1939
tri-color carbro print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Pablo Picasso
The Painter
1964
hand-colored lithograph
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Arnold Mesches
The Three Chandeliers
1987
acrylic on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Aliza Nisenbaum
Susanna Paints
2022
oil on canvas
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

from The Lady of Shalott

In the stormy east-wind straining,

The pale yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

        Over towered Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat

Beneath a willow left afloat,

And round about the prow she wrote

        The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse

Like some bold seer in a trance,

Seeing all his own mischance –

With a glassy countenance

        Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

        The Lady of Shalott. 

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1832)