Avedon

Richard Avedon
Self Portrait in Washington
1945
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Girl with Book, Rome
1946
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Street Performer, Rome
1946
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Street Beggar, Rome
1947
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Two Boys, Sicily
1948
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Gown by Jacques Griffe, Paris
1949
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Fashion Shot for Hat
1949
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Judy Garland, Palace Theater, New York City
1951
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Maureen Stapleton
1951
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Marella Agnelli
1953
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Rocky Marciano
1953
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Mae West
1954
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Emilien Bouglione
1955
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Rudolf Bing
1955
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Anna Magnani
1957
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Marie-Louise Bousquet
1958
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Dorothy Parker
1958
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

from Satires

Such is the worlde, who beares the swey

        assuredly is scande,

Howe he came up, what parentage,

        what was his fathers lande.

For as the yonger that would seme

        moste hansome and moste brave,

Dothe make the mo to marke the more

        if he such features have:

So, who so thinks to rule in realmes,

        and aufull swey to beare,

To place, displace, to dubbe, disdubbe,

        to keep the coastes in feare:

The riflyng of his petigree,

        must thynke erewhyle to heare.

– Horace (65-8 BC), translated by Thomas Drant (1567)

Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie
Self Portrait
1970
inkjet print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Catherine Opie
Justin Bond
1993
C-print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Catherine Opie
Frankie
1994
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Catherine Opie
Flipper, Tanya, Chloe & Harriet, San Francisco, California
1995
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Catherine Opie
Untitled
1997
inkjet print
Art Institute of Chicago

Catherine Opie
Melissa & Lake, Durham, North Carolina
1998
C-print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Catherine Opie
Untitled
(Surfers Series)
2002-2003
C-print
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Catherine Opie
Self Portrait Nursing
2004
C-print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Catherine Opie
Saint Gilles du Gard
2007
three C-prints
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Catherine Opie
Untitled #6
(Inauguration Series)
2009
pigment print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Catherine Opie
Untitled #26
(Inauguration Series)
2009
pigment print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Catherine Opie
Untitled #27
(Inauguration Series)
2009
pigment print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Catherine Opie
Untitled #31
(Inauguration Series)
2009
pigment print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Catherine Opie
Untitled #32
(Inauguration Series)
2009
pigment print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Catherine Opie
Diana Nyad
2010
inkjet print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Catherine Opie
Elizabeth
2013
inkjet print
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

from Ode 29, Book 3, paraphrased in Pindarique Verse

 

Descended of an ancient Line,

    That long the Tuscan Scepter swayed,

Make haste to meet the generous wine,

    Whose piercing is for thee delayed:

The rosie wreath is ready made;

    And artful hands prepare

The fragrant Syrian oyl, that shall perfume thy hair. 

When the Wine sparkles from afar,

    And the well-natured Friend cries, come away;

Make haste, and leave thy business and thy care,

    No mortal int'rest can be worth thy stay.

Leave for a while thy costly Country Seat;

    And, to be great indeed, forget

The nauseous pleasures of the Great:

    Make haste and come:

Come and forsake thy cloying store;

    Thy Turret that surveys, from High,

The Smoke, and wealth, and noise of Rome;

    And all the busie pageantry

That wise men scorn, and fools adore:

Come, give thy Soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.

– Horace (65-8 BC), translated by John Dryden (1685)

Groups - III

Ansgar Larssen
Family Portrait
ca. 1950
oil on canvas
KODE (Art Museums Complex), Bergen, Norway

August Sander
Working Class Students
1926
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Ludomir Śleńdziński
Group Portrait
1925
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Karl Klefisch and Günter Fröhling
Kraftwerk - Konzerthaus Elzer Hof
1981
lithograph (poster)
Röhsska Museet, Göteborg

Emil Schult and Pit Franke
Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator
1981
lithograph (poster)
Röhsska Museet, Göteborg

Abraham van Diepenbeeck
The Four Doctors of the Church
ca. 1660
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Peter Paul Rubens
The Four Evangelists
ca. 1614
oil on canvas
Bildgalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam

Irving Penn
Dusek Brothers
1948
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Gerhard Keil
Gymnasts
1939
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Christian Krohg
Studio at Ankertorvet
1885
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Otto Dix
Portrait of Fritz and Erna Glaser
with children Agathe and Volkmar
1925
tempera and oil on panel
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Julius Exner
Portrait of Jenny Raphael Adler with her daughters
1868
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Edgar Degas
The Bellelli Family
1858
pastel on paper
(study for painting)
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Thomas Gainsborough
The Marsham Children
1787
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Leopold Kalckreuth
Children with Christmas Tree
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Nicolas de Largillière
The Artist with his Family
ca. 1704
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Bremen

"At the head of the procession came the sacrificial animals, led on the halter by the men who were to perform the holy rites, countryfolk in country costume.  Each wore a white tunic, caught up to knee length by a belt.  Their right arms were bare to the shoulder and breast, and in their right hands they each brandished a double-headed axe.  Each and every one of the oxen was black: they carried their heads proudly on powerful necks that thickened to a hump of perfect proportions; their horns were flawlessly straight and pointed, on some gilded, on others wreathed with garlands of flowers; their legs were stocky, their dewlaps so deep that they brushed their knees.  There were exactly one hundred of them – a hecatomb in the true sense of the word.  Behind the oxen came a host of different sorts of beasts for the sacrifice, each kind separate and in its due place, while flute and pipe began a solemn melody as prelude to the sacred ceremony."

"After the animals and the cowherds came some Thessalian maidens, in beauteous raiment girdled deep, their hair streaming free.  They were divided into two companies: half – the first company – carried baskets full of flowers and fresh fruit, while the others bore wickerwork trays of sweetmeats and aromatics that breathed a sweet fragrance over the whole place.  They balanced their baskets on their heads, leaving their hands free to link arms in a formation of diagonal rows; thus they were able to dance and process simultaneously.   They were given the signal to begin by the second group launching into the introduction to the ode, for this group had been granted the privilege of singing the hymn through from beginning to end.  The hymn was in praise of Thetis and Peleus, and their son and finally their son's son."

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)

Confrontations

Roy Lichtenstein
Grrrrrrrrr!!
1965
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

 

Walton Ford
It Makes Me Think Of That Awful Day On The Island
2011
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Katherine Schmidt
Tiger Tiger
1938
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jacob Gole after Cornelis Dusart
Allegorical Image –
Louis XIV as Scourge of Heretics
1691
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Natalia Goncharova
A Game in Hell: A Poem
by Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh
1912
lithograph (book cover)
Art Institute of Chicago

Theodore Roszak
Thistle in the Dream
1955-56
steel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Adolphe Braun
Mask of Medusa
1862
albumen print
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean Dubuffet
Volonté de Puissance
1946
oil paint, pebbles, sand, glass and rope on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Anonymous Photographer
Mickey Walker
1932
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Carl Mager
Wrestler - The Siberian Bearcat
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Mitchell Siporin
Performers
ca. 1939
engraving
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sylvia Sleigh
The Bride with Petunias
1950
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Elaine de Kooning
1980
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Annie Leibovitz
Rolling Stones
ca. 1985
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Thomas Struth
The Ghez Family, Chicago
1990
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Steichen
Marlene Dietrich
1931
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Harry Sternberg
Picasso
ca. 1943
screenprint
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Harald Vike
Self Portrait
ca. 1957
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Portrait

A youth last seen by an undecipherable

Artist. Or not a painting at all. A young man

With his comic hat on, waiting in the middle

Of many things for his painter to come and make

Most of them plausible.

One arm perhaps on the sideboard where would be shown

A lute, cold meats, a snifter somewhat full

Like a crystal ball predicting what's unknown;

Ingot of nougat, thumb-sized kumquats sodden

With juice not quite their own.

The other arm akimbo; eyes askance

Follow the crook of his elbow pointing out

The window, where might be a bird, for instance,

A blue tree, or a woman picking her way

Through what he sees as distance. 

– James Merrill (1951)