Showing posts with label balloons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label balloons. Show all posts

Thursday, September 19, 2024

Seeley - Piccinini - Kauffer - Penn

George Henry Seeley
Girl in Flowered Hat
ca. 1910
autochrome
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

George Henry Seeley
The Burning of Rome
1907
photogravure
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

George Henry Seeley
Eurydice
1903
photogravure
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

George Henry Seeley
Orpheus
1903
photogravure
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
Eulogy
2011
silicone, fibreglass, clothing, human hair
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
Psychogeography
1995
C-print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
Sky Whale
2013
hot-air balloon
(nylon, polyester, nomex, hyperlast, cable)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Patricia Piccinini
The Stags
2009
assemblage
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
Soaring to Success!
1919
lithograph
(poster advertising newspaper)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
With Best Wishes for 1936
1936
lithograph
(greeting card)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
Journey of the Magi
1927
lithograph
(illustration to poem by T.S. Eliot)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

E. McKnight Kauffer
A Song for Simeon
1928
lithograph
(illustration to poem by T.S. Eliot)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Irving Penn
Elsa Schiaparelli, New York
1948
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Irving Penn
Georgia O'Keeffe
1948
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Irving Penn
Gypsy Rose Lee, New York
1948
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Irving Penn
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor
1948
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from Through the Looking Glass

Yours is the only name expressive there,
And family affection speaks in cypher.
Lay-out of hospital and street and square
That comfort to its homesick children offer,
As I, their author, stand between these dreams,
Unable to choose either for a home,
Your would-be lover who has never come
In a great bed at midnight to your arms.     

Such dreams are amorous; they are indeed:
But no one but myself is loved in these,
While time flies on above the dreamer's head,
Flies on, flies on, and with your beauty flies,
And pride succeeds to each succeeding state,
Still able to buy up the life within,
License no liberty except his own,
Order the fireworks after the defeat.

Language of moderation cannot hide: –
My sea is empty and its waves are rough;
Gone from the map the shore where childhood played,
Tight-fisted as a peasant, eating love;
Lost in my wake the archipelago,
Islands of self through which I sailed all day
Planting a pirate's flag, a generous boy;
And lost my way to action and to you. 

Lost if I steer. Tempest and tide may blow
Sailor and ship past the illusive reef,
And I yet land to celebrate with you
The birth of natural order and true love:
With you enjoy the untransifugred scene,
My father down the garden in his gaiters,
My mother at her bureau writing letters,
Free to our favours, all our titles gone.

– W.H. Auden (1933)

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Untethered Heads

Louis Le Brocquy
Head on a Red Ground
1974
intaglio print
Tate Gallery

Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Head and Boat
1983
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Karel Appel
Big Head
1964
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Jyoti Bhatt
Double Self Portrait
1969
gelatin silver prints
Tate Gallery

Brassaï
Graffiti
ca. 1955
gelatin silver print
Tate Gallery

Paul Cézanne
Head of  the Artist's Son, asleep
ca. 1888-89
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Designer
Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano
1973
poster
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous Designer
Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano
1974
poster
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Richard Cooper
Head of Young Woman
ca. 1770
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Emil Nolde
Head of Man in Darkness
(Self Portrait)

1915
lithograph
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anonymous Italian Artist
Three Heads
ca. 1540
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Antoine Lafréry (publisher)
Actor's Mask (Ancient Rome) at the Vatican
ca. 1573
etching
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Henri Laurens
Two Heads
ca. 1925
wood engraving
Yale University Art Gallery

Sidney Nolan
Landscape, Miner, Yellow Helmet
1973
screenprint
Tate Gallery

Nicholas Monro
Cosmic Consciousness
1970
screenprint
Tate Gallery

Bruce McClean
Spaghetti alle Vongole Twice
1995
screenprint
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The Mother's Loathing of Balloons 

I hate you,
How the children plead
At first sight –

I want, I need,
I hate how nearly 
Always I

At first say no,
And then comply.
(Soon, soon

They will grow bored
Clutching your
Umbilical cord) –

Over the moon,
Lighter-than-air,
Should you come home,

They'd cease to care –
Who tugs you through
The front door

On a leash, won't want you
Anymore
And will forget you

On the ceiling –
Admittedly,
A giddy feeling –

Later to find you,
Puckered, small,
Crouching low

Against the wall.
O thin-of-skin
And fit to burst,

You break for her
Who wants you worst.
Your forebear was

The sack of winds,
The boon that gives
And then rescinds,

Containing nothing
But the force
That blows everyone

Off course.
Once possessed,
Your one chore done,

You float like happiness
To the sun,
Untethered afternoon,

Unkind,
Marooning all
You've left behind:

Their tinfoil tears,
Their plastic cries,
Their wheedling

And moot goodbyes,
You shrug them off –
You do not heed –

O loose bloom
               With no root
                                No seed.

–A.E. Stallings (2009)

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Fantasies of Happiness from 18th-century Europe

Charles Joseph Flipart
Gathering in a garden
18th century
oil on canvas
Prado

"The artist painted happy lovers or small groups of friends, usually outdoors in blooming gardens, busy amusing themselves or being entertained with music. Often actors still in costume mingle with aristocrats, and are caught conversing, dancing, listening to music, and exchanging pleasantries under tall trees that function as a backdrop."

 from an essay by Daniela Tarabra on the subject of fêtes galantes in European Art of the Eighteenth Century (Getty Museum, 2008)

Johann Joachim Kändler for Meissen Manufactory
 The Thrown Kiss
ca. 1736
porcelain
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater
Concert champêtre
ca. 1734
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude-Joseph Vernet
View near Sorrento 
ca. 1745-50
oil on canvas
Prado

Antonio Carnicero-Mancio
Ascension of Montgolfier's Balloon at Aranjuez
1784
oil on canvas
Prado

Nicolas Lancret
Before the costume ball
18th century
oil on copper
Hermitage 

Louis-Jean François Lagrenée
Diana and Endymion
1768
oil on canvas
Swedish National Museum

Angelica Kauffman
Telemachus and the Nymphs of Calypso
1782
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hubert Robert
Portico of a country mansion
1773
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francisco de Goya
San Isidro Meadow with view of Madrid
1788
tapestry cartoon
Prado

attributed to Andreas Altomonte
Masked ball in Bohemia
ca. 1748
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Corrado Giaquinto
Triumph of Galatea
ca. 1752
oil on canvas
Louvre

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater
The Golden Age 
18th century
oil on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peeter van Bloemen
Campo Vacino, Rome
1704
oil on canvas
Prado

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Monumental Polaroids


My daughter's commitment to making regular Mabel Polaroids has now maintained its steady course without interruption for five years. It has weathered the very disappearance of Polaroid film itself, which still existed when this project started. This present group covered a remarkable clutch of big events pressed into a remarkably short time  which included 1) the End of Preschool, 2) the Fifth Birthday, and 3) the Start of Kindergarten.






Polaroids accumulate, one per week, in a special box on a special shelf at Mabel's house. When six or eight or ten of them are ready, I put them into a special envelope and carry them home with me. Then I scan them and crop them and shove them up on Spencer Alley so that all the wise people who love to look at pictures of Mabel will be able to see them, and also so that my daughter can download the scans. I make high resolution scans in case either one of us wants to make paper prints, but usually we don't do that since we have the paper originals. Which I have to make a special effort to remember to return to the special box on the special shelf at Mabel's house after I have finished scanning them. My daughter uses one Polaroid (but not in any particular order) for the Monday post every week on Pippa's Cabinet, her own highly organized blog, which stands in such stark contrast to the randomness of mine. On Pippa's Cabinet each Polaroid comes with a lively story or two about the enthralling child. There will surely be future manifestations of these same Polaroids  perhaps not even imagined yet  as they become yearly more remote and more treasured and more venerable.