Accessory

John Constantine Stanley
Countess Canning with Guests, Government House, Allahabad
1858
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pio Joris
Landscape with Figure
1865
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

Félix Bracquemond
La Terrasse de la Villa Brancas
1876
etching
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Georges Seurat
Study for painting La Grande Jatte
1884
drawing
British Museum

Jan Toorop
Woman with Parasol
1888
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

Allen & Ginter (Richmond, Virginia)
Pauline Hall on trade card for Dixie Cigarettes
ca. 1888
albumen print and letterpress
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Paul Signac
Woman with Parasol
1893
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edward Penfield
Harper's April
1897
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Édouard Zier
Woman with Parasol
ca. 1900
watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Eugène Grasset
Woman with Parasol
1900
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Woman with Parasol
ca. 1911-12
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Chris Beekman
Young Women with Umbrella
1917-18
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Augusto Giacometti
Graubünden Schweiz 
ca. 1920
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dorothy Brett
Umbrellas
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Arthur Siegel
State Street
1949
dye transfer print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nancy Kilgour
Beach Umbrellas
ca. 1950
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Marisol (Marisol Escobar)
Mi Mama y Yo
1968
painted bronze and aluminum
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

from Spain 1937

Yesterday all the past.  The language of size

Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion

            Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;

Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,

The divination of water; yesterday the invention

            Of cart-wheels and clocks, the taming of 

Horses; yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants;

The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,

            The chapel built in the forest;

Yesterday the carving of angels and of frightening gargoyles;

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;

Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns

            And the miraculous cure at the fountain;

Yesterday the Sabbath of Witches.  But to-day the struggle.

– W.H. Auden (1937)

Incarnations

Georg Petel
Venus and Cupid (detail)
ca. 1622-24
ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Georg Petel
Venus and Cupid (detail)
ca. 1622-24
ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Georg Petel
Venus and Cupid
ca. 1622-24
ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Andrea Piccinelli (Andrea del Brescianino)
Venus
ca. 1520-25
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Lorenzo di Credi
Venus
ca. 1490
tempera and oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Anonymous French Artist (Fontainebleau)
Toilette of Venus
ca. 1550
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain
Venus emerging from the Bath
1767
marble
(given by Louis XV to Madame du Barry)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Venus Marina
ca. 1550
bronze
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City, Missouri

Guillaume Coustou the Younger
Venus
1769
terracotta
Musée du Louvre

Bertel Thorvaldsen
Vénus à la pomme
ca. 1805
marble
Musée du Louvre

John Beasley Greene
Venus de Milo on Rooftop in Paris
ca. 1852-53
waxed-paper negative
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Francisco Matto
Venus
1968
partly-painted wood
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Domenico Beccafumi
Venus and Cupid
1519
oil on panel
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, West Midlands

Benjamin West
Cupid stung by a Bee, comforted by Venus
1774
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Simone Peterzano
Venus and Cupid with Two Satyrs in a Landscape
ca. 1570-73
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Jacob van Loo
Allegory with Venus and Cupid
1654
oil on copper
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Annibale Carracci
Venus with Satyr and Amorini
ca. 1587-88
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

from Journey to Iceland

The blood moves also by crooked and furtive inches,

Asks all your questions: 'Where is the homage? When

        Shall justice be done? O who is against me?

        Why am I always alone?'

Present then the world to the world with its mendicant shadow;

Let the suits be flash, the Minister of Commerce insane;

        Let jazz be bestowed on the huts, and the beauty's

        Set cosmopolitan smile.

For our time has no favorite suburb; no local features

Are those of the young for whom all wish to care;

        The promise is only a promise, the fabulous

        Country impartially far. 

– W.H. Auden (1936)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1938)

Abe Blashko
A Stitch at Night (The Tailor)
1938
drawing
Seattle Art Museum

Paul Cadmus
Aspects of Suburban Life: Polo Spill
1938
etching
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Stuart Davis
Concert Pitch
1938
gouache on board
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Guy Pène Du Bois
Fog, Amagansett
1938
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Julio González
Study for Mother and Child
1938
drawing
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

Harry Gottlieb
The Strike is Won!
1938
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Carl Robert Holty
Circus Forms
1938
oil on panel
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

George Hurrell
Bette Davis
1938
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Fernand Léger
Head of a Woman
1938
drawing
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Helen Levitt
New York
1938
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Henry Moore 
Stringed Figure
1938
bronze statuette
Dallas Museum of Art

Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham and Erick Hawkins
in American Document
1938
gelatin silver print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Pablo O'Higgins
Man in Nazi Society
1938
lithograph
(poster for public lecture)
Seattle Art Museum

Georgia O'Keeffe
Red and Pink Rocks and Teeth
1938
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Pablo Picasso
Seated Woman with Hat
1938
oil on panel
Menil Collection, Houston

Ben Shahn
Farm People at the Fair, central Ohio
1938
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Shorts I

Between those happenings that prefigure it

And those that happen in its anamnesis

Occurs the Event, but that no human wit

Can recognize until all happening ceases.

                    *          *          *

       To Goethe: A Complaint

How wonderfully your songs begin

With praise of Nature and her beauty,

But then, as if it were a duty,

You drag some god-damned sweetheart in.

Did you imagine she'd be flattered?

They never sound as if they mattered.

                     *          *          *

A moon profaned by 

Sectarian din, death by

Fervent implosion:–

Possibles. But here and now

Our oath to the living word. 

– W.H. Auden (1959-69)