Drowse

Ippolito Marracci
Allegory of Sleep with Cupid, Diana, Endymion and Hebe
ca. 1690-1710
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Mansi, Lucca

Tim Gardner
Untitled (Ryan in Bed)
2002
watercolor on paper
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

James Tissot
Woman Sleeping
ca. 1871-73
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Louis-Claude Vassé
Sleeping Shepherd
1751
marble
Musée du Louvre

Lee Friedlander
Helen Levitt, New York City
1959
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Auden, Emma and Dogs
1989
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
Virgin and sleeping Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1605
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Henri Decaisne
Guardian Angel
(after poem by Lamartine)
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

François Le Moyne
Daphnis with sleeping Chloe
ca. 1721
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

François-Nicolas Delaistre
Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1790
marble
Musée du Louvre

Juan Antonio Escalante
Angel with prophet Isaiah in the Wilderness
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous French Photographer
Clinique vétérinaire Malvezin, Paris
ca. 1905
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paris Bordone
Sleeping Warrior
before 1571
drawing
British Museum

Marlene Dumas
Jen
2005
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

attributed to Ubaldo Gandolfi
Sleeping Child
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anne-Louis Girodet
Sleeping Bacchus
ca. 1790-91
oil on panel
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Conrad Marca-Relli
Sleeping Figure
1953-54
collage of painted canvas elements on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from In Time of War

Wandering lost upon the mountains of our choice,

Again and again we sigh for an ancient South,

For the warm nude ages of instinctive poise,

For the taste of joy in the innocent mouth.

Asleep in our huts, how we dream of a part

In the glorious balls of the future; each intricate maze

Has a plan, and the disciplined movements of the heart

Can follow for ever and ever its harmless ways.

We envy streams and houses that are sure:

But we are articled to error; we

Were never nude and calm like a great door,

And never will be perfect like the fountains;

We live in freedom of necessity,

A mountain people dwelling among mountains.

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1944)

Milton Avery
The Baby
1944
oil on canvas
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

Eugene Berman
Backdrop Design for Danses Concertantes by George Balanchine
1944
watercolor and gouache on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Arshile Gorky
How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life
1944
oil on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Hans Hofmann
Untitled
1944
gouache on paper
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Walt Kuhn
Acrobat in White and Silver
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Jacques Lipchitz
The Road to Exile
1944
etching, engraving and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Barbara Morgan
Berenice Abbott with a Cat
1944
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Max Weber
Woman Carrying Picture
1944
oil on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
The Painter
1944
oil paint, crayon and collage on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Isamu Noguchi
Remembrance
1944
bronze
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Carl-Henning Pedersen
Untitled
1944
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jackson Pollock
Untitled
1944
drawing
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Birger Sandzén
Autumn (Smoky Hill River, Kansas)
1944
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Tacoma Art Museum

Houghton Cranford Smith
Near Los Andes
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

William Sommer
Portrait of Miss Eunice Merton
1944
watercolor on paper
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Paul Bough Travis
Still Life
1944
oil on panel
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              I

Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought – I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.

                                                              II

Of any poem written by someone else, my first demand is that it be good (who wrote it is of secondary importance); of any poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine, recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for better or worse, by me. (When it comes to his own poems, a poet's preferences and those of his readers often overlap but seldom coincide.) 

                                                              III

But this poem which I should now like to write would not only have to be good and genuine: if it is to satisfy me, it must also be true.

     I read a poem by someone else in which he bids a tearful farewell to his beloved: the poem is good (it moves me as other good poems do) and genuine (I recognize the poet's "handwriting"). Then I learn from a biography that, at the time he wrote it, the poet was sick to death of the girl but pretended to weep in order to avoid hurt feelings and a scene. Does this information affect my appreciation of his poem? Not in the least: I never knew him personally and his private life is no business of mine. Would it affect my appreciation if I had written the poem myself? I hope so. 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Envy and Detraction

Roman Empire
Bowl
1st century AD
cast glass
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Joseph Cornell
Allegory of Innocence
1956
printed paper collage
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Park
Two Bathers
1958
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

John Hamilton Mortimer
Figures of Envy and Detraction
1779
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Roman Empire
Bowl
1st century AD
cast glass
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Joseph Cornell
Constellation (Project for a Christmas card)
1953
printed paper collage with added gouache
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Park
Sunbather
ca. 1950-53
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John Hamilton Mortimer
Banditti around a Tomb
ca. 1778
drawing
British Museum

Roman Empire
Bowl
1st century AD
cast glass
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Joseph Cornell
Bear with Angel (Christmas greeting)
1953
printed paper collage, relief print and ink
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Park
Torso
1959
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

John Hamilton Mortimer
Head Studies
ca. 1760-70
drawing
British Museum

Roman Empire
Bowl
1st century BC - 1st century AD
agate glass slumped over mold
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Joseph Cornell
Portrait of the Artist's Daughter by Vigée-Lebrun
ca. 1960
printed paper collage
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Park
The Bathers
1959
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

John Hamilton Mortimer
Monsters
ca. 1778-79
ink and watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Roman Empire
Inkwell
1st-2nd century AD
blown glass
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

from Six Odes

Not, Father, further do prolong

        Our necessary defeat;

Spare us the numbing zero-hour,

        The desert-long retreat.

Against your direct light, displayed,

        Regardant, absolute,

In person stubborn and oblique

        Our maddened set we foot.

These nissen huts if hiding could

        Your eye inseeing from

Firm fenders were, but look! to us

        Your loosened angers come.

Against your accusations

        Though ready wit devise,

Nor magic countersigns prevail

        Nor airy sacrifice.

Weaker we are, and strict within

        Your organized blockade,

And from our desperate shore the last

        Few pallid youngsters fled.  

Be not another than our hope;

        Expect we routed shall

Upon your peace; with ray disarm,

        Illumine, and not kill.

– W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)