Vellum

Cosmè Tura
St Francis receiving the Stigmata
ca. 1470-80
tempera and gold on vellum (manuscript illumination)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jan Baptist Weenix
The Three Fates among Ruins
ca. 1645
gouache on vellum
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Johan Thopas
Portrait of Gijsbert van der Hoven
1657
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Samuel Cooper
Miniature Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1660-65
watercolor on vellum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Samuel Cooper
Miniature Portrait of Henry Jermyn, Baron Dover
1667
watercolor on vellum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Johan Thopas
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1670
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Simon de Vos
The Taking of Christ
before 1676
oil on vellum
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Johan Thopas
Portrait of a Man
1684
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Johan Thopas
Portrait of a Woman
1684
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous English Artist
Miniature Portrait of a Man
ca. 1685
watercolor on vellum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Johan Thopas
Portrait of Ida Block
1688
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Thomas Forster
Miniature Portrait of Margaret Harcourt
1708
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
British Museum

Cornelis Troost
Self Portrait
1745
gouache on vellum
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Elisabeth Geertruida Wassenbergh
Self Portrait
1754
watercolor on vellum
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Phoebe Anna Traquair
Two Illuminated Leaves - Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
ca. 1894-96
watercolor and gold on vellum
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Phoebe Anna Traquair
Illuminated Leaf from
Collection of Reproductions of Medallions
1897
watercolor and gold on vellum
University of Edinburgh Library

Idelle Weber
It's a Business
ca. 1967-69
watercolor, collage and chalk on vellum
private collection

Crossing alone the nighted ferry

        With the one coin for fee,

Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,

        Count you to find?  Not me.

The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,

        The true, sick-hearted slave,

Expect him not in the just city

        And free land of the grave.

– A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1985)

Beverly Hallam
Orange Prince
1985
acrylic on linen
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Robert Mapplethorpe
Sean Young
1985
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Dianne Blell
The Origin of Drawing
1985
C-print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Marsha Burns
Robert
1985
gelatin silver print
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

John Divola
Untitled
1985
dye imbibition print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Robert Motherwell
Perpetual Summer
1985
aquatint and collage
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Robert Motherwell
The Redness of Red
1985
screenprint, lithograph and collage
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Duane Michals
Willem de Kooning
1985
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Agnes Martin
Untitled #2
1985
acrylic on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Jörg Immendorff
Electric Painting - Singender Panzer
1985
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (You substantiate our horror)
1985
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anonymous Designer
André Kertész: de Paris et de New York
1985
offset-print
(exhibition poster)
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Jud Nelson
Shirts IV: Van Heusen
1985
marble
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Louise Nevelson
Untitled
1985
painted wood
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

Louise Nevelson
Untitled
1985
painted wood
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Issey Miyake
Coat
1985
paper (mulberry fiber)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

from Shorts

A Young Person came out of the mists,

Who had the most beautiful wrists;

     A scandal occurred

     Which has long been interred,

But the legend about them persists.

             *                *              *

As the poets have mournfully sung,

Death takes the innocent young,

     The rolling in money,

     The screamingly funny,

And those who are very well hung.

              *                 *              *

Fair is Middle Earth nor changes, though to Age,

Raging at his uncomeliness,

Her wine turn sour, her bread tasteless.

– W.H. Auden (1954)

Untitled

Lyubov Popova
Untitled
ca. 1915
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Alexander Calder
Untitled
1928
painted metal and wire
Reynolda House Museum of American Art,
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Georges Valmier
Untitled
before 1937
gouache on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Harry Bertoia
Untitled
ca. 1943
monoprint
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Janet Sobel
Untitled
ca. 1946-48
enamel on board
Menil Collection, Houston

Serge Poliakoff
Untitled
1959
gouache and watercolor on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Asger Jorn
Untitled
ca. 1959
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Cy Twombly
Untitled
1964
oil stick, crayon and graphite on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Menashe Kadishman
Untitled
1970
screenprint
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Giuseppe Capogrossi
Untitled
before 1972
lithograph
Dallas Museum of Art

David Salle
Untitled
1980
acrylic on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

Jasper Johns
Untitled
1987
oil, encaustic and charcoal on linen
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

John Walker
Untitled
1996
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Charlotte Schleiffert
Untitled
1999
mixed media on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Leonard Brooks
Untitled
2003
collage on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Jon Pylypchuk
Untitled
2003
mixed media on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Rob van Koningsbruggen
Untitled
2017
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

In the Waiting Room

In Worcester, Massachusetts,

I went with Aunt Consuelo

to keep her dentist's appointment

and sat and waited for her

in the dentist's waiting room. 

It was winter. It got dark

early. The waiting room

was full of grown up people,

arctics and overcoats,

lamps and magazines.

My aunt was inside

what seemed like a long time

and while I waited I read

the National Geographic

(I could read) and carefully 

studied the photographs:

the inside of a volcano,

black, and full of ashes;

then it was spilling over

in rivulets of fire.

Osa and Martin Johnson

dressed in riding breeches,

laced boots, and pith helmets.

A dead men slung on a pole

– "Long Pig," the caption said.

Babies with pointed heads

wound round and round with string;

black, naked women with necks

wound round and round with wire

like the necks of light bulbs.

Their breasts were horrifying.

I read it right straight through.

I was too shy to stop.

And then I looked at the cover:

the yellow margins, the date.

Suddenly, from inside,

came on oh! of pain

– Aunt Consuelo's voice –

not very loud or long.

I wasn't at all surprised;

even then I knew she was 

a foolish, timid woman.

I might have been embarrassed,

but wasn't. What took me

completely by surprise

was that it was me:

my voice, in my mouth. 

Without thinking at all

I was my foolish aunt,

I – we – were falling, falling,

our eyes glued to the cover

of the National Geographic,

February 1918.

I said to myself: three days

and you'll be seven years old.

I was saying it to stop 

the sensation of falling off

the round, turning world

into cold, blue-black space.

But I felt: you are an I, 

you are an Elizabeth,

you are one of them.

Why should you be one, too?

I scarcely dared to look

to see what it was I was.

I gave a sidelong glance 

– I couldn't look any higher –

at shadowy gray knees,

trousers and skirts and boots

and different pairs of hands

lying under the lamps.

I knew that nothing stranger 

had ever happened, that nothing

stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,

or me, or anyone?

What similarities –

boots, hands, the family voice

I felt in my throat, or even

the National Geographic

and those awful hanging breasts –

held us all together

or made us all just one?

How – I didn't know any

word for it – how "unlikely" . . .

How had I come to be here,

like them, and overhear

a cry of pain that could have

got loud and worse but hadn't?

The waiting room was bright

and too hot. It was sliding

beneath a big black wave,

another, and another.

Then I was back in it. 

The War was on. Outside,

in Worcester, Massachusetts,

were night and slush and cold,

and it was still the fifth

of February, 1918. 

– Elizabeth Bishop (1971)