Acrylics

Paul Baylock
Universal I
2013
acrylic on panel
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Ilya Bolotowsky
Study for Main Entrance Lobby Mural
1975
acrylic on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jonathan Borofsky
Male Aggression - Now Playing Everywhere
1981-83
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Michel Boulanger
Refuge près de Chute aux Damnés
1994
acrylic on canvas
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Paul-Édouard Bourque
Wozzeck IV
1997
acrylic on paper
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Dale Chisman
Wire and Stone Heads
1974
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Dan Christensen
Myrtle Beach
ca. 1970
acrylic on canvas
Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina

Chris Cran
Beef-Cake
2003
acrylic on canvas
Museum London, Ontario

Chris Cran
Cheese-Cake
2003
acrylic on canvas
Museum London, Ontario

Sarah Crowner
Sliced Tropics, Fragment
2018
acrylic on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Roy De Forest
Leaves from the Notebook of a Horse Girl
1970
acrylic on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Roy De Forest
Slow Time in Arcadia
1977
acrylic on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Jean Dubuffet
Mire G117 (Kowloon)
1983
acrylic on paper, mounted on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Jean Dubuffet
Tower
1975
acrylic on shaped panel
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Audrey Flack
Bounty
1978
acrylic on canvas
Reynolda House Museum of American Art,
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Audrey Flack
Queen
1976
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sonia Gechtoff
Sienna
1991-2001
acrylic on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

    Again, how can death be evil, sith it is the thaw of these vanities which the frost of life bindeth together?  If there be a satiety in life, then must there not be a sweetness in death?  Man were an intolerable thing, were he not mortal; the earth were not ample enough to contain her offspring, if none died.  In two or three ages, without death, what an unpleasant and lamentable spectacle were the most flourishing cities!  For, what should there be to be seen in them, save bodies languishing and courbing again into the earth, pale disfigured faces, skeletons instead of men?  And what to be heard, but the exclamations of the young, complaints of the old, with the pitiful cries of sick and pining persons?  There is almost no infirmity worse than age. 

– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)

N. Jay Jaffee

N. Jay Jaffee
Hazard (New York)
1949
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Fight for Peace (May Day Parade, New York)
1949
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Woman under Movie Marquee (Times Square)
ca. 1949
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Woman reading Paper under El
1950
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Woman with Broom
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Girl on Skates (Brooklyn)
1950
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Oriole Baths (Long Island)
1950
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Pillars in Sunlight (Brooklyn)
1951
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Two Men in Subway
1952
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Bryant Park
1953
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Looking at Sand Sculpture (Coney Island)
1956
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Man and Woman with Shadows (Brighton Beach)
1974
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Two Men
1977
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Self Portrait
1979
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Building Repair (Paris)
1979
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
At the Minster (York, England)
1982
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Sculpture with White Paint
1989
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Group Picture (Los Angeles)
1989
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

N. Jay Jaffee
Clouds and Seascape (Lloyd Harbor, New York)
1990
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Troas

For love Appollo (his Godhead set aside)

Was servant to the king of Thessaley,

Whose daughter was so pleasant in his eye,

That bothe his harpe and sawtrey he defide,

And bagpipe solace of the rurall bride,

Did puffe and blowe and on the holtes hy,

His cattell kept with that rude melody. 

And oft eke him that doth the heavens gyde

Hath love transformed to shapes for him too base.

Transmuted thus sometime a swan is he,

Leda taccoye, and of Europe to please,

A milde white bull, unwrinckled front and face,

Suffreth her play tyll on his back lepeth she,

Whom in great care he ferieth through the seas. 

– Seneca (4 BC-AD 65), translated by Anonymous (1557)

Practical Foreshortening - II

Édouard Manet
Plum Brandy
ca. 1877
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Palma il Giovane
St Jerome
before 1628
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Alexandre-Denis-Abel de Pujol
Seated Model
1834
drawing
(study for painting, Apotheosis of Alexander)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Pablo Picasso
Kneeling Nude
1907-1908
drawing
(study for painting, Three Women)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Rolli
Figure in Clouds
ca. 1660
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Benedetto Luti
Supper at Emmaus
ca. 1695
oil on panel
Princeton University Art Museum

Jacob Matthias Schmutzer
Académie
ca. 1770-80
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jacob Jordaens
Study of Figure in Priestly Vestments
ca. 1650
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Henry Fuseli
Figure Study
(made at the Royal Academy, London)
1800
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

Anton Kolig
Large Kneeling Figure
1922
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Théodore Géricault
Académie
ca. 1812
oil on canvas
(test patch cleaned, lower right corner)
National Museum, Warsaw

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Foreshortened Figure
ca. 1640
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Federico Barocci
Figure Studies
ca. 1580-83
drawing
(studies for painting, Martyrdom of St Vitalis)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pompeo Batoni
Académie
1768
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

attributed to Aert de Gelder
Model arranging her Hair
ca. 1690
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

 

Federico Zuccaro
Putto
ca. 1580
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Overcome by hunger, Rhodanes and his companion lick the honey off themselves, are stricken with diarrhea, and fall as if dead at the side of the road.  Worn out from fighting the bees, the soldiers flee; all the same, they pursue Rhodanes and his companion, and, seeing their quarry collapsed, they pass them by, taking them to be truly dead.  . . .  While Rhodanes and Sinonis are lying collapsed at the side of the road, the soldiers as they are passing follow the custom of their country in throwing shrouds in the form of tunics over what they take to be corpses, and whatever they happen to have, and pieces of meat and bread.  In this way the soldiers pass by.  The couple made unconscious by the honey wake up with difficulty; Rhodanes is awakened by the sound of crows quarreling over the pieces of meat, and he wakes up Sinonis.  They get up and travel in the direction opposite to that taken by the soldiers so as to improve their chances of not being recognized as the fugitives.  Finding two asses, they mount them and load them with what they retained from the things that the soldiers who supposed that they were dead threw over their bodies.  They then turn into an inn, flee from there, and take lodgings at another one around midday.

– Iamblichus, from A Babylonian Story, written in Greek, 2nd century AD.  A summary of the book was composed (also in Greek) in the 9th century by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.  Except for fragments, the original text by Iamblichus was subsequently lost, but the summary by Photius has survived.  This was translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989).