Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts

Saturday, August 1, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1946)

Jack Grue
Still Life no. 16
1946
watercolor on ivory
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Charles Howard
The First Hypothesis
1946
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston



Paul Landacre
Children's Carnival
1946
wood-engraving
Tacoma Art Museum

Dorothea Tanning
Guardian Angels
1946
oil on canvas
New Orleans Museum of Art

Fernand Léger
The White Butterfly
1946
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Francis Bacon
Figure Study I
1946
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Max Beckmann
Dressing Room
1946
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

David Bomberg
Sunset, The Bay, North Devon
1946
oil on canvas
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Arvid Fougstedt
Mother and Child
1946
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Dod Procter
Autumn Flowers
1946
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Tristram Hillier
Quantoxhead
1946
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Clare Leighton
Clam Diggers
1946
wood-engraving
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Bernard Brussel-Smith
The Bunk
1946
wood-engraving
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Eugene Berman
Stage Design for ballet Armida
1946
watercolor and gouache on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Rein Draijer
The Yellow Chair
1946
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Walker Evans
Victorian Building, South Side, Chicago
1946
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                             VII
The "symboliste" attempt to make poetry as intransitive as music, can get no further than the narcissistic reflexive – "I love Myself"; the attempt to make poetry as objective as painting can get no further than the single comparison "A is like B", "C is like D", "E is like F" . . . No "imagist" poem can be more than a few words long. 

                                                             VIII
As an artistic language, Speech has many advantages – three persons, three tenses (Music and Painting have only the Present Tense), both the active and the passive voice – but it has one serious defect: it lacks the Indicative Mood. All its statements are in the subjunctive and only possibly true until verified (which is not always possible) by non-verbal evidence. 

                                                               IX
First I write I was born in York; then, I was born in New York: to discover which statement is true and which false, it is no use studying my handwriting.

                                                                X
I can imagine a forger clever enough to imitate another's signature so exactly that a handwriting expert would swear in court that it was genuine, but I cannot imagine a forger so clever that he could imitate his own signature inexactly enough to make a handwriting expert swear that it was a forgery. (Or is it only that I cannot imagine the circumstances in which anyone could want to do such a thing?)

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1942)

Georges Braque
Large Interior with Palette
1942
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Paul Lewis Clemens
Mr. & Mrs. Clark
1942
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Joseph Cornell
Untitled (Pink Ballet Case)
1942
wood, glass and found objects
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Arthur Dove
The Brothers
1942
tempera and wax emulsion on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Ed Garman
No. 265
1942
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Robert Gwathmey
The Farmer wanted a Boy 
1942
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

John Heliker
Bathers
1942
drawing
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Fernand Léger
The Divers
1942
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

André Masson
La Belle Italienne
 1942
pastel on paper, mounted on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

André Masson
Minotaur
1942
pastel on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Barbara Morgan
Dancer Erick Hawkins jumping with Lloyd
1942
gelatin silver print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Robert Motherwell
Yellow Abstract Composition
1942
watercolor and ink on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

Arnold Newman
Max Ernst
1942
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Angelo Pinto
David and Goliath
1942
pigment on glass
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Hobson Pittman
House in the Country
1942
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Raphael Soyer
At the Mirror
1942
lithograph
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

from Reflections in a Forest

Within a shadowland of trees
Whose lives are so uprightly led
In nude august communities,
To move about seems underbred

And common any taste for words;
When, thoughtlessly, they took to song,
Whatever one may think of birds,
The example that they set was wrong.

In keeping still, in staying slow,
For posture and for social ease,
How much these living statues owe
Their scent-and-color languages.

For who can quarrel without terms
For Not or Never, who can raise
Objections when what one affirms
Is necessarily the case?

– W.H. Auden (1957)

Friday, July 24, 2026

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)

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1935)

Margaret Bourke-White
Passenger eating aboard a TWA Flight
1935
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Giorgio de Chirico
Alexandros
1935
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

William Givler
Window Washers
1935
oil on canvas
Tacoma Art Museum

Arshile Gorky
Untitled
1935
drawing
Seattle Art Museum

Harvey Griffiths
Arrangement with Billboard
1935
watercolor on paper
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Ludwig Hohlwein
On German Roads
1935
offset print (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Raymond Jonson
Rising Moon
1935
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Walt Kuhn
A Stream in the Woods
1935
oil on canvas
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Jacques Lipchitz
Aeneas and Anchises
1935
lithograph
 Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 
Poughkeepsie, New York

Alexandre Benois
Fontainebleau
1935
watercolor on paper
Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, Vermont

Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham in Primitive Mysteries
1935
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Georgia O'Keeffe
Blue Morning Glories New Mexico II
1935
oil on canvas
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Ben Shahn
Destitute Family, Ozark Mountains, Arkansas
1935
gelatin silver print
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Paul Signac
Saint Tropez I
1935
lithograph
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Charley Toorop
Still Life
1935
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Russell Wright
Saturn Punch Service
1935
aluminum and wood
New Orleans Museum of Art

At the Party

Unrhymed, unrhythmical, the chatter goes: 
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.

Beneath each topic tunelessly discussed
The ground-bass is reciprocal mistrust.

The names in fashion shuttling to and fro
Yield, when deciphered, messages of woe.

You cannot read me like an open book.

I'm more myself than you will ever look.

Will no one listen to my little song?

Perhaps I shan't be with you very long.

A howl for recognition, shrill with fear,
Shakes the jam-packed apartment, but each ear
Is listening to its hearing, so none hear. 

– W.H. Auden (1963)