Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1961)

Arnold Newman
Martha Graham, New York City
1961
gelatin silver print
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Enrico Sarsini
Untitled
1961
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Joan Mitchell
Untitled
1961
oil on canvas
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

Henry Botkin
The Letter
1961
mixed media on board
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Robert Beauchamp
Presences
1961
oil on canvas
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Robert Motherwell
Capriccio
1961
pochoir
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Gunther Gerzsó
Cecilia
1961
oil on panel
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Morris Louis
Number 28
1961
acrylic on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Wojciech Fangor
Yellow Cross
1961
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Robert Indiana
Four Star Love
1961
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square: Michoacan
1961
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Francis Bacon
Paralyzed Child on All Fours (after Muybridge)
1961
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Svea Nyman
White Tulips
1961
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

George Segal
Untitled
1961
pastel on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Larry Rivers
Dead Veteran
1961
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Pierre Cardin
Coat Dress
1961
wool bouclé
Denver Art Museum

from Horae Canonicae

                        III. SEXT 

                               III

Anywhere you like, somewhere

on broad-chested, life-giving Earth,

anywhere between her thirstlands

and undrinkable Ocean,

the crowd stands perfectly still,

its eyes (which seem one) and its mouths

(which seem infinitely many)

expressionless, perfectly blank.

The crowd does not see (what everyone sees)

a boxing match, a train wreck,

a battleship being launched,

does not wonder (as everyone wonders)

who will win, what flag she will fly,

how many will be burned alive,

is never distracted

(as everyone is always distracted)

by a barking dog, a smell of fish,

a mosquito on a bald head:

the crowd sees only one thing

(which only the crowd can see),

an epiphany of that

which does whatever is done.

Whatever god a person believes in,

in whatever way he believes

(no two are exactly alike),

as one of the crowd he believes

and only believes in that

in which there is only one way of believing.

Few people accept each other and most

will never do anything properly,

but the crowd rejects no one, joining the crowd

is the only thing all men can do.

Only because of that can we say

all men are our brothers,

superior, because of that,

to the social exoskeletons: When

have they ever ignored their queens,

for one second stopped work

on their provincial cities, to worship

The Prince of this world like us,

at this noon, on this hill,

in the occasion of this dying?

– W.H. Auden (1954)

Postures

Adriaen van Ostade
Peasant Dance in a Barn
1635
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Maarten van Heemskerck
Concert of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon
1565
oil on panel
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Dirck Hals
Merry Company
ca. 1614-18
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

Valentin de Boulogne
Music-Makers and Fortune-Teller
1631
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Daniel Hopfer after Andrea Mantegna
Bacchanal
before 1536
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

attributed to Giovanni Francesco Penni
Putti dancing around a Palm
ca. 1510
drawing
(after Vatican tapestry)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Italian Artist after Andrea Mantegna
Four Dancing Muses
ca. 1497
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jacques de Gheyn II
Masked Revelers
1595-96
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques de Gheyn II
Masked Revelers
1595-96
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques de Gheyn II
Masked Revelers
1595-96
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Marcantonio Raimondi
Orpheus and Eurydice
ca. 1500-1503
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Israel van Meckenem
Knight and Lady
ca. 1470
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Andries Both
Street Musicians
ca. 1635
drawing
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Claude Lorrain
Shepherdess and Shepherd making Music
ca. 1648
drawing
(study for painting)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous French Artist
Bacchus and Father Time
ca. 1700-1750
drawing
(study for theatrical costumes)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto)
Dancing Woman with Tambourine
ca. 1490-1500
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Peloponnesians, when they saw the Athenians would not enter the gulf and strait, desiring to draw them in against their wills, weighed anchor and betime in the morning having arranged their galleys by four and four in a rank, sailed along their own coast within the gulf, leading the way in the same order as they had lain at anchor, with their right wing.  In this wing they had placed twenty of their swiftest galleys to the end that if Phormio, thinking them going to Naupactus, should for safeguard of the town sail along his own coast likewise within the strait, the Athenians might not be able to get beyond that wing of theirs and avoid the impression but be inclosed by their galleys on both sides. Phormio, fearing (as they expected) what might become of the town now without guard, as soon as he saw them from anchor, against his will and in extreme haste went aboard and sailed along the shore with the land forces of the Messenians marching by to aid him.  The Peloponnesians, when they saw them sail in one long file, galley after galley, and that they were now in the gulf and by the shore (which they most desired), upon one sign given turned suddenly everyone as fast as he could upon the Athenians, hoping to have intercepted them every galley.  But of those the eleven foremost, avoiding that wing and the turn made by the Peloponnesians, got out into the open sea.  The rest they intercepted and, driving them to the shore, sunk them.  The men, as many as swam not out, they slew; and the galleys some they tied to their own and towed them away empty, and one with the men and all in her they had already taken.  But the Messenian succours on land, entering the sea with their arms, got aboard of some of them and fighting from the decks recovered them again after they were already towing away. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Postures

Lynn Chadwick
Dance V - Composition with Two Figures
1955
painted iron and concrete
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Jakob Becher
Dancer's Legs
ca. 1860
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Ernst Deutsch (called Dryden)
Richard's Grill Room, Berlin
1913
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Peter Cornelius
Rue Pigalle, Paris
ca. 1957
C-print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

François Dequevauviller
Dancing School
ca. 1780
engraving
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Edmond Aman-Jean
Venetian Festival
1923
oil on canvas
Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan

Edgar Degas
La Fête de la Patronne
1878-79
pastel over monotype
Musée Picasso, Paris

Otto Dix
To Beauty
1922
oil on canvas
(central figure is self portrait)
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Urs Graf the Elder
Landsknecht
1527
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Monogrammist IK
Soldier waving Banner
16th century
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Franz Marc
Letter to Else Lasker-Schüler with Dancer
ca. 1910
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Oskar Schlemmer
Dancer (The Gesture)
1922-23
oil and tempera on canvas
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Virgil Solis
Four Acrobats and an Ape
before 1562
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

workshop of Jean-François de Troy
Luncheon with Figures in Masquerade Dress
1725
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Jean-Baptiste Pater
Fête Champêtre at Grape Harvest
ca. 1730-32
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Joseph von Führich
The Painters Koch, Dräger and Führich
outside Osteria Scozzese in Rome
ca. 1825-30
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

After this the Peloponnesians, seeing their engines availed not and thinking it hard to take the city by any present violence, prepared themselves to besiege it.  But first they thought fit to attempt it by fire, being no great city, and when the wind should rise, if they could, to burn it, for there was no way they did not think on to have gained it without expense and long siege.  Having therefore brought faggots, they cast them from the mount into the space between it and their new wall, which by so many hands was quickly filled, and then into as much of the rest of the city as at that distance they could reach and, throwing amongst them fire, together with brimstone and pitch, kindled the wood and raised such a flame, as the like was never seen before made by the hand of man.  For as for the woods in the mountains, the trees have indeed taken fire; but it hath been by mutual attrition and have flamed out of their own accord.  But this fire was a great one, and the Plataeans that had escaped other mischiefs wanted little of being consumed by this.  For near the wall they could not get by a great way, and if the wind had been with it (as the enemy hoped it might), they could never have escaped.  It is also reported that there fell much rain then with great thunder and that the flame was extinguished and the danger ceased by that. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Momentum

Gordon Parks
James Galanos Fashion
1961
C-print (printed later)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Orazio Samacchini
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
ca. 1570-80
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

John Sloan
Isadora Duncan
1911
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Peter Hujar
Nude Self Portrait #3
1966
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

El Lissitzky
Runner in the City
1926
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Master of the Giants (British painter)
Acrobatic Games
ca. 1780-1800
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Lady Ottoline Morrell
By the Pool at Garsington
ca. 1916
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Mulready
Model in motion
before 1864
chalk on paper
British Museum

August Sander
Artist's Model
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Triumph of Paullus Macedonicus
before 1543
tempera on canvas (grisaille)
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

attributed to Bartolomeo Pinelli
Carnival Procession in Caricature
before 1835
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Monogrammist M.T. (German printmaker)
Courtesans driving away the Prodigal Son
and mocking his Empty Purse
ca. 1540-50
engraving
British Museum

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
El Pueblo
ca. 1894
oil on paper
(bozzetto for advertising poster)
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée
Abduction of Dejanira by the centaur Nessus
1755
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
The Soul freeing itself from Earthly Attachments
ca. 1821-23
oil on canvas (sketch)
Musée du Louvre

Sebastiano Mazzoni
Raising of the Cross
before 1678
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Théodore Roussel
Woman with an Umbrella
ca. 1925
drawing (print studies)
British Museum

May supple-footed theatre-growing ivy

always dance on your glittering

monument, godlike Sophokles:

and your grave be sprinkled by bull-begotten

bees and run with Hymettos honey, 

like Athenian wax tablets for ever,

and your hair crowned with ivy for ever.

– from the Greek Anthology, translated by Peter Levi