To Read

Guido Reni
Young Woman Reading
before 1642
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts
Trompe l'Oeil with Letter Rack and Music Book
1668
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Gilbert Stuart
Portrait of physician Benjamin Waterhouse
ca. 1776
oil on canvas
Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island

Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros
Frédéric Bourgeois de Mercey reading a Letter
ca. 1850-60
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

George Reynolds
Man reading in Hammock
1888
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Irving Ramsay Wiles
Woman Reading
1889
oil on canvas
Lyman Allyn Art Museum,
New London, Connecticut

Charles Noel Flagg
The Bookworm
1891
oil on canvas
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut

John Frederick Peto
In the Library
ca. 1894-1900
oil on canvas
Timken Museum of Art, San Diego

A revealing study – never yet undertaken – would document the tradition (extending back into the Renaissance) of depicting books in various states of neglect and abuse.  Still life is one genre where the sad evidence is abundant, but portraits and historiae are equally rich in examples.  Scholars of the European past stress the fact that printed books tended to be more costly and valuable in earlier than in later centuries, yet their presentation is consistently casual and apparently indifferent throughout – volumes heaped on the floor, tipping off desks, splayed open upside down with pages creased and torn, covers bending or broken.  Was it subliminal hostility between media?  Writing was forever claiming impertinently to explain Painting.  How could Painting retaliate, except to become the Slaughterhouse of Writing?

Bernard Hall
The Marble Staircase, Public Library
1925
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Charles Locke
The Reading Room
1931
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Adrian John Lawlor
Reading
ca. 1938
oil on canvas
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski)
Sylvia Colle
1954
oil on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum

Jacob Lawrence
The Library
1960
tempera on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anselm Kiefer
The Book
1979-85
oil paint, lead, photographic paper, straw and textile fabric on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Howard Bond
Bookmark, East Pennard, England
1982
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Madonna Staunton
Dream Trolly
2013
artist's book on wooden platform with wheels
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Island Life, 1860

I

One day when she was rinsing clothes at the jetty

the chill of the sea rose up through her arms

and into her soul.

Her tears froze to a pair of spectacles. The island

gathered itself, its white grass bristling,

and the herring flag streamed in the depths of the sea.

II

The swarm of smallpox caught up with him

and settled on his face. 

He lies in bed, staring into the ceiling.

What huge effort to move through this silence.

The strain of this moment spreading out forever,

this moment's wound in its ever-widening pool. 

– Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015), translated by Robin Robertson (2006)

Densely Composed - IV

François Fontaine
Beautiful Company
1981
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Girolamo Miruoli
Intervention of the Sabine Women
ca. 1570
detached fresco
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Hugo Birger
Scandinavian Artists' Luncheon at Café Ledoyen, Paris
1886
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Jules-Alexandre Grün
Friday Gathering at the Salon
1911
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek
(wing of triptych)
ca. 1510-20
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1550
oil on panel
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Marx Reichlich
The Last Judgment
ca. 1490
tempera and oil on panel
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Grace Hartigan
#29 Pastorale
1953
screenprint
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

Clara Peeters
Flowers in a Basket and on a Silver Tazza
ca. 1615
oil on panel
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Francesco Solimena
Boreas abducting Oreithyia
ca. 1727-28
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Maerten de Vos
Temptation of St Anthony
1594
oil on panel
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Henri Cueco
Capturing the Rhinoceros
1970
acrylic and lacquer on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Jean-Philippe Charbonnier
La Bibliothèque Municipale, Issoudun
1951
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anton Faistauer
Still Life with Coffee Cups
1912
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Lyubov Popova
Portrait of a Woman (Relief)
1915
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Maurice Prendergast
The Merry-Go-Round
ca. 1902-1906
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Read: the twenty-four books of Antonius Diogenes' romance The Wonder Beyond Thule.  Its narrative is uncluttered and so pure that there is no lack of clarity even in the digressions.  It is most agreeable in the ideas that it expresses because, though verging on the mythical and the incredible, it is altogether credible in the contrivance and elaboration of its episodes.

The story, then, opens with Dinias, who along with his son Demochares has wandered from his homeland in search of information.  After passing over the Black Sea and away from the Caspian, or Hyrcanian Sea, they reached what are called the Rhipaean Mountains and the source of the river Tanais.  There, because of the extreme cold, they turned back towards the Scythian Sea and then struck out in the direction of the east to the quarter of the rising sun, skirting the exterior sea for a long time in complicated wanderings.  

– Antonius Diogenes, from The Wonders Beyond Thule, written in Greek, 1st-2nd century AD.  A detailed summary of the book was composed (also in Greek) in the 9th century by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.  The original text by Antonius Diogenes was subsequently lost; only the summary by Photius has survived.  This was translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989).  

Appearing to Recede/Advance - I

Kerstin Bernhard
Olympic Stadium, Berlin
1934
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Werner Mantz
Staircase, Ursuline College, Georgplatz, Cologne
1928
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Eva Rubinstein
Doorways Perspective, Sabbioneta, Italy
1973
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Lennart af Petersens
Interior
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Giovanni Volpato after Pietro Camporesi
Portrait of Raphael
over the Entrance to the Vatican Loggia
1772
engraving
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Herbert List
Colonnade, St Peter's Basilica, Rome
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Gerardus Johannes Bos
Upper Corridor of a Leiden Mansion
ca. 1846
watercolor on paper
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Johan Gørbitz
View through Open Window
ca. 1830
drawing
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Candida Höfer
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris V
1998
C-print
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Fratelli Alinari
Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence
ca. 1880
albumen silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Gustave Caillebotte
Pont de L'Europe, Rennes
ca. 1876
oil on canvas (sketch)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes

Carl Gustaf Rosenberg
Terrace at Drottningholm Palace, outside Stockholm
ca. 1934
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Max Klinger
Line of Trees
1877
drawing
National Museum, Warsaw

Wright Morris
Telephone Pole and Hydrant
1937
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Armando (Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd)
The Fence
1995
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Carl Curman
Landbyska Verket, Stockholm
ca. 1890
cyanotype
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

from Last Things

There came the last day of my father's breathing

when there was nothing, nothing to do except

to suffer time which suffered to a close.

I stared across his bed with rage seething

through me at how the trees he'd planted slept

outside our window permitting the fact of snows

to settle cold upon them and around

them. Stupid they stood while the ashes of desolation,

falling, reached and never reached the ground.

Anger as thick as blood was my consolation

for the storm of silence bleaching breath and space

since nothing strong and tall out there had grace

enough to toss defiance or even to bend

before the beginning of memory and its end.

– Ernest Sandeen, from Children and Older Strangers (1962)

Showing, Keeping, Making

Anonymous German Painter
Gallery in the Old Museum
1896
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous German Photographer
Italian Renaissance Gallery, Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin
ca. 1925-35
gelatin silver print
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Bénigne Gagneraux
Meeting of King Gustav III of Sweden and Pope Pius VI in the Pio-Clementine Museum, Rome
1786
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Adrienne Marie Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy
Interior of the Studio of Abel de Pujol
1822
oil on canvas
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Norbert Grund
Art Gallery
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Alois Hänisch
Map Room at the Albertina, Vienna
1916
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Nora Heysen
The Studio
1931
woodcut
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Candida Höfer
Villa Hügel, Essen II
2009
C-print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Georg Friedrich Kersting
Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio
1811
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Johannes Laurentius
Gallery View - Deities from Greek Sanctuaries
2011
digital photograph
Altes Museum, Berlin

Sigrid Lehrbäck
Sculpture Gallery - Ateneum, Helsinki
ca. 1898-1905
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Marcel-Eugène Louveau-Rouveyre
Storage at Musée de Cluny, Paris
ca. 1910
watercolor
Morgan Library, New York

Jean-André Rixens
Opening Day at the Palais des Champs-Élysées
1890
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Hubert Robert
Young Artist drawing in Ruins of Roman Sculpture Gallery
ca. 1775
drawing
National Gallery, Athens

Karel Slabbaert
Painting Studio of St Luke
ca. 1645-50
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Fritz Werner
The Librarian
ca. 1873
oil on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Tamburlaine [to Zenocrate]:

Disdains Zenocrate to live with me?
Or you my Lordes to be my followers?
Thinke you I way this treasure more than you?
Not all the Gold in Indias welthy armes,
Shall buy the meanest souldier in my traine.
Zenocrate, lovelier than the Love of Jove,
Brighter than is the silver Rhodope,
Fairer than whitest snow on Scythian hils,
Thy person is more woorth to Tamburlaine,
Than the possession of the Persean Crowne,
Which gratious starres have promist at my birth.
A hundreth Tartars shall attend on thee,
Mounted on Steeds, swifter than Pegasus.
Thy Garments shall be made of Medean silke,
Enchast with precious juelles of mine owne:
More rich and valurous than Zenocrates.
With milke-white Hartes upon an Ivorie sled,
Thou shalt be drawen amidst the frosen Pooles,
And scale the ysie mountaines lofty tops:
Which with thy beautie will be soone resolv'd.

– Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, The First Part, act I, scene ii (1590)