Hand-Held

Michele Giambono
Bishop Saint
ca. 1425-50
tempera and oil on panel
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Francesco Francia (Francesco Raibolini)
Portrait of Evangelista Scappi
ca. 1505
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Maarten van Heemskerck
Portrait of a Woman spinning
ca. 1531
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Giampietrino (Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli)
The Magdalen in Prayer
before 1540
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Hendrik Goltzius
Ill-Matched Couple
1615
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Portrait of sculptor Edme Bouchardon
ca. 1732
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Vincenzo Giacomelli
Diomedes stealing the Palladium
1839
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

James Guthrie
A Gallant of the Terror
1880
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Sarah Cecilia Harrison
Self Portrait
1889
oil on canvas
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Joseph J. Gould
The Illustrator
1900
ink and watercolor on board
(print study for Charles Scribner's Sons)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Joseph J. Gould
The Printer
1900
ink and watercolor on board
(print study for Charles Scribner's Sons)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Hugo Gellert
Modern Science for All
(from portfolio, Century of the Common Man)
1943
screenprint and lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Richard Diebenkorn
Coffee
1959
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Dave Heath
New York City
1962
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Kenneth Graves
Business Office, State College, Pennsylvania
1978
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

 

John Harding
San Francisco, California - Grant Avenue
1989
inkjet print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Victoria Gewirz
Lucky Stripe
ca. 1998
platinum-palladium print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch, Prince Charles, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, into his ancient and Royal City of Edinburgh, the 15 of June 1633

[The King is greeted by various tableaux on his way into the city, and is addressed by Caledonia, the Muses, a selection of classical deities, and the sun and moon.]

JOVE:  Delight of heaven, sole honour of the earth,

             Jove (courting thine ascendant) at thy birth

             Proclaimed thee a King, and made it true,

             That Emperies should to thy worth be due  . . .

– William Drummond of Hawthornden (1623)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1973)

Frans Zwartjes
Rehearsal
1973
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Andy Warhol
Mao
1973
screenprint and acrylic paint
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Julian Trevelyan
Athletes
1973
etching and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

George A. Tice
Interior, W. Milton Avenue, Rahway, NJ
1973
gelatin silver print
Dallas Museum of Art

Hans Krondahl for Katja of Sweden
Pacific
1973
screen-printed cotton fabric panel
Art Institute of Chicago

James Strombotne
Herman Hesse
1973
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Frank Stella
Rozdol II
1973
felt, canvas, paint and cardboard on wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Larry Rivers
Untitled
1973
screenprint and lithograph
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Bridget Riley
Study for Painting
1973
gouache on paper
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Clayton Pond
The Other Chair
1973
lithograph
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

David Plowden
La Crosse, Wisconsin
1973
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Kenneth Noland
Untitled
1973
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Louise Nevelson
Untitled
1973
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Lowell Nesbitt
Grey Shoes
1973
oil on canvas
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Alice Neel
Dorothy Pearlstein
1973
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Robert Motherwell
Suchard on Orange #5
1973
acrylic paint and collage on board
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

The Epigoni

No use invoking Apollo in a case like theirs; 

The pleasure-loving gods had died in their chairs

And would not get up again, one of them, ever,

Though guttural tribes had crossed the Great River,

Roasting their dead and with no name for the yew;

No good expecting long-legged ancestors to

Return with long swords from pelagic paradises

(They would be left to their own devices,

Supposing they had some); no point pretending

One didn't foresee the probable ending

As dog-food, or landless, submerged, a slave:

Meanwhile, how should a cultured gentleman behave?

It would have been an excusable failing

Had they broken out into womanish wailing

Or, dramatising their doom, held forth

In sonorous clap-trap about death;

To their credit, a reader will only perceive

That the language they loved was coming to grief,

Expiring in preposterous mechanical tricks,

Epanaleptics, rhopalics, anacyclic acrostics:

To their lasting honor, the stuff they wrote

Can safely be spanked in a scholar's foot-note,

Called shallow by a mechanised generation to whom

Haphazard oracular grunts are profound wisdom.

– W.H. Auden (1955)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1973)

Martha Alf
Woven Canvas #9
1973
acrylic on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Trevor Allen
Yellow Couch with Zippo
1973
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Alice Baber
Akbar Road
1973
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Will Barnet
Chess Game
1973
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Robert Owen Beach
Standing Figure
1973
acrylic on canvas
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

George Brecht
No Smoking
1973
lithograph
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Patrick Caulfield
Ah! Nuées accourues des côtes de La Manche
1973
screenprint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Hilo Chen
Beach #4
1973
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Robert Cottingham
Hot
1973
lithograph
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Sam Gilliam
Green Lizzie
1973
acrylic on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Ralph Goings
Alpha
1973
watercolor and casein on paper
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Adolph Gottlieb
Phoenix Burst
1973
oil paint and alkyd resin on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Asger Jorn
Exhibition, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover
1973
lithograph (poster)
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Roy Lichtenstein
Untitled
1973
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Robert Mapplethorpe
Alex
1973
toned gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Toon Michiels
Interior
1973
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

         Bathtub Thoughts

            (c. 500-c. 1950)

Hail, future friend, whose present I 

With gratitude now prophesy,

Kind first to whom it shall occur

My past existence to infer.

Brief salutation best beseems

Two nameless ordinal extremes:

Hail and farewell! Chance only knows

The length of our respective rows,

But our numeric bond is such

As gods nor love nor death can touch.

So thought, I thought, the last Romano-Briton

To take his last hot bath.

– W.H. Auden (1955)

Hand-Held

Anonymous French Sculptor
Angel with Flowering Staff
ca. 1160-70
limestone relief
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Antonello da Messina
The Virgin reading
ca. 1460-62
tempera and oil on panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous German Painter
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1480
tempera on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Sandro Botticelli
Portrait of a Young Man holding a Roundel
ca. 1480-85
tempera on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Ambrosius Benson
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1530
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini)
Portrait of a Woman with a Lynx
ca. 1530-40
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous French Sculptor
Goddess Diana with Stag
ca. 1550-60
marble fountain ornament
(gilt-bronze features and vase-shaped support added later)
Musée du Louvre

Trophime Bigot
Physician with Urine Sample
ca. 1633
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anonymous English Painter
Portrait of a Sculptor
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Lambert-Sigisbert Adam
Self Portrait
1737
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

David Allan
Portrait of James Tassie, sculptor and gem-engraver
ca. 1781
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Frédéric Bazille
Portrait of art collector Edmond Maître
1869
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Aubrey Beardsley
Young Woman with Censer
(illustration for Malory's Morte d'Arthur)
1893
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Paul Berthon
Salon des Cent
1897
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mihály Biró
1919 May 1
1919
lithograph
(poster for May Day celebration in Hungary)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

George Bellows
Portrait of art collector Chester Dale
1922
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous American Designer 
Dead Kennedys - Toxic Reasons
Fried Abortions - Angst
Monday at the Mabuhay
ca. 1980
photocopy (flyer)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from The Book of the World 

But silly we (like foolish children) rest

Well pleased with coloured vellum, leaves of gold,

Fair dangling ribbons, leaving what is best,

On the great writer's sense ne'er taking hold;

        Or if by chance our minds do muse on ought

        It is some picture in the margin wrought. 

– William Drummond of Hawthornden (1623)