Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1945)

Weegee
VJ Day Parade in Little Italy
1945
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Ángel Bracho
Victoria
1945
linocut and letterpress
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Nikolai Fedorovich Denisovskii
Victory!
1945
stencil-print and letterpress
Art Institute of Chicago

Dmitry Baltermants
Agfa, Berlin
(Russian officer posed with mannequins)
1945
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Pablo Picasso
Still Life with Skull
1945
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Robert Motherwell
Untitled
1945
watercolor and ink on paper
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Josef Albers
Kinetic V
1945
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Anonymous Photographer
Woman and Girl posed on Front Walk
1945
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Milton Avery
The Card Players
1945
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Gerald Brockhurst
The Basque Boy
1945
lithograph
Frye Art Museum, Seattle

Serge Charchoune
Fourchettes
1945
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Marshall Glasier
The Boat Ride
1945
oil on board
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Albert Gleizes
Composition
1945
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Georgia O'Keeffe
Cebolla Church
1945
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

David Smith
Classic Figure III
1945
bronze
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Rockwell Kent
Endless Energy for Limitless Living
1945
oil on canvas
(advertising image for the coal industry)
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              IV

It would not be enough that I should believe that what I had written was true: to satisfy me, the truth of this poem must be self-evident. It would have to be written, for example, in such a way that no reader could misread I love You as "I love you." 

                                                               V

If I were a composer, I believe I could produce a piece of music which would express to a listener what I mean when I think the word love, but it would be imposible for me to compose it in such a way that he would know that this love was felt for You (not for God, or my mother, or the decimal system). The language of music is, as it were, intransitive, and it is just this intransitivity which makes it meaningless for a listener to ask – "Does the composer really mean what he says, or is he only pretending?"

                                                               VI

If I were a painter, I believe I could paint a portrait that would express to an onlooker what I mean when I think the word You (beautiful, loveable, etc.), but it would be impossible for me to paint it in such a way that he would know that I loved You. The language of painting lacks, as it were, the Active Voice, and it is just this objectivity which makes it meaningless for an onlooker to ask – "Is this really a portrait of N (not of a young boy, a judge or a locomotive in disguise)?" 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1944)

Milton Avery
The Baby
1944
oil on canvas
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

Eugene Berman
Backdrop Design for Danses Concertantes by George Balanchine
1944
watercolor and gouache on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Arshile Gorky
How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life
1944
oil on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Hans Hofmann
Untitled
1944
gouache on paper
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Walt Kuhn
Acrobat in White and Silver
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Jacques Lipchitz
The Road to Exile
1944
etching, engraving and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Barbara Morgan
Berenice Abbott with a Cat
1944
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Max Weber
Woman Carrying Picture
1944
oil on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
The Painter
1944
oil paint, crayon and collage on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Isamu Noguchi
Remembrance
1944
bronze
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Carl-Henning Pedersen
Untitled
1944
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jackson Pollock
Untitled
1944
drawing
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Birger Sandzén
Autumn (Smoky Hill River, Kansas)
1944
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Tacoma Art Museum

Houghton Cranford Smith
Near Los Andes
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

William Sommer
Portrait of Miss Eunice Merton
1944
watercolor on paper
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Paul Bough Travis
Still Life
1944
oil on panel
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              I

Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought – I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.

                                                              II

Of any poem written by someone else, my first demand is that it be good (who wrote it is of secondary importance); of any poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine, recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for better or worse, by me. (When it comes to his own poems, a poet's preferences and those of his readers often overlap but seldom coincide.) 

                                                              III

But this poem which I should now like to write would not only have to be good and genuine: if it is to satisfy me, it must also be true.

     I read a poem by someone else in which he bids a tearful farewell to his beloved: the poem is good (it moves me as other good poems do) and genuine (I recognize the poet's "handwriting"). Then I learn from a biography that, at the time he wrote it, the poet was sick to death of the girl but pretended to weep in order to avoid hurt feelings and a scene. Does this information affect my appreciation of his poem? Not in the least: I never knew him personally and his private life is no business of mine. Would it affect my appreciation if I had written the poem myself? I hope so. 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1943)

Barbara Morgan
Amaryllis Seed Pod
1943
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Alice Neel
Julie and the Doll
1943
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Pablo Picasso
Buffet: Still Life with Glasses and Cherries
1943
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Edward Weston
Neil
1943
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Josef Albers
Untitled
1943
oil on board
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Esther Bubley
Spectators at Memorial Day Services, Arlington Cemetery
1943
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Marsden Hartley
Roses
1943
oil on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

George Platt Lynes
Marsden Hartley
1943
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Robert Motherwell
Untitled
1943
watercolor and ink on paper
Menil Collection, Houston

George Lovett Kingsland Morris
House-to-House Fighting
1943
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Kenneth Heilbron
Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, Savannah, Illinois
1943
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Frederick Carder
Head
1943
cast glass
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Georges Braque
Pitcher, Candlestick and Black Fish
1943
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Opal Fleckenstein
Mountain Snows
1943
watercolor on paper
Seattle Art Museum

Helen Spang Pearce
Devil Flower
1943
oil on panel
Dallas Museum of Art

Raphael Soyer
Farewell
1943
lithograph
Wright Museum of Art, Beloit, Wisconsin

Dame Kind

Steatopygous, sow-dugged

                                        and owl-headed, 

To Whom – Whom else? – the first innocent blood

                                        was formally shed 

By a chinned mammal that hard times

                                        had turned carnivore,

From Whom his first promiscuous orgy

                                        begged a downpour

To speed the body-building cereals

                                        of a warmer age:

Now who put us, we should like to know,

                                        in Her manage? 

Strait-laced She never was

                                        and has not grown more so,

Since the skeptical academies got wind

                                        of the Chi-Rho

St Cuckoo's wooden church for Her

                                        where on Green Sundays

Bald hermits celebrate a wordless

                                        cult in Her praise:

So pocket your fifty sonnets, Bud;

                                        tell her a myth

Of unpunishable gods and all the girls

                                        they interfered with.  

Haven't we spotted Her Picked Winners

                                        whom she cossets, ramparts

And does the handsome by? Didn't the darlings

                                        have cold hearts?

. . . ONE BOMB WOULD BE ENOUGH. . . . Now look

                                        who's thinking gruesome!

Brother, you're worse than a lonesome Peeper

                                        or a He-Virgin

Who nightly abhors the Primal Scene

                                        in medical Latin:

She mayn't be all She might be but

                                        She is our Mum.

You can't tell us your hypochondriac 

                                        Blue-Stocking from Provence

Who makes the clock-work arcadies go round

                                        is worth tuppence;

You won't find a steady in that museum

                                        unless your prefer

Tea with a shapeless angel to bedtime

                                        with a lovely monster:

Before you catch it for your mim look

                                        and gnostic chirrup,

Ask the Kind Lady who fitted you out

                                        to fix you up.

Supposing even (through misdirections

                                        or your own mischief)

You do land in that anomalous duchy,

                                        Her remotest fief,

Where four eyes encounter in two

                                        one mirror perilous

As the clear rock-basin that stultified

                                        frigid Narcissus,

Where tongues stammer on a First Name,

                                        bereft of guile,

And common snub-nosed creatures are abashed

                                        at a face in profile,

Even there, as your blushes invoke its Guardian

                                        (whose true invocable

Name is singular for each true heart

                                        and false to tell)

To sacre your courtship ritual so

                                        it deserves a music

More solemn than the he-hawing

                                        of a salesman's limerick,

Do a bow to the Coarse Old Party that wrought you

                                        an alderliefest

Of the same verbose and sentient kidney,

                                        grateful not least

For all the dirty work She did.

                                        How many hundreds

Of lawful, unlawful, both equally

                                        loveless beds,

Of lying endearments, crooked questions,

                                        crookeder answers,

Of bawling matches, sarcastic silences,

                                        megrims, tears,

How much half-witted horse-play and sheer

                                        bloody misrule

It took to bring you two together

                                        both on schedule?       

– W.H. Auden (1959)

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)