Named Face

David Williams
Don Paterson
2008
pigment print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Maurice de Vlaminck
Guillaume Apollinaire
ca. 1904-1905
oil on board
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Cecilia Vicuña
Karl Marx
1972
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Oscar Wilde
1999
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John Thomas Smith (Antiquity Smith)
Isaac Newton
1828
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Auguste Rodin
Honoré de Balzac
1897
bronze
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Jean-Baptiste Pigalle
Voltaire
1776
marble
Musée du Louvre

Francesco de Mura
Saint Matthew
before 1782
drawing
British Museum

Rollie McKenna
James Merrill
1956
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Man Ray
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Rudolf Lehmann
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1859
drawing
British Museum

William Hatfield
Samuel Johnson
ca. 1780
enamel on copper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Mary Lloyd Estrin
Joan Didion
1977
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

John Singleton Copley
Epes Sargent
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Étienne Carjat
Émile Zola
ca. 1862
Woodburytype print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

William Blake after George Romney
William Cowper
1801
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Mary Bradish Titcomb
The Writer
ca. 1912
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Sic Vita

        Like to the falling of a star,

Or as the flights of eagles are,

Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,

Or silver drops of morning dew,

Or like a wind that chafes the flood,

Or bubbles which on water stood:

Even such is man, whose borrowed light

Is straight called in, and paid to night.

                The wind blows out, the bubble dies;

                The spring entombed in autumn lies;

                The dew dries up, the star is shot;

                The flight is past: and man forgot.

– Henry King (1592-1669)

Confection

Margaret Strickland
Nana's Front Porch
2008
inkjet print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Amy Stevens
Confections #44
2007
C-print
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Joel Sternfeld
May-Pole, Short Mountain Sanctuary - Liberty, Tennessee
2005
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Manit Sriwanichpoom
Pink Man in Paradise #2
2003
C-print
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Royal Family
1994
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Athena Tacha
Ears
1970-75
C-prints trimmed to size and mounted on board
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Alfred Stieglitz
Brancusi Sculpture
1914
halftone-print (magazine reproduction)
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Carl Strathmann
The Lost Glove
ca. 1897
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Carl Spitzweg
The Geologist
ca. 1854
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Louis-Gustave Taraval
Design for Hexagonal Temple
ca. 1780
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Karel Škréta
Marriage Portrait of Noble Couple as Helen and Paris
1672
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt
Miniature Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1656
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

attributed to Bartholomeus Spranger
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1580
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Virgil Solis
Design for Coat of Arms
ca. 1550
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Giovanni Antonio Sogliani
Virgin and Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1530
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi)
Holy Family with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1520
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Arts

Andrea Solario
The Crucifixion
ca. 1503
drawing
(study for painting, now in the Louvre)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

from Ulysses and the Siren

Siren.  Come, worthy Greek! Ulysses, come;

                Possess these shores with me!

            The winds and seas are troublesome

                And here we may be free.

            Here may we sit and view their toil

                That travail in the deep,

            And joy the day in mirth the while

                And spend the night in sleep.

Ulysses.  Fair nymph, if fame or honour were

                    To be attained with ease,

                Then would I come and rest me there,

                    And leave such toils as these.

                But here it dwells, and here must I

                    With danger seek it forth:

                To spend the time luxuriously

                    Becomes not men of worth.

                                 *

Siren.  That doth opinion only cause,

                That's out of custom bred,

            Which makes us many other laws

                Than ever nature did.

            No widows wail for our delights,

                Our sports are without blood;

            The world we see by warlike wights

                Receives more hurt than good.

                            

Ulysses.  But yet the state of things require 

                    These motions of unrest,

                And these great spirits of high desire

                    Seem born to turn them best;

                To purge the mischiefs that increase

                    And all good order mar,

                For oft we see a wicked peace

                    To be well changed for war.

Siren.  Well, well, Ulysses, then I see 

                I shall not have thee here;

            And therefore I will come to thee

                And make my fortune there.

            I must be won that cannot win,

                Yet lost were I not won,

            For beauty hath created been

                T' undo, or be undone.

– Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)

Made in 1975

Willem de Kooning
Two Trees on Mary Street
1975
oil on canvas
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Allan Harrison
Citadelle de Québec
1975
oil on canvas
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Eliot Porter
Argentine Islands, Antarctic Peninsula
1975
dye transfer print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Eliot Porter
Ice Cave, Ross Island, Antarctica
1975
dye transfer print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Roger Scott
Queenscliff 1
1975
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Roger Scott
Queenscliff 2
1975
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

John Scurry
Things, Things, Things
1975
etching
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Richard Yates
Sky Wedge
1975
screenprint
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Roberta di Camerino
Trompe-l'oeil Dress
1975
printed wool jersey
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Ascher Ltd. (London)
Scarf with design by Jean Cocteau
1975
screenprinted silk damask
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Pierre Molinier
Self-Portrait with Mannequin
1975
C-print
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Arnold Newman
Larry Rivers
1975
gelatin silver print
San Diego Museum of Art

Anonymous Spanish Artist
Will Penny - El Solitario
1975
screenprint
(poster for Charlton Heston film)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Margaret Lock
Cordelia braids her hair - Lear's daughters prepare for Act One
1975
woodcut
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Jill Crossley
Change-over
1975
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Ian Dodd
Mirror Image
1975
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

from New Year Letter

Blake shouted insults, Rousseau wept,

Ironic Kierkegaard stared long

And muttered "All are in the wrong,"

While Baudelaire went mad protesting

That progress was not interesting

And thought he was an albatross,

The great Erotic on the cross

Of Science, crucified by fools

Who sit all day on office stools,

Are fairly faithful to their wives

And play for safety all their lives,

For whose Verbürgerlichung of 

All joy and suffering and love

Let the grand pariah atone

By dying hated and alone.

The World ignored them; they were few,

The careless victor never knew

Their grapevine rumour would grow true,

Their alphabet of warning sounds

The common grammar all have grounds

To study; for their guess is proved:

It is the Mover that is moved.

– W.H. Auden (1940)