Showing posts with label masks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label masks. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1962)

Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington
Máscara
1962
gelatin silver print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington
Ode to Necrophilia
1962
gelatin silver print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Hans Hofmann
Sic Itur ad Astra
1962
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Renato Guttoso
À Marat, à David
1962
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Mario Giacomelli
People of the South: Scanno
1962
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Jim Dine
Three-Panel Study for Child's Room
1962
oil paint, charcoal and found objects on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Corneille (Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo)
Untitled
1962
oil paint on vellum
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Hugo Claus
Koniga
1962
watercolor and gouache on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Catholic Congress, Hanover, Germany
1962
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Ashley Bryan
Studio Still Life, Tremont Avenue, Bronx NY
1962
oil on canvas
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Stern Bramson
Baron LaVelle in his Home Theatre
1962
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Ernst Benkert
Half-Inch Grid
1962
oil on canvas
Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, Vermont

Leonard Baskin
William Blake
1962
etching
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Hans Arp
Composition in a Circle
1962
colored paper collage
Art Institute of Chicago

Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square: High Spring
1962
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Frank Auerbach
E.O.W. looking into the Fire I
1962
oil on board
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

from Horae Canonicae

                        IV. NONES (part I)

What we know to be not possible,
     Though time after time foretold
By wild hermits, by shaman and sybil
     Gibbering in their trances,
Or revealed to a child in some chance rhyme
     Like will and kill, comes to pass
Before we realize it. We are surprised
     At the ease and speed of our deed
And uneasy: It is barely three,
     Mid-afternoon, yet the blood
Of our sacrifice is already
     Dry on the grass, we are not prepared
For silence so sudden and so soon;
     The day is too hot, too bright, too still,
Too ever, the deed remains too nothing.
     What shall we do till nightfall?

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
     The faceless many who always
Collect when any world is to be wrecked,
     Blown up or burnt down, cracked open,
Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
     Have all melted away. Not one
Of these who in the shade of walls and trees
     Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,
Harmless as sheep, can remember why
     He shouted or what about
So loudly in the sunshine this morning;
     All if challenged would reply
– "It was a monster with one red eye
     A crowd that saw him die, not I." –
The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat:
     We are left alone with our feat.

– W.H. Auden (1950)

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Masked

Anonymous French Sculptor
Mask of Satyr
17th century
marble
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts


Henri Matisse
Open Window, Collioure
1905
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Franz Antoine
Family Group in a Garden
ca. 1860
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joe Zucker
Octopus 2
1981
acrylic and resin on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
Head of a King
ca. 1225-50
limestone
(detached from statue during the French-Revolution)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Matisse
Pot of Geraniums
1912
oil on linen
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Franz Antoine
Hermine and Marie Antoine
ca. 1862
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Larry Zox
Decorah (Single Gemini Series)
1968
acrylic on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous French Sculptor
Head of St Peter
ca. 1130-60
stone
(detached from lost statue)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Matisse
Reader on Black Ground
1939
oil on canvas
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

Franz Antoine
Hofrat Raymond
ca. 1855
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thornton Willis
Sharon's Dream
1980
oilstick on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
Head of a Knight
ca. 1300
limestone
(detached-from tomb figure by Protestant rioters)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Matisse
Romanian Blouse
1937
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Franz Antoine
Mathias Häusermann
ca. 1860
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jack Youngerman
Delfina
1961
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
Ornamental Mask
ca. 1580
painted terracotta
(fragment from chimneypiece)
Musée du Louvre

On the Lady Mary Villiers

The Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
If any of them, Reader, were
Known unto thee, shed a tear;
Of if thyself possess a gem
As dear to thee, as this to them,
Though a stranger to this place,
Bewail in theirs thine own hard case:
        For thou perhaps at thy return
        Mayst find thy Darling in an urn. 

– Thomas Carew (1595-1640)

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Untitled

Carl Robert Holty
Untitled
1937
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC


Hans Hofmann
Untitled
ca. 1940
gouache and crayon on paper
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Richard Nickel
Untitled (Garrick Theater)
ca. 1955
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

June Harwood
Untitled (Sliver series)
1960-61
acrylic on canvas
Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, California

Thomas George
Untitled
ca. 1965
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Scott Hyde
Untitled (Nude)
ca. 1965
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Cleve Gray
Untitled
1968
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Al Held
Untitled
before 1974
screenprint
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Olivia Parker
Untitled #10
1980
dye imbibition print
Art Institute of Chicago

John Fox
Untitled no. 8203
1982
mixed media on canvas
private collection

Adam Fuss
Untitled
1986
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Thomas Nozkowski
Untitled (7-84)
1996
oil on linen, mounted on panel
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Francesco Clemente
Untitled #6
1998
watercolor on paper
Denver Art Museum

Dwight Marica
Untitled 3
2002
polystyrene
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Laura Owens
Untitled
2004
oil and acrylic on linen
Art Institute of Chicago

Sonia Gomes
Untitled
2009
textile fabrics wound onto wire
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Gauri Gill
Untitled (8)
2015
pigment print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

The Unbeliever

He sleeps on the top of a mast
with his eyes fast closed.
The sails fall away below him
like the sheets of his bed,
leaving out in the air of the night the sleeper's head.

Asleep he was transported there,
asleep he curled
in a gilded ball on the mast's top,
or climbed inside
a gilded bird, or blindly seated himself astride.

"I am founded on marble pillars,"
said a cloud. "I never move.
See the pillars there in the sea?"
Secure in introspection
he peers at the watery pillars of his reflection.

A gull had wings under his
and remarked that the air
was "like marble."  He said: "Up here
I tower through the sky
for the marble wings on my tower-top fly."

But he sleeps on the top of his mast
with his eyes closed tight.
The gull inquired into his dream,
which was, "I must not fall.
The spangled sea below wants me to fall.
It is hard as diamonds, it wants to destroy us all."

– Elizabeth Bishop (1946)