Robert Indiana

Robert Indiana
The Eateria
1962
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Beware-Danger American Dream #4
1963
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
The Figure Five
1963
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Mary Swift
Studio of Robert Indiana
ca. 1970
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Fire Bridge
1964-65
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Robert Indiana
Love Greeting Card
1964
lithograph
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Love
1967
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Love Tabletop Sculpture
1967
aluminum
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Love Ring
ca. 1972
gilt metal
(manufactured by Charles Revson, Inc.)
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Robert Indiana
Love Ring in 18K Gold
ca. 1972
inventory page
(from Eva Lee Gallery, New York)
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Love
1973
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Love Stamp (8 cents)
1973
offset-print with adhesive back
National Postal Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Kunst Markt Köln
1967
lithograph (exhibition poster)
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Robert Indiana
Number Paintings - Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld
1966
lithograph (exhibition poster)
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Robert Indiana
New York City Center 25th Anniversary
1968
screenprint
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Hirshhorn Opening Exhibition
1974
offset-print (poster)
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Robert Indiana
Five
1984
partly painted wood and found wheels
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

"I don't like Americans or America. I'm getting old and only have a certain amount of time and I don't want to waste a day in a place where I would be miserable."

"Is your dislike of Americans based on anything that happened in your childhood?"

"How ridiculous. I didn't even know America existed before the war."

"So you started hating them when the war came?"

"Yes, I'll never forget what a bore it as when they joined the war. We were having a wonderful time and they came along and spoiled our finest hour."

– Nancy Mitford, from an interview with Art Buchwald in the New York Herald Tribune, April 1957

Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla
Portrait of sculptor Carlo Fontana
1907
oil on canvas
Estorick Collection, London

Giacomo Balla
La Mano del Violinista
1912
oil on canvas
Estorick Collection, London

Giacomo Balla
Dinamismo di un Cane al Guinzaglio
1912
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Museum of Art, New York

Giacomo Balla
Orbite Celesti
1913
oil on canvas
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Giacomo Balla
Automobile in Corsa
1913
graphite and crayon on paper
Estorick Collection, London

Giacomo Balla
Velocità Astratta
1913
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Giacomo Balla
Velocità Astratta
1913
oil on canvas
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Giacomo Balla
Velocità di una Automobile + Luce
1913
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Giacomo Balla
Velocità Astratta + Rumore
1913-14
oil on board in artist's painted frame
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Giacomo Balla
Dinamismo d'Auto
1913-14
drawing
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Giacomo Balla
Vortex with Radiations
1913-14
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Giacomo Balla
La Primavera
ca. 1916
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Giacomo Balla
Fuochi d'Artificio
1917
stage-set for Ballets-Russes, reconstructed in 1997 by Elio Marchegiani
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin

Giacomo Balla
Fuochi d'Artificio
ca. 1917
lithograph
(after stage design for Ballets-Russes)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Giacomo Balla
Pleasing Numbers
1919
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giacomo Balla
Continuous Lines
ca. 1929
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Giacomo Balla
Arte Astratta
1955
screenprint
Brooklyn Museum

from Dreams About Clothes

But now, his baby face unlined and bald, 

The old-clothes man comes down the street,

Singing the little song he sings.

His overcoat is all humped up in back

To hide his powerful wings. 

Snow melts at the touch of his bare feet.

He passes me unseeing, yet how much

Of mine's already in his sack!

Tell me something, Art.

You know what it's like

Awake in your dry hell

Of volatile synthetic solvents.

Won't you help us brave the elements

Once more, of terror, anger, love?

Seeing there's no end to wear and tear

Upon the lawless heart,

Won't you as well forgive

Whoever settles for the immaterial?

Don't you care how we live?

– James Merrill (1972)

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns
Untitled
1960
lithograph
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jasper Johns
Zero through Nine
1961
oil on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jasper Johns
Device
1961-62
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Jasper Johns
Slow Field
1962
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hans Namuth
Jasper Johns
1962
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Jasper Johns
Targets
1966
acrylic on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jasper Johns
Targets
1967-68
lithograph
Princeton  University Art Museum

Jasper Johns
Self Portrait
1970
lithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Jasper Johns
Decoy II
1971-73
lithograph
Princeton University Art Museum

Jasper Johns
Untitled
1972
lithographs (four sheets)
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Jasper Johns
Periscope I
1979
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jasper Johns
Two Flags
1980
lithograph (poster)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jasper Johns
Untitled
1983
colored inks on plastic
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Irving Penn
Jasper Johns
1983
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Jasper Johns
Racing Thoughts
1983
mixed media on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jasper Johns
Untitled
2018
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

from Matinées

Lives of the Great Composers make it sound

Too much like cooking: "Sore beset,

He put his heart's blood into that quintet . . ."

So let us try the figure turned around

As in some Lives of Obscure Listeners:

"The strains of Cimarosa and Mozart

Flowed through his veins, and fed his solitary heart.

Long beyond adolescence [One infers

Your elimination, sweet Champagne

Drunk between acts!] the aria's remote

Control surviving his worst interval,

Tissue of sound and tissue of the brain

Would coalesce, and what the Masters wrote

Itself compose his features sharp and small."

Hilariously Dr. Scherer took the guise

Of a bland smoothshaven Alberich whose age-old

Plan had been to fill my tooth with gold.

Another whiff of laughing gas,

And the understanding was implicit

That we must guard each other, this gold and I,

Against amalgamation by

The elemental pit. 

Vague as to what dentist and tooth "stood for,"

One patient dreamer gathered something more.

A voice said in the speech of birds,

 

"My father having tampered with your mouth,

From now on, metal, music, myth

Will seem to taint its words."

– James Merrill (1969)