Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts

Friday, September 4, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1971)

Jamie Wyeth
La Bohème
1971
lithograph
Wright Museum of Art, Beloit, Wisconsin

Andy Warhol
Electric Chair
1971
screenprint
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Vinciata (Joseph Wallace King)
Queen Elizabeth II
1971
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

William Turnbull
Fugue VII
1971
screenprint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Hans Krondahl for Katja of Sweden
Rainbow
1971
screen-printed cotton fabric panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Svein Strand
Table and Window
1971
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Frank Stella
Hampton Roads (blue)
1971
lithograph
Dallas Museum of Art

Tony Smith
Yellow Bird
1971
painted and folded paper
Seattle Art Museum

Wolfgang Schröder
Du Bist Orplid, Mein Land!
1971
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Gerhard Richter
Telephone
1971
lithograph
Dallas Museum of Art

Kaare Rafoss
Untitled (Pink)
1971
acrylic on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Fairfield Porter
Jimmy with Lamp
1971
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Pablo Picasso
Homme et Femme Nus
1971
oil on canvas
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Philip Pearlstein
Two Nudes on Old Indian Blanket
1971
etching
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Alice Neel
Ginny with Yellow Hat
1971
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Reinier Lucassen
Still Life with Morandi
1971
acrylic on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

from Homage to Clio

                                      Artemis,

Aphrodite, are Major Powers and all wise
     Castellans will mind their p's and q's,
But it is you, who never have spoken up,
     Madonna of silences, to whom we turn

When we have lost control, your eyes, Clio, into which
     We look for recognition after
We have been found out. How shall I describe you? They
     Can be represented in granite

(One guesses at once from the perfect buttocks,
     The flawless mouth too grand to have corners,
Whom the colossus must be), but what icon
     Have the arts for you, who look like any

Girl one has not noticed and show no special
     Affinity with a beast? I have seen
Your photo, I think, in the papers, nursing
     A baby or mourning a corpse: each time

You had nothing to say and did not, one could see,
     Observe where you were, Muse of the unique
Historical fact, defending with silence
     Some world of your beholding, a silence

No explosion can conquer but a lover's Yes
     Has been known to fill. So few of the Big
Ever listen: that is why you have a great host
     Of superfluous screams to care for and

Why, up and down like the Duke of Cumberland,
     Or round and round like the Laxey Wheel,
The Short, The Bald, The Pious, The Stammerer went,
     As the children of Artemis go,

Not yours. Lives that obey you move like music,
     Becoming now what they only can be once,
Making of silence decisive sound: it sounds
     Easy, but one must find the time.  Clio,

Muse of Time, but for whose merciful silence
     Only the first step would count and that
Would always be murder, whose kindness never
     Is taken in, forgive our noises

And teach us our recollections: to throw away
     The tiniest fault of someone we love
Is out of the question, says Aphrodite,
     Who should know, yet one has known people

Who have done just that. Approachable as you seem,
     I dare not ask you if you bless the poets,
For you do not look as if you ever read them,
     Nor can I see a reason why you should.

– W.H. Auden (1955)

Friday, August 21, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1963)

Neil Williams
Marine Street
1963
acrylic on canvas
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Ben Vautier
Sculpture Vivante
1963
letterpress (exhibition poster)
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Maija Isola for Marimekko (Finland)
Ananas
1963
screen-printed cotton fabric-panel
Art Institute of Chicago

William Ronald
Akira
1963
acrylic on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Larry Rivers
Portrait of Sunny Norman: Parts of the Face
1963
oil on canvas
New Orleans Museum of Art

Martial Raysse
Visage en Bleu
1963
photo-collage and acrylic paint on canvas
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

Robert Rauschenberg
Manuscript
1963
oil on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Howard Rackliffe
Norse (Inland Water, Bucksport, Maine)
1963
gouache on board
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Pablo Picasso
The Flowered Hat
1963
linocut
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Pablo Picasso
Painter and Model
1963
oil on canvas
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

John Pellew
Metropolitan
1963
watercolor on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Charles Cropper Parks
Watersprite of the Brandywine
1963
bronze
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Jules Olitski
Wildcatter
1963
acrylic on canvas
Bennington Museum, Vermont

Beni Montresor
Stage Design for opera The Last Savage
1963
watercolor on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Knox Martin
Phonograph Record
1963
oil enamel and wax on board
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Sergio Larraín
Boys in Valparaiso Chile
1963
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Horae Canonicae

                                      V. VESPERS (part I)

     If the hill overlooking our city has always been known as Adam's
Grave, only at dusk can you see the recumbent giant, his head turned to
the west, his right arm resting for ever on Eve's haunch,

     can you learn, from the way he looks up at the scandalous pair, what a
citizen really thinks of his citizenship,

     just as now you can hear in a drunkard's caterwaul his rebel sorrows
crying for a parental discipline, in lustful eyes perceive a disconsolate
soul,

     scanning with desperation all passing limbs for some vestige of her
faceless angel who in that long ago when wishing was a help mounted her
once and vanished:

     For Sun and Moon supply their conforming masks, but in this hour of
civil twilight all must wear their own faces.

     And it is now that our two paths cross.

     Both simultaneously recognize his Anti-type: that I am an Arcadian,
that he is a Utopian.

     He notes, with contempt, my Aquarian belly: I note, with alarm, his
Scorpion's mouth.

     He would like to see me cleaning latrines: I would like to see him re-
moved to some other planet.

     Neither speaks. What experience could we possibly share?

     Glancing at a lampshade in a store window, I observe it is too hideous
for anyone in their senses to buy. He observes it is too expensive for a
peasant to buy.

     Passing a slum child with rickets, I look the other way: He looks the
other way if he passes a chubby one.

     I hope our senators will behave like saints, provided they don't reform
me: He hopes they will behave like baritoni cattivi, and, when lights burn
late in the Citadel, 

     I (who have never seen the inside of a police station) am shocked and
think, "Were the city as free as they say, after sundown all her bureaus
would be huge black stones."

     He (who has been beaten up several times) is not shocked at all but
thinks, "One fine night our boys will be working up there." 

– W.H. Auden (1950)

Sunday, August 2, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1947)

Constantin Alajalov
Opera Electricians
1947
tempera on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

Harold Allen
Inez, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago
1947
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Morris Berd
Nature Study
1947
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Max Ernst
Design in Nature
1947
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

M.C. Escher
Other World
1947
wood-engraving
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Alberto Giacometti
Standing Figure
1947
oil on canvas
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Adolph Gottlieb
New York Night Scene
1947
oil and sand on board
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Fernand Léger
Landscape, Blue Background
1947
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Henri Matisse
Composition, Green Background
1947
painted paper collage on paper
Menil Collection, Houston

Wright Morris
Front Room reflected in Mirror,
the Home Place, near Norfolk, Nebraska

1947
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Piet Ouborg
The Sign
1947
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Grace Robertson
Bebop - Sherries Dance Hall, Brighton
1947
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Mark Rothko
Number 26
1947
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

John Sennhauser
Colorforms in Colorspace #1
1947
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Carl Sprinchorn
Potato Field in Lightning Storm
1947
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Max Yavno
Garage Doors
1947
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              XI
In the old days, a poet normally wrote in the third person, and his normal subject was the deeds of others. The use of the first person he reserved for invoking the Muse or reminding his Prince that it was pay-day; even then, he spoke, not as himself, but in his professional capacity as a bard.

                                                              XII
So long as a poet speaks of the deeds of others, his poem may be bad but it cannot be untrue, even if the deeds are legendary, not historical fact. When, in the old days, a poet told how a stripling of nine stone challenged to mortal combat a firedrake weighing twenty tons, or how a rascal stole the Bishop's horse, cuckolded the Grand Vizier and escaped from jail disguised as a washerwoman, it never occurred to anyone in his audience to think: – "Well, his verses may be all very fine or funny, but was the warrior as brave or the rogue as cunning as he says?": their deeds made common sense of his syllabic spell.

                                                               XIII
So long as he speaks of the deeds of others, a poet has no difficulty in deciding what style of speech to adopt: a heroic deed calls for a "high" style, a deed of comic cunning for a "low" style, etc.
     But suppose there had been no Homer so that Hector and Achilles were forced to write the Iliad themselves in the first person. If what they wrote were in all other respects the poem as we know it, should we not think: – "Genuine heroes do not speak about their deeds in this grand way. These fellows must be play-acting." But, if it is inappropriate for a hero to speak of his own deeds in a grand style, in what style may he appropriately speak? A Comic? Shall we not then suspect him of false modesty?

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Sunday, April 5, 2026

L'Allegro - II

Jacques Callot
Bird of Paradise
ca. 1625-30
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Marco Zoppo
Fortuna filling the Sail
ca. 1460
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle 

Frans Wouters
Bacchanal
ca. 1648
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Adriaen van Stalbemt
Triumph of the Infant Bacchus
ca. 1620-40
oil on copper
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Johann Elias Ridinger
Joyous Dancer
ca. 1730
mezzotint
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Pierre Brébiette
Venus sailing in Shell Chariot
ca. 1640
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Sébastien Dulac
Bohème
1831
oil on canvas
private collection

Dirck Hals
Merry Company
1633
oil on panel
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Carl Wilhelm von Heideck
The Wild Hunter
1817
watercolor on paper
(illustration to poem by Gottfried August Bürger)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Marie-François Firmin Girard
Sirens luring the Ship of Odysseus
1864
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne

Madeleine Lemaire
Fairies in Chariot
ca. 1892
oil on canvas
Château Musée de Dieppe

Jan Miense Molenaer
Brothel Scene
before 1668
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Pietro Palmieri the Elder
Group making Music
ca. 1780
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Pietro Righini
Rococo Set for Opera staged at La Scala, Milan
ca. 1730
etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Three Bacchantes
ca. 1570
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Augustin Hirschvogel
The Four Winds
1549
etching
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Two loves, descending on me like the tempest, consume me, Eumachus, and I am caught in the toils of two furious passions.  On this side I bend towards Asander, and on that again my eye, waxing keener, turns to Telephus.  Cut me in two, I should love that, and dividing the halves in a just balance, carry off my limbs, each of you, as the lot decides. 

O eyes, betrayers of the soul, boy-hunting hounds, your glances ever smeared with Cypris' bird-lime, ye have seized on another Love, like sheep catching a wolf, or a crow a scorpion, or the ash the fire that smoulders beneath it.  Do even what ye will.  Why do you shed showers of tears and straight run off again to Hiketas?  Roast yourselves in beauty, consume away now over the fire, for Love is an admirable cook of the soul.  

Boys are a labyrinth from which there is no way out; for wherever thou castest thine eye it is fast entangled as if by bird-lime.  Here Theodorus attracts thee to the plump ripeness of his flesh and the unadulterate bloom of his limbs, and there it is the golden face of Philocles, who is not great in stature, but heavenly grace environs him.  But if thou turnest to look on Leptines thou shalt no more move thy limbs, but shalt remain, thy steps glued as if by indissoluble adamant; such a flame hath the boy in his eyes to set thee afire from thy head to thy toe and finger tips.  All hail, beautiful boys!  May ye come to the prime of youth and live till grey hair clothe your heads.   

Delightful is Diodorus and the eyes of all are on Heraclitus, Dion is sweet-spoken, and Uliades has lovely loins.  But, Philocles, touch the delicate-skinned one, and look on the next and speak to the third, and for the fourth – etcetera; so that thou mayst see how free from envy my mind is.  But if thou cast greedy eyes on Myiscus, mayst thou never see beauty again. 

I know but one beauty in the world; my greedy eye knows but one thing, to look on Myiscus, and for all else I am blind.  He represents everything to me.  Is it just on what will please the soul that the eyes look, the flatterers? 

I am caught by Love, I who had never dreamt it, and never had I learnt to feed a male flame hot beneath my heart.  I am caught.  Yet it was no longing for evil, but a pure glance, foster-brother of modesty, that burnt me to ashes.  Let it consume away, the long labour of the Muses; for my mind is cast in the fire, bearing the burden of a sweet pain.

– from Book XII (Strato's Musa Puerilis) in the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)