Showing posts with label poets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poets. Show all posts

Saturday, October 4, 2025

Observant

Willem Reijers
Portrait of a Woman
1938
drawing
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Alexander Rodchenko
Portrait of Vladimir Mayakovsky
1924
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Francisque Duret (François-Joseph Duret) 
Orestes
1824-25
marble (carved in Rome)
Musée Calvet, Avignon

Alonso Sánchez Coello
Portrait of Infante Don Carlos
(subject of Schiller play and Verdi opera)
1564
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Edward Dwurnik
Before the Heart Attack
1972
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Henry Fuseli
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1785
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jean-Pierre Granger
Portrait of Jean-Charles-Auguste Simon
1806
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Art d'Orléans

Ivan Kramskoy
Portrait of actor Vasily Samoylov
1881
oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Alfhild Lunde
Portrait of Tore Steen
1925
oil on canvas
Oslo City Museum

Charles Le Brun
Portrait of Israël Silvestre
ca. 1670
pastel on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Jean Jouvenet
Portrait of a Canon
1696
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Ernest Hébert
Self Portrait at age 17
1834
oil on canvas
Musée Hébert, Paris

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli)
Portrait of a Man
(the Terris Portrait)
1506
oil on panel
San Diego Museum of Art

Balthasar Denner
Study of a Woman
ca. 1720
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Robert Nanteuil
Portrait of a Man
1662
pastel on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Félix Nadar
Charles Baudelaire
ca. 1860
print from wet collodion negative
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Clytemnestra:

Do not, I beg, pray for the fate of death
because you are grieved by these events,
nor turn your anger against Helen,
calling her a destroyer of men, saying, that she alone
brought death to so many souls of Danaan men
and caused pain too strong to stand.

Chorus:

Spirit that assaults this house
and two Tantalids*so different in their nature,
and controls it, in a way that rends my heart,
through the agency of women whose souls were alike!**
Standing over the corpse, in the manner
of a loathsome raven, it glories
in tunelessly singing a song of joy. 

Clytemnestra:

Now you are voicing a more correct opinion,
naming the thrice-fattened
spirit of this family.
From it grows the terrible lust to lick blood:
before the old wound is healed, there is fresh suppuration.

Chorus:

But it is a great spirit of grievous wrath,
destructive to the house, that you tell of –
ah, ah, an evil tale to tell! –
insatiable in its appetite for ruinous events –
ió, ié! – and all by the will of Zeus,
the Cause of all things, the Effector of all effects:
for what comes to pass for mortals, except by Zeus's doing?
what of all this is not divinely ordained?

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*The two Tantalids are Agamemnon and Menelaus.  Tantalus, the father of Pelops, was their great-grandfather.

**The two brothers "so different in their nature" had for their wives two half-sisters whose "souls were alike" in one crucial respect – their adulterous lust – which in both cases led to disastrous consequences.

Monday, July 21, 2025

George Deem

George Deem
May Wilson as a Rug
1969
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago


George Deem
Lady of Spain
(portrait of Gail Rutherford)

1972
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Mayakovsky Cloud in Pants
1979
oil on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Me and Mayakovsky
1981
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Driving away from Ronald Vance (Study #2)
1981
photocopy collage
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Studio with one Light Source
1981
acrylic on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Courbet Palette
1982
oil on wooden palette
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Mayakovsky Place-Mat
1982
watercolor on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Self Portrait Place-Mat
1983
watercolor on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Mayakovsky Shadow-Boxing
1984
watercolor on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Mayakovsky Bricks
1987
oil paint on bricks
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
The Fauve School
1989
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Homage to William Merritt Chase
1990
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Lili Brik and Mayakovsky
1991
oil on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Peter Angelo Simon
George Deem
1993
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

George Deem
Male Nude
1998
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

George Deem
Early Bird
1998
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

from Ode 29, Book 3, paraphrased in Pindarique Verse

        Fortune, that with malicious joy,
            Does Man her slave oppress,
        Proud of her Office to destroy,
            Is seldome pleased to bless 
        Still various and unconstant still;
    But with an inclination to be ill;
        Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,
        And makes a Lottery of life. 
        I can enjoy her while she's kind;
        But when she dances in the wind,
        And shakes her wings, and will not stay,
        I puff the Prostitute away:
The little or the much she gave, is quietly resigned:
    Content with poverty, my Soul I arm:
    And Vertue, tho' in rags, will keep me warm.

                    What is't to me,
        Who never sail in her unfaithful Sea,
            If Storms arise, and Clouds grow black;
            If the Mast split and threaten wreck,
        Then let the greedy Merchant fear
                For his ill gotten gain;
        And pray to Gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
                His Wealth into the Main.
        For me secure from Fortune's blows
        (Secure of what I cannot lose)
        In my small Pinnace I can sail,
            Contemning all the blustring roar;
        With friendly Stars my safety seek
        Within some little winding Creek;
            And see the storm ashore.

– Horace (65-8 BC), translated by John Dryden (1685)

Friday, April 11, 2025

Literati - II

Victor Binet
Portrait of writer Pol Neveux
ca. 1890
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Edvard Munch
Portrait of dramatist August Strindberg
1896
lithograph
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Eugène Carrière
Portrait of poet Paul Verlaine
1896
lithograph
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Georges de Feure
Portrait of writer Paul Adam
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Max Klinger
Portrait of writer Elsa Asenijeff
c. 1900
marble and stucco
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Sigurd Swane
Portrait of art historian Leo Swane
1908
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Amedeo Modigliani
Portrait of writer Jean Cocteau
1916
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Henrik Sørensen
The poet Henrik Wergeland receiving Inspiration
1917
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Emmanuel Gondouin
Portrait of writer Octave Mirbeau
1919
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Moisey Nappelbaum
Portrait of poet Anna Akhmatova
1924
gelatin silver print
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Augustus John
The poet Roy Campbell
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Jacques-Émile Blanche
Portrait of writer René Crevel
1928
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Joseph Sima
Portrait of writer René Daumal
1929
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Joseph Sima
Portrait of poet Roger-Gilbert Lecomte
1929
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Felix H. Man
Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel and Franz Werfel
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Barbara Klemm
Ingeborg Bachmann, Frankfurt
1971
gelatin silver print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Et puisque nous y sommes, vous et moi, c'est soudain devant n'import quelles bêtes divines que nous nous tenons ici, pas seulement les chevaux mais toutes, les bêtes cornues, les bêtes qui aboient, les autres bêtes rugissantes qui se retournant soudain bondissent sur le roi dans les chasses de Ninive, les grandes menaces frontales qui nous ressemblent et ne sont pas nous. Celles qu'on a peintes au commencement de tout, avant l'Assyrie et saint Jean, avant l'invention de la charrerie et de la cavalerie, bien avant Corentin et le pauvre Géricault, au temps des grandes chasses, au temps des gibiers idolâtrés et redoutés, divins, tyranniques, sur les murs profonds des cavernes.

C'est Lascaux, Monsieur. Les forces. Les puissances. Les Commissaires.

Et les puissances dans la langue de Michelet s'appellent l'Histoire.

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)

Friday, March 14, 2025

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Alvin Langdon Coburn
The Bridge, Ipswich
1904
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC


Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of writer George Meredith
1904
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC
 
Alvin Langdon Coburn
The Embankment, London
ca. 1905
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Regent's Canal, London
ca. 1905
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of writer Edward Carpenter
1905
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of writer Henry James
1906
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of painter John Singer Sargent
1907
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of writer and caricaturist Max Beerbohm
1908
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of writer Hilaire Belloc
1908
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of painter William Orpen
1908
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of painter William Nicholson
1908
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of writer John Galsworthy
1909
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
London - St Paul's from Ludgate Circus
1909
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
The British Lion (Trafalgar Square)
ca. 1910
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Fifth Avenue from the St Regis, New York
ca. 1910
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of poet Herbert Trench
1913
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Portrait of painter and critic Roger Fry
1913
photogravure
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

from Midnight

Below the river sparkled. As I said,
everything glittered – the stars, the bridge lights, the important
illumined buildings that seemed to stop at the river
then resume again, man's work
interrupted by nature. From time to time I saw
the evening pleasure boats; because the night was warm, 
they were still full.

This was the great excursion of my childhood.
The short train ride culminating in a gala tea by the river,
then what my called our promenade,
then the boat itself that cruised back and forth over the dark water –

The coins in my aunt's hand passed into the hand of the captain.
I was handed my ticket, each time a fresh number.
Then the boat entered the current.

I held my brother's hand. 
We watched the monuments succeeding one another
always in the same order
so that we moved into the future
while experiencing perpetual recurrences.

The boat traveled up the river and then back again.
It moved through time and then
through a reversal of time, though our direction
was forward always, the prow continuously 
breaking a path in the water.

It was like a religious ceremony
in which the congregation stood
awaiting, beholding,
and that was the entire point, the beholding.

The city drifted by,
half on the right side, half on the left.

See how beautiful the city is,
my aunt would say to us. Because
it was lit up, I expect. Or perhaps because
someone had said so in the printed booklet.

– Louise Glück (2014)