Avid of Elseness

Andrew Moore
Zumi Crabapple, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Andrew Moore
Winterberry Holly and Flowering Crabapples, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Andrew Moore
European Beech, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Andrew Moore
Eastern White Pine, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of sculptor Pierre Le Pautre
1689
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of la comtesse de Bemareau
1713
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of Jacques-Antoine Arlaud
making a copy of Michelangelo's Leda
1714
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of a Man wearing a Cuirass
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Satanic Ballet
ca. 1922
gouache on paper
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Othello, Act II
1930
pochoir
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Molière's Don Juan
ca. 1929
gouache on paper
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Aleksandra Exster
Stage Design for Ballet
ca. 1925-28
oil on panel
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Pasture with Two Goats
ca. 1865
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ravine in the Morvan near Lormes
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Mantes (Le Matin)
ca. 1865-69
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Rebecca at the Well
ca. 1838-39
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

from Part One of The Age of Anxiety

Malin suggested:

                                 Let us then

     Consider rather the incessant Now of

     The traveller through time, his tired mind
     Biased towards bigness since his body must

     Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope,

     Acquisitive, in quest of his own 

     Absconded self yet scared to find it

     As he bumbles by from birth to death

     Menaced by madness; whose mode of being,

     Bashful or braggart, is to be at once

     Outside and inside his own demand

     For personal pattern. His pure I

     Must give account of and greet his Me,

     That field of force where he feels he thinks, 

     His past present, presupposing death,

     Must ask what he is in order to be

     And make meaning by omission and stress,

     Avid of elseness. All that exists

     Matters to man; he minds what happens

     And feels he is at fault, a fallen soul

     With power to place, to explain every

     What in his world but why he is neither

     God nor good, this guilt the insoluble

     Final fact, infusing his private

     Nexus of needs, his noted aims with

     Incomprehensible comprehensive dread

     At not being what he knows that before

     This world was he was willed to become. 

Quant approved:

     Set him to song, the surly old dodger.

So did Emble:

     Relate his lies to his longings for truth.

So did Rosetta:

     Question his crimes till his clues confess.

     The radio attempted to interrupt by remarking

          And now Captain Kidd in his Quiz Program

          HOW ALERT ARE YOU

But Quant pointed a finger at it and it stopped immediately. He said:

                                          Listen, Box,

     And keep quiet. Listen courteously to us

     Four reformers who have founded – why not? – 

     The Gung-Ho Group, the Ganymede Club
     For homesick young angels, the Arctic League
     Of Tropical Fish, the Tomboy Fund
     For Blushing Brides and the Bide-a-wees

     Of Sans-Souci, assembled again

     For a Think-Fest: Our theme tonight is

          HOMO ABYSSUS OCCIDENTALIS

                                     or

          A CURIOUS CASE OF COLD FEET

                                     or

          SEVEN SELFISH SUPPERLESS AGES

     And now, at Rosetta's suggestion, they left their bar-stools and moved to the quieter intimacy of a booth. Drinks were ordered and the discussion began.

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Fumbling Amphibians

Alec Soth
Cape Girardeau, Missouri
2002
C-print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Alec Soth
Cemetery, Fountain City, Wisconsin
2002
C-print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Alec Soth
Charles Lindbergh's Boyhood Bed, Little Falls, Minnesota
2004
C-print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Alec Soth
Immaculate Conception Church, Kaskaskia, Illinois
2002
C-print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Paris Bordone
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1520-30
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Paris Bordone
Portrait of a Man
1533
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Paris Bordone
Portrait of a Man in Armour
ca. 1535-40
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Paris Bordone
Portrait of Nikolaus Körbler
1532
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Anders Zorn
Fisherman at Saint Ives
1891
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Anders Zorn
Frida
1914
etching and drypoint
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Anders Zorn
Max Liebermann
1891
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Anders Zorn
Study for Portrait of Isabella Gardner
1894
drawing
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Joos de Momper the Younger
Mountain Landscape
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Joos de Momper the Younger
Mountain Landscape with Pilgrims and other Travelers
ca. 1620-30
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Joos de Momper the Younger (landscape) and Sebastian Vrancx (figures)
Alpine Landscape
ca. 1620-25
oil on panel
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Joos de Momper the Younger (landscape) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (figures)
Pilgrims at a Chapel in a Grotto
ca. 1600-1610
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

from Part One of The Age of Anxiety

     They fell silent and immediately became conscious again of the radio, now blandly inexorably bringing to all John Doakes and G.I. Joes tidings of great joy and saying

     Definitely different. Has that democratic
     Extra elegance. Easy to clean.
     Will gladden grand-dad and your girl friend.
     Lasts a lifetime. Leaves no odor.
     American made. A modern product
     Of nerve and know-how with a new thrill.
     Patriotic to own. Is on its way
     In a patent package. Pays to investigate. 
     Serves through science. Has something added
     By skilled Scotchmen. Exclusively used
     By upper classmen and Uncle Sam.
     Tops in tests by teenagers. 
     Just ask for it always.

     Matter and manner set their teeth on edge, especially Malin's who felt like talking. So he ordered a round of drinks, then said:

                                           Here we sit
     Our bodies bound to these bar-room lights,
     The night's odors, the noise of the El on
     Third Avenue, but our thoughts are free . . .
     Where shall they wander? To the wild past
     When, beaten back, banished to their cirques
     The horse-shoe glaciers curled up and died,
     And cold-blooded through conifers slouched
     Fumbling amphibians; forward into
     Tidy utopias of eternal spring,
     Vitamins, villas, visas for dogs
     And art for all; or up and down through
     Those hidden worlds of alien sizes 
     Which lenses elicit?

But Emble objected:
     Muster no monsters, I'll meeken my own.

So did Rosetta:
     You may wish till you waste, I'll want here.

So did Quant: 
     Too blank the blink of these blind heavens.

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Unreconciled

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of painter Gaspard Rigaud
 (younger brother of Hyacinthe)
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud, Perpignan

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Henri-Louis de La Tour d'Auvergne, comte d'Evreux
1703
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of Jean Le Juge with Wife and Daughter
1699
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of bronze-founder Balthasar Keller
1685
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Francis Frith
Concert Hall, Baden-Baden
ca. 1865
albumen silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Francis Frith
Drummond Castle Avenue, Crieff
ca. 1860
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Francis Frith
Rock Temple, Petra
ca. 1857-60
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Francis Frith
The Great Temple, Philae
ca. 1856-60
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Friedrich von Amerling
Portrait of Amelie Julie Sidonie Marie de Questiaux
ca. 1885
oil on canvas
(painted at age 82, evoking fashions of the artist's youth) 
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Friedrich von Amerling
Portrait of Elise Kreuzberger
1837
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Friedrich von Amerling
Self Portrait
ca. 1830-40
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Friedrich von Amerling
Young Woman with Straw Hat
1835
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Rockwell Kent
Let me look back upon thee, O thou Wall
(Shakespeare's Timon of Athens)
1936
lithograph
Dallas Museum of Art

Rockwell Kent
Beowulf and the Dragon
1931
lithograph
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Rockwell Kent
The Old Bookshop
ca. 1948
linocut
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Rockwell Kent
Ex Libris
ca. 1930
wood-engraving
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

from Part One of The Age of Anxiety 

Rosetta said:

     Lies and lethargies police the world
     In its periods of peace. What pain taught
     Is soon forgotten; we celebrate

     What ought to happen as if it were done,
     Are blinded by our boasts. Then back they come,

     The fears that we fear. We fall asleep
     Only to meet the idiot children of
     Our revels and wrongs; farouche they appear,
     Reluctant look-behinds, loitering through
     The mooning gate, menacing or smiling,
     Nocturnal trivia, torts and dramas,
     Wrecks, arrivals, rose-bushes, armies,

     Leopards and laughs, alarming growths of 

     Moulds and monsters on memories stuffed
     With dead men's doodles, dossiers written
     In lost lingos, too long an account
     To take out in trade, no time either, 
     Since we wake up. We are warm, our active

     Universe is young; yet we shiver

     For athwart our thinking the threat looms,

     Huge and awful as the hump of Saturn
     Over modern Mimas, of more deaths

     And worse wars, a winter of distaste

     To last a lifetime. Our lips are dry, our

     Knees numb; the enormous disappointment
     With a smiling sigh softly flings her

     Indolent apron over our lives

     And sits down on our day. Damning us,

     On our present purpose the past weighs
     Heavy as alps, for the absent are never 
     Mislaid or lost: as lawyers define
     The grammar of our grief, their ghosts rise,

     Hanged or headless, hosts who disputed

     With good governors, their guilty flesh

     Racked and raving but unreconciled,

     The punished people to pass sentence
     On the jolly and just; and, joining these

     Come worse warlocks, the wailing infants
     Who know now they will never be born,

     Refused a future. Our failings give
     Their resentment seizin; Our Zion is

     A doomed Sodom dancing its heart out
     To treacly tunes, a tired Gomorrah

     Infatuated with her former self
     Whose dear dreams though they dominate still

     Are formal facts which refresh no more. 

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Ritual

Anton von Werner
State Opening of the Reichstag in 1888
1893
oil on canvas
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Beauvais Manufactory
Audience with the Emperor of China
(from the Grand Mogul Cycle)
ca. 1715
wood and silk tapestry
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Hans Deiters
Künstlerfest Düsseldorf
1905
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous French Printmakers
Tournament Scene in the 12th century
ca. 1820
hand-colored engraving
private collection

Jean-Louis Forain
Congrès Eucharistique International, Lourdes
1914
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Henry Edward Tidmarsh
Oratorio Night, Free Trade Hall, Manchester
1893-94
watercolor and gouache on paper
Manchester Art Gallery

Jean-Baptiste Antoine Tierce
Neapolitan Peasants serenading a Statue of the Virgin
ca. 1765
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Albert Schindler
The Baptism
ca. 1835-40
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Lucien Simon
First Communion
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Musée Petiet de Limoux

Lambert Doomer
Samuel presented in the Temple to Eli
(portrait historié of Françoys Wynants van Beweste
and Elida Essing and their children)
1668
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Art d'Orléans

Johann Peter Krafft
Victory Declaration of the Allies over the French after the Battle of Leipzig, 1813
1839
oil on canvas
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Jacopo Tintoretto and workshop
State Visit of Philip II of Spain to Mantua in 1549
(from the Gonzaga Cycle)
ca. 1580
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Mathias Gabriel Lory
Stone-Throwing in the Appenzell
1804
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Hans Baldung
Preparations for Witches' Sabbath
1510
hand-colored woodcut
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Else Lasker-Schüler
Procession of Priests and Monks in Jerusalem
ca. 1938
drawing (colored chalks)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Käthe Kollwitz
Memorial Print for Karl Liebknecht
1919
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

from Autumn Refrain
 

The skreak and skritter of evening gone

And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,

The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,

The yellow moon of words about the nightingale

In measureless measures, not a bird for me

But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air

I have never – shall never hear. And yet beneath

The stillness of everything gone, and being still,

Being and sitting still, something resides,

Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,

And grates these evasions of the nightingale

though I have never – shall never hear that bird.

– Wallace Stevens (1936)