Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1940)

Reginald Marsh
Mink and Mannequin
1940
watercolor on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

Gordon Coster
Metallic Evening Clutch with Couple in Mirror
1940
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Helen Levitt
New York
1940
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Russell Lee
Lunch Break
Consolidated Airplane Factory, San Diego, California
1940
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Clarence Chatterton
Road to Ogunquit
1940
oil on panel
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Raphael Gleitsmann
Untitled
1940
watercolor on paper
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Raoul Dufy
Café Marocain
1940
watercolor on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

John Buczak
44th Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity
1940
screenprint (WPA poster)
Art Institute of Chicago

John Vachon
Rents Are Going Up In Memphis, Tennessee
1940
gelatin silver print
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Horace Pippin
Christ and the Woman of Samaria
1940
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Henry Moore
Shelter Scene - Swathed Figures
1940
ink, chalk, crayon and watercolor on paper
Manchester Art Gallery

Bendik Riis
Portrait of a Man
1940
oil on panel
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Arthur Dove
Thunder Shower
1940
oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Diego Rivera
Portrait of Dr Otto Ruhle
1940
oil on panel
Dallas Museum of Art

Edward Steichen
Sunflowers
1940
dye imbibition print
Art Institute of Chicago

Unknown American Maker
Beach Clogs
1940
wooden soles with cotton-braid straps
Texas Fashion Collection, Denton

from The Cave of Making 

        

For this and for all enclosures like it the archetype

     is Weland's Stithy, an antre

more private than a bedroom even, for neither lovers nor

     maids are welcome, but without a

bedroom's secrets: from the Olivetti Portable,

     the dictionaries (the very

best money can buy), the heaps of paper, it is evident

     what must go on. Devoid of

flowers and family photographs, all is subordinate

     here to a function, designed to 

discourage day-dreams – hence windows averted from plausible

     videnda but admitting a light one

could mend a watch by – and to sharpen hearing reached by an 

     outside staircase, domestic 

noises and odors, the vast background of natural

     life are shut off. Here silence

is turned into objects. 

– W.H. Auden (1964)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1925)

George Copeland Ault
House in Brittany
1925
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Edward Bawden
Natural History Museum, South Kensington
1925
lithograph (poster)
Art Institute of Chicago

Claude Cahun
Untitled
1925
gelatin silver print
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

Theo van Doesburg
Counter-Composition XVI
1925
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Durr Freedley
Portrait of Mr & Mrs H.H. Freedley
1925
tempera on board
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Paul Morgan Gustin
Guardians of the Pont du Carrousel
1925
etching
Frye Art Museum, Seattle

Frederic Charles Herrick
Arrest the Flying Moment
1925
lithograph
(poster for London Underground)
Art Institute of Chicago

Wassily Kandinsky
Three Elements
1925
oil on board
Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg

Paul Manship
Diana
1925
bronze
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Daniel de Monfreid
Hommage à Gauguin
1925
oil on canvas
Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud, Perpignan

Gerald Murphy
Watch
1925
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Axel Nilsson
Still Life with Pots
1925
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Pablo Picasso
Three Dancers
1925
drawing
Menil Collection, Houston

Alexander Rodchenko
The Workers' Club - International Exhibition
of Decorative Arts and Modern Industry, Paris
1925
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Weston
Neil
1925
palladium print
Art Institute of Chicago

Richard Wyndham
Le Vieux Quartier, Marseille
1925
graphite and watercolor on paper
Manchester Art Gallery

from The Aliens

Wide though the interrupt be that divides us, runers and counters,

from the Old World of the Plants, all lapped in a tolerant silence,

where, by the grace of chlorophyll, few of them ever have taken

life and not one put a sceptical question, we nod them as neighbours

who, to conclude from their friendly response to a gardener's handling,

like to be given the chance to get more than self-education.

As for the hot-blooded Beasts, we didn't need Darwin to tell us

horses and rabbits and mice are our cognates, the double-voiced song-birds

cousins, however removed: unique as we seem, we, too, are

shovelled out into the cold, poodle-naked, as male or as female,

grab at and gobble up proteins, drop dung, perform the ungainly

brute-with-two-backs until, dared and doddered by age, we surrender,

lapse into stagnant stuff, while they by retaining a constant

visible shape through a lifetime, accord with our human idea of

having a Self. 

– W.H. Auden (1970)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1913)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Figures in Landscape
1913
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Self Portrait with Erna Schilling
1913
oil on canvas
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

Max Klinger
Half-Length Figure Study
1913
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Henri Le Sidaner
Country House among Roses
1913
oil on canvas
Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp

Wyndham Lewis
Drawing for Timon of Athens, Act IV
1913
lithograph
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Wilton Lockwood
Peonies
1913
oil on canvas
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

August Macke
Clown (Self Portrait)
1913
oil on canvas
Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz, Germany

August Macke
Figures beside Blue Lake
1913
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

August Macke
Walk on the Bridge
1913
oil on board
Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt

Burkhardt Mangold
Burger-Kehl & Co.
1913
lithograph
(poster advertising chain of clothing stores)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

John Tinney McCutcheon
Effect of the Tariff on Women's Fashions
1913
drawing (print study)
Art Institute of Chicago

Ludwig Meidner
Portrait of writer Max Herrmann-Neisse
1913
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean Metzinger
Woman with Fan
1913
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Pablo Picasso
Harlequin
1913
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Laurits Andersen Ring
Summer Day in Enø
1913
oil on canvas
Ribe Kunstmuseum, Denmark

Paul Sérusier
Synchronie en Vert
1913
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

No, Plato, No

I can't imagine anything

    that I would less like to be

than a disincarnate Spirit,

    unable to chew or sip

or make contact with surfaces

    or breathe the scents of summer

or comprehend speech and music

    or gaze at what lies beyond.

No, God has placed me exactly

    where I'd have chosen to be:

the sub-lunar world is such fun,

    where Man is male and female

and gives Proper Names to all things.
 

    I can, however, conceive

that the organs Nature gave Me, 

    my ductless glands, for instance,

slaving twenty-four hours a day

    with no show of resentment

to gratify Me, their Master,

    and keep Me in decent shape,

(not that I give them orders,

    I wouldn't know what to yell),

dream of another existence

    than that they have known so far:

yes, it well could be that my Flesh

    is praying for "Him" to die,

so setting Her free to become 

    irresponsible Matter.

– W.H. Auden (1973)

Withdrawals

Vanessa Bell
Clive Bell in a Punt
ca. 1908
oil on canvas
Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia

Roloff Beny
Michelangelo's Aurora
Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence
before 1966
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Lois Bielefeld
Monday: JoAlice
2014
C-print
Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin

Elmer Bischoff
Woman with Dark Blue Sky
1959
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Jacques-Émile Blanche
Portrait of Henry James
1908
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Young Man wreathed with Vine Leaves
ca. 1495
drawing
Biblioteca Reale, Turin

François Bonvin
Woman in White
1865
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Anne Brigman
Heart of the Storm
1918
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Edward Calvert
The Chamber Idyll
1904
wood-engraving
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Eugène Carrière
Le Mineur
1900
lithograph
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Herbert Rose Barraud
Portrait of Kate Roke
before 1888
Woodburytype print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Bary Studio, Paris
Portrait of Eleonora Duse
ca. 1890-95
albumen print (cabinet card)
Princeton University Art Museum

Francesco Bassano the Younger
Israelites discovering Water in the Desert
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Otto Baumberger
Marque PKZ
1923
lithograph
(advertising poster for clothing retailer)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Aubrey Beardsley
Les Passades
1894
lithograph
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Domenico Beccafumi
Virgin and Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1542
oil on panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Max Beckmann
Acrobat on Trapeze
1940
oil on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum

Wreck

In the train wreck my pieces of life
Were sidewise laid to track, river, and hill,

Crosswise and palpable

To canyon and cliff.

The damage was, many later could surmise,

Insured, probable, and full of reason,

But crosswise stalled in the grave my greatest passion

Was surprise, surprise. 

– Josephine Miles (1911-1985)