Young

attributed to Simone Bianco
Head of an Infant
ca. 1510
bronze
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Brunswick Monogrammist (Flemish Painter)
Boy with Dog
ca. 1525-50
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of a Little Girl
ca. 1550-75
marble bust
Musée du Louvre

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Maddalena Cattaneo
1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Filippo Cattaneo
1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Johann Zoffany
The Lavie Children
ca. 1770
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous English Painter
Portrait of James Henry Leigh Hunt, age 7
1791
watercolor miniature on ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

John Brett
Portrait of Laura Theresa Epps
1860
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Pierre Bonnard
The Artist's Sister and her Children
1899
oil on cardboard, mounted on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

George Bellows
Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett)
1907
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous French Photographer
Girl in a Garden
ca. 1910
autochrome
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Frank Brangwyn
Study for Missouri State Capitol Mural
ca. 1914
gelatin silver print, squared in graphite
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ekaterina Zernova
Pioneers! Fortify the Defenses of the Land of the Soviets!
1933
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Garry Winogrand
New York
ca. 1962
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Joan Brown
Noel in the Kitchen
ca. 1964
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Diane Arbus
Girl in a Watch Cap, N.Y.C.
1965
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Michael Ackerman
Cabbagetown
1998
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from In Time of War (Commentary)

'Sweet is it', say the doomed, 'to be alive though wretched',

And the young emerging from the closed parental circle,

To whose uncertainty the certain years present

Their syllabus of limitless anxiety and labour,

At first feel nothing but the gladness of their freedom,

Are happy in the new embraces and the open talk.

But liberty to be and weep has never been sufficient;

The winds surround our griefs, the unfenced sky

To all our failures is a taciturn unsmiling witness. 

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1945)

Weegee
VJ Day Parade in Little Italy
1945
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Ángel Bracho
Victoria
1945
linocut and letterpress
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Nikolai Fedorovich Denisovskii
Victory!
1945
stencil-print and letterpress
Art Institute of Chicago

Dmitry Baltermants
Agfa, Berlin
(Russian officer posed with mannequins)
1945
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Pablo Picasso
Still Life with Skull
1945
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Robert Motherwell
Untitled
1945
watercolor and ink on paper
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Josef Albers
Kinetic V
1945
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Anonymous Photographer
Woman and Girl posed on Front Walk
1945
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Milton Avery
The Card Players
1945
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Gerald Brockhurst
The Basque Boy
1945
lithograph
Frye Art Museum, Seattle

Serge Charchoune
Fourchettes
1945
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Marshall Glasier
The Boat Ride
1945
oil on board
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Albert Gleizes
Composition
1945
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Georgia O'Keeffe
Cebolla Church
1945
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

David Smith
Classic Figure III
1945
bronze
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Rockwell Kent
Endless Energy for Limitless Living
1945
oil on canvas
(advertising image for the coal industry)
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              IV

It would not be enough that I should believe that what I had written was true: to satisfy me, the truth of this poem must be self-evident. It would have to be written, for example, in such a way that no reader could misread I love You as "I love you." 

                                                               V

If I were a composer, I believe I could produce a piece of music which would express to a listener what I mean when I think the word love, but it would be imposible for me to compose it in such a way that he would know that this love was felt for You (not for God, or my mother, or the decimal system). The language of music is, as it were, intransitive, and it is just this intransitivity which makes it meaningless for a listener to ask – "Does the composer really mean what he says, or is he only pretending?"

                                                               VI

If I were a painter, I believe I could paint a portrait that would express to an onlooker what I mean when I think the word You (beautiful, loveable, etc.), but it would be impossible for me to paint it in such a way that he would know that I loved You. The language of painting lacks, as it were, the Active Voice, and it is just this objectivity which makes it meaningless for an onlooker to ask – "Is this really a portrait of N (not of a young boy, a judge or a locomotive in disguise)?" 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Accessory

John Constantine Stanley
Countess Canning with Guests, Government House, Allahabad
1858
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pio Joris
Landscape with Figure
1865
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

Félix Bracquemond
La Terrasse de la Villa Brancas
1876
etching
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Georges Seurat
Study for painting La Grande Jatte
1884
drawing
British Museum

Jan Toorop
Woman with Parasol
1888
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

Allen & Ginter (Richmond, Virginia)
Pauline Hall on trade card for Dixie Cigarettes
ca. 1888
albumen print and letterpress
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Paul Signac
Woman with Parasol
1893
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edward Penfield
Harper's April
1897
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Édouard Zier
Woman with Parasol
ca. 1900
watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Eugène Grasset
Woman with Parasol
1900
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Woman with Parasol
ca. 1911-12
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Chris Beekman
Young Women with Umbrella
1917-18
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Augusto Giacometti
Graubünden Schweiz 
ca. 1920
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dorothy Brett
Umbrellas
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Arthur Siegel
State Street
1949
dye transfer print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nancy Kilgour
Beach Umbrellas
ca. 1950
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Marisol (Marisol Escobar)
Mi Mama y Yo
1968
painted bronze and aluminum
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

from Spain 1937

Yesterday all the past.  The language of size

Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion

            Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;

Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,

The divination of water; yesterday the invention

            Of cart-wheels and clocks, the taming of 

Horses; yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants;

The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,

            The chapel built in the forest;

Yesterday the carving of angels and of frightening gargoyles;

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;

Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns

            And the miraculous cure at the fountain;

Yesterday the Sabbath of Witches.  But to-day the struggle.

– W.H. Auden (1937)