Estes - Kandinsky - Man Ray - Jillposters

Richard Estes
Venezia - Murano
1979
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Richard Estes
Nass Linoleum
1972
screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Richard Estes
Big Diamonds for Less
ca. 1974
screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Richard Estes
Restaurant
1979
screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Wassily Kandinsky
Cup and Saucer
designed for State Porcelain Manufactory, Saint Petersburg
ca. 1921-23
porcelain
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Wassily Kandinsky
Comets
1938
lithograph
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Wassily Kandinsky
Sign
1925
oil on board
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Wassily Kandinsky
The Farewell
1903
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Man Ray
Portrait of photographer Berenice Abbott
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Man Ray
Puériculture
ca. 1945
painted plaster and coffee can
Art Institute of Chicago

Man Ray
Untitled (Paris)
1924
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Man Ray
Variation
1946
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Childcare is not just a Women's Issue
(Greek version)
1984
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
she beckoned to me from the bar
ca. 1983-87
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
at the age of five
I decided to stop serving him
ca. 1983-87
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
U.S. Bases Out
1983
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sonnets from China

                                 IX

He looked in all His wisdom from His throne
Down on the humble boy who herded sheep,
And sent a dove. The dove returned alone:
Song put a charmed rusticity to sleep.

But He had planned such future for this youth:
Surely, His duty now was to compel,
To count on time to bring true love of truth
And, with it, gratitude. His eagle fell.

It did not work: His conversation bored
The boy, who yawned and whistled and made faces,
And wriggled free from fatherly embraces,

But with His messenger was always willing
To go where it suggested, and adored,
And learned from it so many ways of killing. 

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Visual Relics (1940-1946)

Lucien Aigner
Coney Island Pyramid
1940
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

August Sander
Yew in Spring
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Minor White
Portland, Oregon
1940
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

George Platt Lynes
Portrait of Paul Cadmus
1941
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

George Platt Lynes
Paul Cadmus with a Triangle
ca. 1941
gelatin silver print
Indianapolis Museum of Art

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Portrait of George Platt Lynes
1941
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Margaret French and Paul Cadmus, Fire Island
ca. 1941
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

PaJaMa
(Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Jared French and Margaret French, Nantucket
1946
gelatin silver print
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

André Kertész
Untitled
1944
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Barbara Morgan
Valerie Bettis in Desperate Heart by Martha Graham
1944
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Cecil Beaton
John Gielgud as Oberon
1945
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Paul Strand
Meeting House Window, New England
1945
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Louis Faurer
Self Portrait, 42nd Street El Station
1946
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Horst P. Horst
Carmen, Face Massage, New York
1946
gelatin silver print
Milwaukee Art Museum

Arthur Siegel
Untitled
1946
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Arthur Siegel
Dry Cleaners
1946
dye transfer print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

"The female seer will burn upon this pyre"

Sylvia Plath is setting my hair

on rollers made from orange-juice cans.

The hairdo is shaped like a pyre.

My locks are improbably long.

A pyramid of lemons somehow

balances on the rickety table

where we sit, in the rented kitchen

which smells of singed naps and bergamot.

Sylvia Plath is surprisingly adept

at rolling my unruly hair.

She knows to pull it tight.

                                                Few words.

Her flat, American belly,

her breasts in a twin sweater set,

stack of typed poems on her desk,

envelopes stamped to go by the door,

a freshly baked poppyseed cake,

kitchen safety matches, black-eyed Susans

in a cobalt jelly jar. She speaks a word,

"immolate," then a single sentence 

of prophecy. The hairdo done,

the nursery tidy, the floor swept clean

of burnt hair and bumblebee husks. 

– Elizabeth Alexander (2001)

Frivolous Playthings of the Senses

Michael Wishart
Arab Courtyard, Fez
1971
oil on canvas
New Art Gallery, Walsall, West Midlands

Charles Meurer
Trompe-l'oeil Still Life
1904
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Spencer Gore
Rule Britannia
1910
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

James Ensor
Fireworks
1887
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York 

Brendan Neiland
Brighton
1993
acrylic on canvas
University of Brighton Gallery

Bryan Pearce
Art School Interior
1959
oil on board
Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro

Patrick Procktor
Figures by the Sea II
1962
oil on canvas
Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

Jackson Pollock
Untitled
ca. 1942-44
oil paint, watercolor and ink on paper
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Maurice Denis
Paradise
1912
oil on panel
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Ludwig von Hofmann
Tanzende in weiter Landschaft
ca. 1918-24
oil on canvas
private collection

Max Klinger
Tritons and Naiads
ca. 1884-85
oil on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Antonio Salvetti
Summer on the Elsa River
1894
oil on canvas
Museo San Pietro, Colle di Val d'Elsa

John Collier
Mother-of-Pearl
1932
oil on canvas
The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire

George Sheringham
Midsummer Madness
(stage design)
1924
oil on panel
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Louis Reckelbus
The Fountain of the Little Faun
1934
tempera on paper, mounted on panel
The Wilson, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

"Woe, I must exclaim, over an age that practices art merely as a frivolous plaything of the senses."

– Wilhelm Wackenroder, writing in 1796, quoted by E.H. Gombrich in The Preference for the Primitive: Episodes in the History of Western Taste and Art (London: Phaidon, 2002)

Representing Glassware Illusionistically

Romek Árpád
Brass and Glass
ca. 1935
oil on canvas
Ulster Museum, Belfast

Gerard Chowne
Roses
1904
oil on canvas
National Museum Cardiff, Wales

Francis Cadell
The Green Bottle
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Norman Douglas Hutchinson
Lilies and Tulips
1989
tempera on paper
Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, Yorkshire

Kathleen Edith Lewis
Bottles
ca. 1950
oil on canvas
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester

from Plurality

Man is surely mad with discontent, he is hurled
By lovely hopes or bad dreams against the world,
Raising a frail scaffold in never-ending flux,
Stubbornly when baffled fumbling the stubborn crux
And so he must continue, raiding the abyss
With aching bones and sinew, conscious of things amiss,
Conscious of guilt and vast inadequacy and the sick
Ego and the broken past and the clock that goes too quick,
Conscious of waste of labour, conscious of spite and hate,
Of dissension with his neighbour, of beggars at the gate,
But conscious also of love and the joy of things and the power
Of going beyond and above the limits of the lagging hour,
Conscious of sunlight, conscious of death's inveigling touch,
Not completely conscious but partly – and that is much.

– Louis MacNeice (1940)

Samuel Peploe
Peonies
ca. 1900-1905
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Stanley Cursiter
A Glass of Milk
1923
oil on canvas
City Art Centre, Edinburgh

Édouard Vuillard
Roses in a Glass Vase
ca. 1919
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Edgar Herbert Thomas
Flowers in a Globe Vase
1919
oil on cardboard
Scolton Manor, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Camille Pissarro
Still Life with Apples and Pitcher
1872
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Édouard Manet
Moss Roses in a Vase
1882
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Still Life with Water Glass
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Giovanni Paolo Spadino
Peaches and Pears in a Glass Bowl
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jan Davidsz de Heem
Flowers in a Glass Vase
ca. 1650-83
oil on copper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Johannes Vermeer
The Glass of Wine
ca. 1661
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin