Showing posts with label ruins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ruins. Show all posts

Friday, July 31, 2026

Charity

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Confident
1954
oil on panel
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


Robert Frank
Charity Ball, New York City
1956
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Achille Etna Michallon
Taormina - Ruins of Ancient Theater
1820
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Caricature Studies
ca. 1840
drawing
British Museum

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Silent Hall
1961
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Frank
Georgetown, South Carolina
1955
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Canaletto
Capriccio with Classical Ruins, Rome
before 1768
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Henry Tonks
Next please!
(caricature of Herbert Henry Asquith hypnotizing Lloyd George)
1915-16
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Starting
1968
oil on panel
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Robert Frank
Man resting aboard the Congressional Limited
1955
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John Sell Cotman
Ruined House
1808
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alfred J. Frueh
Caricature of Jack Dempsey
1920
drawing
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Two Whites between Two Yellows
1958
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Frank
From the Bus, New York
1958
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous German Artist
Ruins on the Palatine Hill
19th century
oil on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Alfred J. Frueh
Caricature of silent film star Alla Nazimova
ca. 1910
drawing
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: White Monument
1951
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from In Time of War

He looked in all His wisdom from the throne
Down on the humble boy who kept the sheep,
And sent a dove; the dove returned alone:
Youth liked the music, but soon fell asleep.

But He had planned such future for the youth:
Surely His duty now was to compel;
For later he would come to love the truth,
And own his gratitude. The 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 the eagle he was always willing
To go where it suggested, and adored
And learnt from it the many ways of killing.

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Friday, June 26, 2026

Repeats

Imogen Cunningham
Fageol Ventilators
1934
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


Andreas Feininger
Grain Elevator in Iowa
1952
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Magdalena Abakanowicz
Standing Figures
1994-98
bronze
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Ursula von Rydingsvard
Blackened World
2008
cedar and graphite
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous Russian Artist
Miniature Traveling Iconostasis
17th century
oil on panels edged and hinged with copper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

John Wharlton Bunney
Columns inside St Mark's Basilica, Venice
ca. 1860
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

John Ruskin
Duomo of San Martino, Lucca
1874
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

William England
View of the International Exhibition of 1862, London
1862
hand-colored albumen silver prints from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Eugène Piot
Propylaea on the Acropolis, Athens
1852
salted paper print from paper negative
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Eileen Gray
Screen
1922
lacquered wood and metal rods
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Pablo Palazuelo
Diferencias XII
1987
gouache on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

David Reed
Untitled
1976
acrylic on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Elizabeth Murray
Pink and Blue Steps
1974
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Anna Andreeva
Fabric Panel
1967
printed cotton
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ralph Steiner
Hanging Sheets
ca. 1960
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Bridget Riley
Study '74 - Colour/Space Sequence
1974
gouache on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Makoto Nakamura
Shiseido Nail Enamel
1978
photolithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

    But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognize the beauty and the power of such passages as these?  Besides Racine's lack of extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic of his style to which we are perhaps even more antipathetic – its suppression of detail.  The great majority of poets – and especially of English poets – produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of details – details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness.  But with details Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have been accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of significance.  And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is more marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate reality.

– Lytton Strachey on Racine (1908)

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Pillared

Marcantonio Raimondi after Andrea Mantegna
Allegorical Figure of Wrath
before 1527
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Heinrich Aldegrever
Allegorical Figure - Fortitudo
1528
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Lorenzo Sacchetti
Stage Design
ca. 1822
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Claes Adelsköld
Interior of Swedish Mansion
ca. 1890
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Antonio Chichi
Model of the Pantheon, Rome (interior)
ca. 1777-82
cork and wood
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Louis-Jean Desprez
Temple at Segesta
ca. 1775
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Arvid Pettersen
Hall of Fame
1983
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Giacomo Antonio Mannini
Hall with Solomonic Columns
ca. 1690
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Antonio Joli
Stage Design for Palace of Flora, Teatro Grimani, Venice
1740
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Bernardo Bellotto
Roman Capriccio with the Colosseum
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Marie-Gabriel Florent Auguste Choiseul-Gouffier
Temple of Olympian Zeus
before 1817
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Photochrom Zürich
Roman Forum
1889
photochrome
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Architectural Composition of Classical Elements
ca. 1750-60
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Claude-Joseph Vernet
Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum
ca. 1750-55
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Henri Le Sidaner
Les Îles Borromées
1909
oil on canvas
Musée de la Cour d'Or de Metz

Christian Rohlfs
Pine Trunks in Sunlight
1903
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle zu Kiel

When the Athenians had heard him, they approved of his words and fetched into the city their wives and children and the furniture of their houses, pulling down the very timbers of the houses themselves.  Their sheep and oxen they sent over into Euboea and into the islands over against them. Nevertheless this removal, in respect they had most of them been accustomed to the country life, grieved them very much.

This custom was from great antiquity more familiar with the Athenians than any other of the rest of Greece.  For in the time of Cecrops and the first kings down to Theseus the inhabitants of Attica had their several boroughs and therein their common halls and their governors, and unless they were in fear of some danger, went not to the king for advice; but every city administered their own affairs and deliberated by themselves.  . . .  The Athenians therefore had lived a long time governed by laws of their own country towns and, after they were brought into one, were nevertheless (both for the custom which most had, as well of the ancient time as since till the Persian war, to live in the country with their whole families; and also especially for that since the Persian war they had already repaired their houses and furniture) unwilling to remove. It pressed them likewise and was heavily taken besides their houses to leave the things that pertained to their religion (which, since their old form of government, were become patrial) and to change their manner of life and to be no better than banished every man his city. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)