Showing posts with label schist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schist. Show all posts

Saturday, September 13, 2025

Substantial

Gandhara Culture
Seated Buddha
2nd century AD
schist
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Desiderio da Settignano
Portrait of Marietta Strozzi
ca. 1460
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Andrea Bregno
Cardinal Raffaele Sansoni Riario
(Papel nephew)
ca. 1478
marble
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Giovanni della Robbia
Goddess Fortuna on Dolphin with Sail
ca. 1500-1510
maiolica (half life-size)
British Museum

Giovanni della Robbia
Goddess Fortuna on Dolphin with Sail
ca. 1500-1510
maiolica (underside and back)
British Museum

Giorgio Ghisi
Parade Shield with Allegorical and Mythological Themes
1554
iron, damascened with gold and plated with silver
British Museum

Suzanne de Court
Casket with the Story of Abraham and Isaac
ca. 1575-1600
Limoges enamel on copper panels
set into modern gilt-metal mount
British Museum

attributed to Francesco Cabianca
Head of a Woman
ca. 1710
marble
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Antonio Canova
Bust of Paris
1812
marble
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Thomas Crawford
Paris presenting the Golden Apple to Venus
1837
marble (carved in Rome)
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

John Gibson
Head of Greek Helen
before 1866
marble
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Moses Ezekial
Jessica
1880
marble
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Constantin BrĂ¢ncusi
Sleeping Muse I
1909-1910
marble
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Jo Davidson
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
1917
marble
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Herbert Ferber
The Flame
1949
brass and lead on stone base
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Package on Hand-Truck
1973
tarpaulin, rope and hand-truck
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Carol Bove
Adventures in Poetry
2002
assemblage of found materials
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

    What have the dearest favourites of the world created to the patterns of the fairest ideas of mortality, to glory in?  Is it greatness?  Who can be great on so small a round as is this earth, and bounded with so short a course of time?  How like is that to castles or imaginary cities raised in the skies by chance-meeting clouds; or to giants modelled, for a sport, of snow, which at the hotter looks of the sun melt away and lie drowned in their own moisture!  Such an impetuous vicissitude touzeth the estate of this world.  But we have not yet attained to a perfect understanding of the smallest flower, and why the grass should rather be green than red.  The element of fire is quite put out, the air is but water rarefied, the earth is found to move and is no more the centre of the universe, is turned into a magnet; stars are not fixed, but swim in the ethereal spaces, comets are mounted above the planets.  Some affirm there is another world of men and sensitive creatures, with cities and palaces, in the moon: the sun is lost, for it is but a light made of the conjunction of many shining bodies together, a cleft in the lower heavens, through which the rays of the highest diffuse themselves; is observed to have spots.  

– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Foppa - Gandhara - West - Whistler

Caradosso Foppa
Allegorical Figures of Justice, Science and Might
before 1527
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Caradosso Foppa
Allegorical Figure of Architecture
ca. 1506
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Caradosso Foppa
Portrait of architect Donato Bramante
ca. 1514
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Caradosso Foppa
Marine Scene
ca. 1500
bronze plaquette
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Gandhara Culture
Head of Buddha
1st century BC - 3rd century AD
schist
Harvard Art Museums

Gandhara Culture
Frieze with Dragons and Rider
3rd century AD
schist
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Gandhara Culture
Standing Bodhisattva
3rd century AD
schist
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Gandhara Culture
Umbrella Bearer
3rd century AD
schist
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Benjamin West
The Pilgrim mourning his Dead Ass
ca. 1773-77
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Benjamin West
Portrait of Ann Inglis
ca. 1757
oil on canvas
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Benjamin West
Study for Thetis bringing Armor to Achilles
ca. 1805-1806
drawing
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Benjamin West
Self Portrait
ca. 1776
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

James McNeill Whistler
Self Portrait
1859
etching and drypoint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

James McNeill Whistler
Drouet, Sculpteur
1859
drypoint
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

James McNeill Whistler
Just Becquet, Sculpteur
1860
etching
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

James McNeill Whistler
The Wine Glass
1858
etching
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

from Letter to Lord Byron

So if ostensibly I write to you
     To chat about your poetry or mine,
There's many other reasons: though it's true
     That I have, at the age of twenty-nine
     Just read Don Juan and I found it fine.
I read it on the boat to Reykjavik
Except when eating or asleep or sick.

Now home is miles away, and miles away
     No matter who, and I am quite alone
And cannot understand what people say,
     But like a dog must guess it by the tone;
     At any language other than my own
I'm no great shakes, and here I've found no tutor
Nor sleeping lexicon to make me cuter. 

The thought of writing came to me to-day
     (I like to give these facts of time and space);
The bus was in the desert on its way
     From Möthrudalur to some other place:
     The tears were streaming down my burning face,
I'd caught a heavy cold in Akureyri,
And lunch was late and life looked very dreary.

Professor Housman was I think the first
     To say in print how very stimulating
The little ills by which mankind is cursed,
     The colds, the aches, the pains are to creating;
     Indeed one hardly goes too far in stating
That many a flawless lyric may be due
Not to a lover's broken heart, but 'flu. 

But still a proper explanation's lacking;
     Why write to you? I see I must begin
Right at the start when I was at my packing.
     The extra pair of socks, the airtight tin
     Of China tea, the anti-fly were in;
I asked myself what sort of books I'd read
In Iceland, if I ever felt the need.
     
 I can't read Jefferies on the Wiltshire Downs,
     Nor browse on limericks in a smoking-room;
Who would try Trollope in cathedral towns,
     Or Marie Stopes inside his mother's womb?
     Perhaps you feel the same beyond the tomb.
Do the celestial highbrows only care
For works on Clydeside, Fascists, or Mayfair? 

– W.H. Auden (1936)

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Fuseli - Stella - Matisse - Gandhara

Henry Fuseli
Portrait of Sophia Fuseli
1799
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

Henry Fuseli
William Tell assassinating Albrecht Gessler
ca. 1775
drawing
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek ZĂ¼rich

Henry Fuseli
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1790
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Henry Fuseli
Satan and the Birth of Sin
(allegorical episode from Paradise Lost)
ca. 1795
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Frank Stella
Chocorua I
1965-66
acrylic on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Frank Stella
Flin Flon VIII
1970
acrylic on canvas
San Diego Museum of Art

Frank Stella
River of Ponds II
1971
lithograph
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Frank Stella
Hiragla Variation I
1969
fluorescent alkyd on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Henri Matisse
Le Madras Rouge
1907
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Henri Matisse
Les Persiennes
1919
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Henri Matisse
The Music Lesson
1917
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Henri Matisse
The Red Blouse
1936
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Gandhara Culture
Head of Buddhist Figure
4th-5th century AD
stucco
Harvard Art Museums

Gandhara Culture
Bodhisattva in Meditation
3rd century AD
schist
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Gandhara Culture
Bodhisattva Maitreya
2nd-3rd century AD
schist
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

Gandhara Culture
Head of Bodhisattva
5th-6th century AD
stucco
Seattle Art Museum

from Part Four of The Age of Anxiety

         
For seven cycles
          For seven years
     Past vice and virtue, surviving both,
     Through pluvial periods, paroxysms
     Of wind and wet, through whirlpools of heat,
          And comas of deadly cold,
     On an old white horse, an ugly nag,
          In his faithful youth, he followed
     The black ball as it bowled downhill
     On the spotted spirit's spiral journey,
     Its purgative path to that point of rest
          Where longing leaves it, and saw
     Shimmering in the shade with shrine of gold,
     The magical marvel no man dare touch,
     Between the towers the tree of life
          And the well of wishes
          The waters of joy.

          Then he harrowed hell,
          Healed the abyss
     Of torpid instinct and trifling flux,
     Laundered it, lighted it, made it lovable with
     Cathedrals and theories; thanks to him
          Brisker smells abet us,
     Cleaner clouds accost our vision
          And honest sounds our ears.
     For he ignored the Nightmares and annexed their ranges,
     Put the clawing Chimaeras in cold storage,
     Berated the Riddle till it roared and fled,  
          Won the Battle of Whispers,
     Stopped the Stupids, stormed into 
     The Fumblers' Forts, confined the Sulky
     To their drab ditches and drove the Crashing
          Bores to their bogs,
          Their beastly moor.

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)