Imitation Sunlight - I

Frédéric Bazille
Les Lauriers Roses
1867
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Baldovino Bertè
Borgo della Morte,  Parma
1872
oil on panel
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Gustave Caillebotte
Path in the Garden
1886
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Adolf Dietrich
Garden in Summer
1925
tempera on paper
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Sailor parting from his Beloved
1840
oil on canvas
Ribe Kunstmuseum, Denmark

Anselm Feuerbach
Rocky Landscape
1855
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Erik Hoppe
Wilders Plads, Copenhagen
ca. 1937
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Ekke Abel Kleima
Dune Landscape on Texel
1939
oil on canvas
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Henri Loubat
La famille Loubat à Saint-Jean-de-Luz
ca. 1904
oil on board
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Gaillac

Albert Marquet
In the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris
1902
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Firmin Salabert
Conversation dans une Allée près du Lac
ca. 1860
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Gaillac

P.C. Skovgaard
View of the Sea from Møns Klint
1850
oil on canvas
Skovgaard Museet, Viborg, Denmark

Vincent van Gogh
Lane near Arles
1888
oil on canvas
Pomeranian State Museum, Greifswald

Carl Moll
Prater Scene
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Claude Monet
Double Herbaceous Borders under Trees at Giverny
1902
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Antoine-Pierre Mongin
Corner of a Park
ca. 1795
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Morgan Library, New York

Clytemnestra: Today the Achaeans are in possession of Troy.  I imagine that the city is marked by shouts and cries that do not blend well.  If you pour vinegar and olive oil into the same vessel, they'll keep apart and you'll call them very unfriendly; so too one can hear separately the voices of the conquered and the conquerors – can hear their distinct fortunes.  On one side, they have prostrated themselves to embrace the bodies of husbands and brothers, and children those of their aged progenitors, and from throats that are no longer free they cry out their laments for the death of their dearest.  On the other, weary nocturnal patrolling after the battle has led to their mustering, famished, at breakfasts consisting of what the city has available, with no criteria for taking turns, but just as each individual draws fortune's lot.  They are now living in captured Trojan dwellings, freed at last from the frosts and dews of the open air, and they will sleep the whole night without needing guards, like happy men.  If they act reverently towards the protecting gods of the city and land they have captured, there is no risk, you may be sure, that after capturing it they may become victims in their turn.  Only let no desire first fall on the army to plunder what they should not, overcome by the prospect of gain; for they have still to return safely home, turning the bend and coming back for the second leg of the double run.  If the army should return without having offended the gods, the pain of the dead would be appeasable, if no unexpected stroke of evil fate occurs.  This, I tell you, is what you have heard from me, a woman; but may the good prevail, unequivocally, for all to see!  I choose to enjoy that, in preference to many other blessings.

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

The Ground Layer (Bright) - I

Axel Bentzen
Interior
1941
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Hans W. Sundberg
Botanical Gardens
1987
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Gustav Wentzel
In the Studio
1893
oil on canvas
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Vilhelm Hammershøi
Interior with Young Man Reading
1898
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Isaak Levitan
Early Foliage
ca. 1883-88
oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Eberhard Havekost
Max - Headroom 2
2003
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Alexander Rothaug
Cassandra
1911
tempera on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Franz Marc
Laundry int he Wind
1906
oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Emile Claus
Flemish Farm House
1894
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

Torsten Bergmark
Floating Figure
1967
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Albert Gosselin
Oak and Olives at Juan-les-Pins
1890
watercolor on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Vilmos Huszár
Sick Woman
ca. 1920
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Otto Greiner
Prometheus
1909
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Ludwig Ferdinand Graf
Swimming Pool
1905
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Empress Eugénie with Ladies in Waiting
1855
oil on canvas
Château de Compiègne

Paul Baudry
Mercury bearing Psyche aloft
1885
oil on canvas
(mounted on ceiling)
Musée Condé, Chantilly

 . . . her judgment totally shaken; coming to the tent and throwing herself on the camp bed, she uttered a loud, piercing cry; she wept profusely, and she tore her tunic.  Eubiotus saw to it that no one was in the tent; he sent everyone out, saying that she had had bad news about the Sauromates.  She wept and wailed and cursed the day she had seen Erasinus while hunting; she cursed her own eyes too and blamed Artemis.  . . .  And absorbed in these misfortunes, she reached out for her dagger; but Eubiotus had surreptitiously removed it from its sheath as soon as she came in.  She looked at him and said: "Wickedest of men!  You dared to lay your hand on my sword!  I am no Amazon, no Themisto; I am a Greek woman.  I am Calligone – no weaker in spirit than any Amazon.  Go and bring me the sword, or I will strangle you with my hands!"

– from Calligone, an anonymous romance fragment written in Greek during the 2nd century AD, translated into English by B.P. Reardon (1989)

Expectedness (Sixties)

Jacob Lawrence
Dreams no. 2
1965
tempera on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

James Henry Daugherty
Tensions and Rhythms
1968-69
oil on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Sam Byrne
Dust Storm approaching Broken Hill
ca. 1960-65
enamel on board
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Arthur Osver
The Voyage
1961
oil paint and collage on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jack Humphrey
Perry Point Ferry
1960
oil on canvas
New Brunswick Museum, Saint John

Perry Nichols
The Desk-Top of Jake Hamon
1966
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

John Hultberg
Monhegan Dock
1961
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

John Hultberg
Plain with Flag
ca. 1960
gouache on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

John Fox
Atelier Rouge
ca. 1965
oil on canvas
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Donald Friend
Mountebanks
1965
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Hassel Smith
Mousehole, Cornwall
1962
oil on canvas
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Harry Soviak
Famille Noire
1968
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Jan Forsberg
Gust of Wind
1963
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Danny Lyon
Robert Frank and Mary Frank
1969
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Helen Lessore
Portrait of art collector David Wilkie
1967
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Eva Kubbos
The Sudden Wings of Blue
1962
color linocut
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Eikoh Hosoe
Kamaitachi #26
1963
gelatin silver print
National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC

POE, EDGAR (1809-1849) – The greatest master of original prosodic effect that the United States have produced, and an instinctively and generally right (though, in detail, hasty, ill-informed, and crude) essayist on points of prosodic doctrine.  Produced little, and that little not always equal; but at his best an unsurpassable master of music in verse and phrase. 

PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH (1802-1839) – An early nineteenth-century Prior.  Not incapable of serious verse, and hardly surpassed in laughter.  His greatest triumph, the adaptation of the three-foot anapest, alternately hypercatalectic and acatalectic or exact, which had been a ballad-burlesque metre as early as Gay, had been partly ensouled by Byron in one piece, but was made his own by Praed, and handed down by him to Mr. Swinburne to be yet further sublimated. 

– George Saintsbury, from Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910)

Screen People

Boris Chaliapin
Elizabeth Taylor
1949
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Katharine Hepburn
1952
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Marilyn Monroe
1956
gouache and watercolor on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Ingmar Bergman
1960
watercolor on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Kees van Dongen
Jeanne Moreau
1965
watercolor on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave
1967
tempera on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Robert Rauschenberg
New Cinema
1967
screenprint
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Frank Gallo
Raquel Welch
1969
epoxy resin
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Julien Quideau
Isabelle Adjani
1977
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Norma Wasserman Miller
Peter Falk
1973
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Marisa Berenson in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon
1975
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Andy Warhol
Robert De Niro, Jon Voight, Jane Fonda -
Vietnam Aftermath Films
1979
paper collage with photo-overlays
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Irving Penn
Nastassja Kinski
1983
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Richard Bernstein
Miami Vice
1985
tempera and pastel on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Ken Regan
Sigourney Weaver
1986
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Theo Westenberger
Molly Ringwald
1986
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Gregory Heisler
Kevin Costner
1989
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Timothy White
Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
1991
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

from Metamorphoses

    Now have I brought a woork too end which neither Joves fierce wrath,

    Nor swoord, nor fyre, nor freating age with all the force it hath

Are able to abolish quyght. Let comme that fatall howre

Which (saving of this brittle flesh) hath over mee no powre,

And at his pleasure make an end of myne uncerteyne tyme. 

Yit shall the better part of mee assured bee too clyme

Aloft above the starry skye. And all the world shall never

Be able for to quench my name. For looke how farre so ever

The Romane Empyre by the ryght of conquest shall extend,

So farre shall all folke reade this woork. And tyme without all end

(If Poets as by prophecie about the truth may ame)

My lyfe shall everlastingly bee lengthened still by fame. 

– Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), translated by Arthur Golding (1567)