Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1967)

Jim Marshall
Grace and Janis
1967
dye transfer print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Enrico Natali
Office Workers
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Emilio Sánchez
Casa Vivienda
1967
lithograph
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Eduardo Paolozzi
Callas Here
1967
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Ellsworth Kelly
Study for White over Blue
1967
acrylic on newsprint
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Leon Golub
Untitled
1967
lithograph
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Asger Jorn
Untitled
1967
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Anthony Scornavacca
Untitled
1967
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Henry Moore
Torso
1967
bronze
Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, Hertfordshire

Andy Warhol
Marilyn
1967
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Andy Warhol
Marilyn
1967
screenprint
Art Institute of Chicago

Andy Warhol
Marilyn
1967
screenprint
Art Institute of Chicago

Mark Rothko
Untitled
1967
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Wes Wilson
Grateful Dead at the Fillmore
1967
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Bonnie MacLean
Quicksilver Messenger Service at the Fillmore
1967
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Alice Neel
Charlotte Willard
1967
oil on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

One Circumlocution

Sometimes we see astonishingly clearly 

That out-there-now we are already in;

Now that is not what we are here-for really.

All its to-do is bound to re-occur,
Is nothing therefore that we need to say;
How then to make its compromise refer

To what could not be otherwise instead
And has its being as its own to be,
The once-for-all that is not seen nor said?

Tell for the power how to thunderclaps
The graves flew open, the rivers ran up-hill;
Such staged importance is at most perhaps.

Speak well of moonlight on a winding stair,
Of light-boned children under great green oaks:
The wonder, yes, but death should not be there.

One circumlocution as used as any
Depends, it seems, upon the joke of rhyme
For the pure joy; else why should so many

Poems which make us cry direct us to
Ourselves at our least apt, least kind, least true,
Where a blank I loves blankly a blank You?

– W.H. Auden (1949)

Commerce

Erina Alejo
Prudencia Ayala on shift at Discount City, 2784-2786 Mission Street
2020
inkjet print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Sharon Core
Delicatessen Counter
2003
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Andreas Gursky
Chicago Mercantile Exchange
1997
C-print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

John Harding
San Francisco, California - 24th Street
1987
inkjet print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

John Salt
Ironmongers
1981
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Susan Meiselas
Marketplace, Diriamba
1978
C-print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Pirkle Jones
Untitled
1966
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Rollie McKenna
New York Times
ca. 1958
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Dan Weiner
Shopping (for Fortune magazine)
1955
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Mario De Biasi
Snack Seller, Naples
1954
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous American Painter
Cheese Factory
ca. 1930-40
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Ethel Carrick
Flower Market, Nice
ca. 1926
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Norman Rockwell
Thoughtful Shopper
1924
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Harold Gilman
Eating House
ca. 1914
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Anonymous French Photographer
Charcuterie Bousquet, Raissac-d'Aude
ca. 1905
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Kees van Dongen
Montmartre
1900
lithograph
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Pieter Aertsen
Meat Stall with view of the Holy Family giving Alms
1551
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

    "Happiness is a shy flowering whose frailty needs preserving.  It is only a matter of determining the minimum meaning of the word and somehow taking the reality it evokes at base level.  More often such definitions are accompanied by latent pessimism and a somewhat nervous smile: happiness is that fragile measure wrenched from universal nothingness and universal suffering."

– Robert Mauzi, L'idée du bonheur dans la littérature et la pensée françaises au XVIIIᵉ siècle (1964)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1956)

Eileen Agar
Seated Figure
1956
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Josef Albers
Homage to the Square: Alto Pluto
1956
oil on panel
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Diane Arbus
Woman on the Street with her Eyes Closed
1956
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Francis Bacon
Figure in Mountain Landscape
1956
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Isabel Bishop
Lunch Break
1956
etching
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Wendell Brazeau
Study for Still Life with Calendar
1956
colored pencils on paper
Seattle Art Museum

Frederick Brill
Quarry Face, Worth Matravers, Dorset
1956
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

Reginald Brill
Rest
1956
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

Gray Foy
Bulbs
1956
drawing
Menil Collection, Houston

Ivon Hitchens
Wood Landscape no. 2
1956
oil on canvas
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Edward Hopper
Sunlight on Brownstones
1956
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Rockwell Kent
Resurrection Bay
1956
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Frank Paulin
Belmont Races
1956
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Frank Paulin
Untitled (Man with Traffic Light)
1956
gelatin silver print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Pablo Picasso
Femme nue devant le jardin
1956
oil on canvas
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Josef Sudek
Egg and Carafe
1956
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                          

                                                            XLII

Of the many (far too many) love poems written in the first person which I have read, the most convincing were, either the fa-la-la's of a good-natured sensuality which made no pretence at serious love, or howls of grief because the beloved had died and was no longer capable of love, or roars of disapproval because she loved another or nobody but herself; the least convincing were those in which the poet claimed to be in earnest, yet had no complaint to make. 

                                                            XLIII

A soldier in battle who knows his Homer well may take the deeds of Hector and Achilles (which are possibly fictitious) as a model and thereby be inspired to fight bravely himself. But a would-be lover who knows his Petrarch well cannot thereby be inspired to love: if he takes the sentiments expressed by Petrarch (who was a certain real person) as a model and attempts to imitate them, then he ceases to be a lover and becomes an actor playing the role of poet Petrarch. 

                                                            XLIV

Many poets have attempted to describe the experience of Romantic Love as distinct from vulgar desire. (Suddenly abashed, I should like to say, aware of having irreverently blundered like a chattering monkey or an unwashed stableboy into a Sovereign Presence, tongue-tied, trembling, afraid to stay yet loath to go, for here, if anywhere, it is good to be . . .) But has one not had similar experiences (of a numinous encounter) in non-human contexts? (I remember coming unexpectedly upon a derelict iron foundry in the Harz Mountains.) What makes the difference in the human context? Vulgar desire? 

                                                             XLV

I should like to believe that it is some evidence of love when I can truthfully say: – Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me wishing it were.

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1951)

Mark Rothko
No. 7
1951
oil on canvas
private collection

Manolis Polymeris
Figure in Red
1951
oil on panel
National Gallery, Athens

John Piper
Study for Shobdon Folly
1951
watercolor, gouache and collage on paper
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Aldo Pagliacci
Interior of a Church in Flames
1951
oil on panel
Southampton City Art Gallery, Hampshire

Roy Lichtenstein
Roping the Brahman
1951
oil on canvas
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Fernand Léger
Les Constructeurs
1951
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Yousuf Karsh
Advertising Shot for Ford of Canada
1951
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Raoul Dufy
Tucson Square Dance
1951
watercolor on paper
Milwaukee Art Museum

Robert Doisneau
Les Géants du Nord
1951
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

John Craxton
The Dancer
1951
oil on canvas
Jerwood Collection, London

Forrest Bess
View of Maya
1951
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Francis Bacon
Pope I
1951
oil on canvas
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland

Clare Atwood
Self Portrait in a Hat with a Basket of Vegetables
1951
oil on canvas
National Trust, Fenton House, London

Hans Arp
Dreams and Projects
1951
woodcut
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Karel Appel
Child IV
1951
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Harold Allen
Still Life in Stanley Mitruk's Studio
1951
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                          XXIV

When his affair with Criseyde was going nicely, Troilus became an even fiercer warrior than before – "Save Ector most ydred of any wight" – but a gentler sportsman – "The smale bestes leet he gon biside." And we certainly sometimes say of an acquaintance who claims to have fallen in love: – "It must be true this time. He used to be so malicious about everybody but now, since he met N, he never utters an unkind word." But it is impossible to imagine a lover himself saying: – "It must be true that I love N because I am so much nicer now than I was before we met." (It is, perhaps, just possible to imagine him saying: – "I believe that N must really love me because she has made me so much nicer.")

                                                           XXV

In any case, this poem I should like to write is not concerned with the proposition "He loves Her" (where He and She could be fictitious persons whose characters and history the poet is free to idealize as much as he choose), but with my proposition I love You (where I and You are persons whose existence and histories could be verified by a private detective).

                                                           XXVI

It is a grammatical convention of the English language that a speaker should refer to himself as "I" and to the person he is addressing as "You", but there are many situations in which a different convention would serve equally well. It might be the rule, for example, when making polite conversation with strangers or when addressing public officials, to use the third person: – "Mr Smith likes cats, doesn't Miss Jones?"; "Can the honourable conductor tell the humble passenger when this train leaves?"  There are many situations, that is to say, in which the use of the pronoun "I" and "You" is not accompanied by the I-feeling or the You-feeling.

– W.H. Auden (1959)