This experimental post responds to the question I’ve been posing for myself for some time: what should I post when preparing for my exams, and have little time for words in the form of a blog? My answer came by way of an assignment I set for myself as part of my contemporary art and ecology exam reading list. Watching the “Ecology” episode of Art21, I was struck by the sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard’s recalling of a time in her life when words were at a premium. In response, she spoke of continuing to “drink of the world by visual means.” And so, in this post, I wish to simply leave you all with a series of objects that have moved me to thought in various ways while studying for my nineteenth-century and contemporary art exams. I welcome comments on what responses to the images readers of the blog might have. William Hogarth, Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme, 1721. Engraving, 8.80 x 12.50 in. (22.20 x 31.80 cm.), Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Robert and Mary Andrews, c. 1750. Oil on Canvas, 27.20 x 46.87 in. (69.09 x 119.04 cm.), National Gallery, London James Barry, The Phoenix, or the Resurrection of Freedom, 1776. Engraving and aquatint, 17.00 x 24.13 in. (43.20 x 61.30 cm.), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT “The hill-nest raised by the Termites bellicosi,” Plate VII from Henry Smeathman’s “Some Account of the Termites,” 1781. From Deirdre Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793. Oil on canvas, 65.00 x 50.00 in. (165.00 x 128.00 cm.), Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels Francisco Goya, “The Chinchillas,” pl. 50 from Los Caprichos, 1799. Etching with burnished aquatint, 8.00 x 9.81 in. (20.30 x 14.80 cm.), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Philipp Otto Runge, Times of Day: Morning, small version, 1808. Mixed media, Hamburg Kunsthalle Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1819. Oil on canvas, 193.31 x 281.89 in. (491.00 x 716 cm.), Musée du Louvre, Paris Auguste Desperret, The Third Eruption of the Volcano of 1789, 1833. Lithograph (hand-colored, with watercolor), 13.39 x 9.65 in. (34.00 x 24.50 cm.), University of Pittsburgh Library Honoré Daumier, Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834, 1834. Lithograph, 11.25 x 17.38 in. (28.60 x 44.10 cm.), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway, 1844. Oil on canvas, 36.00 x 48.00 in. (91.00 x 121.80 cm.), National Gallery, London William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep), 1852. Oil on canvas, 17.01 x 23.00 in. (43.20 x 58.40 cm.), Tate Britain, London Gustave Courbet, Peasants of Flagey Returning from the Fair, c. 1855. Oil on canvas, 82.09 x 108.27 in. (208.50 x 275.00 cm.), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon, France Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872. Oil on canvas, 18.90 x 24.80 in. (48.00 x 63.00 cm.), Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris Claude Monet, Grandes Decorations project, Opened to public 1927. Musée L’Orangerie, Paris Camille Pissarro, The Apple Pickers, 1884-86. Oil on Canvas 50.39 x 50.39 in. (128.00 x 128 cm.), Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan Alexandre Hogue, Drouth Survivors, 1936. Oil on canvas, 30.00 x 48.00 in. (11.81 x 18.90 cm.), Formerly Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
States of order–
Organic intensity–
Energy and motion
Made visible—
memories arrested in space,
Human needs and motives–
Acceptance–
-Jackson Pollock, Poem Manifesto
Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950. Mixed media, 105.00 x 207.00 in. (266.70 x 525.80 cm.), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube, 1963-65. Clear plexiglass and distilled water, Fundació Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Ana Mendieta, Birth, 1981. Film of performance transferred to DVD, Estate of Ana Mendieta Agnes Denes, Wheatfield–A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan, 1982. Two acres of wheat planted and harvested by the artist. http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/works7.html. Kate Paterson, Vatnajökull, 2007. Installation piece with florescent sculpture of phone number linked to working microphone in melting Icelandic glacier Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus Sankt Peter, 2014. Digital C-Type Print, 75.00 x 109.00 in. (125.00 x 181.00 cm.), Sankt Peter Kunst-Station, Cologne
One Reply to “One Thought Fills Immensity”
So many overlapping images of weight and meaning. The Hans Haacke, Daumier, Goya, and Gericault. The Wheatfield and L’Orangerie. Thank you for sharing.
So many overlapping images of weight and meaning. The Hans Haacke, Daumier, Goya, and Gericault. The Wheatfield and L’Orangerie. Thank you for sharing.