Tuesday, September 13, 2016

American Painting (1930-1960) in Madrid

Walt Kuhn
Chico in Top Hat
1948
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid

Edward Hopper
Hotel Room 
1931
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Georgia O'Keeffe
White Iris no. 7
1957
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 

The Dead

Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom.
Though they speak with more than just the season's tongue 
the colors that they blaze from the dark loam
all have something of the jealous tang

of the dead about them. What do we know of their part
in this, those secret brothers of the harrow,
invigorators of the soil  oiling the dirt
so liberally with their essence, their black marrow?

But here's the question: are they flower and fruit
held out to us in love, or merely thrust
up at us, their masters, like a fist?

Or are they the lords, asleep amongst the roots,
granting to us in their great largesse
this hybrid thing  part brute, force part mute kiss?

 from Orpheus : a version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus by Don Patterson (Faber & Faber, 2006)

Josef Albers
Structural Constellation Alpha
1954
incised vinyl
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Arthur Dove
U.S.
1940
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Jackson Pollock
Brown and Silver I
ca. 1951
enamel and silver paint on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 

Willem de Kooning
Abstraction, 1949-50
oil on cardboard
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Charles Sheeler
Canyons
1951
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Georgia O'Keeffe
From the Plains II
1954
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Stuart Davis
Pochade
 1956-58
canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Josef Albers
Casa Blanca B
ca. 1947-54
oil on cardboard
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Guy Pène du Bois
Forty-second Street
1945
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Reginald Marsh
Smoko the Human Volcano
1933
watercolor on masonite
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Joseph Cornell
Blue Soap Bubble
1949-50
mixed-media construction
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

I am grateful for the excellent reproductions from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.