Friday, June 23, 2017

Redon's Mystery, along with other contemporary Mysteries

Odilon Redon
Mystery
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

WHAT WOULD I DO

What would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

 Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

Egon Schiele
Composition with three nudes
1910
drawing
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Ferdinand Hodler
Woodcutter
1910
oil on canvas
Ohara Museum of Art Kurashiki, Japan

Gustav Klimt
Death and Life
ca. 1910-15
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Henri Rousseau
Meadowland
1910
oil on canvas
Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo

Otto Müller
Three Nudes
1910
drawing, colored chalks
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni Giacometti
Young Mother
1910
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Albin Egger-Lienz
Lunch (The Soup, version II)
1910
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Franz von Stuck
The Dance
ca. 1910
oil and tempera on cardboard
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

LATE MINOAN I
(EWERS OF HAGIA TRIADA)

Dolphins, octopi, fish
cool of linen, of reeds, of olive trees
trembling of the day in a color
joy of a line that still moves
and I dream of this hand among billions
of hands, astonished, happy 
and I don't know what, a pigment
that causes the soul to breathe,
that life sees, these things that
come to my fingers
and will die one more time

 Lorand Gaspar (translated by Ronnie Scharfman)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Seated Girl (Fränzi Fehrmann)
ca. 1910-20
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Roger Fry
Still-life with jug and eggs
1911
oil on panel
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Franz Marc
Nudes under Trees
1911
oil on canvas
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Léon Bakst
Preliminary study for the décor of the ballet Le Dieu bleu
1911
watercolor and gouache
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University

Carl Fredrik Hill
Landscape with Lion
before 1911
crayon on paper
Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden