Saturday, September 16, 2017

Early 20th-century Paintings of Individuals and Pairs

Félix Vallotton
Woman writing in an interior
1904
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Harold Gilman
Sylvia darning
1917
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art


Harold Gilman
Portrait of Stanislawa de Karlowska (Mrs Robert Bevan)
1913
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Moonrise - Soldier and Maiden
1905
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Lovis Corinth
Portrait of Alfred Kuhn
1923
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna
 
"In the critical edition of Kafka's Diaries, we find a series of fragments from 1910 that were largely eliminated from previous German editions.  Why?  Surely because of their embarrassing repetitiveness, like a broken record.  Yet it is precisely this repetitiveness that is their most important trait.  There are six of these fragments, ranging in length from fourteen lines to four pages, written in succession.  Let's look at the opening of each:

If I think about it, I must say my upbringing in certain respects has done me great harm.

If I think about it, I must say my upbringing in certain respects has done me great harm.

Often I ponder it and then every time I must say my upbringing, in certain ways, has done me great harm.

Often I ponder it, letting my thoughts follow their own course without interfering, and every time, however I view it, I come to the conclusion that my upbringing in certain ways, has done me terrible harm.

Often I ponder it, letting my thoughts follow their own course without interfering, but every time I come to the conclusion that my upbringing has damaged me more than I can understand.

I often ponder it, letting my thoughts follow their own course without interfering, but every time I come to the same conclusion, that I have been more damaged by my upbringing than anyone I know and more than I am able to comprehend."

– from K. by Roberto Calasso, translated by Geoffrey Brock (New York: Knopf, 2005)

Thomas Eakins
William Rush carving his allegorical figure of the Schuylkill River
ca. 1908
oil on canvas
Brooklyn Museum

William Peploe
Portrait of a young man with long hair
ca. 1915
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Joaquín Sorolla
Portrait of Miguel de Unamuno
ca. 1912
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

Juan Gris
Portrait of Pablo Picasso
1912
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

"The strange  thing is that when one wakes up in the morning, one generally finds things in the same places they were the previous evening.  And yet in sleep and in dreams one finds oneself, at least apparently, in a state fundamentally different from wakefulness, and upon opening one's eyes an infinite presence of mind is required, or rather quickness of wit, in order to catch everything, so to speak, in the same place one left it the evening before."  These lines, which are the fundamental chord of The Trial, were crossed out by Kafka (and again one suspects that he crossed out whatever gave too much evidence of the thought behind the text).  We encounter them in the opening scene, when Josef K. begins talking with the guards.  He recalls then what an unspecified "someone" once told him about the fact that waking is "the riskiest moment."  And that unknown person had added: "If you can manage to get through it without being dragged out of place, you can relax for the rest of the day."  The Trial is the story of a forced awakening.  Josef K. is the one for whom nothing will ever return to its proper place."

– from K. by Roberto Calasso, translated by Geoffrey Brock (New York: Knopf, 2005)

Édouard Vuillard
Lucy Hessel reading
1913
oil on canvas
Jewish Museum, New York

George Bellows
Emma in Purple Dress
ca. 1920-23
oil on canvas
Dallas Art Museum

Egon Schiele
Portrait of Paris von Gütersloh
1918
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Egon Schiele
The Hermits
1912
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Egon Schiele
Mother and Child
1914
drawing, with pigment
Leopold Museum, Vienna