Monday, February 5, 2018

Other Works of Art from the Twentieth Century (Tate)

Lucian Freud
The Painter's Mother
1982
etching
Tate Gallery

Richard Hamilton
Adonis in Y-fronts
1963
screenprint
Tate Gallery

Feeling the Draft

We were young and it was an accomplishment
to have a body. No one said this. No one
said much beyond "throw me that sky" or
"can the lake sleep over?" The lake could not.
The lake was sent home and I ate too many
beets, went around with beet-blood tongue
worrying about my draft card-burning brother
going to war. Other brothers became holes
at first base at war, then a few holes
Harleying back from war in their always
it seemed green jackets with pockets galore
and flaps for I wondered bullets, I wondered
how to worship these giants. None of them
wanted to talk to me or anyone it seemed
but the river or certain un-helmeted curves
at high speed, I had my body
and flung it over branches and fences
toward my coming sullenness as the gravity
of girls' hips began and my brother
marched off to march against the war.
I watched different masses of bodies on tv,
people saying no to the jungle with grenades
and people saying no to the grenades with signs
and my father saying no to all of them
with the grinding of his teeth he spoke with.
I'd pedal after the nos up and down a hill
like it was somehow a rosary, somehow my body
was a prayer I could chant by letting it loose
with others like me milling around
the everything below five feet tall
that was ours, the everything below
the adult line of sight that was ours
to hold as long as we could: a year,
a summer. Until the quarterback came back
without . . . well, without. When the next Adonis
stepped up to throw the bomb.

– Bob Hicok (2010)

Bernard Meninsky
Sketch of male figure's back wearing a vest
before 1950
drawing
Tate Gallery

Alexandre Jacovleff
Seated Model
ca. 1933-38
drawing
Tate Gallery

from The Artist and the Nude

Boredom veils the brimming of her eyes.
She listens to an angry buzz of flies
And muses: "Timelessness must be surprised
By eyes in time, and pears are lovelier,
By far, in hand than on a picture plate."
She glances at a plaster cupid, masked
And aiming aimlessly, and laughs away
Pose, fuming sir, and art's unchanging day.

– Stephen Stepanchev (1957)

Alexandre Jacovleff
Crouching Model from the front
ca. 1933-38
drawing
Tate Gallery

Alexandre Jacovleff
Female Torso
ca. 1933-38
drawing
Tate Gallery

Alexandre Jacovleff
Recumbent Model
ca. 1933-39
drawing
Tate Gallery

Alexandre Jacovleff
Crouching Model from the side
ca. 1933-38
drawing
Tate Gallery

Giorgio Morandi
Hilltop at Evening
1938
intaglio print
Tate Gallery

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life with very fine hatching
1933
etching
Tate Gallery

Still Life

Like walking into a painting
all light but no sound

the usual fruit in a bowl
an open book on the table

a lifetime of polished mahogany
beginning to crack along the grain

how to explain
to all this furniture
you are not returning.

I sit in your chair.
The air settles

as if I could fit into the framework
of your life.

Listen, I hear you say
this is what I wanted you to know –

I have always loved you.
It's cold
colder than you would believe.

– Florence Grossman (1983)

Wyndham Lewis
Crouching Nude
ca. 1919
drawing
Tate Gallery

David Jones
Académie
(made while a teenage student at Camberwell School of Art)
1913
drawing
Tate Gallery

Stanley Spencer
Study for Apple Gatherers
ca. 1912
drawing
Tate Gallery

Charles Conder
Spanish Set
1905
lithograph
Tate Gallery

Hamo Thornycroft
The Kiss
1916
marble (life size)
Tate Gallery

from Mother and Daughter

The mother says, I am afraid.
The daughter says, I am afraid.

The mother says, My feet are cold.
The daughter says, My feet are cold.

The mother says, The car is sinking.
The daughter says Yes, the car is sinking.

The mother says, I am too young for this.
The daughter says, I want to grow old.

The mother says, I can see the sky,
and the daughter says, I can also see the sky.

How about the moon, the mother says,
and the daughter says, I can see the moon.

– Hayan Charara (2016)


Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)