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Two Paintings Lee Robison Home |
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Georgia O’Keefe's Vision of the Black Cross, New Mexico There are those for whom The Cross Is the phallus church Of Christboyo rising Triumph—or rampant In the nunnery But O’Keefe’s cross is the empty neuter Nutless prong and crosscock That weighs more than even Sunlight and soil— That delineates a great black Barrier between pale heaven And what gray we gain of earth— That compresses joycolor Into thin strips (but still—the O! vibrant lumination)— That finally—so neutral So cold, claims cock Dominion over all. Even God. |
George Bellows' Both Members of This Club (1909)
A Compositional Analysis in Three Sentences First, you will notice the white of the white man's body and its curve that is part of the spiral of their violent encounter, a round of violence repeated in the ring of men who are not as men might be, but as these men are, with their blood lust leers and no care for loss or win, but only eager for this rampant whirl of ruin to continue, rise gyre, and climax again and again and again. Now, before you turn away in disgust and horror at this raging rumba, note the rigid plant of the black man's solid right foot that thrusts a leg straight-line at the angle where their arms apex a triangle, which implies the vaguest stability, except that it's collapsing off canvas right over the shoulder of the referee, a collapse echoed in the foreshortened buckle of the white man's right knee and in the expectant leers around the man-ring. Finally, there are the horizontal ring-ropes that are supposed to contain but that vibrate and vanish in the back-darkened unlit arena, a dark that in-your-faces this sweat-shine carnage and, especially, the white man's blood smeared, pale crumple. |
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