Artist Timeline

2001

Howard Hodgkin - Tears, Idle Tears

"Tears, idle ears, I know not what they mean,

 Tears from the depths of some divine despair

 Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,

 In lookin on the happy Autumn fields,

 And thinking of the days that are no more."Hand painted lift-ground etching with aquatint from one copper plate and carborundum from one plastic plate on 100 % cotton paper

1976
Audrey Flack - Queen
Flack's early work was abstract; one such painting paid tribute to Franz Kline. The ironic kitsch themes in her early work influenced Jeff Koons. But gradually, Flack became a New Realist and finally a photorealist. Flack has claimed to have found the photorealist movement too restricting, and now gains much of her inspiration from baroque art

1947

M. C. Escher - Another World
It depicts a cubic architectural structure which is made from brick. The structure is a paradox with an open archway on each of the five visible sides of the cube. The structure wraps around the vertical axis to enclose the viewer’s perspective. At the bottom of the image is an archway which we seem to be looking up from the base, and through it we can see space. At the top of that arch is another arch which is level with our perspective, and through it we are looking out over a lunar horizon. At the top of that arch is another arch which covers the top of the image. We are looking down at this arch from above and through it onto the lunar surface.

1931

Salvador Dalí - The Persistence of Memory

The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch.This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun.