No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King’s body guard… I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone… I have written this that you might see I have my share of the highest pleasures and that though I may choose to pass my days alone I shall be no Solitary… I am as happy as a Man can be… with the yearning Passion I have for the beautiful, connected and made one with the ambition of my intellect. ~ John Keats
| Eva Hesse with a rope sculpture, Hermann Landshoff c.1969 | Gerhard Richter, Eis (“Ice”), 1981. Photo: Sotheby’s. |
| Alex Coleville, Man on Verandah, 1953, glazed tempera. Private collection, Germany |
| Alex Coleville, Man on Verandah, 1953, glazed tempera. Private collection, Germany |
“I must be totally engrossed in my own work, it is only thing that is permanent, matures and is lasting.” ~ Eva Hesse in Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging and Displacement by Vanessa Corby, 2010.
Richter's Eis was based on a photograph taken on a solo retreat in Greenland in 1972.
Colville's haunting works are structured around the essentially solitary nature of human experience.
Colville's haunting works are structured around the essentially solitary nature of human experience.
"I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity — to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone." ~ Edith Wharton in Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, 2008.
