Blue In Green

It's unclear exactly when Paul Burty-Haviland (188-1950) took his well-known photograph but it was definitely before Henri Matisse painted his Woman Before An Aquarium (c. 1923, collection of the Art Institute of Chicago). Patricia Hampl's poem of the same name (1978), inspired by Matisse, evokes the underwater world of blue and green of these disparate images. Just as Aillaud's The Penguins makes us look twice, Hampl's poem makes us think twice about who is looking at whom through the glass.

1. Paul Burty-Haviland - Girl Before a Goldfish Bowl, c. 1898-1916, Musee D'Orsay, Paris.2. Gilles Aillaud - The Penguins from Eight Definitions of the Real, 1974, Pompidou Center, Paris.3. Jean Carlu - Aquarium de Monaco, 1925, Museum of Applied Culture, Vienna.4. Hermann Kosel - Aquarium de Monaco, 1944, Museum of Applied Culture, Vienna.