Revenge of the Goldfish

On the table gaily set, behold, within the dish,

the fishes' queer countenance.

Fish are mute ... so one thought. Who knows?

Is there not a place where the language of the fish,

in their absence, is at last in common parlance?

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus, Part 2, XX

 Herbert List, Goldfish, Santorin 1937

 Gustav Klimt, Goldfish, 1901

Zhang Peng, Goldfish, 2006

Sandy Skoglund, Revenge of the Goldfish, 1980

 Adolf Hoffmeister, In the Pisces Constellation, 1963 

The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop (1948)

  I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

 Dali, One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, 1944

 J.J. Grandville, A Dream of Crime & Punishment, bef. 1847

 Gustave Doré, Gargantua, c. 1850

 Richard Müller, Miracle of Training, 1911

 Ruth Marten, The Herring, 2007

 A. Paul Weber, Little Shark, c. 1950

 James Ensor, Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring, 1891

 Damian Loeb, Fish Sticks, 1999

 Renee Magritte, Les merveilles de la nature (The Wonders of Nature), 1953

 Man Ray, Pisces, 1938

 Óscar Domínguez, Femmes aux botes de sardines, 1937

 Toyen, Eclipse, 1968

 Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Lawyer (Ulrich Zasius), 1566

 Luis Meléndez, Still Life with Bream, Oranges, Garlic, Condiments, and Kitchen Utensils, 1772

Francois Barraud, The Pikes, 1932

Rudolf Wacker, Still with Sprats, 1931

 Max Beckmann, The Small Fish, 1933

More about this painting here

Neo Rauch, Seewind, 2009

Alexis Rockman, Sea World, 2001

Dana Schutz, How we cured the plague, 2007

 John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778

 Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899

 Tom Sanford, The Somali Pirates vs. The USS Bainbridge, 2010

 Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, The “Volga” Epic, 1928

 Oskar Kokoschka, Schlafende Frau (aus: Die träumenden Knaben), 1907

 Edward Burne-Jones, A sea-nymph, 1881

 Néstor de la Torre, Pleamar, "Poema del Atlántico", 1921

 Lizzy Ansingh, On a Carps Back, c. 1915

 Julius Klinger (1876-1942)

  Martin Eder, Night, 2009

 Martin Eder, Friendship, 2009

 Ralph Crane via Fantomatic

 Roberto Kusterle, fishing companions, 2004

 Alexis Rockman, Fishing, 2000

Alexis Rockman, Gymnorhamphichthys bogardus, 2001

   Vladimir Dubossarsky & Alexandre Vinogradov, Untitled, 2007

 Shaun Tan via Animalarium

 

  via Animalarium