The Frick Collection
New York, NY

December 1, 1999, marks the 11th anniversary of DAY WITH(OUT) ART, an international day of action and mourning in response to the continuing AIDS crisis. The Frick Collection once again fully supports the aims of DAY WITH(OUT) ART - to increase awareness about AIDS and the pressing social issues it raises, and to promote action to end the AIDS crisis - but the Trustees and staff of the museum feel that greater consolation for all is to be found in the contemplation of a work of art than in its removal.

"The Portal of Valenciennes", by Antoine Watteau, is such a work of art. Executed in 1710 during a lull in the brutal War of the Spanish Succession, which had taken a huge toll of young lives over the previous decade, the painting seems to have been conceived as an elegiac meditation on the brevity of human existence, specifically that of the infantrymen shown assembled so quietly here around their sleeping dog and buddy, the abandoned musket, and the silent drum. The specter of untimely death was as awesome then as now.

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