Unobtainium. The exotic, unobtainable, and probably mythic
substance sought by scientists that would make a resounding breakthrough and success
of the scientific endeavor at hand. Borrowing that concept from science, it’s
interesting to realize that some of the glamorous things we desire give a
convincing illusion of attainability but are, instead, wholly unobtainable.
Consider Belgian artist Isabelle de
Borchgrave’s elaborate gowns copied from some 300 years of high fashion, ca.
late 17th to the early 20th century. Even the most elaborate of original fabric gowns
from those eras are, theoretically, wearable. Certainly recreatable, in
approximate respects. But de Borchgrave’s gowns are made of papier-mâché! Life-size, three-dimensional, authentic-looking
gowns, robes, and jackets. And shoes – delightful faux-brocade pumps and
slippers.
A close look at these gowns, featured in Prêt-à-Papier: The Exquisite Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, a recent exhibit at the Hillwood Estate in Washington, D.C.,
revealed the intricate workmanship of the drape, prints, trims, and ornamentation.
The heavy drape of an opulent taffeta, perhaps. The gossamer lightness of voile.
The impressive illusion of fabric fitted atop hoops and panniers. In certain
respects, the de Borchgrave gowns are perhaps more impressive than the
originals in that the artist had to not only design, cut and assemble the gowns
but also fashion and paint the “fabric.” Each piece is painstakingly
crushed, ironed, painted, cut, and constructed. It looks just as if a
wearer could be fitted into these splendid fashions by a lady’s maid, or more
simply slip into one of the sheath 1920s frocks by Poiret, Lanvin, and Redfern of London. (Virginia wrote about a 2009 exhibit of de Borchgrave's Italian Renaissance gowns here.)
Papier-mâché can be made into wearable, if not especially durable, costumes and masks. The de Borchgrave gowns were not made for that.
Yet, one wants to wear these dresses, designed,
as they originally were, for human beings - or at least see someone else wear them.
File under “impossible fantasy” because, alas, they are fantasies made of papier-mâché.
(For another, more conceptual take on paper fashion, see
also: Petra Storrs
on Pinterest and YouTube.)
Model wearing nursemaid's kerchief by Lilly Dache. Photo: Gordon Parks, courtesy the Gordon Parks Foundation
At theNew York Times' Lens photo blog, Deborah Willis, of the Photography and Imaging Department at New York University, looks at the fashion work of the late Gordon Parks, who would have turned 100 this year.
Parks is best known for his socially conscious documentary photography—he was the first black photographer for Life magazine—and for the 1970s blaxpoitation film Shaft, which he directed (and which is quite stylish too). But Parks largely got his start in the glamour industry, shooting portraits of society women in Chicago before eventually landing at the ne plus ultra of fashion magazines, Vogue, where he freelanced from the mid-1940s to the '60s.
Parks produced some of the magazine's loveliest images: models draped in furs and waiting for a bus; a woman dashing across an office, her sorbet-colored gown trailing behind her; girls in pert hats jumping in and out of taxis, or deep in conversation at a Parisian cafe. Willis writes:
With a clear understanding about how to “look” on city streets, in cafes and society balls, Parks’s fashion photographs are about the experience of being dressed. He communicated beauty, vanity and pleasure in his photographs of fashionably dressed women. ...
But there's something else that makes Parks's images so arresting, and that made them so radical at the time, and it's that they are alive. At the time Parks was beginning his career at Vogue, most fashion photography was done in a studio, with models posing like mannequins in front of artificial-looking sets or painted backdrops. Parks—along with Martin Munkácsi at Harper's Bazaar and Richard Avedon—was among the first to bring the model onto the streets, showing her interacting with the city and its inhabitants. And it made fashion photography more glamorous, because it allowed women to get lost in the narrative of a photograph, and imagine a world in which waiting for a bus or going to work was filled with romance and excitement and dramatic possibility. Before, fashion photography was about clothes; Parks and his peers made it about the women and the lives they lead in those clothes.
Click on the link to read Willis' article and see a slide show of Parks's work.
At a base level, the aesthetics of the image’s luminous gold surface, the soft rendering of the body, and the overall harmonious combination of colors could activate the pleasure circuits, triggering the release of dopamine. If Judith’s smooth skin and exposed breast trigger the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and vasopressin, one might feel sexual excitement. The latent violence of Holofernes’s decapitated head, as well as Judith’s own sadistic gaze and upturned lip, could cause the release of norepinephrine, resulting in increased heart rate and blood pressure and triggering the fight-or-flight response. In contrast, the soft brushwork and repetitive, almost meditative, patterning may stimulate the release of serotonin. As the beholder takes in the image and its multifaceted emotional content, the release of acetylcholine to the hippocampus contributes to the storing of the image in the viewer’s memory. What ultimately makes an image like Klimt’s ‘Judith’ so irresistible and dynamic is its complexity, the way it activates a number of distinct and often conflicting emotional signals in the brain and combines them to produce a staggeringly complex and fascinating swirl of emotions.
While I’m generally partial to mechanistic and evolutionary-psych analysis, and imagine that our circuits are indeed lighting up per Kandel's description, when it comes to slicing and dicing how and why art moves us, I prefer Camille Paglia’s style of Freud-infused pop-culture riffing and inconography.
Writing about the power of the same painting in her Sexual Personae, Paglia's take seems more compelling, without delving into the grey matter:
The Jewish heroine of Florentine art is now a cynical demimondine with a cold, worldly Joan Crawford face. Smiling, she runs her fingers through dead Holofernes’ hair, parodying romantic tenderness. Her white expanse of breast and belly and taunting directness of gaze come from Von Stuck’s Eve.
Dopamine levels don't seem quite as interesting. But, as the reviewer explains, there's much more to the book than which neurons fire where. Kandel’s focus on just three Viennese artists, Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele, allows him “to compare the painters’ rendering of emotion, the unconscious, and the libido with contemporaneous psychological insights from Freud about latent aggression, pleasure and death instincts, and other primal drives.”
Art history and theory with a focus on Klimt, with both neurobiological and tell-me-about-your-mother insights? If Kandel throws in even a few Pagliaesque Chthonic taboos or Mommie Dearest references, we may have a winner.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has mounted an extraordinary exhibit called The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, which includes paintings, sculptures, medals, and preparatory drawings that are rarely if ever seen together. I was lured to the December press preview by the chance to see Botticelli's idealized portraits of Simonetta Vespucci (above) without a trip to Berlin. (I've previously discussed the right-facing portrait's resemblance to a certain contemporary star.) They are indeed spectacular.
But the most impressive display was the side-by-side comparison of two busts of Filippo Strozzi by Benedetto da Maiano: the terracotta study done from life, above, and the final marble version, below.
The two busts are the same, yet different: a portrait before and after subtle retouching. In the marble bust, da Maiano not only makes Strozzi looks less tired and absent but also changes the tilt of his head, giving him a nobler mien. He looks like a leader.
We've gotten so used to thinking about retouching as something done with pixels and Photoshop that we often forget not only how important it was to early glamour photographers like George Hurrell but also how unusual the ideal of non-idealized images was throughout most of western history. Until the rise of what historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison call the ideal of "mechanical objectivity," there would have been no question that a portrait should follow the Aristotelian ideal of producing a “likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful.”
This dictum applied more universally than we tend to think. In The Patron's Payoff, Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser note that “though many praise Ghirlandaio’s Portrait of an Old Man for its 'realism,' the bulbous growth on the patron’s nose was even more prominent in the preparatory drawing.” You can see the final, glamorized version, which is in the Met exhibit, to the left.
As traditionally conceived, portraits are not like snapshots (most of which aren't that candid either). They're are designed to present a public face. Within the constraints of likeness, they represent the persona the subject wishes to appear--assuming that the subject is the one commissioning the portrait. In The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, John Brewer discusses some of the dilemmas facing 18th-century portrait painters, whose clients could refuse to pay if they didn't like the results.“The trick,” writes Brewer, “was to understand how the portrait should be presented. Usually the client had a sense of how he wanted the sitter to appear. Part of a good portraitist's skill lay in discerning this; otherwise the commission could go disastrously wrong.”
For instance, Jean-Étienne Liotard, who specialized in miniatures, was too realistic for his clients' tastes. (Here's a nice example of his work.) “His likenesses were very strong,” a contemporary said, “and too like [i.e., accurate] to please those who sat for him; thus he had great employment the first year and very little the second.” Ozias Humphry ran into a different sort of conflict when he was hired by a man who wanted a portrait of his wife. The wife, naturally, wanted to look young and attractive. Humphry complied--and infuriated his paying customer. “You have forgot that she is between 30 and 40,” he wrote to Humphry, “and that I am 70, and that the character of a smirking Girl is very unfit for her situation, as I should have liked to have made her of more Importance, and I find some of my friends ridicule me upon it.”
When I read that I thought of my official Bloomberg portrait. In real life, I look more or less like the photo on the left, which is a candid of me accepting the Bastiat Prize. (I'm well lit and well coiffed.) The middle photo is the one I use most of the time as my “official” portrait and is, except for reversing the hands, a characteristic post. (My hair no longer has those post-chemo curls.) The one on the right is my Bloomberg photo, for which I had professional hair and makeup and unknown amounts of retouching. But, most important, the photographer refused to let me smile. No “smirking Girls” at Bloomberg View! (For another contrast, check out Amity Shlaes at Bloomberg View, in a candid lecture shot, and on her own website.) The expression isn't my resting or serious face either; it's more attractive. So the picture looks like I'm an actress playing someone else--the same physiognomy but a different personality.
For more on Nelson and Zeckhauser's work on image building by Florentine patrons, including Strozzi, see my article here. The Met exhibit will be on through March 18. If you can't make it in person, you might want to get the gorgeous catalog.
[Botticelli's Ideal Portrait of a Lady (right-facing image) and Ghirlandaio's Portrait of an Old Man courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other exhibit photos by Virginia Postrel and permission is granted to reproduce these photos with a link back to this post.]
I've been enjoying Christian Esquevin's Silver Screen Modiste blog, which he started in December 2010, for the past six months or so and, thanks to a Google search, knew that he lives in Southern California (he's director of library services for the city of Coranado). So when I went to the Debbie Reynolds auction, I made a point of looking for him in line. Sure enough, Christian arrived not long after I did. In our conversation there and in his subsequent blogposts on the auction, he provided valuable insight for my Bloomberg View column. I also learned that he has a large collection of costume design sketches, which are a beautiful art in themselves. Christian kindly agreed to share a few sketches (don't even think of reusing them without permission), as well as some thoughts on the art and history of movie costumes.
DG: How did you get interested in Hollywood costumes?
Christian Esquevin: My interest came relatively late. My great-aunt had been the head cutter-fitter at the RKO studio during the 1930s. Although I had heard some of her stories growing up, it was not until she bequeathed me many of her photos and costume sketches that I became interested. This interest grew into a passion as I researched many of the unknowns about these beautiful items.
DG: You've written a book about Adrian, who with Edith Head is probably the most famous Hollywood costume designer. What makes his work particularly significant?
CE: There were, and are still, many great costume designers for films. Adrian, I believe, was a genius. He combined his artistic and fashion abilities with the needs of the movie character and the actor playing the part to make indelible images. I truly believe that along with costume designer Travis Banton he created the modern look of glamour.
You can actually look at a photo of some of their creations and say that there was no precedent for such a look – that’s where modern glamour started. Take any of several photos of Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, or Carole Lombard for example. The look of knock-your-eyes-out glamour is there, and it’s still the look today. And with Adrian, you can look at fashion at the time (late 1920s and 1930s) and draw the connection between his costume designs for the stars on film and what women wanted to wear around the world. His looks have been knocked-off for so long that people nowadays can no longer make that connection. Yves St. Laurent was heavily influenced by Adrian in the 1960s, but it’s YSL that gets the mentions.
Los Angeles is always being compared unfavorably with other cities in fashion creation and influence. But in the 1930s and early 1940s, Los Angeles and Hollywood were where fashion trends were started, and that was due to the influence of costume designers like Adrian.
DG: You're now writing a book on Irene, Walter Plunkett, and Helen Rose. What should people know about them?
CE: These three costume and fashion designers were as influential and accomplished in their day as Dior or Schiaparelli. They all led fascinating creative lives designing the looks of movie-star icons, yet who hears of them today?
If your resume stated that you created the costume designs for Gone with the Wind, Singing in the Rain, and King Kong among many others, as it would for Walter Plunkett, people would be impressed. Or that you designed Grace Kelly’s wedding gown, much of Elizabeth Taylor’s early wardrobe, and for such stars as Lena Horne, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Cyd Charisse, Doris Day, Esther Williams, Debbie Reynolds, and many others, people would take notice.
As for Irene Lentz Gibbons, known simply as Irene, it was said at the time that she dressed everyone in Hollywood. [The sketch to the left is one of Irene's designs for Easter Parade.--vp] Since she worked both as a costume designer and a fashion designer with her own boutique and then her own fashion business, she really did work with many leading ladies. Her customers and stars included Marlene Dietrich, Loretta Young, Carole Lombard, Dolores Del Rio, Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo, and many others. When you look at her gowns and suits you’ll quickly see why she was so admired. They are impeccable and drop-dead gorgeous. While each of these designers is fascinating in their own right, they all worked at MGM at the same time for a period. What a combination – a unique time and place in history that will never be repeated. I just couldn’t leave that story alone.
DG: You collect costume design sketches. How do the clothes change from sketch to actual garment to what we see on film? What's the difference from medium to medium?
CE: I’ll talk about the process during the classic, “studio system,” which is what I’m most familiar with. At that time the studios employed virtually all the talent they needed on a long-term basis. In the wardrobe department this was a vertical integration, so that a designer had one or more “cutter-fitters” they worked with, and seamstresses working under them. These skilled cutter-fitters made muslin patterns based on the costume sketch a designer created. And consider that the costumes fabricated could be Elizabethan, classic Roman, or satin glamour gowns.
The costume sketch itself could be rendered by a sketch artist that had the artistic ability to paint figures and costumes. In these cases the sketch artist had to develop a close working relationship with the designer. Some designers wanted to do the sketch themselves. Adrian, for example, did not want anyone else “interpreting” his designs.
After the cutter-fitter used the sketch to devise patterns, the seamstresses would sew the final fabric based on the individual pattern pieces and then sew them for the fitting. Beaders and embroiderers would also base their work on the sketch.
Still, changes came about in the movie-making process. So some costumes were later modified from the original sketch for the movie. Edith Head liked to change her costume designs as she went along. Adrian wanted his costumes to look just like his sketch.
What is particularly fascinating about having an original production-made costume sketch is that this is an artifact that was handled by the stars, the director, often the producer, and the artisans that made the costume itself, as well as the designer. These pieces often have approval initials from these individuals, as well as budget information on the back. They are unique pieces of Hollywood film history.
DG: Can you share a few of your favorite sketches with our readers and tell us a bit about them?
CE: I have many sketches, and each is special in its own way. Although they have traditionally been called “costume sketches,” they are really water-color paintings, with more attention taken than would a pencil sketch. They were nonetheless working tools, and equally important, they represented the costume designer’s original design. I emphasize this because there are also pieces floating around that were often done many years after a film had been made. These were often done by the designers themselves as commemorative illustrations, or because they did not possess the original sketches, and were made for some of their fashion shows. Since these were done as show pieces, they are typically exact reproductions of how the costume looked on film. But even as working tools, the sketches are usually beautiful – they had to “sell” the director and star on that look.
I have picked a few that I like and I think will be of interest to the viewers, or that illustrate a point I want to make about costume designing and sketches. One of the icons of the movies is Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson. The costumes were designed by Edith Head. This is the costume sketch for Gloria Swanson’s opening scene in the film. It’s interesting because it’s not a regular dress but rather what was then called a hostess gown or hostess dress which was worn over pants. You only notice that when she descends the stairs in the movie. As with many of Edith’s designs, the final costume was changed in that the interior lining was no longer a plaid but rather a leopard print.
Here is another Edith Head costume sketch, done for Betty Hutton in Preston Sturges’s The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek in 1942 (left). Edith Head sketches are pretty rare from the early 40s. Over her long career her sketches look quite different. That’s because she used different sketch artists over time and each had their own artistic style. Also, many costume sketches are never signed. When it was a real production sketch, everyone knew who the designer was, so it was not necessary to sign the piece. Sometimes that makes identifying a particular sketch difficult. The next sketch is also by Edith Head from this period, but there is nothing to identify who it was for or for what film.
The next two are costume sketches designed by and rendered by Oscar winning costume designer Mary Wills. The first was done for Joan Collins in The Virgin Queen in 1955. Joan played Beth Throgmorton in the film. A fabric swatch is attached. This costume was one sold at the Debbie Reynolds auction. The next one was also from Mary Wills and was done for “extras” in the outdoor market scene in Hans Christian Andersen starring Danny Kaye. This is one of many sketches Mary Wills did for a variety of outdoor vendors that made the scene really come to life. The sketch looks more like it was painted on an easel at the actual Copenhagen market than a costume sketch in a studio.
This sketch by Donfeld (Don Feld) was done for Angelica Huston in Prizzi’s Honor. Donfeld’s sketching style was very distinctive, with exaggerated long limbs. This sketch was probably done later than the actual film production sketch.
Here is a costume sketch designed by Helen Rose for Edie Adams in Made in Paris in 1966. The sketch was actually rendered by Donna Peterson, Rose’s long-time sketch artist. Some sketches actually showed two views of the costume, or with and without a jacket or coat.
This sketch was done by William (Billy) Travilla for Sharon Tate in Valley of the Dolls in 1967. Travilla is famous for his costume designs for Marilyn Monroe, a couple of which sold for several millions at the Debbie auction.
DG: Are there any contemporary films whose costumes you particularly admire?
I really liked the costumes designed by Coleen Atwood for Alice in Wonderland last year. This was a challenge because of the fantastical nature of the story and the well established look of most of the characters, but she did a great job. Another “fantasy” type movie was The Tempest, with costumes designed by Sandy Powell for Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, and the other cast members. Powell really created the fantastical look of these characters based on the Shakespeare play.
For more contemporary costume I liked A Single Man, with costumes by Arianne Phillips and directed by Tom Ford. You’d expect the best costumes to come with a Tom Ford movie, and these did not disappoint both for the men’s and women’s wardrobe. And for those period costumes that are close to the “Mad Men” rage, there’s Revolutionary Road, designed by veteran costume designer Albert Wolsky for Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. The one dress that has made the biggest splash over the last several years is Keira Knightly’s green satin, backless gown from Atonement, designed by Jacqueline Durran. The movie was set in the 30s and 1940s, and this gown is really right out of the classic movies of that era.
The DG Dozen
1) How do you define glamour?
The original meaning of glamour was “to enchant” and that’s what it’s still all about. The person or the dress of glamour is one that captures attention and holds it in a mesmerizing and basically pleasurable way. It is strictly visual, so you know it when you see it without being able to describe it. That’s one reason why new looks in fashion or glamour occur.
2) Who or what is your glamorous icon?
There are several, including classic icons such as Jean Harlow, Loretta Young, Marlene Dietrich, Gene Tierney, and Catherine Deneuve, and more contemporary ones like Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, and Marion Cotillard.
3) Is glamour a luxury or a necessity?
It is a luxury, but also a necessity in that it’s a human need that many people pursue.
4) Favorite glamorous movie?
There are many, but I’ll mention Dinner at Eight, The Women, Shanghai Express, To Catch a Thief, and The Thomas Crowne Affair (with McQueen & Dunaway).
[Questions 5, 6, and 7 omitted.]
8) Most glamorous job?
I think that even creating art, music, beauty, or fashion involves toil. Creating glamour is work, and displaying glamour oneself becomes a role. The most fun is being the person watching glamour.
9) Something or someone that other people find glamorous and you don't
Parties. I would make an exception for the “masked ball” parties that were held in France by such bon-vivants as Carlos de Beistegui during the first half of the last century, for which I was regrettably not around.
10) Something or someone that you find glamorous whose glamour is unrecognized
Formal dining outdoors for lunch.
11) Can glamour survive?
It will, but it’s always in short supply.
12) Is glamour something you're born with?
No. But It helps if you’re born in the right milieu. Mostly you acquire glamour through cultivation. Some people acquire it through the expertise of others. Garbo was glamorous on the screen, but it was Adrian that created that glamour for her.
[Sketches are owned by Christian Esquevin and used with permission. Do not even think of republishing them without permission. Tumblr counts as publishing.]
Florentine authorities and residents were appalled when the cast of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” invaded the Tuscan capital for the show’s fourth season, which will debut Aug. 4. What were Snooki and The Situation doing associating themselves with the refined city of Dante and Botticelli (not to mention Ferragamo)? Even New Jersey won’t claim these louts.
The ostensible idea was to pay homage to the cast members’ Italian heritage. But these hyper-American descendants of peasants from Italy’s far southern regions hardly represent the Florentine heritage of art, humanism and elegant style. Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and Jennifer “JWoww” Farley aren’t even of Italian descent. The cast’s Florence connection is quite a stretch.
But stretching, it turns out, puts them in a great Florentine tradition. Brand-building through misleading images wasn’t invented on Madison Avenue or Hollywood. Many of Florence’s Renaissance treasures are monuments to exaggeration for the purposes of self-promotion. The medium may have changed, but the motives haven’t. It’s a bit of history that today’s Wall Street billionaires, who have a bit of a collective image problem, might want to study.
The Renaissance patrons who paid for all those frescoes, paintings, altar pieces and sculptures weren’t generally funding beauty for its own sake. They were buying status -- building their brands, we’d say today. Their patronage showed off their wealth and piety and, in many cases, advertised their supposed links to the prestigious and powerful. In the process, these patrons often shaded the truth, leaving out unflattering facts and suggesting associations they didn’t in fact have.
Know what to look for and Florentine artworks reveal secret messages that, while not as sexy as Dan Brown’s Mona Lisa fantasies, have the advantage of actually existing.
Take the boys shown walking up the stairs behind their tutor in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco in the Santa Trinita church. What could these kids have to do with the “Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis,” the official subject of the fresco? They aren’t friars or church officials.
In fact, their portraits are just good public relations. The patron, a banker named Francesco Sassetti, included them to butter up their father, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and to let the churchgoing public know that he and Lorenzo were tight.
But the painting doesn’t tell the whole story. It “conveniently omits a crucial fact about the patron’s relationship with the Medici,” write art historian Jonathan K. Nelson and economist Richard Zeckhauser in their book, The Patron's Payoff, which uses economic signaling theory to analyze Renaissance patrons’ motivations and techniques. That fact: “By the time he commissioned the fresco, Sassetti had nearly run the Geneva branch of the Medici bank into bankruptcy.” Oops. Maybe the portraits were meant as a distraction or damage control. How could you fire (or worse) a man who had sponsored such fine pictures of your kids?
Nelson and Zeckhauser’s work demonstrates that Renaissance art is full of status signals and calculated image-building -- once-obvious messages that today’s tourists never notice. Nelson, who is the art history coordinator at Syracuse University’s campus in Florence, showed me some examples at Santa Maria Novella, the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary that stands near Florence’s train station. (It was novella, or new, in the 13th century.)
On a recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, I was struck by this painting, Pergola with Oranges by Thomas Fearnley. At first it seems like a basic exercise in perspective--all those lines converging at a vanishing point. But it didn't feel like mere geometry. The golden light, the oranges, the flowers, and the Mediterranean architecture seemed emotionally resonant, and intentionally so. Wouldn't it be great to join the man reading in the sun?
The museum's brief caption suggests I was right. If the date is correct (and it may be based on the assumption that the artist was working from life rather than memory), Fearnley painted this scene during a three-year sojourn in Italy. But he was a Norwegian--someone decidedly not from a land of golden sunshine and oranges so abundant they roll on the ground. He would have appreciated how special the scene was and I think he injected some of that emotion into the painting. But maybe it's in the eye of the beholder.
This version of Shepard Fairey's 2008 Barack Obama poster, one of 200 prints the artist signed for campaign staff, will go up for auction at Bonham's on January 11. The auction house estimates its likely sales price at £1,000-1,500 ($1,546-2,319 at current exchange rates).
Although not as famous as the later versions based on Mannie Garcia's A.P. photo, the image of the candidate is even more glamorous. Instead of the angle spoofed by The Onion as a calculated "looking-off-in-the-future pose," this poster features a closer-cropped semi-profile where the stylized light and shadow work more naturally. It doesn't show the candidate's standard-issue suit or his goofy-looking ears.
Not to underplay the glamour of the famous version, but that Obama looks more like a regular politician or businessman—a dreamy guy in a suit—compared to this one. Here he not only looks less calculated and ordinary but a bit less like a Communist dictator and more like someone you'd find on American currency.
The one false note is the placement of the campaign's horizon logo. On the more-famous poster, where it appears on Obama's lapel, it reads as a campaign button. Here it looks like the artist said, "Oh wait, where can I stick that logo? Here's some empty dark space."
Check out this cropped version to see what I mean about currency.
Did the campaign make a mistake to reject this image and prefer the later one? Or was that version more appealing?
Reminded by one of Roger Ebert's tweets that yesterday was Philip Larkin's birthday, I thought the occasion would be a good excuse, even a day late, for resurrecting a post featuring one of his poems. "Come to Sunny Prestatyn" is so deceptively plain-spoken that you can easily miss the rhyme scheme: a beautiful example of carefully crafted effortlessness.
This poster,up for auction next week fromwhich sold for $2,160 at Swann Galleries, calls to mind a different (and possibly fictional) British tourism poster from the same era, the one in Philip Larkin's poem “Sunny Prestatyn.” The poem perfectly captures both the commercial glamour of travel posters and the urge to puncture the illusion.
Come to Sunny Prestatyn Laughed the girl on the poster, Kneeling up on the sand In tautened white satin. Behind her, a hunk of coast, a Hotel with palms Seemed to expand from her thighs and Spread breast-lifting arms.
She was slapped up one day in March. A couple of weeks, and her face Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed; Huge tits and a fissured crotch Were scored well in, and the space Between her legs held scrawls That set her fairly astride A tuberous cock and balls
Autographed Titch Thomas, while Someone had used a knife Or something to stab right through The moustached lips of her smile. She was too good for this life. Very soon, a great transverse tear Left only a hand and some blue. Now Fight Cancer is there.
With its aggressive cynicism, the graffiti destroys not only the model’s beauty but the poster’s promise of escape to a sunny, joyful world where satin stays taut and white. By defacing the poster, making the portrait ugly and ridiculous, the vandals remind viewers that the picture is an illusion, an image “too good for this life.”
To buy Philip Larkin's complete works, go to Collected Poems on Amazon.
John Hendricks, founder of the Discovery Channel, was already captivated by automobiles by age five. He knew the names and model years of all the cars on the road. He would sit behind the wheel of his father’s parked 1952 Plymouth Cranbrook, and instead of being in the mountains of West Virginia, he would look at his father’s maps of Colorado and Utah and imagine himself driving in the wild West.
As an adult, John loved to watch documentaries and didn't think enough were available on TV, so in 1982 he founded the Cable Educational Network and, three years later, the Discovery Channel. Over time, while doing work that he loves as chairman of Discovery Communications, he and his wife Maureen have become wealthy.
Keep in mind that most entrepreneurial ventures fail, but imagine success. Imagine yourself with a multi-million dollar net worth. Would you imagine continuing to work, starting new ventures, and spending some of your earnings on your personal interests? Or do you see yourself leading a life of leisure, perhaps traveling the world on some fashionable circuit?
John and Maureen Hendricks have realized the first fantasy: Their interests and personalities haven't changed. They aren't flashy, and the luxuries they spend their money on aren't designed to impress the world. John, like many entrepreneurs, continues to work hard at various ventures, and both he and Maureen are involved in charitable activities, including establishing two foundations. But their wealth lets them live the dream of indulging their lifelong passions.
With extra money to spend, John Hendricks began to collect autos in earnest. And to share his love of automobiles, he created the Gateway
Colorado Auto Museum to exhibit his growing collection of more than 40 vehicles. This beautifully designed museum provides both an educational and aesthetic experience. John’s statement about the museum reveals his intense passion for automotive design.
The video above shows the prototype of legendary auto designer Harley Earl’s 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 on display at the museum. General Motors decided against producing the F-88 car partly because they were concerned it would compete with the Corvette. Only four prototypes were built and only this one survives. Hendricks purchased it at auction in 2005 for $3.24 million.
The Hendricks's shared love for the American Southwest led to their latest business venture, Gateway Canyons, a luxurious resort in a remote, spectacularly beautiful location in Western Colorado. The resort is now open after Phase I development, and includes the Experius Academy, a retreat for “introducing the most curious learners to the most passionate experts.”
Maureen Hendricks is avid quilter and art-quilt collector, and the Gateway Canyons facilities display numerous large art quilts, many of them by Katie Pasquini Masopust. Katie used to hold an annual quilt symposium Alegre
Retreat in Santa Fe, which Maureen attended each year until rising venue expenses made it too difficult for Katie continue the symposium. The Gateway Canyon resort has given Maureen a way both to enjoy herself and to support other enthusiasts. With the resort’s support, Alegre Retreat now holds its workshops there. Staying at a luxurious resort to study and interact with some of the world’s best-known art quilters remains an expensive retreat for the participants, but Maureen’s passion for quilting is so strong that whether or not the quilting retreat becomes profitable is not her primary concern. She wants the aesthetic rewards of the Alegre Retreat to continue to be a part of her life.
Meeting them when my wife taught at Alegre, I was impressed at how inner-directed John and Maureen Hendricks are. If we fantasize about how we might spend multi-millions if we had them, would our choices likewise remain true to our preexisting passions? (Reflecting on this makes me consider my own passions.) Or do our fantasies revolve about living a life of luxurious leisure dictated by the images we see in fashion and travel magazines? (Such images definitely have appeal for me.) What about you? Imagining that you had some extra millions to spend, DG invites you to comment on how you might spend them.
When I first saw this painting a few years ago at SMU's Meadows Museum, I thought it was some kind of spoof. Surely the sunglasses were an anachronism in a Baroque painting.
But, no, Jusepe de Ribera's Portrait of a Knight of Santiago is a legitimate 17th-century work. The Meadows website explains that the "large ebony spectacles are of a fashionable type sometimes worn by upper class Spaniards. Besides adding concentration to the sitter’s already imposing gaze, the spectacles offered Ribera an opportunity to capture the subtle interplay of shadow and reflection in the lenses as well as a glimpse into the sitter’s personality."
The history of sunglasses seems under-researched. This dubiously sourced article seems to be the Ur-text of most online histories, but even this seemingly more reliable one suggests that tinted lenses date only to 1752, a history contradicted by de Ribera's painting from more than a century before. But there seems to be a consensus that they only caught on in the early 20th century.
Why did it take so long? Were there manufacturing and cost barriers? Or did hats and veils provide the physical and psychological protection that now come from shades? If you know more, or can point me toward good sources, please leave a comment or send an email to vpostrel-at-deepglamour.net.
Muses are an ancient concept. For millennia creative artists have appealed to the Muses to grant them eloquence beyond their normal grasp. The nine mythological Greeks Muses are depicted dancing at left. Classical Greek writers typically began their longer works with an appeal to the muses for inspiration. In this vein Shakespeare, in the prologue of Henry V, has the chorus wish, “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention….” The play that follows contains some of the most vibrant speeches ever written in the English language.
From our psychologically aware perspective we might quickly dismiss Shakespeare’s appeal for a “Muse of fire” as an Elizabethan conceit, a fanciful metaphor of no consequence. But perhaps the imaginative process of conjuring up fanciful imagery (a fiery Muse) can sometimes inspire creative artists to go beyond the boundaries of their “normal” imagination. And perhaps the magical power of muses to inspire comes in part from the power of images to spark our imagination.
The concept of muses is still current. The TV show Project Runway has fashion designers compete against each other, and their models are frequently referred to as their muses. In some episodes the designers are challenged to design for specific women, who are referred to as their muses for that week.
The traditional nine Greek muses were all goddesses, and, as symbols of artistic fertility and grace, this seems logical. Real women have served as muses as well. Dante Alighieri met Beatrice Portinari when he was nine. He fell instantly in love, and she became his muse for the rest of his life. Dante was obliged by parental contract to marry another woman, and when Beatrice died at age 24, much of Dante’s later work was inspired by and dedicated to the memory of Beatrice. Hector Berlioz was twelve when he met eighteen-year-old Estelle Dubeuf, and he was so smitten with her that she became a life-long ideal to him. In each case a relationship existed with the muse, but the romantic relationship the artist desired was only possible as an act of imagination.
Choreographer George Balanchine was noted for finding his muses in flesh-and-blood ballerinas, and he married a number of them. But when he fixated on Suzanne Farrell, there was an age gap of more than 40 years. He created some of his greatest roles for her, and though she was happy to dance them, she resisted his desire to marry her. The relationship between them seems symbolized by his choreographing of Don Quixote. He cast Farrell as Dulcinea and himself as Don Quixote, as seen in this photograph.
Terpsichore was the Greek muse of dance, and this personification seems more apt and inspiring to me than an abstract noun like “Dance.” “Dance” seems inadequate, too generic, to represent the in-the-flesh experience we might have watching a physically beautiful person dance. “Terpsichore” seems closer to creating a image that symbolizes a thrill that touches both mind and body. Real-world sensuous beauty can trigger a frisson of excitement that is unforgettable, as expressed in these lines by poet Wallace Stevens:
Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal;— But in the flesh it is immortal.
Stunned by encountering real-world beauty that must for some reason always remain beyond their grasp, artists sometimes respond by making their desire incarnate in their art form. And—as with Dante’s poetry, Berlioz’s music, and Balanchine’s choreography—when that desire is masterfully fashioned into an integral aspect of a sensible form, the resulting art can itself inspire a sense of awe, magic and glamour.
[The Italian Renaissance painting of Parnassus which shows the Muses dancing is by Andrea Mantegna.]
Gucci has designed a highly effective ad campaign for its Flora perfume that revolves around fields of flowers, diaphanous floral print dresses, and the sultry beauty of model Abbey Lee Kershaw. In the print ads Kershaw is photographed in dresses that seem to magically transform into butterfly wings. The Chris Cunningham video shown below was shot in Latvia in a seemingly endless sea of flowers. Kershaw is depicted like the Roman goddess Flora, who with waves of her arms causes the flowers to bow to her (an effect that appears to use a mobile wind machine). At the end the images are manipulated so that Kershaw and her dress seem about to take flight.
If you have seen Botticelli’s Primavera, the Gucci ads may remind you of his image of Flora, who holds spring flowers in the folds of her sheer floral dress. These images all promise that winter’s reign will end, that spring will transform the world, and that once again we will enjoy the scent of blossoming flowers.
The butterfly-like shape of the billowing dress in the Gucci ads reminds us of another transformation, that of caterpillar to butterfly. Most butterflies are colorful, beautiful creatures. How tempting it becomes to try a perfume that suggests it can transform you into a creature as beautiful as spring, flowers, butterflies, or a youthful goddess.
Most people do not find butterflies attractive in their caterpillar stage. The same is true of bugs. While we might be delighted to have a butterfly land on us, we may shudder if we notice a caterpillar or a bug crawling on us.
That’s one reason this photo by John Bonath, titled “Contemplation on a Cicada,” is so arresting. The beautiful blond model appears to be naked, photographed in a studio, and deep in thought as cicadas crawl on her hair, face, and body. This image is used on a card advertising an upcoming show of Bonath’s work at The Camera Obscura Gallery in Denver. He specializes in surreal digital images, so it is difficult to know what is “real” in this image. Cicadas don’t bite or sting humans, but I can’t image them arranging themselves in such orderly fashion.
When they molt cicadas leave behind ghosts of themselves in the form of hard shells whose claws cling to trees, bushes, and posts. (Here is a time-lapse image of a cicada molting.) We tend to associate bugs with disease and decay, and in nature various bugs and their larvae help decompose dead animals. That is a transformation that few of us enjoy contemplating, yet nature’s transformations are not always pretty. Once while leading an art class on an excursion to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, my wife came upon a group of Monarch butterflies feasting on smelly poo in a tossed-away baby diaper.
Part of the cleverness of the Gucci perfume ads is how well they combine positive images of transformation. In contrast, a brilliant aspect of the opening of David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvetwas its fluid movement from images of an idyllic small town to an man dying while watering his lawn, and then to bugs in the soil beneath the lawn. This sequence prepares us to see the film reveal part of the decadent underworld of the town. In both cases images are used to help us focus on transformations, either toward renewal or toward decay and decadence.
Boston-based artist Ria Brodell doesn’t think of her work as glamorous, but when I happened upon her “Self Portraits” exhibit at the Kopeikin Gallery in West Hollywood, her drawings struck me as perfectly expressing the way glamour works as an imaginative process. Her drawings capture how she projected her ideal self onto slightly mysterious, impossibly graceful figures—in this case, male icons ranging from classic movie stars like Gene Kelly and Cary Grant to Catholic saints and children’s toys. Like her very different “Distant Lands” drawings, which depict strange and whimsical animals, the portraits are at once charming, sweet, and slightly subversive. (This YouTube video shows Ria at work on her Distant Lands creatures.) Her exhibit will be open until March 6.
DG: How did you select the figures you depicted yourself as in
“Self-Portraits”? Why these particular men?
Ria Brodell: The figures I chose were all men I connected with in some way as a kid. If I could have grown up to be a man, I would have been a man like them. Sometimes it was their style, the way they dressed, their hair, the way they carried themselves. Sometimes it was their über masculinity.
Of course, in regards to the movie stars, all of this came from their depictions in the movies and not necessarily their real selves.
As a kid I desperately wanted a fedora, but growing up in Idaho, the closest thing I could ever find was an “outback” hat. Which is not very close at all.
RB: When I began this series I remembered a drawing I made for my First Reconciliation book in second grade (I went to Catholic school). I had drawn a picture of St. Michael that I was very proud of and I showed it to my Grandma. She told me he looked more like He-Man. I remember feeling ashamed for some reason, perhaps knowing I should have shown St. Michael more reverence. I used to draw He-Man all the time, practicing over and over until his muscles looked right. Looking back now, He-Man and St. Michael had a similar appeal to me, strong warriors, fighting for good.
As far as what unites movie stars, saints, and toys like G.I. Joe and He-Man, for me they all represented an ideal, whether it was physical aesthetics or moral values. In combining them all for “The Handsome & The Holy” I was hoping to unite my “queer side” with my religious background because they are equally present in my life.
DG: Your drawings have been described as “achingly sincere,” “both earnest and humorous,” and “intently self-aware schmaltz.” Their humor is gentle and sweet, not ironic—juxtaposing He-Man and St. Michael is funny, but you are, at the same time, owning up to your desires to be like them. Is it hard for a contemporary artist to portray desire and identification without using irony to maintain your cool? Does glamour risk condemnation as kitsch?
RB: I don’t think I’m intentionally trying to be funny in all the drawings. I’m trying to be completely honest, but I think the juxtaposition of some of these subjects is just naturally odd and therefore funny. Sexuality, gender identity, and religion can be very serious, often complicated subjects. I want to create work that deals with these subjects in a simple and not heavy-handed way.
Of course there is always a risk of the work having unintended consequences, such as being deemed “kitsch.” With this work there is a bit of background information needed. On the surface they can appear to be just glamorous self-portraits or “dress-up” but my hope is that people look further than that and begin to think about gender identity and sexuality outside of our society’s strict definitions.
DG: One of your drawings is called “A Picnic With Audrey Hepburn.” It shows Audrey from the back, but there is no one with her. A critic described it as “a picture of mythic femininity, here elusive.” But the title suggests the perspective not of Audrey but of her unseen date, inviting viewers to project themselves into the scene. What inspired this drawing? What does Audrey Hepburn mean to you?
RB: As a teenager I became slightly obsessed with Audrey Hepburn after seeing her in “My Fair Lady.” She was not only beautiful and glamorous but also a humanitarian. For me, this drawing represents the complexity of figuring out ones sexuality, especially queer sexuality, the desire and simultaneous shame I felt. How could I possibly desire a woman and not just any woman, but Audrey Hepburn? Feeling unworthy of her, I chicken-out on our date.
Shown at the Paris Fashion week last Thursday, the Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2010 Menswear Collection immediately caught my eye. Not because I am particularly fond of Vuitton (like too many other fashion houses, it has fallen prey to the Plague of Excessive Logos), but rather because of the references to Vienna.
Dominated by narrow-waisted suits, crisp riding boots and structured bags, the collection is described as having been inspired by Vienna's Age of Splendor, and by the Vienna of today. As Vienna has been my home on and off for the past several years, I could not help but ruminate on my own impressions of the city's style, and on the implications of its new status as Fashion Muse.
Over the course of my life in Vienna, I have continuously struggled with how I relate to it. On some level, it has become deeply familiar and even quite mundane, while on another level it has remained a romantic hallucination. In many ways, Vienna is a continental European city like many others – rich in heritage but dynamic in contemporary culture. The streets are full of young trendy people, the museums offer impressive lineups of cutting-edge international artists, the UN Headquarters looms large, and no matter where you are, you can be certain that a Starbucks or an H&M is not terribly far off. And yet, Vienna is not quite of this time. The spirit of the Austro-Hungarian Empire remains present, its rigid, explosive splendor running through the city like a rogue undercurrent.
Experiencing Vienna in this manner is like having persistent double vision, or perhaps even triple vision – whereby reality, history and historical fiction co-exist and struggle for domination over the cultural landscape.
When I ask myself why this is so, one obvious thing that comes to mind is the architecture. Unlike that of other German-speaking cities, Vienna's architecture has largely remained intact after the Second World War. Enormous neoclassical structures erected for the sole purpose of glorifying the Empire continue to surround the city center along the Ringstraße. The towering white marble, the black wrought iron, the vast stretches of cobblestone, and the tall chestnut trees, create a backdrop that insists upon itself and undermines the passage of time. In a sense, it is a romantic backdrop. But the brand of romance is the kind that makes one feel overpowered and somewhat uneasy. The architecture - both in its grandiosity and in the sheer fact of its continuity - sets a mood over the central district that even an army of neon Starbucks and H&M signs cannot overpower.
Granted, architecture can be seen as a passive influence. But there are other areas where Vienna's anachronistic atmosphere is maintained by choice. Take, for instance, the phenomenon of the Viennese Cafe. One can walk into any number of Viennese cafes that look as if they have remained basically unchanged since the 1920s: gilded interiors, plush red upholstery, starched white tablecloths, waiters in tuxedos, sugar cubes in tiny silver bowls, newspapers attached to wooden holders... the head spins from the elegance, and extravagance of it. And the elaborate coffee nomenclature puts other countries' terminologies to shame. (When in doubt, just order a Melange - and stay away from what the Viennese call a Cappuccino unless you want your coffee made with pure cream instead of frothed milk.)
It is not just the look of such a cafe that functions like a time machine, but the atmosphere as well. In a Viennese cafe, you will be called by your title. You will not encounter crammed floor space, even if it means that the cafe is serving only a quarter of the patrons that it could be serving. And you will never be rushed to free up your table, even if you have been nursing the same cup of coffee for hours while a crowd of hopefuls queues outside. And no, such places are not gimmicky tourist traps; they are perfectly normal cafes where the Viennese themselves go to relax.
And then of course, there are the head-turning persons you see in Vienna, the likes of whom I have not encountered elsewhere: from the ladies in floor-length fur coats and sculptural hats who look as if they've walked out of a silent film, to the serious men with heavy, intense gazes and thick streaks of gray in their hair regardless of their age, to the people wearing traditional national costumes as formalwear on a night out. True, the “retro” look has been internationally popular for over a decade, but I feel that in Vienna the look isn't “retro” at all, as it is done entirely without irony. The mixing of the old with the new simply reflects the city's nonlinear sense of time and its playful attitude towards contemporary realities.
An interesting trend I have noted, is how many fashion ateliers in Vienna are simultaneously involved in costume design for the theater. Of all the arts, theater probably occupies the most important position in Vienna, and has enormous cultural influence. Perhaps this explains why even the most contemporary boutiques seem to be at least partly inspired by dramatic turn of the 20th Century style: the designers who make the clothes for the streets are the same ones who create the costumes for the local stage. It would also explain why the past that mingles with Vienna's present seems to be not so much a historically accurate past, as a fantastical one: a romantic notion that the city embraces and projects back onto itself.
Getting back to the Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2010 Menswear Collection, I think that in large part it succeeds in portraying all of these things. The clothing is architectural, theatrical, and communicative, and there is a conceptual depth to it that exceeds what I have come to expect from Vuitton. The garments are rigidly tailored while suggesting fluidity, tightly closed while expressing a potential for openness. They evoke Sigmund Freud's writings on hysteria, Egon Schiele's images of tortured lanky youths, Gustaf Klimt's gilded motifs, and Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis while mixing traditional and contemporary materials and employing deconstructive techniques.
The LV collection is rather impressive really. But... Well, quite frankly, it brings to mind what has been available in Vienna for as long as I have lived there. If you want Viennese splendor that embodies all the anachronistic complexity the city has to offer, visit Vienna itself and walk through some of the neighborhoods that are lined with independent boutiques carrying Austrian designers, including the areas around Neubaugasse and Kettenbrückengasse. Viennese style is at its best in its natural habitat.
[LV runway images via Louis Vuitton/ Antoine de Parceval; all other images belong to the author]
DG’s subheading is “at the intersection of imagination and desire.” In his book Stein On Writing, editor Sol Stein says of both fiction and non-fiction, “All storytelling from the beginning of recorded time is based on somebody wanting something.” When desire is acted upon so passionately that it defies common sense, we have the possibility of an exciting story.
“King’s wife runs off with foreign prince. War is declared.” So a contemporary tabloid might headline the act of passion that triggers the Trojan War, which Homer immortalizes in The Iliad, one of the first great works of literature in the Western world. (Ancient sources differ as to whether Helen left willingly or was abducted.) If we saw this headline today, we would want to know more. We would want to see photographs of Helen, said to be the most beautiful woman in the world. If we did an Internet search, we might be surprised to learn that Helen is rumored to be illegitimate, the daughter of Leda and Zeus, the philandering God who (in another of his shape-shifting affairs) seduced Leda while disguised as a swan.
Passionate, ill-advised behavior can be the basis of a good story. The creators of fairy tales realized that the stakes needed to high in order to impress children with the consequences of good and bad behavior. This is true of high art as well. In Shakespeare and Opera Gary Schmidgall writes that operas and Shakespeare’s plays are about how not to behave. The main characters are inevitably “slaves of passion,” and those characters who preach common sense are sure to be secondary. The plots of many of Shakespeare’s plays could be reduced to tabloid headlines. “Jealous husband kills wife, then himself” (Othello). “Wife convinces husband to commit murder” (Macbeth). “King forms new church to wed new wife” (Henry VIII).
Stein writes that, “Readers like to experience things in fiction that they would not want to experience themselves in real life.” The Internet allows us quickly indulge our our curiosity when we learn that famous people have behaved badly. We are curious when the news breaks that a beautiful actress is having an affair with the husband of another beautiful actress. Or when it is discovered that a trusted executive has embezzled millions of dollars. Or when it is learned that a supposedly upstanding athlete or politician has commented adultery.
Speaking again of fiction, Stein writes, that “Writers are troublemakers....Their job is to give readers stress, strain, and pressure....readers who hate those things in life love them in fiction.” And to some extent, we love to read about real-life stressful experiences, as long as they are happening to someone else. Regarding nonfiction, Stein comments, “In life we prefer an absence of conflict. In what we read, an absence of conflict means an absence of stimulation.”
The epic poetry of The Iliad used a tremendous cast of characters, from common soldiers to Olympian Gods, all of whom were capable of bad behavior. When kingdoms and empires were ruled by monarchs, the desire to rule led to horrendous crimes. Members of a royal families sometimes murdered each other by means ranging from poison to torture and execution.
Cleopatra VII married two of her younger brothers in succession, conspired against both, and formed successive romantic, child-bearing relationships with both Julius Ceasar and Mark Anthony to consolidate her power. Cleopatra has fascinated storytellers for centuries, witness Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra and several films. (The photo at right is of Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra in Cecile B. DeMille’s 1934 film.) Part of our fascination with Cleopatra stems from her position linking different cultures, but we also are intrigued by her ruthless ambition and seemingly calculated ability to captivate men.
In contrast, the less-well-known 12th-century Welsh princess Nest ferch Rhys was apparently simply so beautiful that men were desperate to possess her, leading to disgraceful behavior on their part. After her father died, King Henry I of England appointed himself her “protector,” and his protection resulted in Nest bearing him a son. Henry then married her to one of his followers, Gerald de Windsor, and she bore him five children. Then her cousin Prince Owain met her, was smitten, attacked Gerald’s castle, and carried her off. This led to a local civil war which cost Owain’s father his lands. She bore Owain two sons. Eventually Gerald killed Owain, and Nest was returned. After Gerald died, another man took her as his lover, and she bore him a son. Imagine the tabloid headlines for various stages of that story.
There are no photographs of Helen, Cleopatra, or Nest to feed our curiosity; so for centuries artists have portrayed such women using their imagination and the standards of beauty in their time. The painting shown above of Helen of Troy is from the 19th century; the one below is from the 17th. Look at the admiring gaze Italian painter Guido Remi gave to Paris.
In films directors cast a beautiful actress in the role of Helen and hope that in onscreen action she proves charismatic. In the Renaissance, Helen’s beauty was captured in words. In Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr. Faustus, Faustus sells his soul to Mephistopheles. Before he is dragged to Hell, Fautus asks to see the legendary beauty, Helen of Troy. His wish is granted, and Faustus is captivated. Here is the beginning of his enraptured speech:
Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
“And all is dross that is not Helena.” To a “slave of passion” consumed by an overwhelming desire, everything else can seem worthless. If such people risk everything else to pursue their desires, stories of their reckless actions may become the stuff of legends and artistic portrayals, or, more likely, tabloid headlines.
[The first Helen of Troy painting by Evelyn De Morgan. The second by Guido Reni. Both images are from Wikimedia Commons.]
Recently up for auction, this Edward Quinn photo of Grace Kelly primping during the filming of To Catch a Thief presents an usual take on a common artistic subject: the beautiful woman at the mirror. From such classics as Diego Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus and Kitagawa Utamaro’s portraits of beauties at their mirrors to this Mark Shaw photo of Audrey Hepburn, the usual composition uses the mirror to give the audience multiple views of the subject: front and back, the face from different angles, the woman as she sees herself and as she is seen by others.
Here, however, we see Grace Kelly entirely from the outside. We do not see the reflection she sees. Rather than a woman of fragments and angles, she appears in a unified view. The photo is a study of surfaces and textures: the shiny, soft hair she is brushing, the lacy gloves, the ornate top, the golden down on her tan arm, the shiny mirror overlaid on the dull trailer. The focal point, framed by her crossed arms is Grace’s face, made even more focal because we know she, too, is looking at it.
The glamour of the toilette points up the difference between male and female audiences (or, to use a phrase encrusted with all sorts of ideological theory, the male and female gaze). For male audiences, portraits of women grooming themselves have traditionally had a voyeuristic quality and were often an excuse for nudity. Projecting himself into the image, the viewer does not generally identify with the subject but with the scene; he imagines not being the subject but being with her. A female viewer is more likely to identify with the subject. She sees herself in the mirror—or longs to.
That feeling was articulated by many of the movie fans interviewed by Jackie Stacey for her study Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. Recalling their youthful filmgoing in the 1940s, women expressed longing and identification when talking about the stars they loved. “It wasn’t Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire, it was me,” said one. Another said, “My favourite was Rita Hayworth. I always imagined if I could look like her I could toss my red hair into the wind…and meet the man of my dreams.”
For women in particular, there is a second kind of glamour of the toilette: the makeover fantasy, which combines the desire for transformation with the idea of being pampered by professionals. “It’s exciting to have important people do stuff for you,” said a nurse from rural Arkansas on ABC’s Extreme Makeover. Hollywood stars not only represent the promise of beauty and fame but also—thanks to their squadrons of makeup artists, hair stylists, wardrobe designers, and, nowadays, everyday fashion stylists—the dream of having an aesthetic entourage on call.
Spurred by the FTC’s concern with blogger freebies, I’ve decided to regularly feature interesting looking books that I’ve received as review copies but haven’t necessarily read. You can buy them (or just get more information) by clicking the links. Here are the first two.
Why Architecture Matters, by Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker
Andy Warhol, by Arthur C. Danto, art critic for The Nation
Overeager makeover artists, devilish little brothers, and occasional Dexter fans have long enjoyed dismembering the world’s favorite doll. By contrast, Brooklyn artist Margaux Lange, 30, describes herself as “an Art jeweler who re-Members Barbie fondly.” She doesn’t tear up dolls for the sake of destruction, or for anti-Barbie social commentary. Rather, she reassembles Barbie parts into joyful jewelry: heart pendants made of Barbie busts, earrings from eyes or smiles.
In December, Lange will have a solo exhibition of her one-of-a-kind pieces at the Luke and Eloy Gallery in Pittsburgh. She sells production designs through Etsy and blogs here. The strange charm of her work has attracted attention from Rob Walker in the NYT Magazine and, most recently, TimeOut New York, where she appears surrounded by translucent bins filled with mostly headless Barbies.
New Yorkers can visit Margaux's studio this Saturday night, September 26, as part of the Morgan Arts Building Open Studio event featuring more than 25 artists (and an open bar). For details see Margaux's blog.
DG: You credit Barbie with fueling your creative life growing up—an unusually positive way of writing about an often-controversial plaything. What did Barbie mean to you as a child?
Margaux Lange: I used to be obsessed with Barbie dolls as a kid. They played a pivotal role in my development as a tool for acting out and exploring the human relationships in my own life, as well as the fantasy lives I imagined. My experience with Barbie was uniquely positive in this way. Barbie can be a source of empowerment through exploration and imagination. Each child's experience with the doll is unique and I believe there's a value in that.
I would spend hours crafting many precious details for my Barbie dolls and their miniature worlds, such as: pillows, stone fireplaces, food items, clothing, accessories, etc. Playing with Barbie dolls helped to develop my dexterity and strengthened my attention to small detail: skills imperative to the art of jewelry making.
DG: How did you get started “fondly re-membering” Barbies?
ML: Barbie made her debut in my artwork in high school and then again in various incarnations throughout college where I studied fine Art (The Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD.) I started to focus more on jewelry making during my junior year, and I became interested in incorporating found objects into my metal work. Because I had done artwork with Barbie in the past (drawings, sculptures, etc) it felt natural to try her out in the jewelry realm. It was an unusual idea with a strong personal connection for me, so it felt right. The Plastic Body Series Jewelry Collection continued to grow from there.
DG: How has your relationship with Barbie changed since you played with her as a child?
ML: I had no desire to cut up all my Barbies as a kid, thatʼs for sure! So that has certainly changed. As a child, I would look at a doll and she would instantly transform in my mind into the imaginary personality I had dreamed up for her.
Now I look at a doll as I would any other material: I think about how that piece of plastic is going to be transformed in an interesting, wearable way.
Iʼm also able to intellectually step back and examine the impact Barbie has had on our society from all angles now. I certainly didnʼt think about any of that as a child so of course that has changed as well.
DG: What do you think makes Barbie glamorous?
Barbie is a quintessential icon of glamour. Sheʼs intriguing and appealing on many levels, not to mention she owns the biggest wardrobe on the planet, has a multitude of cars, shoes and accessories, and has had every possible career you can imagine. I think that makes her pretty glamorous.
DG: How has the changing face of Barbie over the years influenced your work? When Mattel alters Barbieʼs face or body, do you relate to Barbie in a different way?
ML: No, I wouldnʼt say that the way I relate to Barbie changes when Mattel rolls out a new style, but it does change my work. For example, Mattel made some major changes to Barbieʼs body in the year 2000 when they introduced the new “belly-button models” which had wider hips, a more shapely bum, and for the first time, a belly button and a smaller chest. Because her new bust size was smaller than the original Barbieʼs, it happened to be the perfect size and shape for making my Have-a-Heart Necklaces, which are now a prominent piece in my production line.
DG: Barbie is the quintessential blue-eyed blonde, but some of your pieces (the bust hearts, for instance) play with different skin tones. Is Barbie actually more varied than we think of her?
Barbie is a lot more varied than people assume. There is quite a lot of difference in skin tones, body styles, hair colors and facial features as well. Itʼs interesting however, that when we think of “Barbie: the icon” an image of blonde hair and blue eyes is what comes to mind.
DG: When talking about your work, you mention the vast impact that Barbie has had on our society. What do you think is the most important impact Barbie has had over the last 50 years? Do you think her impact has been more positive or negative?
The most important impact she has had has probably been on the millions of little girls who have been drawn to Barbie as a way to understand, what is to them, a very abstract notion of “Womanhood.” Barbie is very unlike us as little girls, and yet under our complete control to manipulate and project onto her “adult-hood” in whatever way we wish. There is enormous power in that type of imaginary play.
However, thatʼs not to say thereʼs nothing to examine regarding Barbie as an ideology. Barbieʼs life of excess has certainly had its negative implications. Particularly the dollʼs emphasis on materialism, beauty, and fashion. We are a nation obsessed with beauty and youth, and Barbie is a direct reflection of our cultural impulses in this way. Plastic and forever youthful, she remains relevant and in-vogue. With each generation, she is re-invented as we see fit to define her. I wouldnʼt be surprised if she sticks around for another 50 years because of this.
DG: Other artists have made Barbie-inspired work, particularly work that deconstructs or takes Barbie apart, often in violent ways. Why do you think we have this urge to deconstruct Barbie?
Barbie is the most beloved and maligned of playthings. Rarely do we feel indifferent about her. I think the urge to destroy Barbie comes from this polarization. To some, she represents oppression in the form of unattainable perfection and unrealistic beauty standards. Thereʼs something cathartic about deconstructing a symbol of those ideals.
At times, my work has dealt with utilizing the doll as an archetype for critiquing beauty, materialism, and prescribed gender roles often associated with women in our society. Sometimes I aim to distance myself and critically evaluate pop culture in this way, and other times I wish to engage and participate in it. Much like my own experience with womanhood as a feminist: a series of rejecting and embracing.
DG: Who buys your work and why?
The Plastic Body Series is sought after by Art Jewelry collectors, Barbie nostalgics, and bold individuals who arenʼt afraid to wear jewelry that sparks a conversation. Some people respond to its humor and think itʼs clever and fun, or it feeds a sense of nostalgia for them. Some wear it as a feminist statement and others simply appreciate it because itʼs bizarre and unique.
I love that everyone brings his or her own baggage and reaction to the work. Itʼs indicative of their own relationship with, or feelings about the icon, as well as how an individual defines wearable jewelry. My goal has been to create Art that a broad range of people can relate to and I feel Iʼve been successful with this.
A background in fine Art gave me the foundation necessary for conceptual exploration in my jewelry work, however, it is my personal connection with Barbie that I credit for the success of this series. It's ironic that what I adored as a child has become the focus of my career as an adult.
DG: Where do you get your components? Do you buy used Barbies? New Barbies in bulk?
ML: I acquire all the dolls as second-hand objects; usually from yard sales, thrift stores, and Ebay. I also have a few friends across the country that are always on the lookout for me. I have thousands of “previously owned” Barbie dolls and parts in my studio from which to choose. It’s important to me that the dolls have had a previous life in the hands of a child. It's a crucial part of the story, the love, and the conceptual basis for the work. I also really like the idea that the dolls are being repurposed after they’re discarded and are contributing to Art, not landfills.
The DG Dozen
1) How do you define glamour?
Glamour is something or someone that exudes a particular allure, an air of confidence, style, uniqueness, distinction, beauty, and grace.
2) Who or what is your glamorous icon?
Besides Barbie? My grandmother was always very glamourous to me growing up. For instance, she would never dream of putting a carton of milk on the table as is, it always went into a “proper” carafe or something first. This seemed very glamorous to me.
During the recent PGA golf tournament the male commentators expressed their tongue-in-cheek appreciation to the woman who phoned in to let them know that they should have identified the color of a golfer’s shirt as “persimmon.” The commentators readily acknowledged they would never have come up with that term themselves.
A friend who is an artist told me a story of walking with her husband and two of his friends. The men began talking about the great looking red car parked up ahead. The artist couldn’t understand what red car they were talking about. The men grew frustrated with her, and one of them walked up to the car, put his hand on it, and said, “This car.” Equally exasperated, she said, “That’s not red, it’s burgundy!”
In 1987 linguist George Lakoff published a book titled Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. (The first part of the title refers to one of the four noun classes used in the Australian aboriginal language of Dyirbal.) One of the things he discusses in the book is the number of color terms that children are taught in various languages around the world. This varies from as few as two to as many as twelve. The colors black and white are always taught, and if a language contains more than two basic colors, red is always present. Beyond that, which other colors are taught varies from language to language.
“Persimmon” and “burgundy” are not basic color terms, but for people in art and design fields, restricting themselves to a dozen color terms would severely impoverish their vocabulary. People with a strong interest in a subject develop a rich vocabulary relative to that field. The relationship between color terms and how we perceive colors is a hotly debated topic.
The names for fashion colors seem to change with changing fashions. To my eye, the fashion color persimmon seems to range from a slightly reddish-orange to the fashion color “persimmon red.” “Persimmon” was an apt description for the color of the golfer’s shirt, but only someone with an interest in fashion would have been likely to use it. The commentators, on the other hand, could have discussed at length the differences between a 3 wood, 3 iron, and 3 hybrid. (Incidentally, tournament winner Y. E. Yang used the latter to make a shot so spectacular that the commentators felt a plaque would be placed in the fairway to commemorate it.)
[Photo of persimmons by pizzodisevo. Used under the Flickr Creative Commons license.]
Hyperion Records often puts art work on its classical album covers, but using this Romance-novel-style cover for Tanja Becker-Bender’s recording of the PaganiniCaprices for solo violin is puzzling. (The cover is a reproduction of a 1996 allegorical painting by André Durandtitled Salieri’s Dream.) The image of a sexy man playing an instrument to seduce a beautiful woman is an old cliché (carried to extremes in one scene in the movie The Red Violin), but using such an image here seems strange.
After all, the album’s performer is a woman—so why not show a man lounging on the couch, admiring a wild-haired woman who dazzles him with her beauty and virtuosity? Why show a woman posed on the couch, looking up adoringly at a male violinist? Or, looking closer, could the violinist also be a woman? What is he or she wearing? Is that a shirt or a nightgown? What kind of dream is Salieri having?
And what about about the howling dog with his huge paw draped over the brunette’s feet? If this cover was supposed to suggest that the CD contains music for romance, a howling dog doesn’t fit the mood. Perhaps it’s yawning. Or could those ferocious-looking bared teeth be some kind of ominous warning?
The disturbing image that Durand has placed on the mantle is Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia, a famous painting that depicts Tarquin threatening Lucretia before he rapes her. Does the smug look on the violinist’s face, in combination with that violent painting and his knife-like bow, suggest that he is thinking of thrusting a menacing knife at his adoring admirer and then forcibly raping her? (She looks as if she might welcome some consensual thrusting, but no doubt she would be horrified to be raped at knife point.) Don’t trust him, girl!
Our dark-haired beauty reclines alluringly in her lacy red gown, mimicking one of the traditional poses of Venus. (Is this another reference to a Titian painting?). Could the African violinist in the lower right corner be some obscure reference to Manet’s Olympia? Durand himself states that the figure at the lower left corner represents Salieri, but that the face belongs to British art critic Brian Sewell, a man that Durand feels personifies “envy.” (I suspect Sewell criticized Durand’s paintings.)
If, for the sake of the album, the violinist is supposed to be Paganini, then the image is far off the mark. The Italian violinist’s appearance was so unusual that it helped feed the rumor that he had gained his phenomenal playing skills by making a pact with the Devil. Most drawings of the time portray him with long dark hair, a hooked nose, sideburns, and a rail-thin figure. No feminine-featured, fair-skinned blonds need apply.
The Art Production Fund's "Works on Whatever" project offers beach towels with designs by fine artists. The Alex Katz design has the most glamour, but I'm a big fan of Ed Ruscha and love his nerdy take here. (Hat tip: Liquid Treat)
Kana Harada says she was born an artist. "I started drawing when I was a year old, and my mother still tells me that when I was four, I announced, ‘I was born to draw.’ Ever since then, art is what I’ve lived,” she says.
Born and raised in Tokyo, with a short stint in Long Island due to her father’s job, Harada had formal training in art in Tokyo. Her husband’s Texas Instruments job brought her to Dallas in 1995 and it was there that she started to create birdcage-inspired pieces out of hand-cut foam sheets.
As she told Artistic Network in 2005, “You may never see any birds in my cages, as I imagine them to be like fairies, coming and going when no one is looking, but I hope you'll feel their joy, their songs of freedom, and the sense of enriched peace in each and every perch I have created.”
DG: With your mirrors, is the shape of the mirror the magical/glamorous part to you, or is it the idea of the gaze?
why?
Kana Harada: It's both. I see them in a theatrical sense, because they were initially inspired by Sleeping Beauty and vintage pictures of women looking into hand mirrors. I hope they're a door to other wonderful dimensions within the viewer... their stories.
DG: Some studies have said we are more narcissistic today than ever before. Do you feel that way?
KH: Not at all.In this economy, our values are definitely changing. We're relating more with others, sharing similar experiences and supporting one another. To me, this is the beginning of finding true luxury and "glamour." Enriching and deepening the beauty within us.
DG: How do you define glamour?
KH: Grace, elegance and kindness. I believe it’s a state of mind, knowing exactly who you are, being in tune with your inner-self.
DG: Who or what is your glamorous icon?
KH: The craftsmanship and design of American plastic handbags from the 50’s, and Audrey Hepburn in her later years.
Matthew Collings and Emma Briggs use six thousand medieval pottery shards from the collection of York Art Gallery for a mosaic, which will cover almost the entire floor space of York Minster. The site-specific installation is based on the Five Sisters window.
In Renaissance art, the Christian virtue caritas--charity or selfless love (agape), as in 1 Corinthians 13--is shown as a nursing mother. Beginning in the 14th century, this image replaced earlier ones of Charity doing the good works enumerated in Matthew 25:35-36, notably clothing the naked.
As a historical matter, the image probably derives from the portrayal of the Virgin Mary as Virgo Lactans, suckling her son and thus emphasizing the full humanity of the Incarnation. (One of the earliest portrayals of Mary, the Virgo Lactans itself mirrors the iconography of Isis nursing Horus.)
But why did a nursing mother seem appropriate as an emblem of Charity? Hanna Rosin's recent Atlantic article, "The Case Against Breast-Feeding" (like many headlines, this one overstates the author's actual argument), offers a clue:
Let’s say a baby feeds seven times a day and then a couple more times at night. That’s nine times for about a half hour each, which adds up to more than half of a working day, every day, for at least six months. This is why, when people say that breast-feeding is “free,” I want to hit them with a two-by-four. It’s only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing.
Breast-feeding, in other words, is a real pain and, thus, a generous act of sustenance, an appropriate metaphor for Charity. As Rosin's article makes clear, it is decidedly unglamorous--though pro-nursing propagandists sometimes make it so.
So does this beautiful image of Caritas from Filippino Lippi's Strozzi Chapel frescos in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Young, sexy, and serene, with adorable, well-behaved children and suggestive flowing tresses, Caritas hardly makes nursing--or, by implication, good deeds--seem like a sacrifice. For Strozzi women, it wasn't. As art historian Jonathan Nelson, an expert on Filippino Lippi, pointed out to me, Renaissance viewers would have seen the portrait not as a mother but as a wet nurse. As in so many instances, the key to maintaining real-world glamour is having good help.
Saturday night and you ain't go nobody? Drag the corset out of your closet, strap on your 6 inch heels and slither over the World of Wonder's Storefront Gallery and check Bettie Page: Heaven Bound.
Curated by Lenora Claire (shown above left and right), the exhibit features work by Olivia and some special guests, as well as the usual glam WoW crowd with James St. James, Thairin Smothers, my former bosses Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, and everyone who loves the nightlife.
Guest blogger Peter LiCalsi is a screenwriter in Los Angeles who has done work in production design and art direction. You can contact him at peterlicalsi-at-gmail.com.
One of my guilty pleasures is the "reality" show, The Hills, in which a cadre of vapid beautiful people (the millennial Bright Young Things, though not all that bright) are given the skeleton of scenes which loosely resemble events actually unfolding in their own lives, and improvise accordingly. We are meant to believe that the scenes played out are the actual lives of those stars, or personalities. What unfolds can be a banal and trite soap opera, but more often than not the scenes themselves are surreal and voyeuristic. The fourth wall is never broken, yet what remains--or rather, what is allowed to remain--are the awkward pauses, the stuttering, the bizarre locutions and facial gestures, the run-ons, and the fragments that are rife within, yes ... reality.
In film, the vérité technique has been used to great effect to illustrate that a subject needn't be editorialized to be compelling. Much of the most famous vérité work has sought to depict the mundane. The Hills, by contrast, uses a vérité lens to examine traditionally "glamorous" subjects. The young, beautiful, and affluent are seen in all their glory--attending nightclubs, buying expensive clothes, staying at resorts, and jet setting to Vegas one weekend, Cabo the next. Yet they are robbed of an essential element of glamour: grace.
This combination of glamorous subject matter and graceless presentation is derivative of many of the films from Andy Warhol's Factory. Indeed, much of reality television seems to be Warhol's legacy: Warhol's famous “15 minutes of fame” idea is predicated on the notion that fame per se is a cultural commodity, with value independent of any deeper association. The rise of the reality show, the faux-reality show, YouTube, etc.--these owe a great deal to Warhol's insistence that simply focusing the eye toward a subject can imbue it with artistic and commercial value.
Among these, The Hills is quite special. It dispenses with the grace, eloquence, and comportment that are typically granted to attractive, affluent characters in western pop culture. In doing so it confirms, intentionally or not, Warhol's point that beauty validates itself indefinitely. And fame validates beauty eternally. Perhaps we miss the point when we agonize that Lauren, Audrina, Brody, and The Whole Sick Crew probably couldn't master long division, and are thus not worthy of mass adulation. They are works of art to be observed, nothing more--the descendants of the Campbell’s Soup Can.
More pointedly, it’s difficult to watch Warhol's Poor Little Rich Girl, the hour-long film of heiress Edie Sedgwick preparing for a party, musing on about her reckless spending habits, rock and roll, and fur coats, and not recognize some happenstance lineage to The Hills. Warhol expanded upon Keats's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” making beauty an acceptable tenet of art after the deconstructionism of the previous half-century. The Hills is one of the many chapters in the battleground of glamour and reason, one that says we can have our cake and look at it too.
This completely unauthorized and illicit photo (click for a larger view) is from an exhibit currently installed at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence. With an evocative name that translates "The Medici: The Dream Returns," the show features life-size, and three-dimensional, versions of personages known only from their portraits. Recreated by Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, the clothes are made not of silks and laces embroidered with gold but of paper and paint. (Good photos and a video in English are on her website here.)
Paper, says de Borchgrave, "is a very simple, undaunting material. There's not the same fear of ruining it as there is with cloth. I create a trompe-l'oeil, an illusion, as in painting, as is the Chapel of the Magi frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli," the museum's signature work, whose portraits feature carefully rendered textiles.
Perhaps because its material is so scratchy and yet so light, the exhibit reminded me of an observation about the relationship between painting and fashion made by the brilliant fashion historian Anne Hollander in a 1991 essay published inThe Idealizing Vision : The Art of Fashion Photography. Hollander wrote:
In the superior world of the painter, noble personages in all sorts of awkward gear were created and presented in a state of ideal dignity and refinement; and so a standard was set for perfect appearance that might be followed by the living originals, who could feel beautiful in their trappings instead of trapped. Consequently, still bigger lace ruffs and even thicker silk skirts might continue in vogue, even into the next generation, because Rubens and Van Dyck and their colleagues were at work rendering them glorious to see, wonderfully becoming, and apparently effortless to wear.
Of course, it's also possible that those people looked in their mirrors--or at each other--and wondered why they couldn't live up to those glamorous images. Could a little girl in a dirty world ever have a dress this white?
In 431 the church declared the Holy Virgin the Mother of God, thus sanctioning the cult of Mary. Her popularity became staggering. In France alone more than a hundred churches and eighty cathedrals were raised in the name of Notre Dame, Our Lady, including the cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, and Amiens.
To counter the massive illiteracy of the Dark Ages, in the 6th century Pope Gregory the Great overruled the commandment forbidding the making of idols, declaring that "Painting can do for the illiterate what writing does for those who can read." To fill churches, cathedrals, and private chapels, hundreds of sculptures, frescoes, and paintings were commissioned of the Madonna and child. Many of these images are remarkably beautiful, typically showing us a serene young mother holding her clear-eyed young son. Images of Mary and her son became so widespread that when people had spiritual visions in this period, they most often saw the Virgin Mary.
Images of the Virgin Mother presented the church's two desired states for fertile women: either chaste virgins or married women bearing children. Celibacy was much championed in the Middle Ages. The church encouraged young women to remain permanently chaste by becoming a nun. The cult of courtly love that arose in France praised young women who
remained unattainable, who steadfastly resisted the pleas of their wooers.
Unmarried women who failed to remain virginal until married were regarded as
loose, immoral, and even sexually aggressive. Men supposedly feared that such
seductresses would tempt them like the Biblical Salome, but many were fascinated by the ancient femme fatale archetype.
Hard and fast categories like virgin, mother, or immoral seductress are of little use to most contemporary women, and in modern culture images abound of women in multiple and varied roles. We see images of women as doctors, lawyers, writers, mothers, athletes, business owners, models, police officers, fire fighters, and fighter pilots.
One striking advertising image shows Danica Patrick's face split into the roles of race car driver and glamorous woman. In one case a helmet completely masks her identity--she seems a mysterious black knight. In the other case hairstyle and makeup create another kind of mask--she seems an unstoppable seductress. Neither image is false, but neither represents ordinary reality. Both are stylized, artful portrayals of a woman who has been successful as both a race car driver and model. Contemporary women can choose to play multiple and varied roles, and most no longer rely on patriarchal authorities in choosing which roles to pursue. For an individual woman, balancing the multiple roles that interest her can sometimes become one of the challenges of modern life.
[Detail of Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, photo by Virginia Postrel. Photo of Danica Patrick billboard courtesy of Luis Rodriguez Gonzalez (Spain), whose Flickr sets are here.]
In recent years, the mighty mustache, hero of the upper lip, has found itself more closely aligned with comicalcops than with the esteemed mustachioed men of history. A symbol of both man’s virility (it takes some testosterone to grow all that hair) and attention to appearance, the mustache has been a matter for debate for thousands of years.
It's said (on quasi-reliable websites, at least) that in ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Teqikencola so disliked the concept that he forbade anyone under his rule from growing a mustache. Today, discussion is a little less dramatic and a lot more open but even among those who find mustaches sexy, they’re a little bit of a joke.
All mocking aside, mustaches have a rightful place in cultural and artistic history. In addition to the many thousands of stiff portraits that have been painted of gruff, mustachioed military men, the mustache has been a form of expression for artists themselves, from Rembrandt to Mark Twain to, maybe most famously, Salvador Dali. For Dali, whose mustache inspired its own book (the aptly named, Dali's Mustache), facial hair was one part branding tool and one part functional – he used it to paint. Genius or kind of gross? I can’t decide.
In today’s less mustache-centric society, at least one group is celebrating all things facial hair. Extremely Hungary, a year-long festival of Hungarian arts based in New York and Washington, D.C., is sponsoring “The Most Fabulous Mustache Growing Contest Ever.” Contestants must start clean-shaven (before photos are key) and beards are strictly forbidden. Sideburns and the use of mustache “product” are, however, allowed. The owner of the “most fabulous” mustache wins a roundtrip for two to Budapest. If you’re interested in entering, start growing. The deadline is in less than two weeks – April 13th.
Yes, it’s still a little bit of a joke. But the reverence for Hungarian history, in all its mustachioed glory, is very real. And who knows: the contest could very well turn up Salvador’s rightful heir to the glamorous mustache throne.
I was amused to read that Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent's partner and keeper of his legacy, had withdrawn YSL's portrait from a Paris exhibit of Andy Warhol portraits, on the grounds that mixing the designer with others from the world of "glamour" was disrespectful to Saint Laurent as an artiste. Bergé's letter of explanation, published in Le Monde, opened with a quote from Warhol himself, proclaiming YSL "le plus grand artiste français de notre temps."
Even leaving aside the very important and limiting qualifier français, what would Andy Warhol mean by proclaiming someone a "the greatest artist"? After all, Warhol famously wrote:
Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called “art” or whatever it’s called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business—they’d say, “Money is bad,” and “Working is bad,” but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
Bergé's reaction was very French and not very Warholian.
“All things considered this was not an affair about painting but about people," said the exhibit's curator in response. "It’s a decision I regret enormously, because the portraits are those where Warhol’s empathy for the subject is of the highest degree.”
Once the show opened, people pretty much forgot about Saint Laurent. In an interesting review that doesn't mention the missing portraits (except in their appearance in a poorly reviewed exhibit 30 years ago), the FT's Jackie Wullschlager writes:
The sweeping style with which some 100 paintings are displayed, across vast galleries linked by a belle-époque staircase, would surely have made Warhol delirious with snobbish glee. His best works – “Red Jackie”, “Silver Liz”, laconic 1963-64 self-portraits in dark glasses, interleaved with paintings of a glittery dollar sign and an electric chair – have never looked more seductive or more classical. Warhol, New York soup can prince of conceptualism, becomes in Paris an opulent society portraitist in the tradition of John Singer Sargent or Kees van Dongen: master of colour, texture, clarity, precision, ravishing yet chilly, flattering even as he anatomises triviality and brittleness...
Frivolous in appearance but deadly serious in intent, his mechanical repetitions put painting in its place, within a continuum of the 1960s media of mass production – particularly photography – only to exalt it again by the conviction and beauty of his painterly surfaces. This is an utterly enjoyable show which illuminates the artist’s lifelong concerns, methods and his discomforting, prophetic take on an epoch that continues to shape our own.
This online article, which features some shots from the show (including one of the missing YSL portraits), explains some of the groupings:
Hollywood stars (Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Sylvester Stallone, BB, etc), pop stars (Mick Jagger, Deborah Harry, etc.), artists (Man Ray, David Hockney, Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring, etc.), collectors and art dealers (Dominique de Menil, Bruno Bischofberger, Ileana Sonnabend, Leo Castelli), politicians (Willy Brandt, Edward Kennedy, etc.), fashion designers (Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel, Hélène Rochas, etc.) as well as businessmen and jet-setters (Gianni Agnelli, Lee Radziwell, Princess Grace of Monaco, Günter Sachs, etc.). Famous or less famous, they all glow with the aura of Warhol’s genius. The entire global social scene… in paint!
Like designers, singers are commercial artists. But you don't see Mick Jagger and Deborah Harry pitching fits about not being adequately respected. Of course, they aren't French.
As this earlier post suggests, the ideal of blonde beauty wasn't invented in Hollywood. Good luck finding a brunette Virgin Mary or Venus in a Quattrocentro painting. (Mary Magdalene generally has red hair.) But until yesterday, I didn't know that the blond ideal extended to Donatello's David.
The bronze statue was recently restored and stands in the foreground of the photo to the right. The restoration process identified where the statue originally included gilding. In the museum, if you look very closely you can, in a few places, detect tiny traces of the original gilding. (What you see in the photo is reflected light.) The statue in the back is an exact copy of the original, with the gilding restored.
Here's a closer picture of those shiny gold locks.
The two versions of the statue raise an interesting question about authenticity and copies. Nowadays, it's possible to make a perfect copy of a statue in bronze. So which is the more authentic version of the original? The one that looks the way Donatello intended the statue to look, or the one he actually worked on? As a matter of both modern taste (that gold is a bit much, at least under electric lights) and history, I prefer the original. But I also like seeing them together.
This lovely lady is thought to be Simonetta Vespucci, the most beautiful woman in Renaissance Florence. Like many of his contemporaries, Botticelli had a major crush on la bella Simonetta--and he immortalized her, or versions of her, in many of his paintings.
This painting, officially known as Young Woman in Mythological Guise, is not meant as a realistic portrait. In his introduction to a 2001 exhibition at the National Gallery, David Alan Brown wrote that the image recalls a verse from Petrarch:
Breeze that surrounds those blond and curling locks, that makes them move...and scatters the sweet gold, then gathers it in lovely knots recurling....
The abundant, gravity-defying, partially braided, partially down hair was highly suggestive in its day. The pearls--remember, this is long before the cultured variety--would be worth a fortune. (Check out the pearls threaded through the braids outlining her bust.) The pearls woven through her hair create a net called a vespaio, or wasp nest, and are usually taken to refer to the Vespucci name. But, for all the clues, she remains a mystery. Maybe she's Simonetta; maybe she's an imaginary creature. Maybe she's a mixture of the two.
All in all, she's the picture of quattrocento glamour.
John Singer Sargent famously described a portrait as a " likeness with something funny about the mouth". Today's NYT has a piece about people and their portraits, and judging by the examples shown, these subjects would have been lucky if the mouth was the only funny thing.
Don Bachardy is shown with his scary clown version of actress Natalie Schafer, best known as Mrs. Thruston Howell III or Lovey on Gillian's Island. Since she's dead, who knows if she she liked the portrait or not--but as Bachardy's got it, her heirs might not crazy about it. Bachardy's a real artist, with a real point of view, and if you're looking to be immortalized and flattered, he might not be your best choice.
I'm guessing that those who chose to be painted by gazillionairess Margie Perenchio must have hoped that they'd look well, perhaps better than in real life. She painted Salma Hayek (and produced Frida), and I can only hope Hayek was polite about it. Look at that right hand--it's the size of a small dog.
Perenchio charges $12,000 for a portrait, but graciously allowed Les Moonves to make a donation to a charity instead. She worked from a photograph for her rendition of Moonves and his wife, Julie Chen. If this was my portrait, I'd hang it at Goodwill.
Mentioned but not shown is the work of Maxine Smith, who like Perechino is married to a media mogul.There's a lot of Matisse there, but real heart as well.
Also not shown, which is a real pity, is a portrait of George Hamilton by Ralph Wolfe Cowan. Now, that's a portrait.
Recently, I've had my own portrait done. My daughter captured me in a characteristic pose. Look how cleverly she avoided the whole question of the mouth.
Although the words promote Air France flights to South America, nothing other than the (presumably) westerly direction of the plane suggests that destination. Unlike many vintage travel posters, this one contains no short-hand emblems of a colorful and exotic destination.
It's a timeless, placeless image capturing the glamour of escape.
Referring back to the Norton Simon's poster exhibit, I'm a big fan of WWI poster art, but I'm also intrigued by the poster art of the period between the wars, especially the German ones .
But can anyone really collect and display these without horrifying dinner guests? While the graphics are great, the caricatures repel many.
On the left is a 1933 poster from Munich, advertising an African themed party at the Deutsches Theater. Held during Fasching, the German version of Carnival, the party was sponsored by the the Reich (African) Colonial League.
The party was still going in 1935, but the imagery got cruder.
During the Nazi years, the Reichskolonialbund stopped throwing jazzy parties and concentrated on reclaiming Germany's overseas colonies.
Jazz was officially considered degenerate and the imagery reflected that.
Lars Hasvoll Bakke has more on German propaganda posters.
So, can these images be enjoyed? I confess to liking the strong colors and playful spirit of the first two posters. But is the pain they might cause people I respect too great? I'd love to know your thoughts.
Five-inch stilettos made of bronze and copper. The hinged straps fasten with matching padlocks. Size 7. Price: $1,200. Explanation and more photos here.
Assuming your shoes are more reasonable than these, I now have a solution to the chafing problem that's easier to find--and cheaper--than Blister-Block. It's called FootGlide. For the past few days, I've been using a sample they sent me after reading this post, with good results.
In honor of the Labor Day weekend, DG invites our readers to ponder the legacy of the WPA.
The Library of Congress has a great collection of posters --the one seen here was created for the Federal Art Project's Index of American Design exhibit in Ohio.
(The government is still in the circus business, some might argue.)
Laura Hapke's book, Labor's Canvas, is an engrossing study of labor art, from both an art history and social history view, which sounds very academic, but don't be deterred. Well worth the effort.
In 2005, Steve and I happened to catch this great exhibit, "Driving Through Futures Past," at the Petersen Automotive Museum. Although the highlight of the exhibit had to be the 1954 Bonneville Special (sorry for the low-quality of my snapshot), the real revelation was the art on the walls: concept car renderings done by mid-century car designers. (Here's a slide show of samples from the exhibition.) Although I'm far from a car buff and don't even like the fins-and-chrome look of mid-century cars that much, I loved both the aesthetic feel of the renderings and their exuberant futurism. What a great thing to collect, I thought. I wonder where you get them?
At the June Art Deco and Modernism Show in San Francisco, I met one of the sources: Leo Brereton, who has rescued many of these drawings from Detroit area basements and attics and sells them to collectors. (He also collects and sells original illustrations from pulp fiction and, as you can see from the photo, mid-century science fiction.) He talked to me about car renderings.
Q: How do you define what you collect and sell?
A: I deal in automotive concepts or renderings, which are the drawings done by the designers for the Big Three as well as independent automobile manufacturers, from the '30s through the '70s, with an emphasis on the '50s and '60s.
Q: Where do you get the drawings?
A: Primarily from the designers themselves. As a designer, you were not encouraged to keep the stuff you were working on. However, if you were the guy who worked for 24 years in the Buick Division and all of a sudden you were transferred to Cadillac, your boss might say, "All the stuff in these files that we haven't cleaned out in 20 years, if you want it fine. If not just throw it out."
There was no thought--not a moment's thought--at a place like GM that this archive might be important one day, that we should open up a museum, if nothing else to toot our own horn. That lack of vision is astounding. So routinely the work is now found in landfills across Metropolitan Detroit.
Q: How long have you been doing this?
A: About 10 years. There really wasn't a market for it when I started.
Q: And what do these represent to people who buy them today?
A: Visions of the past, examples of great designs. It's a nostalgia thing, as well as a clear recognition that this work has gone unrecognized.
I wound up buying several renderings by automotive designers from Leo. Here's a slide show. But only one of the drawings, by a Czech designer Leo knew nothing about, is of a car of the future. The rest take the glamour of high-speed transportation to the sea and to space, in inspiring but wildly impractical forms. When I showed them to our friend Greg Benford, the astrophysicist and hard science fiction writer, he rolled his eyes. Looking at the moon vehicle John Aiken (later famous for the Mercury Cougar) designed as a student project, he asked, "Why would you want streamlining in a place with no atmosphere?" For the same reason Golden Age Hollywood put actresses in gowns they couldn't sit down in and Cecil B. DeMille demanded high heels even for Paulette Goddard in Northwest Mounted Police--to transport viewers to a world that transcends the practicalities of real life.
Leave it to Kate to associate lipstick fads with Japanese literary musings. But it's a great reference. Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows is, in its own subtle (and intensely conservative) way, one of the great books for understanding glamour--in particular, the mystery that glamour requires. Tanizaki also offers an important historical insight into why religious and luxury objects that may seem gaudy today were glamorous and inspiring in the conditions for which they were designed.
Darkness is an indispensable element of the beauty of lacquerware. Nowadays they make even a white lacquer, but the lacquerware of the past was finished in black, brown, or red, colors built up of countless layers of darkness, the inevitable product of the darkness in which life was lived. Sometimes a superb piece of black laquerware, decorated perhaps with flecks of silver and gold—a box or a desk or a set of shelves—will seem to me unsettlingly garish and altogether vulgar. But render pitch black the void in which they stand, and light them not with the rays of the sun or electricity but rather a single lantern or candle: suddenly those garish objects turn somber, refined, dignified. Artisans of old, when they finished their works in lacquer and decorated them in sparkling patterns, must surely have had in mind dark rooms and sought to turn to good effect what feeble light there was. Their extravagant use of gold, too, I should imagine, came of understanding how it gleams forth from out of the darkness and reflects the lamplight.
Lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in at a single glance; it should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light. Its florid patterns recede into the darkness, conjuring in their stead an inexpressible aura of depth and mystery, of overtones but partly suggested. The sheen of the lacquer, set out in the night, reflects the wavering candlelight, announcing the drafts that find their way from time to time into the quiet room, luring one into a state of reverie. If the lacquer is taken away, much of the spell disappears from the dream world built by that strange light of candle and lamp, that wavering light beating the pulse of the night. Indeed the thin, implausible, faltering light, picked up as though little rivers were running through the room, collecting little pools here and there, lacquers a pattern on the surface of the night itself.
This insight applies not only to Japanese lacquerware and statuary but to gilded Renaissance and Medieval religious art and the excesses of crown jewels. It even applies to the flash of rhinestone cowboy and rock-star costumes, which are meant to be seen at a distance under stage lights.
DeepGlamour explores the magic of glamour in its many manifestations, from movies, fashion, advertising, and cars to real estate, politics, sports, and travel.
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. Kafka quotes Kandel’s analysis of Gustav Klimt’s Judith and the Head of Holofernes:
, Paglia's take seems more compelling, without delving into the grey matter:
, Jonathan Nelson and Richard Zeckhauser note that “though many praise Ghirlandaio’s Portrait of an Old Man for its 'realism,' the bulbous growth on the patron’s nose was even more prominent in the preparatory drawing.” You can see the final, glamorized version, which is in the Met exhibit, to the left.
, John Brewer discusses some of the dilemmas facing 18th-century portrait painters, whose clients could refuse to pay if they didn't like the results.“The trick,” writes Brewer, “was to understand how the portrait should be presented. Usually the client had a sense of how he wanted the sitter to appear. Part of a good portraitist's skill lay in discerning this; otherwise the commission could go disastrously wrong.”
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, who with Edith Head is probably the most famous Hollywood costume designer. What makes his work particularly significant?
, which uses economic signaling theory to analyze Renaissance patrons’ motivations and techniques. That fact: “By the time he commissioned the fresco, Sassetti had nearly run the Geneva branch of the Medici bank into bankruptcy.” Oops. Maybe the portraits were meant as a distraction or damage control. How could you fire (or worse) a man who had sponsored such fine pictures of your kids?
on Amazon.
, editor Sol Stein says of both fiction and non-fiction, “All storytelling from the beginning of recorded time is based on somebody wanting something.” When desire is acted upon so passionately that it defies common sense, we have the possibility of an exciting story.
Gary Schmidgall writes that operas and Shakespeare’s plays are about how not to behave. The main characters are inevitably “slaves of passion,” and those characters who preach common sense are sure to be secondary. The plots of many of Shakespeare’s plays could be reduced to tabloid headlines. “Jealous husband kills wife, then himself” (Othello). “Wife convinces husband to commit murder” (Macbeth). “King forms new church to wed new wife” (Henry VIII).
. Recalling their youthful filmgoing in the 1940s, women expressed longing and identification when talking about the stars they loved. “It wasn’t Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire, it was me,” said one. Another said, “My favourite was Rita Hayworth. I always imagined if I could look like her I could toss my red hair into the wind…and meet the man of my dreams.”
, by Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker
, by Arthur C. Danto, art critic for The Nation
(1981), 
is, in its own subtle (and intensely conservative) way, one of the great books for understanding glamour--in particular, the mystery that glamour requires. Tanizaki also offers an important historical insight into why religious and luxury objects that may seem gaudy today were glamorous and inspiring in the conditions for which they were designed.
affiliate. Virginia Postrel receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through one of our 
links, including purchases you make while on 
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