Photo by VC Ferry

“Your words are my food, your breath my wine.

You are everything to me.”

Sarah Bernhardt

VC Ferry

All Rights Reserved

© 2009

Bernhardt was the greatest star of the 19^th century. If she didn’t already exist, it would have been necessary to invent her. So great was her fame (and, apparently, her talent) that thousands of English-speakers in Britain and America paid to see her performances despite the fact that they were all in French.

She was born in 1844, the illegitimate daughter of Judith Van Hard, a Jewish Dutch woman. The father took a powder, but he was evidently a man of means, for he set her up with a sizable trust fund before disappearing. Judith was a “kept woman”, not so rare an occupation during the Second Empire. She changed her name to Bernard first, the “h” and “t” were added later.

One day (according to legend), Sara, a highly sensitive girl, announced her intention to become a nun. Her mother and her group of posh friends (including Dumas pere) laughed in her face. (What nice people!) In response, Sara threw one of her tearful tantrums, and, based on the performance, it was jokingly suggested by one of the party that she should go on the stage. This being a group of idle people with nothing better to do, they followed up on the project. The gang brought her to the Comedie Francais to see her first play. She was so moved by the experience she was reduced to a sobbing wreck.

The die was cast. Sarah was to enroll at the National Conservatory of Music and Declamation. Her early career was bumpy. Upon graduating, she was hired by the Comedie Francais and acted there a short time, until she made the mistake of slapping one of the leading ladies during an argument. She then moved to the Gymnase and then to the Odeon. Her first breakthrough was as Cordelia in King Lear. In 1868, she played the female lead in a play called Kean and from there on in, she was a a star of unbelievable magnitude. The Comedie Francais eventually took her back. She played all the great roles of the age: Phaedra, The Lady of the Camellias, Andromache. The fame surrounding her genius was abetted by whispers about her scandalous love life.

In 1879, she made her first trip to London, where she was a smash success. The following year she came to America, where the same was the case. She toured the whole continent on her own special train, the Sarah Bernhardt Special. She got a taste of America’s love of variety, when her frontier “Camille” was supplemented by can-can dancers and a xylophone player. Here’s what Ed Howe of the Atchison Globe said of her in 1881:

At exactly 8:31 last night, Sarah Bernhardt made her appearance on the stage of Toodle’s Opera House [St. Joseph, Missouri], walking down the center as though she had but one joint in her body, and no knees…with reference to Camille in French, it is about as interesting to an American as five acts of a Chinese drama running three months.

Hey, I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.

In the teens, Bernhardt toured the Keith circuit twice, receiving sky-high sums for her troubles. In later years, she continued to play roles much younger than she (as was the custom), and with an amputated leg. She also starred in many filmed versions of her plays, spreading her fame and her genius even further. This legendary person finally conceded mortality in 1923.

To find out more about these variety artists and the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Sarah Bernhardt
Life begets life. Energy becomes energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

“Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spe

nding oneself that one becomes rich.”

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R is for Radish

2.5″ x 3.5″ Watercolor & Ink

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Here we are…. the last two days on the ArtNowForAutism auction. Everything that’s left is $30. Go take a look. Let’s leave them with nothing and support a good cause.

About Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt, the French stage and silent film actress known as the Divine Sarah, was born in Paris in 1844 as Rosine Bernard, the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish courtesan. She began her acting career at age 13 and quickly rose to international stardom. Oscar Wilde wrote the play Salome for her. After her right leg was amputated in 1915, she continued to perform onstage with a prosthetic limb. She was very close to her only child, her son Maurice. She died in 1923.

Check this out.

The Funny Part
- Their…interesting looks – proof of inbreeding to keep the blood pure and blue! It’s got to be.

The Deadly Serious and Angry Part

That strange woman wittering on about the girls being the “high achievers” of the future – yeah, because middle-class Oxbridge graduates are more likely to succeed in high-profile jobs such as lawyers. For a working-class worm like myself, law is pretty unreachable.

Oxbridge itself is a joke. You know they claim to be accepting more and more children from working-class backgrounds? Well, their theory is pleasant enough but it doesn’t work particularly well. In our state schools, we don’t get access to “the classics” or a chance to “read around the subject”, thus exposing ourselves to the kind of enlightenment afforded the private school bunch. Our classrooms are packed with thirty-plus pupils – all it takes is for one kid to disrupt the lesson and we end up with a five-minute teacher-pupil battle of wills before getting the lesson back on track. How are we supposed to further ourselves if we’re struggling to get through set course material in the first place? It’s hopeless. If you’re thinking of commenting to tell me that I’m wrong, I’m ever so sorry, sir or madam, but please go and fornicate with yourself using a lacrosse stick. I KNOW what it’s like because I HAVE BEEN THERE.

Nonetheless, I got to the stage where I was called to interview at Oxford. This, my tutor mused, was unusual, because I had a mix of As and Bs at AS level, and the Oxbridge brigade have a complete aversion to the corpulent second-best grade. I’m aware that I’m now going to sound like a bitter reject, so before we continue, I would like to state that I am extremely glad I escaped Oxford. I would have been wedged between a working-class family and middle-class fellow students, taken too far from my roots to return and be grateful, and not able to play with the big boys and keep up with the Harrington-Smythes due to my state education. I would have been entirely unhappy being something stuck in the middle, an outcast in both major sectors of my life.

I believe that I was interviewed because:

a) They saw my surname. My surname isn’t English. It’s Maltese. A mixed-race child? Score one for the Equal Opportunities team.

b) They knew I was from a state school and was studying at a state college. I was a clear example that they were therefore giving both working- and middle-class pupils a chance. A mixed-race working-class child?! Someone had an orgasm whilst sorting the paperwork, I imagine.

In short, I was the unfortunate pleb that made up part of their required equal opportunities quota, if they have such a thing.

But in interview, that’s where it fell apart. I grit my teeth and act in interviews. I hate the fuckers. I feel nervous and inadequate every time I’m seated before someone in a suit. So I gritted my teeth and beamed and acted like Sarah forking Bernhardt. But here’s the deal-clincher. Prior to prising our tender bodies apart with their clipboards, they asked us to make a list of books we’d read in the past year, so I did. One of the books was Jane Austen’s ‘Northanger Abbey’, which is tedious and which I never wish to subject myself to again.

In interview, in a high-ceilinged room that looked like how I imagine Mr Jaggers’s office to be, I was surrounded by three professors, two male, one female, two on my right, one on my left. They seemed to find it incredibly difficult to smile. I was, naturally, terrified of them.

One of the bright sparks in the group decided to question me on “the importance of distance in ‘Northanger Abbey’ and its effect on Catherine.” …Sounds simple enough? If I had to concoct an essay on it, I’d find it fairly easy.

How do you read a book, when you read it just once, and for pleasure? Do you take notes, underline, annotate, prepare yourself for potential interview questions on the contents? No? Surprisingly, neither do I! So when this GEM of a question was fired at me, I had nothing. I said things, things came pouring out of my mouth, but I can’t recall what they were, let alone if they were any good. I was out of my comfort zone and feeling like I’d been ripped apart publicly.

We’re not taught, in our overcrowded state schools, how to read that deeply and intelligently. And I’m aware that some, regardless of their working-class status, get in to Oxbridge. I’m not suggesting that the interview questions require dumbing down. I’m pondering why we need Oxbridge at all. In a perfect world, the same money and attention would lavished on every school and every pupil, and we’d all be as able as each other. We can’t shot of this class rift in reality – it’s been around for too long. People on the right side of it enjoy it. People like me have to grin and bear it, and keep fighting for opportunities.

And the debutantes can float around in their pretty dresses, looking vacant and trying to speak around their buck teeth. Tally ho Jenkins, to the drawing room!

A história do cinema apresenta-se como uma sucessão de estrelas pluridimensionais, ricas, elegantes, inacessíveis, amantes perfeitas, eternamente jovens, felizes e bem-sucedidas – das quais, certamente, Marilyn foi a última. Cada uma antecedeu ou sucedeu à outra, ao longo dos anos, em conformidade com as tendências de catarse coletiva identificadas no escuro das salas de projeção.

Na década de 10, Sarah Bernhardt, Theda Bara e Mary Pickford encarnaram as primeiras heroínas mudas e virtuosas do amor.

Sarah Bernhardt

Theda Bara

Mary Pickford

Na década seguinte, Lilian Gish, Greta Garbo e Rodolfo Valentino consubstanciaram, respectivamente, arquétipos de “vamp”, de “femme fatale” e do galã viril.

Lilian Gish

Greta Garbo

Rodolfo Valentino

Só a partir dos anos 30 é que os até então deuses das telas abandonaram a condição etérea de tótens de bronze para se tornarem mais terrenos, humanos e, portanto, falíveis. Iniciou-se uma fase de resignação mítica da estrela. O sexo não sumiu das telas, pelo contrário, expandiu-se para a categoria do erotismo.

A pouca frequência de público, verificada em 1947, nas salas de exibição da Europa e dos Estados Unidos, quase pôs fim à figura da estrela, que teve de ser resgatada à custa do velho e eficaz material erótico.

O par de seios volumosos de Sophia Loren, a combinação explosiva de rosto infantil e corpo voluptuoso de Brigitte Bardot e o sexo desinibido de Marilyn Monroe foram convocados a reanimar o star system.

Sophia Loren

Brigitte Bardot

Marilyn Monroe

Każde spotkanie z nią zmieniało się w orgię

Zuchwałe, bezwstydne, puszczalskie. Istnieje cała rzesza kobiet, obecnie uznawanych za sławne czy wybitne, która prowadziła mniej lub bardziej swobodne życie seksualne. Czy cierpiały na to, co dziś zwiemy seksoholizmem, czy może po prostu chciały być w stu procentach sobą?
Dopiero w 1970 roku Światowa Organizacja Zdrowia zaliczyła uzależnienie od seksu w poczet chorób. Ale nawet dziś wielu z nas sam pomysł, że ktoś może cierpieć na nadmiar aktywności w dziedzinie seksu, wydaje się zabawny i… nienormalny.
Einstein to nic w porównaniu z Anais Nin
“Osoba bez myśli seksualnych jest nienormalna” – perorował William O. Douglas, sędzia Sądu Najwyższego Stanów Zjednoczonych. Czy zatem normalni, czy nie byli Nietzsche, który ponoć sypiał ze swoją siostrą, i Einstein, który to samo robił z kuzynką? Jeszcze gorzej rzecz miała się z kobietami, w znacznie większym stopniu skrępowanymi gorsetem nakazów i zakazów. Często właśnie wybitne kobiety, wyróżniające się uprzywilejowaną pozycją społeczną, nieprzeciętną urodą i inteligencją, miały odwagę przeciwstawić się surowym normom. I zyskiwały opinie rozpustnic.
Colette i Anais Nin ze szczerością, na jaką nie byli przygotowani ludzie ich epoki, na kartach swoich powieści opowiadały intymne i erotyczne historie. Słynna i podziwiana aktorka Sarah Bernhardt, ogarnięta obsesją śmierci spowodowaną własną ciężką chorobą, sypiała ze swoimi kochankami w wykonanej na specjalne zamówienie trumnie wyściełanej czerwonym atłasem. Udała się w niej również na ostatni spoczynek. Malarka Frida Kahlo dwa razy wychodziła za mąż za kolegę po fachu Diego Rivierę. Za obopólna zgodę zamienili niezliczone romanse i flirty obojga w zwyczajną i przynajmniej pozornie akceptowaną rozrywkę.
Była w łóżku z Marilyn Monroe
Najbardziej rozpustne życie ze wszystkich hollywoodzkich gwiazd prowadziła aktorka Joan Crawford. Na liście jej podbojów znajduje się nawet platynowa Wenus, czyli Marilyn Monroe. Czterokrotnie wychodziła za mąż, regularnie sypiała z młodymi chłopcami i wymieniana była jako “ta druga” w przynajmniej dwóch procesach rozwodowych.
Trudne, ale niezwykłe życie genialnej Edith Piaf również upływało na poszukiwaniach kochanka idealnego. Naprawdę kochała podobno tylko tragicznie zmarłego boksera Marcela Cerdana. Uwiodła jednak wielu: Yves Montanda, Johna Garfielda, Georgesa Moustaki i Charlesa Aznavoura. Podobno łączyły ją stosunki lesbijskie z Marleną Dietrich.
Gwiazda, której nikt nie chciał przelecieć
Każde spotkanie towarzyskie, w którym brała udział perła muzyki, Janis Joplin, zmieniało się w orgię seksualną – “orgię zwierzęcą“, jak ja sama nazywała. Sypiała i z mężczyznami, i z kobietami. Gdy stoczyła się w uzależnienie od narkotyków, próbowała sprzedawać swoje ciało. Kiedyś powiedziała, że “była gwiazdą, której nikt nie chciał przelecieć“.
Według SAA, amerykańskiej wspólnoty Anonimowych Seksoholików, osoby uzależnione od seksu przyznają się do postępującego nadużywania własnej seksualności. Stopniowo tracą kontrolę nad ciągłym poszukiwaniem nowych doznań, które destrukcyjnie wpływa na związki i przyjaźnie, życie zawodowe i kondycję finansową. Bardzo często towarzyszą im konflikty z prawem, depresja i niska samoocena. Przymus ciągłego współżycia i wieczne uczucie niezaspokojenia libido w końcu staje się koszmarem, z którym trudno walczyć, a który często jeszcze trudniej zdemaskować.
Opisywane kobiety kierowały się zapewne różnymi motywami swojej rozwiązłości. Dla jednych seks był sposobem na polepszenie sytuacji życiowej – materialnej, zawodowej itp, inne – kierowały się nieposkromionym pożądaniem, dla jeszcze innych była to forma ucieczki. Czy popadły w to, co dzisiaj zwiemy uzależnieniem od seksu? Prawdopodobnie nigdy się tego nie dowiemy.

Tiffany & Co. (American, 1837 – present). Necklace, (Diamonds, pink tourmaline, yellow gold, platinum, c.1885 –1895). The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 1991-20. Photo: Howard Agriesti, The Cleveland Museum of Art.

How gratifying that in an economic crisis, we can momentarily forget our worries, escape to a museum and indulge in pure fantasy.  “Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique” at the Legion of Honor through May 31, 2009 is an enticing show that will fuel your imagination and transport you back a century to a time when the world’s fair was the stage where all the newest innovations, curiosities and luxury goods were unveiled.  The show offers a glimpse of rare jewelry and design masterpieces from bling’s “big three” Peter Carl Fabergé, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and René Lalique set against the backdrop of the Exposition Universelle of 1900, the only world’s fair where all three masters showed simultaneously.  With some 300 objects from more than 50 international lenders, “Artistic Luxury” reunites works that have not been presented together since they were shown at this world’s fair and offers many pieces that have never been exhibited publicly in the United States before.  The exhibition is curated by Stephen Harrison of the Cleveland Museum of Art curator of decorative art and design, where the show originated and by Martin Chapman, curator of European decorative arts and sculpture for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

The Legion of Honor is the perfect venue for this show as its benefactor Alma Spreckels, “big Alma” was a passionate collector of all three of these master designers, particularly Fabergé.  And one of the Legion’s current benefactors, Diane B. “DeDe” Wilsey, Fine Arts Museum Board of Trustees President, is also a passionate collector.   The Legion also organized the impressive 1996 blockbuster show “Fabergé in America” that had a 16 month, 5-stop national run and left some critics scathing at the blatant promotion of Fabergé, a large financial sponsor of the show.  Some of those Fabergé objects, along with some bequeathed by Mrs. Spreckels are on display again, and Mrs. Wilsey has lent her Kelch egg, rarely shown in public.  

Grand Entrance, 1900 Paris International Exposition. Courtesy of http://www.paris-in-photos.com

Prepare to be pleasantly overwhelmed.  The show is awash with globetrotting royals, aristocrats, stage stars, gallerists and industrialists from several different eras. It would take a battalion of Vanity Fair readers to piece together all the juicy stories behind these treasures that the rich and famous have commissioned, bought, bequeathed, auctioned, hawked and sued each other for over the years.  Unfortunately, the placards on the display cases read like dry novels, long lists of owners and way too little gossip.  Because jewelry is intimate, it begs for intimate stories of those who owned and wore these items.    And, of course, what the original owners paid and how that translates in terms of today’s dollar.

The Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris provides a fresh and historically interesting context for examining these three luxury producers.  Billed as the summation of a century, this world’s fair aimed to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate movement into the next.  And it was the center stage on which the rivalry between these three great luxury makers took place as they attempted to outdo each other and to woo the upper crust to buy their exquisite creations.  From April through November of 1900, over 50 million visitors attended and some 60 countries presented 85,000 exhibitions of the best of their art and culture, scientific innovations and manufacturing accomplishments. Visitors were wowed by innovations such as a moving sidewalk which rattled around the exhibitions at two different speeds—9 km/hour and 4 km/hour, the wireless telegraph, scientific photography, the first projected sound films and the world’s most powerful telescope.  The Exposition’s legacy includes many grand Parisian buildings that were constructed as venues for the Exposition such as the Grand Palais, the Gare de Lyon, the Gare D’Orsay (now the Musee D’Orsay), the Pont Alexander III and the Petit Palais.  

The new style that was universally present and served to usher in modernism was Art Nouveau, a revolutionary movement which was a response to the radical changes caused by the rapid urban growth and technological advances that followed the Industrial Revolution.  Art Nouveau basically sought to make art central in the design of all things and to abandon the traditional separation of art into the distinct categories of fine art (painting and sculpture) and applied arts (ceramics, furniture, and other practical objects).  

House of Fabergé (Russian, 1846-1929). Mikhail Perkhin (Russian, 1860-1903) designer. Imperial Pansy Egg. Nephrite, silver-gilt, enamel and rose-cut diamonds, 1899. Private collection. Photo: © Judith Cooper.

 The three luxury makers embraced Art Nouveau in varying degrees—Rene Lalique and Louis Comfort Tiffany on the cutting edge; Fabergé worked in several styles; Charles Lewis Tiffany remained a traditionalist.  

When walking through the galleries at the Legion, it is hard to distinguish objects that were actually shown at the Paris world’s exhibition from those produced during that period.  According to curators Stephen Harrison and Emmanuel Ducamp, who have been researching this for years, verification of the actual objects that were on display has been a difficult task, especially so for  because little information was retained.  The best sources have been photographs taken of the various booths and of objects and also sales receipts and correspondence. 

Fabergé: Beyond Eggs

Peter Carl Fabergé of St. Petersburg was at his peak at Exposition Universelle of 1900 where he displayed all the exquisite imperial Easter eggs he and his craftsmen had made, plus a selection of other luxurious objects, and was awarded the Legion d’Honneur.   Fabergé was the most conservative of the big three, catering primarily to the tastes of the Russian and British royal families and to international clients such as the King of Siam.  He used a greater variety of precious and semi-precious stones than any other jeweler in history and the Czar’s patronage gave him access to exquisite and rare Russian hardstones from Imperial quarries in the Urals and Atai Mountains.  Sapphires, emeralds and rubies were usually en cabochon (not faceted) and diamonds were almost always rose cut.  His enameling techniques were unparalleled, especially the finishes he achieved: opaque, semipolished or brilliant, or color effects which varied according to the angel of light or vision.  Refinement is the distinctive characteristic of all his work: one object alone might have four differnt shades of gold, blended and contrasted exquisitely with the colors of the gems and enamels he chose.

The 7 Fabergé eggs on display at this exhibition wonderfully illustrate the competing push-pull factors at play between historical revival styles and the beginnings of modernism around the turn of the century.  Fabergé maintained a foot in both design camps:  some of his designs were executed the Art Nouveau style such as the “Imperial Pansy Egg,”  while others such as the “Imperial Blue Serpent Egg Clock” were done in Louis XVI taste from 18^th Century France.  His complete mastery of historical styles was so proficient that he could readily adapt the very best elements from the past while keeping aspects of his pieces attractively modern. 

The well-known story behind the exquisite ornamental Imperial eggs is that they were commissioned by Czar Alexander III in 1885 and presented to his czarina, Maria Feodorovna, yearly at Easter up until the Russian Revolution.  After Alexander died, his son Czar Nicholas II continued the tradition with gifts of eggs to his mother and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.  Together, father and son commissioned 56 eggs in total.  Fabergé had to always best himself and over the years his eggs, which always related thematically to the Imperial family or to scenes from Russia important to the family, become more and more elaborate with an array of dizzying surprises inside.   

House of Fabergé (Russian, 1846 - 1918), Mikhail Perkhin, workmaster. Imperial Blue Serpent Egg, (Gold, blue guilloche enamel, opalescent white enamel, diamonds, sapphires, 1887). H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco.

One of Fabergé’s most beloved eggs is the famous Art Nouveau style “Imperial Pansy Egg,” given in 1899 to Maria Feodorovna.  This stunning green egg in nephrite, a form of Siberian jade, has tender branches of twisted gold from which appliqué pansies in enamel and diamonds seem to grow.  The treat found inside is executed in a more traditionally historical design—a large white heart with a border of diamonds sitting on an easel; affixed are 11 red enamel medallions like holly berries that click open to show miniature portraits of the members of the imperial family.  The family lent the egg back to Fabergé so that it could be shown at the 1900 Paris exhibition.   

The more traditional “Imperial Blue Serpent Egg” is actually a clock with a rotating dial—a snake’s tongue marks the hour—and was inspired by a fantastic French desk clock by Jean André Lepaute from about 1785.   The midnight blue enamel egg with gold garlands and diamonds was originally presented on Easter in 1887 to Maria Feodorovna and later owned by Princess Grace of Monaco.  Prince Rainier III of Monaco received the egg as gift in 1974 from Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos and it became one of Princess Grace’s favorite objects, adorning her desk in her private study.  When we consider how cherished these objects were, it is remarkable that the Dowager Empress lent this egg, along with other treasures back to Fabergé to show at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. 

Also on display is the Fabergé “1902 Kelch Rocaille Egg” owned by Fine Arts Museum Board of Trustees President Diane B. “DeDe” B. Wilsey.  

House of Fabergé (Russian, 1846 – 1920). Imperial Lilies-of-the-Valley Basket, St. Petersburg, (Yellow and green gold, silver, nephrite, pearl, rose-cut diamonds, 1896). Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art; on loan from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation.

 The 7 Kelch eggs were modeled after the Imperial Eggs and were all created by Michael Perkhin, Fabergé’s second head work master between 1898 and 1904.  They are as fine, if not even more sumptuous that those in the Imperial series.  The 1902 rocaille egg is made of translucent green enamel adorned with gold rococo cartouches, platinum flowers set with diamonds and varicolored gold palms, also set with diamonds.  The heart surprise picture frame is made of gold, rose-cut diamonds, and rose and white enamel.  Mrs. Wilsey keeps a portrait of her beloved dog in the diamond studded frame.

Fabergé and his craftsmen also created a wide range of personal luxury items and whimsical objects coveted by European aristocrats–all kinds of little boxes, small animal sculptures in semiprecious materials decorated with gold and gems, umbrella handles, cigarette cases, flowering branches set in vases and baskets, clocks and mechanical pieces.   One of his finest creations is the masterwork “Imperial Lilies of the Valley Basket” a basket of lilies of valley of seed pearls nesting in moss of spun gold with delicate leaves of carved stone.  It was presented to Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna by the merchants of Nizhny Novgorod as a coronation gift in 1896 and became her favorite object by Fabergé; she kept it on her desk until the 1917 Revolution.  Fabergé borrowed it back and took it to the 1900 exposition in Paris where it was a sensation.

One of Fabergé’s most popular works at the turn of the century was a delicate “Dandelion Puff Ball” whose real-looking powdery fluff was actually asbestos fiber fixed on a thread of gold with a small uncut diamonds at the edge.  His inspiration was the Hermitage’s collections of flowers cut in precious stones made for Catherine the Great and her aunt.  The Legion of Honor has an entire case of flowers carved of rare hardstones from Russian Siberia and the Urals, each flower exquisite in its endearing simplicity.

Tiffany & Co. (American, 1837-present), Paulding Farnham (American, 1859-1927), designer. Iris Brooch. Pink tourmalines, green garnets, platinum, c. 1900-1901. Primavera Gallery, NY. Photo: Howard Agriesti, the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Two Tiffanys: American Upstarts

Visitors to the 1900 Exposition Universal would not have missed the stunning displays of luxury goods in the American pavilion by Charles Lewis Tiffany’s firm, Tiffany and Co., and beside it, the Tiffany Glass & Decorating Co. owned by his son, Louis Comfort Tiffany.  The numerous awards won by father and son were reported widely and this critical exposure bolstered demand and secured the reputations of both Tiffanys as a brand source of museum-quality objects.  No greater contrast between the traditional and conservative versus the new Art Nouveau style—could be seen than in the two Tiffany booths. 

In the Tiffany & Co. display, the emphasis was on rare and expensive stones in lavish settings that beckoned the seriously wealthy to buy.  The exhibition at the Legion offers a stunning 5-inch-long “Iris Brooch” in pink tourmalines, green garnets and platinum as well as a breathtaking necklace of large pink tourmalines set in diamonds, both created by Tiffany and Co. for Jeptha Wade II and his wife Ellen, of Cleveland, Ohio.  Wade was the grandson of the founder of the Western Telegraph Union and he and his wife typified the type of wealthy and socially prominent clients that Tiffany cultivated.  Despite heavy American demand, most Europeans thought the flashy American works produced by Tiffany & Co. were vulgar because they were created for business tycoons and not true aristocrats.  An elaborately carved elephant tusk tankard on display clearly crosses the line into excess and humor as it mistakenly features painstakingly carved American-style alligators instead of the African crocodiles that big-game hunters would expect want to see carved on their African elephant ivory trophies.

 Louis Comfort Tiffany’s glass was well known in Europe before the Exposition Universelle of 1900 due to his association with Siegfried Bing, the Paris gallerist whose department store-museum “Salon de l’Art Nouveau” which opened in 1895 gave name to the Art Nouveau movement.  Tiffany was one of the top artists in Bing’s stable of artists and designers and Bing retained exclusive distribution rights over his work up until the 1900 exhibition.  By the time, Tiffany showed at the 1900 exposition, his Favrille (handmade) glass had become legendary to the point that any artwork that had any iridescent quality was called “Tiffany glass,” much like any copy is referred to as a “Xerox.”

Tiffany Studios (American, 1900-1932). Magnolia Window. Lead, stained glass, 1900. State Hermitage Museum.

Louis Comfort Tiffany presented his finest work at the Paris fair, creating a special shaded gallery so that viewers could experience hismagnificent glass in all its glory.   His large “Four Seasons” window won a gold medal and his religious masterpiece, “The Flight of the Soul,” was extremely popular. In key parts of his windows, Tiffany and his team of artisans folded and layered glass to create texture, depth and realism. 

Tiffany’s precious “Magnolia Window” which has its U.S. debut at the Legion was displayed in Bing’s separate pavilion just outside the gates of the exhibition on the River Temps.  This window was bought in 1901 and taken to Russia by Baron Alexander von Stieglitz, for his Stieglitz Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts in St. Petersburg, as an example of contemporary art.  After the Russian Revolution and during the Soviet era, the window was in safe storage in the Hermitage but essentially lost to the art world.  This is the first time it has ever been seen.

The window exemplifies Tiffany rewriting the boundaries of conventional stained glass during this period, creating a canvas on which he essentially makes an Impressionist painting in glass.  The woman who actually worked the glass and created the cartoon or framework was Agnes Northrop, one of the many gifted women designers employed by Tiffany Studios.  In fact, the big three all had similar design studio set-ups where they were the master artist but employed a stable of very talented artists who could execute and sometimes extend their creative masterpieces.  The delicate shades of pink, green, and ivory glass selected for the petals and leaves of the tender magnolia blossoms show a remarkable sensitivity for color nuance.

Lalique: Uniquely Poetic Of the big three, Rene Lalique (1860-1945), the Parisian goldsmith and jeweler, had the most profound influence on his peers in Europe.  His booth was the sensation of the 1900 exposition, what everyone came to see—the walls were a glorious bestiary of women  crafted from bronze and glass with arms outstretched and transforming into winged butterflies, flanked by snakes and bats.  Beneath their protective wings were cases of his fabulous jewelry.  Lalique’s poetic interpretations, expressed through Art Nouveau design delivered a groundbreaking message: this not about was jewelry as precious stones but rather about jewelry as art.  Lalique was interested in conveying the mutual interdependence of the human, animal and plant realms and he created wildly provocative and metaphorical works that were a fusion of female, animal and plant in a mystical recognition of nature.

René Lalique (French, 1860-1945). Purse with Two Serpents, 1901-3. Gold, silver, antelope skin, silver thread; 23.1 x 17.9 cm. Private Collection.

Lalique’s designs were embraced by the celebrated actresses of the day, including Sarah Bernhardt and Julia Bartlett whose bold personalities could carry off these strong and often large artworks.  According to scholar Emmanuel Ducamp, who wrote the catalogue essay on Lalique, “The aristocracy backed away saying ‘too much and not enough,’ meaning too loud and the simple materials didn’t have enough value.” 

Lalique’s creativity and reformist vision of woman as earth mother, creator, warrior, and protector went hand in hand with the modernism embraced near the turn of the century in the theatrical repertoire.  Powerful roles for women like Salome, Jeanne d’Arc, Medee, Cleopatra—made impressions that had ripple effects.  The catalogue (p. 128) quotes the critic Plumet musing that Lalique’s jewelry had “a bizarre charm…disturbing, spellbinding, even Satanic.”  In all, a new woman was in the making and feminism was about to pop with Lalique’s designs stirring the pot.

While it was common among the big three to use serpents and insects in their designs, the snake in its various complex contortions was a principle theme of Lalique.  His “Purse with Two Serpents” (1901-03) created for Bernhardt has a clasp of two angry striking serpents cast in silver which guard the contents of the purse.  

According to Stephen Harrison, Lalique’s use of fighting snakes as guardians for the contents of a purse references not only the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but the general mood of titillation that was central to Art Nouveau.  The work’s realism is underscored by the slippery-looking snake skins embroidered into the bag’s surface with silver thread.

René Lalique (French, 1860-1945). Cattleya Orchid Hair Ornament. Carved ivory, horn, gold, enamel on gold, diamonds, 1903-1904. Private collection. Photo: Laurent Sully Jaulmes. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP Paris.

In the 19th Century, a passion for tropical orchids overtook Europe and people became practically manic in their interest which drove prices to incredible heights. Missions were sent to the tropics for collecting orchids to satisfy this passion for exotic plants.  Lalique’s ability to immortalize the delicate orchid in ivory must have been mesmerizing.  Around the turn of the century, he created a number of orchid hair combs which attest to his complete mastery of the material.  The “Cattleya Orchid Hair Ornament” on display has creamy petals whose lacey ruffled edges are so thin they are translucent. The piece is enhanced by pale green cloisonné leaves with veins of diamonds. 

As soon as mass production and second-rate firms began flooding the market with “Lalique-style” jewels, Lalique himself turned to a new medium–glass and a style that moved way from Art Nouveau’s interpretations of nature to a more abstract and simple form.  One of the reasons that Lalique became perhaps the greatest glassmaker of all times was that he applied his techniques of jewelry-making to glass art and his works conveyed his love of nature, capturing its poetry and enough realistic detail to impress everyone who encountered it. 

Saturday, May 30, the show’s very last weekend, offers “Luxe at the Legion: Divas as Patrons, Collectors”a free program that promises to let you relive la belle epoque in a luxurious day of music, films, lectures, and art.

The catalogue Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique by Stephen Harrison, Emmanuel Ducamp and Jeannine Falino, Yale University Press, is recommended, and provides a wealth of information about jewelry-making and styles at the turn of the century. 

Clement Scott, policing society to save it from Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.

Sarah Bernhardt, being awesome. On a poster.

Clement Scott was a bit rubbish. Think of your least favourite, self-satisfied male theatre critic and then walk half a mile to the right. Scott’s there. He’s the one who thought that Ibsen would destroy society, and conspired with George Alexander to make Oscar Wilde change the original, too-radical plot of Lady Windermere’s Fan.

On the other hand (as Gail Marshall has just pointed out to me, via Shakespeare and Victorian Women 2009 although what an Oxford Brookes don is doing publishing with CUP, hem hem), he managed to write an entire chapter on Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet without getting worked up about the fact she was a woman.

Used the female pronoun throughout? Check. Thought her performance was completely fantastic? Check. Used the phrase ‘the actor or actress Hamlet’ without hyperventilating, snideness or mouth-frothing? Oh, Clement Scott, all is so very nearly redeemed.

Best of all, when he says that Bernhardt’s ‘task was heroic in its significance and importance’, he doesn’t just mean ‘well done, that woman, for being Hamlet without mucking it up, have a hairbow’, he’s talking about what she’s done for her career and for Hamlet in general: she’s done what Scott felt needed to be done for Hamlet (and, of course, for theatre in general) by offering not only ‘new readings, new ideas, change for the sake of change’ but also ‘genius and the gift of inspiration’.

‘These things,’ Scott concludes, ‘belong to Sarah Bernhardt’. And thus Hamlet does too.

Uno de los carteles que anunciaban las corridas de toros en La Habana

La plaza de toros luce sus mejores galas para recibir a la gran estrella. Desde una de las gradas más cercanas a la pista, los ojos de una bella mujer no se separan de la figura central de la tarde. Pero él no parece percatarse de cuánta curiosidad ha despertado en la dama. Su atención está centrada, por completo, en la bestia herida. El ataque final es inminente. El toro se deja cegar, una vez más, por el color de la capa del hombre y lo embiste con las pocas fuerzas que le quedan. El matador elegantemente lo elude y clava las dos banderillas a ambos lados del toro. El golpe es mortal y a pocos metros el animal cae.

Los gritos de la multitud acallan los estertores del toro. La sangre cubre la pista, pero como en el circo romano, el público parece disfrutar el momento. El matador ha cumplido su trabajo y ahora recorre la plaza, orgulloso de su hazaña. Su mirada finalmente se cruza con la misteriosa dama y ese contacto visual resulta suficiente para cautivarlo.  El gran torero, Luis Mazzantini, ha encontrado un nuevo amor en La Habana; pero no uno cualquiera, sino el de una de las mujeres más codiciadas de su tiempo: la artista Sarah Bernhardt.

Días antes de la primera corrida de Mazzantini había arribado a la capital cubana la Bernhardt. Ya era famosa en toda Europa y sus triunfos como actriz llegaron hasta Nueva York. Su belleza y excelentes dotes histriónicas cautivaban y ese encanto no le fue indiferente al torero.

Luis Mazzantini era un nombre muy conocido entre los amantes al arte taurino. De origen vasco, si figura sobresalía en el mundo de los toros, pues a su elegancia física unía una gran cultura, con dominio de varios idiomas y conocimientos musicales. Además, frente a los toros mostró siempre una enorme sangre fría.

La noticia de un posible romance entre el torero y la diva se esparció con rapidez por toda la capital y llegó hasta Europa. Los dos se hospedaron en el hotel Inglaterra y Mazzantini hasta olvidó su principal objetivo en la capital. Sus presentaciones posteriores al encuentro con Bernhardt dejaron que desear y muchos reconocieron que otros toreros, también de gira por La Habana, opacaron la brillantez de Mazzantini.

Pero eso no le importó mucho al torero. Hasta en las páginas de la revista francesa Le Figaro apareció la crónica acerca de la corrida a puerta cerrada que Mazzantini le regaló a la actriz e incluso se llegó a hablar de fastuosos regalos.

¿Cuánto hay de cierto en toda esta historia? Nunca los dos protagonistas del supuesto romance dieron por cierto los rumores. Sin embargo, sus frecuentes paseos y fiestas dicen mucho. Para nadie era un secreto la enorme afición de Mazzantini por las mujeres. La Bernhardt no se quedaba detrás y sus múltiples romances con hombres famosos llenaban cuartillas en la prensa de la época. La gran interrogante es si el encuentro habanero de 1886 tuvo luego una segunda parte.

El nombre de Mazzantini es repetido casi a diario por los cubanos, aunque muchos no conozcan exactamente su historia. La frase ¡Eso no lo logra ni Mazzantini, el torero! forma parte del refranero popular y se utiliza para referirse a situaciones imposibles de resolver y es un reconocimiento a las habilidades del torero para salir de problemas.

Publicado en Habana Radio

The peony is the classic wedding flower: indulgent, romantic and terribly thirsty

Peonies are sensitive souls, flowering for 4-6 weeks between May and July. However June is their big moment, so if you’re planning for June nuptials the peony is within your grasp. Yay. In fact, what with global warming and the early onset of Spring, peonies could even work for an April or May wedding. Double yay. Post-a-rose is already advertising the arrival of its peony season, starting mid April. Triple yay.

Post a rose's pink peony & green alcimilla robustica bouquet

Indeed, June is a good bet for an environmentally-friendly wedding, as you can source home-grown English peonies and avoid flying out hothouse flowers. The rest of the year you might be better settling with David Austin St Cecilia roses, which are basically like longer-lasting, counterfeit peonies and can be sourced from the UK.

David Austin St Cecilia rose - the counterfeit peony

If you’re full of beans or bridal ambition, you could even grown your own. Or not, because that would, on second thoughts, be a ridiculous and highly stressful plan.

Which peony?

Sarah Bernhardt, Sarah Bernhardt and maybe a couple of stems of Sarah Bernhardt? All the florists advise using this one as it’s big, pink and fluffy, just like your dreams. And it’s perfick for cutting.

Sarah Bernhardt peonies - the ideal peony for cutting

Peonies come in all the romantic hues - red, pink and white

Making it all about the peony

For the clever bride, you can think backwards and make your wedding iconography all about the peony. Then everyone will assume you have terribly joined-up thinking, not that you’re just retro-fitting the flower that happens to be in season into your wedding.

Luckily the peony seems to be the motif du jour amongst the trendy bridal magazines.

The classic peony invitation - by Papeterie

And if you want to go matchy-matchy mad, you could even have peony stamps.

Personalisable peony stamps from Zazzle

Pussy Power is sitting in her studio at Warehouse B16, The Old Peanut Factory, wearing a feathered eye mask and smoking a rollie. Behind her, the wall is covered in black and white photos of French actress Sarah Bernhardt. In the corner, a row of bunting made out of porn mags hangs across the biggest pair of pants I have ever seen. A cast of a pelvic bone made out of Dolly Mixtures next to them on a table. Pussy Power greets me warmly, and invites me to take my shoes off (because of the carpet) and come in.

Why do you call yourself Pussy Power?

The art I make under the name Pussy Power (which includes sewing, painting, drawing, performance, writing and making ukeleles) is about trying figure out what kind of a world I’m bringing my daughters up in. It’s also about trying to figure out what feminism is, as it seems to have become a dirty word. Pussy Power embodies feminism for women who love men and have a sense of humour.

Tell me about the pants.

I have two daughters – one’s twelve, one’s seventeen – and I worked out I’ve washed over 10,000 pairs of knickers. It makes me a bit of an authority. So I got the biggest knickers in Britain, asked people to get in them and gallop up and down. They are officially the biggest knickers in Britain – 8XL, I think. I searched online and found the Big Bloomer Company, who sent them to me beautifully packaged up in red tissue paper. And I have written on them:

The thing about these Hackney Wickers
I’m told is they’re wearing no knickers
So why not try these
They come to your knees

What about the bunting?

I started off doing graffiti porn because I was interested in the fact that graffiti has become like wallpaper: people aren’t shocked by it anymore. I call it c**t bunting or the fanny banner. People say, “Oh yeah, porn is hilarious,” but let’s not get so ironic and cool and edgy that we forget these are people. I get inside the picture with these women and look out at you, laughing.

And the pelvic bone?

The pelvic bone (which is cast in clay, and covered in white sugar and Dolly Mixtures) highlights an injury I had to my pelvis when I was pregnant. I had a trapped nerve. I knew a woman who took an overdose because of the pain of it, so I’m trying to raise consciousness.

How long have you been working in this studio?

I decided last december that I wanted to get a studio and answered an ad on Facebook. I had no idea Hackney Wick had a reputation as an artistic community; I just wanted a studio. I’ve lived in Shoreditch for 8 years and watched it become more and more trendy. It pushes studio rents out of my price range. I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m part of a community of artists but it’s nice to be in an environment where you feel like anything goes – whatever daft idea you have.
 
You can read the full story of the Biggest Knickers in Britain on the Pussy Power website.

pussy.power@mac.com
www.pussypower.me.uk
www.myspace.com/pussypower_me
www.facebook.com/pages/Pussy-Power/15204671729

This is probably the first grownup book I ever read, not too long after finishing The Little Engine That Could. In fact, I’m sure it’s the main reason I learned to read. Although the stories were in tiny print, I wanted to know what that tiny print said, because of the pictures.

After a long hiatus, I found the book again, and traced back some of the ways in which I was influenced, as an artist and as a writer, by A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago, this collection of newspaper columns written by Ben Hecht, with art by Herman Rosse. To call that influence profound wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

These vignettes transcend the topical: Hecht wrote for the ages. The preface, by his editor, describes the extraordinary pieces as the fruits of Hecht’s Big Idea -

…the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often flatly and unimaginatively told, lay life….

It goes on to say that his daily columns “invaded the realm of literature, where in large part, journalism really dwells.” And he produced one of them every day.

Ben Hecht is one of the masters before whom I bow. He proved over and over that you can find a story anywhere, more stories than you’ll ever live long enough to write. He asks a policeman to recall interesting cases, and the policeman modestly demurs, saying he doesn’t really have any. Unless maybe Hecht means something like the man who had a tobacco jar made from a human skull, “and that’s how they found out he killed his wife.”

Hecht could get the essential story out of a person, and divine the defining events of the life. “Life stories are sometimes no longer than a single line–a sentence, even a phrase,” he said. That sounds condescending, doesn’t it? But Werner Erhard said pretty much the same thing. Everyone’s bio can be distilled into one line. “Your life is about……” That’s why geniuses like Hecht write cautionary tales, of people with these cramped, constricted mini-lives–as a way of warning us not to follow their example, if we can possibly help it.

He wrote of the obscure nobodies, trying to fight their way into the light. He saw the atavistic, archaic, and mythic elements beneath the surface of everyday life. He could lay down an atmosphere, like Ridley Scott did for another city in the Bladerunner movie. The urban variety, and the characters Hecht introduced, helped me know how banal my existence was. His reportage set up a template in my head, from which I learned what to look for in a city. It bent me toward wanting to live someplace full of weirdness, which I later did, in Venice, CA. When I went to Chicago, I found it there too. I found it in so many places along the way, because of being taught how to seek it, by this book, at a very young age.

Here’s one way 1001 Afternoons directly affected my life: its writer and illustrator modeled for me a way of assimilating the city that made it bearable. At 20, I spent a lot of time in downtown Buffalo, and thanks to all that Hecht/Chicago imagery that had been planted in my childish head many years before, the metropolis was not as ugly or alienating as it otherwise would have been.

I worked in a 26-story building–just four stories shorter than Rosse’s picture At the end of a wretched day, when everyone else rushed for street level, I’d take the elevator to the top floor and gaze for a while upon the darkening city. I don’t think I’d have had it in me to do this, if not for Hecht and Rosse.

I like the way Hecht would put things in context. For instance, when interviewing a renowned tattoo artist, he learned from the man’s press clippings that–surprise!–this was not a new phenomenon. Back in the late 1890s, skin art had been a wildfire fad among Chicago’s elite. The Americans were “following the lead of New York’s Four Hundred, who followed the lead of London’s most aristocratic circles…” In the early 1920s, when Hecht got around to writing about the tattoo, it was no longer a status symbol, but had become a lower-class kind of thing.

He wasn’t afraid to write experimentally. Except it’s not really an experiment when such a master does it. I wouldn’t hesitate to call this the first gonzo journalism. Although Hecht speaks of himself in the third person, as “the newspaper man,” the approach is unashamedly subjective. His tone could be acerbic, what we might call snarky. His writing has attitude. He certainly combines elements of fact and fiction, with a good deal of embroidery. What he could make, for instance, of a glimpse of a young woman buying a newspaper….

Thoughts from Ben Hecht, while wandering in the rain one night, which is different from daytime rain:

Ideas do not come so easily or so clearly. The ennobling angers which are the emotion of superiority in the iconoclast do not rise so spontaneously. And one does not say “People are this and people are that…”

Hecht listened to and recounted stories from a taxicab driver, an old watchmaker, a manicurist, a Chinese laundry man, a charwoman, a night conductor on the El. He listened to a man who’d traveled all over the world and had nothing to say about it, and a prison guard who says, “They pick me out for the death watch on account I have a way with doomed men.” A death-obsessed young woman. A vendor of roasted chestnuts. A sailor with a wooden leg.

Hecht would hang out with the day laborers waiting to be hired, or check out talent contests in bottom-feeder bars. Sometimes he went to dangerous places and mixed with desperate people. Or he would report on a formal concert in a glittering hall, and note that the admission price was “33 cents, including war tax.” Wonder why he threw that in?

He tells poignant tales from the sales clerk at the 10-cent wedding ring counter, and from the man who won a pig and brought it home to live in a dirt-filled bathtub. He explores the reasons why another man devotes his life to being a juror, and relates the strange and funny saga of the auctioneer’s wife. He conveys the air of bacchanalia in the nightclub that played the blues and catered to race-mixing (remember, this was 1922). He interviews black entertainer Bert Williams about the time Williams found in his dressing room a huge bouquet of flowers from Sarah Bernhardt, and about how Eleanora Duse called him the best artist on the American stage.

In the midst of the city, Hecht managed to meet up with some nomadic Americans or rubber tramps similar to the ones I composed a MySpace page for decades later. All these encounters became part of the furniture of my immature, impressionable brain. There was the snake charmer, the Japanese female impersonator… This was heavy stuff for a little kid who didn’t even have TV. I was warped into a bohemian – by a book.

So, starting young, as a direct result of 1001 Afternoons, I was attracted to mavericks and outcasts. Decades later, this explained why I was fascinated by Alky Bob (who is briefly shown in this movie , occupying a bench on the Venice boardwalk, with the used magazines he sold spread out around him.)

Doll Lady Susan Moscowitz was one whose story I inquired about, following the example of my mentor. She was a boardwalk regular, making her dolls from found scraps, sometimes selling a doll to a tourist. After being widowed once, Susan chose for her second husband a big, strong man who looked like he wouldn’t die any time soon. He became ill with multiple disease processes. He drove his rickety old car around and habitually crashed into things. Living with him became a terrible burden, and then he died, that big, strong man. Susan shook her head over the irony of it, and I knew Ben Hecht was watching and listening from somewhere.

One effect of the book was almost immediate, taking place when I was a kid. I didn’t really hear any cuss words until I was about 14, but had caught on early that there were such words. I remember, as a kid, using “blankety blank” as a substitute for the cuss words of which I was still innocent. That’s a nerd story if I ever heard one.

I see that familiarity with Hecht’s perception filters contributed to my cynicism. He writes of a woman who

…belongs to the type that becomes charitable around Christmas time. She makes a glowing pretense of aiding the poor…she regards the poor as a sort of social and spiritual asset . They afford her the double opportunity of appearing in the eyes of her neighbors as a magnanimous soul and of doing something which reflects great credit upon her character.

In the piece titled “Nirvana,” he writes of one of the

wise, brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler. She’s it. Selling her ankles for a glass of pop and her eyes for a fox trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette.

He reproduces quite a lot of dialogue from a flapper, and now I realize, all over again, why Inserts is a great movie. Because this piece of writing by Ben Hecht was lodged somewhere in my subconscious, I recognized the character Harlene as authentic.

In one piece, a mother is in a courtroom, trying to keep her baby quiet, waiting to know if her older daughter will be charged with prostitution. In another, a woman’s children are taken away by the juvenile authorities, because when her husband died she spent the insurance money on a big funeral for him. Thanks to Hecht, I was sensitized to stuff like this early on, and I can see the results in the things I wrote in college. I’m sure it wasn’t conscious at the time, but looking back, the influence is plain as day.

About an event that happened at lunch with author Sherwood Anderson, Hecht tells a story so strange, you wonder if they clashed over who got the material to use. Hecht must have been tempted to make it into a screenplay. He writes about the magic of a used book shop on a rainy day. He talks about a book scout finding a 30 cent book that turns out to be worth $150, a 75 cent book that fetches $200. Fifty years later I became a book scout and racked up some amazing finds, but nothing that impressive.

“Ill-Humoresque” contains his reflections on a beggar, the same kind of mental exercise I went through so often when I lived in a community full of mendicants. There’s a great exegesis of the psychology of panhandlers and the citizens who donate dimes to them. This is what is meant by the examined life

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A Great Mystery: the Tattoo
Ben Hecht and Bill Haywood

Occasionally considering myself a bright lad, I was reading this book today, 211 things A Bright Boy Can Do by Tom Cutler. On page 86 I found instructions I thought were interesting on “How to change your name.”

The shocking advice was to just “start using your new name.” According to this book, they claim that as long as you are not trying to deceive or defraud people there is no legal process you have to follow to change your name in the United States.

So, according to this book, all I have to do is start using a new name and it will actually be my new name.
How cool is that? (Very).

Now I’m wondering how often I can make a change like this. Could I change my name every year? Every month? Every week? I’m thinking, sure, why not? But the book doesn’t offer that much information. I guess you have to look that up for yourself if you are interested.

Can I change my name to something different each time I decide to change it? (Absolutely).

Can I finally become a Mary? (Uh, if that’s what you want).

Will anyone care if I change my name? (I don’t know. Maybe my parents might care since they named me first).

So many questions remain.

The book goes on to say that you can legally order up a new passport, driver’s license, credit cards, and open bank accounts with your new name. I might have to try this theory to see if it actually works.

They do however offer a disclaimer that as security concerns escalate and the threat of identity theft increases, you may find that making these changes requires some kind of legal documentation and a court
petition.

Yeah, I think in 2009 we have come to the point where you might need a little more than just “say it and it will be so.” This disclaimer made me immediate check the copyright of the book, which was listed as 2006. The fact that the book was published after 9/11/2001 with this advice really surprised me. I’m sure there are lots of every day normal people who have changed their name for some reason, but I began to think about some of the people I have heard of with name changes. I wondered if some of them had just started using their new name or if they did it in a more legal way.

Just for kicks, here’s a list of a few people that changed their names. How many did you know?

A causa di un brutto incidente ad una delle attrici protagoniste, lo spettacolo “NUDO DI DONNA – L’ombra di Sarah” scritto e diretto da Massimo Mele, che doveva essere in scena al Teatro Lo Spazio.it dal 24 marzo al 5 aprile è stato sospeso e rinviato a data da destinarsi. Roma, dal 24 marzo al 5 aprile TeatroLoSpazio.it  Via Locri 42/44, (traversa di via Sannio) TeatroLoSpazio.it la compagnia Nick’s Theatre Presenta: Nudo di Donna – l’ombra di Sarah  di Massimo Mele con Giuseppe Alagna, Elena Presti, Vincenzo Sartini e  Sandro Scarpelli Regia Massimo Mele Aiuto regia, Consulenza artistica e Scenografia Giorgio Baldo. Sarah è Sarah Bernhardt, la prima diva della Storia del teatro, che entusiasmò generazioni di spettatori e artisti, con la sua tipica voce e con l’unicità dei suoi gesti.  Lo spettacolo “Nudo di donna – L’ombra di Sarah”, non è una biografia, ma uno spaccato della sua vita, un periodo dell’esistenza e della carriera della grande attrice che la vede vicina ad Oscar Wilde, in un incontro/scontro che la porterà a rievocare ricordi nascosti più o meno volontariamente, nei meandri della memoria. E allora come oggi, la donna diviene purtroppo, troppo spesso, vittima di mercificazione e sopruso.  Siamo nel 1892. Oscar Wilde, che aveva visto Sarah interpretare Lady Macbeth e che ne era rimasto folgorato, scrive per lei il dramma ‘Salomé’. Nonostante la riconosciuta fama dello scrittore irlandese, la Bernhardt dopo alcune prove rifiuta di interpretare l’eroina di Wilde. Salomé risulta infatti la donna rifiutata in amore. Non essere accettata, è un ruolo inconcepibile per Sarah. Inoltre la scena del banchetto le riporta alla memoria un’ombra che si porta dietro dall’età di 16 anni… un oscuro episodio, un trauma della sua giovinezza… nonché un’ immagine che la ossessiona da sempre… un nudo di donna…
Sarah Bernhardt (Parigi, 22 ottobre 1844 – Parigi, 26 marzo 1923) è stata una celebre attrice teatrale francese. Il suo vero nome era Rosine Bernardt. Soprannominata La voix d’or (“La voce d’oro”) e La divina, Sarah Bernhardt è ad oggi considerata come la più grande attrice del XIX secolo.  Sarah Bernhardt pubblicò diversi libri ed opere teatrali e fu inoltre tra le fonti di ispirazione per il personaggio dell’attrice La Berma, descritta da Marcel Proust ne Alla ricerca del tempo perduto. L’influenza è stata così netta che Proust ha spesso chiamato il personaggio nelle sue lettere “Haras”, l’inverso di Sarah.

Toda vez que passo por uma banca de revistas eu dou de cara com um monte de publicações cujas capas apresentam a foto de uma celebridade produzida em estúdio. Lembro-me então da avó de todas essas fotos, uma bela imagem da atriz francesa Sarah Bernardht, executada pelo retratista Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (o Nadar) há uns 145 anos (1864).

Mesmo que a foto acima não estivesse presente na capa da primeira publicação em que foi utilizada, esse tipo de retrato, que dialoga mais com a publicidade do que com o jornalismo, está muito presente em capas de revista até hoje. Arrisco dizer que é o tipo de capa mais comum.

Seguem algumas capas interessantes retiradas daqui.

Haute Couture (fransk for ‘høysøm/mestersøm’ eller ‘høy klesdesign’, altså det ypperste innen søm og klesdesign) refererer til produksjonen av eksklusive og individuelt tilpassede moter. I dagens Frankrike er Haute Couture et beskyttet navn som kun kan benyttes av firmaer som møter visse veldefinerte standarder. Haute Couture blir ofte ‘made to order’ for spesifikke kunder, og er som regel laget av dyre, høykvalitetstekstiler og sydd med et ekstremt øye for detaljer og finish. Som regel laget for hånd med tidkrevende teknikker.

Couturieren Charles Frederick Worth (13 oktober, 1826 – 10 mars, 1895), blir av mange ansett som ‘The Father of Haute Couture’. Han var den første som ble kalt en couturier, en klesdesigner som var mer ansett som en kunstner enn en håndtverker. Selv om han ble født i Bourne, Lincolnshire, England, var det i Frankrike han opererte og åpnet sin forretning i 1858. Selv om han lagde one-of-a-kind designs for noen av sine aristokratiske, rike og berømte  kunder, deriblant den franske keiserinnen Eugénie og den berømte skuespillerinnen Sarah Bernhardt, er han mest kjent for å forberede porteføljer av forskjellige designs som ble vist på levende modeller i the House of Worth. Kundene kunne så velge en eller flere modeller, spesifisere farger og materialer, og få skreddersydd et duplikat i Worths workshop. Worth ble en stor suksess og kunder kom hele veien fra New York og Boston for å få skreddersydd sine klær av Worth.

Dette store motedynastiet, The House of Worth, stengte sine dører så sent som i 1952 etter at Worths oldebarn, Jean-Charles, trakk seg tilbake fra familiebedriften.

Kilder: Wikipedia, Oxford History of Art – Fashion, The Metropolitan Museum of Art og The Power of Fashion.

/Kenneth Tangnes

Uh, thanks, Allah. Almost lost my breakfast.

That was really funny, Terry Tate, did you think that up all by yourself? Or did you have to have Sandra Bernhardt in on a brainstorming session with you?

Well, Allah gives some background on this joker who apparently has some fans, although I personally can’t imagine what sort of humans could find this remotely amusing. “Unfunny” doesn’t even begin to describe how vile and disturbing not only this piece is, but anyone who could like it.

So let me review this again: there’s Madonna telling an audience of thousands how she is going to kick Sarah Palin’s person, Sarah Bernhardt raging-fantasising about Palin being gang raped, an artist’s depiction of Sarah Palin’s faced being punched so hard a tooth is knocked out and the glasses fly right off her face, and a mock up of someone pointing a gun at Palin’s head. And now this joker with his own twisted damp dream acted out to the framework of an already perverted Reebok commercial spot. How long ’til this becomes mainstream?

It’s not an unreasonable question given how there has been such a small amount of outroar coming from the press–if any at all. And why? Because they don’t like Palin’s political positions? Isn’t this supposed to be a country in which people can openly speak and tell their ideas–protected by the First Amendment? Since when do we go around perpetuating violence against those we disagree with? Of course there have always been “hits” on political figures, i.e. assassinations and attempts, and while not getting into any discussion on the merits of those, what I’m looking at here is the alarming phenomenon of public and private figures promoting and almost advocating physical aggression and violence–because they don’t like what someone said.

What happened to the days when you just didn’t vote for them?

We all know about schoolyard bullies and the routine theories re: how insecure they are, etc. Could these otherwise ordinary (word use relatively in some cases) beings be so threatened that killing or severely harming Palin makes them feel better about themselves and their insecurities? There’s an imbalance in this description, because “insecurity” seems too small a word to stand parallel and in partnership with the violence being promoted these days.

I also have to wonder: “Why Palin?” No, I’m not saying that in consideration of why Hillary wasn’t the object of such attacks. (Although Clinton did endure some abuse coming from self-hating idiots.) No, what I’m thinking about is that surely some of these people dislike John McCain as much as they do Sarah Palin. So how come nobody’s making the moves against McCain? Not that I am asking for it to happen, of course; it would be just as despicable. But the fact that he is a man can’t stop itself from crossing my mind, and the horrible consideration that even amongst the female population, violence against women not only is still acceptable, but also can be considered funny, especially when the intended target is someone who disagrees with them.

This is perhaps nowhere better reflected than in some of the video responses at the YouTube site itself, such as:

montalvomachado
Maaan, she deserved that! Hilarious.

or

jaeastman
pretty sure dr. king would find this pretty lol-worthy

or

MudkipRex
Get used to having a black president, you racist moron. Obama is going to win. And he’s the better candidate too.

Not only were there few comments that directly objected to the depiction of a large man crashing into a small female (what in real would have killed her), but there were ones such as the last (above) that justified it with the implication that she had it coming because of the alleged racism inherent in the McCain campaign and its supporters. In fact, the first reply I quoted above comes out and says, “[S]he deserved that!” And in failing to recognise their own out-of-control behavior and irrational ways of, erm, thinking, there even is the assertion that Martin Luther King would have approved.

By the way, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was Joe Biden’s baby. Why isn’t he speaking up against this monstrous trend?

With the Obama scare measures against freedom of speech already happening, a bunch of pre-pubes dressing up in fatigues to worship their candidate, children being indoctrinated to sing love songs to him, the proposal of some sort of civilian gang (funding same as the actual military’s) and now tacit approval of violence against Obama critics, I’m not only still wondering how far this will go, as I wrote last time, but also when the American Cultural Revolution starts.

Oh yeah: The media are spreading fears about “Republican anger” on election night. Snort.

Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama (Published in Association with the Jewish Museum, New York) is available at Amazon for $34.21. To Order click here
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Other Products of Interest

• My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt (Suny Series, Women Writers in Translation)
• Divine Sarah: A Life of Sarah Bernhardt
• Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series
• Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly
• POPism: The Warhol Sixties