Ascent of A PyrAmid

CINDY SHERMAN? NO SILLY!

2010-11-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

This fall, Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History will showcase a fascinating fragment of its collection of forty-thousand magic lantern slides, all dating from the turn of the previous century, during the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival. The natural-history museum used to lend these sorts of images to public schools statewide, pre-organized in boxes for what must have been excruciatingly boring lectures on topics ranging from “Useful Trees” to “Minor Industries of New England.” Yawn! But seriously, folks,this image is fantatstic, eh?, and the show promises to be a real treat.

SELF-AGGRANDIZING, YES, YET SIMPLY SPECTACULAR

2010-10-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Suzy Solidor (1900 – 1983) was the French singer and actress whose greatest achievement was the décor of her nightclub La Vie Parisienne, decorated with thirty three pictures of herself, painted by some of the greatest known artists of the day including Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Raoul Dufy, Tamara de Lempicka, Francis Picabia and Kees van Dongen. The result? One magnificent, massive, and multifaceted self-portrait.

For the Social X-Ray

2010-10-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

Even though Salvador Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli’s stark black crepe Skeleton Dress was created for the Italian designer’s February 1938 Circus Collection, it has held up particularly well from an aesthetic point of view and would create a sensation today at, say, Per Se. So don’t just push that Marscapone Enriched Parsnip "Agnolotti" around on your plate, now you can eat it, too!

No one will know the difference.

Box 272 Interior, Harry Burton, Gelatin silver print circa 1927

2010-05-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

Photo documentation from the excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun. And, I think, one of the loveliest photographs ever made.

"LA DI DA" LILLIPUTIAN'S LOUNGE

2010-05-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

About one hundred years ago, New York's swanky socialite spinster Stettheimer sisters began the decoration of a dynamic, yet diminutive, Deco-influenced early Modernist-style dollhouse.

Now to be found among the dreary period rooms and droves of dusty dolls that comprise the Museum of the City of New York’s permanent collection, Carrie and Florine Stettheimer’s creation really stands out as a work of art that’s quite spectacular and super-original.

Ahead of its time, indeed -- yet also an encapsulation of the era in which it was produced.

And the sister’s artistic endeavor is ambitious in another way, ‘cause the mini mansion contains a Meta-magnificent mélange of original, to-scale works created by the Stettheimer's artist friends, including William Zorach, Alexander Archipenko, and Gaston Lachaise.

Crouch down, peer in to its many rooms, and it just might be hear a tinny-sounding, Cole Porter song spinning on the gramophone, and tiny satin-shod feet stomping on a postage stamp-sized polar bear fur rug to the detumescent fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz rhythm… of a plethora of Pop! Pop! Popping! Popped! pen nib-sized champagne corks.

ICE DREAM

2010-04-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

Caspar David Friedrich’s’ ‘Das Eismeer' (The Ice Sea) 1823/4

Monica Bonvicini’s 'Hun Ligger' (She Lies), 1997

I know what you’re thinking:

“Pictures of Icebergs. Oh no! ”

But please, suppress that yawn, Gentle Reader. There's no need for alarm.

‘Cause I’m not going to ascend a soap box to preach about global warming.

To hell with the ill-effects of greenhouse gasses! Let’s throw caution to the wind, and emit a collective sigh of relief -- to the detriment of the ozone layer. 'Cause we're gonna talk about some frivolous stuff, instead.

...take a look at Monica Bonvicini’s preparatory drawings for the sculpture 'Hun Ligger' (She Lies) a steel structure partly covered with translucent diagonal stripes, measuring approximately 17 x 16 x 12 meters -- riffing on Caspar David Friedrich’s’ genius ‘Das Eismeer' (The Ice Sea) -- to be installed floating in front of Oslo’s new opera house.

Whenever there’s any discussion of global warming, I tend to get distracted and start thinking about Arctic Explorer Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen (1886 - 1957).

I can't decide which is the most luxurious:
Peter's beard, or maybe his fur hoodie?

This guy sure was dreamy:

Tall.

Incredibly good-looking.

Courageous.

And such a great writer—his encyclopedic Book of the Seven Seas is one of my favorites, ever.

And, most importantly, this guy looked fuckin' fantastic in fur.

Peter Freuchen and the equally dashing Knud Rasmussen.
I'm saving up all my pennies for a pair of bear fur gaiters, just like Peter's.

Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North (1935) is the product of Freuchen's long, dark winters in Greenland, when his mind sailed off with the big bergs "as they floated eternally to their doom".

In addition to scampering around on snowdrifts with his cute friend Knud while sporting the finest quality polar bear, blue fox and baby seal pelts, Freuchen married a lovely Inuit wife Navarana Mequpaluk and the union produced two children: Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk and Piplauk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager.

But man, oh man, isn't it just too exhausting, thinking about crawling out of the igloo, night after night, and mustering up the energy just to call those kids in for dinner?

Peter Freuchen and Navarana Mequpaluk in a fabulous pose

Peter and his third wife Dagmar, in an astonishing photograph by Irving Penn. Peter really puts all of today's so-called 'bears' to shame, eh? Any old fool can grow a belly and wear a flannel.

THIS BUD IS FOR ZEUS

2010-04-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

The rather louche Greek myth of Ganymede has been omitted from the curriculum of fables taught in middle schools today.

However, the tender young Trojan shepherd’s rape and abduction by Zeus metamorphed as an eagle, was deemed appropriate subject matter for a Budweiser ad, circa 1900.

Ganymede was Zeus “piece”at Mount Olympus and enjoyed great popularity as “cup bearer to the gods”.

Hence the forty-ounce!

Doesn’t it look like a Max Ernst collage?

THE PRECIOUS LUCIEN WATTLESKEAT AND HIS BREATHLESS HOSTESS MRS. GRAMPLAIN

2010-03-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Any old fool knows that Ascending pyrAmids ‘Aint for Amateur ArcheAologists. It’s quite a workout, even with the assistance of a band of burly Bedouins. Enroute to the summit, remember to chillax, maybe even read a good short story. Saki’s "The East Wing" (1914), for example.

Here, a recent snap of my friends Bug and David in tableaux vivant to illustrate the main characters of Saki’s "The East Wing": THE PRECIOUS LUCIEN WATTLESKEAT and his breathless hostess MRS. GRAMPLAIN.

(Propped on the mantle, a painting of the daughter that Mrs. Gramplain wished that she had had and which she has faithfully updated with the passing years. In an endeavor to match her painstaking endeavor I re-made Lucien Wattleskeat's uniform, a Navy dress coat, by 'broidering it with more than 1,500 rusty bottle caps.)

IT was early February and the hour was somewhere about two in the morning. Most of the house-party had retired to bed. Lucien Wattleskeat had merely retired to his bedroom where he sat over the still vigorous old-age of a fire, balancing the entries in his bridge-book. They worked out at seventy-eight shillings on the right side, as the result of two evenings' play, which was not so bad, considering that the stakes had been regrettably low.

Lucien was a young man who regarded himself with an undemonstrative esteem, which the undiscerning were apt to mistake for indifference. Several women of his acquaintance were on the look-out for nice girls for him to marry, a vigil in which he took no share.

The atmosphere of the room was subtly tinged with an essence of tuberose, and more strongly impregnated with the odour of wood-fire smoke. Lucien noticed this latter circumstance as he finished his bridge-audit, and also noticed that the fire in the grate was not a wood one, neither was it smoking.

A stronger smell of smoke blew into the room a moment later as the door opened, and Major Boventry, pyjama-clad and solemnly excited, stood in the doorway.

"The house is on fire!" he exclaimed.

"Oh," said Lucien, "is that it? I thought perhaps you had come to talk to me. If you would shut the door the smoke wouldn't pour in so."

"We ought to do something," said the Major with conviction.

"I hardly know the family," said Lucien, "but I suppose one will be expected to be present, even though the fire does not appear to be in this wing of the house."

"It may spread to here," said the Major.

"Well, let's go and look at it," assented Lucien, "though it's against my principles to meet trouble half-way."

"Grasp your nettle, that's what I say," observed Boventry.

"In this case, Major, it's not our nettle," retorted Lucien, carefully shutting the bedroom door behind him.

In the passage they encountered Canon Clore, arrayed in a dressing-gown of Albanian embroidery, which might have escaped remark in a Te Deum service in the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, but which looked out of place in the corridor of an English country house. But then, as Lucien observed to himself, at a fire one can wear anything.

"The house is on fire," said the Canon, with the air of one who lends dignity to a fact by according it gracious recognition.

"It's in the east wing, I think," said the Major.

"I suppose it is another case of suffragette militancy," said the Canon. "I am in favour of women having the vote myself, even if, as some theologians assert, they have no souls. That, indeed, would furnish an additional argument for including them in the electorate, so that all sections of the community, the soulless and the souled, might be represented, and, being in favour of the female vote, I am naturally in favour of militant means to achieve it. Belonging as I do to a Church Militant, I should be inconsistent if I professed to stand aghast at militant methods in vote-winning warfare. But, at the same time, I cannot resist pointing out that the women who are using violent means to wring the vote-right from a reluctant legislature are destroying the value of the very thing for which they are struggling. A vote is of no conceivable consequence to anybody unless it carries with it the implicit understanding that majority-rule is the settled order of the day, and the militants are actively engaged in demonstrating that any minority armed with a box of matches and a total disregard of consequences can force its opinions and its wishes on an indifferent or hostile community. It is not merely manor-houses that they are destroying, but the whole fabric of government by ballot-box."

"Oughtn't we to be doing something about the fire?" said Major Boventry.

"I was going to suggest something of the sort myself," said the Canon stiffly.

"Tomorrow may be too late, as the advertisements in the newspapers say," observed Lucien.

In the hall they met their hostess, Mrs Gramplain.

"I'm so glad you have come," she said; "servants are so little help in an emergency of this kind. My husband has gone off in the car to summon the fire-brigade."

"Haven't you telephoned to them?" asked the Major.

"The telephone unfortunately is in the east wing," said the hostess; "so is the telephone-book. Both are being devoured by the flames at this moment. It makes one feel dreadfully isolated. Now if the fire had only broken out in the west wing instead, we could have used the telephone and had the fire-engines here by now."

"On the other hand," objected Lucien, "Canon Clore and Major Boventry and myself would probably have met with the fate that has overtaken the telephone-book. I think I prefer the present arrangement."

"The butler and most of the other servants are in the dining-room, trying to save the Raeburns and the alleged Van Dyke," continued Mrs Gramplain, "and in that little room on the first landing, cut off from us by the cruel flames, is my poor darling Eva – Eva of the golden hair. Will none of you save her?"

"Who is Eva of the golden hair?" asked Lucien.

"My daughter," said Mrs Gramplain.

"I didn't know you had a daughter," said Lucien, "and really I don't think I can risk my life to save some one I've never met or even heard about. You see, my life is not only wonderful and beautiful to myself, but if my life goes, nothing else really matters – to me. I don't suppose you can realise that, to me, the whole world as it exists to-day, the Ulster problem, the Albanian tangle, the Kikuyu controversy, the wide field of social reform and Antarctic exploration, the realms of finance, and research and international armaments, all this varied and crowded and complex world, all comes to a complete and absolute end the moment my life is finished. Eva might be snatched from the flames and live to be the grandmother of brilliant and charming men and women; but, as far as I should be concerned, she and they would no more exist than a vanished puff of cigarette smoke or a dissolved soda-water bubble. And if, in losing my life, I am to lose her life and theirs, as far as I personally am concerned with them, why on earth should I, personally, risk my life to save hers and theirs?"

"Major Boventry," exclaimed Mrs Gramplain, "you are not clever, but you are a man with honest human feelings. I have only known you for a few hours, but I am sure you are the man I take you for. You will not let my Eva perish."

"Lady," said the Major stumblingly, "I would gladly give my life to rescue your Eva, or anybody's Eva for the matter of that, but my life is not mine to give. I am engaged to the sweetest little woman in the world. I am everything to her. What would my poor little Mildred say if they brought her news that I had cast away my life in an endeavour, perhaps fruitless, to save some unknown girl in a burning country house?"

"You are like all the rest of them," said Mrs Gramplain bitterly; "I thought that you, at least, were stupid. It shows how rash it is to judge a man by his bridge-play. It has been like this all my life," she continued in dull, level tones; "I was married, when little more than a child, to my husband, and there has never been any real bond of affection between us. We have been polite and considerate to one another, nothing more. I sometimes think that if we had had a child things might have been different."

"But – your daughter Eva?" queried the Canon, and the two other men echoed his question.

"I have never had a daughter," said the woman quietly, yet, amid the roar and crackle of the flames, her voice carried, so that not a syllable was lost. "Eva is the outcome of my imagination. I so much wanted a little girl, and at last I came to believe that she really existed. She grew up, year by year, in my mind, and when she was eighteen I painted her portrait, a beautiful young girl with masses of golden hair. Since that moment the portrait has been Eva. I have altered it a little with the changing years – she is twenty-one now – and I have repainted her dress with every incoming fashion. On her last birthday I painted her a pair of beautiful diamond earrings. Every day I have sat with her for an hour or so, telling her my thoughts, or reading to her. And now she is there, alone with the flames and the smoke, unable to stir, waiting for the deliverance that does not come."

"It is beautiful," said Lucien; "it is the most beautiful thing I ever heard."

"Where are you going?" asked his hostess, as the young man moved towards the blazing staircase of the east wing.

"I am going to try and save her," he answered; "as she has never existed, my death cannot compromise her future existence. I shall go into nothingness, and she, as far as I am concerned, will go into nothingness too; but then she has never been anything else."

"But your life, your beautiful life?"

"Death in this case is more beautiful."

The Major started forward.

"I am going too," he said simply.

"To save Eva?" cried the woman.

"Yes," he said; "my little Mildred will not grudge me to a woman who has never existed."

"How well he reads our sex," murmured Mrs Gramplain, "and yet how badly he plays bridge!"

The two men went side by side up the blazing staircase, the slender young figure in the well-fitting dinner-jacket and the thick-set military man in striped pyjamas of an obvious Swan & Edgar pattern. Down in the hall below them stood the woman in her pale wrapper, and the Canon in his wonderful-hued Albanian-work dressing-gown, looking like the arch-priests of some strange religion presiding at a human sacrifice.

As the rescue-party disappeared into the roaring cavern of smoke and flames, the butler came into the hall, bearing with him one of the Raeburns.

"I think I hear the clanging of the fire-engines, ma'am," he announced.

Mrs Gramplain continued staring at the spot where the two men had disappeared.

"How stupid of me!" she said presently to the Canon. "I've just remembered I sent Eva to Exeter to be cleaned. Those two men have lost their lives for nothing."

"They have certainly lost their lives," said the Canon.

"The irony of it all," said Mrs Gramplain, "the tragic irony of it all!"

"The real irony of the affair lies in the fact that it will be instrumental in working a social revolution of the utmost magnitude," said the Canon. "When it becomes known, through the length and breadth of the land, that an army officer and a young ornament of the social world have lost their lives in a country-house fire, started by suffragette incendiarism, the conscience of the country will be aroused, and people will cry out that the price is too heavy to pay. The militants will be in worse odour than ever, but, like the Importunate Widow, they will get their way. Over the charred bodies of Major Boventry and Lucien Wattleskeat the banners of progress and enfranchisement will be carried forward to victory, and the mothers of the nation will henceforth take their part in electing the Mother of Parliaments. England will range herself with Finland and other enlightened countries which have already admitted women to the labours, honours, and responsibilities of the polling-booth. In the early hours of this February morning a candle has been lighted – "

"The fire was caused by an over-heated flue, and not by suffragettes, sir," interposed the butler.

At that moment a scurry of hoofs and a clanging of bells, together with the hoot of a motor-horn, were heard above the roaring of the flames.

"The fire-brigade!" exclaimed the Canon.

"The fire-brigade and my husband," said Mrs Gramplain, in her dull level voice; "it will all begin over again now, the old life, the old unsatisfying weariness, the old monotony; nothing will be changed."

"Except the east wing," said the Canon gently.

I WANT MY MUMMY

2010-03-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

Judging from this 1880 portrait, it’s quite apparent that Spanish industrial tycoon and diplomat Count Eduardo Toda Y Güell was an exceedingly well-dressed gentleman.

A multi-tasker in magnificent mummy make up, Güell was also quite accomplished as an archaeologist, art collector and author. His book Through Egypt (Madrid, 1889) is an evocative snapshot of contemporary life in late nineteenth century Cairo, as well as a scholarly exploration of the region’s ancient monuments. Of course, the volume is illustrated with his own photographs.

In addition to suffering from acute Egyptomania, Güell was also gaga for Antoni Gaudi – as the Catalan architect’s principal patron. For Güell’s Barcelona estate (now the Spanish royal family’s Palace of Pedrables) Gaudi created a gate of wrought-iron forged into the form of a ferocious and formidable-lookin’ dragon.

Doesn’t Gaudi’s gargantuan and grimacing

beast look like a Giger?

ANOTHER SAPPHO, BUT THIS GAL HAILS FROM THE ISLE OF STATEN

2010-02-28T09:10:00.000-08:00

Alice Austen, at age 19.

The legacies of ancient Greek writer Sappho (circa 630 – 570 BC) of the Greek island of Lesbos, and of an obscure photographer named Alice Austen (1886 – 1952) of New York's Staten Island, are remarkably similar. Although the bulk of their respective life's works have been lost, what remains transcends artistic medium, time and space to endure as vastly important and poetic testaments o to"love between the ladies". Of the two women, of course Sappho is the much more famous. Indeed, the adjectives deriving from her name and place of birth are now associated with female homosexuality. But only a single complete work, Hymn to Aphrodite, remains of her nine-volume corpus which was read so much in antiquity. Of Alice's oeuvre, only 3,500 of the 9,000 glass plate negatives produced in her lifetime, and made exclusively for her own enjoyment, are still in existence today. Very few of these glass print negatives have been examined or printed by scholars. To follow, a sampling of Alice’s unprecedented record of gay Americana at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Alice's seventeenth century cottage,
Cold Comfort, now a house museum.

Alice, snappin' away.

Alice and her lover Violet, puffin' away, en déshabillé.

Suffragettes sure did love to ride bicycles.

Alice and the boys, er, um, girls.

A few boys from Alice's circle, dressed as girls. Note the scarf over the lampshade. Electricity had just been invented. The gays figured out that trick pretty quick!

“MARY” MUMMIES NIANKHKNUM AND KHNUMHOTEP

2010-02-26T12:53:00.000-08:00

Despite the unprecedented discovery, nearly fifty years ago, of what appears to be documentation of the gay life and times of history’s first same-sex couple, attempts are still being made to keep the nature of their apparent relationship under wraps.

NIANKHKNUM and KHNUMHOTEP, whose names translate respectively as “joined to life” and “joined to the blessed state of the dead” were manicurists to the court of King Niuserre during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty (about 2,400 B.C.) In 1964, archaeologists discovered a warren of chambers fabulously decorated with reliefs of two men hunting, banqueting, and most surprisingly, in a series of intimate poses reserved for hetero-normative couples in the canon of Egyptian art.

Despite this evidence, homophobic historians have classified the two men as being merely “friends” or brothers. Even as recently as 2009, a professor of Egyptology at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts constructed a hypothesis about the relationship of NIANKHKNUM and KHNUMHOTEP to suggesting that the two men were “…conjoined twins, and it was this physical peculiarity that prompted the many depictions of them hand-holding or embracing in their tomb-chapel.”

All I have to say is HELLO! These two old queens were manicurists! What more evidence do you need?

PINK PUT ON? PAPAYA SUPRISE? OR PERHAPS YOU'D PREFER PERRIWINKLE PUSSYCAT?

2010-02-25T16:24:00.000-08:00

"Lord Love a Duck" is an old Cockney euphemism that waddled its way in to some highfalutin' literature*, fersure; and it's also the title of a nineteen-sixties black comedy starring an equally-luscious-looking couple of actors, Tuesday Weld and Roddy MacDowall.

Methinks just about anyone can relate to this clip from the movie. 'Cause after perusing the plethora of Pantone palettes at, say, Saks cashmere counter, wouldn't it be fun to disregard impecunity -- purloin a purse, even -- and purchase 'em all?

1. P.G. Woodhouse, The Coming of Bill: "'Well, Lord love a duck!' replied the butler, who in his moments of relaxation was addicted to homely expletives of the lower London type."

2. James Joyce, Ulysses: "Paddy Leonard eyes his alemates. Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I'm standing drinks to!"

3. T.S. Eliot, The Rock: "Lor-love-a-duck, it's the missus!"

SAGE ADVICE THAT'S NOT JUST FOR "TEEN AGERS"

2010-02-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

Don't exchange cross words with your mate. Instead, wear them out on the town to your favorite restaurant or nightclub. Its a much more attractive way to be. Talk about something frivolous!

A SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE ON THE MTA

2010-02-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

Every time I ride the subway, I crack up. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the commute that much. It's what comes over the intercom that makes me laugh, whenever I hear it:

"Ladies and Gentlemen... If you see a suspicious package on the platform or train, do not keep it to yourself. Tell a police officer or an MTA employee. Remain alert, and have a safe day."

Let's clarify a few things:

1. Webster's defines suspicious as "tending to arouse suspicion."

2. I define package as a "present".

3. If you were to find a nicely wrapped package on the subway, would you really want to give it away to a cop, or the token booth lady?

As the train approached Union Square Station, I looked over towards the handsome guy sitting next to me. In his lap, he held the current issue of Newsweek. Aroused, and suspicious, I read the headline. KING TUT'S DNA REVEALS A MORE MANLY PHARAOH. The article briefs a recent analysis published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, how DNA extracted from the bones of 11 royal mummies, including Tut's, has changed perceptions of genetics and also the artistic conventions during this period in time. Called the Armana art-style, it's unique for more realistic depictions of the figure which broke away from the strict formalism universal in Egyptian art. The boy king, who died at age 19 in about 1324 B.C., the 10th year of his reign, and others male royals from this period are seen in quite feminized representations, which led to speculation that the family tree was riddled with hormonal diseases like gynecomastia (excessive breast development in men). But Tut's CT scans show no signs of it. Perhaps this "feminization" of the male figure is another sort of stylistic convention?

And, well, another sentence really piqued my interest: "...the penis of Tutankhamen, which is no longer attached to the body, is well developed."

HE PUT THE “OH!” IN OLIGARCHY.

2010-02-14T19:30:00.001-08:00

Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov of Russia (1887- 1967), seen here at age sixteen in a dazzling portrait by Valentin Serov, was a pretty and privileged and precocious poufster, fersure. Heir to one of the world’s largest private fortunes at the outbreak of The Great War, he lost it all, and continued to metamorph -- an extraordinary character.

Felix’s two volume memoirs Lost Splendour and En Exil are his enduring treasure, a veritable Golden Horde of the Tatars that begins with fourteenth century khan ancestors and ends in mid-twentieth century Paris. What happens in-between is the most interesting part: a coming-of-age story rich with candor and wit, in a strangely detached voice -- equal parts De Profundis, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Wizard of Oz. Now put that in your pipe, and smoke it!

And meet a very young man of Byzantine beauty who wears his mother’s Worth dresses and famous jewels to dine in Saint Petersburg’ chicest restaurants and perform in its cabarets; gets cruised by King Edward VII at the opera; hangs out with bands of gypsies; creates a startling lavender, orange and black décor in his apartment at Oxford; marries the Tsar’s only niece Princess Irina (a union that lasts fifty years); and with his lover Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich masterminds the plot to murder Rasputin, in a desperate measure to save the monarchy.

(Felix is tormented by recurring nightmares of the mad monk's murder for the rest of his life, and Dimitri involved with the creation of Chanel No. 5, and then a champagne salesman in New Jersey.)

Civil War necessitates that Felix’s spectacular fortune, its palaces, paintings and objects d’art are to be left behind, save two Rembrandts and a bag of diamonds which pavé the way to safety in Paris. Re-establishing themselves in a house on the Bolougne-sur-seine, the Yusupov’s are renowned for financial generosity to fellow Russian immigrants, and cause a sensation with a short-lived couture house Irfé as well as a £25,000 award for libel in connection with MGM’s Rasputin and the Empress.

The disclaimer which now screens at the end of every American film, "The preceding was a work of fiction, etc.," is due to the legal precedent set by the Yusupov case. Life is stranger than fiction, indeed!

Felix, and his wife Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia

Irfé

Rasputin and the Empress, 1932

Pixacão

2009-11-22T10:57:00.000-08:00

My friend David just got back from a trip to Brazil. Over lunch the other day, he told me about the amazing graffiti to be found there. He said: "...all beautiful Brazilian boys have braces, and back tattoos."

Whoops! I digress.

Here, an example of the graffiti particular only to São Paulo, called pixacão. It strongly reminds me of one of the earliest known examples of mankind's writing style, called cuneiform. Funny, how things become démodé and then, all of a sudden, very of the moment! Mesopotamian scribes used cuneiform to recorded daily events, trade, astronomy, and literature using a reed pen to impress characters on a clay tablet. Examples date back as far as 3,500 B.C! Who would of thought of back tattoos and brazes as sexy, until David's breathless description and photo documentation?

PLEASE PASS DAT FUNK, COVER GIRLS

2009-11-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

Remember, back in the day -- say, 1990? Dolce and Gabban-o-tards had zero street cred. A sicko beat, some airbrush jeans, maybe a freestyle Cabbage Patch was all you need to look Dope. Now getdafunkouttahere, Fashionista. There's dog turd on your Jimmy Choos.

zSHARE - 06 funk boutique 12 remix.mp3

OMG! A YOUNG HIPSTER IS STABBED!

2009-11-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

Brideshead sure does get chilly in winter, (brrr!). And a tapestry is a great way to blot out creeping drafts. So, the next time I'm kickin' it in Paris, instead of blowing all my milk money at some louche bar on the Rive Gauche, I'm gonna creep over to the XIIIe arrondissement and have this crazy snap -- taken off the TV screen, obviously -- woven as a tapestry at Manufacture des Gobelins. Since the 15th century, Gobelins has been the premier weavers of massive depictions of stylish and bloody battle scenes, la chasse, etc. So the concept makes perfect sense. Well... it does to me, anyway.

La Bataille de Zama by Jules Romain, 1688

VARIOUS STYLISH INDIVIDUALS

2009-10-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia with Dr Chalmers Mitchell. 1924

The Nigerian Chiefs watching the Lord Mayor of London

arrive for the election of Sheriffs at the Guildhall. 1934

Burma Round Table Conference at St James Palace.

The Sawbwa of Hsipaw and his wife. 1932

Official reception at the India Office by the secretary of state for India Sir Samuel Hoare

and Lady Maude Hoare; Princess Indira and Sir P. Pattana. 1933

Dakoman, the masked safe breaker and his manager, Mr Mortimer.

St James Palace Garden Party in aid of the League of Mercy.

Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, and Lady Alexander. 1920

Tibetan lamas , appearing with the Mount Everest Film at the Scale. 1925

Diana and Daphne Chamberlain twins, with "Messa Mascot" and "Messa Marksman". 1934

Bobby and Teddy, sons of Mr Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador. 1938

Bully (mascot of the Royal Flying Corps). 1917

Funeral of Miss Marie Lloyd, Music Hall star - her parents. 1922

Oops! Obamas Overlooked:

2009-10-11T08:32:00.001-07:00

The First Family's forty four works of art, borrowed from several Washington Museums to spiff up The White House, run the gamut from humorous and self-reflective -- Ed Rusha's "I Think I'll...", to pedantic -- Edgar Degas "The Bow" (yawn!); from rather nerdy -- "The Electric Telegraph patent model, May 1, 1849" by Samuel F.B. Morse, to perhaps inspirational but definitely Depressing -- "Portrait of President Harry S. Truman" by Frank O. Salisbury.

Please, don't get me wrong. The Obama's made some great picks.

Especially considering George W's juvenalia, which preceded: generic paintings of cowboys and Indians, and war loot from the capture of Saddaam Hussein. Nonetheless, art critics whine: Not enough women arists! Not enough black artists! So, I thought it a fun exercise to make a few suggestions for the re-decoration of The Oval Office -- the old, the new, and the in-between, each inherently American. And so here they are:

Wildfire Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1843-1911) studied sculpture in Paris and was of African and Native American descent. Her "Portrait of a Woman" would make a fantastic mate to Kehinde Wiley's homage to Bernini called "Louis XVI, The Sun King". Arrange them on the mantlepiece, Michelle!

William "Bill" Traylor (ca. 1854-1949), born into slavery in Alabama, was a prolific artist whose exuberant "Untitled" dancing woman prefigures, by nearly a century, Jean-Paul Goude's genuis, pre-Photoshop-era collage portrait of Grace Jones. Call for a step ladder, a hammer and nails, Mr. President!

"Piece" Prize goes to: Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen

2009-10-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

Any old fool knows that a "piece" is street vernacular for a gun. But "piece" is also a louche term for a prime sexual encounter, as in: "I got me a piece at lunchtime."

Therefore it makes a lot of sense, to me anyway, that devastatingly handsome Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (1861 - 1930) was awarded the Nobel Piece Prize in 1922.

THE THREE FACES OF AL-GADDAFI

2009-09-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Concerning Libian loony Muammar al-Gaddafi, all I have to say is that the peacock president packs one helluva suitcase! And seems to have chosen three style icons for his New York holiday: Eddie Murphy as Prince Akeem in Coming To America; Michael Jackson, and Don Johnson. Back in the nineteen sixties, al-Gaddafi was quite dashing and he really ought to have stuck with authoritative olive drabs à la Che Guevara. Don't get me wrong, I dig masses of gold chains as much as the next guy, and I'd trade my kingdom for his pavé diamond elephant diadem (below). But someone really ought to do al-Gaddafi a favor and tell him to lose the bullion fringed epaulets, and the ill-fitting blazers.

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS,

2009-09-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

(or The Bodleian Oath*)

or The New York Times Turgid

"Below, the A-List Eats; Above, Bare-Bones Lives",

Here's the Accompanying Photograph!

Saturday's Times ran an illustration of flop house resident, gravely ill Bernhardt Wichmann III, 76, laying on a single bed in a dingy room no larger than a closet. To accompany an Upstairs, Downstairs-style study in contrast between purveyor of preppy pub food J.G. Melon, and said shabby single-room occupancy hotel above it. But is this the stuff of a self-styled melancholy style blog?

Indeed.

Because Wichman's over-the-top floor-to-ceiling collage -- compulsive embellishment to create fantastical variance with grim objective reality -- got me thinkin' bout sixties-era British playwright Joe Orton, and the similar décor of his inner-city London council flat. A "garden of earthy delights" created from hundreds of mutilated library books. Which, true to form, resulted in Orton and lover Kenneth Halliwell being sentenced to Hell, six months imprisonment.

The couple's guerrilla tactical art included altering, and then returning, library books. Evidence that Orton honed his satirical skills with scissors, in order to skewer the genteel middle classes, authority and defenders of ‘morality’, several years before the wild successes of the playwright's Entertaining Mr. Sloane, etc.

"Libraries might as well not exist; they’ve got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books." Orton wrote in 1967. Thanks for reminding us, Joe, that not so long ago, before the Information Age's embarrassment of riches, nourishing a hungry mind could be tough going.

*The Bodleian Oath is, of course, Oxford University Library's "I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; nor to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”

OUR LADY OF THE CITY HALL STEPS

2009-09-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

I encountered this well dressed creature at a rally on the steps at City Hall. Doesn't she look like an efficient line drawing? Nothing is superfluous about her, despite prominence of stature, masses of flame-colored hair, and a very Plantagenet-looking forehead and nose. In fact, her resemblance to Margaret Pole, (née Plantagenet) 8th Countess of Salisbury is uncanny. The countess, by the way, was the last legitimate member of the Plantagenet dynasty, (1473-1541) niece of King Edward IV and King Richard III and was executed on the chopping block at command of her cousin King Henry VIII.

Ouch!

Our Lady of the City Hall Steps works for an important housing non-profit, and will no doubt contribute a more spiritually uplifting legacy than the aforementioned, and unfortunate, Countess.

BAITULLAH MEHSUD IS FALL 2009!

2009-09-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

Sartorially speaking, Taliban toe terrific towel, eh? Although the late Baitullah Mehsud, (1974 – August 2009) was unquestionably a naughty, naughty man let's put politics aside to review dastardly, yet dazzling, desert chic. I'm seriously considering a Baitullah Mehsud-inspired look for Fall 2009. Flak jackets, huge scarves, wild curls arranged in a center-part. Not so keen on the apple-pie hats, though.

Above right, Meshud in contrapposto, channeling Veruschka
as photographed in the Sahara by Avedon.

Some say that Meshud didn't like to be photographed.
I don't believe that for one second.

ODE TO SUMMERS END, À LA JAPONAISE

2009-09-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

THE SAILOR STRAW, SENNIT HAT, SKIMMER

Pass over your boater. And sigh.

Dear Summer is over.

Oh Summer, bummer! Good-bye.

MESSRS. SANFORD ET FIL, OR DAVID SMITH?

2009-08-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

Art, dear reader, is all about context these days. Case in point: my Crown Heights neighbor's clever creation. A wrought iron sculpture-cum-fence to protects and embellish a young tree growing out front of his charming property. Equal parts Abstract Expressionism and junk heap, the sculpture is a meta masterpiece in miniature that delivers threefold. Its an assemblage, its a fence, and its also a vitrine en plein air for further urban detritus. Various objet trouvés discarded at the foot of the tree are showcased: dried-up doo doo, fast food wrappers, a forty in a skirt (that's street vernacular, for une bouteille de bière, dressed down in a prêt-à-porter paper bag) etc. Trash never looked so good.

BEAUTY, AS A BOY

2009-08-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Remember when, back in the nineteen forties, Barbara Hutton was chucked out of the Paris Ritz? If memory has failed you, Hutton was wearing... culottes.

Standards of convention in dress certainly have digressed a helluvalot since then, eh? But the iconic Westwood/McClaren t-shirt, with a rather risqué Tom of Finland drawing silkscreened on it, still manages to cock more than just a few eyebrows -- a whopping thirty years after Sid Vicious wore his! I spotted this youthquaker on the subway last night. And quite a fine specimen he is, indeed. Skinny as the aforementioned Woolworth heiress and the punk god, the boy radiates the bloom of youth to imbue the now-classic garment with a certain somethin'.

MADAMES RÉCAMIER AND ZAPPA

2009-08-01T11:35:00.001-07:00

Centuries separate Julie Adélaïde Bernard Récamier, (1777 - 1849) and Moon Unit Zappa, (1967 - ). But these two proto-tweens each exhibited mind-numbing precocity to spearhead similar sociological shifts: triumphs of luxury, leisure, and most importantly, way infectious loquacity. Ascend A PyrAmid, shall we? In order to get a better perspective on the subject.

Julie is remembered for, like, stimulating good conversation. At fifteen, she married and quickly established herself as a leading Parisian hostess. Everyone-who-was-anyone came over to her salons, to talk about important stuff. Julie was very keen on literary types, like Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, and François-René de Chateaubriand. She would recline on a sofa named for her -- the récamier -- in order to chill out, and just listen. If Julie dissed someone and they weren't invited to speak at one of her salons, they still wanted to go really bad. Julie had gnarly personal taste. Her house, one of the grandest in Paris, had been done up in the new, neoclassical style: à la Grecque, they called it. Because, after the monarchy fell, every self-respecting French person ditched those silly powdered wigs. And frilly clothes. Instead, they decided to dress real simple, like Greek gods and goddesses. And lived in houses that looked like old temples with big white columns, and stuff. That's what neoclassical style means. Julie was way responsible for these trends. The most renowned artists captured Julie's likeness, 'cause she was so beautiful and rich and popular. The best-remembered is Jacques-Louis David's portrait, (1800). Julie was so famous that it was reproduced as an engraving. (Kind of like the Farrah Fawcett poster.) Everyone got one, and stuck it on the wall. "Journal des Dames et des Modes", one of the first women’s fashion magazines, ever, reported on Julie's glamour and explained that her head band was an ancient Greek invention, called a filet. And how her iconic white dress showed off the woman's silhouette in an entirely new way. It belted below the bosom, instead of at the waist. This so-called Empire waist was a big fad. Complicated undergarments, padding, the corset -- all were eliminated. Napoleon was Emperor, a genius on the battlefield with the victor's laurel leaf wreath on his head, just like a sculpture of classical antiquity. This was no fussy old queen, er, um, king, in a pathetic wig and makeup and silly satin clothes. It was a new century! No one wore underpants, anymore! Julie was a star! Everyone saw her picture, and wanted to be just like her. Before cable, or "In Touch" magazine was invented. (But, of course, these things were revolutionary, too.)

Moon, was a lovely, fourteen-year-old torch-bearer of materialism and self-centeredness, and, of course, corrupted English. She made talking about shopping the chief resort of political society that pretended to fashion. Just like Julie before her, Moon was a keen listener. With acute powers of observation and an eagle's ear, Moon studied the Byzantine language of her contemporaries. And mimicked so-called Val'-speak at her father's recording studio. Frank's re-mixed Moon's Val'-speak as Valley Girl (1982). A lyrical celebration and skewering of the affluent young ladies who resided in California's San Fernando Valley bedroom communities. These Valley Girls were habitués of the extravagantly appointed Sherman Oaks Galleria, with its soaring, three story interior of glass, chrome and mauve defined by massive, floating escalators. There, ensconsed in the mall's food court, Valley Girls engaged in heated discourse regarding, say, Contempo Casuals, while dining on Coca Cola Slurpees and cheese fries (pomme frites et fromage). Their distinctive speech pattern was defined by narrative sentences often spoken like questions, using a high rising terminal. Words were spoken with high variation in pitch combined with very open or nasal vowel sounds. For Moon's appearance on Solid Gold, she performs the memorable meta-anthem while wearing a white Laura Ashley dress with leg o' mutton sleeves, white stockings and Mia flats. I remember my sister in Connecticut used to dress just like that, for a while, too. Sold Gold dancers, however exhibit a more proletariate, low-rent version of the Val'. They wear Jane-Fonda / streetwalker Lycra aerobics gear, with a Lurex filet in their hair, à la Grecque, and just like Julie's.

EQUAL PARTS RHINOCEROTIDAE & ALPHA-METHYLHENETHYLAMINE

2009-07-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

Bright Young Things aiming for that dissipated Brahmin heiress look, make note: Kenny Jay Lane chandelier earrings, khol applied in copious amounts, The Kinks LP skipping on your turntable -- all baby steps! Its way important to ingest a lot of pharmaceutical-grade amphetamine (Benzedrine, Dexedrine, and/or Methedrine) and then arabesque on a leather rhino.

Because, for half a century, WASP matrons have decorated degenerate daughter's and son's starter apartments with these charming footstools, made by a small British company called Omersa. Alas, like so many of the finer things in life, it will cost you. Upwards of "One Large" in street vernacular. And remember, its the Greater Depression. (In other words, Daddy's dividends have dwindled.) So... what to do? Ask Mummy to write a bad cheque to "The Man" for the afore-mentioned pharmies. And go in arrears on the rent!

Then, wrap that Balenciaga chinchilla 'round those narrow shoulders and run, don't walk, up Park Avenue in your opaque-stockinged feet. Directly to Scully & Scully; exclusive U.S. distributors of the extensive range of leather animals, just like Miss Sedgwick's.

DESSERT, BACK IN THE DAY, AT THE BROWN DERBY RESTAURANT

2009-07-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

Rudolf Freidrich was head pastry chef at Los Angeles' fabulous Brown Derby, during in the 1940's. My friends Glenn and Robert discovered these pictures at auction, a few years back. 'Nuf said.

CLINGSTONE HOUSE, DUMPLING ISLAND

2009-07-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

As a boy, I was in love with... a house. Is it possible to be in love with real estate? I think so. Like so many romantic interests, a home -- whether lived in, or worshiped from afar -- also has the ability to convey complex and contradictory floods of emotions. Think "attractive liability doctrine" of the law of torts.

Each summer, our family spent quite a bit of time in Newport, Rhode Island. At a distant cousin's place, the eighteenth century Pagoda House (so-called, because of the quirky shape of its roof). But that's another story. Anyways, as we crossed the Newport Bridge each time, to and fro, to and fro, from my vantage point seated in the back of the car I'd look out across the water to catch just a tantalizing glimpse of a small island, right in the middle of the Narragansett Bay, with a massive house built over it. (Much later, I learned that the house is called Clingstone, built in 1904 by a Philadelphian, Mr. J. S. Lovering Wharton.) Year by year, I grew a little older and Clingstone stayed the same: a three story shingle-style beach cottage with 26 rooms, clinging like a stubborn old tortoise to a small outcropping of rock, the miniscule and delightfully named Dumpling Island. Clingstone looks fragile, and formidable.

One summer, a friend of my parent's who also lived in Newport and shall remain nameless, committed suicide. He was handsome. Successful. Involved in the Arts. We would see him at the beach. I liked him a lot. And then one morning, at Pagoda House, I stood atop the back stairs and listened as the adults whispered to each-other in the kitchen down below. They said something to the effect of: "Last night So-and-so pulled over and parked his car right in the middle of the Newport Bridge, and then..." Afterwards, he wasn't at the beach anymore. Since that particular summer, twenty-five-or-so years ago, there remain 'No Parking' signs, installed the span of the bridge every hundred yards. He deserved a better epitaph.

An August 1904 society item in The Philadelphia Press reads, “Everyone is of the opinion here that Mr. Wharton will not stay in the house more than one season, and they say one nor’easter will settle it.” Mr. Wharton spent every summer there, on Dumpling Island, until his death just before the devastating hurricane of 1938. Clingstone suffered little damage.