No one captured the lives of the rich and idle of summers past as diligently or decorously as photographer Slim Aarons. Over these long languid days of summer, a few of his featured works.
Giacomo and Stefania Montegazza welcome guests arriving by boat at their villa, La Casinella, on Lake Como, 1983.
May your holiday be every bit as luxurious.
Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies”
is a ravishing dream
of violent gangster life in the thirties—
not a tough, funny, and, finally, tragic dream
like “Bonnie and Clyde”
but a flowing, velvety fantasia of the crime wave
that mesmerized the nation early in the decade.
The scowling men in long dark coats and hats,
led by the fashion-plate bandit John Dillinger (Johnny Depp),
march into a grand Midwestern bank
with marble floors and brass railings,
take over the place,
throw the cash in bags,
and make their getaway,
jumping onto the sideboards of flat-topped black Fords—
beautiful cars with curved grilles and rounded headlights
that stand straight up from the cars’ bodies.
It’s the American poetry of crime.
Yves Saint Laurent residence photographed by Ivan Terestchenko
“This is not a book on decoration.
It is a window on two shared lives.”
~Pierre Bergé
Those with the most discerning of tastes, will undoubtedly find this tome to be one of the most remarkable documents ever published on Yves Saint Laurent’s private realm.
Pierre Bergé was Yves St Laurent’s lifelong business partner, friend and former lover who collaborated on this lavish volume, which provides a glimpse of the exotic and breathtaking interiors of the worldwide homes they shared and what they collected.
Yves Saint Laurent was more than a designer of clothing – he was, for many, one of the great style arbiters of the twentieth century. His talent made him the youngest and brightest star in the firmament of fashion, first with Christian Dior, who chose him as his successor, and later in his own right as the shy but daring creator of the modern woman’s wardrobe.
His private life was the subject of constant public fascination, and the homes that he shared with Bergé were extraordinary private cocoons of taste and style. Ivan Terestchenko’s photographs – taken after Yves Saint Laurent’s death in 2008 – capture these exquisite surroundings and cultured luxury for the last time.
Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé amassed an exceptional collection of furniture and paintings over some forty years. It included important works by Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian, Old Master paintings by Goya, Ingres and Géricault, and masterpieces of furniture, sculpture and silver from the Renaissance to Art Deco.
Not a single piece from the collection was sold until the year following Saint Laurent’s death. A historic sale by auction at the Grand Palais in Paris became the stuff of legend months before it even took place.
Beyond the legendary rue Babylone apartment in Paris, the book also chronicles those seven other homes of St Laurent and Berge including the lush Villa Majorelle in Marrakech. Even the most dedicated minimalist will have to bow in respect to the unerring erudition of taste displayed in this seductive parade of nineteenth-century French décor, important paintings by modern and Romantic artists, and masterpieces of furniture, sculpture, and silver ranging from the Renaissance to the Art Deco era. A worthy addition to any aesthete’s library.
It is rumored that Karl Lagerfeld has asked modeling sensation Sasha Pivovarova to illustrate a book based on Russian fairy tales. If the rendering she crafted (above) for the recent restaging of the Chanel Paris-Moscow fashion show is any idea of her talents, the book promises to be as magical and incandescent as she.
“My drawings were inspired by the joy
of seeing fairytale characters coming to life
in one of the main theatres of Moscow,
the city where I was born.”
Sasha Pivovarova by Steven Meisel
Chanel News
If you’ve ever wondered if those must-have acquisitions you just had to have or whether those choices you spent significant portions of your life fretting over have resulted in a quantifiable surge in happiness, read on:
A new study conducted by Dr. Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist and author of “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior” in an effort to determine once and for all the age old question if money does, indeed, buy happiness, he posed this question to readers:
List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness .
Count how many items appear on both lists. (This last point designating which items appeared on both lists proved to be both fascinating and revealing).
On the “most expensive” lists, the most distinctive items were:
• “Drugs”
• “Psychotherapy”
• “A week at a mental hospital”
• “Wine cellar filled, then emptied. Repeat.”
On the “happiness” lists, the most distinctive items were:
• Thrift store shopping
• Eyeglasses
• Liposuction
• Pilot’s license
• Social club dues, memberships
• Beach house rentals
• Yoga retreat
• Adoption of child
• $25 plain gold wedding band that lasted through a 46-year marriage
• Coffeemaker with auto settings for waking up to fresh coffee
• “Shack in the woods”
• “Studio apartment in Paris”
• “Upgrade to business class on international flights”
• “Girlfriend”
• “Weekend delivery of NY Times”
• “Tire swing”
• “Spleefs” (marijuana)
• “Ant colony”
While Dr. Miller was impressed with participants’ “good insights, self-revelations and vigorous debate,”on their choices, there were some rather startling revelations. For example, one might expect a certain uniformity in items appearing on both lists, like houses, higher education, travel and cars, but who would have thought that under items appearing much more on the ‘expensive’ than on the ‘happy’ lists were: children, marriage and boats!
But take heart, trends bode future happiness, as well as a discernible upswing in narcissism. But didn’t we know that?
“Why am I always expected to wear a dressing-gown,
smoke cigarettes in a long holder
and say ‘Darling, how wonderful’?”
~Noel Coward
A fresh new face for fashion-forward Calvin Klein whose reputation for discovering talent in the raw is legendary. Newcomer’s name Will Defiel. His look: simple, elegant and smart.
Shot by David Sims, styled by David Bradshaw for the F/W campaign, Will is a study in contrasts: crisp black style, blinding white frame. All cool for an ad that focuses on the simplicity and elegance of dressing.
For those still in doubt on the superior “eye” for talent of Calvin Klein, gaze no further than below to behold his famous underwear God, Garrett Neff, looking impossibly gorgeous at the Paris shows last week. Being unfamiliar with the rules of underwear Gods, I am bewildered as to whether the unbuckled look is a new trend or a prerequisite of Mr. Neff’s contract that he always appear in a state of partial readiness or, if you prefer, undress, for those last minute photo ops. Thoughts?
WHITE SHEEP STICKPIN // Handcrafted Solid Silver Head, Handcrafted Linden Wood Book Box. Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons.
“I promise I shall never give up,
and that I’ll die yelling and laughing.”
Jack Kerouac,
Journal Entry, 1949
Model LIZ PRINGLE, Jamaica, February 1959. Richard Avedon
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts
Hiatus in Hyannis: John Kennedy takes a break from stumping to wriggle his loafers in the sand in 1960. In a few months, he will be elected the nation’s 35th president.
Photo: Ted Polumbaum/Time & Life Pictures
Aug 01, 1960
The Outer Banks, North Carolina
Come summer the Mid-Atlantic leisure class flocks to the Outer Banks, where historic lighthouses like this one at Cape Lookout create an atmosphere of retro relaxation.
Photo: Eliot Elisofon./Time & Life Pictures
Mar 01, 1946
If that’s YOU!
Samples:
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.”– Caliban
The Tempest, William Shakespeare
Photo of Campse Ashe, Suffolk, 1903. From English Gardens in the Twentieth Century, by Tim Richardson.
Dear Readers: A heartfelt thanks to all of you for your votes and words of encouragement on my modest little foray into the valley of Napa, but alas, it was not to be. My millisecond of fame was roundly squelched by a formidable opposition of tweeters, youtubers, and facebookers in a round of buzzes, whines and tweets numbering in the thousands from coast to coast. It was, to put it mildly, a humiliating and deafening defeat. Thus, the above seemed fitting for right now as I depart for a weekend of gentle repose.
My thanks to The Blue Remembered Hills for the above.
“Something strange happened during
[Governor of South Carolina, Mark] Sanford’s confession.
He broke the formula. He got lost. He went too deep.
He exposed his soul. He got all weird and human on us.
His life had become an awful train wreck
happening in front of the whole country,
and it didn’t seem like he had any idea
of how it was going to end up
and he didn’t care who knew it.
Instead of a press conference,
we had been carried into
some Eternal Bedroom of Misery
that most of us have been in
at one time or another,
that room where marriages
and love affairs
– all alike, all different –
come to a painful end.
Surreal, jagged emotional shards
flew through the air. …
It was unscripted.
It was so intimate
it was almost unwatchable.”
With the recent publication of Edith Bouvier Beale of Grey Gardens: A Life in Pictures, more indelible images emerge like this one taken of little Edie in East Hampton, 1951. The tome released by the estate is the first ever family sponsored book of photographs (many never before published), poetry and writings exclusively of and about this extraordinarily iconic woman.
Past post: Grey Gardens: Riches to Rags
Edith Bouvier Beale of Grey Gardens
A Life in Pictures
Verlhac Editions
Retail $75
With a constituency limited to anyone who eats, “Food, Inc.”
is a civilized horror movie for the socially conscious, the nutritionally curious and the hungry.Yes, it has a deceptively cheery palette, but helmer Robert Kenner’s doc — which does for the supermarket what “Jaws” did for the beach — marches straight into the dark side of cutthroat agri-business, corporatized meat and the greedy manipulation of both genetics and the law. Doc biz may be in the doldrums, but “Food, Inc.” is so aesthetically polished and politically urgent, theatrical play seems a no-brainer, though it won’t do much for popcorn sales. …
Disturbing as it is, “Food, Inc.” doesn’t present some doomsday scenario. People can make a difference, it says: After all, look what happened to Big Tobacco.
~ Variety
It’s time to seriously consider growing a garden.
Clark Gable & Edward, Prince of Wales, Vanity Fair, November 1932
The International Animated Film Society – Hollywood has a series of fine illustrations online from the 1932 Vanity Fair magazine titled The Genius of Miguel Covarrubias. In the one above, the last king of Hollywood, Clark Gable, meets the future king of England, Edward, Prince of Wales.
Covarrubias caricatures Edward to near-perfection. Checked suit, brown (suede?) shoes, coke hat, yellow gloves – the only awkward note is that Edward was unlikely to have worn a matching necktie and pocket handkerchief.
It had me, so they say, at the title:
Ignore Everybody
One reader hailed it thus: “Cynical as Woody Allen, down-to-earth like Bukowski. A must read.” Another, more famous fan, Seth Grodan said of it, “A work of art, a brilliant insight, a book that will change your life.”
Gratefully, another reader, J. Brown from Florida provided his top eight takeaways from “Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity” by Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void fame.
1. The more original your idea is, the less good advice people will be able to give you.
2. Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
3. Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.
4. The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.
5. Being good at anything is like figure skating – the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That is what the stupidly wrong people conveniently forget.
6. Your job is probably worth 50 percent of what it was in real terms ten years ago. And who knows? It may very well not exist in five to ten years…Stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you.
7. Part of being a master is learning to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own…Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. Its that simple.
8. The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
As improbable as it might sound, this combination is magnificent, both savory and refreshing at the same time. You can pare it down to the essential contrast, and serve no more than a plate of chunked watermelon, sprinkled with feta and mint and spritzed with lime, but this full-length version is hardly troublesome to make and once made will, Nigella (Lawson) assures, become a regular feature of your summer table. Hence, an endless summer salad!
A personal note: The mixture of flavors and the cool juiciness of the melon are wonderfully delectable, especially on those days that simmer. And the color? Gorgeous, no?
INGREDIENTS
* 1 small red onion
* 2 – 4 Limes depending on juiciness
* 3½ pounds sweet, ripe watermelon
* 9 ounces feta cheese
* fresh Flat-leaf parsley
* fresh Mint chopped
* 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 4 ounces (½ cup) pitted black olives
* Black pepper
No one captured the lives of the rich and idle of summers past as diligently or decorously as photographer Slim Aarons. Over these long languid days of summer, a few of his featured works.
Mr and Mrs Nigel van Wieck take a stroll along a beach in Barbados, April 1976.
“Do we allow our rights to be violated
(photography, filming and audio taping of performances is illegal)
or tolerate rudeness by members of the audience
who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater,
texting or checking their e-mail
while the light from their screens
distract both performers
and the audience alike?
Or, should I stand up for my rights
as a performer
as well as the audiences
I perform for?”
Patti Lupone on Theater Etiquette
NYTimes
Bravo!
Irving Penn’s 1947 photograph “Twelve of the Most Photographed Models of the Period”, is a stunning record of what feminine beauty used to look like.
The women––including Helen Bennett, Lisa Fonssagrives and Dorian Leigh––have captivating faces, all-knowing eyes and arched brows. Their hair is brushed and pinned into simple updos with strict parts. Shoulders are a point of erotic emphasis, and facial expressions tend toward the imperious and the inscrutable. The models do not project vulnerability. They appear to have interesting personalities. They look––what is it?––sophisticated, old, and rather unlike the adolescents currently gracing the pages of Vogue.
When was the last time you saw a model with knowing eyes? Or an arched brow? It’s enough to make an aesthete nostalgic.
Costume sketch by Donfeld for Anjelica Huston in Pritzi’s Honor, 1985.
The cocktail dress rivals only the LBD for sartorial essentials. The cocktail is feminine, fun, sexy, made for a night out or modestly paired with a jacket for the morning after. And so it’s only fitting that it get an entire book devoted to its history, curated and written by Style.com’s Laird Borrelli- Persson.
The Cocktail Dress traces the history of the piece, from its conception in the twenties to Dior’s New Look interpretation to Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy magnificence in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to more recent couture looks. And, true to Borrelli-Persson’s other image-heavy books, this one is filled with contributions by designers like Peter Som, Cynthia Rowley, and Isaac Mizrahi, and shows off dresses by Vionnet, Marc Jacobs, and more. C’est Magnifique!
Cecil Beaton resplendent in his fourth costume of the evening as host of his garden party. Circa 1948.
Be daring,
be different,
be impractical,
be anything that will assert
integrity of purpose
and imaginative vision
against the play-it-safers,
the creatures of the commonplace,
the slaves of the ordinary.
~Cecil Beaton
Leonore Fili, LIFE, 1947
Leonore Fini. 1908 – 1996. Famed Argentine surrealist painter (although she was an ardent dabbler in art nouveau), illustrator, novelist, nude model, costume designer and unconventional lifestyle enthusiast who cavorted with the likes of Henri Cartier Bresson, Max Ernst, Picasso, Elsa Schiaparelli, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and Margot Fonteyn.
Of her many talents, her depiction of women is, perhaps, most notable in that she was rumored to be the only artist to paint women without apology.
With her taste for the dramatic, Fini’s life made its way onto the canvas with paintings that featured strong, beautiful women (in many instances, resembling herself) in ceremonial or provocative situations.
Men are often portrayed as lithe figures who are portrayed as pliant and uncharacteristically agreeable under the protection of Fini’s females. (Role playing she obviously relished).
As a provocateur, she worshiped at the altar of the mythological sphinx, recruiting its closest relative, the cat, to play a major part in her paintings.
Forgiving her the eccentricities that inhabit the artistic, she lived with many cats, up to a total of 23 at one time. So deep was her attachment that the illness of one of her cats could send her reeling to the fainting couches, leaving her in a deep melancholia for weeks.
As art imitates life, so was it with Fini who once remarked, “A woman should live with two men; one more a lover and the other more a friend.”
She then proceeded to do so. Stanislao Lepri, an Italian diplomat when she met him, left the diplomatic corp to live with her and take up painting. Approximately five years later Konstanty Jeleński, a Polish writer and journalist (i.a. from Kultura) joined them in a ménage à trois. What some might call a progressive arrangement.
She led a rich, full and colorful life that has been immortalized over the years. Although in truth, she would, no doubt, take great pleasure in learning that as recently as 2007, a nude photograph of her taken poolside by famed photographer Cartier-Bresson when the two traveled through Europe together circa 1917, drew the highest price paid at auction for one of his works to date. Her legend lives on.
Too tentative, timid and tense,
Our President straddles the fence,
But the time does grow short,
And ’tis sad to report,
Reforms are not hither, they’re hence.
Larry Eisenberg, NYC
New York Times
Iridescence Sea, Mark Yankus
Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the first official day of summer and the longest day (and shortest night) of the year. Contrast that with today also being the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and you get some idea of the exquisite harmony and balance of it all.
In countries like Australia, Argentina, and South Africa, today is the shortest day of the year. Down there, the summer solstice is in December.
For inquiring minds, you might be interested in knowing the term solstice comes from the Latin words for “sun” (sol) and “standing still” or “stoppage” (stice). On this longest day of the year, the sun appears as if it were standing still in the sky. A rather bewitchingly lovely thought, I’d say, as though everything is in pause for the day.
There are massive celebrations throughout Northern Europe today, many of which harken back to ancient pagan times and will be characterized with bonfires, dancing, feasting, and staying up all night to welcome the dawn. One of the biggest destinations for the summer solstice is Stonehenge in England; today it is the place for New Agers such as neo-druids, neo-pagans, and Wiccans to gather, along with college-age revelers, adventuresome families, romantic couples, and shoestring backpackers. And it’s the only day of the year the park service offers free parking, free admission, and the opportunity to stay at Stonehenge overnight.
And in China, the perfectly commendable and noteworthy celebration of honoring the Chinese Goddess of Light, Li, is observed. What rituals, pagan or otherwise, might you be observing this day?
The Writer’s Almanac
"I remember nothing
as it was.
What I remember--
all I remember is
as it is"
~Miguel Funes
by author Jonathon Baumbach
Awaiting A Return
 | eÆsthete on The Living is Easy |
 | sorrentolens on The Living is Easy |
| eÆsthete on Library for Lost Graphics |
 | Sarah on Library for Lost Graphics |
 | AMA MAWUSI on Inside Neverland Ranch |
 | Vineca Gray on Bliss |
 | kris on Happiness is … |
| eÆsthete on Bliss |
 | Nuit on Bliss |
| Vineca Gray on Bliss |
As I bounce around online looking for images I always look for the extraordinary, the esoteric, the naive, and the emblematic of a time; works that are not the pieces we often see in design history books.
Just as a map helps us find our way and shows us where we are, looking at design from years past helps us better understand the trajectory contemporary design has taken. DesignObserver.
“Whatever is worn on the head is a sign of the mind beneath it.”
Stephen Jones, the greatest milliner of his generation, disagrees.“Whatever is worn on the head
is a sign of what a person would like to be.
Hats are a passport
to another world.”
“Get used to it”, he said, "before you go out. Then you will wear it with nonchalance.”
An Anthology by Stephen Jones;
24 February - 31 May
Some may frown on Tim Davis' photographs of famous paintings. For one thing, it appears that his camera's flash intrudes upon and harms each masterpiece. However, the artist doesn't use a flash at all, instead relying on the light provided by sources within the museums where the works are housed.
Davis shoots them from angles that accentuate the available light and then creates prints that reveal the physique of the paintings.
The added beams of light modify our sense of these mostly familiar images. In certain pieces the light reveals texture (the aged paint cracks in Corot's Evocation of Love); in others it alters the figures (notably the child, now resembling a specter, in Monet's Un Coin d'Appartement).
"One day [photographer Hendrik Kerstens' daughter] Paula came back from horseback riding. She took off her cap and I was struck by the image of her hair held together by a hair-net.
It reminded me of the portraits by the Dutch masters and I portrayed her in that fashion."
A number of the portraits of Paula are very reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer. The austerity of the photograph, its clarity, the serene expression on the young girl’s face, untouched by the experiences of adult life and, not least, the characteristic ‘Dutch’ light, all combine to create this impression.Bag (detail) by Hendrik Kerstens, 2007 National Portrait Gallery
Q: What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Marcel Proust: Will-power and irresistible charm.
In this classic novel of old New York, Edith Wharton recreates the city of her girlhood in the 1870s. The Arion edition has been illustrated with photographs of the actual settings of the story.
“Truly a thing of beauty” according to Forbes magazine, this edition celebrates a classic of American literature. The book has a special status as an affectionate record of the streets and buildings of New York City. At every moment of the novel the reader knows where the characters are, walking down a particular street, standing in front of a certain address, looking out the window of a familiar room.
The Arion Press edition is illustrated with images of the novel's actual setting, as they are today, captured by noted photographer Stephen Shore who brought to this project a personal knowledge of the historic buildings and streets that made up Wharton's New York world.
New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman raved: "The work’s laconic eloquence speaks of an era and a nation."
Francis Bacon's sickly serene Self Portrait 1971 is a refracted faceted face akin to some of Paul Cézanne's self-portraits which are reminiscent of cut precious gem stones reflecting light. Bacon painted with a very dry brush giving the sensation of a granular, grainy effect.
The melancholia mood is of a man melting before you: a disturbing image of a disturbed man in a disturbed century. This is one of the last great self-portraits Bacon painted before he went off the rails and went back into to the lazy worn grooves of inane illustration.
eÆsthete
