Taking ‘Place’ as its theme, this year’s PhotoEspaña festival in Madrid had an array of varied and interesting exhibitions scattered throughout the city. See Slide Show for exhibits. Featured here in what was the real “standout show” was a major W Eugene Smith retrospective.
“Diamonds with tweed?
Never!”
~Bunny Rogers
Awaiting A Return
L’esprit de l’escalier or esprit d’escalier (stairway wit) is the sense of thinking of a clever comeback in an encounter when it is too late.
The phrase can be used to describe a riposte to an insult, or any witty, clever remark that comes to mind too late to be useful—when one is on the “staircase” leaving the scene of the encounter.
The phenomenon is usually accompanied by a feeling of regret at having not thought of the riposte when it was most needed or suitable.
Featured: Stairway at the Louvre, Paris, 2007
“Taste is a feeling that makes all the difference between what is beautiful and what is merely showy – and also what is ugly!” the couturier Madeleine Vionnet once said. “It is transmitted from mother to daughter. But some people don’t need to be educated: they are innately tasteful. I think I am one of them.”
This was a designer who toiled endlessly to liberate women from buttons, zips, corsetry and show-off embellishment. Hers was the language of extreme sophistication, where decorative elements such as rose motifs and fringes, drapes and twists formed the structure of her much-coveted dresses, rather than being mere appendages.
The first Parisian retrospective paying homage to Madeleine Vionnet is going on now, running through January, 2010 at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
“A man should look
as if he bought his clothes
with intelligence,
put them on with care,
then forgot about them.”
-Hardy Amies
“Life itself
is the
proper binge.”
~Julia Childs
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.
The novelist Alison Lurie wrote:
“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.”
“The golden moments
in the stream of life
rush past us
and we see nothing
but sand.
The angels
come to visit us,
and we only know them
when they are gone.”
-George Elliot
“I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fake Chanel”
Following her counterfeit faux pas, the culture’s rebellious “bad girl” Courtney Love has been granted a reprieve by Karl Lagerfeld’s court. Fortunately, the iconic rock star is now decidedly back in fashion.
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.
Errant Aesthete
Q: What natural gift would you most like to possess?
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