The Errant Æsthete

“Diamonds with tweed?

Never!”

~Bunny Rogers

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Deborah Turbeville

R. Kenton Nelson

Awaiting A Return

Georgia O'Keefe

Frantisek Drtikol

Galleries

Art Deco

Modernisme Majestueux

L'esprit de l'escalier

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

Sarah Moon

Paris Style

Le Couturier des Coutouriers

“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.

Un Coeur Tres Nature

Robert Motherwell

Sudden Bronze

Sunburn Series

Jeff Zaruba

Berenice Abbott

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Michael Levin

Noticed

Acquired Tastes

• 

• VIEW

• VAULT

Le Royal Dressmaker

“A man should look

as if he bought his clothes

with intelligence,

put them on with care,

then forgot about them.”

-Hardy Amies

Anatomie de l'elégance

Our Lady of the Ladle

“Life itself

is the

proper binge.”

~Julia Childs

Grey Gardens

Dovima the Divine

Sir or Madam?

Joyce Tenneson

Asaf Ben Zvi

Eugene Gabritschevsky

Larry Abramson

Will Cotton

Dietmar Busse

Andy Warhol

Eric Baker on Design

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 Thoughtful Traveler

Poires de Vacances

Great Performances

Swoon Worthy

Irving Penn

The Remarkable Mr. Jones

     The novelist Alison Lurie wrote:

“Whatever is worn on the head is a sign of the mind beneath it.”

“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.”

Cecil Beaton

Cocktail Hour

Cotton's Candied Confections

Ernst Haas

Annechovie

Patricia Gray

Post Wisdom

Reflections

“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

Fifi Flowers Design

Edouard Chimot

Anne Rothenstein

Edith Wharton's Gilded Age

Famed Fury - Leonore Fini

J. David McKenney

Destinations

Mats Gustafson

La Boheme: Loulou

Suzanne Katzenberg

Meisel's Models

The New Dutch Masters

William Wegman

Color

Maira Kalman

Sound Files

Hugo Guinness

Les Indiennes

Tim Walker

Lost Archives

John Keats

Faraway Places

Alex MacLean

Tim Davis: Trains, Vol.1

Star-Spangled Polish

Nazmiyal Collection

John Atkinson Grimshaw

Lars van de Goor

Proust on Proust

Q: What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Marcel Proust: Will-power and irresistible charm.

Portrait of a Marriage

Bert Stern

George Hoyningen-Huene

Luc Dratwa

Richard Avedon

Peter Lindbergh

/

Lillian Bassman

Mary Ellen Mark

Edward Steichen

Michael Magill

Eudora Welty

L'Incident de Chanel

“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.

The Age of Innocence

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."

The Kindle

Francis Bacon

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.

Wallace Berman

July, 2007 - February, 2010 © The Errant Aesthete. All Rights Reserved. If you would like to reprint an article or repurpose a photo, please email for permission. EMAIL: worddrawing@gmail.com