Vanity Fair Classics 1913-2008
Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs
1913–2008October 26, 2008–March 1, 2009 | Hammer Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008 is the first major exhibition to bring together the magazine’s historic archive of rare vintage prints with its contemporary photographs. The exhibition explores the ways in which photography and celebrity have interacted and changed, with portraits from the magazine’s early period (1913–1936) displayed in conjunction with works from the contemporary Vanity Fair (1983–present). The Los Angeles presentation will be the only U.S. stop on the exhibition’s international tour. Pictured: (Above) Kate Moss (Below) Adele and Fred Astaire. Details follow.
KATE MOSS This Vanity Fair caption accompanied the smoldering 1935 Bruehl-Borges image (photographed on the set of the film Desire) on which this picture was based: “Mary Magdalene Dietrich—called Marlene—was born in Berlin two days after Christmas [1901]. As a child, she studied the violin, but grew up to be a singer of chansons vulgaires in Berlin music halls. In 1929, Josef von Sternberg saw her in a German theatre and hired her for the lead opposite Emil Jannings in the film The Blue Angel. Then he brought her to America to make Morocco. The rest is history. Somehow, from the complete inertia of her movements and her expressionless face, comes a mysterious emanation which is deadly to the male.” Deadly indeed. Here, British model Kate Moss does Dietrich Reconfigured, in this 2006 study by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Wrote A. A. Gill, in his essay introducing the image: “No tears. No excuses. Kate Moss looked out from a thousand pages of editorial vilification, and then a thousand more of luxury advertising, and didn’t dignify a single word [of press criticism]. There is an old, stiff-lipped, patrician motto that could be stitched on her pillow: never explain, never complain.… No words—just a picture.” By Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, 2006; Vanity Fair, September 2006; © Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
ADELE AND FRED ASTAIRE They first shared a dance floor in 1904. Adele was seven; her brother, Fred, only five. But an act suddenly took wing. “Delly,” Fred Astaire later remarked, “danced like a feather and this, coupled with her genius for comedy, made her … one of the outstanding musical comedy gals of all time.” Possessed of the most masterful footwork ever to grace a vaudeville stage or a Hollywood back lot, the debonair Astaire, who would later make Ginger Rogers his ballroom alter ego, was a staple in a magazine that revered the top hat and the tux. For this 1926 take, however, the Astaires, fresh off a European tour, chose outfits that were decidedly continental. By James Abbe, 1926; Vanity Fair, September 1927; © Kathryn Abbe/courtesy of Condé Nast Archive.
Errant Aesthete
Q: What natural gift would you most like to possess?
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