On the Avenue
“The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass;
it is cab country, tip-town, glassville,
a window-washer’s paradise.”
~Gay Talese
Morris Engle: Park Avenue, New York City, 1938. Via Paul Pincus.
The Errant Æsthete
Essentials for the Cocktail Swilling Savant
Quote…
“Diamonds with tweed?
Never!”
~Bunny Rogers
Authors
Errant AestheteDeborah 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
Recent Comments
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.”
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.”
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
ÉSOTÉRIQUE
Color
Maira Kalman
Sound Files
Hugo Guinness
Les Indiennes
Tim Walker
Lost Archives
John Keats
Faraway Places
Q: What natural gift would you most like to possess?
NOIR ET BLANC
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.
EX LIBRIS
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
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