All About Boldini

Giovanni BOLDINI Portrait of a lady, Mrs Lionel Phillips

For two great posts about Giovanni Boldini

aka 'The King of Swish' according to Dash

check out her posts here and here on her French Sampler blog
I too have a Boldini post in mind, but no time to write it....

Around Town - Dave McCoy Photography at the Harris and Ruble Gallery

Last night I went to the opening night show of 'Wild Eyes in the Sierra Skies' featuring Dave McCoy's photography at the Harris & Ruble Gallery in Hollywood in collaboration with Posner Fine Art.

Dave McCoy, a founding developer of the Mammoth Mountain ski resort in the Sierra Nevada, has been taking photographs of the region since the 1930s.  Now in his 90s he is still taking pictures of the Mammoth area. 

This shot of the sunset was one of my favorites

...naturally, my photo of it would be completely askew

To see more photos there is his book Tracks of Passion ,a photo essay on the development of Mammoth Mountain, and the Dave McCoy website.

Personally, I like this iconic photo of the man himself shot by Warren Miller making skiing in a t-shirt representative of California skiing.

Things To Do In LA - Gérôme At The Getty

When the sun refuses to come out...which it has for weeks
The Gérôme exhibit at the Getty Museum
And why Gérôme?
Because he painted amazing Orientalist paintings

and portraits

and pure cheesecake

From the Getty website
Through most of the 20th century, however, Gérôme's critical reputation was tarnished by his alleged commercialism and his stubborn opposition to the triumphant avant-garde movements of Impressionism and Postimpressionism. The first comprehensive exhibition of his work in almost 40 years, this exhibition offers the opportunity to reconsider the variety and complexity of Gérôme's masterful oeuvre.

Around Town - Renoir versus American Stories at LACMA

Another week started with total craziness...goods going here and there and now the need to gear up for the Antique and Estate Jewelry Show in Las Vegas which is coming up in a couple of weeks.

At least I had the perfect Mother's Day: two art exhibits, an exquisite afternoon in the sun and an early dinner with the kids.

Happily, I made it to the last day of the Renoir in the 20th Century exhibit at LACMA.

With the entire 2nd floor of the Broad building filled with Renoir, I can say that a huge effort was made to, as the LA Times review states, overturn the conventional wisdom. that late Renoir was bad art.

Here's the contested rap on Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Following success at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, when he was 33, plus another decade's worth of heady achievement, his paintings went steadily downhill. After his death in 1919, conventional wisdom began to solidify: Late Renoir is bad Renoir.

After seeing this show my opinion remains conventional, Renoir's late works were pretty bad except perhaps for the influence that they had on other artists such as Bonnard and Maillol.

Bathing Girl by Renoir

Don't get me wrong, I loved the early work by Renoir, all lightness and froth and luminosity, but the late work of fleshy females and wanna be Titianesque classicism I found to be trite. Furthermore, I particularly disliked the way that Renoir, who had earlier created portraiture with specific character definition in the faces of his subjects, reverted to a style where the faces of many of his females were undefined and childlike and totally without individualization.

Where others might have looked at the expressions on the faces of the females and found them contemplative or perhaps seen a intimate glimpse of girls caught in their own dream world, I found the expressions to be unaware to the point of being catatonic.

So for me the late Renoir paintings just became a bevy of interchangeable buxom, big bottomed, babes...in pretty soft pastel colors....kind of like soft core porn early 20th Century style...talk about the objectification of women!

The Serenade by Renoir

Much more exciting to see was American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915 featuring works from Peele, Copley, Sargent, Chase, Homer, Eakins, Cassatt and many more. The exhibit featured a small but astounding group of American masterpieces, including five great paintings by Homer, which the LA Times review describes as almost worth the cost of the ticket alone.

But I was particularly impressed with this portrait.

Portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley

From the Times review an excellent description:

A few portraits also make an appearance. They include Copley's classic 1768 depiction of Paul Revere, silversmith and Revolutionary War hero, in shirtsleeves. His chin is contemplatively held in his right hand, a handsomely crafted silver teapot cradled in his left.

The teapot of course nods toward the critical role of tea in the New World's economy. A year before, Britain's Parliament fiddled with the tea tax; results were devastating for colonists. (Witness Revere's grim, shadowed face.) The subsequent Boston Tea Party was an insurrection against a corporate stranglehold on trade, held by the British East India Company working with George III. Copley's brilliant image fuses head and hand as tools for thought, labor and moral action. The portrait describes a person, but it places him in the context of an epic story.

The painting -- as sleek and elegantly crafted as Revere's light-reflective silver -- puts artists in that developing story too. Copley is as much an agent of thought, labor and action as Revere is, and his work speaks to the present as much as to history.

Boys in a Pasture by Winslow Homer

And then there were the Homers, the famous ones including the carefree Breezing Up and the menacing Gulf Stream. I think that my favorite was Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide) which depicted three young women drying their long bathing dresses on the beach after swimming. It was certainly not one of Homer's best, but it had the promise of a story not yet told of the activities of women during the 1870s.

The American Stories show will be at LACMA through May 23rd and I highly recommend that you see it.

Georgian London Through The Art of Paul Sanby

If, like me, you have an interest in 18th and 19th Century history and art, check out the podcast on the Georgian London blog about 18th Century water colorist Paul Sanby at the Royal Academy

Beladora Bacchante Beauty

I say forget the 10 Ridiculously Stylish Cameo Themed Objects
brought to us by The Frisky
such as this Cameo print scarf
for $165 from Shopbop


And go straight for the antique cameo

Antique Victorian Bacchante Cameo

Especially a Neo-Classic themed Bacchante

with vines and grape clusters amid the tendrils of her hair

bacchante [bəˈkæntɪ]
n pl bacchantes [bəˈkæntɪz]
1. (Myth & Legend / Classical Myth & Legend) a priestess or female votary of Bacchus
2. a drunken female reveller

Bacchante With Grapes by Paul Merwat

Because Bacchante Babes are Beautiful!

Around Town - One-Sheet Art At The Academy

Way, way back in the day, long before CAD, CG and Photoshop, movie posters or one-sheets were created from hand illustrations. The one-sheet, so integral to the marketing of a movie, had to be eye catching and enticing. It had to convey the promise of the excitement, sex, suspense, romance or comedy that would be delivered in the film.

So yesterday, since I have an interest in art, movies and marketing, I went to see the
Art Of The Movie Poster
Illustrated One-Sheets And Design Concepts From The Paul Crifo Archive
at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences


From the Academy's write up
This new Academy exhibition explores the creative choices that go into the visual elements of a movie marketing campaign. Why was that design chosen? How might the success of a particular film have been affected if an alternate ad campaign had been selected?

“Art of the Movie Poster” explores the decades between the 1950s and ’80s, and showcases the creative process by which a finished movie poster was achieved. Each stage of the process is included, displaying reference stills, concept sketches, and hand-rendered and photographic ‘comps’ (a design incorporating graphics and text). Also featured are many of the approved original illustrations of ‘key art.’ Multiple poster styles will be displayed alongside the final, ‘winning’ posters, which are from the collections of poster designer Paul Crifo and the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library.

During the decades covered in this exhibition, posters were generally conceived and executed by art school-trained craftsmen working within studio advertising departments or at ad agencies. Crifo studied illustration at Pratt University; from 1942 through 1986, he worked on more than 400 motion picture advertising campaigns and personally designed 120 film posters for Hollywood studios, foreign distributors and independent film companies, largely while working out of New York City.

Posters and the preliminary design artwork that will be showcased include “Paths of Glory,” “Separate Tables,” “The Great Escape,” “Tom Jones,” “Zorba the Greek,” “The Group,” “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying,” “The Producers,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “Play It Again, Sam,” “A Separate Peace” and “Mahogany.”

Of course the days of this kind of hand illustration are long gone. Today's one-sheets typically showcase the stars, in their larger than life, photo-shopped to perfection images.

After the exhibit, it was lunch outside on the terrace

next to to the fountain at my new favorite Beverly Hills restaurant,

Via Alloro

Around Town - A Day At The Musée Granet

On my many trips to France over the last 30 or so years, I've always preferred wandering to shopping. I can find plenty of cute boutiques here in the States, but what I can't find is charming buildings like this and ivy draped gardens like this

But it was really too hot to do much wandering so I stopped into the Musée Granet

to see the Picasso Cezanne exhibit

which I didn't enjoy because I'm not a fan of Picasso.

OK, I think that he was a brilliant artist in terms of his technique

but overcome by his own ego and desire for crass commercialization.

Don't judge me.

So after all that Picasso nonsense I walked through the permanent painting collection.

Lot's of lovely landscapes and powerful portraits

and then I saw this

I hadn't realized that Mannerist masterpiece, Jupiter and Thetis

painted by Ingres when he was only 30 years old

is HUGE.

The canvas takes up an entire wall.

From William Feaver's article Why All Ingres Is Erotic in Art News

Bare-chested, his pink robe draped to one side like a furled curtain, the great big god sits with high, thick clouds wreathing his throne and cushioning his left elbow. He’s in one of his moods. How to arouse him? Thetis the sea nymph is sure she can manage it. Bare-breasted, her sage-green gown elegantly draped around buttock and thigh, she molds herself against the mighty knee and reaches up to twiddle his beard.

I didn't find it particularly erotic, but I did find it absolutely stunning.

From Prehistoric Porn to Currin and Coco

The birth of sculpture?
From the New York Times
Full-Figured Statuette, 35,000 Years Old, Provides New Clues to How Art Evolved

Venus of Hohle Fels
John Currin

Coco

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Around Town - Ancient Gems At The Getty Villa

Vintage Antique Victorian Bacchante Cameo From Beladora.com

Carvers and Collectors:The Lasting Allure of Ancient Gems
At the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa March 19 – September 7, 2009



“For a great many people, a single gemstone alone is enough to provide the highest and most perfect aesthetic experience of the wonders of Nature.”-- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 37.1 d. A.D. 79



LOS ANGELES—Carved gemstones have captivated connoisseurs and collectors of every age, from antiquity to the present. Carvers and Collectors: The Lasting Allure of Ancient Gems, on view from March 19 – September 7, 2009, at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, brings together remarkable intaglios and cameos carved by ancient master engravers along with outstanding works by modern carvers they have inspired.



The exhibition will display ancient gems together with items from later periods that illustrate the importance of gems through the ages. Illuminated manuscripts, rare engravings from early catalogues, and cabinets designed to house collections of gems as well as other works of art in diverse media will also be included.



“Greek rulers, Roman emperors, medieval and Renaissance popes and potentates, and 17th–19th-century monarchs and aristocrats all sought to possess these precious markers of culture, taste, and status,” said Kenneth Lapatin, associate curator of antiquities. “This exhibition truly illustrates the lasting allure of these masterpieces in miniature.”



Semi-precious hard stones, like carnelian, chalcedony, amethyst, and agate, have long been carved with decorative patterns and figural designs. Skilled craftsmen in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt as well as Greece, Rome, and Etruria used hand-powered drills and lathes to cut images into stone to create exquisitely carved gems.



Ancient gem forms called intaglios––from the Italian “to cut in”–– were produced through a technique that used negatives to create positive reliefs, or impressions, when pressed into a soft material, such as wax or clay.



Around 400 B.C., a new technique developed alongside intaglios––the making of cameos. Carvers created relief images that were produced by cutting away the stone surrounding the figure. By exploiting the different colors of banded stones, which could be artificially enhanced, artisans created the illusion of depth with multi-colored compositions.



Engraved gems have been valued not only for their distinctive carving, but also for the intrinsic qualities of their stones. In the Middle Ages and early modern period, ancient intaglios and cameos were reused not only as rings and pendants, but also were mounted in reliquaries, book-bindings, and altar pieces. Rulers, noblemen, and wealthy merchants sought and traded gems, and modern carvers produced replicas and forgeries.



Ancient gem carvers occasionally signed their works, but very few are recorded in ancient literature. However, unsigned intaglios and cameos have in many cases been attributed to known masters through their shared characteristics.



Master carvers on display in this exhibition include Solon, active about 70–20 BC, who worked in Roman imperial circles. Recently, one of his signed gems was found in excavations at Pompeii. His carvings gained great popularity in the 18th century due to the exceptional quality and design of his “Strozzi Medusa” gem, which appears in the exhibition.



Also included are gems attributed to Dioskourides, a Greek master from Aigeai, mentioned by several Roman authors as the carver of the Emperor Augustus’ personal seal.

Savvy Shopping - Going Green For The Getty

So what do you do when the Santa Ana winds have left Los Angeles so clear that you can see from the mountains to Catalina?

You go to the Getty Center of course to appreciate the view while catching up with some culture.

Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725

This exhibition tells the extraordinary story of a small group of artists who changed the course of art history. In the decades after the deaths of the great Renaissance masters, such as Raphael and Michelangelo, the art of painting was thought to have gone into steep decline. But then, in the late 16th century, the Carracci family of painters from Bologna burst onto the scene with tremendous energy and vitality, raising art to new heights. Their heroic achievement set standards that were to remain authoritative for more than 200 years. Here a selection of key works by the Carracci and several generations of their pupils and followers brings this artistic triumph to life. For them, the visible world became their principal source of inspiration, and nature was their teacher. Painting was about to enter a new era of creativity and lavish patronage, resulting in the glories of the Baroque age.

J0seph and Potiphar's Wife by Simone Cantorini at the Getty

Beladora.com vintage emerald and diamond dangle earrings $1650


Armani Collezioni at Neiman Marcus on Sale with additional 20% off

Beladora2.com vintage emerald and diamond ring $1295

I like the baroque-ish look of this vintage jewelry with the satin texture of the Armani jacket...

clearly very painterly

Simon Schama Spoof

Hysterical

Fashion Photography - A Blumenfeld Beauty

Nothing better illustrates the point of my previous post than these two photos, proving that while the elements of fashion, the clothes, models and photography, continue to evolve, they don't necessarily improve.

More from Fashionology. This new Lady Dior campaign featuring Marion Cotillard by Photographer Peter Lindburgh is a nod to Erwin Bumenfeld's 1939 photos of Lisa Fonssagrives on the Eiffel Tower.

Marion Cotillard atop the Eiffel Tower for Peter Lindbergh 2008
Lisa Fonssagrives atop the Eiffel Tower for Erwin Blumenfeld - 1939

From Exploring the Fabric of Form by Johnathon Keats in Art and Antiques Magazine

Blumenfeld advertised this most
spectacularly atop the Eiffel Tower in May 1939, when he took a series of
photographs of Lisa Fonssagrives swinging from the steel girders in a summer
dress by Lucien Lelong. Yet there’s more to this famous portfolio than style.
Through a dynamic of structure and shadow, every photograph conjures a three-way
relationship between woman, gown and edifice, each ideal form amplifying the
others in shape or gesture. None is subservient, and the camera captures all as
a single fabric. Fashion photography is often deservedly dismissed as mere
illustration: A photographer uses a model and a setting to show off a dress. In
Blumenfeld’s Eiffel Tower portfolio, the photographs are wholly self-sufficient
visual statements.

Blumenfeld’s Fonssagrives is
art—as aesthetically right as a masterpiece by Stieglitz or Weston or Strand—but
neither he nor his contemporaries could see it in that light. (Evidently some of
his contemporaries didn’t quite see it as fashion either; after the Eiffel Tower
shoot, his Vogue contract wasn’t renewed, and he landed in the French and
American offices of Snow’s Harper’s Bazaar for the following five years.)

On the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht I find it fascinating that Blumenfeld took this photo in carefree fashion forward Paris when just across the border anti-semitism was on the rise and the Nazi's were marching into Poland.

Costume Institute 2009 - The Model As Muse

This coming year's theme for the Gala of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Model as Muse.

Posted by Fashionology

As Harold Koda, curator of the Costume Institute, explained: "We look at the power of clothing, fashion
photography and the model to project the look of an era. With a mere gesture, or
the line of her body, a truly stellar model can sum up the attitude of her time,
creating an alluring synergy between herself and the clothing to communicate a
designer’s message to the wider world."

Marion Morehouse aka Mrs e.e.Cummings - The First Super Model
Lisa Fonssagrives

Suzy Parker

Jean Shrimpton

Today's Ultimate Super Model -Giselle Bundchen

I just don't know what it is...the clothes, the photographers or the new crop of super models, Giselle Bundchen, Amber Valleta, Kate Moss and Nadja Auermanm...fashion photography just doesn't seem to have the same impact as it did a half a century ago.

Around Town - Some Gorgeous Art At The Getty

If you haven't been to the Getty Museum lately you are missing out on one of the best things that Los Angeles has to offer. It's easy to get to. The total cost is $10 for parking. And when you see the view from the top of the Brentwood hills, it takes your breath away.
And then there's the art.
I loved this exhibit: Sur Le Motif: Painting in Nature around 1800
The choice of vistas and the use of color in these painting evokes everything that the Romantic Period in Art was all about.
These paintings of Italy are just so lovely.

And, I was particularly thrilled to see these works of art because I love the Romantic aesthetic in music, art and literature...and I am reading the biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the uber poets of the Romantic Era.

A Tale Of Two Cities- London and New York

The Golden Calf by Damian Hirst sold for $18.6 million

New York

Well it's been a roller coaster week in the stock market with the bankruptcy or Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, and continued uncertainty about Washington Mutual, Morgan Stanley and other firms with shaky financials. The SEC has issued a temporary ban against short selling of financial stocks. Long term Lehman employees with mortgages, college tuition's, and basic family living expenses to pay, are now unemployed. Individual investors who had only recently recouped what they had lost in the market crash of 2001, have seen the the value of their investments seriously eroded

London

Meanwhile, this week Contemporary artist Damian Hirst, rumored to be worth a billion dollars, is now some $172 million richer after Sotheby's two day sale of his new works. Lots were sold to Gagosian and White Cube galleries and Russian gazillionaires.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

But the biggest spender -- bidding over the telephone and said by industry insiders to be Christie's owner, the keen Hirst collector Francois Pinault -- paid £13.2 million for three lots. The most expensive, "The Golden Calf," a 20-ton calf with 18-karat-gold hooves and horns in a formaldehyde glass tank, was perhaps the most symbolic work in the sale, representing as it does the idolatrous worship of money. (Note the exquisite irony of this particular work selling for 18.6 million)

And a description of who was at the auction from the Times Online:

But inside the saleroom the drama was palpable - the art auction as high-risk spectator sport. Sir Norman Rosenthal, until recently the exhibitions secretary at the Royal Academy and one of the men who helped to make Hirst’s reputation, was among the onlookers, along with sundry hedge fund managers in open-neck shirts and haughty-looking younger women with big hair and expensive facial features.

While I find the work of Damian Hirst interesting, I can't understand why "The Kingdom", a tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, could justify a price of $17.2 million.

Is Contemporary Art a con?

One comment that I read referring to this sale is "There is no Contemporary Art, there is only marketing". I couldn't have said it better myself.

Around Town - Garnier for the OC Great Park in Laguna Beach

Laguna Beach

Jacques Garnier Photos (no they aren't actually this tiny)

So, tonight it was another "First Thursday Art Walk" in Laguna Beach. Every first Thursday of the month all the art galleries are open and there's a lot of activity in sleepy little seaside Laguna Beach .

After a short wrap up committee meeting for the Jewel of Orange County event for the Great Park Conservancy at the Peter Blake Gallery, we were treated to a short presentation by photographer Jacques Garnier. Garnier is in the progress of creating a photographic documentary over a 15 year period of the evolution of the area that will become the Great Park.

I was fascinated by Garnier's project not only because he documents historical change, but because he does it with the eyes of an artist.

Monday Morning Miscellany

The Fashioniste is not a fashion blogger but an Art-Fashion-and-Literature Synthesist


I'm fascinated with the way that his latest post highlights Dior's 1789 with commentary on women and revolution by leading intellectuals of the 19th Century, including these quotes from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

Ever since the French Revolution, women's influence in Europe has decreased to the same extent that their rights and ambitions have increased; and thus the “emancipation of women,” in so far as women themselves (and not only shallow males) are demanding and encouraging it, turns out to be a curious symptom of increasing weakness and dullness in the most womanly instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, which a truly womanly woman (who is always a clever woman) would have to be utterly ashamed of. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Part Seven: “Our Virtues,” Section 239, (1886), translated by Walter Kaufmann (1967).

Was it not the case in France that the influence of women, which steadily increased from the time of Louis XIII, was to blame for that gradual corruption of the Court and the Government, and which brought about the Revolution of 1789, of which all subsequent disturbances have been the result? However that may be, the false position which women occupy nowadays, demonstrated as it is, in the most glaring way, by the institution of the “lady,” is a fundamental defect in our social scheme, and this defect, proceeding from the very heart of it, must, by its very nature, spread its irritating and burdensome influence in all directions.-The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism (1851), translated by T. Bailey Saunders (1891), and slightly modernized for clarity by me.

and if that wasn't enough Schopenhauer for you...

[The fact that] woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence, immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a priest.-The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism (1851), translated by T. Bailey Saunders (1891).

On one hand the 19th Century produced philosophers like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and their ilk. On the other hand it produced a scientist of the caliber of Marie Curie who despite her study of mathematics, chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne, was denied a position as a professor at Krakow University because she was a woman.

Ultimately, whose work was more important...Schopenhauer's or Curie's...the answer is evident.

interesting, non?

Around Town - Great Exhibits At The Getty

When I need a weekend get-away and I don't have time to drive down to Laguna Beach, I like to go to the Getty Center.
High on the hill, above all the traffic and congestion of the city. it's lovely to just wander around outside amid the stately Richard Meier architecture and enjoy the magnificent view of the coastline.
But this weekend it is all about what's going on inside the Getty Center with the Bernini and Maria Sibylla exhibits.



And while I typically don't drive to Malibu during the summer because of the seasonal traffic, I'm definitely going to make the trek up to the Getty Villa for the Dilettanti exhibit.