antea: beguiling, strange beauty

Antea was painted in the early 1530s by Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, known as Parmigianino (1503–1540). This captivating painting is on view at The Frick through May 1. While there is no known evidence definitively linking the woman Parmigianino depicted to a specific person, her identity has been the cause of speculation for centuries.

Holland Cotter notes in his Times review of Antea: A Beautiful Artifice, that 'we enliven objects with our attention.' The bewitching Antea has captured mine. Truth be told, I'm most intrigued by her adornments and their composition — her gold satin dress, the marten fur, pearl drop earrings, ruby ring and gold chain; the lavish ruby and pearl jewel in her hair; her apron and the cuffs of her underdress decorated with delicate blackwork embroidery — not to mention that implausibly long right arm. I have returned again and again to dote on this Frick visitor; I hope to see her one more time before she leaves.




The woman in the painting was first identified as “Antea” in 1671 by the artist and writer Giacomo Barri, who claimed she was Parmigianino’s mistress. As Antea was the name of a famous sixteenth-century Roman courtesan, it was assumed that this was the woman to whom Barri referred. She has been identified alternatively as the daughter or servant of the artist; a member of an aristocratic northern Italian family; and a noble bride. It is most likely, however, that the Antea represents an ideal beauty, a popular genre of portraiture during the Renaissance. In such portraits, the beauty of the woman and the virtues she stood for were the primary subject, while the sitter’s identity — and even her existence — were of secondary importance.

More from Holland Cotter's review:

We know that the name “Antea” was attached to the picture only in the late 17th century, after the artist’s death. In classical mythology it referred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In the 16th century it was associated with a Roman courtesan of high renown, though there is no reason to think Parmigianino had either in mind.

Attempts have been made to determine the social status of his subject through a close reading of her sumptuous attire, though the results are contradictory. One scholar concludes that her apron indicates she was a servant, but another points out that noblewomen wore aprons too, fancy ones. Marten fur stoles like the one draped over the woman’s right shoulder were emblems of fertility, suggesting an identity as a young bride. But in other contexts the marten was a symbol of unbridled lust. The head of the animal preserved on the stole, its teeth as sharp as the fangs on a Japanese anime demon, looks rabid rather than nurturing.

In short, after much interpretive parsing and sorting, we know nothing at all about who this woman called Antea was, or what she meant to the artist, or to anyone else.




:parmigianino’s ‘antea’: a beautiful artifice is on view through may 1, frick collection.

true nature

Birds’ nests are ephemeral, often abandoned once the young have fledged. But the sheer ingenuity of these miniature marvels of architecture is as durable as the impressions left by San Francisco photographer Sharon Beals who captures them in their lasting glory.
















:audobon magazine

holi: spring arrives in india

The Inimitable Persephone of What Possessed Me and Sarah the Intrepid of Passementerie are two of my most favoritest, most fantacularly well-traveled blogging comrades.




Sarah is journeying through India right now - having recently overcome a combination of formidable in-country lodging and weather and physiological challenges. Follow her here. The other day, Sarah got me thinking more about Holi, India's festival of color, when she left this comment on another post:

...we arrived here in Varanasi on Holi which is the celebration of springtime (as far as I can gather) and the city is still liberally daubed in pink, blue and green dye, even some of the goats are brightly coloured!




Holi is the Hindu festival which celebrates the time when Krishna paid amorous attention to young women tending cows by spraying colored water over them. (Interesting.) Holi occurs each year, the day after the full moon in early March. Holi and Divali (the Festival of Light which occurs in October or November) are India’s most celebrated holidays.




I've just noticed that P very recently posted some remembrances of travels past, here. She trekked to a friend's wedding in Mumbai earlier this year - go here for a sample of some sublime visual treats. You can also screen P's slideshows from the expedition to India as well as her solo backpacking tour of northern and eastern Ethiopia here. Wondrous gorgeousness.




The images on this post serve as double homage: to those who literally fulfill the promise of Oh, The Places You'll Go! (and who possess the skill and desire to share their stories with the rest of us) - as well as to the intriguing, exuberant traditions of a beautiful land.







This painting (above) depicts the Indian deity, Krishna, celebrating Holi with Radha and the Gopis (great name for a Hindi jazz-rock fusion band, don't you think?).








:flickr

San Francisco’s Paul Hayes creates large surreal installations of foam and paper that swirl like schools of fish and hover like an invading flock of birds. They say that when you stand among them, you'd swear the swarm is multiplying.

Hayes, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate, currently has an installation at Johansson Projects in northern California. The exhibit, Propagations, also features works by Tadashi Moriyama, Kiersten Essenpreis, Rebecca Whipple and Alexis Amann. Showing through May 2.










:johansson projects; paul hayes flickr

leonard cohen: you're our man

This evening, Leonard Cohen will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My reaction? It's about time.



Few artists in the realm of popular music can truly be called poets, in the classical, arts-and-letters sense of the word. Among them are Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell and Phil Ochs. Leonard Cohen heads this elite class. In fact, Cohen was already an established poet and novelist before he turned his attention to songwriting. His academic training in poetry and literature, and his pursuit of them as livelihood for much of the 50s and 60s, gave him an extraordinary advantage over his pop peers when it came to setting language to music. Along with other folk-steeped musical literati, Cohen raised the songwriting bar. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum)


I love this line from Cohen's Anthem. It just may be my favorite lyric. Ever.

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

I recently discovered a remark that Cohen made about this bit of his poetry: That’s the closest thing I could describe to a credo. That idea is one of the fundamental positions behind a lot of the songs.


And regarding his work and method:

You know, you scribble away for one reason or another. You’re touched by something that you read. You want to number yourself among these illustrious spirits for one advantage or another, some social, some spiritual. It’s just ambition that tricks you into the enterprise, and then you discover whether you have any actual aptitude for it or not. So I’ve always thought that I, you know, do my job OK.

It thrills me to know I'm sharing an area code with Mr. Cohen - at least for the evening. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will air live from the Waldorf-Astoria on VH1 Classic tonight at 8:30 p.m. EST. BTW, Lou Reed will present Mr. Cohen.

O Canada. You must be so proud of this Native Son.




K.D. Lang performs Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Juno Awards, Winnipeg, 2005. (Of the 10,983,477 listens to the guskillion covers of Hallelujah on YouTube, I claim 795,517. K.D. gets into it here, for sure.) Word has it that Damien Rice will perform Hallelujah at the induction ceremony this evening.




Rufus Wainwright performs Everybody Knows. This is a clip from the Cohen-tribute film I'm Your Man. Rufus talks about meeting Cohen for the first time. Cohen says a word or two. The song begins at 1:51.




Martha Wainwright performs Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song. Late Night with Dave.




Our Man himself, performing Hallelujah. (Love the set. Looks to be borrowed from The Muppets, c. 1985.)




:photo © sony bmg; quotes via the vancouver sun; the rock and roll hall of fame + museum

vivienne in pink

Vivienne Westwood, arguably the most influential British fashion designer of the twentieth century, revels in incendiary provocation and a defiance of convention, but nonetheless finds beauty and inspiration in the past. This apparent contradiction, to attempt to upset the status quo while clearly having a consciousness of tradition and history, made Westwood the most representative designer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute's 2006 exhibition AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion. Given Westwood’s violation of expectations, it's really no surprise that the designer so associated with torn T-shirts, bondage jackets and punk rock (see last image, below) is also capable of creating astonishingly rigorous examples of tailoring and dressmaking.




At the time, Westwood said that this dress was her most important work to date. Comprising a beautifully constructed and boned bodice as its base, the gown has been draped, fitted and spiraled around the body in one unbroken length. Yes, one unbroken length. It is an aesthetic marvel, all the more important for the virtuosity of Westwood’s approach, at once conceptually reductive and technically audacious. While the gown might evoke the French haute couture of the 1950s and an attendant impression of retardataire elegance, Westwood’s subversion is in her breaking of any prior conventions of draping and dressmaking.




Yowzah.




:images metropolitan museum of art; vivienne westwood (british, b. 1941). “propaganda” dress, fall/winter 2005–06. lilac silk faille; shoes, autumn/winter 1990. hot pink crocodile-embossed patent leather.

dianamuse feature: yellena's temple and allusion

Temple


If you haven't met Yellena James, allow me to introduce her to you. Yellena is a 29-year-old artist who lives on the Central Oregon Coast with her musician husband and two cats, Masha (good kitty) and Fisher (bad kitty). Yellena explores flow, movement and organicity in her extravagantly fanciful creations. She loves to invent new relationships between shapes and colors from those that exist naturally.

Flirt



Yellena was born in Sarajevo and lived there until the end of the civil war, in 1995. During the war, she would sneak past snipers to attend a high school that was dedicated to the arts. That's where she grew passionate about her own art. The school had electricity most of the time—which meant heat and music—and like-minded people who just wanted to create and get away from the horrors of the world outside. After moving to the United States (Orlando, FL), Yellena received a BA in graphic design from UCF and eventually made her way to the West Coast.



Breeze


From a (pilfered) interview on etsy, used here with Yellena's permission:
What is the first thing you can remember making by hand? How and why did you make it?

When I was seven years old, I was in a city-wide competition to do a drawing that had a '21st-century' theme. I drew a bunch of robots wearing aprons and baking cookies. I wish I still had that drawing. It took second place.


Magic


What inspires you? Where do your ideas come from?

I think that my works come from a desire to put something in front of myself that I would really want to look at later. Inspiration is everywhere: the works of other artists, books, design blogs, catalogs, my husband, my sister (danca dot etsy dot com), my friends, vintage patterns, fine-point pens, velvet paper, felt, deep-sea creatures, Julie Mehretu, music, cacti, moss, wallpaper, micro-cosmos, macro-cosmos, pebbles, plants, animals, the universe. That's about it.





What are your favorite materials?

Pens, inks, markers, good quality paper. I also love to work with acrylics. I could spend hours in an art supply store, just touching everything.



Allusion





:yellena's shop, blog, gallery

leigh wells

During her successful career as a commercial artist in New York and California, Leigh Wells simultaneously created an entirely separate body of personal work "exploring complexity and the unknown in the physical world, human life and culture, with an interest in attempts by science, religion and history to address these issues."

With inspiration as diverse as scientific diagramming, early Chinese ceramics, theoretical physics and extreme religious beliefs, Wells transforms her materials—gouache, acrylic, graphite, collage and found materials—into fascinating and beautiful abstractions of tangled strands, shadow objects and cosmic conglomerations that swirl together to form a dynamic whole.





I've had this grouping of Wells's work waiting in the wings (how's that for an alliterative run?) for some time. I thought to pull them out and put them up after recently spotting a Wells painting at sfgirlbybay—one I'd not seen before. There's something about the combination of contained chaos, underlying calligraphic form, Wells's wit and her judicious use of color and emphatic use of red that makes my heart beat a little faster.




























:leigh wells

mad about mad men

I'm surprised that those of you (you are many) with a predilection for all things mid-mod haven't yet posted about this terrific series. Perhaps you young people aren't inclined to watch AMC? Perhaps you've got a post buried somewhere and I haven't yet discovered it? Don't know. But I predict that this show—with its star, Jon Hamm—is going to rock the cazbah at upcoming awards events (or...er...announcements).





So forget for a moment that Mad Men is the best new thing on TV. What really fuels the series is pure, undiluted mid-century Manhattan Glamour. With its intoxicating styling and set design, Mad Men is a super-crisp reflection of what many New Yorkers think of as their own personal alternate universe, a place where men wear fedoras and lipstick leaves dark stamps on everything it encounters. The show is heaven for design geeks and retro romantics alike.




Don Draper (Jon Hamm - pictured just below) is an icon of male confidence—a cynic with smarts who, like so many New Yorkers, has erased his own history and learned to control the city that would swallow him up. Each day, he dominates a midtown playground, one outfitted with eight-martini lunches. Unlike, say, Entourage, Mad Men is willing to acknowledge its rat pack’s ugly streak (Don's casual insensitivity to his wife tops the list of his ugly). But thank heaven for decent character development.




Mary Corey, a lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles who specializes in post-World War II intellectual and cultural history, said Mad Men is a dead-on depiction of the era, with its vast inequities between the sexes. “It is at the very moment that the party is almost over for American men,” she said. “It’s extremely accurate — the sadness and loneliness of the women.”

Professor Corey described the era as a “roiling mess” about to explode. “The show explains why the ’60s had to happen, because it can’t stay like that,” she said. “The surface tension is too profound.”





Bonus: A bit of John Hamm's backstory (if you don't already want to know something about this guy, give it time):

“Nothing [in Hollywood] happens without incredible luck,” says Hamm, 36, “being in the right place at the right time and taking advantage of what you have.” Times were hard (until relatively recently!) for Hamm, but he was used to it. His mother died when he was 10. His father followed 10 years later. “What my mother left me was a trust that was used to pay for my high school and a little bit for college,” he says. “And my father had nothing when he passed away. My mother—it sounds very Dickensian and romantic—but my mother’s dying wish was that I go to this particular private [high school], John Burroughs School in St. Louis because friends had gone there. I have to say it was the single most profound, resonating decision ever made in my life. It wasn’t made by me, but it’s what every mother should want for her child.”




Hamm went on to finish college with a major in English. “By the time I graduated college I managed to talk them into giving me a theater scholarship and then into hiring me to do plays ... I went back to my old high school and said, 'You’re the reason I am the person I am today and I would like to inspire other people in the way this place has inspired me.' They thought it was a good idea, and I went back and taught school there for a year under the person who had taught me acting.”

It was after he’d resolved that debt that he decided to take the tumble into show biz. “I thought, 'If I don’t do it now I’m never going to do it.' For me, I think, the idea of not doing this was way more terrifying than doing it. I couldn’t imagine the soul-rushing regret of not giving it a shot. And even had I never gotten a job and never gotten a career or any of it, I would’ve said, 'You know what? At least I was the man in the arena, at least I threw it out there and gave it a shot. I had my opportunities and I tried.'”




You go, Jon.





:amc

and the tony goes to...

Resistance. Is. Futile. I just have to offer another homage to Tony Duquette, the brilliant and eccentric California designer of interiors, stage sets and jewelry. Some of you posted such wonderful tributes, I hesitated to keep it going here. I got over it. To my mind, we'd do well to keep Duquette's obsessive, audacious, transform-the-pedestrian-into-something-beautiful-and-splendid vision front and center--a source of daily inspiration.

I'm weaving together some shots I took of the Duquette-influenced BG windows with some of Guy Trebay's words (pilfered from his TD piece that appeared in The Times this fall).




In 1999, the last time Tony Duquette was rediscovered, Amy Spindler, the style editor of The New York Times Magazine, made an observation in [The Times] that still rings true. “When a Banana Republic catalog starts to look like the trendy, vacuous pages of Wallpaper, and Club Monaco is indistinguishable from Prada,” she wrote, “you know it’s time for high style to move on.”

But an era of baroque theatrics in fashion and design, which Ms. Spindler suggested a Duquette comeback might inspire, never quite materialized. “A coral branch on a coffee table does not a Duquette make,” as the interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber said. Mr. Duquette died in late 1999 at 85, and what followed in the design world was, if not uniformly pedestrian, somehow lacking the rococo whimsy for which he was renowned.




Rather than the fantastical visions Duquette conjured up for clients with the movie sets he designed for Vincente Minnelli, the jewelry he made for the Duchess of Windsor and interiors he created for, among others, Mary Pickford and Doris Duke, consumers were delivered into what Louis Bofferding, an antiquarian and style columnist, called the era of “the square lampshade, of boring beige and white.” Those trendy vacuous pages of Wallpaper turned out to be a visual template for a lot of designers.




With the arrival [this month] of Tony Duquette, a hefty lavish monograph on the late designer, the style world may be getting a kind of gilt-edged Post-it note, an overdue reminder to a market dominated by monotonous status goods that nothing is quite so luxurious as an individual eye. “There is way too much out there that feels corporately and central-office driven,” said Linda Fargo, the fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman, the Fifth Avenue retailer whose Christmas windows are inspired by Duquette’s vision, as rendered in scenarios that are part Elsie de Wolfe and part Brothers Grimm.

“Tony always said he was about beauty and not luxury, if you’re going to define luxury by cost,” Ms. Fargo said. Enthusiastic about raiding the storehouses of the past for his projects, Duquette was also audacious in his use of shoestring effects to set off important antiques. “He was Rumpelstiltskin spinning gold from straw,” said Ms. Fargo, echoing Tom Ford’s observation that only Mr. Duquette could see a piece of junk and imagine a pagoda.




Hutton Wilkinson, who wrote Tony Duquette with Wendy Goodman, the design director of House & Garden, says that where some people saw a hubcap, Duquette saw a shining disc to set in the middle of an improvised sunburst.

“Tony was no label lover,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “His attitude was that the last definition of luxury was that it’s just for you.” It was not mass production that Duquette resisted; it was the dumbing-down of style. “The democratization of style and design may be a fantastic thing,” Ms. Goodman said. “But while there’s a level of accessibility now, there’s also a kind of standardization he disliked.”

In his jewelry designs, he balked at the notion that everything revolved around the gem. “I love his approach to doing real jewelry in the spirit of fake jewelry,” said Victoire de Castellane, the designer of playful jewels for Dior. “His approach was not to be enslaved by materials, to be concerned first with the creative effect. He combined gems, cut stones and rough gems, forgetting their value,” Ms. de Castellane said. “They were completely crazy, mixes of real coral with amber and pink quartz, associations with colors that were audacious, odd, maybe not in such good taste, but never bourgeois.”




“Duquette’s work was either haute Bohemian or Bohemian masquerading as haute,” Mr. Bofferding said. “You did not necessarily want to see it by the light of day.” Still, he added: “the vision was informed and full of historical reference. And he looked at things as an artist does,” with an emphasis on color and texture and aesthetics instead of price tags.

“Tony really sprung out of nowhere,” said Ms. Goodman, which is to say tiny Three Rivers, Mich., by way of early 20th-century Los Angeles. “He was of the culture of make-believe,” she added, referring to studio-era Hollywood, where Duquette’s work was enthusiastically taken up by the movie people who also formed a social set around him and his wife.




Duquette, like his early mentor, the decorator Elsie de Wolfe, had both the moxie and the unfettered, rule-breaking approach typical of certain self inventions. “Elsie de Wolfe always said, ‘I was born an ugly child in an ugly age,’ and so she committed herself to creating beauty,” Ms. Goodman said. Having taken the same inventory, Duquette arrived at a similar resolve. “He was channeling something, putting all his references into the blender of his imagination,” Ms. Goodman said. “He believed more than anything that people had access to things they were not aware of.”




Young designers looking to shake off the more deadening aspects of an increasingly corporate design culture might learn a lot from Duquette, Ms. Goodman said. “It’s like: ‘Wait a minute, those things I thought about, I can do them,’” she said. “‘I can do things in an unorthodox way. I can be a mess.’”










:bottom two images of duquette's home, dawnridge, courtesy of the times. all others dianamuse.