New Web Project: Reclaiming Beauty: Please Donate Using the Payapl Button On the Right

Garden in the Cloisters , New York
Discussed in: Garden Guide: New York City pp. 33-37
Cloisters Flowers
[Photo by KPA, August 2012]

I have started a new web project, which I've titled "Reclaiming Beauty."

In the "About" section, I've described it thus:

This is a site which aims to reclaim beauty. It is a group effort, with the vision that it becomes a movement.

Please take a look, make a comment, pass on an idea. Join us.

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Fundraiser for New Project "Reclaiming Beauty"

I am raising funds to initiate my project "Reclaiming Beauty."

Please use the most convenient method to submit the funds:
- Contact me by email, and I can send you my mailing address
- Contact me by email, and I can send you information for direct deposit into my bank
- Use a secured Paypal deposit method by linking to the Donate button on the side

Thank you in advance for your interest.

I will send a gift, from my own "Trillium Series" designs, for the corresponding contributions:

$20 - Brooch/Button

$35 - Note Cards (Pack of ten)


$55 - Mug


$75 - Tote-Bag


$100 - Wall Clock

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Florabotanica

I tried out a new perfume by Balenciaga today. It was the name that caught my attention: Florabotanica. The salesgirl said it was an infusion of roses. I asked her to spray it on the usual test card, and she gave me a small spray sample along with the test card.

"I do smell roses. It is subtle but persistent. But there's another flower there, and it is a little fruit/citrusy too, and the base is just a touch heavy," I said.

"No, no other flower. And it the vetiver and amber in the base that give it the citrus scent," replied the helpful salesgirl.

I wasn't convinced, I left thanking her for the sample spray.

I went online on Balenciaga's site and sure enough there is another flower: the carnation. And the fresh citrusy smell I could detect is mint. The heavy base is from the leafy caladium.

The perfume, as the Balenciaga site describes it, is a paradoxical soft and strong. Our modern age has to dilute whatever it presents to us, reduce its beauty, and uglify it. The perfume itself is just a ghost of the old classics, which didn't need some paradox to show us their strength. And perfume bottles were works of art on their own. This paradoxical concuction is bottled in a flask "which takes its design from laboratory bottles" according to Nicolas Ghesquiere, one of the perfumers.

That waif of a woman, Kristen Stewart, who became famous through a series of vampire movies, is Balenciaga's choice of a spokesgirl. Spokeswoman is a more apt title since Krisren is no girl, but a grown woman in her mid-twenties. Kristen's insipid personality is devoid of any strength, whether to combat gory creatures, or to represent Balenciaga's lofty ideal. Our modern era keeps producing these girl-women who fling themselves into dangerous roles, but who break down at the slightest difficulty.

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Modern Beauty

The modern world is so anti-beauty that anyonewho searches for beauty and emulates it is regarded as some kind of anomaly. This is most strongly communicated to (and by) those who should most be our examples of beauty: movie stars.

Laura Wood at the Thinking Housewife has a post on beauty, and links to an essay on beauty by Peter Singleton titled: The Beautiful Female Face - And It's Feminist Enemies.

Laura Wood writes, commenting on a photo of the actress Jennifer Aniston:

Reading this essay, I was reminded of the sheer banality of one prominent celebrity: Jennifer Aniston. I cannot understand why people find her face interesting enough to see everwhere. It devoid of mystique.

In an earlier post, Laura writes about The Beauty of Therese of Lisieux, a nineteenth century saint, hardly a physical beauty, and perhaps with spiritual beauty, although I find even that hard to see in her harsh expression.

It is not that ordinary women (including ordinary movie actresses) want to uglify themselves, it is the gatekeepers of modern aesthetics who have decided that ugliness rules. The reasons are complex and long, and I'm in the process of expounding on that. But here's basically what I think:

Modern aesthetics refers to evil, rather than the good, to define our world. And ugliness is the manifestation of evil, whereas beauty is the manifestation of good.

Here's an excerpt from the essay by Singleton:

The contemporary American woman's beauty...is a complete fraud that seems to recognize itself as a complete fraud...Since I cannot suppose that our women actually have fewer physical attractions than others around the world, I must conclude that our culture has fed their souls upon something that has dulled their their spiritual radiance. And why, I ask, should that conclusion strike anyone as a surprise? How are you to be beautiful in the context of paleo-feminism, whose ambition was that women should become men?

Since women cannot become men, in body or soul the next best thing is not to become women (or, more precicely, not to be feminine). That leaves the strange option of a non-feminine, anti-beauty female, who either looks androgynous, or who dresses as ugly as possible to camouflage her femininity. After all, her fashion bibles are telling her that looks good!

Here are excerpts from a couple of articles I wrote on Jennifer Aniston:

From Jennifer's Momentary Radiance:

She looks so radiant and happy with her flowing locks and pretty veil.

And after her husband Brad Pitt cheated on her with that formidable Angelina Jolie, she linked up with Justine Theroux. I wrote abiut them in my blog post Modern Couples:

Well here's Jenn in New York's West Village, and that's how to look urban and chic.

This post was tongue in cheek. Jennifer looks drab and dreary, although she cannot help styling her scarf.

One final thing, before Jennifer's transformation into the mousy looking, hurt woman (everything about her exudes hurt, and who can blame her, after her husband cheated on her), I think she had charm and style and became the only talented actress on that awful sitcom Friends, running circles around her "friends" in her stylish clothes and clever lines. And her confidence and charm transferred over to her actual persona. She may not be a refined beauty, but she has enough ordinary prettiness that her sitcom fans (ordinary women) can relate to. Beauty does come in gradations, and prettiness is one of them.

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A Most Ancient Spiral Galaxy

The "grand-design" spiral galaxy described as "the most ancient spiral galaxy...ever discovered" shouldn't exist because "Current wisdom holds that such 'grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn’t exist at such an early time in the history of the universe," according to this website.

And commenting on the structure of this galaxy, UCLA astrophysicist Alice Shapley opines:

The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks...Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?

And University of Toronto's David Law, who authored the study, comments:

The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding. Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn't exist at such an early time in the history of the universe.

At the View From the Right, the sentiments are different. Lawrence Auster writes:

What a dumb, vulgar thing to say [that vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks] about objects ten billion years old, a hundred thousand light-years across, and each containing hundreds of billions or even tens of trillions of stars. No scientist in 1950 or 1970 would have said it...

Far too often, scientists, like their fellow elites in contemporary liberated society who believe in nothing higher or truer than the disordered human self, seem to have no sense of appropriateness, no inherent respect for anything, for the isness of anything. They must drag everything down to the commonest level and make it appear to be as messy and meaningless as we ourselves—even objects that are infinitely vaster and older than anything we can conceive, and that express an order of which (notwithstanding scientific theories which claim to explain far more than than they really do explain) we have no idea.

I think that people, modern, liberal people (which is the majority of the West now) have no principles with which to guide their observations of the world around them.

The Good, the True and the Beautiful are no longer those solid principles with which we tried to understand the world around us. These principles were formed partly through religion (specifically Christianity) and partly through our cultural history and traditions. Society was thus constantly informed how to differentiate between good and evil, beautiful and the less beautiful, the true and the untruthful.

Now, since we have cast aside these traditions, and since religion is just something one harks back to on Christmas or a christening, we no longer have that to guide our understanding of the world.

So, the tremendous beauty, complexity, and mystery of the universe is smeared with the ugly words of a modern "scientist." Beauty, rather than bring things up to its level, is now dragged down to the putrid messes of the ugly. And this is just how modern people would have it, since bringing things down to the "equal" level of ugliness is much easier than bringing it up to the difficult hierarchical requirements of beauty.

If scientist are not in awe of what they're discovering, how can they enjoy their work? Why bother to spend hours, days and even years looking through a metal funnel if they are not impressed by what they see? Otherwise, they may as well spend their days looking at the crumbs on their desks, which is how the likes of David Law really do see their work, and hence their crass and crude comments on these celestial bodies.

I should add that pre-modern scientists had a much better sense of the mysterious, and were much more humble than their post-modern inheritors. As I've mentioned before, it was God who got discarded so that David Law and Alice Shapley can say (and believe) these things. Things are now measured in terms of man's limitations, rather than God's infinity.

Since my interest is beauty, I think what is going on is an elimination of beauty in our modern understanding of the world, which also leads to the elimination of the good and the true. I wrote here about beauty:

Ugliness rules. In clothing, in films, in art and even in our "representatives" of beauty. I don't think it is a lack of knowledge about beauty. We've developed standards and often unanimous agreement about what constitutes the beautiful. So I'm not going to into the beauty-hater's argument that beauty is relative; beauty can be objectively measured. What's going on is that people are hating beauty. It is a form of envy. If I cannot be beautiful, then why is she beautiful? It is like wealth, or intelligence, or a sense of entitlement to live anywhere one pleases. Spread the wealth, accept I.Q.ers of 91 into Harvard, let everyone from every corner of the world come into the prosperous West. Or youth. Why cannot I be as young (and attractive) as any fifteen-year-old, at my ripe old age of seventy? Such are the mantra of the equal-opportunity narcissists.

So, in order to fit in with their lowered standards, beauty magazines are (actually they have been, for decades now) publicizing ugliness in their fashion shoots, their models, and even with the "celebrities" and film actors they promote. There was a time when actresses like Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly and many more appeared in immaculate clothing, looking ethereally beautiful, at any age. And we admired them.

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Adept Attackers of Beauty

Frumpy, home-body Miu Miu

I sent the email below, along with a link of my blog post From Schiaparelli to Prada: Deterioration of Culture to a correspondent.

I have written a long post on the Met's exhibition "Schiaparelli & Prada, Impossible Conversations" (linked above), but this email adds more on my ideas and observations about the decline, or perversion, of culture that I see around me. Art, and artists, are often the first to grasp (either by accepting or rejecting) societal changes. I think Prada has given us some insights, not what she really wants us to see but nevertheless insights, on our current culture.

Here is my email, which I titled: War on Beauty and the related War on Masculinty:

Hi ____,

I read a little while ago your post on beauty with interest.

Beauty is a hard concept to "analyze" and to "deconstruct" as leftists love to do. It is an ethereal presence. We react to beauty rather than coldly observe it. We have to admit it is there in some things, probably not in us, and thus we realize it is some kind of favored state (it is clear that beautiful people, and babies, are treated better than ordinary people). At our best, we are humbled by beauty.

This hierarchy of beauty is what grates liberals and leftists.

I've written several (many) blogs on beauty, and I've noticed that there is an even more vicious war going on against beauty than when I started my blog a few years ago. This time, I think people are well-versed on how to attack beauty, and how to make beautiful people, things, etc. feel they're doing, and are, something wrong (and evil). Decades (even centuries, if you look back at the origins of modernism) have made such people adept attackers of beauty.

I wrote this post on Prada's really ugly clothes after I saw the exhibition "Schiaparelli & Prada, Impossible Conversations" at the Metropolitan Museum. Schiaparelli, in her time (around the turn of the 20th century), was considered a radical fashion designer, yet her least feminine designs are not as viciously ugly as Prada's. Schiaparelli was also much more talented, skilled (trained, I think) than Prada, and she admits the power of femininity and feminine beauty.

Prada is the post-modern feminist who seems to have a visceral hate for femininity. and feminine beauty, and ultimately beauty in general (I won't go into the many viciously anti-woman homosexual designers, since perhaps their deficiencies are obvious, but the heterosexual, female Prada is the ultimate betrayer.)

Prada of course supports all the evils that come with feminism, yet her life is strangely traditional, with a husband of several decades, two grown sons, and one son who is following her footsteps in her fashion design empire. She herself inherited this already successful empire from her father and grandfather, so she hardly qualifies as a female empire builder. She holds her temperamental husband at bay by giving him the high profile role of managing her company (and metaphorically, her too?). She's a clever, smart feminist. Those are the types that really do rule this world, since they realize that the female energy IS different than the male's. So, what they're after in not equality, but a reversal of roles (of power), even though they know from experience that this isn't likely to happen. But, I think even clever, smart Prada succumbs to her illusions, since her inner-most desire must be (from all the information she keeps giving us) to make women the superior sex. I think one of your correspondents called this envy. I think that is what it is. The natural, obvious, strength (power) of men, which they carry with such ease, is something to be admired, just as beauty is to be admired in beautiful women. When this admiration is perverted, it turns to something ugly like envy. I think we are in the age of perversions. And this is manifested, at least in my observations of culture, in the cult of ugliness as a vicious retaliation against beauty, and I think related to that (since it all presents itself as equality) the cult of male feminization, which is part of the degradation masculinity.

And finally, what happens if a woman can no longer be beautiful? The alternative now is that she has to look masculine. How does Prada reconcile all that with her "hatred" of masculinity AND femininity? One way is that modern fashion designers (and artists in general) who still work with/for/about women are creating alien monsters, neither male nor female. But, this is something I've just began to observe, and I still have to think about it some more.

Kidist

Android, from Prada's 2013 collection

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"My eyes were made to erase what is ugly"

Left: Dufy, Jetee d'Honfleur, 1930
Right: Cassigneul, La Plage Aux Hortensias, 1985

[More images after the end of the post]

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Raoul Dufy:

"Mes yeux sont faits pour effacer ce qui est laid"
("My eyes were made to erase what is ugly")

A couple of days ago, I posted some images by Jean Pierre Cassigneul, a painter whose print I have carried around for many years. Yet, I don't know (or didn't bother to know) much about it, or him.

It is Dufy who has always attracted me. From a long time back, I started to study his vivid colors and exotic (French) locales. He painted a variety of subjects, but almost always the same ones. He painted mostly the French coastline, often in southern France in Nice, but sometimes in the north in Deauville and Honfleur. He scatters his scenes with people. His themes include: at the racehorses; sailboats; views of the sea through open widows; bouquets of flowers; musical instruments; and some famous European (mostly French) towns and buildings. He was also a diverse artist and designer, making textile prints, tapestries, murals, furniture, woodcuts, lithography, ceramics and theater sets.

Dufy is certainly the more important painter. Cassigneul never got the similar popularity. I think Cassigneul paints well. His subjects are pleasing and his paintings pretty. But there is a lack of completeness in his paintings, like a slightly blurred photograph, or a painting without the moldings of light and dark (shadow and light) to give them a three dimensional quality.

For all of Dufy's Fauvist "seemingly wild brush work and strident colors...with [his] subject matter [having] a high degree of simplification and abstraction [source]" his paintings are defined and sure, even if they often look like watercolor sketches. Sail boats have clear lines; horses are molded and given rounded bodies through dark and light paint; the sea is differentiated with white paint for crests and dark blue for troughs; the outer and inner colors of petals are given different shades; and he painted portraits of actual, recognizable people, rather than anonymous subjects like Cassigneul.

Cassigneul paintings are pleasantand flattering to the women, who are his central (overwhelming) theme. But they are always anonymous women, and he tells us nothing about their personal backgrounds: no names, titles, positions, or even relations. Many have dark, vacant eyes.

Dufy's subjects look anonymous, but they are seldom alone, and are almost always within a social context of the horse races, at the regattas, or on piers and promenades. We recognize the individuals and groups of individuals through their social and cultural milieu. Where his subjects are alone, they have distinct features. They are almost exclusively women, either painted as portraits or nudes. And in many of his portraits, he gives us the names of these female subjects.

Left: Dufy, Portrait of Regina Homburger, 1952
Right: Cassigneul, Profile, 1982

Left: Dufy, Reggatta, date not available
Right: Cassigneul, Dans le Train Bleu, Côte d'Azur, 1970

Left: Dufy, Fenêtre ouverte sur la mer, ca. 1923
Right: Cassigneul, Femme au Balcon, Vue de l'Avenue Foch, 1990

Left: Dufy, The Racetrack, 1928
Right: Cassigneul, Longchamp, ca. 1967

Left: Dufy, Le champ de courses de Deauville, ca. 1941
Right: Cassigneul, Dimanche au bois, 2008

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White Gardenia

White Gardenia

The Body Shop never ceases to amaze me (in a good way). I recently reviewed its very good Moroccan Rose, and called it "a true rose fragrance." The slightly heavier "perfume oil" which I praised was White Musk.


Now my local Body Shop shop is selling White Gardenia Eau de Toilette for half price. This is a scent that was discontinued, but has been re-introduced, not surprisingly. Gardenia scents can be overwhelming (and acrid), but this one is fresh and light, up with a touch of citrus.

Once again, as I wrote here, the bottle is nothing to write about (:-)), but such a plain design has somehow become the Body Shop signature.

Here are its notes:
Lotus flower, gardenia, bergamot and musk. It is the bergamot that gives it the citrusy scent.

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Free Fall

Nico, Los Angeles, CA 1966
Photo by Lisa Law

I wrote about Nico, the odd, deep-voiced chanteuse of the Velvet Underground here. The photo I posted is actually a cropped version of an original by "rock" photographer Lisa Law. Nico has her feet (precariously) on the ground, as though she fell from the sky (or a tree). So even in my original interpretation of the cropped version, I was right that her movements showed the instability of someone wavering between free fall and stability.

Here is what Lisa Law, the photographer who took the black and white photo of Nico writes about her experience with mind altering paraphernalia. She was in good compaly with Nico.

Psychedelics assisted me in seeing that we are all one, not just us humans but everything on the planet, the animals, the trees, the water, the air, the earth, the plants. God is always present. It is a very humbling, unifying, heeling feeling that affected the way I looked at the rest of my life.

The first time I took LSD, Owsly's purple liquid, I knew life would never be the same.

Below is a much better photo of Nico. The freedom one associates with floating, swimming or being in water with all our senses in tact (which is how I like being near or in water) is not there. She is overwhelmed, and has a defiant, but frightened look, goading the water to come get her, as she probably does the heroin she used to smoke (shoot), and yet is petrified at the same time. Her behavior is not one of bravery, but of recklessness, as she well knows. Even Lou Reed writes in his heroin song: "Heroin, be the death of me."

Nico, 1967
Photo by Michael Ochs

All people want stability and beauty, amongst many other human (humane) necessities. Hippies are no exception. Law lived in a hippie commune called the Castle in San Fransisco, which she describes as a mansion. Below is a short transcript from her interview with journalist Tom Lyttle. I cannot find the date of the interview, but it looks like it is in the 1990s. The online version is a pdf article and is clearly a copy of an original. It is also available as an html online. This excerpt is from page eighteen if the article:

If the Factory [Warhol's New York studio] was a place that the beautiful people hung at...then the Castle was the West Coast version of that. Word traveled fast and in the two brief years that we were there, everybody came by to visit and hang out, partake, party, sing, make love, eat, write songs and dance their hearts out. Tom Law and John Phillip bought it with Jack Simons for mere $100,000 and had to sell it at a loss. John Getty owns it now.

Vultures like Law and Warhol collected their beautiful people only to desecrate and destroy them later. This is what Wikipedia says about Nico, after her initial glamor and beauty wore off:

Nico was a heroin addict for over 15 years. In the book Songs They Never Play on the Radio, James Young, a member of her band in the 1980s, recalls many examples of her troubling behaviour due to her "overwhelming" addiction...Shortly before her death, Nico stopped taking heroin and began methadone replacement therapy while also embarking upon a regimen of bicycle exercise and healthy eating.

Despite her career in music, she was deaf in one ear, which made it difficult for her to understand what others were saying.

On 18 July 1988, while on holiday with her son on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Nico had a minor heart attack while riding a bicycle and hit her head as she fell...[She] died at eight o'clock that evening. X-rays later revealed a severe cerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death.

Nico was buried in her mother's plot in Grunewald Forest Cemetery in Berlin. A few friends played a tape of "Mütterlein," a song from [her album] Desertshore , at her funeral.

Mütterlein
By Nico

Dear little Mütterlein
Now I may finally be with you
The longing and the loneliness
Redeem themselves in blessedness

The cradle is your homeland-dress
A gracefulness your glory
In ecstasy your heartbreak transforms
And reaches inside of the victorious tide

Beauty alone is not enough.

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Bob Dylan's Desk, the Castle, 1965
Photo by Lisa Law

Bob Dylan also stayed at the Castle. Above is a photo of a corner of his room by Lisa Law, beautiful and ordered, with a Tiffany style lamp, a patterned cloth on the table, and some small carved animals. He has a view.

The Castle, Los Angeles, 1965
Photo by Lisa Law

Above is the Castle where the hippies hung out. Beauty is clearly not wanting, including a sports car, meant for the rich and famous but why not for hippy squatters as well?

Drudge has an article about drug use (abuse) in contemporary teens from in the suburbs, and links to this Daily Mail article. Not crack or marijuana for these pampered adolescents, but heroin. These are the children of the sixties.

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Beauty Au Naturel

Constance Jabloski, September 2011

Joan Small, July 2011

Liu Wen, July 2011

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Here are the three Estée Lauder models I blogged about in my last post Radical Multi-Culti Chic, where I was comparing the beauty (outer, no inner beauty here) of the three models.

Even without make-up, (or elaborate make-up), the white model still looks to most beautiful, followed by the black girl. I still don't see any beauty in the Asian model.

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The Chrysler Still Stands

The image above is titled at this site as "Shadows on the Avenue, c. 1930"
meaning Fifth Avenue. A commentator on the site writes:

I know you say circa 1930 but I can date the image almost exactly;

The double decker bus (right side of frame traveling away) is a 1936 Yellow Coach Model 735 operating for the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, and judging by the latest cars I would say the image is about 1937 vintage.

The two Fifth Avenue Coach buses to the left of the frame heading at us are from the mid twenties.

Notice how well-dressed all the pedestrians are, both men and women with hats, long coats and some with fur trims.
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If I were to be re-born (reincarnated?) at any period, it would be during the late 1920s and 1930s. The Art Deco period is really my period.

Recently, I saw this photo (posted above) of the Art Deco Chrysler Building (which was completed in 1931) in New York City with some modern pedestrians below it. What a blemish! What would the original architects and builders of New York have thought at such ugliness! Well, at least they're spared that.

Above are some gowns from the 1930 (admittedly they are ball gowns, and no one would have worn them in the streets in daylight) but they capture the style, confidence and sense of aesthetics that people still had only half a century ago. We have lost a lot in such a short period.

The photo below that is of a 1930s street scene with pedestrians.

I was in New York during a brief, busy visit last December. I rushed downtown to have a quick peek at the Chrysler as I ran to my commitments. There was a lot of high rise construction going on in the city, with a few new glass towers I hadn't seen before. At least the Chrysler still stands, and outshines any of the new additions.

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From Fun to Serious in a Blink

Page from the graphic book Paris Versus New York, by Vahram Muratyan
(Captions read: Godard: New Wave Filmmaker, and Woody: New York Filmmaker)


I personally prefer the films of the the eccentric Woody Allen
to those of the harsh Jean Luc Godard

I went to look for the book Beauty by Roger Scruton from a "specialty" book store in downtown Toronto, but couldn't find the book, nor did the owner know about the book. I was surprised, since I think it is a small, but seminal, piece of work. It even follows some of my own ideas (please excuse my pomposity!) about beauty as viewed through the centuries, and through different cultures, societies and artistic movements.

Instead, sitting on the shelf right by the register, I found one of those "graphic" books titled Paris Versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities. This spiked my curiosity, and I skimmed through it. I started to chuckle quietly. The back cover describes the book thus:

A friendly visual match between two cities told by a lover of Paris wandering through New York. Details, cliches, contradictions: This, way please.

It looks to me like the author of this book (an Armenian - I guessed his nationality to the slight surprise of the unrufflable store owner) knows both Paris and New York pretty well, although he clearly prefers to be a Parisian (a lover of Paris, as he describes himself). This makes sense to me since many Armenians I know have close contacts with France, the French and of course Paris.

Personally, I prefer New York. As much as Paris is an exquisitely beautiful city, there is a slight decadence (old-fashionedness?) to the beauty, and anything that has been erected in the last century and a half is a desperate attempt at bringing Paris to a certain modernity. New York, with its soaring buildings and art deco grandeur, took over Paris, and Europe, at least a century ago, and, I think, is still going strong.

Muratyan turned his blog Paris Versus New York, A Tally of Two Cities into a book of the same name (and, I presume, with many of the same images). He has prints from his book/blog which are for sale starting at a reasonable $35 for a 10"x8" print. He also works on commission as a graphic designer/animator for clients such as the fashion house Prada and the magazine version of the newspaper Le Monde.

Here is a brief background on Muratyan:

Paris, New York and everything in-between.
Vahram Muratyan is a French graphic artist. His work mixes commissioned work in print for high-profile clients and personal projects. In the fall of 2010, during a long stay in New York, Vahram launched his first blog, Paris versus New York, a tally of two cities. A site viewed more than 4 millions times, exhibitions at colette and The Standard, eventually the book Paris versus New York, published by Penguin.

Among his new projects, the weekly column La ville est belle in M, the magazine created by Le Monde in France. And recently, the Prada Spring/Summer 2012 special collaboration, Parallel Universes.

The unrufflable owner of the book store wasn't amused that I found Paris Versus New York amusing. I nonetheless bought the "fun book," as I told his pleasant assistant who was at the cashier, which must have pleased him a little, since (I think) he gave a smile as I paid the $20+tax. "I'll let you know when I find Beauty" I said confidently. He seemed happy with my offer, and I saw a glint of a smile behind his professorial spectacles. Perhaps he will pick up Paris Versus New York in the mean time (although it behooves me why he wouldn't find out the whereabouts of Beauty for himself, except as my theory goes these days, beauty is pretty much out the door for many people).

I ended up buying Beauty from the book chain Chapters, which had several copies at hand.

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Carla Is Not Making Any AlliesWhile Valérie Is Not Watching Her Dress

With a husband who lost his presidency bid, one would think that Carla Bruni would try hard to give him (and her) a good exit name and image.

I wasn't the only one to notice (and comment on) Bruni's shabby outfit at Hollande's inauguration, and the possible reasons behind Bruni's appearance. Here's what Tiberge, the blogger with a wealth of information on all things French, wrote:

But what a surprise to see Carla Bruni-Sarkozy dressed so badly! She was always elegant, whatever one thought of her. Here she looks so bad, it can only have been deliberate, as a slap in the face to those who she feels betrayed her husband.

I wrote in my blog:

I think her appearance, both physical and sartorial, is an affront at the new Prime Minister of France, as though she is waging a battle against him and his wife.

Tiberge also posts the dress that Mme la Présidente is wearing to the inauguration.

Actually, the split/slit didn't bother me too much. I think it was a sartorial mistake, possibly a missing or loose button. It seems absurd that Trierweiler would ruin a decent looking outfit with a slitty/slutty gap. Plus, the slit is just too high up to be a deliberate cut of the dress.

Bruni's odd appearance is far stranger. But, it isn't the first time I've critiqued Bruni's dress. Here, I am surprised that the then leading lady of France would not show off the beautiful French designs, and instead opted for an ill-fitting ensemble.

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The Aggressive Drabness of Carla Bruni

Carla Bruni and Valérie Trierweiler
at the Élysées Palace

Carla Bruni came out looking like this for François Hollande's inauguration. Bruni may have the excuse that she recently gave birth to a daughter (although that was now over six months ago), but she simply could have stayed home if she didn't feel ready to be in public. But, many mothers don't gain tens of pounds during pregnancy, and many of them shed their pounds relatively quickly.

I think her appearance, both physical and sartorial, is an affront at the new Prime Minister of France, as though she is waging a battle against him and his wife.

I thought that Hollande's "partner" came out looking attractive and smart. I understand she has a very liberal background, yet she somehow managed to look classic French at this important public appearance.

I don't know what this says about France. French perfume and fashion are still the best in the world. French restaurants cater to the gourmand. And French cities are still the most beautiful. None can beat the beauty of Paris.

Perhaps all this sustained beauty can finally usher in all that could be (has been) good about France, and Hollande's vicious socialism may awaken the French out of their trance so that they can save their civilization. I really do have some hope.


The above image shows François Hollande's inauguration parade as his motorcade drives up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. Behind him is the Place de la Concorde, with the Obelisk de Luxor at its center. Even the foggy, rainy day cannot diminish the grandeur of the street, and the monuments that surround it.

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On Beauty

[I cannot find any information
on the cover painting. I'll keep looking.
If anyone has any ideas, please let me
know at cameralucidas@yahoo.com]

Roger Scruton has written a book he simply titles Beauty which came out in 2009. I only recently found out about this book. I give similar importance to beauty. My blog has a whole category on beauty. My book looks at beauty in the bigger context of art, culture and society. I think beauty is important, but I think it is part of many other related, or conflicting, subjects. Scruton has decided to concentrate on beauty alone, which I think leaves it isolated from culture and society. I find that modern beauty lovers tend to isolate beauty. They also personalize beauty, making it some kind of fetish or personal quest. People's internal, personal monologues, without the checks and balances of the external and the spiritual worlds, are suspect, and sometimes turn to horror. So, at times, as we see in the modern world of the avant-garde artist, beauty actually turns to ugliness.

Scruton has two chapters which seem to address this: "Judging Beauty" and "Artistic Beauty" but I don't think either goes far enough to address the beauty-turned-to-ugliness phenomenon that is overwhelming our modern world.

I have two sections in my chapter on Beauty in which I address this. They are: "Rejecting Beauty" and "Elimination of Beauty."

Still, I guess great minds think alike :-).

Below are Scruton's chapters on Beauty:

1. Judging Beauty

2. Human Beauty

3. Natural Beauty

4. Everyday Beauty

5. Artistic Beauty

6. Taste and Order

7. Eros and Art

8. Sacred Beauty

Chapter on Beauty from Camera Lucida: Views on Art Culture and Society, which I've divided into the following sections:

- Synthesis of Beauty

- Beauty in the Worship of God

- Beauty and the Transcendent

- Beauty and Humanity

- Beauty, Truth and Goodness

- How to be a Beautiful Movie Star

- Beauty: I will be your mirror

- Rejecting Beauty

- Elimination of Beauty

It is interesting that Scruton, as an art critic, doesn't seem to be interested in how beauty is created (by man, or even by God). He also omits the dangers of narcissism in beauty, which I try to address in "I'll be Your Mirror." I like the title of his chapter "Natural Beauty" which I think means the beauty actually found in nature, whether a human being, an animal or a plant. But he doesn't have any views on "Rejecting Beauty" and ultimately "The Elimination of Beauty." Again, as an art critic, I think Scruton believes that beauty is eternal and universally desired. Yet our own culture is pursuing the incredible project of ridding us of beauty, and quite successfully too, something which he doesn't seem to address.

I will try to get a hold of this book soon, and write my own review of it. It might even give me some ideas.

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Dufy's Beauty

I've posted "Trente Ans Ou La Vie En Rose" by Dufy in conjunction with Edith Piaf's song "La Vie En Rose" (picked up by Louis Armstrong) here. I've always liked Dufy, and have carried around a postcard of his "Yellow Violin" for many years. Below are paintings by Dufy, where he captures diverse images from bouquets of flowers to the seaside, and some of his charming views through windows.

Nature Morte Devant La Fenetre, 1924

Interior With Open Window, 1928

Vue Sur Notre Dame, 1924

Bouquet d'Arums, 1939

La Tour Eiffel, 1935

La Baie Des Anges, Nice, 1926

La Baie Des Anges, Nice
Looks like a sketch study
for the above painting.
Christie's describes it
as a print "stamped with
the artist's atelier stamp
(lower left)" and drawn with
"ink and pencil on paper"

Trente Ans Ou La Vie En Rose, 1931

Window On The Promenade Des Anglais, Nice, 1938

The Philadelphia Museum of Art describes Dufy's "Window on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice" [above] from its Modern and Contemporary Art collection:

In this work Dufy depicts the view from the closed window of his studio in the Hôtel Suisse, which looked out over the Promenade des Anglais, the celebrated shoreline road fringed with palm trees that hugs the curved Bay of Angels in downtown Nice. The work owes an equal debt to Henri Matisse's earlier hotel window paintings and to Piet Mondrian's severely geometric abstractions. The rectilinear windowpanes, placed parallel to the picture plane, serve as a framing device for the hillside city, which Dufy has rendered in saturated colors dominated by the vibrant blue sea and sky.

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Much of modern art is a rearrangement of reality, according to the visions and sentiments of the artists. The impressionists perhaps are at the cusp of bringing together what the artist saw and what the artist felt. Their art was still linked somewhat to reality, although the shimmering colors of Monet, and the psychedelic, moving lines of Van Gogh might have crossed the line to the other (their imaginary) side. Still, I think they were talented. Many went through rigorous training at various art institutions, and deconstructed, or reinvented, art through knowledge (and progress), rather than some malicious intent at destruction which is how our era is treating art.

Dufy works the thin like between impressionistic painting and line drawing. He cannot help splashing those glorious colors on the canvas, but he want to define them, and contain them, with his lines. No mad/unrestrained chroma explosion for him.

He of course deconstructs space too, but not as masterfully as Matisse, surely his mentor. His indoor spaces often seek the infinite freedom of the exterior by giving us a glimpse of this world through half open windows.

Perhaps the final quest of these artists is to attain some kind of glorious freedom, some utopic or paradisiacal world, right here on earth, and through their own creations. The restraints of civilization, of time and history, of culture, and even of etiquette were mildly scorned by them (and they seem mild compared to the advanced modernists.) But, they were still the draughtsmen of the demons which they unleashed into our world.

Still, beauty is beauty, and I think Dufy loved beauty.

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Slothful City

Pedestrians on Fifth Avenue in midtown
Alfred Eisenstaedt
1942

Below are some photos of New York City that the ever-diligent photographers at NYC Daily Pictures recently posted. I think they are good images, capturing beautiful sun light making the building glow on the top photo; the background curtain of the Pan Am building in the distance in the second photo; trees, flags and signs making patterns in the third photo; and the Empire State looming in the background in the fourth.

Yet, look at the people. They are an overweight, under-dressed, slothful lot. In one of the most beautiful cities in the world (well, some wold say handsome), we have the ugliest women, or the women dressed in the ugliest manner, walking down its avenues.

Compare these photos of the enlightened 21st century with the one at the top of the blog. It was taken in 1942 by Alfred Eisenstaedt (the photographer who took the famous V–J Day in Times Square photograph). One could argue that midtown Fifth Avenue is not the same as the downtown, more bohemian Fifth Avenue that NYC Daily Pictures has posted, and that midtown Fifth Avenue women are smart, even in 2012. But here is a link to shoppers by Saks Fifth Avenue, and it is the same story of jeans, shapeless coats and dreary colors. Once again, the building outshines the pedestrians. In the pre-slothful era, extending to the 1940s period of Eisenstaedt photograph and into the 1950s, women complemented the buildings around them, looking worthy to walk beside them.

1 World Trade Center- view from 6th Avenue in Chelsea

Park Avenue South - view from Union Square, NYC

Broadway at Herald Square, 35th Street, NYC

Monday morning at Fifth Avenue. Chelsea, NYC

[Above photos from NYC Daily Pictures]

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