House of Alla

"We must always judge an art by its best examples, not by its worst, not even its second best."





From an essay by her biographer Martin Turnbull:

[Alla] Nazimova took charge of every aspect of her career, much in the same way as Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin, and Griffith did in 1919 when they formed United Artists.

Her first independent feature was a film of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1922), released through United Artists. Although it was a critical hit, it was far from a commercial success. However, Nazimova had tasted independence and wanted more of it, and set her sights on making what she wanted to be her greatest achievement: a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1923).

Inspired by the artwork of illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, Nazimova and [Natacha] Rambova [a friend of Nazimova and future wife of Rudolph Valentino] set about making a version of Salomé such as 1920s filmgoers had never seen. Even by today’s standards, the film’s art direction reached for the outer limits of avant-garde.

Nothing on screen is designed to suggest first century Roman Empire. Instead, Nazimova sought to recast Wilde’s one-act play in a world where the ruling aesthetic is Art Nouveau meets searing minimalism meets Hollywood decadence. This is a world where wigs come fitted with glowing baubles, actors wear stockings patterned in palm-sized fish scales, and king’s yes-men don headdresses that resemble giant, glittering conches.

Although it had its supporters — in its review, Photoplay Magazine said, “A hothouse orchid of decadent passion... You have your warning: this is bizarre stuff” - it’s not hard to see why movie-goers barely knew what to make of this astonishing spectacle. After all, this was 1923, and people wanted The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney, Zaza with Gloria Swanson, and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.

In Salomé what they got was a 42-year-old lead actress playing a teenager sporting cinema’s first micro-mini skirt as she performed a dance of the seven veils accompanied by chorus girls decked out in two-foot shoulder pads.

The world wasn’t ready for Nazimova’s inspired vision for Salomé and the film flopped badly. Consequently, Nazimova lost the ton of money she sunk into the film. She made a couple more movies, but was unable to recover financially, and left the movie industry in 1925, returning to the theatre until the 1940s when she experienced a minor career second wind before her premature death in 1945.

However, when seen through 21st century eyes, Salomé is a phantasmagoria of striking images, unbridled sensuality, and fearless storytelling. It also leaves the viewer with the lingering sense that if Alla Nazimova had the good fortune to come along a hundred years later than she did, she’d have found a world with its arms thrust wide open to embrace the groundbreaking artist that she was.

Alla Nazimova (born Marem-Ides Leventon, 22nd May 1879 – 13th July 1945)

Chin a little higher, dear

"Ah, Hastings, you are full of the charitable feelings for the young ladies who are beautiful, hmmm? As for me, I am always full of the charitable feelings to the old ladies that have the maladies." - Hercule Poirot

"Yes, quite as I expected. There are distinct social possibilities in your profile. The two weak points in our age are its want of principle and its want of profile. The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. " - Lady Bracknell

David Suchet, who portrayed Agatha Christie's fictional Belgian detective for a quarter of a century, will play Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell in a new West End production of The Importance Of Being Earnest this summer.

This could be interesting...

The Importance Of Being Earnest will be at the Vaudeville Theatre from 24th June to 7th November 2015.

Dandyism

“Dandyism may be taken as the art of selection, practiced by a lover of the visible world.” — Douglas Ainslie



“A dandy does nothing. Can you imagine a dandy addressing the common herd except to make game of them?” — Charles Baudelaire



“I’ve always been backward on morals, but I do know how to dress appropriately for any given occasion, and that’s more than half the battle.” — Thorne Smith



“In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.” — Oscar Wilde

Dandyism.net

Greenery-Yallery

Aestheticism was an extraordinary avant-garde artistic movement which sought to escape the ugliness and materialism of the Victorian era by creating a new kind of art and beauty. Its adherents were also referred to as "decadents" from the decadentismo movements in Italy and France.

"Aestheticism is acknowledged for its revolutionary re-negotiation of the relationships between the artist and society, between the 'fine' and design arts, as well as between art and ethics and art and criticism. Aesthetic sensibilities produced some of the most sophisticated and sensuously beautiful artworks of the Western tradition."

Taking their lead from the pre-Raphaelites, British artists, designers and writers who are today considered the mainstay of Aestheticism include such favourites here at Dolores Delargo Towers as Pugin, Rennie Mackintosh, Beardsley, Swinburne, Whistler, Wilde, Burne-Jones and even William Morris. The style of the decadent aesthetes more or less formed a "bridge" between the Arts and Crafts and the later Art Nouveau fashions.





The imagery of the Aesthetic movement is described by the scholars on VictorianWeb thus:

• trance and dream;
• life as a drama, dance, or puppet show;
• jewels and instances of extreme artifice (the anti-natural), such as - masks, Byzantine goldwork, cosmetics, and the dandy;
• particularly ornate, perverse, or unnatural examples of natural phenomena, such as orchids and peacocks;
• perverse people, customs, and events in ancient Rome and Egypt;
• Japanese style and taste such as lacquered or ebonised wood and blue and white pottery;
• instances of transience (butterfly, flower, sunset, autumn, self).

The predominant colours of wallpapers, fabrics, ceramic tiles and ephemera were often yellow and green.


"Fearful consequences through the laws of natural selection and evolution of living up to one's teapot."





The movement was heavily ridiculed for its "feyness" (in modern day parlance read "effeminacy" or "camp"), hence the pastiche of the "aesthete" in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience:

When I go out of door,
Of damozels a score
(All sighing and burning,
And clinging and yearning)
Will follow me as before.

I shall, with cultured taste,
Distinguish gems from paste,
And "High diddle diddle"
Will rank as an idyll,
If I pronounce it chaste!

A most intense young man,
A soulful-eyed young man,
An ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical,
Out-of-the-way young man!

A Japanese young man,
A blue-and-white young man,
Francesca di Rimini, miminy, piminy,
Je-ne-sais-quoi young man!

A pallid and thin young man,
A haggard and lank young man,
A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery,
Foot-in-the-grave young man!

From 2 April until 17 July 2011, the Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum features a new exhibition The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900:

The exhibition will feature paintings, furniture, ceramics, metalwork, wallpapers, photographs and costumes, as well as architectural and interior designs. Included will be major paintings by Whistler, Rossetti, Leighton, and Burne-Jones. Architecture and interior design will be represented by the works of Edward Godwin, George Aitchison, Philip Webb and Thomas Jeckyll, among others. Art furnishings designed by these and others, including William Morris, Christopher Dresser, Bruce Talbert, Henry Batley, and Walter Crane will showcase not only the designers and manufacturers they worked for, but also new retailers, such as Liberty's.

Read more about the exhibition

VictorianWeb - Aesthetes and Decadents