Cottaging, Kabuki style

Probably the weirdest thing you'll see all day year!

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I'm not willing just to be tolerated

“Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.”

“Living is a horizontal fall.”

“What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.”

“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?”

“A little too much is just enough for me.”

“I'm not willing just to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and of liberty.”

“I am a lie that always speaks the truth.”

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5th July 1889 – 11th October 1963)

It's a look

The estimable surrealist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, “a marginal figure in art history who was a raucous ‘proto-punk’ poet from whom Duchamp allegedly stole the concept for his urinal”.

Apparently.

[Needless to say, we have featured the bizarre Baroness as an "exhibit" here before...]

Yeah. You know Haus!

From the Bauhaus 100 site:

From foundation, the Bauhaus saw itself as a part of the modern movement and as its mediator. Created from the migration of artists and ideas, it developed in constant interaction with various groups of architects, urban planners, artists, scientists and designers. The constitutive ideas of the Bauhaus come from the Arts and Crafts Movement of the prewar period, especially the progressive education movement and the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) that unites all of the arts as well as aesthetic education in all areas of life as represented by the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) and Art Nouveau...

...The return to craftsmanship was not connected with the intention of creating industrialised reproductions of past styles that evolved from craftsmanship but with the development of a new formal vocabulary based on experimentation and craftsmanship that would do justice to the industrial manufacturing process...

...The artist William Morris (1834–1896) was the founder and leader of a reform movement that aspired to counter the cultural damage caused by industrialisation. Starting in 1861, he revived historic handicraft techniques in his workshops and used them to produce high quality goods such as fabrics, carpets, glass paintings, furniture and everyday objects. In his own publishing company, Kelmscott Press, he produced books that paved the way for Art Nouveau.

Morris triggered a wave of reform that was to reach Germany later, where industrialisation had achieved a new quality after the foundation of the German Reich in 1871. Germany also recognised that well-designed industrial products represented a significant economic factor. The British educational system was analysed in order to reform the German schools of arts and crafts. An entire generation of painters now understood that the applied arts were their most important task. The Dresden Workshops (1898), whose ‘machine furniture’ was designed by Richard Riemerschmid, are the best-known example of the many workshops established on German soil. In 1903, the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop) was established in Austria with Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser as its most important representatives.

The Weimar State Bauhaus was founded [in 1919] by Walter Gropius with the goal of overcoming the division between the artisan and the artist. The employees of the Bauhaus wanted to eliminate social differences through their creative work.

But, as they say, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". And in the hands of Oskar Schlemmer (Master of the mural-painting and sculpture departments at the Bauhaus), the enthusiasms of the students "at play" certainly knew no bounds...













I feel a future theme for Gay Pride outfits coming on...

A thing of strange beauty

“In his glory days of the 1920s, he entered the vaudeville stage or circus ring like a Ziegfield showgirl, swathed in ostrich feathers, stunningly gowned, bejewelled and bewigged. He then removed his headdress, cape and gown, and garbed in as little as possible to suggest near nudity but not run afoul of the law, Barbette began the acrobatic part of his act. He walked a tight wire, slack wire, and performed on the rings and the trapeze. He was a master of the dramatic, seeming to fall only to catch himself by a last second hook of his foot. He kept his audience aghast and amazed until he left the stage. When he returned to acknowledge the sustained applause, he doffed his wig, revealing his bald head and reminding all that they had marvelled at a man playing a woman.” [from Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers by Frank Cullen]

“I’d always read a lot of Shakespeare…and thinking that those marvellous heroines of his were played by men and boys made me feel that I could turn my speciality into something unique. I wanted an act that would be a thing of beauty - of course it would have to be a strange beauty” - Vander Clyde, aka the great Barbette.

In 1923 Vander Clyde took to the stage of the Folies Bergère in Paris dressed in full drag as Barbette. During the show Clyde performed incredible acrobatic stunts such as walking a high wire and dangerous trapeze-related tricks. Clyde’s appearance was so convincing that it left people to ponder the ambiguous performer’s true sexual identity.

Members of the French avant-garde community were captivated by Clyde’s portrayal of Barbette including one of France’s most influential creative minds the great Jean Cocteau, who was allegedly linked to Clyde romantically. Cocteau was so taken with Barbette that he commissioned surrealist photographer Man Ray to take a series of photographs showing Clyde’s metamorphosis into the ethereal, androgynous Barbette.







Ill-heath forced Barbette to hang up her trapeze in 1938, but she went on to provide inspiration for up-and-coming performers as well as collaborating with with some of Hollywood’s greatest stars – Orson Welles, Vincente Minnelli, Judy Garland, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and the legendary producer and director Billy Rose.


Judy stole this "look"

More on Barbette at Dangerous Minds, and also (of course) at the marvellous Queer Music Heritage archive.

Sadly, after years of dealing with chronic pain, Barbette committed suicide on 5th August 1973. RIP.

Wildflower: The Dramatic Life of Barbette is a biography of the great showgirl by Kyle Taylor.

Swans reflecting elephants in a Surrealist jungle

Edward James, 1930s, by Cecil Beaton

“We still have two lobster telephones, so we have to ask ourselves, we obviously need a lobster telephone, but do we really need two? We also have three Mae West sofas, and that’s just greedy, isn’t it?"


Lisa Fonssagrives on Dali's "Mae West's Lips" sofa, by George Platt-Lines

Thus the director of West Dean College justified the forthcoming sale - which will be conducted by Christie's in December - of parts of their vast collection including the two aforementioned works by Salvador Dali as well as paintings by Pavel Tchelitchew, all bestowed upon the college (along with the vast mansion and grounds in which the college resides) by the eccentric millionaire philanthropist and collector of Surrealist works Edward James.


Edward James with composer Igor Markevich, by Norman Parkinson

Their benefactor Mr James certainly does seem to have been fabulously eccentric... According to The Guardian:

[He] lived mainly in nearby Monkton House, which came to him as a modest, plain home designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens as a refreshing break from the opulence of the main building. James painted the walls a searing purple, added two-storey palm-tree trunks and murals of washing hung out to dry, and heavily padded the interior walls.

He slept in a bed modelled on Nelson’s hearse, and when he married Tilly Losch, an actor and dancer, he commissioned a green carpet woven with her footprints. The marriage did not last, with James accusing his wife of adultery and Losch suspecting her husband was gay. When they separated he had the carpet replaced with one woven with his Irish wolfhound’s paw prints.

As well as Dali and Tchelitchew, Edward James supported numerous renowned artists and writers during their careers, including John Betjeman, Brian Howard, Bertold Brecht, Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya and George Balanchine. One of his favourites René Magritte made him the subject of not one, but two of his most famous paintings. He went to school with Evelyn Waugh and Harold Acton, and counted among his social circle such luminaries as the Mitford sisters, Lord Berners, Sergei Diaghilev, Boris Kochno, Gertrude Stein (till they fell out) and Pablo Picasso. The refurbishment of Monkton House was done by society interior designer Syrie Maugham. His autobiography Swans Reflecting Elephants was written with the assistance of fellow Surrealism fanatic George Melly.



His greatest indulgence, however, was the creation of the magnificent Surrealist gardens of Las Pozas in Mexico.


Tilda Swinton at Las Pozas

From "W" Magazine:

For 20 years, he dedicated much of his time and wealth to the design and construction of a spectacular series of concrete sculptures amid the luscious vegetation of Las Pozas, his vast estate in a tropical rain forest high in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains near the tiny town of Xilitla, about an eight-hour drive north of Mexico City.

Some of the sculptures were inspired by the shapes of exotic plants and trees in the surrounding jungle; others, by the convoluted forms in the immense collection of works by the surrealist artists James had assembled back in England. Among his fantastical structures were totem poles, hidden rooms, teetering towers, and staircases leading to nowhere. James gave them baffling names like The House With Three Storeys That Could Be Five and Temple of the Ducks and instructed the hundreds of artisans who’d worked for him over the years to leave many of them unfinished.

Now the gardens are being restored to their former glory, and the college is intending to use its auction earnings to provide a home for a permanent exhibition of Mr James' bequest (what remains of it, which was quite a lot) - so, thirty-two years after his death, the man's eccentric legacy lives on anew...

Edward William Frank James (16th August 1907 – 2nd December 1984)

A cry against conformity, a shriek against boredom

"[Camp is] always, and at whatever cost, a cry against conformity, a shriek against boredom, a testament to the potential uniqueness of each of us and our rights to that uniqueness." George Melly, from the preface of Camp - the Lie that tells the Truth by Philip Core [one of my favourite books of all time].

The epithet "Camp" could have been invented for Mr George Melly, whose 90th birthday it would have been today. Paradoxically "Good-Time George" was not particularly effeminate, nor robustly homosexual (although he had many "flings" - as recounted in detail in his first volume of autobiography Rum, Bum and Concertina), yet he exuded a flamboyantly defiant air of swagger against the po-faced world of Jazz purists, perpetually displaying his "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration" [to quote Susan Sontag's epic Notes on Camp], and was eternally adored for it - equally by those who were "in on the joke", and by those who merely appreciated the work of a supremely talented "English eccentric" and raconteur.



Who else but George - a huge fan of the likes of Bessie Smith and her contemporaries - would dare to perform (with his gravelly baritone voice) a Trad-Jazz cover of Jelly-Roll Morton and Lizzie Miles's I Hate A Man Like You, gender references intact? And that was just one among a huge repertoire of boundary-pushing, somewhat smutty covers he did, not least I Want My Fanny Brown:

George Melly - I Want My Fanny Brown

He even sang lead vocals on a song about an archetypal "Dirty Old Man", Old Codger, the b-side of Walk On By by The Stranglers...

Stranglers featuring George Melly - Old Codger

Who but George would bring lurid, luminously-coloured zoot-suits and velvet fedoras to the stage at venues ranging from Ronnie Scott's legendary West End venue to cabaret clubs in New York to the Reading Festival? He even took it a step further when the mood suited him, according to his obituary in The Telegraph:

On one occasion at Ronnie Scott’s Melly had decided to perform in full drag, and sent John Chilton on to the stage to tell the audience that he was indisposed - but that, luckily, his aunt Georgina, who knew all of his songs, would valiantly fill the gap. "Georgina" duly swept on stage, and the disguise was so complete that the audience was wholly deceived.

He was uncompromising in his anti-religious stance (Mr Melly was at one time President of the British Humanist Society), spoke voluminously about personal freedoms - in particular his support for the permissive society in the 60s - and, as well as myriad fellow Trad-Jazzers, counted among his friends a coterie of like-minded "eccentrics" including Molly Parkin, Francis Bacon, Maggi Hambling, Peggy Guggenheim and even Rene Magritte.

"Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style - but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not." [Sontag again]

And, for those of you of more of an "artistic" bent, why not join George in a special BBC Arena documentary about his love for Surrealism? Here's The Journey", or The Memoirs of a Self-Confessed Surrealist:

BBC 'Arena' documentary, 1978 - George Melly on Surrealism - The Journey

Alan George Heywood Melly (17th August 1926 – 5th July 2007)

More of the marvellous Mr Melly here, here and here.

The Great Wall

"I’m interested in the behaviour of penis. It’s soft and hard, up and down, small and large, smooth and rough. It may be the most attractive and intuitive interface."

This kinetic sculpture ["The Penis Wall"] consists of 81 erectable penises that respond to either a viewer's movements or to realtime movements in the stock market.

Apparently.





[Source: Dangerous Minds]

Intemperance and perversion were the order of the day

From the ever-fabulous Dangerous Minds:

Swiss surrealist artist H.R Giger has died. Giger is famous as the designer of the eponymous creature and bizarre sets for the film Alien, and for a lifetime’s worth of beautiful and disturbing organic/machine hybrid body-horror paintings (he called them “biomechanoids”). He also became a part of the music world when his works were used as album covers for the likes Emerson Lake and Palmer, Magma, Celtic Frost and Danzig, among many others. Notoriously his Penis Landscape was included as a poster in Dead Kennedys’ Frankenchrist LP, setting in motion an avalanche of censorship and legal difficulties which derailed the band.

Here’s a 1981 British television interview with Giger and Blondie singer Debbie Harry. The occasion for the seemingly odd pairing is Giger’s portrait of Harry for her début solo LP, KooKoo.

H.R. Giger's surreal designs influenced many outside the cimema and music, such as the avant garde fashionista Alistair McQueen, who produced shoes based upon his designs for Alien.



He also has a museum, and, more importantly, a bar dedicated to him in his native Swiss region of Gruyère:



I would love to drink there.

"My planet was ruled by evil, a place where black magic was practised, aggressions were let loose, and intemperance and perversion were the order of the day. Just the place for me, in fact."



RIP Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger (5th February 1940 – 12th May 2014)

This weekend, I shall mostly be dressing casual...

...like avant-garde artist, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven!

Difficult times, outrageous fashion

From Vogue:

Schiaparelli’s designs deliberately subverted traditional notions of beauty - fanciful, bizarre, and irreverent ideas that she developed early in life. Berated by her [Italian] mother for her homely looks, she grew up thinking of whimsical ways to beautify herself.

Her astronomer uncle tried to allay her concerns about a cluster of moles on her cheek by noting their resemblance to the Big Dipper; years later, she recreated the constellation on the chairs in her salon, in embroideries, and on a cherished brooch.

Schiap once took flower seeds and sowed them in her ears, mouth, and nose, in the hopes that she would blossom into a beauty. “To have a face covered with flowers like a heavenly garden would indeed be a wonderful thing!” she wrote in her autobiography.

Elsa Schiaparelli was truly a woman ahead of her time.





Newly arrived in Paris in the mid 1920s after the break-up of her marriage in New York, she quickly made influential connections in the surrealist art world, collaborating on various designs with such artists as Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali.







She made her name as something of an innovator. In addition to such dramatic concoctions as the Lobster Dress, gloves with gold claws and the Shoe Hat, her design ideas spawned the wrap-around dress, the “miniature hat” fascinator, the peplum jacket, harem pants, culottes, the wedge heel, the women's "power suit" with shoulder pads, the perfume bottle in the shape of the female body, and, of course - Shocking Pink!





Famously described as “ ...an aggressive, brawling, warrior pink” by Yves Saint Laurent, this new and vibrant colour was well suited to the extravagant styles of '30s couture and the glamour of Hollywood, became popular again in the "colour explosion" of Carnaby Street in the '60s, and of course endures today.

Elsa's popularity waned in the face of stiff competition from her hated rival Coco Chanel - she sneeringly called Elsa "an Italian designer who makes clothes",; to which Elsa retorted by referring to Coco as "that milliner" - and others such as Christian Dior and his "New Look", and the House of Schiaparelli closed in 1954. Eventually she purchased a house in the resort of Hammamet (popular with the rich and famous of the "jet set"), and spent her retirement moving between Paris and Tunisia until her death in 1973.





Yet, to great fanfare - and with the support and backing of such grandees of fashion as Diana Vreeland and Christian Lacroix, the House of Schiaparelli has risen once more. It was re-launched in time for Paris Fashion Week in Autumn 2012. Read more about the revival, and M Lacroix's tribute to Elsa.

Facts about Elsa:

• The surname Schiaparelli is pronounced with a hard "ch", as in "school".
• She single-handedly created the concept of the "boutique" when she started selling her sweaters and accessories in the corner of her popular salon in the Rue de la Paix.
• She was grandmother to Cabaret actress Marisa Berenson and Antony Perkins' widow Berry Berenson, who was killed in the Twin Towers terrorist atrocity (12 years ago tomorrow).
• In her heyday, her clients included Mae West (upon whose curvy figure the aforementioned "torso" perfume bottle was based), Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor and the heiress Daisy Fellowes. Her style was beloved of Anna Piaggi and John Galliano.
• She experimented with acrylic, cellophane, a rayon jersey called "Jersela" and a rayon with metal threads called "Fildifer" - the first time synthetic materials were used in couture.

"Dress designing ... is to me not a profession but an art. A dress cannot just hang like a painting on the wall, or like a book remain intact and live a long and sheltered life. A dress has no life of its own unless it is worn, and as soon as this happens another personality takes over from you and animates it, or tries to, glorifies or destroys it, or makes it into a song of beauty."

"Never fit a dress to fit the body but train the body to fit the dress."

"I gave to pink the nerve of the red, a neon pink, an unreal pink."

"In difficult times fashion is always outrageous."

"The moment people stop copying you, you have ceased to be news."

Elsa Schiaparelli (10th September 1890 - 13th November 1973)