Thursday, May 23, 2013

Henri de Haiphong



Wonderful old image from Indochine--another of those mythic postcard places.  The way the tie seems to be imitating the beard is a piece of charming preciosity.

This fellow is not identified on the back--it's a very beautiful mauve-tinted cabinet card---but he's always made me think of the diplomat from M. Butterfly.  Costume-wise at least.  He looks a bit too wily, perhaps, to play the gullible Bernard Boursicot....  

Monday, May 20, 2013

The White Stag


Mysterious old illustration I found in a junk store in Prague last year.  I especially like the secondary characters here: the alert yet wary dogs (one a Great Dane?); the doe and the Baby Deer.  I also like the stag's balletic pose--hooves marvelous, jeune premier-like.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Propped Baby





The weird thing about 19th-century photographs is that everybody in them looks post mortem, even when--as in this painted tintype--the image is  purportedly that of a living (?) person.

Monday, May 13, 2013

What Is To Be Done?



The dialectic tells me--after a lovely few days in NYC--that I need to lose some weight.

"Yellow wrapper for animal, and white for human flesh."

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Eight Men Wearing The Same Hat

Exemplary modernist emblem: Chaplin, Magritte, Laurel and Hardy, Hitchcock, et al. 

But don't forget John Steed, Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Liza in Cabaret, und so weiter.  

I want one.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The Carnivalesque




Compare and contrast with previous post.  Another pairing, but in somewhat more festive costume.   Peacock feathers and blue feathery ruffles.  The taller one seems to have a little grey tail, but maybe that's simply the fringe at the bottom of her frock.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Venuses in Their Furs



No, I don't own a fur coat.  Did once though---a ratty muskrat (??) affair, with no lining and one sleeve ripped up and hanging by a thread.

Didn't get the point of it until one night in Minneapolis in the 1970s.  Temperature in the 50-60 below zero zone.  Esther D. and I were at a bus stop and I had never been so cold in my life.  And suddenly one got it: without the fur--and only the fur--one would be a goner.