North Pole Greetings....

....from San Francisco.

Embossing, century-old glitter blackening with age.

Messages From a Rebus World

A Pink Posada

I confess, I fiddled some color into this one.  Pink meant to indicate blood-thirstiness, yet also domestic setting of the somewhat dire events here.  I'm in Mexico for the fourth time this year: Posada, like Daumier, always relevant. 

Just Another Pretty Face

Barber With Clippers

Detail from an (authentic?) West African barbershop sign I purchased a few years ago in the Mission.  At around that time, or a bit earlier, such signs, usually painted on masonite, had began showing up in trendy "shelter magazines," like Elle Decor---as part of a kind of cosmopolitan or "bohemian" Paul Bowles-in-Tangier interior decoration.  (Benito Cereno was never mentioned.)  I saw this one around then and jumped on the barber-shears bandwagon.   Now such signs seem to be "over"--or have at least receded into the background.

Interesting to know how these "3rd World" artifacts or "traditional" pieces of signage, cloth, costume, furnishings, etc. suddenly become First-World design tropes, then disappear almost as soon as they've arrived.  A similar bafflement: how it was that "Kantha-stitched" bedspreads, throws, pillows, etc suddenly appeared one day everywhere in upscale "lifestyle" catalogues like the Sundance Catalog.  Who started this particular import/export fad?  Mysterious East, etc.  These Kantha textiles are often very beautiful.

Real and Unreal People in Threes

"Three women" post of a few days ago got me thinking about threesomes--possibly the minimum number of actors needed to get a good narrative going?  Family unit?  Oedipus Complex?  Love triangle?  Mediated desire?   Graces?  Fates?

Tripods like to pretend they are stable, but they really aren't.

Cat Who Ate Canary in back.

Three Pierrots.

Three inhabitants of comet trail....

San Diego Auto Court

When will my native place ever become picturesque?   Maybe it will start with something like this 1940s-50s motel.  Colors--really nice.  Little white rock borders--somewhat nice.  Postal stamp marks--freebie of dubious value.  But a Part of History.

Like the way how on the side of the first unit on the left the differently- sized windows look a bit like eyes with droopy orange eyelids.

From the Zone of the Unreal

A chalk drawing I bought at the New York Outsider Art Fair earlier this year.  The artist's name is (I think) Jack Flich, or Jack Flitch.

A moment of high tension, obviously.  Three women--as in the Robert Altman film of the same name--always an uncanny grouping, bound for a realm of dream and disturbance. 

Danielle Darrieux

Darrieux the star of one of the greatest films of all time: Max Ophuls'  The Earrings of Madame D----.  Now that Lauren Bacall is dead, Darrieux is one of a tiny handful of actresses still alive from the Golden Age of Cinema.  She is 97.  In 2002 she gave an extraordinary performance in the French director François Ozon's 8 Femmes.

Here's a YouTube link to some gorgeous pix of her when young, set to her recording of "Petite Fleur," which I believe she wrote herself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpsi4XpPRwk  

I adore her.   OK, a little bit wonky during Vichy period--and married at one time to legendary--and fairly unsavory--Porfirio Rubirosa--but we won't hold that against her, at least for a few minutes.

Fun Dog Day

Now here's a RPPC curio.  I bought this postcard, as I recall, for the intelligent and friendly smile of the dog, not for any visual quirkiness (other than that the image was a good enough example of the very trendy vernacular-photo-collecting category--"cast shadow of photographer unintentionally visible."

Looking at the image now I see it's a bit more complex: a double exposure of some sort.  The woman (?) here is standing on a porch with her back to a rather sparse-looking landscape.  One might surmise that the light-source, the sun, is coming from behind her, casting her in darkness.  Yet the dog, who seems to  be in front of her, is fully illuminated by the sunlight. 

How the silhouette plus secondary outline of the woman came to pass is beyond me.  Dog seems to be having fun, though.

Bowler Man

....slightly tinted.  (I must have done something to this scanned version, but I can't quite tell what.)  It's a larger-size tintype, hand colored, and I've used bits and pieces of it in various art works.

My favorite among many nice elements--the extraordinary design the shirt, stand-up collar, and necktie make.

She-Devils Everywhere

Some street art stencils--a photo I took in Prague a while ago.   Just came across it again yesterday and thought the colors especially were rather nice. 

(.... In Keeping Up with My Postcard Posts)

I confess: Pinterest and Instagram have briefly drawn my attentions elsewhere---I need to get back to good old wholesome Fun With Postcards....   Here's a weirdee: the artist has made several of the gals here--2 central figures especially ---look as if their arms have, indeed, been put on *backwards.*

Mitfordian

Maidstone Man

One of the British Neanderthals.  Something about him--I don't know what---makes me think he's not French.  

Incommunicative Subaltern Department

A page from a feature a few years ago in World of Interiors--one's favorite magazine, after all--showing fashionable new textiles of the season.  The photos were taken in Mongolia with help (as one can see) of locals.  I believe these two are circus performers.  Have never been able to throw picture away.  Archaic animal hide booties have a certain allure.  Guy on the left: Mongolian pudge of the highest order.    

And World of Interiors: utterly blithe and undismayed, as always, on issues of global capitalism, exploitation of underclass, Orientalism, etc., etc.

Bipolar Workwear of the 1950s

  

Mid century Modern at its finest.  This model's somewhat perverse energy reminds me of the inimitable Randy Newman song, "You Can Keep Your Hat On".                                       

A Grande Dame

That touchstone of solo portrait photography: has the sitter 'defeated' the camera, or has he or she been defeated by it?   Here one sees, in my view, a clear-cut example of the former.  The dress is fine and ferocious, and the quite luxuriant curls piled up likewise, but best of all, the wry/sly expression: one of watchful, yet utter, equanimity.   Victory.

An RPPC, of course, and one in charmingly good condition.  The woman's desire to connect with us emotionally is palpable across, what? 120 or 130 years?