Kittiwake Cogitating

Here: simply an altogether delightful example of 1930s graphic simplicity.  The lettering (to my eye) looks hand-drawn--especially the vertical words and "waterline length."

First Prize, Concours de Beauté

A 7-day holiday hiatus with no wireless or cell phone service, and numerous margueritas has left me with large-scale mental impairments.  I believe this to be an image of current Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, though others tell me it is not.

Mrs Mealhouse in Your Wheelhouse

Caption says it all: Mrs Lurlyne Mealhouse, star of US Women's Basketball team at the Pan-American Games, 1955.  I was two.  "Her cool competence on the court led to a comparison with [Ben] Hogan, golfdom's "man with the ice in his veins."   Which would you rather have as your name---Mrs. Lurlyne Mealhouse or Mrs. Carmen Smotherman?   (On the fatal Mrs. S. see post from 10/11/13.)

Ladies With Pugil Sticks

Awfully sluggish lately about keeping up the posts---but it's a holiday!  Here's one to knock some sense into me.

Painkiller

Something strange here about the baby's expression--not quite as insipid as everything else....   A certain vehemence.

L'Hystérie

Very strange French postcard from around 1900: comico-serious image of bourgeois lady in the throes of hysteria, being attended by (?) flummoxed husband.  The concept of hysteria was not a new one in the late 19th century, of course, but had really come into its own, medically speaking--and in the popular imagination--with the famous clinical studies by Charcot and others in the 1870s.  

In its own tacky way, the image makes explicit the idea advanced in Freud and Breuer's case study of "Anna O.":  that so-called hysterical symptoms originated in--indeed were a displaced representation of--unconscious sexual fantasies and desires. 

In the Garden With Lace to Kill

I haven't visited with Madame Delait lately, so here she is again.  Which is more magnificent--blouse or beard?  She has her own look, that's for sure.  I think of myself as open-minded but it's hard to imagine sleeping with Madame Delait.

Pin Prick Man, 1830

Two Extraordinary Photographs

Two extraordinary photographs, indeed.  Lucky enough to snag them last month off Elysium Books, my favorite website for old gay-related antiquarian books and ephemera.  Both show the studio of Romaine Brooks in Nice in the late 1960s.  Paul Kehren was the photographer.

You can see Romaine (1874-1970) sitting jauntily enough in the top one, next to a breathtaking sample of her portraits--including her self-portrait in top hat, and in the background, her very comical image of Una Troubridge, lover of Radclyffe Hall.  (Troubridge shown with monocle and dachshunds.)

According to the biographies--Diana Souhami's book about her and her lifelong lover/companion, Natalie Clifford Barney is the best--Brooks was a fairly odious misery-guts.  The photographer here, however, seems to have caught her on a relatively good day. 

The images, while a little beaten up, have the most beautiful color-processing. 

Alla Nazimova 4Ever

A Term to Forget

                                                                                    

Marvelous 1930s pictorial dust jacket.  And a scene all too apt for the moment.

Onward,  summer hols.

Mind If I Drop In

Gateshead Snow Plough

Does industrial design get any better than this?

Gateshead--angel of the north.

Where Is My Alice?

Moping away the days with flu and pesky sore throat, hence a pair of convalescent shots with nurses.  The first pic shows an array of tonic-style medicaments (brandy?) and a caretaker with both fan and a vague resemblance to Alice B. Toklas. 

I don't think I look quite as bad as the limp and somewhat spotty invalid in the first.  Prefer to compare myself to the young lady in the second, obscured as she is by coverlet and sheets.  She and the nurse regard the camera enigmatically --almost as if they were 'playing' at Nurse and Patient.  A tiny bit sly?

More Equestrianism

An 'exquisite cadaver' style image: the long rectangular pieces of plinth, horse, and rider require vertical assemblage, though not of a particularly challenging kind.  I have two other word-and-picture card sets like this one.  One depicts George Washington, and the word spelled out on the side is "American."  The other one shows a native American with arrows, quiver, blanket etc. and spells out the word "Indian."  And there you have it.

Horsin' Around

Definitely some rough and tumble pelvis play going on here.  But I'm also enjoying the drab if not pokey late 19th-century boarding-house bedroom decor, and the very chic --not kidding-- ticking fabric on the mattress.  Click to enlarge.

The Chevalier d'Eon

                                                                                                                                                                   

An oddity to say the least: very old man-doll in pretty muslin dress.  A recent addition to the vintage puppet/doll assembly-room that used to be my study. He inevitably reminds me of the notorious Chevalier d'Éon---"a French diplomat, spy and soldier," Wikipedia informs us, "whose first 49 years were spent as a man, and whose last 33 years were spent as a woman. From 1777, d'Éon claimed to be anatomically a woman, and dressed as such. Doctors who examined the body after d'Éon's death discovered that he was anatomically male."  Of great interest to us 18th-c. masquerade fans, drag kings and the like.   See images below for a portrait of him in female dress, as a 'half-man, half-woman,' and fencing in a dress.  I think he must have been charming--a real Enlightenment type.

Supremacist Street Art