DIANA VREELAND: HARPER'S BAZAAR EDITOR

That's Diana Vreeland above, the editor of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue in their peak years from 1936 to 1944 when those magazines were undergoing a Golden Age. Theory Corner owes a lot to her influence, although I almost never read her magazines, and I only discovered her name a couple of weeks ago. 

My connection with her comes from the magazine editors she might have influenced, and who in turn influenced me: Harold Hayes (Esquire), Hugh Hefner (Playboy) and  Harvey Kurtzman (Mad).

I discovered Vreeland while researching Horst, the photographer. Horst credits Vreeland and Alexey Brodovitch with introducing Surrealism (above) to American women's magazines.

She had a vision that fashion photography could be elegant and lighthearted at the same time.  

She favored models (above) with personality. 

She also had a taste for the mystical and eerie, as in this photo (above) by Cecil Beaton. It reminds me of the female vampires in the film, "Dracula."

Her photo essays frequently told a story, or rather they suggested a possible story which the reader was invited to construct. Her dramatic models were often thoughtful and in the throws of moral choice. The photo above is by Dahl-Wolfe.

Most impressive, in my opinion, was how she inspired the great photographers she worked with. The examples above and below are from a photo shoot she commissioned, where the models were to pose in furs in far away Japan. For any other fashion magazine that would be a simple matter of photographing models in front of temples. Not so for Vreeland. She wanted more.

Vreeland wanted an indescribable fantasy that exceeded what was possible in the real world. To underline the unreality of it, she chose models who were incredibly tall and lean and, in the case of the man, philosophical. The shoot took place on a plain field of snow-covered black volcanic pebbles...no temples, no cherry trees.

I'm guessing that this approach influenced Hugh Hefner whose fantasies were equally audacious and unreal. 

This is a room in Vreeland's apartment. Haw! I wonder what her husband thought of it.  It's right out of her outrageous "Why Don't You...?" column in the 30s Harper's Bazaar.  

I'll end with the unlikely story of how Vreeland got the job at Harpers. After all, she was an indifferent student in high school, she never went to college, she had no experience in publishing, and she was considered plain-looking by her friends and family.

She got it because she had the good fortune to social dance at a night spot where Harper's editor Carmel Snow was in attendance. Snow was the rare executive who realized that her business was operating far beneath its potential and needed fresh blood. In Vreeland, a total stranger up to then, she saw someone who was passionate, theatrical, charismatic, poised, well-dressed, danced well, etc., etc.

Snow offered Vreeland the job of fashion editor the very next day on the condition that Vreeland work her way up through the ranks, albeit on a fast track. The rest was history.

Interesting, eh?


BTW: There's some nice books about Vreeland, but the one essential thing to see is the documentary film: "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel."

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS FLY

This morning I did some reading about the Wright Brothers and their famous first flight in 1903. That's (above) Wilbur flying the glider version of the plane over the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk. 

The brothers suffered a lot of crashes and setbacks. When they finally succeeded very few people were there to see it.  If I've got it right, the first sustained glider flight lasted 59 seconds, which is a long time if you think about it.

Here's (above) a motorized version of the plane.  Here the vertical front rudder in the glider has been replaced by two tiny horizontal wings. I don't see the engine but I'll assume it's there because two propellers are visible. Each prop rotated in a different direction for stability.

At first I thought it odd that the propellers were in back of the wings. I mean, isn't it the job of a propeller to throw wind over the wings? I guess it isn't. According to an article I just read, the propeller is only there to pull the plane through the viscous medium of the air.

There's a lot about flying that's counter-intuitive. I always thought that the wing shape causes low pressure on the top and that in turn allows high pressure underneath to push the wing up. Evidently that's not exactly true. What really happens is that a vacuum layer forms over the top of the wing and the plane is pulled up from the top. Interesting, eh?

Lilianthal, another aviation pioneer, noticed that bird feathers on the outside tips of the wing had a different shape and direction than the other  feathers, and he spent a lot of time trying to figure out why.  So did the Wright Brothers but they eventually concluded that it wasn't important.

Boy, I'd like to have a working model of the Wright plane...one like this zombie child (above) has. You can get one for 50 bucks. It has a hand-cranked motor located in back of the wings, near where the real ones were.

I also discovered this morning that you can buy an electric motor for home-made  paper airplanes. It costs 20 bucks...a real bargain if it works.

 You can even put two motors on a paper airplane! Hmmm...maybe if the plane's made of card stock.

I also looked up paper plane designs and discovered that a lot's been done with that. Here's a soda straw airplane that someone claims can fly.

Here's (above) a fly-powered airplane, with flies super-glued to the wing. It didn't work out so good.

HORST: THE BEST FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER EVER?

Horst P. Horst 1906 - 1999 may have been the best fashion photographer ever. He worked for Vogue mostly, but also for Chanel, and did memorable portraits of the notables of his era.

The man was heavily influenced by surrealism.

Who'd have thought that a style as offbeat as that could be bent to commercial use?

According to Wikipedia he frequently used only four lights for his studio photography, one of which was directly overhead.

He experimented with still lifes (above) and used the best ideas in his human photography. 

He also shot interiors. The text usually suggested that they were pre-existing, real-life rooms but they were often enhanced by Horst's own collection of furniture and accessories. 

He had a sense of humor (above)....

...and a flare for drama.

Outdoor photography...no problem. 

Like Cecil Beaton he had a flare for elaborate, prop-intensive portrait photography, but he also excelled in simple, straight-forward portraits, like this one of fashion editor Diana Vreeland.

Interesting, eh?

JEAN SENNEP: GENIUS CLASS CLOWN

Many thanks to Jo Jo and Steve Worth for turning me on to Jean Sennep, the funniest 20th Century French cartoonist I know of. That's his work above. Sennep must have been the king of the French class clown artists.  I defy anyone to look at his best work without laughing. It can't be done.

Sennep did a lot of political caricatures. In the example above I don't know whether he was satirizing a real sex scandal or whether he simply decided to draw perfectly normal targets in drag in order to make them look ridiculous.  

Hitler was said to have seen a caricature Sennep did of him and was furious. Yikes! Imagine having Hitler mad at you!

I looked up Sennep on the net and discovered that Sennep was influenced by an artist named Sem.  That's his work above and below. The yellow wallpaper one looks like a parody of Lautrec's style. I have to remind myself that Lautrec was also a pen and ink cartoonist.

Sem (above) in turn was influenced by Cham. Who as Cham? Well, that's his work below. I'm guessing he was influenced by Daumier and Gilray. 

Haw! Good old Cham!

I planned on writing a post about Sem and Cham but got distracted by all the period cartoons I was discovering while doing the research. I especially liked the ones dealing with dance (above and below). 

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that era!

If you can believe the artists,  the crowded dance halls of that time could get pretty rowdy. The dance styles were increasingly flamboyant and insults, punches, bites, even riots would occasionally break out.  

The funny thing is that before all those wild gyrations could take place, the dancers were still expected to engage in a caricature of upper class gentility. You had to demonstrate your refinement before hopping around like a kangaroo. 

 Those early French caricaturists were fearless. They even dared to make fun of ordinary workers, something that must have appalled doctrinaire communards and socialists.

Maybe Van Gogh would have gotten a better reception from the peasants he lived with if he'd done some funny pictures of them first.

ROMAN SCULPTURE

 I've been searching the net for cheap, good quality plaster replicas of a couple of my favorite sculptures. So far the results haven't been very encouraging but I'll persist. Near the top of my list would be a replica of the so-called "Brutus Bust," an Etruscan-style portrait of a Roman subject from the third century B.C. This is too early to have been a portrait of the Brutus who killed Caesar, but then...who was he?

The book I got this picture from describes this head as being that of "an obstinate peasant, marked by suffering but by no means bowed, and knowing how to bear his lot with dignity." Wow! I'd love to have a decent replica of this.

For comparison, here's (above) a bust of the Brutus who killed his friend Julius Caesar for what he believed was the good of Rome. There's competing depictions of that Brutus, but I trust the accuracy of this one because it was commissioned by his family who must have known what the real man looked like. It's an interesting face, no?

If you liked the black and white photo of the Brutus Bust, then you might be interested in this bronze (above) from the same period. It's from the Getty Villa outside of LA. It's so similar to the theme and technique of the other sculpture that I'm guessing it was executed by the same man. If I'm right, then that sculptor, who's name we don't know, was surely one of the best Roman artists ever to work in that medium.

BEFORE AND AFTER ROOM MAKEOVERS

As you probably know,  I'll be moving in a few months and I've done some research into "staging." In case you don't know the term, in the housing biz that's another word for "where you put the furniture." Some of the best staging advice I've found came from before-and-after comparisons that I found on the net.  Take a look at these examples and see what you think.

By the way, Most of the interior decoration shown here isn't to my taste. I'm just isolating the elements that interest me and ignoring the rest.

 Wow! Compare the "Before" and "After" photos above. What a difference moulding makes! The architect made the ceiling too high but the moulding saves it.

 Boy, leather furniture (above) looks great in wood-paneled man caves but it doesn't work in suburban living rooms. It attracts too much attention.  Fabric covered furniture does a better job of fitting in.

This comparison (above) also underlines another truth, that hardwood floors should never be stained too dark.

Let me digress for a moment to address another issue: does white fabric covering on sofas and chairs really work? It certainly does here (above) but then again this was designed by a professional to look good in photography. Could ordinary people pull this off?  Is white too girly for manly men? Is it practical?  It'll show every spill, won't it?  I don't know what to think.

 I have lots of books that'll require shelves, so I won't need decorative, elephantine cabinets like the one above.  I do like the table in front of the stone wall on the "after" side,  and the two black table lamps look great. Ditto the window curtains. Ditto the hanging light. The desk design in the after photo doesn't work IMHO.

This is an interesting photo because the elements I singled out...the black table, the two lamps, the curtains and the hanging light... are all items which wouldn't impress me much if I saw them out of context in a store. Professional decorators seem to have an eye for what works well in combination.

EATING BREAKFAST

In artist families a sketch war can break out without warning, at any time. Here (above), on a normal day, on a normal morning,  my wife puts outs out breakfast cereal for my daughter and me, and I, as I often do,  pick up my sketchbook to record it.

 Little did I know that this day would be different because my daughter...who hates to be drawn...has decided to take a stand and fight back.

She eats her food in the most gross way possible, no doubt hoping that'll deter me from drawing her.

She peels off the crusts from her bread (something every parent hates to see for some reason), nibbles her bread into patterns, and taps out a song on her cereal bowl. 

   

All this drives my wife nuts and she makes small talk to cover up her anxiety. She's dying to say "YOUNG LADY! That's NOT the way we eat a meal at the breakfast table!!!!," but she restrains herself because I'm nudging her under the table, begging her to let my daughter go, so I can draw it. 

My kid takes full advantage, knowing how uncomfortable we are are. She rolls  her bread into a baseball and crams it into her mouth.  She masticates it, gorilla-style. My wife is appalled.

Finally my kid ends it all by putting up a wall of breakfast cereal around herself. Well, that's it. You can't draw what you can't see.

EDDIE FITZGERALD CARICATURES

Here's (above) the cover of a Mother's Day card drawn by my kid when she was in Middle School. Haw! Am I really that much of a scene stealer?

Here's a pencil enhancer...or is it an eraser... designed by John K and beautifully sculpted by Anthony Hrymakowski. You may have noticed the resemblence to (Ahem!)...me.

And here (above) is a clean-up of the original John drawing. Gee, I made it to the top (literally) of the pencil universe. My place in history is assured!!!!!!