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Not Your Normal Portraits

Beauty

If you’ve ever wandered through the Louvre in Paris or through any of the great houses in Britain, you’d have come across portraits of royalty and the nobility and good grief, how boring they are. Most, of course, were painted in times when there were no photography, and to preserve any memory at all of King Louis the Umpteenth or His Grace The Duke of  Marmalade-Hyphen-Dogsbottom, a portrait artist was summoned and told, “Paint me.” Needless to say, of course, the painter would take great pains to hide His Majesty’s facial pox marks or the Earl’s syphilis sores, and the result was one of uniform blandness, generations and generations upon generations thereof. If the painter was really good, and not just some fashionable hack that all the Society Knobs were using at the time (yes, that happened then just as it does today), he’d maybe capture a spark of spirit in the eyes, or a dimple in a smile, but mostly they all looked like waxwork figures, with about as much life.

Then came Boldini.

Giovanni Boldini is definitely my favorite portraitist of all time, and indeed he’s in my top ten list of all artists, period. I’m not going to write a potted biography of the man (here’s a decent one on the website bearing his name); rather, I want to highlight just a few of my favorites of his works.

When heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt married the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895, one of the things she brought to the marriage, other than a gazillion of her father’s dollars, was a very American attitude towards one’s own children. In contrast to the other noble families of the time, who looked on their male children as “heirs and spares” and wasted no time in shipping them off to boarding school, thence to the Army/Navy or public service, Consuelo adored both her sons, and especially the younger, Ivor Spencer-Churchill.

Enter Boldini. By this time, he was one of the most sought-after portraitists in Europe — indeed, he made so much money through his portraits that in his later years he’d quit painting them and only painted what he wanted to paint (which we’ll look at down the page). Boldini spent some time with Lady Marlborough, and discovered the close relationship between her and her younger son. Then he painted this portrait of the two of them:

The portrait actually scandalized what was known then as “polite” society (even though it was anything but), because instead of having young Ivor standing stiffly at her side in the prevailing fashion, he had the boy lounging against his mother in a pose which, to the swells, looked more like that of a lover than a child, nestled up to her bosom and his hand possessively on her leg. Of course, Consuelo cared not a fig for the whispers — as one of the wealthiest women in the world, and married into one of the oldest and most storied noble families in Britain (or anywhere else) withal, she could tell them all to take a hike, and she did. So the portrait survives to this day at Blenheim Palace, and you can see it for yourself if you do one of the tours (unless the painting is being exhibited elsewhere). I think it’s absolutely incredible: Boldini captured the relationship between mother and son as well as Consuelo’s considerable beauty and elegance, and it remains one of the great family portraits of all time.

Even Boldini’s “ordinary” portraits are anything but. Here’s one of Lady Colin Campbell, a society beauty of the late nineteenth century:

…and I don’t know if there’s a sultrier, sexier portrait of its kind anywhere.

As I said, Boldini gave up portrait painting after a while and started to do works that interested him. Mostly, as his biography notes, they were of women — but instead of the realistic style of the portraits, they began to lean towards late Impressionism. (Whether that’s because of his failing eyesight or just because he liked the style is probably a moot issue. Myself, I love almost every one of his later works.) Here’s a sample. First, the “Spanish Dancer At The Moulin Rouge”:

Now let’s look at something a little (okay, a lot) racier, his “Reclining Nude III”:

Hmmm… maybe I should have put up the usual NSFW warning, but hey, it’s Saturday and you shouldn’t be at work anyway. Finally, here’s my favorite of all Boldini’s paintings, an earlier one entitled “The Hammock”:

In a word, it’s exquisite: the soft springtime lighting and the dense background of bushes, trees and flowers which surround the slight form of the girl sleeping in the hammock. It’s a view which is chaste (the long soft material conceals almost everything except her face) and yet intimate (the stockinged leg falling carelessly off the hammock and out from under the dress). It’s voyeuristic, but innocently so — and I think if Boldini had only ever painted this single work, it would still be considered a masterpiece.

Now you can go and look at his other works, here. No doubt you’ll find one or two that you prefer over my choices, and you won’t hear a word of disagreement from me, ever. That’s how highly I regard this artist.

Enjoy, and if you want to buy a print of one of Boldini’s works (on canvas or paper, in varying sizes), you can do so at the Art Renewal Museum.

 

Camera Work

Funny Stuff

When getting a new smartphone or camera, the natural instinct is to take photos of people and things almost nonstop. However, care should be exercised, and people should take time to get practiced with features such as “focus” and “zoom” — and especially “zoom”. Take these two scenarios, for instance. In the first, our photographer wanted to capture this romantic picture of a couple kissing on London’s Tube, and share it with her friends.

What she wanted to send:

What actually arrived:

The second situation was a freshman coed who wanted to show her mother a cute picture of herself and her new roomie coming home from a sorority party, somewhat the worse for wear.

What she wanted to send:

What actually arrived:

Like I said: we really need to know how to work the technology…

Synchronicity

Culture

I think it was Jung who coined that word to describe a sequence of seemingly-unrelated events which concatenate and produce what seems an almost inevitable, unstoppable outcome. When it’s only two events, of course, we call it “coincidence”.

So after yesterday’s post about expensive watches, I opened the Daily Mail to be greeted with this headline: “Why the new arm candy’s on your WRIST“…

Vanessa Redgrave recently admitted hers is one of her most treasured possessions. Nicole Kidman’s, meanwhile, is so rare there are only a handful in the world.
Exclusive designer handbags dangling from the arms of A-listers are no longer catching our eye — they’ve been forgotten in favour of something rather more sparkly, not to mention elitist: a luxury watch.
Now that almost everyone is walking around with smartphones, and their built-in clocks, watches may not be the everyday essential they once were.
But with price-tags stretching to £250,000, straps of gold and alligator skin and diamond-crusted faces, these tickers are more status symbols than timepieces.
‘Watches have become much more of a statement than handbags because of their elitist prices,’ says Gabrielle Teare, a celebrity personal shopper and stylist based in London.
…
For the celebrities, meanwhile, a truly showstopping piece offers them the chance to show off their status — and how much top brands want to dress them — without looking as fussy and overdone as they would dripping in diamonds.
You wouldn’t wear £50,000 of jewellery on a trip to the shops, but you can easily get away with a watch that costs just as much and still look dressed down. It’s a sure way for celebs to raise their profile, particularly if the brand in question decides to return the favour by publicising the star’s allegiance to its famous name.

That’s me, all right: right at the spear point of fashion (for the first time in my life).

Oh gawd… just when I thought it was safe to wear a decent watch on one’s wrist… the fucking celebrities and luvvies have taken it over. Gah. It’s enough to make one wear a frigging Timex, or a discreet “pocket” (okay, belt-) watch like this one of mine, quite easily the unsexiest watch ever made:

Anything to avoid being trendy…

Stupid Shit

Bad News

From my travels around Teh Intarwebz:

“What Wine Do You Drink With Fish Fingers?” (Daily Mail)

You don’t drink wine with fish fingers: it’s fucking kid’s food.

“Sushi warning as patient found with live worms writhing in gut” (Telegraph)

No kidding. You eat RAW FISH and wonder at the parasites. You morons (and that includes anyone who eats raw fish, btw; I don’t care how “cool” or “trendy” it is).

“In response to an alleged hate crime, students would like exam exemptions, a tuition freeze, and a new curriculum, just to name a few.” (Weekly Standard)

It’s called “letting the inmates run the asylum”, you academic assholes. (Actually, it gets worse, if you can imagine it. Read the whole article.)

Then from Over There:

“Germany Takes First Step Towards Legalizing Rape Committed By Muslim Men” (ROK)

Weapons-grade accommodationism from some German judge (who needs a month’s worth of daily scourging and/or hourly ball-kicking).

Finally:

“Ladies Day at Chester” (Daily Mail)

…and for once, it doesn’t look like a group of dockside totties during Fleet Week, simply class and elegance with just a couple examples of Train Smash Women. Maybe there’s hope for us yet… nah, that could only happen if:

“Freak Tsunami Submerges All Of Coastal California Under Two Hundred Feet Of Water” (The Daily Kim)

We can but hope.

 

Conservative Timekeeping

Guy Stuff

One of the problems of having a conservative outlook is that it permeates every part of your life. Just because something is called “new and improved” does not necessarily make it so — which is even more the case when it comes to societal conditions, of course, in that if one is aware of history, there isn’t much new, and even less is an improvement that hasn’t been tried before, mostly ending in failure.

One might think that this isn’t the case with technology, but even there I look at things with a jaundiced eye. Automotive technology is certainly better than it was a hundred years ago, but we’ve climbed that far up the quality/performance curve to where today’s model is enormously better than the Model T, but not that much better than last year’s model. (And I still prefer a stick shift to an automatic transmission, and a bolt-action rifle to a semi-auto one, to name but two of thousands of examples.)

All this came to mind when I was having a couple of welcome-home drinks with Doc Russia, and he mentioned the fact that he was looking at buying a decent “dress” wristwatch, but because his experience with watches has been limited to utility rather than appearance, he was somewhat at a loss as to what he should be looking at.

As it happens, watches and clocks are something of a passion of mine — if I ever won the lottery, I’d be in deep trouble — so I was happy to offer some words of advice. (I’ve owned several decent watches in the course of my life: Omega, Longines, Piguet and so on, which has made me keenly aware of the value of a good watch — and not just one which keeps perfect time.)

Buying a watch is about as personal a decision as one can find — hell, I’ve known men to spend more time on deciding which watch to buy than selecting a car or even a wife — so there are all sorts of combinations / permutations of features and characteristics which go into one’s final decision which are, to put it mildly, very much individualistic. I realize that in today’s world, such a discussion is akin to such old-fashioned purchase decisions as to the best buggy whip to buy, or even (gasp) the best bolt-action rifles for your needs and wallet, but nevertheless, here we go.

At the outset, I’m going to exclude from this post any discussion of being comfortable with a drugstore digital battery-powered cheapie which keeps perfect time and costs less than fifty bucks. I have absolutely no problem with this attitude — hell, I’ve owned more than one Timex or Casio in my time too — and I’m also not going to engage with people who’ve quit wearing wristwatches altogether, leaving the timekeeping function to their cell phone. It’s the modern thing, and of course it’s your choice. That’s all well and good, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Remember, we’re not talking utility as the primary driving factor in buying a new watch; we’re talking class, beauty, style and quality of workmanship. This is akin to the difference between buying a Toyota Corolla and, say, a Lexus. Both do the same job, both are of excellent quality, but each offers a different style of delivery. This is no less true of watches.

As with all things, you have to start with budget. (If you don’t, you’ll just get frustrated.) Doc’s budget is between $5,000 and $7,000, which offers a wide range of options, all good ones. (Much more than this, say $10,000 plus, and we’re looking at investment watches, which creates a set of completely different purchase criteria.)

Let’s also stipulate that we’re looking for a wristwatch and not a pocket- or “waistcoat” watch, just to keep things simpler.

We should start with what I think is the most important criterion, which is movement: automatic, or manual wind? (There are few battery-powered watches in this price range, which I think is good. My everyday watch is a cheap-ish Dooney & Burke which, while very pretty, needs a new battery every eighteen months, and it drives me scatty.) Automatic is the lazy man’s choice — it self-winds by the movement on one’s wrist but to be honest, unless you’re spending a lot of money (more than our budget), the timekeeping is not always perfect to the millisecond and the watch may need to be adjusted occasionally. A manual wind — generally more precise and therefore more expensive — is of the “eight-day” type: one full wind will last for about a week, and then the watch will need to be rewound. I have no preference, myself, although I lean towards the manual (see “stick shift” and “bolt-action rifle” above): it’s the first of many personal choices we’re going to encounter. Here are some examples of manual-wind watches in our price range:

The last, the IWC Pilot, is normally outside our price range, but I’ve seen it on sale recently, so if you love it (and I do), you may be in luck.

With automatic (a.k.a. self-wind), prices almost halve. All the above examples which have automatic variants cost less than $5,000 — and with that premium removed, we also have a few more brand options within the price range:


…and so on.

Next, we come to appearance: white face, or black/colored? Myself, I prefer a white face, but some of the grays are quite gorgeous. Ditto the hands of the watch: simple, straight, ornate? And the numbers: regular, Roman, dashes, or Art Deco (to name but some). Other functions (date, day, month, stopwatch, moon phase etc.)? Leather strap, plastic strap or metal expandable strap? Once again, all this is a matter of personal choice. If you want or need a watch that does everything except make you coffee in the mornings, go for it.

Honestly, the choices are dizzying (in almost any price bracket), and there are hardly any bad choices once one gets over a thousand dollars. (Poor taste choices, however, are another story — but one man’s bad taste is another’s gotta-have, so I stay away from value judgments of that nature.) For myself, the plainer the better, and I don’t need a date because I hardly ever write checks anymore. I prefer the look of stainless steel over gold; although a decent gold watch always looks classy, the price premium is just more than I want to spend. I prefer a leather strap; I can’t wear the expandable metal straps because I have hairy arms and wrists, and the damn things pinch.

So here’s my shortlist of watches (in addition to all the above) which are more or less in Doc’s price range.

IWC (probably my favorite brand in this price range):

Longines:

Maurice Lacroix and Glasshutte:

And finally, no piece like this would be complete without showing the watch I’d want to get as soon as the Powerball guys got their ducks in a row and finally gave me the winning ticket:

If you wanna know how much it costs, you can’t afford it. Note the Art Nouveau numbering, the faded and understated gold… yowzah.

If you want to play like I did, and see just what’s out there, go to Prestige Time and browse. I don’t think their prices are realistic, by the way: I haven’t found them to be anywhere near those quoted by reputable retail outlets. But they have a bunch of watches showcased, so enjoy.

The First 100 Days

Politics

I’ve said before that the first 100 days of a new presidency (any presidency, not just Trump’s) is a nonsensical quasi-deadline, an artifice created and imposed upon new presidents by the Jackals Of The Press (JOTP), as though there’s something magical about the number 100 — as opposed to 120, or 86, or 227, for example.

All that said, The Diplomad has an excellent summary of Trump’s first 100 days. While the summary of his achievements is fine, Diplomad also highlights the “achievements” of the Democratic Left and their fascistic cohorts:

Opponents tried to disrupt the inauguration, and have engaged in a consistent pattern of street violence and thuggery aimed at intimidating Trump supporters and trying to give the impression that the country is ungovernable unless the progressives are in charge. Nothing is off limits, including Trump’s family, in this assault on the new president. Unprecedented coarseness, violence, and fake news are all arrows in the progressive quiver and being unleashed on Trump and supporters daily.

Read the whole thing, because it’s better than anything I could have written.