Saturday, December 31, 2011

This is my brain and this is my brain on NYE...

I have a guest coming for shots of whiskey --someone to summarize (and naturally analyze) the events of 2011. I tend to be somewhat superstitious about NYE. I don't like to make a big deal of it because I'm half afraid it will wake or alert some asshole NYE gremlin that will lodge itself in my cogs throughout 2012. These gremlins apparently sleep through humble reflection. This is silly, but this is my brain and this is my brain on NYE. So you all have your big lovely event, and I'll have my little one and may none of us have NYE gremlins of any kind. Hold on tightly... this is an interesting time. Here we go.....


Parisian Proto-Goth Beauties, 1910


Cheers !
Darla Teagarden

Friday, December 30, 2011

The Dark Star...

The agitating and agitated Polaire! The tiny slip of a woman that you know, with the waist slender to the point of pain, of screaming out loud, of breaking in two, in a spasmically tight bodice, the prettiest slimness … And, under the aureole of an extravagant masher’s hat, orange and plumed with iris leaves, the great voracious mouth, the immense black eyes, ringed, bruised, discoloured, the incandescence of her pupils, the bewildered nocturnal hair, the phosphorus, the sulphur, the red pepper of that ghoulish, Salome-like face, the agitating and agitated Polaire!
What a devilish mimic, what a coffee-mill and what a belly-dancer! Yellow skirt tucked high, gloved in open-work stockings, Polaire skips, flutters, wriggles, arches from the hips, the back, the belly, mimes every kind of shock, twists, coils, rears, twirls…trembling like a stuck wasp, miaows, faints to what music and what words! The house, frozen with stupor, forgets to applaud.
-Jean Lorrain




















Polaire!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

For the love of Maurice...




“I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpening exercises.”
Buy his new book. I know I will






Me and my pig bella pepperpot today in our yard...

Should I laugh or cry in the garden of Tuileries?

Doña Maria Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox de Guzmán Portocarrero y Kirkpatrick was born on 5 May 1826, in Granada, Spain.
Hunting bodice worn by Empress Eugénie de Montijo, 1853-70, Musée de la Vénerie-via old rags







Eugenia variously used the titles of Countess of Teba or Countess of Montijo. While in London she was introduced to Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808 - 9 January 1873). He was the son of Hortense Eugénie Cécile Bonaparte Beauharnais, Queen Consort of Holland (10 April 1783 - 5 October 1837) and Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Holland (2 September 1778 - 25 July 1846). When the new President of the Second Republic held balls at the Elysée Palace, Eugenia appeared with her mother and met the Prince President, Louis Napoléon.





According to The Life of an Empress (Eugénie de Montijo) by Frédéric Louee Madame de Montijo wrote to Marquis de Rochelambert, "I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Many mothers who to-day envy me could not explain the cause of my tears. Eugénie is about to become Queen of France, but I cannot help thinking that queens know but little joy. Do what I may, I am obsessed by the recollection of Marie Antoinette, and I ask myself in dread if my poor child will not some day meet with a similar fate."


Napoleon III's Wedding to Eugenie



In a speech from the throne on 22 January 1853, Napoléon III formally announced his engagement, saying, "I have preferred a woman whom I love and respect to a woman unknown to me, with whom an alliance would have had advantages mixed with sacrifices." Eugénie and Napoléon III were married on Saturday, 30 January 1853, at the Tuileries. On the next day, Sunday, in a religious ceremony, at Notre Dame. She became, Her Imperial Majesty The Empress of the French. Known in France as Eugénie de Montijo.


Eugénie de Montijo
Photographed by Emmanuel Flamant of Paris
( via ( OVO)




Eugénie de Montijo, the last Empress of the French died aged 94...

( text source Ann Lauren

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Walk with me...

Show me the place...





чернил подземных

A few months back I posted images from 1905-1906 Russian revolutionary periodicals that I found at Yale University’s digital library. Recently I (accidentally) came across a related book called Blood and Laughter: Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution that contains more illustrations of the 1905-1906 Russian underground press.
- The Assemblymen.( via Michael Walker)














More clearly than any party resolution or government proclamation, the caricatures of 1905 tell the story of that heroic failure – and they are a symptom of that failure too…they chronicle with incredible vividness that moment of the transition from Tsarist despotism to Bolshevik revolution." -by Cathy Porter

Monday, December 26, 2011

Friday, December 23, 2011

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Lobby Tree, Hobby Tree

JOEL MEYEROWITZ
Spinning Christmas Tree, New York City, 1977



Madrid

Monday, December 19, 2011

NAPOLEONIC Vestiges

‘Photographs of veterans of Napoleon’s Grande Armée and the Guard wearing their original uniforms and insignia. Likely date May 5, 1858 – all are wearing the Saint Helene medal, issued on August 12, 1857 to all veterans of the wars of the Revolution and the Empire. May 5 – the anniversary of the death of Napoleon. Every year on that date veterans gathered in Paris:

‘‘The base and railings of the column of the Place Vendôme appear this day decked out with the annual offerings to the memory of the man whose statue adorns the summit. The display of garlands of immortelles, and other tributes of the kind, is greater than usual… the old soldiers of the Empire performed their usual homage yesterday at the same place.’

Times - May, 1855‘

- Brown University Library
via Retronaut