(Source: sarammineo)
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Monday, 28th May
Anna May Wong, 1932, photo by Carl Van Vechten
via troisvierges
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Monday, 28th May
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At 20, Chandler became a reporter. He was an unsuccessful journalist, published reviews and continued writing romantic poetry. Accounting for that time he said, “Of course in those days as now there were clever young men who made a decent living as freelancers for the numerous literary weeklies, but I was distinctly not a clever young man. Nor was I at all a happy young man.”
He strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a time of scrimping and saving. By 1931, at age 43, he had become a highly paid vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, but a year later, his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees and threatened suicides contributed to his being fired. Chandler turned to writing to make a living, teaching himself to write pulp fiction. He published his first short story at 45, and his first novel, The Big Sleep, at 51.
“The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at the least, when a professional writer doesn’t do anything but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. But he is not to do any other thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines. Two very simple rules, a: you don’t have to write. b: you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.” -Raymond Chandler
(Source: timothyhallinan.com)
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Thursday, 24th May
Another fantastic Radiolab episode. This time on colours. here it is.
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Thursday, 24th May
Mérode appears of her time in some ways, but behind or ahead of it in others. With her chokers, feather boas, fancy headgear, boldly-drawn buttons and collars, and other such accoutrements, she seems the paradigm of the period’s exuberant fashion. Yet the severity of her coiffure and flawless oval of her face conjure up Renaissance madonnas or Romantic muses, while her slender silhouette points toward a new, far less fleshy ideal of feminine beauty—toward the perilously anorexic elegance of contemporary supermodels. From our twenty-first century perspective, she looks at once quaintly historical, soberly classical, and strikingly modern. There are, moreover, none of the exhibitionistic postures, the naughty winks and sultry stares, the titillating glimpses of flesh, that define so many “girlie” pictures of the day. Instead, Mérode displays cool detachment and a studied consciousness of herself, not as an explicitly sexual object, but as an exquisitely-wrought objet d’art offered up for the connoisseur’s delectation.
from Cléo de Mérode’s Postcard Stardom by Michael Garval
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Wednesday, 23rd May
The 1900 Paris World’s Fair launched the mass production of postcards. Factories in France and abroad churned out millions, using an array of technologies and techniques—mechanized printing, machine cutting, stencil coloring, even hand retouching—to create objects of delight and fascination during the postcard’s “golden age,” from 1900 to 1914. And while postcards featured many different popular performers, Cleo de Mérode’s case provides the most stunning example of the medium’s potential—and exploitation—as a celebrity vehicle. Images of Mérode usually originated in top Parisian photographic studios but enterprising publishers the world over made myriad reproductions emblazoned with greetings, captions, and decorative elements, that circulated from Varna to Montevideo.
from Cléo de Mérode’s Postcard Stardom by Michael Garval
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Wednesday, 23rd May
![Cleo de Merode, 1894, by Felix Nadar
By the mid-twentieth century, when Hollywood stars dominated popular entertainment across the globe, Belle Époque dancer Cléo de Mérode was no more than a dim memory. At the height of her renown, however, she was an international sensation, perhaps the most photographed woman in the world or, at least, the woman whose image was most widely reproduced. Cléopâtre Diane de Mérode entered the Opéra ballet at age seven and worked her way up the ranks. At sixteen she debuted her trend-setting, hallmark hairstyle: over the ears, usually in a chignon, often worn with metal bands. She became renowned for her glamour and her image began appearing on postcards and playing cards. Her fame was such that Alexandre Falguiere sculpted The Dancer in her image, Toulouse-Lautrec did her portrait, as would Charles Puyo, Alfredo Muller and Giovanni Boldini. From 1896 to 1900, her image was disseminated widely, both in the press, and through photographs hawked in shops. Avant-garde author Jean de Tinan characterized the French press of his day as “haunted” by her. Tinan observed how “curious or breathless passersby linger before shop windows crammed with photographs” of Mérode, and he mused on the “curious psychos[is]” of someone “loving her with an impossible love, … from across display windows.” Many of these portraits would be reproduced more widely still in the years ahead, on postcards.
from Cléo de Mérode’s Postcard Stardom by Michael Garval](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m42o9xpdjJ1rppeeoo1_1280.jpg)
Cleo de Merode, 1894, by Felix Nadar
By the mid-twentieth century, when Hollywood stars dominated popular entertainment across the globe, Belle Époque dancer Cléo de Mérode was no more than a dim memory. At the height of her renown, however, she was an international sensation, perhaps the most photographed woman in the world or, at least, the woman whose image was most widely reproduced. Cléopâtre Diane de Mérode entered the Opéra ballet at age seven and worked her way up the ranks. At sixteen she debuted her trend-setting, hallmark hairstyle: over the ears, usually in a chignon, often worn with metal bands. She became renowned for her glamour and her image began appearing on postcards and playing cards. Her fame was such that Alexandre Falguiere sculpted The Dancer in her image, Toulouse-Lautrec did her portrait, as would Charles Puyo, Alfredo Muller and Giovanni Boldini. From 1896 to 1900, her image was disseminated widely, both in the press, and through photographs hawked in shops. Avant-garde author Jean de Tinan characterized the French press of his day as “haunted” by her. Tinan observed how “curious or breathless passersby linger before shop windows crammed with photographs” of Mérode, and he mused on the “curious psychos[is]” of someone “loving her with an impossible love, … from across display windows.” Many of these portraits would be reproduced more widely still in the years ahead, on postcards.
from Cléo de Mérode’s Postcard Stardom by Michael Garval
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Wednesday, 23rd May
