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Dress-down Friday: Liane de Pougy
Like her great rival La Belle Otero, French Belle Époque courtesan Liane de Pougy was a hugely popular postcard motif of the era. Their blue-blooded suitors may have showered them with gifts and hard...
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Poison
Meret Oppenheim, seen yesterday, naturally gravitated to the Surrealists when she arrived in Paris in 1932. For a woman, entrée to André Breton’s clique customarily came in one or more of three modes:...
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Erwin Blumenfeld | photomontage
Few 20th century photographers did as much to smuggle avant-garde aesthetics into the world of fashion as Erwin Blumenfeld. Born in Berlin in 1897, Blumenfeld made contact with that city’s exponents of...
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Wild hearts at midnight
It’s that time of the year again, when costumed apparitions turn society on its head, strange creatures emerge from the undergrowth, and the most diffident wallflower can blossom into a glamorous...
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Georges Bottini | Lorrain illustrations
In 1899, author Jean Lorrain reviewed an exhibition by a young artist named Georges Bottini who found inspiration in the dance halls, bars, theatres and brothels of Belle Époque Paris. The writer...
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Springfield Virginia
Virginia Oldoini, the Countess de Castiglione, died in Paris on this day in 1899. A famed beauty and imperial courtesan, she bowed out just before the end of the 19th century having supplied its...
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14 books for 2014
Princess Sheila Margaret MacKellar Romanov by Cecil Beaton Happy new year! I hope you haven’t used up your Christmas book vouchers yet, because there is much published wonder of a Strange Flowers...
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L’Atlantique noir
Cunard by Beaton Nancy Cunard – writer, publisher, activist – was born on this day in 1896. She is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, specifically her...
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Germaine Krull | arcades
The most famous image of philosopher and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin was taken by German photographer Germaine Krull in 1926. Around this time Krull was more preoccupied by machinery and metal...
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Hotel Sordide
Denham Fouts, “best-kept boy in the world”, would be 100 years old today had he not checked out in 1948. In his highly recommended biography of countercultural eminence Brion Gysin, Nothing Is True –...
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Gisèle Freund | photographic portraits
Berlin-born photographer Gisèle Freund (1908-2000) came to prominence in Parisian exile, staging her first exhibition at the Maison des Amis des Livres, whose proprietor Adrienne Monnier is pictured...
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Various | portraits of René Crevel
In the words of Salvador Dalí, fellow Surrealist René Crevel had “the sullen, deaf, Beethovenesque, bad-angel face of a fern shoot”. Dalí was just one of numerous artists to capture the French writer’s...
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Toot toot, hey, beep beep
Birthday boy Jean Lorrain turns up at your door dressed as a chauffeur, swaying slightly and reeking of ether. He gestures airily in the direction of a horseless carriage, smooths down his moustache...
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C’est Fini
Leonor Fini by André Ostier While I have yet to read it cover to cover, filmmaker Curtis Harrington‘s posthumously published autobiography Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood has yielded wonders at...
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Wild hearts in wartime
Barney and Romaine Brooks in Florence (from Wild Heart, by Suzanne Rodriguez) The writer/saloniste Natalie Clifford Barney and her early 20th century Left Bank circle are attracting more attention than...
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15 books for 2015
Edith Olivier at the entrance to Daye House by Rex Whistler Happy new year! In the first full week of 2015, by the light of the first full moon, here’s a look at some of the more interesting books...
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Wild hearts at midnight
It’s that time of the year again, when costumed apparitions turn society on its head, strange creatures emerge from the undergrowth, and the most diffident wallflower can blossom into a glamorous...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Georges Bottini | Lorrain illustrations
In 1899, author Jean Lorrain reviewed an exhibition by a young artist named Georges Bottini who found inspiration in the dance halls, bars, theatres and brothels of Belle Époque Paris. The writer...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Springfield Virginia
Virginia Oldoini, the Countess de Castiglione, died in Paris on this day in 1899. A famed beauty and imperial courtesan, she bowed out just before the end of the 19th century having supplied its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Befuddled oracle
Page 13 [August] 1931 Barbara Ker-Seymer 1905-1994 Presented by Barbara Ker-Seymer’s partner Barbara Roett (born 1927) in 1997. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/TGA-974-5-2-15Sketched by Augustus...
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