a blind flaneur

Photo by [auro]
The photo is titled “la musique adoucit les murs” (”music softens walls”). Thanks to [auro] for sharing it on the Creative Commons.

In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell describes my Paris neighborhood as “a ravine of tall, leprous houses, lurching towards one another in queer attitudes, as though they had all been frozen in the act of collapse.” Orwell changed the street name to Rue du Coq d’Or. Take another look. It’s Rue […]

[Photo by mmatting]

In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell describes my Paris neighborhood as “a ravine of tall, leprous houses, lurching towards one another in queer attitudes, as though they had all been frozen in the act of collapse.” Orwell changed the street name to Rue du Coq d’Or. Take another look. It’s Rue […]

Pablo Picasso. Portrait of Lee Miller as L’Arlesienne. 1937. Musée Picasso, Paris.

Exhibition note for Lee Miller. Picasso in Private at Museu Picasso in Barcelona:
Lee Miller … took over a thousand photographs of Picasso during the thirty-six years of their friendship. The exhibition shows a selection of more than one hundred of these […]

Tom mentioned a Lee Miller profile in this week’s New Yorker. It’s written by Judith Thurman, author of Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette. The full text isn’t available yet on the New Yorker web site, but here is the abstract:
Judith Thurman, A Critic at Large, “The Roving Eye,” The New Yorker, […]

Franklin Carmichael. Lake Superior landscape. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. [Source: torontohispano.com]
I’ve spent hours gazing at this Lake Superior landscape in the old Group of Seven gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario. With AGO’s recent Frank Gerry makeover, that cozy wood-paneled room is no more. What a shame. Where is this Canadian masterpiece now? […]

Valentino’s finale at the Rodin Museum was bathed in red. [Photo by Jean-Luce Huré for NYT]
To the storied history of the Hôtel Biron- Rodin’s studio, Sister of Icarus, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet — add this: Valentino Garavani’s haute couture finale. After a 45-year run, Valentino sold the shop last year for […]

Valentino’s finale wasn’t the only spectacle on Day 3 of Paris Fashion Week. Jean Paul Gaultier’s collection featured the shimmering wet look, including a gold sequined confection drenched by a sponge the model carried in her hand.
“Many of the dresses were as wearable as they were ingenious,” according to NYT’s Cathy Horyn. Something in […]

Reel 1: Jean Cocteau. The Blood of a Poet (trailer).
Lee Miller played the Statue in Jean Cocteau’s Surrealist classic, The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poéte). It’s a trippy, enigmatic film laden with “deep” imagery. The original 1930 film moves like molasses compared to the quick cuts in the trailer, which was […]