at The National Arts Club

INSPIRATION - A Muse Among Friends The Personal Collection of China Machado

"China Machado is one of the most celebrated and remarkable figures in fashion history and a model for Givenchy, Dior and Balenciaga, editor for Harpers Bazaar, writer and television producer. The was the exclusive muse of photographer Richard Avedon, and China’s life and career has also been recorded by photographers Bruce Weber, Francesco Scavullo, Jerry Shatzberg and Steven Meisel."

Louise Lévêque De Vilmorin

Marie Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin (4 April 1902 – 26 December 1969) was a French novelist, poet and journalist.

from WIKIPEDIA

coming soon!

Proust's Muse, The Countess Greffulhe at The Museum at FIT

"Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe features extraordinary fashions from the legendary wardrobe of Élisabeth de Caraman-Chimay, the Countess Greffulhe (1860–1952). A famous beauty celebrated for her “aristocratic and artistic elegance,” the countess was a fashion icon comparable to Daphne Guinness today."

 "The countess fascinated her contemporaries, including Marcel Proust who told her cousin, Robert de Montesquiou, "I have never seen a woman so beautiful." When Proust wrote his great novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), the Countess Greffulhe was one of the primary inspirations for his immortal fictional character, Oriane, the Duchess de Guermantes, of whom he wrote, "Each of her dresses seemed like... the projection of a particular aspect of her soul."

from the FIT website

from the FIT website 2

Society of Illustrators

Society of Illustrators website

Society of Illustrators website 2

A Retrospective: Ralph Steadman

from the NYPost

Two Castles and a Gingerbread House

a castle in the Bronx: 

a gingerbread house in Brooklyn: 

a castle on Central Park West:

Garbo at Staley-Wise

staleywise website

 

Shenandoah, PA

RIP Courtesy Motel

This motel sat high up on a hill and was so... spooky, sinister, and eerie. I would pass it every time I rode home from New Jersey, on Route 4, going to the George Washington Bridge. It gave me the creeps.

Vito Spatafore got whacked here... and now this motel in Fort Lee New Jersey belongs  to the ages.

Chrzanow, Poland

 

Nathan Wasserberger, 1928 - 2012 

from 2009:

I was going to interview Nathan Wasserberger for this blog on Wednesday, April 15th. He called a few days before that date to cancel the interview and told me that he wanted to postpone for a month our project because he had some unfinished business. He said he wanted to remain in touch and work it out.

It is now October, and I am very disappointed that this much anticipated interview did not happen as planned. Nathan Wasserberger has not contacted me to pursue an interview and while we did speak today on the phone, it appears an interview will not happen.

With good intentions, I post these paintings done by Mr. Wasserberger. You can learn a bit more about Nathan Wasserberger here. Nathan told me "literature lasts forever." And so does the impeccable and magnificent beauty of his work. Many of Nathan Wasserberger's color plates of his paintings are in the permanent archives of American Art in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

"Sandra," 1957

"Old Man," 1964

"Girl in White Robe," 1982

Nathan Wasserberger is aware that his paintings appear at this blog.

The artist Nathan Wasserberger was born on June 24, 1928 in Chrzanow, Poland, and he died on April 23, 2012, in New York City.

This is Chrzanow, Poland:

 Nathan Wasserberger's obituary