although i have never been one to seek out role-models, i felt a need to give a nod to some classy dames.
martha graham.
i don't know much about martha graham's work. i think i saw the martha graham dance company on telly years ago. one of the principal dancers was a black woman and i mistook her as being "martha graham". silly me. but this was well before google.
i do like modern dance, though. much prefer it to classical ballet. and the good stuff is very good. (my mummy did isadora duncan-martha graham like "movement" classes when she was little. what a cool child she was growing up in the 40s)
i like this description of graham's work: Graham believed that through spastic movements, tremblings, and falls she could express emotional and spiritual themes ignored by other dance. She desired to evoke strong emotions, and achieved these visceral responses through the repetition of explicitly sexual and violently disjunctive movements.
some of her moves
martha gellhorn.
best known for being ernest hemingway's squeeze
for a number of years, she also had a reputation for being a fearsome journalist and wartime correspondent. i tried reading a biography and found her truly unlikeable. but i figure, that's just me. doesn't mean she wasn't a stand-up lady. maybe i'll go back to it and skip her early years. after all, i'd rather know her for her work than being mrs hemingway (that would really piss her off). more pointedly, maybe i'll read her work.
the thing is i first read about martha gellhorn when i was reading about cuba - she and hemingway lived at finca vigía (lookout farm) near havana - it sounded wonderful ... see lots more pictures here
i do like modern dance, though. much prefer it to classical ballet. and the good stuff is very good. (my mummy did isadora duncan-martha graham like "movement" classes when she was little. what a cool child she was growing up in the 40s)
i like this description of graham's work: Graham believed that through spastic movements, tremblings, and falls she could express emotional and spiritual themes ignored by other dance. She desired to evoke strong emotions, and achieved these visceral responses through the repetition of explicitly sexual and violently disjunctive movements.
some of her moves
martha gellhorn.
best known for being ernest hemingway's squeeze
for a number of years, she also had a reputation for being a fearsome journalist and wartime correspondent. i tried reading a biography and found her truly unlikeable. but i figure, that's just me. doesn't mean she wasn't a stand-up lady. maybe i'll go back to it and skip her early years. after all, i'd rather know her for her work than being mrs hemingway (that would really piss her off). more pointedly, maybe i'll read her work.
the thing is i first read about martha gellhorn when i was reading about cuba - she and hemingway lived at finca vigía (lookout farm) near havana - it sounded wonderful ... see lots more pictures here
hee hee, here's the very naughty shane maloney chatting about gellhorn and john pilger in the monthly. some snippets:
Over a bottle of Famous Grouse, they talked about "the struggle of memory against organised forgetting", agreeing furiously on almost everything... Strongly adverse to "the kitchen of life", the former Mrs Ernest Hemingway was a terrible cook. On subsequent visits, Pilger took food. Sometimes they would stroll in the park, talking surfing and snorkelling between denouncing the vileness of Kissinger...[Gellhorn] died of cancer in 1998. John Pilger continues to annoy the buggery out of his critics.
nina simone
i have a "best of" collection of nina simone's songs. in one of the songs, mississippi goddam, she
intersperses the song with comments. i was going to write about it, but someone (with more knowledge) beat me to it:
At the beginning of the song, she announces "the name of this tune is 'Mississippi Goddamn'. And I mean every word of it," [the largely White audience laughs and are] still laughing with Simone after she sings the opening chorus ("Alabama's got me so upset / Tennessee makes me lose my rest / And everybody knows about Mississippi, Goddam") and states that "this is show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet." But this is where the song, and its reception, changes.
Simone rips into America's race policy, simmering as she sings "don't tell me, I tell you / Me and my people just about due ... The audience is dead silent after the verse, a fact that Simone acknowledges, when she says to the crowd "bet you thought I was kidding". The moment seemed to only fuel the fury brewing underneath Simone's performance up to that point. When she starts singing "This whole country is full of lies / You all gonna die, die like flies," it is clear that she is in a space, in opposition to the non-violent stance of the mainstream Civil Right Movement, and one that portended the violence in American cities like Los Angeles (Watts), Newark and Detroit in the coming years.
nina simone, singing it live
she was smart, ferociously talented and determined, "my original plan was to be the first black concert pianist - not a singer - and it never occurred to me that they'd be drinking and carrying on when i played the piano. so i felt that if they didn't want to listen, they could go the hell home." read more in this well-considered article
last year, protest anthology was released - a compilation of her civil rights songs and interview
it's available for download
i have a "best of" collection of nina simone's songs. in one of the songs, mississippi goddam, she
intersperses the song with comments. i was going to write about it, but someone (with more knowledge) beat me to it:
At the beginning of the song, she announces "the name of this tune is 'Mississippi Goddamn'. And I mean every word of it," [the largely White audience laughs and are] still laughing with Simone after she sings the opening chorus ("Alabama's got me so upset / Tennessee makes me lose my rest / And everybody knows about Mississippi, Goddam") and states that "this is show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet." But this is where the song, and its reception, changes.
Simone rips into America's race policy, simmering as she sings "don't tell me, I tell you / Me and my people just about due ... The audience is dead silent after the verse, a fact that Simone acknowledges, when she says to the crowd "bet you thought I was kidding". The moment seemed to only fuel the fury brewing underneath Simone's performance up to that point. When she starts singing "This whole country is full of lies / You all gonna die, die like flies," it is clear that she is in a space, in opposition to the non-violent stance of the mainstream Civil Right Movement, and one that portended the violence in American cities like Los Angeles (Watts), Newark and Detroit in the coming years.
nina simone, singing it live
she was smart, ferociously talented and determined, "my original plan was to be the first black concert pianist - not a singer - and it never occurred to me that they'd be drinking and carrying on when i played the piano. so i felt that if they didn't want to listen, they could go the hell home." read more in this well-considered articlelast year, protest anthology was released - a compilation of her civil rights songs and interview
it's available for download
sophie calle
i have only recently come across sophie calle and her smörgåsbord of an oeuvre.
i saw (or perhaps was told about) a doco on sophie calle. talking to a friend later he mentioned that she was the artist "maria" in paul auster's novel, leviathan.
now i am a big auster fan, so i skipped off to find the relevant passage. apparently auster and calle didn't know each other when auster wrote about her, but calle subsequently re-created or perhaps re-claimed the works of her alter-ego "maria" (frieze article talking about it). all this became their collaborative work, double-life. how very post-post-modern of them.
looking up calle's shenanigans, i found an article on the guardian, he loves me not, recounting the story of sophie calle's work at the 2007 venice biennale, take care of yourself or how sophie calle turned being dumped by her boyfriend by email into a modern masterpiece. says calle,
"The idea came to me very quickly, two days after he sent it ... I showed the email to a close friend asking her how to reply, and she said she'd do this or that. The idea came to me to develop an investigation through various women's professional vocabulary."
she's hilarious. i love her work. usually i hate conceptual pieces, but she is genuinely smart and her work is adept, and stylish and witty.
i have only recently come across sophie calle and her smörgåsbord of an oeuvre.
i saw (or perhaps was told about) a doco on sophie calle. talking to a friend later he mentioned that she was the artist "maria" in paul auster's novel, leviathan.
now i am a big auster fan, so i skipped off to find the relevant passage. apparently auster and calle didn't know each other when auster wrote about her, but calle subsequently re-created or perhaps re-claimed the works of her alter-ego "maria" (frieze article talking about it). all this became their collaborative work, double-life. how very post-post-modern of them.
looking up calle's shenanigans, i found an article on the guardian, he loves me not, recounting the story of sophie calle's work at the 2007 venice biennale, take care of yourself or how sophie calle turned being dumped by her boyfriend by email into a modern masterpiece. says calle,
"The idea came to me very quickly, two days after he sent it ... I showed the email to a close friend asking her how to reply, and she said she'd do this or that. The idea came to me to develop an investigation through various women's professional vocabulary."
she's hilarious. i love her work. usually i hate conceptual pieces, but she is genuinely smart and her work is adept, and stylish and witty.
in a recent issue of frieze, sophie calle is asked 'what images keep you company in the space where you work?'
She answers: 'In my studio there is a stuffed giraffe that I bought when my mother died, to replace her. Her name is Monique too, and she looks at me from on high with sadness and irony, just like my mother did.' She concludes the questionnaire with 'I don't think my mother would have chosen to return as a stuffed giraffe in the studio of her daughter, but she is dead.'
She answers: 'In my studio there is a stuffed giraffe that I bought when my mother died, to replace her. Her name is Monique too, and she looks at me from on high with sadness and irony, just like my mother did.' She concludes the questionnaire with 'I don't think my mother would have chosen to return as a stuffed giraffe in the studio of her daughter, but she is dead.'
she has recently collaborated with a brazilian outfit, tetine. classy. here they are, tetine vs sophie calle and samba de monalisa 2
tallulah bankhead
a minor actor, tallulah bankhead was a large personality. she happily laid claim to laying marlene dietrich, greta garbo and numerous others. she was also a bit player at the algonquin round table.
a minor actor, tallulah bankhead was a large personality. she happily laid claim to laying marlene dietrich, greta garbo and numerous others. she was also a bit player at the algonquin round table.
Some compared her to Dorothy Parker, who was not amused to hear that she had competition. Of course, one friend noted that Tallulah never kept her mouth shut, so she was bound to say something witty occasionally. Tallulah indeed was always talking and was never at a loss for something to say, even if it was an untruth. During one party, someone brought up the subject of rape and Tallulah quiped, "I was raped in our driveway when I was eleven. You know, dahling, it was a terrible experience because we had all that gravel."other naughty things she said:
**my father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.
**if i had my life to live again, i'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
a woman with the courage of her hedonism.
marguerite duras
my first experience of marguerite duras was reading her autobiographical novella, the lover. i liked the idea of the novel more than the experience of reading it, i must admit. what got me in, though, was a magazine spread in french vogue in the 90s, where duras spoke of some of her favourite things, a link to the images here
a view from her apartment, her favourite bag (black leather clutch with gold handles), her favourite pen, her diamonds - delicate rings on her fragile hand
i've carried the last photo with me to all my work desks -the image is now coffee stained and wrinkled. i love it.
she also sent this truly subslime photorgraph of duras by richard avedon. duras looks like a naughty gremlin (which by all accounts was just about right)louise bourgeois
edith bouvier beale ("little edie")
a documentary about little edie and her mum, "big edie" - the beales of grey gardens
edith bouvier beale ("little edie")
a documentary about little edie and her mum, "big edie" - the beales of grey gardens
society dames who took to living reclusively in their east hamptons mansion with several cats and a lot of cat tins and detritus ... ladies of big character,
drew barrymore played little edie in a movie about them a few years ago, grey gardens
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