ABOUT AUSTEN

"The reason no one married her was it was just all too much. Something truly frightening rumbled there beneath the bubbling mirth: something capable of taking the world by its heels, and shaking it."
- Fay Weldon

"Edmund and Fanny are both morally detestable and the endorsement of their feelings and behaviour by the author makes Mansfield Park an immoral book."
- Kingsley Amis

"The art is so consummate that the secret is hidden; peer at them as hard as one may; shake them; take them apart; one cannot see how it is done."
- Thornton Wilder

"Austen reveals so frankly and with such sobriety the economic basis of society."
- W H Auden

"This old maid typifies 'personality' instead of character, the sharp knowing in apartness instead of knowing in togetherness, and she is, to my feeling, thoroughly unpleasant English in the bad, mean, snobbish sense of the word, just as Fielding is English in the good generous sense."
- D H Lawrence

"Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought. And when people compare Shakespeare and Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare."
- Virginia Woolf

"She is mistress of derision rather than of wit or humour. Her irony is now and then exquisitely bitter. The lack of tenderness and of spirit is manifest in Miss Austen's indifference to children, and as children through whom a mother may receive flattery from her designing acquaintance on her sensible friends... in this coldness or dislike Miss Austen resembles Charlotte Bronte."
- Alice Meynell

    

Monday With Monet

                                                        Still Life with Meat, 1862

CHILDHOOD SWEETHEART: THE GIRLS OF TAKAHASHI MACOTO

Did you grow up dazzled b the girls of Takahashi Macoto, without knowing it? I did. I can still vividly recall the Colleen colouring pencils that came in pompous tins, 36 colours all arranged in an ombre rainbow. For years, I attempted to copy the cover illustration, a Marie Antoinette type girl clutching a poodle, wearing a huge picture hat just laden with flowers. I thought the pencils were meant for re-creating the drawing. It is only now, decades later, that I learned that Macoto drew with pencil and then coloured with watercolour, in delicate layers, and that his signature sparkles in the the eyes were added later in a constellation of goauche dots and stripes!

Takahashi was born in Osaka in 1934, debuted as a manga artist in 1957. He's still working today and that means that there is a huge archive of his work (there have been exhibitions and books). Of his work and inspiration, he has said: "Why do I always draw girls? I have this lingering image I had when I was a sixth-grader, right after the war. There was a church of the Allied Occupation Forces near my house, and one day I saw a girl over the fence. She was about five and was playing in the garden filled with flowers. The girl, her leg in a cast, was called by her mother. She turned around and ran to her mother, her beautiful blond hair flowing. It was such a beautiful scene in such a gloomy time in postwar Japan. The image stuck with me, and I came to want to paint that girl. I wanted to express the world of girls in a short two- to three-year period of adolescence, to express elegance, gentleness, shyness and sense of cleanliness." One of the authours of "kawaii" genre, I can see Macoto's direct influence even in Takahashi Murakami's work, in the obsessive detail, crazy explosive flowers, and the maniacally glittering, unseeing eyes of his creations. I wonder if Murakami has ever acknowledged his debt to the older artist?       

Murakami's work in Versailles has the same effect as Macoto's, combining old and new, cute with traditional 

WEEKEND READING LIST: PICTURE BOOKS OF 2015

I've sworn off buying books for a while now, not for any noble green reasons (although you must consider these), and have been dutifully been borrowing all my reading from our wonderful libraries here. Truth is, I simply have no more shelve- or indeed floor-, space for one more book, and yet... I couldn't resist these. 
These are all picture books, and are about drawing, a talent which I've been neglecting - I havn't picked up a pencil to sketch in ages, and I suppose these purchases are meant to inspire me to draw in the new year (and not act as dust magnets). Fingers and toes crossed, guilt-drenched.

How can you resist Gruau: Portraits of Men (with a come hither cover like this)? 

How to resist anything by David Downton? I squawked when I saw it and flew down to Kinokuniya and bought it in a flash. David Downton: Portraits of the World's Most Stylish Women is not unrelated to Gruau and his work is very much in that tradition, although Downton doesn't acknowledge that debt. I don't agree with Downton's pick of "most stylish" - Coco Rocha? Dita Von Teese? Really? - but still.

Finally, my niece Sharon very kindly ordered the book Harry Bush Hard Boys - and she promptly added one into the cart for herself! I think she said she bought it on Book Depository, but whatever it was, it arrived to make an excellent Christmas present for me!

Singapore Diva Tracy Huang Sings Again

PEACHES AND CREAM
One of Singapore's earliest pop successes, Tracy Huang has survived the vagaries of the industry by shrewdly shifting her act to the right places at the right time. 
Daniel Goh  fathoms the woman and her image.


"Fat, fat," says Tracy, slapping her thighs. "Fat, fat. I've put on weight,. Three pounds. Fat, here," she says, cupping her cheeks. She lifts her arms and flaps them, making the flesh on her alabaster-white upper arms jiggle. "Fat, fat, do you see?"

Tracy's preoccupation with weight, her looks, her age is understandable. After all, her feminine and fashionable image has always been a strong selling point for her albums. As such, these vanity concerns, inherent in most women, must seem even more vital to Tracy. But today, just for the moment, Tracy, relaxed and light-hearted jokes, "I'm 28, two years older than Alan Tam!" Later, she would give me her age as 39.

Tracy Huang is folded neatly onto a black sofa in the photo studio. She's just completed a photography shoot, part of her efforts to promote her new album Traces of Love, but talk is not about the album. There is nothing so crassly commercial about Tracy.

Even relaxing, her legs are elegantly crossed, ending in pointy, stiletto-heeled ankle boots. She's wearing a two-year old Azzedine Alaia: A black stretch one-piece with a white patent leather belt. "It gives me the illusion of height," she says.

Her hair is straggly now, and is loosely tied back; her eye make-up has run a little, there are black smudges; her lipstick has bled into a crooked pout. Plumes of smoke from her cigarette surround her like an aura.

Tired and slightly dishelleved, even while chain-smoking Virginia Slims, Tracy Huang still exudes a glow. Her skin is not only just fine and creamy white, it has a translucent, jade-like glaze, like rare Song china.

As Tracy talks, her small, white hands flutter about her in arabesque, like twin doves. "Hands are important," she says, flipping through the lyric pages for her new album cover until she finds the illustration of her silhouetted hands, reaching for a bird on a branch. "Look at this picture, I like this very much. Hands can express so much. You don't see my face here at all. But it's me."

Her small, flower-like hands. They are not money-grabbing hands, nor dish-washing hands. No, these are the hands of a princess. I tell her so. "Oh, but I'm not a princess!," she says, laughing. "More like a Cinderella. My father was from Guangdong, a military man, a colonel, so he didn't earn much. My mother was from Shanghai. When they came over to Taiwan from the mainland, they had absolutely nothing, not even a roof over their heads. We were very poor.


"When I was young, I had to help my mother do all the chores. I was the oldest, I had to take care of three baby brothers. All I can remember of my mother from those days was that she was always cooking, cleaning. She'd give me some money and I would have to go to the market to buy vegetables. And I had to cook after school.


"I still found time to play, somehow. I ran around barefoot. I have memories of a little barefoot girl, piggy-backing one of my brothers – maybe that's why I'm so short and all my brothers are so tall!


"I remember one day, while out in the open fields, an aeroplane flew over. At that moment, I made a promise to myself that I would be on that plane someday. I would fly out into the world. And it was a big wish, for a little country girl like me."


She continues in a rush of words; she is enjoying the reminiscences. "Singapore put me on that aeroplane. I was discovered by a talent scout from Neptune Theatre. Here I was, a Taiwanese singer singing English songs – wow! What a novelty, you know. I was billed as 'Angel from Taiwan' at the Neptune!"


That was in 1969. The Angel from Taiwan took flight. Tracy appeared in countless TV variety shows and eventually recorded her own albums, mainly sentimental ballads and cover versions of Olivia Newton-John hits. Over a 43-album career, Tracy established herself as a major star in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Now she has set her sights on Japan with her album, consisting of English songs by Dick Lee.

Not only was she a major recording artiste, Tracy was also a style icon of the 70s. The image conscious artiste embraced every 'look' that emerged – from frosty purple eye-shadow to padded sweaters, from tattooed eyebrows to cowboy shirts.

The correct 'look' no doubt contributed to her enduring popularity, but she attributes her success to a determination to better herself. "I want to learn something new everyday – then that day is not wasted." And indeed, there were many occasions during my meetings with her when she whips out a little electronic organiser and enters all sorts of information, with a great urgency: names, numbers, movies to see, authors to read, phrases, ideas.


"When I was in school, I only studied music and Chinese folk dance – these were subjects thought to be more befitting to a girl. I learnt to read only after I left school. When I first came to Singapore, I had no friends or family. There were long spaces of time when all the friends I had were magazines and journals and books. I read so much during this time. And all those English programmes on television here. Education is the world around you. It does not mean that if you go to a university you become educated. A lot of people don't realize that experience is so important – you can learn from the people and the environment. I feel that my education is still going on, never stopping."

But something that Tracy feels she has not learnt enough of is studio production and other technical aspects of recording. So last year, she formed her own production company in Taiwan called Inner Music. "I'm at a turning point now – or rather – I'm in a period of flux. I feel that Tracy, as an artiste, is fading out and Tracy, the producer is fading in."

Her energies, and her accumulated knowledge and contacts in the music industries, are now concentrated in production. "It is not that I don't want to perform anymore. Working behind the scenes on a recording is also like performing. What's on show is what you produce, is how Tracy sees it. Inner Voice is where she put together her last three albums – of which two became award winners and hits. Tracy is also casting about for new talents to groom, record and promote.

Next year, in her role as producer, she will launch a 17-year-old Singapore girl, Gina Tan. There are several uncanny similarities between Tracy and her protégé : Tracy herself started her musical career at about the same age (at 16, Tracy was already singing at the American Club). Gina has the same sort of demure, feminine beauty that has served Tracy well; she sounds remarkably like Tracy. They sing like they look: all peaches and cream. There is tinkling clarity in their singing, there is a breathy languidity.


"Also, I really want to act. I really feel like making a movie, something meaningful. Maybe it's a bit late. But I was really inspired by my experience doing the music video which Wong Kar Wai directed."

The video for her Mandarin number entitled Making You Glad has generated more than the usual attention because it features Tony Leung, the star of The Lover.


"All the reporters keep asking me about it, as if Tony Leung was the main thing. At my press conference a reporter asked me if I felt flattered and thrilled that I had Tony Leung to act with in my video. Just imagine.


"I replied, 'How so?' Tony Leung should be the one to be flattered and thrilled."

First published in 8 DAYS Nov 28 – Dec 5, 1992 edition, as a cover story

WEEKKEND READING LIST: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant

My new obsession is Stephen Tennant: An artist and writer, he was also a great beauty in early youth (he was the Kate Moss of the Jazz Age!). Mostly he's that very English thing - an eccentric. The Philip Hoare biography of Tennant, Serious Pleasures is one of the best books I've read in ages - a serious, addictive pleasure. 

Must Watch Movie: Hand Made with Love in France

This 2014 documentary explores the world of four French craftsmen/dinosaurs who inhabit another altogether different, finer world than the one in which we find ourselves. After decades working for the most prestigious couturiers like Chanel, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, their workshops are closing down. What will happen to the art of fashion once they are all gone? This quintessentially French movie questions our harried exisitence with our dwindling interest in intricate craftsmanship. Featuring masters Gérard Lognon (pleats), Bruno Legeron (artificial flowers and feathers), and Lorenzo Ré (one of three remaining sculptors of hat blocks), this film will leave those who love fashion spellbound.

SPRING 2016 REVIEW: J W ANDERSON

Tough And Tender 3

Henri Matisse, Woman in Blue, 1937

A romantic version of the tough/tender trend can be seen in the courageous and confident collection by J W Anderson – how new and fresh to bring Edwardian dress to the present! Prim leg-o-mutton sleeves were exaggerated to such extremes that they ceased to look feminine, becoming instead aggressive. The constrain of structured little black bras and corset type belts, worn on the outside, with a bold squiggle of a Vivien Westwood print is again unseductive and aggressive. Ruffled Edwardian tea dresses, a couple clearly recalling Woman In Blue in the paper doll outlines, are truncated, worn with bloomers showing, look rakish if anything. Lace, little ruffled collars, bowed sleeves and legs, the pretty style touches that make up a Matisse woman, is always undercut with something quite angry, like an insistent zipper, or unfriendly proportions, with a cross hatch of two messenger bags. Anderson's vision is thought-provoking and idiosyncratic - and for me, always memorable.

Vivien Westwood dress with Matisee print, 1982

Young Man With A Flower

For Valentine's Day and for Chinese New Year, I give you this quite rare 1981 oil portrait by Gauguin. So pretty!

PASSAGE OF TIME: Hermes's Must-See Exhibition

Becoming Again, Ran Hwang’s meditation on transience, is a fitting last exhibition at Third Floor, before the gallery closes for a one-year refurbishment. Launched in 2006, Third Floor is a non-commercial art space that promotes contemporary art by commissioning and presenting works in the Hermes flagship store on Orchard Road. Next month, the iconic Liat Towers flagship store closes for a one-year refurbishment. 

It is fitting then, that the last exhibition to show in that space, South Korean artist Ran Hwang’s Becoming Again, is a meditation on time. For indeed the 10 years since the inauguration of Third Floor (located on the third floor of the store) have flown by in a flurry of shows including works by Takashi Kuribayashi (in conjunction with the Singapore Biennale 2006), Laurence Dervaux, Heman Chong, Flavia Da Rin, Luis Terán, Rei Sato, Ming Wong, Yeondoo Jung, Ranjani Shettar, Christine Ay Tjoe, Shinji Ohmaki, Joo Choon Lin, Nadim Abbas and Aiko Tezuka. 

Becoming Again is an immersive multimedia one-work installation, comprising a curved wall of Plexiglas that forms a shimmering screen studded with buttons arranged obsessively as a conflagration of cherry blossoms. As you watch, the blossoms glow with projected, shifting lights, changing colour and shapes in a kaleidoscope of moods; a golden phoenix unfurls its wings to the left and majestically flaps through the cherry forest to the right before a climax of golden showers. The artist, Ran Hwang, swathed in a grey dotted shawl, guides us through the work, a meditation on the cyclical nature of time, the brevity and fragility of life, which is represented by the evolving flowers, first chastely pale, then prettily pink, then autumnal gold, then fading into the void as the cycle begins again. The mythical phoenix – a symbol of grace, infinity and renewal – echoes the transient nature of existence that is at the core of Hwang’s work.    

Why buttons?

Beauty can be found in the most ordinary, and the humble button is a metaphor for the ordinariness of human existence. I want to encourage an appreciation of the simple things we overlook in the frantic course of everyday.

Your work uses a feminine vocabulary, with materials from fashion such as buttons, pins and needles.

My first memories of art were of my father avidly painting Chinese inks and I must have been five or six, very introverted, grinding his ink stone for him. While he painted, I would be drawing by his side. I spent all my time drawing, all through school and one day I started making paper dolls and making Barbie dresses for them and all of a sudden I found myself with friends! I became very popular, and from that time I became very interested in fashion.

When I went to study in New York, I scoured the flea markets and I would find old Chinese pieces of embroidery, and that fascinated me. I found many beautiful used items that were abandoned, and that was when I first discovered the beauty in found objects. I began to use those to create mixed media collages. My first job in New York was interning at an embroidery company. One day in the office, I found a stash of abandoned buttons in a corner. These lifeless, worthless abandoned objects were like me. I was working for a living in the day and could only work on art at night and I identified with the buttons. And so I decided to resuscitate these beautiful discarded buttons as works of art. I began to work more and more with buttons and now I make my own buttons using a traditional Asian method. Each button is made of seven layers of paper, then varnished, made just for me.

You also utilize traditional Eastern imagery.

My dad, a writer who passed away more than 10 years ago, and who never got to see my works, had influenced me a lot in this. His paintings were traditional scholar’s subjects of bamboo and plum blossoms, etc. And after I moved to New York, I began to feel the pull of tradition and history, especially embedded in vintage objects. And if I need to categorize my work, then I’m a Post-Modernist; even if the visuals may be figurative and traditional, but the techniques and medium are contemporary, so this isn’t exactly traditional.

When did you decide that you would be an artist?

I never wanted to be anything else! Right from the time that I was drawing Barbie dresses with my father, I knew I would be an artist. Now I have a permanent team of 25 working for me full time, in both Seoul and New York. I have so much to tell after surviving some really challenging personal times. I’m really grateful that I can create the art that I do.

How does Singapore and this collaboration with Hermes make you feel?

Before I arrived, I thought I would only find buildings here and I was surprised to find so much greenery! There’s also this combination of old and new, the organic and the man-made that I find really interesting. The Third Floor-Hermes space was inspiring because the sides consist of glass. This potentially makes the projected image different during daytime and night. Due to the low ceiling, the work also fills up the exhibition space, so the viewer solely focuses on the work and gets overwhelmed by the scale of it.

Becoming Again is on till 31 January 2015.  Time: 10:30 am to 7:30 pm daily. Third Floor - Hermès, 541 Orchard Road, Liat Towers. Free admission

         

  

SPRING 2015 MENSWEAR REVIEW

What a fresh, eye-opening start to another round of fashion shows and all those fashion tarts are off again on their business flights and cars in the carousel of stale parties and Instagram-ops and what-nots. Did you like Sarah Burton's Matisse collage-suitings at Alexander McQueen? I thought they were sharp and jazzy and Japanese (Comme/Junya, anyone?) at the same time, decorative without being bogged down. The entire thing was bracingly "racy", except for a quartet of looks that had the look of those black-and-red lacquer bento boxes: Too literal a reference to Japan.

It's clearly inspired by Henri Matisse's cut-outs (like this Blue Nude from 1952), which fashion types can see at the exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs, at the Tate Modern (on till 7 September) instead of worrying about which samples to wear.

WEEKEND READING LIST: One Thing Leads to Another

Bla and I were both inspired by PH's improving habit of systematically eating at one new cafe a week, reading one new book a week, going to one exhibition, one performance, watching one movie, every week. He'd been doing this since the new year and he has the notebook as proof of his resolve, on each rather dog-eared page are lists and dates, in his poor scribble, of all the new things he's seen and read and watched and (hopefully) absorbed. 

And so last week, one very hot afternoon, Bla and I, to kickstart our very own effort, visited the Asian Civilisations Museum, Empress Place, to view the rather special Secrets of the Fallen Pagoda: Treasures from Famen Temple and the Tang Court (till 4 May).  It's a rather lively and interesting show (see the tortoise container above? It's so cute and a real luxury item don't you think?) and I urge you all to go look at it if you haven't already.

Anyway, that led me to want to learn more about Chinese history and this led me to randomly pick up a book, without much thought from a shelf about Chinese history. It was a lucky chance find. I'm now swiftly devouring A Brief History of the Dynasties of China by Bamber Gascoigne (2003). I can't put it down. I'm sure it's not as pedantically academic as it can be, but it's exactly what I need at the moment. You see, the focus is oddly personal and Mr Gascoigne just seems to zoom in on all the sometimes odd details and character that does bring out the flavour of each of the periods he's writing about; It's a quick guided tour of over 2,000 years, and Mr Gascoigne's concerns, are thankfully like mine, heavy on the arts and culture (and the odd fact or two), and less about warcraft and politics. I like that it's quite a subjective focus, and it's beautifully, humourously written. This isn't to say that Mr Gascoigne is without erudition, it's just that he uses his learning to convey his own passions for his subject. Of course this is just an entertaining launch pad for more specific reading. 

I learnt a lot from just one swift reading. For instance, did you know that Marco Polo was only 20 years old when he was made a high official in the court of Kublai Khan? He later waxed lyrical of Kublai Khan's appearance:

"He is of good and fair size, neither too small nor too large, but is of middle size. He is covered with flesh in a beautiful manner, not too fat, nor too lean; he is more than well formed in all parts. He has his face white and partly shining red like the colour of a beautiful rose, which makes him look very pleasing; and he has the eyes black and beautiful; and the nose very beautiful, well made and well set on the face."  

Isn't this a marvellous detail to highlight? I was simply entranced that this 20 year old Venetian boy is studying this great Mongolian emperor as if he were some model come for a casting! I would never have thought that the thing that struck one about Kublai Khan (above left) would be his beautiful black eyes. Highly recommended.

GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL REVIEW: 5 POINTS TO NOTE BEFORE CHECK IN

 1. The Grand Budapest Hotel, identifies Stefan Zweig, an Austrian novelist, as an inspiration (a contemporary of E.M. Forster from the early half of the 20th century). It uses a Zweig-like author as one of its three framing devices, which left me wondering if this was necessary - or just another cute style flourish in a movie composed entirely of cute style flourishes. Form is function in this (writer-director) Wes Anderson film. What is this manically-paced movie about? It is all about style, if it is about anything at all. 

2. It's a meringue of a movie, profoundly sweet and pretty, like one of those confections from the confectionery Mendl's in the movie. It's a heist and a caper, it's a whodunit too, with a body in the library, a butler (in this instance the protagonist, the pompous, mannered and perfumed grand concierge Gustave H, brought to life by Ralph Fiennes in a comic, sympathetic and droll performance), a missing painting, a jail break, a disgruntled heir, a gothic palace, and a guest-list of cameos. The whole thing is finely art directed and exactingly styled, reminding me of nothing so much as one of those big production Tim Walker fashion spreads.

3. Luckily the rather self-conscious thing is enlivened by wonderful little pieces of acting by the ensemble of cameos. These are studded like brandied cherries in an all-cream wedding cake, densely sweet on sweet, with a bit of tartness. We see them all through the extraordinary pragmatic eyes of Zero, the Indian lobby boy (Tony Revolori): I was riveted by a sequence where a chain link of grand concierges of the crossed keys make telephone calls. Tilda Swinton is amazing and memorable (she looks like amazingly like Dame Vivien Westwood here); Adrien Brody adds a darkly sleazy note 

(always!); Jeff Goldblum is surprisingly good (because 

almost unrecognisable, I suspect); Willem Dafoe is really 

rather funny as the ruthless roughneck; Edward Norton is a 

handsome policeman: there are many others including 

Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Jude Law, Owen Wilson, Jason 

Schwartzman, etc. They are uniformly eccentric and 

wonderfully good.  

4. For all its polish and distancing nostalgic style, this work 

still feels human. It has a warmth and heart because it is also 

about rather real human frailties and heroic qualities.

I think also that it is made with great passion and that does translate onto the screen.

5. Lush visuals aside, the movie suffers from a rather abrupt ending (not that it's a short movie). The various threads seem to be knitting themselves into a bigger picture than it really is. As it is, the movie seems to be a tribute to "CUTE" and "CHARM" and that's sufficient I suppose in these rather dark and charmless times.

Naked Men Exhibition Causes a Reaction

If you've always suspected that the nude male form is a work of art, you're more unique than you think. Vast swathes of the world are still afraid of the nude male body - which seems rather strange given social media and fashion mags which proliferate with such images.

Elmgreen & Dragset, Shepherd Boy (Tank Top), (2009)

The prestigious Leopold Museum in Vienna has sparked controversy with Naked Men, an exhibition on the theme of... naked men. Posters advertising the show around Vienna have been covered up with red gaffer tape and some have been removed altogether.

The show includes works spanning the period from the Enlightenment until the present, supplemented by important reference works from ancient Egypt, Greek vase paintings and works from the Renaissance. In other words, nothing that you won't immediately see once you log onto the internet. Beginning with Ancient Greece, the exhibition addresses the depiction of men through the ages. Another focus is on the nude self-portraits of the Expressionists Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl as well as the change in the perception of naked men after 1945. On display are works by Albrecht Dürer, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Rodin, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Giovanni Giacometti, Egon Schiele, Maria Lassnig, Andy Warhol, Alfred Hrdlicka, Günter Brus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Heimo Zobernig and others.At the turn of the century, Klimt believed that nakedness and truth coincided and Egon Schiele began to make his own body the object of his paintings. Expressionism brought with it a radical examination of the self, which saw the artists exposing themselves both physically and existentially and exploring the use of their own nudity.


The exhibition unites examples of many different genres and is on until January 2013.

HE SAID, SHE SAID

"Heaven? Who needs it? I want 20 more years on earth. That's my heaven." - Ellsworth Kelly

Humble Moths and Flies

By artist John Dilnot who uses clipped illustrations of birds and months he to create dioramas within wooden boxes. Dilnot frequently lines the interiors with antique maps and arranges the birds in small flocks, setting them on perpetual cartographic journies.

Weekend Reading List: On a Plane

I read about La Bella Principessa on the plane in the National Geographic, and it interested me more than anything I've read in a long time. This purported 'lost' drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, in ink and coloured chalks on a sheet of vellum measuring only 330mmx39mm (it was reproduced in actual size in the magazine over a spread, like a centerfold), is a controversial find. Its origins and authenticity continue to be debated over by experts. The drawing is on a sheet of vellum which carbon-14 tests date to between 1440 and 1650, which coincides with the years in which da Vinci was working. The direction of the hatching shows that the artist was left-handed, as was Leonardo. The Renaissance-style garment is said to be accurately rendered, and is purportedly the portrait of Bianca Sforza, the teenage daughter of the Duke of Milan.The Portrait of Isabella d'Este (below), a chalk drawing on paper by Leonardo da Vinci, is the only profile drawn by the master.Reading the story made me think of my painting classes at NAFA. Our teacher Fern made us paint oils of radishes in claypots, which is quite different from sketching a doomed teenage bride in an Italian court I suppose, but still. Rembering those days reminded me of this passage from Brideshead Revisited, one of my favourite scenes:"One day in a cupboard we found a large japanned-tin box of oil-paints still in workable condition.
‘Mummy bought them a year or two ago. Someone told her that you could only appreciate the beauty of the world by trying to paint it. We laughed at her a great deal about it. She couldn’t draw at all, and however bright, the colour were in the tubes, by the time mummy had mixed them up, they came out a kind of khaki. Various dry, muddy smears on the palette confirmed this statement. ‘Cordelia was- always made to wash the brushes. In the end we all protested and made mummy stop.’"
And so Charles Ryder began to paint. I imagined the japanned-tin looked like this.

Horns and Heads

Eiko Ishioka's headdresses for the movie The Fall.

Weekend Reading List

Isn't this a nice cover? It's designed by Megan Wilson and pictures a detail of a dress from the V&A. On the subject of reading, I'm still struggling with P D James's (91) Death Comes to Pemberly - it's been three weeks since I bought the book in a swoop of joy (a cross of Pride and Prejudice with a crime thriller), but oh dear, it's so ploddingly dull. I'm puzzled by this book's glowing reviews. This is hardly Austen's style - there's no irony, no wit and no sparkle. Poor Elizabeth Bennet has lost all her spirit.

Pattern