Late 1920s Berlin... noch einmal, bitte!

Art Crush: Christian Schad.


I'm just infatuated with Christian Schad's life, style, painting, and just about everything. To make a very long and complicated and interesting story short - Schad's work traverses several key movements in 20th Century art; Dada, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), and even Photorealism. The most interesting part for me at the moment are the portraits he produced in the interwar period.

Christian Schad, Lotte, 1927 (Berlin)
Sprengel Museum, Hannover

Timeless style: sheer white blouse, black ribbon tie, black blazer, red lips, short hair.

Here's me trying to pull off a similar look: 

 Me, after work...going to hang out with my glamorous friends. 

Christian Schad, Sonja, 1928 (Berlin)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie 

Timeless style: Sheer black tunic, camels. Although, I bet if Sonja were around today - she would wear that tunic as a dress - sans pants. 

Lotte and Sonja are a great example of how confident, stylish, and independent women in Berlin lived at the time. Neither woman was from an upper middle class family  - unlike Mr. Schad whose wealthy lawyer father supported him throughout most of his life. Lotte was a milliner and Sonja was a secretary. Both women, clad with short hair, worked to support themselves but because of their cultural status we mixing with the likes of Mr. Schad and his entourage.


And last but not least, here's a photo of the handsome Mr. Schad himself. *Swoon* ...Could that be our lucky Lotte?

Dapper: Schad and friends in a cafe, Berlin, late 1920s. 

Social issues...

Fall is coming.


The Fall 2012 Louis Vuitton Ad Campaign is here. It's stunning - exploding all over the blog-o-sphere. Although, I first stumbled upon it while flipping through my best friend's September issue of Vogue. 

Fall 2012 Louis Vuitton Ad Campaign via Style by Red

Fall 2012 Louis Vuitton Ad Campaign via Fashion Gone Rogue

Legendary fashion photographer Steven Meisel shot this campaign with models Mackenzie Drazan, Marie Piovesan, Franzsika Mueller, Julia Nobis, Ros Georgiou, Marina Heiden and Elena Bartels. Meisel is beyond clever setting up these images of these beautiful models clad in the finest of luxury. It's no doubt a tongue in cheek ode to Daumier's Third Class Carriage - a beautiful painting of the less fortunate working class on their evening commute. The compositions are strikingly similar as the disparities between the social statuses of the women in each image. 

Honore Daumier, Third Class Carriage, ca. 1862-1964, oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 35 1/2 in. H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Currently on view in Gallery 802.


This painting was made by an artist who was well known for his political caricatures in the Parisian journal Le Charivari, in a time of social and political upheaval in France. Plenty of correlations can be made with the economic status of France at the time and that of the United States. There were few extremely wealthy people with a great deal of power and a lot of working class people with little power and wealth. 

Do you think Steven Meisel is making a statement about our Society? Or is it just Smoke & Mirrors?

XO
M

P.S. - A little known fact: Daumier began his career as a caricaturist who mocked the regime of the French King Louis Philippe. He often drew him as a poire (french word for "pear", slang for "fathead"). Aren't those LV hats huge? 

Louis Philippe by Daumier via L'Historie Par L'Image

Your Sidekick - The Side-Braid

Sometimes in the summer you need to tuck away your hair. It gets really humid and hot - and then you just need it out of your face! Besides, sometimes I take my very adorable The Londoner bike for a ride and I can't be bothered with a wayward fringe. Here's what I do - I basically braid my hair into the side of my head and then pin it all together in the back. You can pin it easily by rolling your hair into a horizontal twist along the bottom of your head. 

Me with a Sharon Moody painting entitled Great Wave (2011)
Rings (from left): Guess, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Aldo, Vintage, Earings: Betsey Johnson
Nails: "Bubblebath" by OPI and "Afterhours" by Urban Outfitters

Dress: Audrey 3 + 1

Sharon Moody, Mjolnir - To Thy Master!, 2011, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches

Sharon Moody has been getting a lot of hype recently. (She's gotten mentions on Beautiful/Decay and Flavorwire  & a myriad of other online publications.) Her paintings of comic books are without a single doubt technically stunning. There's a lot more to them - at least on a theoretical level. The artist gives them a new life with her own interpretation of the storyline - as they are displayed to us, seemingly floating on a wall, beyond their entierity. The storyline is jumbled to us as the artist picks her own view of the comic book to show us. Another important bit of information is her comic books appear to be about a quarter of a centimeter smaller than the original. Ceninno Ceninni once wrote in his 15th Century manuscript, Il libro dell'arte, that the highest form of flattery from one artist to another is to copy an artist's work - but - on a smaller scale so as not to magnify their mistakes. 

xo

m