Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

In Praise Of The Unknown Actress – Margaret Nolan

Gratuitous Chick Pics

We take a break today from our regular Sunday programming — that of the study of classically-beautiful women — and pay homage to another group — those women who are neither classic nor even classy, but whose outstanding attributes deserve similar scrutiny.

Such as Brit actress Margaret Nolan:  one of the “fringe” actresses who never made a serious impact on the cinema, but who always found work in movies of little redeeming social value (not that that’s important or anything, when it comes to the movies).  So here’s Margaret:

And in glorious Technicolor:

Nothing much wrong with that, and whole lot right.

Lunch On The Grass

Fine Art

It was a popular theme, for a while:  people having a picnic lunch en plain air, in some park or other.  Here’s (I think) the best-known example of “Dejeuner sur l’herbe”, painted by Edouard Manet:


(all pics can be right-clicked/embiggened)

His similarly named contemporary Claude Monet also did one (albeit less shockingly):

…and Paul Cézanne did two:

  (I’m pretty sure the second was painted during his Drunken Phase, but whatever.)

Here’s Marcel Dyf’s pair:


…although it must be said that Dyf had a thing about barely-pubescent girls, the dirty old sod.

Of course, Picasso had to add his two pesetas:

…while Egon Schiele went off-script completely:

Some American guy followed the trend:


…but he cocked it up completely, i.e. no nudity — I’m frankly surprised that he had wine in the pic.

The theme has continued into the modern era, mostly through photography (here’s Robert Doisneau):

…and in glorious (?) color:

…and even as a party theme:

There’s been some modern art on the topic, of course. Here’s Chinese artist Yue Minjun:


…which made me howl with laughter.  Absolutely brilliant satire.

There was even a French movie entitled “Dejeuner sur l’herbe”.  Here’s a still:

And yes, that was yesterday’s Caption Competition pic.

Stunning Beauty

Toys

Over at Wristwatch_Revival, Marshall gets an old (1960s-era) Omega Constellation working again.  And by the time he’s done…

I have no words.  That tapered dial, the simple numerals… it whispers “elegance” like their newer bling-studded geegaws can’t (no pics:  I don’t even want to put them on the same page as this beauty).

I would wear this watch every night of the week, and most especially if I were eating at a fine restaurant each night with, say, Nigella Lawson.

Am I alone in loving these things so much?

By the way, this is one of Marshall’s earlier shows, where he was still finding his way around the craft.  There are a couple of mishaps, one hilarious.

The Seven Wonders

Good Stuff

Sparked by Idiot Joe Biden’s yammering about the “nine” wonders of the world, I put it to you, O my Readers:

What would YOU consider to be the modern-day Seven Wonders of the World?

Some parameters:

  • no natural stuff e.g the Grand Canyon;  the original Seven were man-made, e.g. Hanging Gardens, Colossus of Rhodes etc., so only man-made stuff should be considered
  • you don’t have to rank them, that’s too difficult not to say irrelevant
  • for the purposes of this exercise, let’s say that “modern” is anything  built or made since 1900
  • longevity is not important;  most of the original Seven Wonders have long since disappeared

In case anyone’s wondering or forgotten, the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were:  the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  Today, we would call them “tourist attractions” — i.e. things worth traveling to see.

However, times have changed, and what with construction and engineering techniques making structures less awe-inspiring a task than before (not to mention fugly, e.g. London’s Shard), let’s not confine ourselves to structures, and include things like the jet engine, penicillin or the Internet — stuff that would make a time-traveling visitor from (say) 1860 go “Whoa!”.

Have at it in Comments.  My own opinions are below the fold, so as not to influence anyone.

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3 Questions That Shouldn’t Need Answering

3 Inexplicable Things, Guy Stuff

Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway.  Here’s an example:

1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history.  Need proof?  See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.

Here’s another one:

2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).


(watch the second video at the link…)

Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):

3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show?  All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects.  To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death.  If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.

The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:

Craftsmanship.

It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is:  guilty as charged.  Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

On life:

“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going?” ― Tennessee Williams

Actually, by that definition, there’s no such a thing as a “present moment”.

Discuss among yourselves.

Afterthought:  I apologize for the unwarranted gravity of this post.  And now, we return to the topic of Salma Hayek’s boobs.