Category: Culture

Art, music, literature and thespianism

Boldini’s Portraits

Fine Art

I may have mentioned before that one of my favorite artists, Giovanni Boldini, made a name for himself as a portrait artist during the late 1800s and early 20th century.  But I didn’t feature too many of those portraits — which oversight I’m now going to rectify.

Here’s La Contessa Speranza:

…Madame E.L. Doyen:

…Madame Juillard:

…Madame Veil-Picard:

…Mrs. Howard Johnston:

…Lina Bilitis (with her two Pekinese):

…and one of his favorite subjects, La marchesa Luisa Casati:

All these, and many more can be seen here.  It’s only when you look at portraits done by other artists of the time that you can see how different Boldini was, and why he was one of the most popular.  Here’s one (Florence Chambres) that he himself painted in about 1862, before he developed his signature style:

I think you get my point.

But just in case you were getting sick of all those society dames, here’s another of my non-portrait Boldini favorites, At The Paris Opera:

This one was painted sometime during the late 1880s, as I recall, and just looking at it makes me want to go back in time to the fin-de-siècle period.  What a riot.

10 Best / Worst

Movies

Here’s a list of movies I can get behind:

10 Brilliant British War Films That Completely Tanked
(That Are Now Classics)

I’ve seen all but one or two (I have got to watch Colonel Blimp at some point in the near future), and all I can do is offer a ringing endorsement.  That they all failed at the box office just reinforces how good they really are.

I have DVD copies of A Bridge Too Far,  Aces High and Charge of the Light Brigade, and having been reminded by the video, I think I need to look at acquiring a couple more — The War Game and Zulu Dawn, especially.

Do ye (y’all) the same.

Big Mermaid

Fine Art

So much for art, then.  It appears that while the doughty Danes had such a good record of resistance against the real Nazis, they’re going to submit to the Feminazis:

A revealing mermaid statue in Denmark is set to be removed after it was deemed ‘a mans hot dream of what a woman should look like’ due to its large breasts.  

The Danish Agency for Palaces and Culture is reportedly taking down the massive 14-tonne Den Store Havfrue (the Big Mermaid) from Dragor Fort after criticism from locals.

Politiken’s art critic, Mathias Kryger, branded the statue ‘ugly and pornographic’, while Sorine Gotfredsen, a priest and journalist, wrote in the newspaper Berlingske: ‘Erecting a statue of a man’s hot dream of what a woman should look like is unlikely to promote many women’s acceptance of their own bodies.’ 

She said it was encouraging to know that many people find the statue ‘vulgar, unpoetic, and undesirable, because we’re suffocating in overbearing bodies in public space’.

So because “many people” find the thing (things?) objectionable, it’s “Bye bye statue”, then?

For those Readers who couldn’t be bothered to follow the link, here are pics of the offending artwork:

And in profile:

Wasn’t sculptured boobage the very origin of the term “statuesque”, anyway?

Stupid Danes.

Oh, and speaking of stupid Danes, here’s what the above-mentioned “art critic” looks like:

…and the priestly journalist:

Go figure, huh?

And to help you banish that foulness from your mind, here’s our own favorite statuesque lovely, Kelly Brook:

…who makes Den Store Havfrue  look positively anemic by comparison.

Not Really The Best

Literature, Movies

Okay, I admit I was caught by the headline to this article:

‘Masterpiece’ period drama based on ‘best book ever written’ is free to stream on Netflix

Ignoring for a moment the inherent inability of Netflix to make a “masterpiece” anything, I was nevertheless curious to see what constituted the “best book ever written”.

Alas, no.  While One Hundred Years of Solitude  isn’t a bad book, it’s nowhere close to being the best book ever written — hell, even in the “magical reality” genre (to which it belongs) John Fowles’s The Magus  has it beaten all ends up — but while One Hundred  may entertain, it’s not going to change your world in the same way, perhaps, that Les Misérables  might.

Feel free to discuss in Comments, or to nominate your own submission for the greatest.  (Oh gawd, here come the Heinlein / Pratchett groupies…)

Smart Move

Culture, Health, Immigration

To many people, this little move would be astonishing, nay even incredible:

France will ban smoking in all outdoor spaces frequented by children, including beaches, parks and bus stops, the country’s health minister said.

The restrictions will involve creating a perimeter outside schools where members of the public will not be able to smoke a cigarette.

“Tobacco must disappear where there are children,” Catherine Vautrin, the health minister, said in an interview with the Ouest-France newspaper.

The freedom to smoke “stops where children’s right to breathe clean air starts”, she said.

The ban on smoking outdoors will come into force on July 1.

As one of many who has had to endure the clouds of smoke from the Gitanes/Gauloises that form a permanent fixture of any French establishment, I first asked myself:  The French?  Of all people, the French?

It’s like asking them to have only one kind of cheese, or banning wine.  C’est incroyable!

But they’re sneaky, the Frogs, as any old doughboy or G.I. will tell you.  Note this little wrinkle:

Café terraces will be excluded from the ban.

So that lifestyle choice — essentially, involving most of the places outside the home where Frogs would be found smoking — can carry on as before.

It’s the “outdoor spaces frequented by children” that’s the kicker.

If anyone loves them a good strong cigarette more than the French, it’s the… Arabs.  And where there are Arabs, you’ll always find hordes of screaming ill-behaved… children.

If you put those two facts together:  I think that this smoking ban is a subversive move to get Arabs to leave France in disgust.