Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

No Longer

Guy Stuff, Toys

I think I’ve outgrown this kind of thing:

Men who like watches are split into categories. There are those who delight in intricate movements, what writer and watch obsessive Gary Shteyngart once described as ‘a small city of silver and gold gears and wheels, a miniature three-dimensional universe in which everyone is running to catch the next bus’. These men turn their noses up at overly commonplace brands like Rolex, which makes in the region of one million watches per year. Their preferred marques are rare and meticulously hand-crafted by the boutique manufactures of Breguet, Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. A highly collectible Patek Philippe model, the limited-edition Calibre 89 (the world’s most complicated watch, with 33 functions and 1,278 parts) sold at auction in 2004 for more than $5 million.

…and that’s possibly because as I’ve got older and the chances are getting increasingly smaller of winning a lottery that could fund such an obsession, the prospect of being a horologista (what?) as explained in the above article.  (I also detest this linguistic tic of turning words into ur-Spanish derivations, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Also, I have begun to prefer simple things —  a stick shift over a Formula 1-style steering-wheel button gear-shifter, for example — and as far as watches are concerned, this has coincided with finally finding the watch I’m wearing at this very moment, a Tissot Heritage Petite Second manual:

…which happens to satisfy all my needs in that it’s simple, inexpensive, not showy or a “snob” brand, and made in Switzerland rather than in some Asian sweatshop.

A funny thing happened when I first strapped this watch on:  in an instant, I lost almost all desire to own another watch — in fact, since that day I’ve not worn any of my other watches, and even in that lottery dream, the desire to own that Vacheron Constantin or Patek Philippe has almost disappeared.

My distant-#2 favorite watch is also a Tissot:

…but it’s driven by a battery (ugh) and the only reason I like it at all is that it has Roman numerals — that classical background is very difficult to shake off, let me tell you.  I wear it pretty much only when I’m going to do something that may cause damage to what I’m wearing on my wrist, and at about $200 retail (under half the cost of the Heritage), I’m not going to slit my wrists if the thing gets busted.

All that said, I understand the fascination that watches hold for men — it’s almost exclusively male, this watch fetish — just as I understand (only too well) what makes men lust after certain cars, guns, cameras or any of the countless number of gadgets that take our fancy.

And as with all such obsessions, price is seldom a factor unless it’s stupid — stupidity as defined by the individual himself and not the uncomprehending others.

I recently showed a Dino Ferrari with a half-million dollar price tag — which is, as I said at the time, stupid money for a Dino.  On the other hand, I see that Iain Tyrrell is restoring a Dino of similar vintage, and I estimate that the depth of said restoration will cost the Dino’s owner about a hundred thousand dollars — and for him, it’ll be worth every penny.

It wouldn’t be, for me;  but I sure as hell understand why it would be, for him — just as I understand why someone would drop a still-greater amount on a Vacheron Constantin Overseas model, like this one:

Lovely, innit?  If you’re into that kind of thing.

Finally, Autumn

Beauty

Our temperatures here in north Texas will finally (!) be seasonally adjusted this week from Broil to Simmer and finally, Acceptable:


(I left the silly Celsius things there for the benefit of my Furrin Readers)

My laptop’s wallpaper reflects that mood, although fall in Texas is never that pretty:


(right-click to embiggen and save)

I don’t know where that is;  my instincts say New Hampshire because of the granitic boulders, but I’ll be persuaded otherwise.

Silken Drapes

Fine Art

I have always been fascinated, not to say turned on, by the appearance of the female form when loosely covered with soft, diaphanous materials such as silk, satin or linen.  Here’s an example of what I mean, that of a statue of Callipygian Venus, in the Louvre:

The nineteenth-century American sculptor William Wetmore Story specialized in the form, seen here with his Cleopatra Reclining:

…and Semiaramis:

That last pic I took myself when the statue was on display at the Dallas Museum of Art, and I stared at it for ages.

Story, by the way, had this to say about sculpture in general:

Quite so.

Nowadays, of course, such wondrous sights are few and far between, and pretty much confined to photography.  Although there is this lovely picture of Mr. and Mrs. David Bowie:

…wherein even the bony Angela looks quite appealing, most such pictures seem to need backlighting:

…while most (shall we say) are more prurient:

Honestly?  I prefer Story’s sculptures to all of them.

Detail

Real Estate

For the past week or so, this pic has been my wallpaper — and a pretty pic is is, too.

However, only a day ago my eye was drawn to this little detail in the bottom-right corner:

I mean, if you’re going to do that camping thing, there are far uglier places to do it e.g. Newark NJ or Bradford Yorks.  Still, it niggles me for reasons I can’t explain.

In Praise Of The Fish-Bellied

Gratuitous Chick Pics

As a Registered White Person Of Severely Anglo-Saxon Heritage, I have a very pale skin.  When newly born, my hair was actually white-blonde, but later darkened to ash-blonde and then tawny-blonde in my twenties and thirties (and thence to gray, but we all know about that part).  My eyes:  blue.  My skin has remained stubbornly pale — suntanning, in my case, is actually a brief period of ow-ow-ow burn red, followed by (if I’m lucky) a couple days of sorta-tanned, and then it reverts to its habitual color of white.

That’s me;  but what it means is that as a paleface, I have no problem with light-complexioned women — in fact, in most cases I find pale white skin unbearably sexy.  The old (Victorian?) attitude of “pale skin means ladylike, dark skin means farm worker” must somehow have wormed itself into my psyche — I have no idea if this is even possible, but who cares? — because my belle idéal  has always been a pale, even fish-belly-white skin.

Hence of course my adoration of redheads.  Here’s Julianne Moore, for example:

 

(I know she’s an insufferable liberal twerp, but I don’t want to talk politics to her;  my discussions would preferably be more of a Ugandan nature.)

All this came to me when I read this little piece:

Angela Scanlon has revealed that while she’s embraced her glitzy Strictly [Come Dancing] makeover, there’s one show tradition that she won’t be adhering to. The presenter, 39, has revealed she’s drawn the line at having a spray tan during her time on the show after refusing to cover her naturally pale skin.

Angela, who is partnered with pro dancer Carlos Gu, previously admitted it’s taken her 15 years to accept her complexion, sharing the insight during an appearance on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel, where her specialist subject was redheads.

Young Angela has featured on these pages before, so Loyal Readers will know of whom I speak.  Here’s a reminder, for the forgetful / ignorant ones among you:

…and here she is in the aforementioned show:

And for those interested in such things, here are her legs, without fake tan:

I think I may need another Breakfast Gin.  Or a cold shower.

Hidden Depths

Fine Art, Men & Women

I have to admit that while I can appreciate Renaissance art — paintings, I mean, not the sculptures, which I love — I’ve always found the old guys to be a little too much on the Christian thing.  I mean, how many Madonna w/Baby Jesus renderings are there?

Take Agostino Carracci, for example.  Here’s his “Judith As Woman” work, which should make her the idol of ultra-feminists everywhere:

Then there’s the “Last Communion of St. Jerome”, which may have been big news back in the day, but which is not that relevant in today’s world.

Happily, Carracci (Agostino, not his several brothers, sons and cousins — all artists themselves) didn’t just confine himself to religious themes.  Here’s his “Landscape with Bathers”:

…wait, what’s that detail over on the right?

Nekkid bodies?  With no carefully-draped linen (see Jerome, above) to disguise their nekkidness?

Well;  it turns out that ol’ Aggie had a whole ‘nother body of work in the I Modi school, which probably gave people fits. I’m not quite sure how many of the examples below are his — the style varies, and some were printed from his woodcuts — but here are a few:

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