Cocktail

"Cocktail" Gerald Murphy (1927)

Tonight I attended an after hours event at the Whitney Museum. While I did check out the new exhibits, I probably enjoyed the gallery with selections from the Whitney’s permanent collection the most. In one section among works by Edward Hopper, Man Ray, and Joseph Cornell is the painting “Cocktail” by Gerald Murphy (1927).

During the 1920s, Americans Gerald and Sara Murphy lived a charmed life on the French Riviera. Cultured and stylish, they swam, sunbathed, danced, and dined with their circle of friends who included the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Picasso. It was also the decade that saw an artistic outpouring from Gerald who produced 14 paintings in the Cubist-style, which were well received. Tragedy struck the Murphys in 1929 when their son, Patrick, became ill with tuberculosis; Patrick and his brother, Baoth, would both die a few years later. Gerald never painted again.

Today, only eight of his paintings are known to still exist including “Cocktail.” It is a perfect painting for the Jazz Age. Titled after what one drank in a speakeasy, it features a martini glass and cocktail shaker along with a corkscrew and an all-important lemon for a twist. There’s also a large box of cigars. Devoted to his family, Gerald included five cigars to represent him and his family members. The collection of items, lined up in an orderly fashion, is modern and sophisticated, just like its painter. 

Bronia

Bronia and Tylia Perlmutter (1922)

On my shelves are a fair amount of books about the Lost Generation and one that I return to again and again is Billy Klüver and Julie Martin’s Kiki’s Paris. It’s filled with loads of stories and wonderful images that I can spend hours poring over.

This photo of Bronia and Tylia Perlmutter is one of my favourites in the book. Bronia, the younger sister, demurely averts her eyes while elder sister Tylia stares almost insolently at the camera, holding a boudoir doll in her hand. It is the seemingly shy Bronia who draws our attention. What thoughts are going on behind those downcast eyes?

There is not a lot of information about Bronia but I discovered that the sisters were Polish Jews raised in the Netherlands who came to Paris in 1922 when Tylia was 18 and Bronia 16. They both found work modelling for various artists in Montparnasse. Bronia was particularly popular with Nils Dardel, Foujita, and Moïse Kisling (she would often act as hostess for Kisling at luncheons he hosted). She also modelled clothes for designers Paul Poiret and Nicole Grolt that she would wear out at night.

"Young Girl Depicting Bronia Perlmutter" Nils Dardel (1925)

Bronia and Tylia made appearances in the works of Lost Generation writers as well. Djuna Barnes and Robert McAlmon wrote about them, as did Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast where they are referred to simply as the two models. Hemingway describes Bronia as “beautifully built with a falsely fragile depravity.”

It's not surprising that artists wanted to capture her beauty. Bronia was lovely in an ethereal way with dark hair and large, blue-grey eyes. She liked to dance and one evening in 1923 at Le Boeuf sur le Toit she met the young writer Raymond Radiguet who danced with her and soon declared that he planned to marry her. A jealous Jean Cocteau became angry and, according to Bronia, threatened to have Bronia and her sister deported. The young couple hid out at the Hôtel Foyot to avoid Cocteau. But Radiguet became ill and died from typhoid fever that year at the age of 20.

In addition to modelling, Bronia also did a little acting. For Galerie des Monstres (1924) director Jacque Catelain gathered Montparnasse locals to star in the film; Bronia appears as a dancing doll and Tylia as a juggler. The film also has appearances by Kiki and a young Lois Moran.

Bronia Perlmutter. Photo: Berenice Abbott.

In December of 1924 Bronia and Tylia were invited by Francis Picabia to attend a performance of the Dadaist ballet Relâche, which included a screening of a short film, Entr'acte, at intermission. Bronia was introduced to the film’s director, René Clair, after the show. Later that same month Picabia asked Bronia to participate in a production, Ciné Sketch, that he and Clair were putting on after the ballet on New Year’s Eve. Bronia agreed, and she and Marcel Duchamp appeared nude—Duchamp did have a strategically placed fig leaf—in a living tabloid of Lucas Cranach’s Adam and Eve, which Man Ray photographed. 

A bit part in Clair’s film Le Voyage Imaginaire (1926) followed. The two fell in love and were married in 1926. They had one son, Jean-François, who was born in 1927. Bronia gave up modelling to devote herself to Clair, and they would remain married until Clair’s death in 1981.

I wondered what had become of Bronia. Then one day I was watching the Criterion Collection release of Clair’s À Nous la Liberté (1931) and there on the DVD extras was an interview from 1998 with an elderly Bronia who spoke about her early life and her husband. She was now a grand old Parisian lady but when she turned her head a certain way or flashed those mysterious eyes you could see the young girl in the photo from all those years ago.

Happy Birthday Scott!

Today is the birthday of one my favourite writers—F. Scott Fitzgerald. Born on September 24, 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, he is one of the great American writers of the 20th century. The man who often glorified the flapper in his work would, along with his wife Zelda, come to symbolize the 1920s—the era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.”

After dropping out of Princeton and serving in the Army, he published his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), at the age of 24 and became an overnight success. Four more novels followed as well as countless short stories in which he chronicled the dreams and downfalls of his generation. He once said, “Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.” With the character of Jay Gatsy in The Great Gatsby (1925) he created not only the ultimate American hero but a brilliant, tragic masterpiece. 

It is often remarked that his writing appears effortless and yet he was a serious artist who worked hard to infuse his stories with a rhythm and tone that is both beautiful and uniquely Fitzgerald. 

In her poem “The Flapper,” Dorothy Parker wrote that the flapper “may render thanks to God and Scott Fitzgerald.” In fact, we should all render thanks to Fitzgerald for the amazing collection of work that he gave us. So thank you Scott and happy birthday. 

Meet the Steins

Left to right: Leo Stein, Allan Stein, Gertrude Stein, Theresa Ehrman, Sarah Stein, and Michael Stein. Photo: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The other day I visited 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. I didn't really. But it felt like I did when I went to the Met to see “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde.” Chronicling the art collecting of the Stein siblings—Leo, Gertrude, Michael and his wife Sarah—the exhibit explores how their patronage of avant-garde painters, particularly Picasso and Matisse, and their famed Saturday salons introduced scores of people to these artists for the first time and had a major impact on modern art.

Although associated with Paris, the Steins were Americans from Oakland, California. They were well-off but not rich; their income was derived from real estate and streetcar investments their father had made. After dropping out of Harvard, Leo moved to Paris in 1903. Gertrude followed that fall while Michael along with his wife, Sarah, and their son, Allan, arrived the following year.

"Woman With a Hat" Henri Matisse (1905)

In 1904 when Michael informed his brother and sister that they each had received $1,600 from the family business, Leo and Gertrude decided to pool their money and buy art, purchasing small works by Cézanne, Gauguin, and Renoir. Unable to afford the masters, Leo decided to focus on new artists. The following year he purchased two works by a little known Spanish painter named Pablo Picasso. A few months later, he paid $100 ($100!) for “Woman with a Hat” by another unknown artist named Henri Matisse (Leo referred to the painting as “the nastiest smear of paint”).

Michael and Sarah, who began collecting as well, were introduced to Matisse, and they became good friends and staunch supporters of the artist with Sarah even taking lessons from him. Soon the walls of Michael and Sarah’s flat at 58 rue Madame were filled with the artist’s work, probably the greatest collection of Matisse at the time.

As the siblings continued to buy, news of their collecting spread and the Steins found themselves inundated with requests to view the paintings. So Leo and Gertrude, who shared a flat and atelier at 27 rue de Fleurus, and Michael and Sarah, began to host Saturday salons, opening their homes to anyone with a reference. For many of the visitors who flocked to these gatherings, it was the only place where they could view these bold new works of art. Some visitors came just to criticize while others were inspired by what they saw. 

"The Bay of Nice" Henri Matisse (1916)

In 1913 Leo moved to his own flat, dividing the collection between him and Gertrude (Leo took the Renoirs, Gertrude the Picassos). Along with her companion, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude would continue to live at rue de Fleurus for the next 25 years. There she held court, giving her opinion on various topics. By the 1920s, with Gertrude focused on her writing, more writers began calling, including Ernest Hemingway (Gertrude acted as mentor to the young writer and is often credited with coining the phrase “the Lost Generation”). Yet her collection was still a draw for her visitors, and Gertrude continued to add to it, including works by Picasso until the artist who she had been an early champion of became too expensive for her.

Two hundred paintings, drawings, and other items once owned by the Stein siblings are on display in the exhibit, which is divided into sections highlighting each sibling’s contribution. The rue de Fleurus atelier is even replicated. In a space the same size as the atelier (460 square feet), various photographs that were taken over the years to document the collection are projected onto the walls, allowing one to see how the space changed as paintings were added and taken away. This was one of my favourite parts of the exhibit; I stood there for quite a while, imagining what it must have been like to be in that room and wishing once again that I could have a Midnight in Paris moment.

"Gertrude Stein" Pablo Picasso (1905-1906)

I must confess I have never been a big Gertrude Stein fan. Much of her writing is over hyped and her larger-than-life ego hard to take at times. Yet there are some things I do like—her libretto for the opera Four Saints in Three Acts (which is included at the end of the exhibit), the story that she was hurt that Matisse never asked her to sit for him (I like to believe this was one case where her ego wasn’t involved), her later mentoring of young writers, and her Saturday salons, which allowed such brilliant minds to come together. And I do like Picasso's portrait of her. With signs of the cubism that was to come, there is a melding of the traditional with the new in the painting that is so fitting of Gertrude.

While I was most familiar with Gertrude, I found myself drawn to the sections on Michael and Sarah because I knew so little about them. Michael is often overshadowed by Gertrude and Leo; he was known as the sensible Stein (he made sure the family’s business interests were taken care of as well as his siblings). Yet Michael and Sarah’s impact on modern art is just as important as Leo and Gertrude’s. As early as 1906, on a trip to San Francisco to check out damages to their properties from the Great Earthquake, the couple brought some works of Matisse back with them, the first time he was seen outside of Europe (people were reportedly shocked). And when the couple returned to California for good in 1935, their collection became the basis for Matisse's first solo show on the West Coast, influencing a new generation of artists.

By the end of the 1930s Gertrude and Alice had left 27 rue de Fleurus (the lease hadn't been renewed by the landlord), Leo was living in Italy, Sarah was in California, and Michael was dead. Much of their collections had been broken up or sold. This exhibit brings it all back together.

“The Steins Collect” is at the Met through June 3, 2012. For more information, visit their website here.

European Vacation: Paris

Paris—one of my favourite cities in the world. During my recent vacation, we left Belgium and drove to Paris where we spent a couple of days exploring the City of Lights.

We stayed in the Marais at the Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc (website here), which is perfectly situated for a base camp. Except for one Metro ride we walked everywhere, and the Marais was in the middle of everything. The neighbourhood is also filled with loads of good shops and food, and we took advantage of both. 

Best falafel ever.

We had what must be the best falafel I’ve ever eaten at L’As du Fallafel, which is located on rue des Rosiers, the main thoroughfare of the historic Jewish quarter.

Repetto!

As for shopping, we went into all types of stores including the tiny Au Petit Bonheur la Chance, filled with everything vintage from latte bowls to metal letters, À Chacun son Image, where you can purchase wonderful old black and white photographs of anonymous Parisians (I could have stayed there for hours), and Repetto whose rainbow circle of ballets had my heart skipping a beat but I somehow resisted making a purchase (the reminder of how many pairs of ballets I already own helped).

Notre Dame

Leaving the Marais, we walked over to Île Saint-Louis (or Ice Cream Island as we dubbed it; everyone seemed to have a cone in their hand) and followed along the Seine with Notre Dame looming in the distance. Heading over to the 5th arrondissement we stopped by Shakespeare and Company where I once slept upstairs many, many years ago on my first visit to Paris. The place had been on my mind recently with the passing in December of its owner, George Whitman, at the age of 98. He was a truly unique individual who had been kind to me when I stayed there (he made me dinner one night and let me feed his cat).

Saint-Étienne-du-Mont

In grad school my field of study was the Lost Generation and so I cannot help but see Paris through 1920s eyes. For that reason, we headed over to the rue de l'Odéon to see the site of the original Shakespeare and Company run by Sylvia Beach who was the first to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 and had dinner at Les Deux Magots where I purchased a small cendrier (ashtray) to take home before walking up the hill to the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, the church featured in Midnight in Paris (alas no car stopped to pick us up and take us to a party with Hemingway).

Montmartre Cemetery

Sacré-Cœur Basilica

The next day we walked to Montmartre, stopping on the way to have breakfast at Rose Bakery before tackling the walk up to Sacré-Cœur. We visited Montmartre Cemetery and wandered along the streets, picking out apartment buildings where we would like to live (a girl can dream) and peaked into some small gardens. Everything was so charming. Until you got up to the church and then it was tourist chaos but still, Sacré-Cœur is beautiful and the view is amazing even on a smoggy day.

We ended our visit with a boat ride on the Seine (boats seemed to be a theme of this trip), which I had never done before. It was a nice way to relax after walking all day and to see the city from a different angle.

No matter how many times I visit Paris, I always find it fascinating. I guess it's the details—rooftops, flowers in a bucket, bookstands on the quay, a bright red car, a partial face that looks like Charlie Chaplin peeping out from a wall. All these small parts that together make Paris the city it is.

Two days later I was on a plane back to New York. I can't wait to return.

Photos by Michele.

Midnight in Paris

Strolling the streets of 1920s Paris in Midnight in Paris.

Confession. I waited a long time to see Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris because I was apprehensive about the depiction of the artists of the Lost Generation. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been enamored with the 1920s and the Lost Generation. So much so that I went to graduate school to study the literature (I wrote about Hemingway). And while I’m a fan of Woody Allen’s and knew he was fond of the Lost Generation I was still a bit wary. But after seeing the film I’m happy to report that Allen did not disappoint.

Midnight in Paris is the story of Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter who is visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. While the others don’t seem to particularly care that they're in Paris, Gil is simply enchanted. Trying to write a novel that will hopefully get him out of the screenwriting game, he looks for inspiration in the city where his favourite writers once lived. One night he wanders off alone, slightly drunk, and gets lost. At midnight, a vintage Peugeot pulls up with a group of revelers dressed in 1920s clothing who invite Gil to come with them to a party. He accepts and is whisked off to a house where a familiar looking man is at the piano singing a Cole Porter song. Gil is then introduced to a couple named Scott and Zelda. Wait a minute. What?

 Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the film.

Turns out Gil’s nostalgia for the past has somehow brought him back in time to his favourite era where he meets and has discussions with the writers he admires. Later he and Adriana (Marion Cotillard), the beautiful mistress of Picasso who Gil falls for, travel even further back in time to her favourite era—the Belle Époque. Allen’s message seems to be that everyone always thinks that the golden age is in the past and never the present.

Allen also asks you to suspend your disbelief. Gil appears to time travel and doesn't question it, and Allen asks the audience to do the same. Explanations on how it all physically happens are not forthcoming and it doesn’t really matter because it’s all so much damn fun. Oh to be able to visit Paris in the 1920s.

Hemingway gives some advice.

As for the writers and artists of the Lost Generation? For the most part, the film does a bang up job. There were a couple of moments when Hemingway (Corey Stoll) threatened to cross over into parody (the actor by the way looked perfect) and Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill) looked too young but F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston who also looked perfect), Dali (a brilliant cameo by Adrian Brody), and Gertrude Stein (who I’ve always disliked but Kathy Bates did a fine job nonetheless) were great. I also love how Allen included real places like Chez Bricktop and references that were like inside jokes for fans of the Lost Generation (Gil to T.S. Eliot: “Where I come from, we measure out our lives in Coke spoons”).

Gil and Inez visit Givenry.

As for the others, Wilson was better than I thought he would be as the wide-eyed Gil, Rachel McAdams was fine as the materialistic Inez given that there wasn’t a whole lot to work with, and Michael Sheen as Inez’s college friend played the pompous ass to perfection. And then there’s Marion Cotillard who is lovely and sad and just so good. I think she’s turning out to be a favourite actress of mine. And don't forget the costumes. Sigh. If only we could all dress that way. 

Marion Cotillard as Adriana.

But, of course the real star of the film is Paris itself, the greatest inspiration of all, which always seems wonderful no matter what the time period.

Photos by Roger Arpajou/Sony Pictures Classics.

Sunning One's Pearls

Sara Murphy and pearls, Antibes, 1924.

"Her bathing suit was pulled off her shoulders and her back, a ruddy orange brown set off by a string of creamy pearls, shone in the sun."—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sara Murphy was a friend and muse to many of the artists of the Lost Generation. In 1923 she and husband Gerald Murphy purchased a house in Cap d'Antibes in the South of France, which they named Villa America. There the Murphys threw parties and played host to their friends, including Fitzgerald, Picasso, Hemingway, and Mrs. Parker, turning the quiet town into a fashionable summer resort. Days were spent at the beach, where the Murphys and their guests swam and sunbathed (a rather new concept). Sara was known to wear her famous rope of pearls on the beach, always draped down her back so as to not spoil her tan in the front. She claimed the sun was good for the pearls. I think Sara was on to something and plan to do the same next time I'm at the beach.