Falling in love again

On Saturday my hands stopped shaking for a while, thanks to sleep, food that stayed down, and yes, drugs, so I was able to try a new paintbrush I’d ordered.

Painting on a very small scale has distinct challenges, particularly when the surface is irregular. Generally detail work is all about pointing: the ability of a brush’s bristles to come to a smoothly tapered sharp end when wet. Kolinsky, squirrel, goat hair… high-grade soft natural bristles, expertly trimmed, make the best points and hold a proportionately large amount of paint. The problem is springback; I need a precise point, but I also need it to have some body, some bounce, in order to “draw” in different directions without constantly rotating the piece, and super-soft bristles won’t do. Synthetic fibers are better-suited, but even ones designed for miniature painting haven’t made me happy so far. They lose point quickly, split or curl or develop stray hairs, and I have a very, very light touch with a brush. Unbelievably frustrating, working around your tools.

Then, this weekend, the Silver Eagles came into my life.

No, not an aerobatic squadron – two little paintbrushes, with points worthy of dancing angel feet and enough spring to slap you in the face and make you want more. I feel as though I’ve been painting with a toilet brush until now… ahhhhhh.

Hello, my little love. Hello, you gorgeous 20/0 sharp round. With you in my hand, I can paint anything.

(Monday) Gearing up for the first session with my alliteratively-named therapist and I can’t stay away from these brushes – I keep running upstairs to do just one more thing, running downstairs to make phone calls, thinking of something else to sketch in, running back upstairs… it’s lurv, all right.

This is how I feel today: I don’t know why

The bitch is BACK.

Maybe it was the successful Christmas pudding (more on that later).

Maybe it was the continued outpouring (inpouring?) of lurv and support from my grrls and my dollfriends and my Scrogues and everyone.

Maybe I’m just sick of my morbid, joy-sucking self.

Or maybe… it was this:

Costume links: garment exhibits and collections

It occurs to me that I have all these bookmarks, and that knowledge is a wonderful thing to share.

Primary sources: these would be photographs of extant garments, including accessories and sometimes textiles, in exhibits and personal collections. Technically I suppose they’re secondary, but not everyone can get to the V&A or the Met on a whim. Links are current when posted: online exhibitions are frequently taken down without warning, so caveat browser, I suppose.

Bissonnette on Costume

Anne Bissonnette, curator of the fashion and textile collections at Kent State Museum and a very nice person, showcases a diverse assortment organized by period and type of garment. Her commentary is clear and detailed; I’ve linked to her own page, but be sure to check out the museum home page.

National Museum of American History

Garments from 1770 to 1992, mediocre photography but great construction details in the descriptions. This is a direct link to the women’s dress collection; go here for a searchable database of the majority of the museum’s collection and a look at the current exhibitions.

Karen Augusta Antique Lace and Fashion

C. A. Whitaker Auctions (Karen Augusta’s partner; look here for auction catalogs and additional photos)

One of the important names in antique clothing and textile collecting. After lusting over the items for sale, go to the Museum Archive and tear your hair out in jealousy and impotent desire. (I wouldn’t sell my grandmother for the 1884 wedding gown, but I’d very likely sell yours…) Multiple photos from every angle, inside and out, highly informed commentary. Then go to her Links page, and get me to bed a little earlier tonight. These are all the best commercial, museum, and educational resources, including the V&A, the Met, FIT, and the Bath Museum of Costume.

Tomorrow, I’ll post some links to my favorite online art galleries and ephemera collections.

A bit more on Tissot

He covers my all-time favorite costume period – well, my latest all-time favorite; commonly called “Natural Form,” it was a hiatus between First Bustle and Second Bustle (the truly hideous one) from about 1876-1882. I love the way you can see the same dress trimmed in different ways and the same models in different settings; plus, his brushwork is light-handed but strong, and he loved his Kathleen very, very much… after she died, he painted only religious subjects.

He’s often dismissed as a “society painter,” whatever that means to assorted critics, but I don’t care. I want to see the details of fabric, the difference in sheen and drape among watered silk and twill and taffeta, the effect of a new set of ribbons on a plain muslin dress, the posture and poses adapted to the exigencies of costume. Yes, it’s pretty. Yes, I just love dress and fashion history. But more than anything, I love an accurate depiction of clothing because it is the record of hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours of handiwork by utterly forgotten women. I can look at an issue of La Mode Illustreé from 1879, and then find contemporary portraiture from, say, the East Coast of the United States, London, and Germany. Not only can I compare the interpretations of the mode according to wealth and status, I can find regional touches as well: the floral embroidery on an Austrian chemise that hearkens back to the Tyrol, the English devotion to understatement as an expression of elite solidarity, the joyous extravagance of the first American millionaires becoming more subdued as their descendants become more cosmopolitan. Every nuance, every frill and tuck, every trend – touched and built by human hands and human imagination. Whether or not Tissot considered these aspects, he certainly appreciated the intended effect, and recorded it with love and skill.

People make clothes, and sometimes clothes can make people, and sometimes people re-make themselves to suit the clothes and the life they long for. Fashion is masking and social standing and personal fable and art and craft and industry and avocation and technology and instinct.

And millinery? A stretch of the human imagination toward the divine laughter of angels… okay, I just love hats. My God, how I love hats.

Osun: Yoruban Goddess of Love

“When she possesses her followers she dances, flirts and then weeps – because no one can love her enough, and the world is not as beautiful as she knows it could be.”

Oh. That strikes a chord.

The Orisha, Oshun

Linda Falorio 1994

I love this.

It’s from Scary Go Round – Brian showed it to me one day. I’m not a regular reader, but I so wish this came on a t-shirt.

What NOT to get me for Christmas

You know, I’m an ex-artsy type. I’m fine with “it’s art if I say it is.” Dada makes me smile. Abstract Expressionism kind of glides by me, but that’s okay. Meat sculpture and Modern Primitives? Whatever gets your expressive rocks off.

And in turn, I reserve the right to call “asshattery” when I see it. So here is an exquisitely crafted piece of art whose components supported the continued enslavement of thousands of mine workers and propped up a bloated amoral monopoly called DeBeers; and whose selling price could have educated and fed a small town for twenty years.

Plus it’s a butt-ugly waste of lots of shiny sparkly pretties.

$100 million dollars? Damien Hirst, my asshat is off to you.

Recently Discovered: Portraits of Our Heroines?

Only James Tissot knew for sure, but look:

Who could this be but Lorelei?

Polly and Stacia?

And Anna, showing a bit too much ankle?

It almost has to be true.

A little Waterhouse to soothe the soul…

I would love the Lady even more if she hadn’t had to die at the end. Thanks a lot, Alfred.