Strange Plastic Day

I stumbled upon these pictures in the Art section of the New York Times' photo galleries. They're creepy and cold and fantastic. Apparently one of the largest mannequin manufacturers, Lifestyle Forms and Display, is in Brooklyn -- a whole factory of people spending their days creating fake bodies from wood, plastic and wax. What a strange strange world this is, ours.

Edgar Degas "Horses" c. 1882

I adore this. I have a print of it in my room.

Transitory Art and Fashion in Motion: The Physical Emotion of Rodin and Balmain

Auguste Rodin, perhaps the most prolific modern French sculptor, was a master of emotional form. He had an unmatched ability  to convey anguish, sensuality, and the tire of existence with chipped and scathed stone and cast metals. Rodin understood the weight of our bones, the tension of our muscles, and the movement of our bodies to be the most powerful expression of our love and our pain. 

Taking influence from painters before him, Rodin used texture and figure, replacing the Impressionists' color and shadow, to sculpt the transitory nature of ourselves. Man Walking is a momentary study of motion and gravity; of the shifting of weight; of the progression of ourselves as our bodies inhabitant.

It is without hesitation that we can look at fashion as exploring the transitory nature of ourselves and our bodes as well. (Which isn't to automatically conclude that fashion designers and Rodin have similar intent, vision, or understanding.) 

The Fall 2009 Balmain collection has given to us an undeniable contrast of structure and fluidity. Much like the texture and form of Man Walking, the heavy, rigid shoulder and ever-moving silhouette below the waist seen on the Balmain runways at fashion week imply the transitional, unresting nature of our bodies as we move through time and space. In both, it's difficult, if not impossible, to separate the passage of the physical and the evolution of the emotional. 

Rodin and Balmain force us to consider -- where does muscle tension end and stress begin? Is there a difference between feeling down and feeling the pull of gravity? How can we distinguish the weight of ourselves from the weight of our emotions? And perhaps most importantly, does it matter?

In Early Summer

Things fall slower at three a.m., of this I am quite certain. When the air is cool and the sky is stuck between getting darker and getting lighter, an aged kitchen chair leaping from a second story window into the street falls gracefully, quietly, slowly -- fracturing and splintering into a million exquisite pieces, each different from the other.

Tucked neatly underneath the the window from whence the chair flew, five sit on the front porch of the house. Stories and sly eyes and smoke between us, we are a collective prime number in the early hours of the city. The street wanderer plays guitar -- a piece of broken pipe sliding through the blues of his Georgia soul. He's not good and it's not beautiful, but that's okay.  

Our ribs and voices melt into one another, colliding and collapsing into something comfortable. The porch is our whole world. Our everything, ourselves. The quiet of the night protects us from the rising sun and saves us from the close-drawing day.

It's time to sleep and find sweet dreams when we get there.  

The Only Question That Matters

I saw this written on the T.

Spring

Just some pretty things in the city, love. 

Bon Iver, my darling, Bon Iver

This is my heart and my head melted and seeping into parchment and poetry. With a kind of vulnerable, familiar melancholy that's meant to be a close friend - that kind of silent friend where we needn't say anything because everything worth saying has already been said. And loudly, at that.  

(this one's for my near and dear friend Kate and her smoke-and-music perfect porch and the summer evenings we will spend there)

Chanel No. 5 with Audrey Tautou. Directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet

This is beautiful and brilliant and perfect. Again, Chanel has crafted something of innate grace and class that is, without question, unmatched. Coco would be so proud.