SwimArt - More Synchronicity

We make a killing in the art market.

Back-of-the-book mishmash.  Skipping ahead to kill two birds - the always-anticlimatic b-o-b pages and to get some more art out of the way.  Nearly a quarter of the way through!

Are we going to the beach?  No.  We're going to pretend we're at the beach with our sunlamp and sea-air machine and ridiculously feeble exercise program.  And we're going to start by wearing a Christian Dior silk hat.

The hat is not so great here, but gorgeous on the page. I can't stop looking at it.  The blurbage:
"Eclipsing almost everything - except the fact that this much hat is a lot of fashion - a hat of bright blue silk shantung and a huge white bow.  To wear: not with bathing suits, but in a bathing-suit climate- with, say, a white sliver of a dress for lunch in the sun-country now. "  So why not show it with the white sliver of a dress?

It could be found at Lord & Taylor (still around and on Twitter) and the sadly-departed Joseph Magnin, which would have  had the best Twitter feed of all.  Earrings by Schlumberger of Tiffany. Red Comet lipstick by Germaine Monteil, which is kind of still around, if you count Costco.

Let's talk about some of those "remarkable substitutes" for the beach.

"In terms of good looks gained, tensions lost, and a general rise of euphoria, we know of no more efficient machine than a beach with its irresistible combination of swimming, sun and salt air.  Failing the real thing, however, we're pleased to report that what you can do in the way of duplicating the great beach benefits at home or at a salon is:  extraordinary.  . . . Sun tans, of course, are a cinch to acquire away from the beach- and getting cinchier by the minute."

And it goes on to warn of the hazards of the sun lamp, advising you to start with 30 seconds a day and work your way up to 5 minutes.  Now, if this were written in the style of the present day, some poor Vogue minion would have cooked herself horribly and given us all the gruesome details.

After more words of warning about the sun lamp, we turn to the sea-air fakery.  "Even the famously potent alchemy of the sea air itself is not, it seems, behind the scope of beauty salons.  One fascinating alternate is a treatment called Vapozone, which consists of aerating the skin in a dense mist of ozone and active oxygen.  The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow: clearer, cleaner, plumper-looking skin; a definitely peppier complexion.  Vapozone comes, like dessert, at the end of a full-course facial, is administered by the Charles of the Ritz Salon in New York, and works this way:  After your face and throat have been  properly cleansed and gently massaged with a rich cream, icy witch hazel-soaked pads are applied to the eyes.  At this point, the Vapozone machine - which looks rather like a particular elegant vacuum cleaner attachment, and has been warming up quietly all this time - goes into serious action.  Which is, simply, to deliver at a flick a stream of warmish moist air, and a sensation that a Vogue editor - ah! - who's been through the Vapozone mists describes as floating through the moors. Following this fifteen-minute aeration, a creamy masque to tauten things up; more icy cold cotton pads; a final sloshing of skin-freshener; make-up. . . "

Vapozone is still around!  A quick look around Vogue.com reveals that Cate Blanchett sometimes has an oxygen facial.  Vapozone?  It seems to be a European thing.

And the rest of the blurbage describes some simple Pilates-style exercises that will take you five minutes a day, yet will give you results in two weeks.

Now - cooked, oxidized and almost perspiring, we are ready for that bathing suit!

"Pay-off for the figure that's been swimming steadily for months (possibly via the exercises charted above) - maillot of knitted cotton-and-Orlon in a sunburst of color news: a clear, un-ingenue yellow.  This, by Jantzen; about $17.  At Bonwit Teller; Dayton's; Roos Atkins.  Beach turban: a Wamsutta towel, wrapped at great length.  Red with a clear affinity for the new beach-yellow: Harriet Hubbard Ayer's lipstick news - Red Blaze."

The stores - gone, gone, gone.  Harriet Hubbard Ayer is new to me - but she shouldn't be.  The brand lingers on in Europe.  There is a recent biography . . . we'll come back to this.  The venerable Wamsutta  is still going strong.  And, Jantzen, of course.  This suit looks so uncomfortable. Wearing an enormous towel wrapped around your head won't help.  She looks tense - very un-beachy.


Now, for the art, which I chose before deciding to skip ahead to the bathing suit.  Our art could wear our bathing suit!  That's synchronicity!

"$400 ($3,260) Lynn Chadwick  'Maquette for Female Dancing Figure,' 1958: iron.  By one of England's most spectacular sculptors, winner of the Venice Biennale Sculpture Award in 1956.  Big museums, including London's Tate, own his works.  5 1/2 " x 11".  Seidenberg."

The least expensive maquette sold at auction went for $19,000 - which appears to have done much better than if we had invested that $400 in the stock market ($9,000).

I had to look up "maquette" - it means the model made to scale.  It doesn't mean something you might impale yourself on.

I had, also, to look up Lynn Chadwick.  But I'm not the only one, apparently.  In rummaging around through the Tate website, I came across this:

A poster for a talk - or the book jacket - by the author of a new book about "England's most neglected" post-War sculpture.   Still, our $400 did pretty well.  One of Mr. Chadwick's most famous sculptures:

A very short video shot by Mr. Chadwick's grandson:

Next time:  more fun not in the sun and our first Picasso.