Chappers sans moustache - yow!Today I sojourned off to the Royal Scottish Portrait Gallery to check out the Vanity Fair portrait collection, which was fascinating, beautiful, and more than a little telling. To wit: it covered two periods, from 1910-1930, and from 1980s to the present day. (Vanity Fair was defunct for the period in between - there was a plaque explaining this in the exhibition - but that didn't stop some chap from writing "why didn't you put any fucking photos from the 1930s-1980s up? Fucking cover-up bullshit" in the exhibition comments book. Hmmm)
A sampling of characters photographed in the 1910-30s section:
H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Georgia O'Keefe, Aldous Huxley, Albert Einstein, Eisenhower, Buckminster Fuller, DH Lawrence, Pablo Picasso, Isadora Duncan, Hemingway, James Joyce, Noel Coward, Jean Harlow, Peter Lorre, Babe Ruth, Bojangles, Frida Kahlo, Gertrude Stein.
A sampling of characters photographed in the 1980s:
Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Miles Davis, Nancy Reagan, Arthur Miller, Mapplethorpe, Robert Mitchum.
A sampling of those from 1990s-present:
Demi Moore, Madonna, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Diana, Princess of Wales, Matt Damon, Clint Eastwood, Julia Roberts (who would possibly be pretty if only she'd stop all that damned smiling), Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, J-Lo.
I was going to make a comment on the nature of celebrity changing and our fascination/adulation with actresses/actors occupying the space that used to be dedicated to admiring authors, singers, playwrights, scientists, painters, etc etc, but instead I'll just let the list illustrate that.
A sampling of characters photographed in the 1910-30s section:
H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, Georgia O'Keefe, Aldous Huxley, Albert Einstein, Eisenhower, Buckminster Fuller, DH Lawrence, Pablo Picasso, Isadora Duncan, Hemingway, James Joyce, Noel Coward, Jean Harlow, Peter Lorre, Babe Ruth, Bojangles, Frida Kahlo, Gertrude Stein.
A sampling of characters photographed in the 1980s:
Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Miles Davis, Nancy Reagan, Arthur Miller, Mapplethorpe, Robert Mitchum.
A sampling of those from 1990s-present:
Demi Moore, Madonna, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Diana, Princess of Wales, Matt Damon, Clint Eastwood, Julia Roberts (who would possibly be pretty if only she'd stop all that damned smiling), Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, J-Lo.
I was going to make a comment on the nature of celebrity changing and our fascination/adulation with actresses/actors occupying the space that used to be dedicated to admiring authors, singers, playwrights, scientists, painters, etc etc, but instead I'll just let the list illustrate that.
Our generation's answer to Gertrude Stein. Yay.
It was a great show though. My favourite portrait was of DH Lawrence - there's a man who looks as though he could use a hug (huge eyebrows, rather worried and shy looking) - but wouldn't enjoy it if you tried to give it to him. Strange, though, because you'd imagine from what he writes that he'd be more physically imposing/confident, a man who could throw you down by the fire and make sweet naked wrestling to you.
Also - I found out that George Bernard Shaw refused half a million pounds (according to an on-line inflation calculator, nowadays that's 19 million pounds) back in the 1920s for the movie rights to his plays, as he didn't want to see them ruined by the medium. I am over here, being impressed by his artistic integrity. Why don't you join me?
And - final note. Charlie Chaplin was a surprisingly beautiful man when he wasn't dressed as the Little Tramp - his face was dreamy, pensive, with modern, androgynous features. Also caught in a "I was a 192os-hottie-shocker" - Aldous Huxley. I'd like to brave his new world, if you know what I mean.
*thinks*
I don't know what the hell I mean.
hello.
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