Dazzling rhinestones and teardrop crystals are providing the antidote to a rainy summer weekend inside the Time Warner Center, where HBO has installed Liberace’s piano, signature suits, and a tower of champagne to celebrate of the debut of the Michael-Douglas-as-Liberace pic Behind the Candelabra.
Up the escalators on the Third Floor, crowds were swimming through glitter Nirvana – Lee’s head-to-toe glamour looks: white cravats, bejeweled lapels, matching boots with rhinestone-studded heels, and the all-important cuff, which framed those flying ring-encrusted hands.
Enjoy it all in the Flickr gallery, because it’s all about the details. Besides, there’s no more Liberace Museum to visit in Vegas, so this is your chance to check out a bit of his million-dollar legacy.
Branding for the HBO film was everywhere, featuring giant pictures of Matt Damon and Michael D, but people mostly hovered about the glass cases to see look after look loaned by the barely-surviving Liberace Foundation.
There were no capes in sight, but plenty of fur-trimmed boots, beaded fringe, and a giant Swarovski crystal. Downstairs throngs were circling Lee’s rhinestone Duesenberg and admiring the bling on the Baldwin.
Check out the HBO movie, but run over to Time Warner to see (for real) what made this man a show business legend. Open 9am to 9pm through May 27.
Monet’s Women in the Garden (1866) from the Musée d’Orsay, Paris featuring impressions of fast-changing dappled sunlight and ladies’ fashions (e.g. the fad for soutache)
You can witness the collisions of the new crashing into the old in the Metropolitan Museum’s joyous show, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. Impressionism’s heaviest hitters (Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, and Morisot) are displayed alongside stunning 19th Century dresses, suits, accessories, and underthings to prove a point — that incorporating the latest fashions was one of the cudgels that these rule-breakers used to facilitate their revolution in painting.
The show features paintings from three grand Impressionist collections (the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d’Orsay), and includes breathtaking dresses from NYC’s fashion-collection superpowers – the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, FIT, and Museum of the City of New York.
The Met’s website explains the key themes of the show, but it’s no substitute for going through the galleries in person. Why? The tiny photos cannot do justice to the monumentality of these paintings, where scandalous 19th-century fashionistas stormed the barricades of the French Salon, in large-format framed paintings normally reserved for staid, moralistic history paintings.
Crisp summer day dress worn by Madame Bartholomé in her husband’s 1880 painting In the Conservatory. Source: Musée d’Orsay
The size, colors, and techniques are amazing, especially as the Impressionists moved outdoors just as new technology was encouraging lifestyle and fashion revolution. Steam-powered train lines were inventing the concept of the weekend getaway for City hipsters, so a lot of the paintings feature dappled sunlight with high-fashion young people lolling about in nature. (See the show’s highlights.)
The show’s curators shine the spotlight on how fashion, innovation, and the art world influenced one another: New aniline dyes allowed hot pink, bold color-blocking and vivid hues for extravagant skirts and dressing gowns. New fabric-finishing technology enabled super-white cotton fabric to be crafted into diaphanous, desirable, but high-maintenance dresses and gowns for the first time in fashion history.
The Met scatters mass media throughout the galleries, just to demonstrate fashion’s democratization during 1850-1890. New printing technology enabled trendy fashion magazines to be consumed by the masses. New-fangled duplication techniques revolutionized the studio photograph by inventing the eight-image carte-de-visite – a paper-based way to market your “celebrity” self and show off your fashion chops long 150 years before Facebook and YouTube.
Silk and ivory French parasol (1860-69) from Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Met (Source: gift of Mrs. William Ashbaugh)
Pop-art pink velvet, boleros with pompoms, lace parasols, Worth gowns, kid gloves, top hats, corsets, hat shop girls, high-end boutiques, and Cezanne’s surprising oil painting based on a fashion-magazine layout. Which part of this show is the best?
Go before May 29, when the show decamps for Chicago for its June 26 opening.
The red carpet is back at Grand Central, right where it belongs: leading visitors down Tracks 34 and 35 to the door of the 1947 observation car of the 20th Century Limited and to fifteen other vintage sleeper, dining, and lounge cars that once traveled the New York Central rails and other lines all over the United States between the 1920s and 1950s.
An unexpected treat was being greeted by former “Century Girl” Joan Jennings Scalfani, who politely posed for photos with admirers and talked about the 1960s when she represented the brand to celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Bess and Harry Truman, Ernest Hemingway, and Lena Horne.
Joan Jennings Scalfani, a former “Century Girl”, at the Parade of Trains
Besides the streamlined 20th Century observation car, we visited the leather lounge of the 1923 Kitchi Gammi Club (Pennsylvania Railroad), the 1949 Babbling Brook observation car (New York Central), and the refurbished Broadway Limited baggage car that has transformed into a luxurious private-dining experience, Dover Harbor.
All sixteen cars were brought to New York for the Parade of Trains in honor of GCT’s 100 anniversary – the largest convergence of private rail cars ever assembled at one time in the City.
Small crews of people serve up meals and make guests comfortable whenever the rail cars are booked for parties, getaways, and dinners. Rail clubs, crews, and owners welcomed us in every car we visited, including the fully stocked barbershop aboard the Overland Trail, which once ran on the Southern Pacific.
Due to the crowds, not everyone who came to Grand Central was able to walk through the halls of long-distance travel history, so we’re providing a closer look at the luxury, design, and history on our Flickr feed.
Front of the streamlined Hickory Creek sleeper-observation lounge car (1947) for the 20th Century Limited.
To accommodate the overflow crowds who weren’t able to make it onto Metro-North Tracks 34 and 35 before the afternoon cut-off time, MTA provided a train made up of three vintage subway cars, which shuttled between Times Square and Grand Central – the 1948 R-12 car that was still equipped with wicker seats and whirring fans, the red 1950 IRT R-15 (the first subway to be air conditioned) with its iconic “portholes” in the doors, and the R33-S “World’s Fair” car which took visitors to the 1963 fair in style.
An avant-garde 1890s tapestry by Morris & Co., Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and John Henry Dearle (designers), The Arming and Departure of the Knights of the Round Table on the Quest for the Holy Grail. Collection of Jimmy Page, courtesy of Paul Reeves, London
How did a secret society of artists in the 19th century turn into one of the most beloved interior design trends of the modern era? That story is the most surprising part of the exhibition (closing May 19) at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848–1900.
Organized by the Tate (and originally titled Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde), the show introduces us to the PR Brotherhood (founded 1848), whose oil paintings and writings looked to the Middle Ages, myths, and legends of ancient literature for the spirituality that they felt was missing from modern, rapidly industrializing life.
Early collaboration by Rossetti and Morris, The Arming of a Knight chair, 1856 – 1857, painted pine, leather, and nails from the Delaware Art Museum,.
Dante Rosetti, William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and others took inspiration from meticulous observation of nature, sensual textiles replicated in their paintings, and ethereal muses in medieval robes, which they often painted on location in leafy, natural settings.
In 1859, Rosetti painted a cupboard as a wedding gift for Morris. It wasn’t long before these pals ran with the inspiration — constructing medieval-inspired furniture and decorating it with similar mystical medieval images and experimenting with mixed media (images + poetry) on tiles, tables, and other creations made by hand.
For all the beautiful painting in the National Gallery’s show, the most startling room is the one that showcases the fact that the painters took it one step further by creating chairs, tapestries, tables, and textiles for forward-looking couples who wanted to live the 360-degree experience. In the 1860s, Morris & Co. was the go-to interior design shop for medieval-style avant-garde furnishings. They singlehandedly drove the stained-glass revival in Victorian architecture.
In 1873, Morris & Co. went international, selling wallpaper in Boston. Soon, American retailers in most major cities were carrying the hand-blocked or woven wall coverings and textiles.
Block-printed cotton designed by Morris (printed 1884-1917) from The Baltimore Museum of Art
Ever the advocate of the handmade, Morris was passionate about the relationship of decorative arts to the modernist movement. During Oscar Wilde’s US speaking tour in 1882, his lectures about Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the nobility of hand-crafted work spread the trend in hand-crafted interior design in America.
Today, just about every museum shop carries William Morris-inspired something-or-others. Here’s the Tate’s video about the 17th century carved oak bed that Morris himself used in the 1890s. It’s all about the hand-made approach to the bedding textiles – a modern-medieval collaboration between his designer daughter, Mary, and wife, Jane.
Hats off to the Tate and National Gallery for presenting avant-garde design in a new light. Check out the rest of the Tate’s PR videos, including the one with Karen Elson on the topic of model as muse, then and now.
Long before Cirque du Soleil began selling $180 seats to eight shows in Las Vegas or Floating Kabarette came to Brooklyn, high society and avant-garde crowds were flocking to extravagant theaters on Montmartre in Paris to see the finest aerialists from Europe.
The Morgan Library’s exquisite micro-show,Degas, Miss La La, and the Cirque Fernando, documents the meticulous work of Mr. Degas to portray the magic, daring, and wonder inside a 2,000-seat arena where he experienced the artistry of one of the must-see acts of 1879 – a mixed-race German aerialist who hung from a trapeze clenching an apparatus in her teeth from which she dangled a firing cannon.
As in the Met’s blockbuster show, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity(which also features a circus-themed painting in its last gallery), the Morgan makes the case that Degas selected this subject because was associated with the height of fashion (along with café concerts and racetracks). Although this particular work was the only circus image Degas would ever paint, just tackling the dazzle and glamour of Miss La La dangling 70 feet in the air (before the cannon stunt) showed that he was capturing what was “happening” among high society and artsy types in their “modern” life.
A vibrant pastel study of the artist by Mr. Degas. Source: Tate, London/Art Resource, NY
Although we can marvel at how well Degas captured this fleeting moment, the Morgan lays bare that this work was planned in meticulous detail. They’ve displayed preparatory works, sketchbooks, and even architectural drawings of the theatre’s interior that Degas created to work out the feeling, look, composition, and setting for this spectacular work. As Degas said, “No art was less spontaneous than mine.”
If you love Impressionism and theatricality, get over to the Morgan to enjoy the mechanics behind the creative process and flip through the digital version of our artist’s sketchbook (which was to fragile to be sent from France) right inside the colorful upstairs gallery.
Visit Mr. Degas and Ms. La La before May 12, when they leave for the Continent. (Sorry, no video, but here’s a photo of the star herself.)
Photograph of the artist, Miss La La (c. 1880). Albumen silver print. Source: Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Black velvet evening dress by Charles James (c. 1955) with a 3-ft. zipper inserted along that diagonal seam
Once you see the clothes in FIT’s Fashion and Technology exhibition inside a technology context, you’ll start making the connections at other shows all over town.
Exhibit A right inside the entrance – a seamless nylon-powder dress and bag made from CAD software and a 3D printer by Freedom of Choice in 2005 is a mesh wonder that is made by the same process as Amanda Levete’s woven Fruit Bowl in MoMA’s current Applied Design show.
Take the brilliant purple British day dress that FIT displays as an example of the revolution in color that occurred in the 1860s as analine dyes began to be used for the first time in commercial cloth manufacture. The Metropolitan Museum showcases the same point (except surrounded by Manet and Monet masterpieces) in its blockbuster time-series Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity. (Reference Camille.)
The 1860s color revolution due to analine dyes in commercial fabrics
Outstanding achievement award invention + application at the FIT show: invention of the zipper in 1913 and the stunning accomplishment of Charles James, who inserted a three-foot-long zipper into a spectacular gown in a hidden seam on the bias (see left).
In Fashion and Technology, FIT makes brilliant use of its own stellar collection to chronicle the changes in technology that revolutionized fashion, from the advent of the Spinning Jenny in 1764 to the world’s first programmable T-shirt (see below).
For fans of the 18th and 19th centuries, here’s what technology mattered:
1764 – cotton replaces wool and linen as the go-to fabric (thanks, Spinning Jenny)
1780s – machine-knit textiles (200 years before double-knits)
1801 – Jacquard looms create complex patterns by using punch cards (up to 10,000, so take that Univac!)
1846 – sewing machines eliminate tedious hand stitching for the interiors of gowns
Pierre Cardin, dress, fuchsia “Cardine” textile with molded 3D shapes, 1968, Gift of Lauren Bacall.
1856 – analine dyes bring about a color revolution to ladies’ fashions (go, hot pink!)
1857 – chain-stitch sewing machine
1860s – more color complexity with roller-printed fabrics
1880s – collapsible bustles let ladies sit down
1882 – celluloid used to imitate ivory and tortoiseshell for accessories
Check out the excellent exhibition timeline interactive to see these breakthroughs and what happened in the 20th and 21st centuries.
As promised, here’s the video of the world’s first programmable T-shirt:
To experience an all-out burst of color, walk through the doors of the Museum of the City of New York and visit the paparazzi-worthy tribute to a 1970s design legend, Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced. You’ll get to know the man who styled Liza, Cher, Diana, Farrah, and so many icons of the 1970s with bright, beautiful, glamorous draped designs were made to whirl around the dance floor.
Vogue issues throughout the 1970s were filled with cavorting models sporting color-blocked coats, dresses, sweaters, and evening wear and lettuce-edged jersey wrap tops, cocktail dresses, and pant suits by King of Qiana, Stephen Burrows. When he burst upon the scene in the late Sixties, Geraldine Stutz installed him in her ground-breaking “street of shops” that she created at Henri Beldel, when it was still on 57th Street. If you don’t know Stephen’s work, a stroll through the first floor of MCNY will set you straight about who actually created the draped metallic disco top emblematic of Studio 54.
It’s the first retrospective dedicated to this stylish creative powerhouse, with ensembles drawn from the Burrows archive, FIT, the Metropolitan, and MCNY’s own treasure trove, and you’ll have until July 8 to see it.
Stephen gave us the draped metallic disco top and so much more.
The opening night party drew fashion royalty, and when we visited, Michael Kors was levitating with excitement, seeing the work that inspired so many to drape, piece, and glamorize with eye-popping colors. Check out the looks on the Flickr feed.
Don’t miss the major piece of fashion history hiding in one corner of the show: At a time when American fashion was viewed by Europeans as second rate, Burrows and Blass, Calvin, Oscar, and Halston were invited to follow the French at the still-talked-about 1973 benefit fashion show at Versailles. You’ll witness how Stephen and the NYC crew battled it out on the stage against YSL, Cardin, Ungaro, Givenchy, and Dior.
Spoiler alert: Stephen and his American crew won. Historic is an understatement.
Steve Quinn couldn’t send them to the L’Oreal Paris hair and make-up room like Tim Gunn does on Project Runway. They’re just too big, too famous, and too fragile. We’re talking about the furry animals that populate the 43 dioramas on Floor 1 of the American Museum of Natural History’s in the Hall of North American Mammals.
So how do you buff, puff, make up, color, groom, blow dry, restore eyelashes, color brows, and repair noses on New York superstars that have been in the (literal) spotlight since the early 1940s? That’s the subject of AMNH’s YouTube sensation, Restoring Dioramas in Hall of North American Mammals – a 16-show reality series that won a prestigious Webby Award earlier this month. Download the North American Mammal app (with before and after looks at the enhanced fur).
No more “demon” eye in the baby Mountain Goat, who is surrounded by thousands of flowers refurbished by AMNH volunteers
Steve Quinn leads a team of accomplished artists to, well, perform makeovers on the animals, plants, and background paintings that reside inside some of the most famous 3D attractions inside the AMNH. Steve told us that the first step was to update the decades-old lighting inside each case with state-of-the-art illumination that would inflict much less damage on the mammal coiffures.
His team engineered wooden platforms that extended into each scene so that leaf-turning and snow repair could occur with minimal disruption to the diorama floor. If you watch the 4-minute videos, you’ll see how they fixed a bison’s nose, put whiskers on cougars, restored the grass on the Great Plains, and restored the jackrabbit’s ears. The runaway hit of the series is Updating the “Moon Shadow” in the Wolf Diorama. With over 8,000 views, it’s not going to knock Dr. Neil off the AMNH charts any time soon, but Steve’s magical artistry is something to savor.
Go to the AMNH YouTube channel and scroll down to find the North American Mammal diorama series, depicting Steve and his crew at work. Check out this series trailer:
Just before Steve retired the other week, he gave us a special Night at the Museum, walking around and visiting his favorite dioramas after the visitors left.
Steve, you’re a total rock star. Thanks for all your spectacular work at AMNH over the years, and congratulations on the Webby.
Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny’s Edge of a Wood (1850). Oil on canvas done northeast of Paris. The flattening technique was developed with his hiking companion, Corot.
Most of them feature Italian or French landscapes, and you’ll be surprised to know these tranquil, beautiful visions of nature were considered a little bit radical at the time. Apparently, there once was a time when painters didn’t travel beyond the studio, and certainly did not work outdoors.
Installation view of The Gate to the Temple of Luxor (1836) by La Bouëre. After Napolean invaded Egypt, the exotic Middle East became all the rage. The missing obelisk ended up in the Place de la Concorde.
The artists in this collection (gifted to the Met 10 years ago by Mr. Whitney) literally went on the road, took to the hills, and created spectacularly perfect outdoor oils to record a bit of the exotic, wild, and ruined visions they experienced. And it all happened long before Monet went outside to serialize his haystacks.
If you’ve ever wanted to take a Grand Tour of the wonders of Europe and the Middle East, now is your chance. Check out the Met’s online gallery of these works, and enter the mountains, hillsides, parks, ruins, and vistas with new 18th and 19th century friends.
If you have some time, you can listen to the Met’s curator, Asher Miller, discuss how adventure travel inspired a generation of painters to break the rules.
Installation view of the network behind the birth of abstract art, according to MoMA and Columbia Business School
As soon as you arrive at Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925, MoMA’s soon-to-close extravaganza featuring the relationships among painters, poets, composers, and dance innovators, you encounter a big, bold infographic on the wall – a web showing who was collaborating with, influencing, viewing, and reading each other as “abstract art” was born.
The stunning exhibit is a who’s who of modern art, with work by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Malevich (of course), but pulls in works from lesser-known early innovators from Britain, Poland, Italy, and America (hi, Georgia!) and across disciplines. So many connections, so little time! The show has books, music, pioneers of modern dance…just about everything.
If you can’t get to it, don’t worry. MoMA’s put it all on the web so you can explore all the connections yourself. The highlighted names show the artists with over 25 connections, like an early 20th century LinkedIn or really popular Facebook friends. Who knew that Russian fine-art diva Goncharova was more connected than, say, Malevich or El Lissitsky? I guess inventing Rayism and designing sets for the Ballet Russes paid off in getting her positioned in this MoMA pantheon.
Created by MoMA curators, designers, and pros from the Columbia Business School, the interactive web highlights every artist featured in the massive MoMA show. The infographic allows you to zoom in to see how the buzz, particularly in 1911-1915, brought abstract art into being. No matter which name you click on, you’ll get to view the works, play the music, and watch the dances – a web-based multimedia tour-de-force.
Now dive into one of the best art-websites ever, and get to know the network and likes of the hot, emerging artists who made the art world of 100 years ago into what we know today.
Watch how this show and web project were brought to life with Excel, great minds, and graphic design. And be sure to check out Paul Ingram’s views on the value of networks at the MoMA video site.
Enjoy it all in the Flickr gallery, because it’s all about the details. Besides, there’s no more Liberace Museum to visit in Vegas, so this is your chance to check out a bit of his million-dollar legacy.
There were no capes in sight, but plenty of fur-trimmed boots, beaded fringe, and a giant Swarovski crystal. Downstairs throngs were circling Lee’s rhinestone Duesenberg and admiring the bling on the Baldwin.
itsnewstoyou 