When kids think Man Ray is a poisonous jellyfish, there clearly isn't enough art in our schools
In someways, Beardsley's broke through the different art movements of Sybolism and Art Nouveau with his strange obscessing for bondage and "perverted" sexual figures. Other members of the Art Nouveau movement took his flat lines and innovatedness and reinvintated it in their own style. Rene Lalique was at first a jewely designer. He used design elements and simiprecious stones rather than rubies or diamonds. The Art Nouveau swirls and female nudes were worked into his pieces.
His most famous work is perfume bottles. (L'Aire du Temp perfume by Nina Ricci still features frosted glass bird floating over the bottle of perfume.)
His earliest perfum bottles were the most beautiful, and collectable today. E'Elegance by D'Orsay, a perfume botttle designed by Lalique c. 1914. (today it is worth $4,700.00 in mint condition, signed by the artist.)
It is a very simple design of a square bottle and stopper made in frosted glass, shaped like a beehive. The bottle stands 5 1/2" tall, but it so exquistedly rendered, it's like jewelry for your dresser. You could set this piece down and have no other decorations.
The figures of two slender female forms, elegantly draped in gowns, swaying among flowers are in high relief. This is a piece where art and design meet - the premise of Art Nouveau - and remains timeless in it's astictic appeal.
Ouiatt Alexander Builski, c. 1927 is a perfume bottle also designed in dressed down elegance. The glass is clear and bell shaped, the screw on top is golden, and it looks like the shape is just approaching Art Deco - there are no vivid swirls or flowers, and the glass is very plain. It has the look of something stamped out of a mold, not hand crafted, There is a sun figure of aman with his whiskers rediating all around him as a sun burst. Lalique kept his designs simple and in harmorny. Many perfume bottle and jewelry pieces are inspired by him to this day.
A graphic artist who lived to only see 25, personified the shift from Symbolism to Art Nouveau. His work was complicated, erotic, decadent and he as an artist, was beloved of Salome, the infamous Biblical dancer of the 7 veils. However, he was strictly Art Nouveau in his rendering of flat drawings. He drew only in black and white, but the complexity of his lines shows him to be a great draftsman and artist, not simply a creepy pornographer.
Dream (1896) ink on paper
Dream show an elaborate chambermaid and her "uniform" outside a sheer curtained bed. She's poised in the left part of the scene, and the bed curtain makes a pointed edge, makes the patterned carpet, the only dark part of the picture, the only negative space. The chambermaid is wearing a short, 18th century puffed, flounced skirt, and fitted bodice, and a blouse of sheer dotted Swiss. She has on a fitted, beautiful mob cap. She is highly stylized, and it's uncertain if she's the Dream, creating the Dream or looking into the bed chambers to see the Dream. She has a faint feel of erotic bandage about her, wearing black boots, and carries a long baton twinkling at the top. She points into the bed chamber. This must be where the action begins.
The Dancer's Reward (1893) ink on paper
The perpetual femme fatal in the form of Salome, having danced her dance of the 7 veils, receives John the Baptist head on its silver platter. Just as she requested. She is both tender, loving and menacing as she looks down at the blood head where the tray is being held up by a stylized post, as if it were part of the surroundings. Salome grabs the Baptist by the hair, in one hand, and feel the dripping blood with her other hand. This is done with a sort of glee.
Salome in this picture is a vengeful Salome and she wears a dress like one designed by Paul Poiret (French Fashion Designer), an gown, but elegant. There are white lines that define the dress and a hanging scarf around her neck as counterpoint.
She has no problem with the blood and complications of killing of man in revenge for her own lust. The head of the Baptist is severed at the neck and the cry of his death throes are still on his mouth. Guess who won this sexual surrender?
"In 1981, a nineteen old unknown graffiti writer took the New York art world by storm. The rest is Art History"
the film directed by Julian Schnabel
the working script by Julian Schnabel
Into: this film script is a shorten version of much more complicated story about the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988). The film itself is a complicated story, so I took the highlights & compared them to the facts from the biography of JMB (Jean-Michel Basquiat: a Quick Killing in Art by Phoebe Hoban (1998) in italics. At the very end I wrote up some of the differances in the film & the script published on the web.
Note: Schnabel was another artist in JMB's life so he had to fabricate a character - Milo - to fill out the story.
Open: Rene Ricard is sitting on park bench reading from the article he's writing about the New Art Scene. Suddenly, a young black man, who's Haitian, and very cute in spite of his homelessness, jumps out of a big cardboard box. Cut to: coffee ship, white beautiful waitress Gina waits on him, and he makes a painting for her out of pancake syrup, and gets kicked out by the owner. Later they hook up, and start living together in her apartment. Cut to: Jean at the Mudd Club playing with his "band" Gray Cut to: hanging out with his slacker friends and one makes a video, a scratchy blue set video of a surfer in blue. This image will repeat again & again in the film over the buildings in the sky. Cut to: Samo (Same-O) who paints aphorisms all over the city, then Jean painting furiously at home with Gina, on the walls, on the door, etc. Cut to: Jean has a job moving things in an art gallery. He meets Milo, the famous painter. Jean introduces himself and says he's a painter too. Milo is surprised, but still asks Jean to move around the stuff they need. Jean walks out the door. Cut to: PS1 a gallery show, Jean is discovered by Annina Nosei, gallery owner. She loans out her basement to him for painting, then has a big gallery showing with his work. Mary Boone, another gallery owner, tries to convince Jean to come with her. Cut to: Jean has tons of money now from sales of his paintings, he starts to shoot heroin , hit up on other women, leaving Gina in dust, again and again. Cut to: Jean loses all his friends Cut to: Meets Andy Warhol, they become close friends, and start painting together in collaboration. Cut to: Jean is visiting Milo and tells him the papers said he's an art mascot. Milo says that's not true. But Jean is so messed up by this time, he goes and pisses in Milo's back stairs. Cut to: Jean finds out about Andy's death, and spirals out of his mind. He tries to rescue his mother from the asylum she lives in and starts to scream when the guard won't let him in. Cut to: He's picked up by one of his dropped friends and they ride around in his open car, with Jean standing up holding his arms up in victory. Cut to: A solid black background and the words "Jean-Michel Basquiat, American Painter, died from a heroin OD on August 12, 1988" Reading the script on line, I can conclude that it might have been the working script, although about 85% of it was the words in the movie, scene by scene. Around 10% of the dialog was cut from the film editing, and around 5% was changed completely, for whatever reason. There's a scene in the script where Jean is meeting Gina in an upscale restuarant, and is laughed at by a group of white executives. So Jean pays their bill. They are put in their place, come over and thank him, and Jean shakes hands with one with a $100.00 bill, and the guys asks, what's this for? Jean says, it's the tip. In the movie, Jean pays for their bill, but tells the server, don't say who picked it up. In conclusion, this is what Jeffery Wright, the actor who portrys JMB in the movie has to say: "The sense I got about him from his work and what I found out about his life was a profound sense of aloneness . . . . a real sense of isolation. "Julian made him out to be too docile and too much a victim and too passive and not as dangerous as he really was. . . . but maybe our culture can't take the real danger of Basquiat right now."
Rene Ricard did write this important article, but Jean wasn't really living in a box, he just went from friend to friend because he ran away from home because his father was beating him.
Suzanne Mallouk was Jean's girlfriend. They had a far more complicated relationship, which ends when Suzanne takes a pile of Jean's paintings and makes a bonfire out of them.
This is a fact
This is an image of Jean's hopes and dreams
This is close to the truth.
It didn't happen, but it shows Jean's attitude.
This is mostly true, but a lot of facts are taken out for time reasons, like another art dealer he went to after Nosei, on & on.
In real life Jean became a heroin addict and hooked up with as many women as he possibly could
In real life, he moved to the Ritz Carlton to avoid them.
They have a show, the critics say it sucks. Jean drops Andy.
This is a shorten version of the real life story.
This actually happened.
This may not have happened, but it represents Jean's nervous breakdown.
Didn't happen, but also represents his nervous breakdown.