We Can Say No, But It Isn't Enough

I should add to my last post People Are Not Stupid on the Kardashian sisters' promiscuity that relying in people's "common sense" is not enough. Young girls, growing in this culture of celebrity vulgarity are very susceptible. Their mothers (the woman I talked with could very well have a young toddler at home) may be less susceptible to all the tabloid news, but young children are not.

Protecting them to avoid such exposure is one way to lessen their descent into innocence lost, but there is still TV, friends, and the general culture which will seep through any barriers well-meaning adults may build. Teaching girls to be "nice" is not enough, and modern mothers very often don't have the principles and tools to help their daughters maneuver through these wastelands anyway.

We have to fight this promiscuous culture directly, while at the same time protecting and teaching young children the right behaviors. This takes more than a mother, and more than common sense. Religious and cultural traditions are essential.

Society pariahs like the Kardashians should not be made comfortable with their disgusting TV shows. Cultural networks like TV, magazines etc. should be made to feel the cost of putting out pornographic-level material. Schools should feel the cost of allowing (and at the very least, ignoring) a sexualized culture to foster in their play grounds.

We can fight the battles at the front lines, but we can also protect children through standards and principles.

People Are Not Stupid

Ordinary people are not stupid.

I was at the grocery checkout, when I saw one of those tabloid magazines with the heading "Kim [Kardashian] caught with a man and a woman and ." The story is more detalied, as it also involves Kim's lesbian tryst at this same encounter.

I turned to the young woman behind me and said "That's not surprising." (I talk to "ordinary" people behind me or next to me in lines, etc. to gauge what people are thinking. The media keep telling us that people are more perverted, more liberal, more accepting of erratic sexual behaviors, but I think that is not accurate. We may be inundated with these images and stories usually from second rate "celebrities" but people take that like some kind of circus freak show.)

"I would believe it with the other one," said the woman.

I started to laugh. "Yes, Khloe, right?" I said. But the woman didn't answer, I think embarrassed at being "gossipy" with a stranger in a grocery line. Khloe, who is married to a black basketball player, looks like a transvestite, and looks like she will "experiment" with anything.

Khloe Kardashian

I just continued to laugh as I finished at the checkout.

Well, these "celebrities" deserve no remorse from us. With their mediocrities and media fawning, this is exactly the kind of "news" that makes their day. I also believe it. What else do they have to do with their empty days?

But to give this group of sisters some support, it is their "manager" mother, Kris Jenner (yes, all the female members of this family have names which begin with "K" courtesy of Mom) who started hawking them to gossip magazines at a young age.

The Hip Pimp Mother with her brood
(She's the one on the far left)

None of these girls has done anything substantial. They cannot sing or dance for their dinner (see Kim Kardashian's "colder and more distant than Siberia" performance at Dancing with the Stars), so it is to their advantage to follow their mother's lead, or so they think.

Now "Kris" has two more teenager daughters, which will extend her daughter-hawking career by a few more years. Will it be grandchildren next?

Kris with Kyle and Kendall

Mitt Romney's Acquiescing and Submissive Jaw Line

My post yesterday was about the confidence that Ann Romney exuded as she appeared at the Republican National Convention. I titled the post The Aggressive Ann Romney since I was struck by her (feminine) boldness as she stood on the stage, apparently to introduce her husband, but actually to proclaim some kind of feminist solidarity with the women at the convention and beyond.

Above is an image I received via email with the comment:

The woman is the dominant figure, the man is recessive, weak, childish looking. Look at the decisive set of the woman's mouth and jaw line. Then look at the lower part of the man's face--it's girlish and passive.

The image is from an ad for some kind of spa.

I've juxtaposed the image with that of Mitt and Ann Romney at the RNC convention from yesterday, where Ann Romney spoke. I have it in my collage of images I posted at my blog post yesterday.


The Romney image could just as well have the caption:

The woman is the dominant figure, the man is recessive, weak, childish looking. Look at the decisive set of the woman's mouth and jaw line. Then look at the lower part of the man's face--it's girlish and passive [or I could add here, "it is acquiescing and submissive].

The Aggressive Ann Romney

Collage of Ann and Mitt at the 2012 Republican National Convention

Ann is a mixture of the exalted female, the hen-pecking wife (at a public, national convention!), an over-emotional presenter, the overwhelming wife ready to hug some sense into her husband, and the demure and pretty housewife.

Mitt isn't any better. Clutching at his wife in a prolonged hug is embarrassing for a world leader, and he seems to have a slightly apprehensive (frighted) look when next to his wife, as though he doesn't know what she'll do next. Holding hands has now become standard for politicians and their wives, but this is again a degradation of a public political event, where husbands clutch at their wives' hands at any occasion.

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I liked Ann Romney at her first appearances. She looked pretty and reserved, and seemed to let her husband lead. I'm sure they had private discussions about his leadership (in business and in politics), but I didn't think she was the type of spouse who would take a prominent role in his work. I defended her in this post where nasty bloggers were tearing apart a shirt she wore for a CBS This Morning interview with her husband. I said that she looked supportive of her husband, and was wearing a silk shirt with the design of the American naturalist and painter James Aududon. But, I should have read the signs even then, where Ann is clutching at Mitt Romney, who looks a little overwhelmed by his wife in this photo from that interview.

Mitt and Ann Romney at a CBS This Morning
interview in May 2012

I didn't watch her speech at the Republican National Convention last night, but I read the transcript this morning.

It is a painful jumble of many things. She comes off as a loving wife, yet her love she declares is better suited for their private interaction, rather than a public avowal at a political event (and for political gains).

I have broken down the speech and into these categories:

- "Soppy" love, better suited for private interaction

- A leftist comradeship with her "brothers and sisters" inclusion

- An aggressive feminist on single fathers, working mothers, and "stay-at-home moms" who wish to leave their homes and start their careers

- Sympathizing with the "career-house-keeper" mom, who generally chooses to have such a chaotic family life, and berating Romney by extension as a lounging dad, who doesn't help with household chores

- Demeaning her husband when they first started to go out, and yet disappointed that he didn't act "like a man"

Below are some direct quotes from her speech, and I have written short commentary on the quotes in bold:

- "Tonight I want to talk to you about love." Soppy love

- "Tonight I want to talk to you from my heart about our hearts." Soppy love

- "I want to talk to you about the deep and abiding love I have for a man." Soppy personal (private) love which doesn't need to be publicized

- "love we all share for those Americans, our brothers and sisters" A leftist comradeship

- "the single dad who’s working extra hours tonight" An aggressive feminist outlook with sympathy for broken families. And how many single dads are there really out there?)

- "working moms who love their jobs but would like to work just a little less." Again, an aggressive feminist outlook. Ann Romney stayed home to take care of her kids. So her secret dream was to have a job and a career?!

- "if we were all silent for just a few moments and listened carefully, we could hear a great collective sigh from the moms and dads across America. And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men." All these over-worked women, who love their jobs, and can't quit to take care of their families, feeling sorry for themselves!

- "It’s the moms who always have to work a little harder, to make everything right." Again, overworked (home and office) saintly career women/mother

-"You know what it’s like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work and then come home to help with that book report which just has to be done." Yes, again the overworked mother who is the one who helps with the kids' homework, while the husband lounges around.

- "I’m not sure if men really understand this, but I don’t think there’s a woman in America who really expects her life to be easy." Ditto as above

- "he was tall, laughed a lot, was nervous -- girls like that, it shows the guy’s a little intimidated" Yes, anything for the female power

- "I know this good and decent man for what he is — warm and loving and patient."
This is not what political conventions are about, to say what a lovely person the competitor is. This is about competition, and this kind of "niceness" doesn't cut it.

- "He loves America. He will take us to a better place, just as he took me home safely from that dance." Ditto as above, plus back to her personal story, which cannot be extrapolated into political life

- "As a mom of five boys" Back to the "female power" again and the power of being a mom!

-He built it. An aggressive jab at Obama

Portrait d'Une Négresse

Michelle Obama Nude Portrait
[This is one title I can find for the work.
Another is simply First Lady Michelle Obama]
By: Karine Percheron-Daniels

[I cannot find a date for this work, and even Percheron-Daniels doesn't give a date on her site. I would assume it is from midway into Obamas presidency, which could make it between 2011-2012]

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A Spanish magazine has a crude portrayal of Michelle Obama on its recent cover (see above image). It is after a nineteenth century painting of a slave woman titled Portrait d'Une Négresse by which is on display at the Louvre in Paris. The painter of Portrait d'Une Négresse is Marie-Guillemine Benoist, whose paintings are mostly of female, and feminine, figures both domestic and political. The famous characters she paints are related to prominent male figures, and their prestigious positions are often due to these associations.

Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist
Portrait d'Une Négresse, 1800
Oil on canvas
Paris, Musée du Louvre

Benoist also paints many domestic scenes, mostly of mothers with their young children. So, although a female painter, her subjects were very much feminine (and not feminist).

Benoist's painting is "interpreted" by Karine Percheron-Daniels, another female artist, although a 21st century post-modern one, whose repertoire is re-interpretations of paintings and works of famous figures whom she unclothes in various levels of nudity.

I thought that perhaps Percheron-Daniels actually paints her "parodies" but true to the mediocrity of post-modern artists, she is described in many sites as a "mixed-media" artist. Wherever I find works of hers that look like they were drawn (or painted), it is clear that she is a mediocre painter and drawer.

Here is how this site describes her technique:

The photo was created by photo-shopping or super-imposing Mrs. Obama’s face onto a black female drawing from 1800 entitled “Portrait d’une negresse” by Marie-Guillemine Benoist who was a French artist. The combination of altered artwork and cover photo is part of a “Famous Nudes” series created by artist Karine Percheron-Daniels.

Is it surprising that this "artist" (albeit one whose repertoire is unclothing famous personalities) might some day be tempted to paint Mrs. Obama with her upper body exposed? Although Obama has never shown us any crude, half-exposed breasts as some kind of fashion statement, she has given us plenty of shots of her bare shoulders with intimidatingly large muscles. Perhaps that is one of the reasons Percheron-Daniels chose Michelle Obama as her subject, and in that particular pose (notwithstanding the "blacks and slavery" angle, which she uses to demonize America, and particularly white America).


Perhaps this is the model that allowed Percheron-Daniels to depict the First Lady in semi-nudity. The photo above is from a post I did on Michelle Obama's "off-one-shoulder" style which she wore at the State Dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2011 (I describe the gown as "some kind of modern tied-dye African costume" so there's another angle Percheron-Daniels might be following). Mrs. Obama has no qualms about pulling down her bodice as far as possible without causing a national scandal to show us her toned muscles which she cultivates in the gym.

So far, there's no news on how the First Lady is taking this depiction of her.

Straus Park in New York

Bronze figure titled "Memory" gazing into the reflecting pool
in Straus Park was sculpted by Augustus Lukeman
and dedicated on April 15, 1915.

I had my tablet with me while sitting in Straus Park in the Upper West Side in New York, and searched for the biblical quotation inscribed behind the statue (in gold, it is visible in the above photo) to see it in the context of the biblical story it came from:

Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives
And in their death they were not divided
II Samuel 1:23

The quote is a strange and obscure one. It tells the relationship between a father and a son (Saul and Jonathan), whereas the memorial is dedicated to a married couple.

I suppose we can use biblical texts to transfer to, and describe, many kinds of loves. Still, it is a little strange to transfer a father/son love to that of a married couple.

Ida and Isador Straus were on the Titanic when it sank. Ida, rather than save her life by boarding a lifeboat which was rescuing women and children (first), decided to stay with her husband as the ship sank. Eye witnesses say that Ida chose to remain on board with her husband, saying,"I have lived all these years with you. Where you go, I go."

Straus Park with the sculpture and the small garden,
with 106th street in the background

I think a Biblical quote more appropriate to a married couple could have been found. I'm not sure who chose this quote, but it is probably a team of people from the various New York city offices, the sculptor and the the Straus family descendants. The plaque behind the memorial informs us that it was:


There is also an eternal fountain (see top image), which originally flowed into a reflecting pool. The pool was filled in to create a flower bed for easier maintenance.

Water lilies float serenely in the reflecting pool during
the dedication of the Straus Memorial in 1915
[Photo Source: Library of Congress]

The portrait below is of Isador and Ida Straus. Here is information on Isador Straus, who was an important citizen of New York:

Isidor Straus (February 6, 1845 – April 15, 1912), a German-American, was co-owner of Macy's department store with his brother Nathan. He also served briefly as a member of the United States House of Representatives. He died with his wife, Ida, in the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Titanic.

Isador and Ida Straus about 1910
[Photo source: Straus Historical Society]

Bluegrass

Kentucky Bluegrass

A while ago, I bought Doll Parton's The Grass is Blue, which is a collection of her original bluegrass songs. I'm not a country music fan, I find the current country music to be bland, boring and musically simplistic. The songs I've heard of a few decades ago are much more interesting, but I've never really got into them.

Dolly Parton's cheerful disposition is always attractive. I heard a song from her The Grass is Blue album in some public place, and asked about it. I then went and bought it.

I take back "I find the current country music to be bland, boring and musically simplistic." Jeff Bridges acted in the great film Crazy Heart, where he does much of the singing. Yes, the songs are a little repetitive, but the melodies are very good, and Bridges gives the songs energy and rhythm.

I heard Gillian Welch for the first time on some talk show, and was taken aback again at the strength of her melodies, which are clearly country influenced. As she says about her experience hearing a bluegrass band as a college student:

The first song [by the bluegrass band The Stanley Brothers] came on and I just stood up and I kind of walked into the other room as if I was in a tractor beam and stood there in front of the stereo. It was just as powerful as the electric stuff, and it was songs I'd grown up singing. All of a sudden I'd found my music.

Although she's produced CDs since 1996, it is her recent albums that have made her more known.

Starbucks (yes, the coffee house) plays and promotes CDs of "non-mainstream" artists. After listening to a song, I asked the girl who were the vocalists. They are the Secret Sisters. Again, it's "contemporary" country, but with very distinct "old" country roots.

It's as though these singers do a lot of research on the old country songs, their styles and melodies, and reproduce them in their own idiosyncratic ways.

So I am a country music fan, after all!

Dolly Parton singing Train, Train, from her album The Grass is Blue

At the Cloisters

Standing Virgin and Child
Attributed to Nikolaus Gerhaert von Leiden
(North Netherlandish, active in Strasbourg, 1460–1473)
Date: ca. 1470
Medium: Boxwood, tinted lips and eyes
Dimensions: 13 1/4 x 5 1/8 x 3 9/16 in.

Above is a photo I took of The Standing Virgin at the Cloisters Medieval Gallery in New York. She is enclosed in glass. I wasn't aware that I couldn't use my flash. The museum staff were quick to point that out to me, upon seeing the sudden flash of light. I apologized - I really don't want to participate in the destruction of these beautiful pieces. The damage was done, but I got the lovely photo above, with the light glowing on the faces of Mary and Jesus, and on the folds of Mary's robe. The stained glass window on the left, part of the collection in the Treasury, is reflected in the glass on the right.

Although it isn't that unusual to see a depiction of the Madonna and child in stained glass windows, it is still a little bit of a coincidence that the image in the glass behind The Standing Virgin also depicts the Madonna and Child. I instinctively included the whole of the stained glass background, although most photos I find of this sculpture crop off the background (as I show in the collage below - one even obstructs a stained glass with the sculpture). For example, this could have been a perfectly acceptable version, which focuses almost entirely on the sculpture (I cropped the image in photoshop, not in camera):


The stained glass is:


Virgin of the Apocalypse
Circle of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet (active 1470-90)

Date: ca. 1480–90
Geography: Made in, Middle Rhine, Germany
Culture: German
Medium: Colorless glass, silver stain, and vitreous paint
Dimensions: 13 7/8 x 9 5/8in.

The imagery depicted on this panel derives from the Book of Revelation, which describes "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (12:1). The Virgin standing on a crescent moon, surrounded by rays of light, is a specific iconographic type, of German origin, which became popular by the middle of the fifteenth century. Encircled by the rays of perfect light, the Virgin, Queen of Heaven, outshines the transitory and evanescent nature of all other realms, just as the sun dissipates the light of the moon.

The softness and delicacy of the figures, as well as the unmannered, free use of line, place this panel in the immediate circle of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, arguably the greatest graphic artist active in northern Europe before Albrecht Dürer. [Source: Metropolitan Museum]

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I've written about the external beauty of the Cloisters here and here, but the Cloisters also house an expansive, and beautiful, collection of medieval art. The Standing Virgin is in the newly re-opened Treasury, which is:

an intimate gallery displaying some of the most precious small-scale works at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages – has reopened to the public after two years of renovation. Originally constructed in 1988 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Cloisters, the Treasury houses small luxury objects acquired in the years subsequent to the branch museum's 1938 founding. [More on the Treasury here]

It was The Standing Virgin that caught my attention. I was taken in by the intricate carvings of her robe, her expression which is a mixture of alarm (she sees something in front of her) and expectancy, and her playful infant with his chubby cheeks and legs. Yet, this is clearly Jesus, who is blessing us. The guide who took us around said that the sideways view is as important (if not more important) than the view from the front, since Mary is holding her child sightly forward, so that his two-finger blessing is clearly visible from the side, and he is slightly ahead of Mary, making him more important then her. I found the back view also important, but in an artistic sense. The carver has not cut any corners with the back, giving us a detailed carving of her long locks, Jesus' curly hair, and the shawl on Mary's head which is draped forward leading us to Jesus' hand which is holding it at the front.

The Standing Virgin, images acquired from
various sources around the web.

In the bottom right of the collage is a reliquary arm.

Here's what the Metropolitan Museum's website says about this object:

Reliquary Arm, ca. 1230
South Netherlandish
Silver over oak; hand: bronze-gilt; appliqué plaques: silver-gilt, niello and cabochon stones
25 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 4 in.
The Cloisters Collection, 1947 (47.101.33)

Precious containers for relics—the bones of a holy person, or objects touched by that person—are among the most inventive and accomplished works of art in the Middle Ages. In this reliquary, a silver and gilded arm is bordered both by decorative filigree plaques set with gems and antique cameos, and figurative scenes crafted in niello on silver. These plaques include images of saints Peter and Paul, perhaps the patrons of the church from which this reliquary originally came. As a reliquary was thought to retain the power and holiness of the saintly person, clergy used arm reliquaries to bless people or heal the sick.

It is of course a larger, and more imposing (and truncated!) version of the blessing that Jesus is giving in the sculpture.

The wood used to sculpt The Standing Virgin is a rich, red wood. It is identified as "Boxwood" in the catalogs. Wikipedia says this about Boxwood:

Owing to its fine grain it is a good wood for fine wood carving, although this is limited by the small sizes available. It is also resistant to splitting and chipping, and thus useful for decorative or storage boxes. Formerly, it was used for wooden combs.

Owing to the relatively high density of the wood (it is one of the few woods that are denser than water), boxwood is often used for chess pieces, unstained boxwood for the white pieces and stained ('ebonized') boxwood for the black pieces, in lieu of ebony.

The extremely fine endgrain of box makes it suitable for woodblock printing.

And this about its use for musical instruments:

Due to its high density and resistance to chipping, boxwood is a relatively economical material used to make parts for various stringed instruments. It is mostly used to make tailpieces, chin rests and tuning pegs, but may be used for a variety of other parts as well. Other woods used for this purpose are rosewood and ebony.

Boxwood was a common material for the manufacture of recorders in the eighteenth century, and a large number of mid- to high-end instruments made today are produced from one or other species of boxwood. Boxwood was once a popular wood for other woodwind instruments, and was among the traditional woods for Great Highland bagpipes before tastes turned to imported dense tropical woods such as cocuswood, ebony, and African blackwood.

The Standing Virgin is attributed to Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leiden. She stands about 13 1/4 inches high, and was carved around 1470 [Source: MetMuseum.org].

Here is biographical information on the sculptor Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leiden:

Gerhaert is considered the most influential northern European sculptor of the 15th century. He was born in Leiden, Holland (present day Netherlands) sometime around 1420. Based on the location of his work, we know he spent most his working life in the Germanic areas of Trier, Straßburg, Baden, Konstanz, and Vienna. Much of his documented work is lost to history, but what has survived is characterized by elaborate drapery and extreme physical realism, both extraordinarily vivid and unconventional. His specialties were tombs, altarpieces and other religious pieces. Sandstone and limestone are among his most frequent mediums.

One of his most well known works currently resides in the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg (Alsace, present day France). Called the Buste d'homme accoudé (1467), it is an indisputed masterpiece, and is believed to be a self-portrait. Gerhaert died on 28 June 1473 in Wiener Neustadt (present day Austria)

Man Meditating (Buste d'homme accoudé),
an apparent self-portrait, c. 1467

Another source describes the stone as Red Sandstone. Gerhaert seems to like rich rose colored media, like the boxwood he used for The Standing Virgin and the reddish sandstone he used Man Meditating. The Cloisters also incorporate pink marble from the Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa Benedictine monastery, located at the foot of Mount Canigou in the northeast Pyrenees of France, into the architecture. More current areas of the building also retain that warm, pinkish hue.

La Dentellière and the Lacemaker

La Dentellière is a hard film to take. It was showing recently on the French channel Télévision Français de l'Ontario (TFO), which is the french version of TVO, Television Ontario, last night. I hesitated to watch it, since I knew it would be a sad film to watch.

The lovely Isabelle Huppert is a young actress in this film.

I didn't get the connection between the film and the painting until the very end. Huppert turns her head and looks at us, the audience. It's the culmination of the many things her character, Pomme (her nickname which means "Apple" because of her round face), has gone through.

I've written about the uncontrollable desire to animate Vermeer's paintings, as though their stillness is some kind of suspended animation (or life). I've noticed that many artists feel the same way. Most, though, make small animated spurts of the actual painting. Claude Goretta, who directed La Dentellière, creates a whole story behind The Lacemaker. He brings the painting to life both through animation and through story, and creates a new character to embody her.

The film is from the novel La Dentellière by Pascal Lainé, who writes of Pomme:

She was like one of those genre paintings where the subject is captured in mid-movement. Her way, for example, of pursing hairpins in her lips as she redid her hair bun! She was The Laundress, The Water Girl, or The Lacemaker.

He is, of course, talking about Vermeer, after whose Lacemaker he titles his book.

Vermeer, Jan
The Lacemaker
c. 1669-1670
Oil on canvas transferred to panel
23.9 x 20.5 cm (9 13/32 x 8 1/2 in.)

It was fun to see Paris in the seventies, but most of the film takes place in the northern seaside resort of Cabourg. This is partly a story about sexual liberation, and the societal responsibilities (or irresponsibilities, more like) that followed from that era. A lovely, delicate girl like Pomme, again an apt name because she does look as lovely, fresh and round-faced as an apple, would have probably got a lot of protection from her mother and especially her male family members in per-feminist eras. "Elle est fragile," says Pomme's friend, who brought her to Cabourg for a short vacation, but has no time for the especially vulnerable Pomme. She probably brought her along on vacation to help with the hotel bills.

The Grand Hotel de Cabourg, where Pomme would sit
at their outdoor cafe with her chocolate ice cream
and a view of the Atlantic

Under normal family protection, some Don Juan wouldn't have been able to walk through the door, decide that he likes what he sees, and try to seduce (if he moves too fast, she might fly away) a young girl, without everyone making sure of his true intentions (i.e. marriage). That is what François, the young man Pomme meets on her trip to the seaside, tried to do.

Pomme was adept in many ways, although she would probably be considered a little slow. She works in a hair salon (mostly doing the hair of "vielle dames" as she explains), could manage many daily tasks well, and she maneuvers her way around Paris without difficulty. She is a respite for her young seducer, a University literature student full of ideas of romance, from the harsh feminists that surround him daily. I think that men are tired of feminists and feminism, even though many liberal men are staunch supporters of feminism. When it hits their daily life and choices, I am sure they would go for a gentler soul like Pomme. François realizes too late that he really was dealing with a vulnerable soul, and his clumsy attempts at seduction worked because Pomme really did like him, and trust him (he was different from the boys who whistle at her in the Paris streets). But, after he sleeps with her, he loses interest, or more precisely, he realizes he was dealing with not a savvy city girl, but a fragile, pure, soul he couldn't protect (or love). Pomme, uncharacteristically, had already told him she loved him after their night together, and it was too much for him to handle.


Huppert, in the still above from La Dentellière, has an uncanny resemblance to the woman in Vermeer's painting.
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Here is an article I wrote on Vermeer:
Vermeer's Discerning Light

And here is a blog post I wrote on the desire to animate Vermeer's works:
Vermeer's Light and Movement

In the blog, I've posted a very short animation I made of The Lacemaker. I've also made a box with the face of the lacemaker printed on fabric and stretched on the outer and inner lid of the box. The outer lid is a re-print of the original Vermeer painting. When opened, the inner lid shows a photoshopped version of the lacemaker, with her eyes up and looking out at us. The outer cover is of browinsh/yellowish hue, similar to the hues of the original painting. The inner is a light (celestial?) blue.

Hijabs and Tight Skirts

I wrote earlier about the pseudo-conformity of non-Western immigrants to Canadian society (specifically about Indians) here. Well, Muslim immigrants are no different.

Above are photos (from around the web) that I found where these hijabed girls are also wearing extremely tight skirts. The variation gets worse, where I'm seeing hijabed girls with tight jeans or even leggings that show their protruding behinds and thighs.

I wonder what the Imams think of this? I think they actually give temporary permission to these "Canadian" Muslim girls to wear such clothing so that they can blend in with the rest of the society. It is another stealthy encroachment of Muslims into the West. As these adolescent girls grow up, they become more strict, if what the older women wear is any indication. They will be better versed in Islam, and uncontested believers. They will also make great advocates for Islam. Canadians who think that Muslims will integrate into Canadian society have it all wrong. They just need to look at (the obvious) details to realize what is going on.

Indian And Proud (In Canada)

The blog title is from the refrain: Proud to be Canadian. This refrain is perhaps chanted once a year on Canada Day by hyphenated Canadians, while all the other days of the year they are proud to be, well, wherever they came from.

I actually don't blame them. It is hard to be a Canadian in Canada.

These are the notes I typed down on the bus on my way back to Toronto from New York.

Bus ride

- Indian women sitting across the aisle from each other
- Both talk about finishing or being in post graduate work
- Talk to each other in mixture of Indian language and English
- One has a white boyfriend, sitting in front of her, "occupied" on his iPad. Occasionally he turns around and shows her something.
- A lot of their conversation in English is on Indian stuff both here and in India
- The screen saver of the one next to me is some Indian star in a sari

- Mannerisms:

- eating with mouth open
- strong odor of body cream or perfume
- Indian style sandals

- No chance of assimilation, let alone acculturation

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The young white man seems to have acquiesced to the "Indian in Canada" life style. The two young women can keep talking in their mixed English/Hindi all they want. He will enter the conversation when he can (possibly when they give him an inroad). Otherwise he is content to entertain himself. He sits on a public bus, driving through the landscape of his country, yet he is more alien than are his foreign travel companions.

China Love

Stephen Harper with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

Canada's esteemed Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is visiting the "Far North" to:

address the issue of China’s state-owned enterprises buying stakes in Canadian resource companies.

The Gulf News, hardly a main stream publication whose article I've quoted above, continues in detail about China's "investments" in Canada.

Harper’s government is reviewing Beijing-based Cnooc [China National Offshore Oil Corp] Ltd’s $15.1 billion offer for Calgary-based oil and gas producer Nexen Inc under the country’s foreign-takeover law. The government in 2010 rejected BHP Billiton Ltd’s $40 billion hostile bid for Potash Corp, only the second time Canada had blocked a foreign takeover in 25 years

The Gulf News continues:

Investment from Chinese companies helped push exploration spending in the Yukon to a record last year....Asian companies have made seven “significant” investments in Yukon-based companies since 2007.

Now, what I don't understand is why Chinese companies have to be the ones who make investments in Canadian companies. And why Harper is so eagerly courting their investments.

My simple (not simplistic) question is based on the fact (we know this) that the Chinese government is running on a corrupt system, that it has a large, Third World level work force that it exploits, that the stories of the rising Chinese middle class may be true, but this tiny middle class is rising at the expense of the country's vast underclass, and that the model the Chinese government has adopted is not true capitalism but a form of coerced capitalism, with lots of government intrusions and regulations.

China is NOT a free country, and is fact is cleverly straddling between pleasing the West with specific, few and well-designed "open" market policies, while maintaining a stringently controlling government.

Even Harper's political base agrees with me. According to the Sault Star, another way off-main stream media newspaper:

...rock-ribbed Conservatives in Harper's political base...object to the deal because they don't like the idea that Communist China should have such influence in one of Canada's most important industries.

Commenter #1 at the National Post's article Oil sales, human rights (and pandas) on Stephen Harper’s China agenda writes in:

Let's be very clear about something from the start. China is a communist country. Communism is all about world domination. What the hell are we doing pandering to them? This is a huge mistake. China wants to buy more and more of Canada for one reason.......so they can pull the political and economic strings of this country.

And the #1 comment on the leftist CBC's online article Canada and China next steps could include free trade deal is:

The price Canadians will pay for "free trade" with China is lost jobs and closed businesses.

Courting Chinese business and development ventures in Canada also means courting Chinese "experts" to Canada. Chinese immigration into Canada will of course increase, as Harper's government is doing all it can to reduce overall immigration into Canada. On his February visit, the National Post reported that Harper took with him:

Chinese-Canadian community leaders and the president of the University of Western Ontario...to attract China’s best and brightest to Canada.

The ordinary readers and commentators quoted above have a much better understanding of why Harper should not be playing trade games with China.

Major publications, left and right, are not reporting honestly on this mission, and are not covering the social, political and economic impacts they can have on Canadians. But it is good to know that ordinary people are so insightful. But, this is probably insight brought on by suffering. Off the beaten path newspapers are also taking on the challenge of reporting this "hidden" news. And the internet becomes an active hub for all this information.

Finally, here's an interesting tidbit, from the Windsor Star, hardly a publication that the majority of Canadians read:

According to the World Bank, the GDP per capita in China last year [2011] was nearly $8,500, as compared to $40,500 in Canada.

So much for Chinese wealth and development.

The only reason I can think of why Harper would court a communist government to assist him with his country's development, instead of going across to the much friendlier nation, and sure ally, to the south, is a pervasive anti-Americanism in the world these days. Perhaps the key information for his decision is in this Wall Street Journal article:

The trip is part of a broader strategic push by Canada to more closely align itself with China and reduce its reliance on the U.S. Mr. Harper aims to increase Canada's capacity to export oil and other resources to China, an effort that has intensified following the Obama administration's decision to reject for now TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL pipeline, which would have shipped oil-sands crude from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast

The operative word is "for now." The Obama administration may have closed off the oil sands venture, but business men and oil companies continue to think it is a good idea. There is no reason why the venture cannot resume, and soon.

A View Across the Hudson

This is a photo I took from Cloisters' terrace with a view of the George Washington Bridge and the Hudson River. Across the river is New Jersey, and the undeveloped stretch of land is the New Jersey Palisades. John D. Rockefeller had the Cloisters built especially to house his medieval collection. He also bought several acres of the Palisade hills across the river in order to have the best view possible from the Cloisters.

Below is a Wikipedia image of the Palisades with the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge (more on the Palisades at the link provided):

New York Fire Escapes

Below, I've collected several examples of fire escapes in upper Manhattan from various sources on the web.




I went to the Cloisters a second time with a friend. It is not enough to go once, and even twice doesn't cut it. The ride up to the Cloisters is an experience in itself. The best way to get there is on the M4 bus, which might crawl along its route, but this gives one ample time to observe the scenery. Several tourist buses were on this route, most likely for a steep price. The M4, for a mere $2.25, goes all the way up Broadway right up to the Cloisters. The most interesting part of the ride up is probably between 155th Street up to around 193rd Street.


"Don't look at what's below," I quipped, as we traveled through the area known as Hamilton Heights, between 135th Street and 159th Street. The buildings' bodegas and dollar stores are a messy presence on the ground levels, but the upper parts still retain their beauty.


The outdoor fire escape stairs fascinated me. They briefly reminded me of West Side Story, but these are intricate, beautiful wrought iron works, which are works of art. I have never noticed them, or bothered to look at them, during my previous trips to New York. But, that is the nature of New York. Despite the imposing presence of the skyscrapers, the city's building facades are subtle, and can easily be ignored. "Subtle isn't what one associates with New York," said my New Yorker friend.

I have posted above photos I have culled from around the web buildings with these wrought iron fire escapes. I will write a post on the history of these structures soon.


I don't like to end on a negative note, but the above image shows buildings whose ground level messy bodegas and stores still do not spoil the beautiful architecture and stairways above.

Black Slang For a Black President

This may show my own lack of deeper knowledge of black American culture, but Niall Ferguson's "Obama's Gotta Go" Newsweek article title, which I wrote about here, reminded me of Spike Lee's movie She's Gotta Have It.

I will venture to say that Ferguson took his title from this relatively well-known black cultural reference, which shows that his knowledge of American blacks is shallow and superficial.

Ferguson in America

I'm the last one to talk about non-Americans talking/writing about American affairs, but I think (I know) I have much more sympathy and admiration for America than many who spend a lot of their time dissecting the country.

As I mentioned earlier, I was recently there for about two weeks, and felt much more at home there than I do here in Toronto. One could say that New York is different, but as I have written before, I spent my formative adult years in the U.S. I went to undergraduate in a small college in Pennsylvania (Lock Haven University), and went on to get a masters at Rutgers University, with a some time in Connecticut before my parents sponsored me to come and immigrate to Canada. I have always been a reluctant Canadian, and I am not being ungrateful, since I am sure that my presence here "benefits" the multi-culti ethos that pervades the country. Of course, Canadians are always shocked when they find out that I don't believe in, nor participate in, multiculturalism. In fact, most of my activities denounce it.

So, having said that, I think I have more clout to talk about America than does Niall Ferguson, who is the mentioned in Lawrence Auster's discussion on the Newsweek article which Ferguson wrote.

I agree that only someone scornful of America would head his article with: "Obama's Gotta Go" which is some kind of American slang which Ferguson uses to make his title rhythmically interesting. The rhythm is in black style, another jab at Obama, who is black, but doesn't "act" black. So, this scornful Ferguson even mocks one of the cultural elements of America - black slang and swagger, which at its best is entertaining and charming. Ferguson could have just left off those references.

But, who is Ferguson to talk? He is married to a black woman, a Somali foreigner who lives in America. She is not there for the love of America, but for the convenience of being in America (and being American). In fact, she recently had a child with Ferguson, whose tawdry personal life involves several bouts of adultery during his first marriage, including with Ali. The child they have together is illegitimate. In a Globe and Mail interview, the "devout" atheist, anti-Christian Ali says that she doesn't mind if her child, at adulthood, comes to her and declares he's a Muslim. "Alright, go for it" will be her response.

Ali is also involved in "helping" Muslim women escape Muslim countries through her foundation the AHA Foundation, which means that she will simply increase the number of Muslims (albeit female only) into the West without any considerations for their assimilation, change of religion to fit with the West's Christian culture, or any other such matters. Her idea is not to help the West, as she keeps repeating like a parrot, but to ultimately help those like her, who have semi-denounced their cultural and religious upbringings, but who can also be part (of families, of groups) who haven't. Letting in one Muslim woman also is some guarantee that the "abusive" husband, or sister with a family of five, etc. will make it into the West, increasing the Muslim population in the West.

So, when her grown son encounters one of these Muslim women's daughters, whom she helped to immigrate to America, and declares his intentions to marry her, Ali's response would be: "Go for it."

Finally, Ferguson himself has a website where he posts some of his articles. One that caught my attention, but I didn't know how to bring it up in a previous blog post, is his eulogy for China. Of course, like all clever neoconists, he words his article well. But it is an article with a message of submission to Chinese power, and a wry belief in the fall of American power. I, as a mere cultural observer, do not believe that America will succumb to China, whether militarily, economically or culturally. Or that the Chinese will reach the level of American greatness, with their corrupt system and third world-like conditions which they try hard to hide from the world. Barack Obama may try to speed up the process, and Ferguson may continue his rap of Barack attack, but the American people will realize how much they have to lose if they relinquish their position to a Chinese hegemony.

I doubt Ferguson believes, or wants to believe, this. His convoluted position, of submission coupled with sporadic aggression, doesn't have the principles to reveal to him America's strength and beauty.

Red Apples and Vampires

Caught in her own web

On my trip back from Toronto, I struck a conversation with a young woman next to me (she's about twenty-five, so she doesn't qualify as "that" young, and is actually a grown adult). She was traveling from New York to Toronto for a week's vacation. She is studying financial management at the New School. She said she was from Toronto (Pickering, a town about 25 miles from Toronto), and already has a degree in Visual Arts from the University of Toronto, a small, and not particularly good, art program.

She did her final art thesis on a "video installation" which is really an easy way out for not very talented students of art to present something "artistic."

Here is the technical part of her work:

- She covered her face with white powder.
- She sat in front of the camera and taped herself holding an apple in front of her mouth for a few minutes
- She sat in front of the camera again for a few minutes taping herself holding a cylindrical object smaller than the apple.
- She filled her mouth with blood-red liquid, and started to tape as she let the liquid spill out of her mouth
-She super-imposed the first image over the second image.

The effect she wanted, and got, was of her eating an apple, with blood gushing out of her mouth as she ate the apple. But, without the apple showing any signs of having been eaten.

Apples, crosses and demons
Red apples from the vampire movie Twilight,
which clearly influenced the young woman
who is the subject of this post.

I immediately went into a non-judgmental, analytical mode:

"- Snow White (your white face), Red Rose (the blood from the apple)
- Snow White is pure, but what's wrong with Red Rose (a rose is good, isn't it?)
- Vampires, blood from eating flesh
- Eve and the apple"

"Yes, pretty good," she said.

But, she said she was also working on menstruation and the beginnings of adulthood for girls which starts out with blood. That her white face was to make a strong visual contrast with the red blood and the red apple. That Snow White is a symbol of purity, while the red blood shows the impurity of adulthood, and the corrupted nature of woman (i.e. menstruation is the beginning of the impurity).

She couldn't quite make a clear analogy between the apple and Eve, but I think it is the same idea of the fallen, corrupted woman, that she had. Although she didn't say so, it is also clear that the white powder-mask she covered her face with is also a sign of her purity, and how adulthood, menstruation, etc. is making her less pure than her younger, childhood years. She talked a little about the Hunter from Red Riding Hood as well, insinuating some kind of rape, or forced sexual meaning.

It was all a little convoluted, but very interesting. Young adult women these days have no idea what to do as adult women. A few decades ago, women in their early twenties were married and had at least one baby by the time they were twenty-five. Now, twenty-five year-olds don't only prolong their adolescence (this girl was back at school after several years in a dance program, then she was in New York for a masters in finance at the New School, so she never really had to be out in the real world) but they seem to regress even further back in age, and in their psyche, as they grow older and old.

One think I noticed about this young woman was how much she lacked self-confidence. This seems a contradiction, considering her art thesis is an aggressive and violent piece. But that "artistic" aggression is a channeling of a self-centered, narcissistic personality. She wanted me very much to "like" her ideas, but at the same time, she has tells me her story of a bloody, vampiric art piece which is liable to turn off and repel any normal person.

But it repelled her too. She confessed that the experience affected her so negatively that she hasn't done any "art" since then. And that is why she went into finance. "After all, like art, finance is about communication," she tried to explain.

"No, art is about creating. I don't know what finance is about, but I would assume it is about negotiation money in various way. No relation at all with art." I was a little harsh, which put her into more of a "pleasing" mode for a while.

The conversation petered off. How much can there be to talk about when the subject is so unpleasant to her? I was just intrigued, and could have gone on for a while, including finding out more about her mother was picking her up at the bus stop. "Are your parents divorced?" would have been my question, a little less bluntly asked, perhaps.

But, such are modern (or post-moder) women these days. They just cannot handle life. Their morbid, narcissistic, suicidal tendencies are coupled with a latent aggression that spurts out in unexpected moments. But, when it comes to the practicalities of life, they have nothing to grasp on to that will pull them out of the abysses that all of us encounter at times. But in her own morbid way, this girl likes these abysses, and manipulates them as much as she can.

I switched her off and turned to the window, and looked at the beautiful landscape rolling by me. Let her handle her apples and demons on her own.

Kirsten Stewart in a "vampire" movie Eclipse

Prescient Perceptions

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River
in New York City

Laura Wood, from The Thinking Housewife, writes to Lawrence Auster at View From the Right:

You have done a great job over the last several days.

I agree. View From the Right has been unusually active and prescient these few days (and months).

Larry Auster responds to Laura:

But I think my message is too much for people to take. It’s getting too much for me to take.

To which Laura replies:

The alternative is denying reality and denying that things are as bad as they are.

I agree that writing about reality these days is exhausting. It is summer after all, and why not write about the warm weather, and other cheery things? But, each time I am about to do that, right next to what I'm observing, or alongside what I'm thinking, something negates this.

I'm not sure where this will lead, for now, at least. But, still, there are beautiful things to wonder at, observe and record. I will continue to do that as I go along.

A Road Less Taken

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River

I cannot upload photos from my camera to the computer I'm using while in New York. I will make a file (a post) of photos I took here when I return to Toronto.

But, there are plenty of online images to download.

I tried to get to the Cloisters today. They are a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, but they are somewhere in the Netherlands of New York City. They are located in an area called Fort Tyron Park. The closest street intersection is 190th Street. I'm not sure if this is the Bronx, or if it is still Harlem, but I decided to take the M4 bus which supposedly goes straight there. It didn't happen so easily.

There was some kind of parade (actually it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or more precisely the National Puerto Rican Day Parade - what is "national" about Puerto Ricans in New York?) which held up buses between 44th and 79th on Fifth Avenue. At one point I waited close to half an hour to get a bus. When one finally arrived and we climbed on, we had to get off on 135th Street because...well the driver couldn't give a reason. He parked the bus and waited inside. Then this parked bus suddenly took life, and the patient group that was waiting for another (some people just left - to catch a cab?!) was allowed back on this one.

But it really was worth the wait. The ride on the M4 from about 135th street down to 79th was incredible. The bus went down Riverside Drive, along the Hudson and past the beautiful Riverside Church (which I think is even more beautiful than St. Patrick's, or St. John the Divine's just above 110th Street) until the driver turned on 79th Street and took Broadway. I went all the way to 59th Street and Columbus Circle and took the M10 down Central Park West, to get more views of another of New York's beautiful park. I got off just before 110th Street, where Central Park ends, to get to where I was staying on the Upper West Side. The ride took shorter than I thought, although it is a good 45 minutes. I highly recommend this "tour" for a mere bus token ($2.25). There were plenty of tourist buses taking a similar route, and I'm sure their's was an expensive affair.

A view of the Riverside Church with the Hudson River

One of the reasons I wanted (want) to go to the Cloisters is to see the beautiful unicorn tapestries.

The Unicorn in Captivity
At The Cloisters

(I've linked to backgrounds on The Cloisters and the tapestries, but I will write some more tomorrow on how they got to New York and to such a location. It is a fascinating bit of New York history.)

Adept Attackers of Beauty

Frumpy, home-body Miu Miu

I sent the email below, along with a link of my blog post From Schiaparelli to Prada: Deterioration of Culture to a correspondent.

I have written a long post on the Met's exhibition "Schiaparelli & Prada, Impossible Conversations" (linked above), but this email adds more on my ideas and observations about the decline, or perversion, of culture that I see around me. Art, and artists, are often the first to grasp (either by accepting or rejecting) societal changes. I think Prada has given us some insights, not what she really wants us to see but nevertheless insights, on our current culture.

Here is my email, which I titled: War on Beauty and the related War on Masculinty:

Hi ____,

I read a little while ago your post on beauty with interest.

Beauty is a hard concept to "analyze" and to "deconstruct" as leftists love to do. It is an ethereal presence. We react to beauty rather than coldly observe it. We have to admit it is there in some things, probably not in us, and thus we realize it is some kind of favored state (it is clear that beautiful people, and babies, are treated better than ordinary people). At our best, we are humbled by beauty.

This hierarchy of beauty is what grates liberals and leftists.

I've written several (many) blogs on beauty, and I've noticed that there is an even more vicious war going on against beauty than when I started my blog a few years ago. This time, I think people are well-versed on how to attack beauty, and how to make beautiful people, things, etc. feel they're doing, and are, something wrong (and evil). Decades (even centuries, if you look back at the origins of modernism) have made such people adept attackers of beauty.

I wrote this post on Prada's really ugly clothes after I saw the exhibition "Schiaparelli & Prada, Impossible Conversations" at the Metropolitan Museum. Schiaparelli, in her time (around the turn of the 20th century), was considered a radical fashion designer, yet her least feminine designs are not as viciously ugly as Prada's. Schiaparelli was also much more talented, skilled (trained, I think) than Prada, and she admits the power of femininity and feminine beauty.

Prada is the post-modern feminist who seems to have a visceral hate for femininity. and feminine beauty, and ultimately beauty in general (I won't go into the many viciously anti-woman homosexual designers, since perhaps their deficiencies are obvious, but the heterosexual, female Prada is the ultimate betrayer.)

Prada of course supports all the evils that come with feminism, yet her life is strangely traditional, with a husband of several decades, two grown sons, and one son who is following her footsteps in her fashion design empire. She herself inherited this already successful empire from her father and grandfather, so she hardly qualifies as a female empire builder. She holds her temperamental husband at bay by giving him the high profile role of managing her company (and metaphorically, her too?). She's a clever, smart feminist. Those are the types that really do rule this world, since they realize that the female energy IS different than the male's. So, what they're after in not equality, but a reversal of roles (of power), even though they know from experience that this isn't likely to happen. But, I think even clever, smart Prada succumbs to her illusions, since her inner-most desire must be (from all the information she keeps giving us) to make women the superior sex. I think one of your correspondents called this envy. I think that is what it is. The natural, obvious, strength (power) of men, which they carry with such ease, is something to be admired, just as beauty is to be admired in beautiful women. When this admiration is perverted, it turns to something ugly like envy. I think we are in the age of perversions. And this is manifested, at least in my observations of culture, in the cult of ugliness as a vicious retaliation against beauty, and I think related to that (since it all presents itself as equality) the cult of male feminization, which is part of the degradation masculinity.

And finally, what happens if a woman can no longer be beautiful? The alternative now is that she has to look masculine. How does Prada reconcile all that with her "hatred" of masculinity AND femininity? One way is that modern fashion designers (and artists in general) who still work with/for/about women are creating alien monsters, neither male nor female. But, this is something I've just began to observe, and I still have to think about it some more.

Kidist

Android, from Prada's 2013 collection

From Schiaparelli to Prada: Deterioration of Culture

Schiaparelli's designs displayed at the Metropolitan's
Schiaparelli and "Prada: Impossible Conversations",
with the shoe-hat, the lobster dress, and other gowns.

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When a fashion designer says that her aim is to introduce ugliness into women's clothes, what do you do?

That is what Prada said in an imaginary dialogue she held with Schiaparelli, the "avant-garde" designer of the early twentieth century.

The "Dream Dialogue" between Schiaparelli and Prada is part of the Metropolitan Museum's "Schiaparelli & Prada, Impossible Conversations" exhibition that runs through August 19. Prada appears as her self, and Schiaparelli is reincarnated by the actress Judy Davis.

Prada is our contemporary expert on women's clothes. Her clothes are uninteresting, and their ugliness factor is more a boring lack of style than anything "shocking" the avant-gardists attempted through wit and imagination at the peak of their creativity. Prada says she is influenced by Schiaparelli's designs, and hence the exhibit (and her new line of work). But what she's really after is the rebellious essence of the early twentieth century avant-gardists. Of course, she misconstrues their efforts and intentions. They never wanted to destroy beauty, skill and culture, as do die-hard post-modernists like her.

Prada is the avant-gardist of our era, who wishes ugliness for women. That is her "shocking" contribution to her art. Not playful lobster dresses and witty shoe-hats (from the foot to the head, as Schiaparelli joked). But the telling point in Prada's conversation with Schiaparelli was not that she wishes simply ugliness for women and to discard their femininity (if these are just simple things), but that she wishes POWER for women. Power over what? Over men; over their destiny as women (the weaker sex, as she calls women); over their bodies, one of which is of course their ability to have (and NOT have, in Prada's argument) children. Prada, as with all feminists, doesn't really want equality for women, but a recreation of their person-hood. She wants to destroy the feminine woman, destroy her feminine essence and unique strength, which according to feminists is woman's weakness, then create a super creature that presides over all others, and especially over men. What feminists ultimately wish to create, although they would never admit to this, or even recognize this, is an alien creature/monster.

Schiaparelli is the better, the more talented, the more skilled, the more educated designer. Her clothes are well-crafted, her textiles well-chosen, and her designs far more superior than what Prada has to offer. Even her presence is more alluring and imaginative than the frumpy Prada. Still, there is no denying that Schiaparelli's playfulness did contribute to the decline in cultural excellence. She dismissed skill for pure imagination. Prada is ultimately her heir, who works simply with her ideas, without the finesse and skill necessary to back them up.

Prada is the supreme post-modern artist of our era. Ideas (and almost always bad, ugly ideas) are the crutch she leans on, as though things materialize out of the nether worlds of her vapid brain.

I would get Schiaparelli's "lobster dress" and "shoe-hat" any time over Prada's drab dresses.

The exhibition entrance is a suggested $25, but you can enter with a donation of any amount. The guy at the ticket booth took my "donation" of $2 with good humor. You can spend quite a bit of money at the Museum's store, with its overpriced, but one-of-a-kind items made especially for the exhibition, to make up for a lower entrance fee.

My instincts were right about Prada's feminism which leads to equality, which ultimately means power of women over nature. Here is some background on her:

As a young woman, Prada, who has a degree in political science and then studied mime with the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, was a signed-up member of the Communist Party and a reluctant inheritor of her grandfather's leather goods and glass company. She finally took the helm there in 1978.

"Italian society was becoming obsessed with consumerism, but my big dreams were of justice, equality and moral regeneration," she said. "I was a Communist but being left wing was fashionable then. I was no different from thousands of middle-class kids."

I suppose her slabs of ugly glass are some kind of homage to her grandfather Mario Prada, the founder of the Prada line. Yet a convoluted homage it is.

Mario Prada did not believe that women should have a role in business, and so he prevented female family members from entering into his company. Ironically, Mario's son harbored no interest in the business, so it was his daughter Luisa Prada who took the helm of Prada as his successor, and ran it for almost twenty years. Her own daughter, Miuccia Prada, joined the company in 1970, eventually taking over for her mother in 1978.[Source: Wikipedia]

Miu Miu may have never forgotten the second choice women in Mario's family were given to run his business. Her subconscious revenge is to scatter her works with ugly glass and crudely cut leather.

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Prada's convoluted homage to her grandfathers glass and leather heritage:

Prada's sack tunic with
what look like glass (but are
probably plastic) slabs from
the Met's exhibition.

Tunics (Roman gladiator?)
at the Met's exhibition
From Prada' s Ready-to-wear
Fall 2009 collection

(More images of the exhibition piece here.)

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And on those avant-gardists. All those I have met (at least the leaders) who SELL the idea of the leftist/communist/anti-establishment avant-garde are bourgeois at heart. Avant-garde is for the common people, who literally, like the advance guard in armies, are sent to the front to fight the real, deadly battles.

Here is how the Department of Defense explains the advance guard:

Detachment sent ahead of the main force to ensure its uninterrupted advance; to protect the main body against surprise; to facilitate the advance by removing obstacles and repairing roads and bridges; and to cover the deployment of the main body if it is committed to action. [Source: Department Of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms]

The common folk get the products that seep out of the distorted imaginations of these armchair avant-gardists, while they live safe and secure bourgeois lives.

That is how Prada is living her life. Her husband is the "boss" as she has arranged it. She acts as the creative force, while he runs the business and rules the staff with his boisterous personality. It is a "family" business, apparently run by the head of the household, Mr. Prada. They have two grown sons, one of whom is joining the family business.

Clever Mrs. Prada, who's kept her name, gives just enough of the reigns to her excitable husband, and sits demurely next to him when necessary.

Prada with her husband in 2011

Prada with her two sons below (in 1999), forming her happy family which is still in tact. Families consisting of husband-wife-two/three kids are only for fake avant-gardists like her. Other "families" can be of any type: homosexual parents, unmarried parents, women bringing up their children alone, etc. All of these make up the foot soldiers who change the messy world below the palaces of the pradas.

Prada with her husband and two sons in 1999