Lee Miller

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Art for Housewives

One hot morning in July of 1937, I woke up needing to hug a tree. So Hugh suggested we drive to Mougins for a brief vacation because that area of the Côte d’Azur was full of pines, olives, and cypress trees.  Ahh, j’adore!

We checked into the Hôtel Vaste Horizon and were sitting on the terrace having an aperitif when Picasso and Dora Maar showed up. Dora looked so sad and Picasso looked so full of himself. Picasso had many visitors including Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, Man Ray with his new girlfriend, Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington as well as poet Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch. The group kept mainly to themselves but one evening I ran into Lee on the terrace. She’d obviously been drinking and was quite talkative. Lee was exquisite and it was easy to see why men swooned over her. Fascinated by her presence, I took advantage of her altered state to ask personal questions.

She was there with Roland Penrose, a surrealist painter who, like the other men present, for some reason treated Picasso as a god. And, as an offering to this god, they had their girlfriends take turns sleeping with Picasso despite the fact that he was there with Dora, his official girlfriend.

Hugh and I were jumping the waves when the Picasso group arrived. Jealous of the diaper bathing suits all the women were wearing, I decided to make myself one, too.

My talk with Lee the night before made me wonder if beauty isn’t really a beast. Everyone wanted Lee but for all the wrong reasons. She was still a teen when she moved to New York City (maybe to get away from her peculiar father). One day as she was crossing the street, a car almost hit her. Luckily a man pulled her away in time.  That man was Condé Nast and, like most men, he was overwhelmed by Lee’s beauty. He convinced her to model for VOGUE initiating her successful modelling career. But the thrill of being on magazine covers quickly dissipated. Lee wanted more. She wanted to be on the other side of the lens.

So, at the age of 22, Lee arrived in Paris determined to study photography with Man Ray. She stalked the Bateau Ivre bar on Blvd Raspail not far from his studio in Montparnasse until he showed up. Then she boldly went up to him and said “My name is Lee Miller and I’m your new student”. May Ray told her he didn’t have students plus he was on his way to Biarritz to which Lee responded “So am I”.

For a month the two went riding around the south of France in Ray’s Voisin cabriolet wearing matching berets. Back in Paris, Lee rented a room on rue Campagne-Première near Ray’s studio and started studying photography with him. For 3 years the relationship was very stimulating and they enjoyed experimenting together (as with solarisation). But Ray became too possessive.  He continued the role of guru and went into a rage when Lee used some of his trashed negatives to experiment on her own. Feeling claustrophobic, Lee fled to NYC leaving behind a Ray who sunk into depression. Fixated with his ex-lover, for two years he worked on a painting of Lee’s lips floating over Paris.

Back in New York, Lee set up a photography studio hoping to earn a living as a commercial photographer. She was sponsored by a couple of boyfriends and all went well until she got The Itch again. Her sails were hungry for a wind to sweep her away again.

While vacationing with Charlie Chaplin in Saint Moritz, Lee met Aziz Eloui Bey, an Egyptian railroad magnate in his forties. For some reason Lee married Aziz and went to live with him in Cairo. But Cairo was dull and Lee was easily bored. Initially photography helped to distract her but in 1937, she couldn’t take it anymore and boarded a steamer headed for Marseilles. Back in Paris, Lee started making the rounds. And it was at a Max Ernst dinner party that she met Penrose.

I had quite enjoyed Lee’s psychological strip tease that night on the terrace but, once our vacation was over, life took my thoughts in another direction. Then, years later, Hugh & I went to visit our friends, Rita & Demetri, who were now living in south Essex. They were quite excited about their new rural lifestyle and insisted on driving us around the countryside. One lovely home particularly stood out. Connie said it was Farley Farm, the home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose.

So Lee was living in England now! My mind immediately flashed back to our evening together. Exploding with curiosity, I had Rita tell me everything she knew about her.

On September 1, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and a new wind set Lee’s sails in another direction. She convinced VOGUE magazine to let her be their WWII photojournalist.  The only female photographer with the permission to travel in a war zone, Lee was audacious and dared to go everywhere to take photos.

Straight out of a Hemingway novel, Lee was tough, hard drinking and hard talking. And looked like an angel. She used a Rolleiflex without a telephoto lens. This meant getting close to the action often risking her life. But nothing she’d seen during the war could compare to the Nazi atrocities of Buchenwald and Dachau. The emaciated bodies piled up like rubbish was too much for her and would leave her psyche permanently scarred.

Finally the Allies took control. While in Munich, Lee broke into Hitler’s apartment and took a bath in his tub just hours before he committed suicide.

The war was over but not its consequences. Having photographed so many horrors radically changed something inside of Lee. And all those dead bodies she’d photographed kept coming back to haunt her. Maybe she thought that a “normal” life would make those monsters go away. So in 1946 she married Penrose. The couple bought Farley Farm and had a child. But the monsters remained. Sometimes, to obliterate their presence, she started drinking. And menopause didn’t help either. Despite a facelift, the mirror was no longer her friend.

The war had obviously left Lee suffering from PTSD. She sought refuge in food by becoming a gourmet cook. Lee collected cookbooks and studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. And, when not entering cooking competitions, she enjoyed inviting friends to the farm to enjoy her meals. Guests included Picasso, Mirò, Renato Guttuso, Henry Moore, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, and Max Ernst.

In 1977, at the age of 70, Lee died of cancer. She was cremated and her ashes dispersed in her herb garden.

(from Cool Breeze, aka The Age of Reconfiguration ©)

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Brakes

Posted on November 26, 2022 by Art for Housewives

Last night I dreamt I was driving along the Cornish coast again. The road was narrow and full of curves. I was afraid of swerving off the road. Then I remembered Hugh’s words, “Brake before the bend, not on it”. It was a relief to wake up all intact. But the dream had aroused briny scented memories and I spent the rest of the morning thinking about her.

It was September of 1939. The Germans had just invaded Poland and we were in Fowey, a small town in southern Cornwall. Fowey sits on the mouth of a breath-taking estuary and we thought it would be a good place for Hugh to write and for me to do some landscape painting.

We didn’t have much of a social life and our main pastimes were those of taking long walks or having afternoon tea at Hotel Fowey. One day I had a craving for scones and went for tea alone. Sitting next to me was a woman I’d recognized from the newspapers–Daphne du Maurier, the author of Rebecca. Intrigued, I improvised a ruse to start conversation. “Excuse me for interrupting”, I said, “do you have a pen I could borrow? I need to write something down quickly before I forget it.” It wasn’t the most ingenious approach and Daphne looked at me quizzically. Nevertheless, she opened her purse and took out a pen. It was the beginning of a mild manned rapport and we often took walks to Sandy Cove together. But I couldn’t really call it a friendship as Daphne was very self-contained and revealed little of herself.

Hugh and I eventually left Cornwall and my contact with Daphne slowly dissipated. Then in the late 50s, I was having martinis at Duke’s Hotel in London when I ran into one of Daphne’s friends. For reasons of discretion, I will simply refer to her as Mrs. R. From her I learned that Daphne had had a nervous breakdown and, said Mrs. R., it was all the fault of her grandfather and that Peter Pan man. Totally intrigued, I begged to know more and, thanks to the martinis, Mrs. R. was more than happy to elaborate.

While studying art in Paris, Daphne’s grandfather, George du Maurier, became fixated with hypnosis and enjoyed experimenting its effect on young women. His experimentation led to a novel, Trilby (1894), the story Trilby, a young artists’ model. Svengali, a musician and a hypnotist, is infatuated with her. Although Trilby is tone deaf, via hypnotism, Svengali transforms her into an international singing diva. But when Svengali has a heart attack and can’t hypnotize her, Trilby goes on stage and is unable to keep a tune. The audience boos and humiliates her so she cries out that she had never wanted to sing but did so only because of Svengali. Realizing that she doesn’t know who she really is, Trilby breaks down and dies a few weeks later.

Du Maurier’s novel, a major bestseller, inspired Jim Barrie to manipulate minds, too. He choose George Du Maurier’s grandsons (and Daphne’s cousins) as his prey and was so successful that it wasn’t long before the boys referred to him as “Uncle Jim” and the parents often left their children in his care. Uncle Jim taught them how to achieve Dreaming True, a trance like state where fantasy obliterates reality. And the king of this imaginary world was Peter Pan, Barrie’s novel that led to money-making plays.

Basic mind control techniques include: taking advantage of a person’s vulnerability and their need for approval, making someone feel special while simultaneously isolating them from others, creating synchronized activities together as a form of bonding. And, above all, demolishing one’s sense of personal identity.

A year after Barrie’s death, Daphne published Rebecca, a novel about a man with two wives. And Daphne represents both those wives.

As a child, Daphne’s father (also under Barrie’s control) let it be known that he’d wanted a son, not a daughter. So the young Daphne cut her hair, dressed as a boy, and called herself Eric Avon. In Rebecca, Mrs Danvers tells us that Rebecca “looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a face like a Botticelli angel.” Mrs. Danvers is describing Daphne.

By killing Rebecca in the novel, Daphne symbolically tries killing off the boy in her so she can liberate herself from Uncle Jim and her father.

Lesson learned from Daphne:

Having a sense of self is fundamental. It’s like a compass that helps keep you going in the right direction. Because if you lose touch with your core, you’ll easily get lost.

It’s important to “know thyself” and to keep that self whole. Personal identity is based on so many variables so we are constantly changing and need to periodically update the image we have of ourselves even as we grow older.

The stronger our sense of self, the less likelihood of being manipulated by others. So keep close to your core and stay united with yourself. Just think about Robert Louis Stevenson (Jim Barrie’s pen pal for many years). Dr Jekyll is a nice guy until he meddles with his mind and tries splitting up his identity so that Mr. Hyde can come out.

And if you ever feel you are going out of bounds, remember to “Brake before the bend, not on it”.

(from Cool Breeze, aka The Age of Reconfiguration ©)

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Mementos

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Art for Housewives

The smell of honeysuckle entered from my bedroom window. The summer heat had intensified its sticky sweetness and the aroma was making me dizzy. Luckily I was reading in bed so I didn’t risk falling.  Connie had lent me Lee Harper’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Set in a small Alabama town of the 1930s, it’s the story of how a black man, unjustly accused of a crime, is defended by a white lawyer, Atticus Finch.  But Atticus knows that no matter how well he defends his client, his client will be found guilty simply because he’s black.

Some people respect prejudice more so than they do truth.

Atticus’ statement that “the one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience” inspired me to be a better woman. That’s why, in August of 1963, I found myself in D.C. for the March on Washington. Civil Rights leaders had organized a protest against racial discrimination and 200,000 people had gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr speak.

“I have a dream—I have a dream that…little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers” King said. The crowd, wanting to dream too, roared with emotion and, resonating together, all felt related one to the other.

After the march I met up with an old friend from middle school, Clyde. Clyde and I were both romantics. We liked heartbreaking mariachi music, chimichurri sauce, and rainy Sunday mornings. A friend of his from church, Lillian Rogers Parks, had invited us over for tea. Lillian was a tiny little woman who liked wearing fake pearls and a smile full of adjectives. Having suffered from polio as a child, she used crutches. But she hadn’t let her handicap turn her into a victim. Both Lillian and her mother had worked at the White House as domestics for 30 years. Together they’d collected quite a number of White House souvenirs now displayed in a large mahogany Victrola given to Lillian by President Hoover and his wife.

The little cabinet of curiosities was loaded with photos, fans, figurines, and perfumes. Lillian’s collection also included the dress worn by Mrs. Coolidge for a portrait, a ribbon from Queen Elizabeth’s bouquet, two of FDR’s canes as well as his Bible, and Mrs. Harding’s mourning items. But more than objects, Lillian had collected stories. She was initially uncomfortable with the idea of writing about her White House experiences thinking it would be too audacious. But her mother said that “if a cat may look at a Queen in England, a maid may write about a First Lady in America”. The result was the bestselling book “My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House”.

Much of Lillian’s work dealt with sewing. She made drapes and tablecloths but also did much mending. Lillian had mended White House towels and tablecloths as well as FDR’s sweaters and Eisenhower’s golf stockings.

While working at the White House, Lillian had a chance to observe the Presidents and their attitude towards Blacks.

When Coolidge was president, the Mississippi Delta risked flooding. To save the cotton plantations, Black communities were flooded in order to reduce pressure on the levees. Now, not only homeless and without food, Blacks were forced by guards to help fortify the river banks. But the levee broke and hundreds of black labourers were swept away and died.

When President William Howard Taft’s wife became First Lady, she substituted police with Blacks as doormen at the White House believing the latter to be less intimidating.

Woodrow Wilson believed in segregation and backed the Klu Klux Klan.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first to invite Blacks to the White House as guests. When Queen Elisabeth came for a visit, Eleanor’s mother-in-law said that it would be best to have only white domestic helpers. Eleanor ignored her. However, in 1942, despite Eleanor’s civil rights activities, her husband enacted one of America’s most racist executive orders by forcing 100,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps.

Harry Truman grew up believing in white supremacy but the brutal violence of racial lynchings he saw as President forced him to create a Civil Rights committee.

When Nikita Khrushchev visited the White House in 1959, he took a look at the Black employees and asked Eisenhower “Are these your slaves?”

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional and that Black students in Little Rock, Arkansas couldn’t be prohibited from attending the local high school. So, although “understanding” why Southerners wouldn’t want their sweet little girls sitting next to some “big black buck”, President Eisenhower had no choice but to send U.S. army troops to escort the Black students to school.

Lesson learned:

Historians obviously write about the Presidents from a particular point of view. But someone like Lillian, who spent her days at the White House as a domestic, had the possibility to observe things historians couldn’t. Like how the Roosevelts loved to have loud and rowdy meals whereas the Eisenhowers enjoyed being alone and eating dinner in front of the TV. And only an insider would know that Harry Truman washed his own underwear or that Taft was so overweight that a special bathtub had to be made for him (and maybe the reason why his wife introduced twin beds in the White House).

Convictions take courage.

And you don’t have to be President to live in the White House.

(from Cool Breeze, aka The Age of Reconfiguration ©)

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Tricky Tangos

Posted on November 21, 2022 by Art for Housewives

In the dimness of my room, I’d often imagined myself dancing a tango while a Carlos Gardel look-alike sang “La Cumparsita”. Just the thought made my heart flutter and sigh. The only way to liberate yourself from a desire, they say, is to actualize it. So, to emancipate myself from leg wrapping fantasies, I booked a flight to Buenos Aires.

Being in airports always makes me feel somewhat displaced. Because in an airport, I’m inbetween here and there which is basically like being nowhere. I look at the strangers around me and realize we have something in common.  We are all transients. One transient who caught my attention was sitting on a lounge chair as if she were sitting on a throne. Her appearance was screaming to be noticed so I did. The woman’s hair was blonde and she was wearing tinted eye glasses, a fur trimmed jacket, and, among other things, an impressive emerald ring.  Her talent seemed to be that of wearing too much in such a way as to make it look like just enough. Intrigued, I nonchalantly took the seat next to her. She smelled of tonka bean as she was wearing Shalimar, a perfume not to be worn on a hot day (although perfect for winter nights).

To pass the time, we exchanged a few words.  Her name was Fleur Cowles and she was the wife of LOOK magazine’s publisher. Fleur, public relations-like friendly, was pleased about my presence only because she needed an audience. A journalist, she was on her way to Buenos Aires to interview Evita Peron. But before more could be said, our flight was announced.

Fleur’s sillage* was still stuck in my nose when I boarded the plane but, like a fleeting fragrance, by the time we’d landed, I‘d already forgotten her. Then, a couple of years later while browsing around Rosengren’s bookstore, I noticed Fleur’s name on the cover of Bloody Precedent,a book about the similarities between Juan and Evita Peron’s regime with that of Juan and Encarnacion Rosas 100 years before. It was obvious that Fleur couldn’t stand Evita and depicted the Perons as typical South American despots. The idea of Fleur’s and Evita’s duello of egos made me chuckle inside.

Despite Fleur’s criticism of Evita, the two had much in common. Both had obscure beginnings (whenever asked about her childhood, Fleur would be reticent saying it was too painful to discuss). Both women, blondes, were ambitious and addicted to wealth and power. Both women loved to be praised and indulged in self-flattering. Fleur, for example, boasted that she had an idea a minute and that she was a “born idea” herself.

Fleur’s biggest accomplishment could be considered FLAIR magazine that she was able to publish thanks to her husband’s considerable financial backing. FLAIR was lavish and unique and offered a juxtaposition of articles and stories by the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jean Cocteau, Tennessee William, Salvador Dalì, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir and even the Duchess of Windsor. FLAIR was extremely expensive to produce as die-cutting, textured paper, and pull-outs were used.  Controversial and innovative, the magazine was just too costly to last long.

As a young girl, Evita had arrived in Buenos Aires with a cardboard suitcase packed with darned stockings and tattered dresses. But, recognizing the power of appearance, once she was the First Lady, she carefully constructed her look and took advantage of her husband’s power and wealth to create her image.

A few weeks before her death, Eva rode next to her husband for his second Presidential Inauguration. She was so weak that an armature had to be made to help keep her upright. Many believed her weakness to be the result of cervical cancer. But others believed she was weak because of the lobotomy her husband had subjected her to. He said that the operation had been done to help her deal with the pain caused by the cancer. But there are those who believe her skull had been perforated mainly to muffle her intentions.

Evita wanted to arm trade union workers with pistols and machine guns so they could form their own militia. Obviously, to defend their money and power, Peron and the elite could not permit this or many other of Evita’s initiatives. But they didn’t have to worry long. In 1952, at the age of 33, Evita died. Fleur, on the other hand, was much luckier. She died at the age of 101.

Lesson learned… Both Fleur and Evita started off poor but died excessively rich. Evita’s jewellery cases were loaded with expensive jewels and closets had to be custom made in order to make room for all of her shoes, purses, hats, and designer clothes (she loved Dior’s New Look). Whereas Fleur, also addicted to designer clothes, owned many painting by famous artists that she used, along with other exclusive objects, to decorate her many homes scattered across the world.

When too much is not enough, there’s a problem.

*Sillage is the term used to indicate the lingering smell of a perfume

(from Cool Breeze, aka The Age of Reconfiguration ©)

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Bibliography: Cowls, Fleur. She Made Friends and Kept Them. Harper Collins. New York. 1996.

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Color Theories

Posted on November 19, 2022 by Art for Housewives

It was thanks to some oranges that I got to meet Elizabeth Taylor.  I was handling some pears at Campo de Fiori’s outdoor market when the woman standing next to me asked what color fruit went best with blue walls. “Well oranges, of course”, I replied. Surprised by my lack of hesitation, I told her that I’d studied Itten’s color theory with great care. “Color has a tremendous effect on us”, I continued.  “Just think of Hitchcock’s bizarre dinner parties.”

“Once he had all the food tinted blue—blue soup, blue bread, blue mashed potatoes.  Can you imagine eating a blue chicken? Blue, the color of bruises, is an appetite suppressant. That’s why you’ll eat less if your food is served on a blue plate”. Fascinated, the woman invited me for a glass of wine and that was the beginning of my friendship with Muriel Spark, author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Even though it was based in the 1930s, it’s such a contemporary story. Miss Brodie, accused of teaching Fascism, is forced to retire. The accusation is made by the student she trusts most, Sandy. After the betrayal, Sandy studies psychology and writes “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” before becoming a nun. Why Sandy, a stone throwing sinner, felt the need to betray Miss Brodie is the real dilemma in the book. Because it’s the story of how one dogma substituted another but continued to dress in black.

Anyway, Muriel told me that a film was being made based on her book, In the Driver’s Seat, starring Elizabeth Taylor and she felt obligated to host a party in the actress’ honor. Muriel’s book had been inspired by the new French writers especially Alain Robbe-Grillet’s “repetition, boredom, despair, going nowhere for nothing”. You know, an existential hangover. But what did I care as Muriel had invited me to her dinner party where I met Liz and had a great time.

In the months following the party, Muriel and I often met for dinner at Galeassi’s in the heart of Trastevere. Rome had taught her how to become glamorous. She’d lost a few kilos and started wearing designer clothes. Muriel loved Rome because she said it was a place where you could assume the identity that you wanted. Her entourage of friends were straight out of a nouveau roman— charmers, flatterers, and borderline aristocrats. They were part of her new look until she started hanging out with the artist Penelope Jardine. You could tell the two felt really comfortable with one another. Eventually Muriel and Penelope moved to Tuscany and, for 30 years, they travelled around Italy in Muriel’s Alfa Romeo in search of new things to discover. Gossips speculated that it was a lesbian relationship but I don’t think sex had anything to do with it. Muriel wanted something the men she’d loved hadn’t been able to give her—companionship.

Lesson learned from Muriel: Everyone needs to live abroad for at least a year.

Muriel was from Scotland but had lived in Southern Rhodesia and New York City before moving to Italy. She understood the advantages of living abroad.

When you live abroad, you’re forced to do things differently than you did at home. This expands your peripheral vision permitting you to see more than you did before.

Learning to adapt to new ways of doing things will make your dendrites grow. Complicit with your imagination, you will learn to adapt which, according to Darwin, is the basis of survival.

Affronting the unknown is a stimulus. Even going to the grocery store can become a happening. The routine broken, boredom is obliterated and life is a thrill.

Comparing and contrasting old ways with new ones gives you more options when having to make choices. Plus the initial uncertainty that comes with living abroad helps build character and self-esteem.

Often creative people feel like aliens in their own country which can lead to a feeling of frustration and insecurity. When you live in a foreign country, it’s ok to feel different.  Italo Calvino said that the ideal place is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

(from Cool Breeze, aka The Age of Reconfiguration ©)

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Related: Muriel Spark (1918-2006) + Muriel Spark and Penelope Jardine + some of Muriel’s friends in Rome included Brian de Breffny, Count Lanfranco Rasponi, Dario Ambrosiani, the Honorable Guy Strutt + Muriel Spark lived at Palazzo Taverna, VIA DI MONTE GIORDANO

Read  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie  by Muriel Spark (1961) online + watch The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie online + Watch The Driver’s Seat on youtube

Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark: The Biography.

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