VL CL YSL liVing art

.

by now this Lalanne torso has appeared somewhere in your sphere.

Yves Saint Laurent shocked, certainly a bit, when these sculptures serenely floated down the runway on his models in 1969.
Why?
It was the times-by then every Body part had been declared an erogenous zone-
Sex was IN-Rather it was OUT- everywhere.
Nothing could be bare without suggesting SEX

Oddly enough- Breasts have been with us-since well-pick a story, Creation-Eve, Evolution- Ape, and right down the line to the navel. Jan Massys Models for his paintings in the 1550' before-and -after of Flora, Judith, Venus and others would have been perfect for Lalanne to work from.

& who did sculptor Claude Lalanne look to for his Muse? 

VERUSCHKA

Irving Penn's photographs of the Claude Lalanne jewelry sculpture appeared in the December 1969 Vogue. The waxed moulds were cast in copper and then dipped in vermeil.

Veruschka was an Artist even when she was modeling in the 1960's-and Muse-pushing the envelope with photographers in her fashion shoots. Richard Avedon called her the most beautiful woman in the world. She began photographing and chronicling her own persona during this period and completed a series of 45 photographs in 1992 that can be seen here.

Veruschka self portrait

In the 1960s, there suddenly appeared on the scene a fashion model and actress of extravagant and exotic beauty known to the world as "Veruschka." She remained an enigma, even when she starred in Antonioni’s classic film Blow-Up. As we now discover, Veruschka was, and is Vera Lehndorff, who, twenty years later, emerges as an artist of extraordinary power and originality. The manikin she created of herself is an abstraction inspired by Egyptian art (from Ralph Pucci International)

Mannequin 

by Vera Lehndorff

from Ralph Pucci here

see VERUSCHKA'S enigmatic self portraits HERE

Holiday heat up

 .

The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year.

Mark Twain from- Following the Equator

& thank you Reggie Darling for adding this- a 1946 Irving Penn photo of Dorian Leigh and Ray Bolger (yes, the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz). A B&W original print of this just sold at Christie's for $30,000 earlier this month.

.

Simone de Beauvoir: that Face

.

I found that the first question that came up was: 

of what significance was it to be a woman?

I thought I could quickly extricate myself from the question.

I never had any feeling of inferiority...

(later) I had a revelation: this world was a masculine world,

my childhood had been nourished by myths forged by men...

photograph by the incomparable Irving Penn
.

Goodbye Mr. Penn

Tonight I raised a toast to the passing of one of this century's greatest photographers. Not actually to his passing but a toast of respect to a man who has done more than his share for photography (and bothered to live to 92 years of age to leave us an even greater legacy of his gorgeous work).

Irving Penn, was the master of the elegant studio image in black and white. Renowned for stark, simple and engaging images of fashion, he created magnificent silhouettes of models and photographed an outstanding 150 Vogue covers. Penn rarely shot on location, he loved to photograph heads of states, artist, tribesman and the man on the street in front of his mottled grey backdrop. I believe Irving Penn has inspired many great studio photographers including the likes of photographic gods, Richard Avedon and Paolo Roversi.

Irving Penn was said:

"Many photographers feel their client is the subject," he explained in a 1991 interview in The New York Times. "My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. ... The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader."

Thanks Mr Penn for trying to so hard to please that woman in Kansas! Along the way you pleased the entire photographic world and inspired thousands of photographers. Merci beaucoup. Rest in peace, you have done more than enough. Carla xx

Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn

.
Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn. model. muse. rare beauty. wife. All linked to Irving Penn-her husband-who died
October 7, 2009 at the age of 92.

Fonssagrives by Penn

Photographer David Seidner said in the Lisa Fonssagrives book by Vendome Press- "It is difficult to imagine the history of fashion photography without thinking of Lisa Fonssagives-Penn." More than Penn, famous photographers of the day flocked to photograph the rare bird. She would always give them their best shot. Penn adored L. as evidenced in the countless iconic collaborative photographs the pair produced over their 40 years together.

David Seidner a photographer extraordinaire now gone as well-photographed LFP in the summer of 1990. He had taken friendly snaps of her-the two had developed a close friendship over the years-but Seidner was unprepared for his first look into the lens at LFP-the Model. He remembered being "dumbstruck and thrilled. Lisa Fonssagrives that magical, musical name conjuring countless images reappearing through my lens... She molded herself into that familiar vision of perfection."

"Lisa maintained a kind of Zen detachment from all the false importance of the fashionable. She was pure and good and marvelously old fashioned." DS

Fonssagrives in Rochas by Penn

The image of LFP in the Rochas mermaid dress is considered by Seidner to one of the two images defining post war zeitgeist. (The second- Richard Avedon's Dovima with the elephants.) Seidner called the Penns "collaborators in smuggling art onto the printed page."

LFP wrote to Seidner... do not mature, maturity is rot, I don't believe in it, and too much thinking is harmful to your artistic health. One can't throw in the towel, that would be living death. It is here, in our private work we must stand, naked in honesty, in front of that tyrannical god, who is our soul- our heads bowed-reaching for that higher innocence required for the guest of art. LFP

Lisa Bernstone Fonssagrives-Penn May 17, 1911 – February 4, 1992

David Seidner February 19,1957- June 6,1999

Irving Penn June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009

NYTIMES article about Penn and Seidner here
more David Seidner here
DS and LFP Interview in Bomb Magazine where the original material quoted above & reprinted in the Vendome book appeared here
.