Cabinet of curiosities & Inspirations since 2009

Cabinet of curiosities & Inspirations since 2009
*I Don’t Own the Rights to These Photos*
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est imaginary museum. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est imaginary museum. Afficher tous les articles

30 janv. 2012

“I want to be a living work of art,” Marchesa Luisa Casati





‎"Women of the world today dress alike. They are like so many loaves of bread.
 To be beautiful one must be unhurried. Personality is needed. 
There is too much sameness. 
The world seems only to have a desire for more of this sameness. 
To be different is to be alone."

 Marchesa Luisa Casati





 Marchesa "chad nude male servants gilded with gold.
Wax mannequins sat, lifeless, at her dinner table. 
  She wore live snakes as jewellery, & was infamous for her late-night walks,
 during which she would walk cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes,
while completely naked beneath her furs.

When both her wealthy parents died, Luisa (aged 15) & her sister were suddenly the wealthiest women in Italy. Luisa’s natural propensity for the arts & fascination with surrounding herself with beautiful, unusual things became a major part of her personality. She regularly shocked the aristocracy with her bizarre garb & enthrallment with the macabre.


She was tall & thin, with a pale, almost cadaverous face. Her huge green eyes were flanked by false eyelashes, slathered with black kohl, & she regularly used belladonna eyedrops to dilate her pupils. Her mouth was painted rich vermillion. "
From the blog GALADARLING

18 nov. 2011

All about Books: The Literary geek questionnary


Literary geek, I was tagged by Louise from Pandora
in 2009 I decided to respost this questionnary.


1) What author do you own the most books by ?
Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Guy de Maupassant,
Dostoievsky, Paul Morand, Céline, Cocteau.


2) What book do you own the most copies of ?
La montagne magique (Thomas Mann)




3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions ?
No

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with ?
Lewis (From Lewis et Iréne (Paul Morand).




5) What book have you read the most times in your life
(excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count) ?
Moineau, la petite libraire (Trilby),
Le monde en tant que représentation ( Shopenhauer ),
Mont Oriol (Maupassant),
La montagne Magique (Mann),
La curé (Zola),
Le discours sur la méthode (Descartes),
Le Grand Nulle part ( James Ellroy).


6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old ?
Le mystère de la chambre jaune de Gaston Leroux




7) What is the worst book you've read in 2009 ?
L'élégance du hérisson (Muriel Barbery)


8) What is the best book you've read in 2009 ?
Le moine (Lewis),
Moïra ( Julien Green),
Nada (Carmen Laforet).


9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be ?
Les Frères Karamazov (Fedor Dostoievski)

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature ?
James Ellroy




11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie ?
La forteresse vide (Bruno Bettelheim)

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie ?
Le Maître et Marguerite (Boulgakov )

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I don’t remenber my dreams.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult ?
Justine Levy, Lolita Pille, Nathalie reims …

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read ?
Ulysses (James Joyce)
Essais sémiotiques (Christian Metz)



16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen ?
Less known : Beaucoup de bruit pour rien (Much Ado About Nothing)
The more dark : Le Roi Lear (King Lear)

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians ?
Both

18) Roth or Updike ?
Never read.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers ?
I have to google.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer ?
Shakespeare

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading ?
Japanese Literature

23) What is your favorite novel ?
La Pitié dangereuse (Zweig) and
Les possédés (Dostoievski).



24) Play ?
Le canard sauvage (Ibsen),
La cerisaie (Tchekhov),
Un tramway nommé Désir (Tennessee Williams),
Don Juan (Molière),
Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel (Jean Cocteau),
Pelléas et Mélisande (Maurice Maeterlinck),
La Boîte de Pandore (Frank Wedeking).

25) Poem ?
Les yeux d'Elsa (Eluard),
Paroles (Prévert ),
Les Fleurs du mal ( Baudelaire).

26) Essay ?
L'analyse du film (Raymond Bellour)

27) Short story ?
Le Journal d'un homme de trop (Tourgueniev),
Un diamant gros comme le Ritz ( F. Scott Fitzgerald),
Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires (Edgar Allan Poe).


28) Work of nonfiction ?
Esthétique du film (Jacques Aumont, M. Marie, A. Bergala),
Théâtres du Je ( Joyce McDougall).

29) Who is your favorite writer ?
Impossible to answer.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today ?
Michel Houellebecq

31) What is your desert island book ?
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë ),
Moby Dick (Herman Melville).

32) And... what are you reading right now ?
Pretty Things: The Last Generation
of American Burlesque Queens ( Liz Goldwyn)




22 oct. 2008

Imaginary Museum 3: The Movie In My Mind

This morning, i wake up very early as usual since few months.
I decide to try again to find the sounds of my imaginary museum.

''I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music.
There is only good music and bad music.'' 
Kurt Weill

I just realize how i was mad about great pop songs and singers.
Popular sounds from the 30's untill now.
I admire singers and song writers that will always be remenber for a melody.
I try to pick again very personnal songs that i believe reflect my inner world.
Some of them still make me cry and bring memories back deeply.
Other make me smile and bright my days.

Those kind of songs never die.

This is a long post with very different musical style.
I hope you will enjoy it but i recommend to take times to go trough all the videos.

Stardust

"Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely night dreaming of a song
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
But that was long ago
Now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song

Beside a garden wall
When stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
A paradise where roses bloom
Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody   
The memory of loves refrain ."

Lyrics written by Hoagy Carmichael in 1929
























Imaginary Museum 3: The Movie In My Mind






11 oct. 2008

My imaginary museum part 2: Childhood songs

It now the time to keep writing about my imaginary museum.
Do you remenber the rules i imposed myself, when i didn't find a way  to answer the bloggers's tag questions.
The movie of my mind and a good way to inderstand where are coming my inspirations.


This time i try to think about the music i was hearing when i was a child and not yet a kid. 
The end of the 70's and the mid 80's. 
When i search for music videos, it was hard to decide , i came up with 20 of them.
I will post about the Chilhood Music of my imaginary museum: 4 differents posts.

Next, week i would like to post about vintage,and i had to finally write about my last trip to NY and Florence.
I hope to have the time this week.


Madonna - "Into the Groove"-1985
I was listening the album with my sister while playing Barbie (of course....) and we were looking the movie: "Desperately Seeking Susan". This is one of the worst movie of the 80's. 
In 85, I think all the little girls in America and Europa were dancing on this record.


Mozart from "Die Zauberflöte":"Der Hölle Rache"
I wanted badly at 10 to become an opera singer.
I saw operas and concerts and i was so impress by the conductors and the divas.
I was trying to sing the chorus very badly under the shower ( Damm...my poor familly had to endure that).


Cyndi Lauper-All through the night-1983
She was my favorite singer, i was loving her crazy style and sweet behaviors.
" She's So Unusual" (1983) was the first vinyl, i ever owned. Lauper is still for me one of the best singer living today.
The record was playing all day in my room. I remenber that the single "Girls just want to have fun" was a number 1.
I saw this concert on the french TV and was very impressed by her voice in Live. I have been so moved.
Even if i was enjoying the Madonna album, Cyndi surpassed her by her voice, swing and style.


Jean Michel Jarre-Zoolook-1984
This album and artist are linked to the work of my parents. My parents were devoted with passion and energy to work.
This kind of music was playing all day or i was sleeping sometimes in recording studios.
I had a true affection for this video and music. But this sound was linked to sad feelings too, my parents were working very hard , travelling for business far way from us. A child don't always understand why ...
All childs, feel this someday.The video is from Caro & Genet.


Lio-Bananasplit
this song was playing in my familly house juxebox. Inside thay was a lot of rock songs but this was my best dance song ever.
When people were outside in the garden at night the juxebox was playing and we were parting untill bedtime.
I wasn't understanding the erotical meaning of this song at the time.

22 sept. 2008

My imaginary museum part 1


I woke up so early this morning: 6 am.
I sat in front of my computer and began to look through Youtube.
Some of those videos are from my favorites movies and 
others are some of my favorite movie moments.

I began with Picnic with Kim Novak, 
she is so incredibly sexy in this dance with William Holden.
The music is magical too: a mix of piano (Stardust)
 and the orchestra ( playing Picnic theme).


I had to have more Kim Novak.
So i began to search for my favorite Vertigo moment with her.
Even, on my computer screen and on the small youtube video,
 i got move everytime she looks at the camera.
Last week, i had to answer to some tags for the blog 
and one of the question was:"what are your favorite movies?"
I said Vertigo, Laura and The Red shoes.


I realized that i have get 3 or 10 favorites movies, i have hundred of favorites movies 
and videos that i can see again and again sometimes only 5 min of them. 
Some of those sequences may not are always unforgetable to the film fans, 
sometime, even, they are out of fashion or stereotype:
 but they are just a montage of the images of my imaginary museum.


I found the tag questions incredibly difficult to answer.
I have difficulty to answer questions about what i am and what i like.
Picking and choosing some of my favorites images is the best way
 i found to speak about myself and my tastes.
It's why, i will now post videos and movies sequences 
of this imaginary museum regularly on my blog: this movie of my mind.


I am conviced that the images we love to see often 
are the only way to enter someone's mind.
Here are some of them.........

I hope you will enjoy them and tell me if you want 
more of my imaginary museum in your comments.

Picnic (1955)



Vertigo (1958)




The red shoes (1948)




Laura (1944)