Tamara de Lempicka to the Rescue

 

Young Woman in Green, c. 1931

Curmie can’t seem to focus much on anything these days.  His writing, both for scholarly publication and on this blog, has slowed to a crawl.  He suspects that he’s not alone in feeling a little overwhelmed by the stupidity, cruelty, and lawlessness of the Trump administration and the mind-boggling cowardice of the Congressional GOP.  Senator Murkowski is only the most outrageous recent example; there are, as you know, Gentle Reader, plenty of others.

Although some of the worst stuff was cut before the final version, what remained in the “Big Beautiful Bill” was still an indictment of the morality of every pol who voted for it, as well as an abdication of the legislature’s responsibility to do that whole “checks and balances” thing, especially when the executive branch wants something transcendently moronic (or evil).

Then there was the horror that took place a few hours west-southwest of Curmie’s abode in East Texas.  Would there have been fewer deaths had the country been led by someone less sociopathic, someone who didn’t cheerily cut funding for the very agency that could have detected the intensity of that storm sooner?  Well, we don’t know that for certain, but it seems pretty damned likely.  And it’s certain that the cuts to FEMA, even though this a red state, will negatively impact the lives of thousands of people.

Those of us who think of ourselves as “the left” generally really mean “not the right.”  One of the differences is that we tend to be at least marginally empathetic: it doesn’t have to happen to us for us to care.  There are lots of memes about how Biden sent relief to red states as a matter of course, but Trump wouldn’t do so after the California fires. That doesn’t mean that events don’t hit a little harder when you know someone directly affected, though. 

One of Curmie’s favorite former students is from Kerrville, one of the hardest-hit communities; it was good to hear that her family is safe, but so many spaces important to her are gone forever.  (By the way, Gentle Reader, if you have a few spare dollars, the organization she’s suggesting we support is the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.  Curmie made an online contribution and he hopes a few of his readers might be in a position to do so, as well.)

Beloved Spouse went to a conference in Anaheim a couple of weeks ago.  While she was there, she took some time off to visit Disneyland with her best friend (who was also at the conference) and her son and one of her daughters.  They’re all US-born citizens, but they’re identifiably Hispanic, and mere details like citizenship haven’t seemed to matter much to the cowardly goons of ICE.  The was a major raid in the area two days after they came home.  One wonders, “what if…?”

There are personal distractions, too: a minor health issue, some unforeseen expenses,  and the realization that Curmie will soon need to replace his car, his mattress, his phone, and his laptop.  Not getting to hear the Boston Pops play the 1812 Overture on the 4^th, as we’ve done for many years in a row (thanks for nothing, CW), shouldn’t have been as annoying as it was.  

So we come to Saturday the 5^th, not exactly in foul humor, but certainly stressed and a little overwhelmed.  What to do?  There are two possibilities.  The first is escape into nature.  Head to the mountains, the forest, the shore, but away from everyone else except those you love.  But Curmie was never a fan of heat indexes over 100°, and what meager allure being outside in that heat may once have had has dwindled further as septuagenarian status approaches.

That leaves ART.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse don’t live within an easy drive to any major city, but Houston is still close enough that a day-trip is possible.  So that’s what happened.  We’d been intending to go down to the Tamara de Lempicka exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts for some time, but it never seemed to work out.  But on Saturday, it did. 

Normally, when we go to a museum, we’ll see the special exhibitions that interest us and still have time to check out the permanent collection, too.  We can’t do that at, say, the Art Institute in Chicago—it’s just too big—but we generally get to visit our favorites from previous visits.  Not this trip, either.  Not only is the MFA huge, spread across four multi-story buildings, but the Lempicka exhibit was also enormous, with dozens of works displayed.  Yes, some of them were small preliminary sketches or whatever, but it was a lot.  There were a couple of places to sit, and Curmie took advantage of them, but just the amount of standing and walking was rather exhausting for an old fart like Curmie.

So we didn’t see much else.  We didn’t need to, to declare the day a huge success.  The exhibition was magnificent.  Tamara de Lempicka (originally, “Łempicka,” apparently, so I’ve been pronouncing it wrong for years) is one of those handful of artists—alongside the likes of Van Gogh, Chagall, and yesterday’s birthday boy Giorgio de Chirico—whose work is instantly identifiable as hers. 

Regarded as one of the founders of Art Deco (she claimed to be the founder of the movement), she drew from about every artistic movement imaginable.  There’s one painting “inspired by Botticelli.”  Yep, Curmie can see that.  Others are reminiscent of the style of other late medieval or Renaissance artists.  Her use of color seems to be drawn from the vividness of expressionism, her still lifes from post-impressionism, many of her backgrounds from cubism.  There are hints of surrealism in the juxtaposition of images (there are a couple of her works that are unquestionably surrealistic, but they weren’t part of this exhibition).  And yet all of her paintings are unquestionably hers.

She was also, of course, a fascinating individual.  Born in Warsaw (probably), she later lived in St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Los Angeles, and Houston before retiring to Mexico.  She was married twice—to Polish lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki and Austro-Hungarian baron Raoul Kuffner de Diószegh—and had multiple affairs with both men and women.  When her first husband was arrested by Russian authorities after the 1917 Revolution, she supposedly slept with the Swedish consul to get his support for Łempicki’s release.  It worked.

She was an outstanding example of the “new woman” or “modern woman,” both in her life and in her work.  An article in Vogue from 1929 is cited on the description of Young Woman in Green (Young Woman with Gloves).  It describes the modern woman: “She seeks purity in line, in contour, hair, and clothes.  She knows that, in the drama of her own personality, she must be stage director, scene-shifter, mistress of costumes, as well as star of the play.”  It’s no wonder that such a confident, competent, independent woman would be just a little scary to those who knew nothing but patriarchy.

She understood her role in all this: 

I was the first woman to make clear paintings, and that was the origin of my success. Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. The banality in which art had sunk gave me a feeling of disgust. I was searching for a craft that no longer existed; I worked quickly with a delicate brush. I was in search of technique, craft, simplicity and good taste. My goal: never copy. Create a new style, with luminous and brilliant colors, rediscover the elegance of my models.

Lempicka was cognizant of the need to apply, on numerous occasions, a male suffix to her name when she signed paintings (the art establishment was not interested in female artists); she hid her Jewish ancestry, which certainly played a role in her decision to leave Paris in the late 1930s.  But she was also iconoclastic, fully deserving of the title of “Bad Girl Queen,” as a headline on the Paper City site reads.

The sensuality of her models, especially the women, is foregrounded.  Yes, she painted both male and female nudes, but, as Dan Duray wrote for Observer, “everyone is much sexier with their clothes on.”  Young Woman in Green is a good example.  The eyes are turned away in a manner reminiscent of all those studio shots of Clara Bow; the dress looks like it is sprayed on in places; the left hand draws the eye towards the crotch.  The sexuality is a function of both what is revealed and what is concealed.

Not all of her work is this overtly sensual, but most of it is nearly as eye-catching.  It’s difficult for us now to understand how her work fell out of favor, even as the likes of Elton John, Barbra Streisand and Madonna were buying it up.  But that did happen.  The more recent revival of interest in her work, and in Art Deco in general, is a good thing.  Because she and a lot of her contemporaries, were got at their jobs.

Curmie still worries about the future of the country, about the upcoming bills, about what he’ll do when he really retires.  But for a couple of glorious hours last weekend, none of that mattered.  The problems are still there.  But the mind is clearer, and Curmie is more mentally and emotionally prepared than he was a week ago.  

We take our triumphs where they come.  Take care of yourself, Gentle Reader.