Thank you for the good read! Fascinating! In the past I have collected Bella Epoque posters from France. When I head but I gave it to my ex-husband was a fabulous Chat Noir poster. You made my morning allowing me a glimpse inside the real Chat Noir. 😍
Thank you for the note! Wow - what a lovely thing to collect. I'd never seen the inside of Chat Noir either till I started digging around - it made me wish time machines were real. : )
Me too! When Randall posted the Wm Burroughs piece, I was like, whoa, we sure published some amazing stuff. I went back to look at our old site and looked up the ToC for the print issues and it kind of knocked me sideways (in a good way). I guess most little magazines have a short life, so we stayed to form that way. Honestly I can't believe what we pulled off, and not even sure how we did it .... all three of us were working full-time plus and doing other projects at the time.
Fascinating overview, Stef! I knew a little bit about the French-language ones (my research into composers often leads me down these rabbit holes), but I wasn't aware of the phrase "ephemeral bibelots," which I'm already sure I will pilfer someday. The pianist-muse-society doyenne Misia Sert used to publish one of those literary quarterlies. With the first of her many husbands, Thadée Natanson (also her cousin), she published La Revue Blanche, which published the likes of Mallarmé, one of her salon buddies. Ravel adored her and included little coded musical ciphers of her name in his score. There's a prominent motif in La Valse built around the transliteration of her first name (a nickname). She was mostly famous for her great beauty, but she was a fine pianist, who performed in the home after marriage (which was almost always the case for married women in her social class). She was also very discerning and helped promote avant-garde artists who were generally scorned by the bourgeoisie.
Thanks, Rene! I love how intertwined people were, and how they worked in multiple art disciplines, and how raw and wild it all was. I'd never heard this term either — I stumbled on this completely accidentally when I was doing some reasearch about the Gettysburg Review shuttering. Wow. I LOVE these stories Misia Sert, who I did not know of — I am going to take a deep dive and read more about her. The detail about the ciphers in the score is lovely. Why hasn't someone made an art film about her life?
I don't know! It's interesting to me because they lived through the Occupation, and Chanel (Misia's bestie--Chanel actually prepared her body for burial to make sure it looked just so--had some dealings with the fascists that do not put her in a great light. I wouldn't say she was herself a fascist, but she also wasn't as repelled by them as perhaps she should have been, or maybe she was essentially a survivor, like Richard Strauss, who was pretty much an apolitical careerist who loved his family (some members of which were Jewish by marriage). I haven't done any real research on Chanel since high school French class (I did a term paper on her), but I do know there is a perfume blogger who is always railing against Chanel for the founder's disgusting politics during the Occupation, and I'm not sure if he's entirely insane--I do think people are very quick to judge historical figures sometimes, and they always seem to imagine that they would be a lot braver under the circumstances, which is just another form of wishful thinking from people who are too deeply invested in the concept of free will. But Misia had Jewish family members and even married one of these Jewish family members, so I don't know how much of a "Nazi" Chanel could have been, really. Then again, she might have been antisemitic the way Alma Mahler was (who married Jews and then made fun of her offspring who had antisemitic features and were therefore less beautiful than the ones she made with Aryans--but Alma Mahler is to me a case study in how thwarted artists can go from muse to monster, so I don't entirely blame her for that, or for being a serial fabricator/embellisher, or for being a starfucker, as some might call her. AM was an ambitious, talented woman who had to repress all her creative ambition, so it seems natural that she might try to live through the daughter she considered most beautiful (who died very young and tragically--her name was Manon, and she was fascinating in her own right--the daughter of Alma and Walter Gropius; Berg, who had adored her from childhood, dedicated his beautiful Violin Concerto to her memory).
One reason I enjoy writing about and researching classical music is that it is also a window into history--Historiola fodder for sure! I have to watch myself, or I get bogged down into all the peripheral details that fascinate me so much. I have probably written more about Misia in my latest Ravel notes than I probably should have, but I figure some people might have seen the perfume at the Chanel counter, and then my mind goes into digression mode!
Rene! So sorry - I've been underwater and completely missed your wonderful, rich reply. I found a wonderful herbalism book by a guy named Maurice Mességué, and I loved his writing style and his approach to plants, but then discovered his stance during WWII regarding the Vichy government was cowardly at best and problematic at worst. : ( Isn't it funny how thwwarted artists so often become monsters? Hitler and Evola being two of the worst. On a more poetic note - I got curious about Misia (the perfume) and found this delightful review from a perfume blogger, who did *not* like Misia, but wrote about her dislike of it in a really lovely, eccentric way: "From the opening, I was surprised by a “burnt green” note that made me think of tobbaco – unlisted. Then I got a very medicinal, old-fashioned violet (in the lines of 1919’s Guerlain Aprés L’Ondée), and a dusty, opaque powderyness that made me question my liking of orris. Not to be dramatic… but my first impression was of cherry cough syrup and stale lipstick & compact powder. Leather soon came in to close off the accord, but it didn’t make it better; the cough syrup and old make-up were now inside a good quality, but not very fashionable purse – which used to also store cigarettes, a couple of decades ago." Here's the entire review: https://teascentedlibrary.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/fragrance-review-chanel-misia/
Well now I’ve just seen the Steinlen poster of the cats. I also collect Steinlen. One of my cats was named Theophile after him! 🐈 🐈⬛
Ah, lovely!!! We have similar aesthetics for sure!
Thank you for the good read! Fascinating! In the past I have collected Bella Epoque posters from France. When I head but I gave it to my ex-husband was a fabulous Chat Noir poster. You made my morning allowing me a glimpse inside the real Chat Noir. 😍
Thank you for the note! Wow - what a lovely thing to collect. I'd never seen the inside of Chat Noir either till I started digging around - it made me wish time machines were real. : )
Indeed!
Tres magnifique, Stef.
J'apprécie, mon ami!
Missing 52nd City...
Me too! When Randall posted the Wm Burroughs piece, I was like, whoa, we sure published some amazing stuff. I went back to look at our old site and looked up the ToC for the print issues and it kind of knocked me sideways (in a good way). I guess most little magazines have a short life, so we stayed to form that way. Honestly I can't believe what we pulled off, and not even sure how we did it .... all three of us were working full-time plus and doing other projects at the time.
Fascinating overview, Stef! I knew a little bit about the French-language ones (my research into composers often leads me down these rabbit holes), but I wasn't aware of the phrase "ephemeral bibelots," which I'm already sure I will pilfer someday. The pianist-muse-society doyenne Misia Sert used to publish one of those literary quarterlies. With the first of her many husbands, Thadée Natanson (also her cousin), she published La Revue Blanche, which published the likes of Mallarmé, one of her salon buddies. Ravel adored her and included little coded musical ciphers of her name in his score. There's a prominent motif in La Valse built around the transliteration of her first name (a nickname). She was mostly famous for her great beauty, but she was a fine pianist, who performed in the home after marriage (which was almost always the case for married women in her social class). She was also very discerning and helped promote avant-garde artists who were generally scorned by the bourgeoisie.
Thanks, Rene! I love how intertwined people were, and how they worked in multiple art disciplines, and how raw and wild it all was. I'd never heard this term either — I stumbled on this completely accidentally when I was doing some reasearch about the Gettysburg Review shuttering. Wow. I LOVE these stories Misia Sert, who I did not know of — I am going to take a deep dive and read more about her. The detail about the ciphers in the score is lovely. Why hasn't someone made an art film about her life?
I don't know! It's interesting to me because they lived through the Occupation, and Chanel (Misia's bestie--Chanel actually prepared her body for burial to make sure it looked just so--had some dealings with the fascists that do not put her in a great light. I wouldn't say she was herself a fascist, but she also wasn't as repelled by them as perhaps she should have been, or maybe she was essentially a survivor, like Richard Strauss, who was pretty much an apolitical careerist who loved his family (some members of which were Jewish by marriage). I haven't done any real research on Chanel since high school French class (I did a term paper on her), but I do know there is a perfume blogger who is always railing against Chanel for the founder's disgusting politics during the Occupation, and I'm not sure if he's entirely insane--I do think people are very quick to judge historical figures sometimes, and they always seem to imagine that they would be a lot braver under the circumstances, which is just another form of wishful thinking from people who are too deeply invested in the concept of free will. But Misia had Jewish family members and even married one of these Jewish family members, so I don't know how much of a "Nazi" Chanel could have been, really. Then again, she might have been antisemitic the way Alma Mahler was (who married Jews and then made fun of her offspring who had antisemitic features and were therefore less beautiful than the ones she made with Aryans--but Alma Mahler is to me a case study in how thwarted artists can go from muse to monster, so I don't entirely blame her for that, or for being a serial fabricator/embellisher, or for being a starfucker, as some might call her. AM was an ambitious, talented woman who had to repress all her creative ambition, so it seems natural that she might try to live through the daughter she considered most beautiful (who died very young and tragically--her name was Manon, and she was fascinating in her own right--the daughter of Alma and Walter Gropius; Berg, who had adored her from childhood, dedicated his beautiful Violin Concerto to her memory).
One reason I enjoy writing about and researching classical music is that it is also a window into history--Historiola fodder for sure! I have to watch myself, or I get bogged down into all the peripheral details that fascinate me so much. I have probably written more about Misia in my latest Ravel notes than I probably should have, but I figure some people might have seen the perfume at the Chanel counter, and then my mind goes into digression mode!
Rene! So sorry - I've been underwater and completely missed your wonderful, rich reply. I found a wonderful herbalism book by a guy named Maurice Mességué, and I loved his writing style and his approach to plants, but then discovered his stance during WWII regarding the Vichy government was cowardly at best and problematic at worst. : ( Isn't it funny how thwwarted artists so often become monsters? Hitler and Evola being two of the worst. On a more poetic note - I got curious about Misia (the perfume) and found this delightful review from a perfume blogger, who did *not* like Misia, but wrote about her dislike of it in a really lovely, eccentric way: "From the opening, I was surprised by a “burnt green” note that made me think of tobbaco – unlisted. Then I got a very medicinal, old-fashioned violet (in the lines of 1919’s Guerlain Aprés L’Ondée), and a dusty, opaque powderyness that made me question my liking of orris. Not to be dramatic… but my first impression was of cherry cough syrup and stale lipstick & compact powder. Leather soon came in to close off the accord, but it didn’t make it better; the cough syrup and old make-up were now inside a good quality, but not very fashionable purse – which used to also store cigarettes, a couple of decades ago." Here's the entire review: https://teascentedlibrary.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/fragrance-review-chanel-misia/