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Marilyn in Japan 1954.
I have recently come to realize that I am a bit captivated by Marilyn’s trip to Japan in 1954. The basics of the trip are fairly well-known, mostly as a chapter in the book of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio marital drama. The story goes, M & J went to Japan as an unofficial ‘honeymoon’. Joe had a baseball related gig in Japan, Marilyn…who had never left the continent came along to spend time with Joe away from Hollywood. Simultaneously.. the US had troops stationed in Korea, and Marilyn was invited to entertain the troops. Joe was hesitant about his wife on display..(which brings us to a giant ‘Huh??!’ because after all, he did marry Marilyn Monroe). He told her to not pack the purple dress. She packed the purple dress.
Joe was also hesitant because Marilyn didn’t have an act, little did he realize that she was the act. She came in helicopter in fatigues and made the pilot swoop down so she could wave to the soldiers. It is freezing cold. She performed. She was brilliant. She comes out onto the stage in only the slinky purple dress and heels. She is Marilyn, She sings. she is stunning. she has no studio behind her. no fear. all confidence. the crowd roars. Marilyn has been quoted on saying it was the greatest moment of her life.
Until Japan, Marilyn Monroe was never officially regarded as an act. Sure, folks knew this peroxide blonde didn’t crawl out of the womb the way she is. She also already had plenty of studio appearances as “Marilyn Monroe” for various events…but this was the time she was the full-on Marilyn Monroe for a huge events, without the studio. I think in Japan, Miss Monroe truly realized what a fantastical creation she managed to pull of, and in spades.
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Spotted, E watching Gossip Girl around the clock
My roommate and I have gotten ridiculously into Gossip Girl. We both knew this was going to happen.I saw it happening to some folks around me….but I had my reservations about the integrity of the show, as wall as the deterioration of my brain cells. I watched a few episodes, and pretended to still doubt it. I even decided to ‘stop watching’ for a brief period of time . Then bored one day packing, I put this show on again, and got completely and intensely sucked in to the glamor, wit, self-awareness, and deception of Gossip Girl.
I don’t know why I keep acting like my adoration for Gossip Girl is unexpected. Who am I kidding, I love overanalyzing teen shows. I don’t like to overanalyze (or even watch) all teen shows, but ones I find that are personally and culturally significant… hence my currently-in-the-works series on the decade-long iconic Beverly Hills 90210.
The cultural significance is easy to spot in Gossip Girl with its scheming hand on the pulse of our media technology frenzied and digital networked culture.
Yet Gossip Girl doesn’t just focus on the fast-changing nature of contemporary digital media, fashion trends, or teenage gossip. It touches base on the oldest social systems and scandal….the offspring of America’s industrial moguls. Gossip isn’t a new tradition, especially when you get to the uppity uppity scale of Van Der Bilts and Waldorfs…..but what is new is seeing these iconic American empires intertwined with our current rapid technology world of blackberrys and blogs.
The Henry Clay Fricks, and Andrew Carnegies had to create epic philanthropic institutions and monuments to overpower their scandalous pasts. How will these 20-something heiresses, moguls and socialites compensate for their scandals when their deepest secrets can be caught by the click of a camera phone and the send button on a smartphone?
I would like to go all Gossip Girl on you all, and say that’s one secret I’ll never tell…
…..except I know I will keep blogging on Gossip Girl to attempt to tell, and tackle, the richness of this teen drama.
Until next time, xoxo.
Site/Show updates.
I am currently in the process of redesigning my main artist website. If you happen to go over there and see the void, that’s why. In the meantime I will be trying to put more work into this blog. maybe.
Anyway, the good news is I officially booked a show in September at The Distillery Gallery. It’s for my Beverly Hills, 90210 series that I’ve recently started on. Some of my loftmates are most likely going to collaborate.
The best part is, the opening will be on September, 2, 2010.
or……9/02/10.
Also, there should be a studio 11 show coming up in a couple of months too. It’s for anyone that’s live in our studio in the past 25 years. It should be interested.
Stay tuned for updates…closer to the actual dates.
Sketchbook Marilyns
So I am working on just…sketching again….without pretension, without worry. At times, I get so caught up in trying to make the perfect piece, or my anxieties about my skills that I often become just..static. So I’ve started to keep a sketchbook again, and the crazy thing is, I am sketching..for fun.
Anyway, it’s an easy when to churn out some Marilyn studies, because like I’ve said before…due to the nature of Marilyn’s image saturated in the media..if you are going to make art about her…you better be able to get her feature right…we all know what they look like.
So, some quick studies from this week, playing around with paint markers.
Sketchbook 1
sketchbook 2
Also…can you tell I just saw a Tolouse Lautrec Exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts?
Hitchcockian Marilyn in Real Life
Often when a celebrity or person unexpectedly passes before their time, we are loaded with speculation about what ‘could have been’. In the case of Marilyn Monroe, there are already lists upon lists of never realized Monroe vehicles. Amist the future projects conjecture, perhaps the cinematic quality of her everyday life becomes overlooked.
I came across this candid photos of Monroe and was forced to do a double-take. It seemed as though Monroe walked right out of a Hitchcock film….except…in real life.
courtesy of everlastingstar.net
She may not be a Grace Kelly, or a ‘Grace Kelly was busy/Eve Saint-Marie, despite not wanting to join the masses, it’s hard not to wonder “What If…”
My new home is magical.
my fabulous new home.
Fabulous Celebrity Saint Candles on Etsy
These candles make me smile, as well as wish I had disposable income.
ArtsyChica on etsy.com
Check it out:
Celebrity Prayer Candles on Etsy
Musings of Truman Capote.
For ages I’ve been swayed to check out the writings of Truman Capote, but for ages I have been preoccupied to do so. Tonight I finally sat down with Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote and am already won over.
I particularly liked this passage from “New York 1946″
Lunch today with M. Whatever is one to do about her? She says the money is gone finally, and unless she goes home, her family refuses absolutely to help . Cruel, I suppose, but I told her I did not see the alternative. On one level, to be sure, I do not think going home is possible for her. She belongs to the sect most swiftly, irrevocably trapped by New York, the talented untalented; too acute to accept a more provincial climate, yet not quite acute enough to breathe more freely in the one so desired, they go along neurotically feeding upon the fringes of the New York scene.
Only success, and that at a perilous peak, can give relief, but for artists without art, it is always tension without release, irritation with no resulting pearl. Possibly there would be if the pressure to succeed were not so tremendous. They feel compelled to prove something, because middle-class America, from which they mostly spring, has withering words for its men of feeling, for its young of experimental intelligence, who do not show immediately that these endeavors pay off on a cash basis. But if a civilization falls, is it cash they find among the ruins? Or is it a statue, a poem, a play?
Which is not to say the world owes M., or anyone, a living; alas, the way things are with her, she most likely could not make a poem, a good one that is; still she is important, her values are balanced by more than the usual measure of truth, she deserves a finer destiny than to pass from belated adolescence to premature middle age, with no intervening period, and nothing to show.
-Truman Capote.
He sure knows how to tell it.
Perfume of the Dead
Interesting article that I discovered via Immortal Marilyn
Perfume’s heaven scent: New ‘Antiquity’ fragrances based on DNA of dead celebs
BY Nancy Dillon
NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU CHIEF
Tuesday, November 17th 2009, 4:00 AM
Peculiar perfume line features DNA-linked scents of a veritable constellation of luminaries, including Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein.
Kornman/AP, Clyde Fisher
Peculiar perfume line features DNA-linked scents of a veritable constellation of luminaries, including Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein.
LOS ANGELES – Get ready for Eau de Elvis.
A Beverly Hills company is formulating a line of “Antiquity” fragrances based on the DNA of dead celebrities including Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson – even Richard Nixon.
The firm, which also makes individualized scents based on a customer’s cheek swab, says it’s conjuring the star potions from DNA tests performed on hair clippings provided by renowned celebrity hair collector John Reznikoff.
“I can’t go into our secret process, but we base the fragrance on the genetic code,” said Dr. Diva Verdun, chief development officer at MyDNAFragrance.com.
Verdun conceded buyers aren’t getting a tangible piece of their deceased idol’s biology in the bottle, admitting that “you couldn’t do a reverse DNA analysis off of the perfume.” But she vowed the process is scientific.
“I did a little research on Elvis, and he actually had really bad body odor. So we don’t want to clone him in any way or create a fragrance that actually smelled like him,” she said. “DNA has nothing to do with bodily functions. There’s no way it can stink.”
Some skeptical experts said the type of DNA test used for old hair clippings wouldn’t reveal much we don’t already know about our icons.
“It’s the least precise form of testing, only tracking the maternal branch of your family tree. But it can give a sense of your deep ancestry, say if you’re Native American or Asian,” genealogy expert and Ancestry.com spokeswoman Megan Smolenyak told the Daily News. “I’m just scratching my head here.”
The Antiquity line is $59.99 per sculpted aluminum bottle and available online. The company hopes to begin deliveries in the next few months.
“It’s very scientific. They are working toward evoking the individual represented in the DNA,” Reznikoff told The News. “It’s far from an astrology reading.”
ndillon@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/11/17/2009-11-17_perfumes_heaven_scent_new_fragrances_based_on_dna_of_dead_celebrities.html#ixzz0Zb9pg0HL
