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Showing posts with label Judith and Holofernes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judith and Holofernes. Show all posts

VL CL YSL liVing art

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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.














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

smitten

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oh- do try


lovely fellow bloggers and even beloved ones.

I know it will be hard.

do not be "smitten"

 ever again.



Exceptions:


Now lightning-struck by thee, Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth: --Thus do I lie, Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed With all eternal torture, And smitten By thee, cruellest huntsman, Thou unfamiliar--GOD.-Nietzsche

That fights with Fate, is smitten grievously. -Sophocles


Middle English smiten, from Old English smtan, to smear.
Old English smītan; related to Old High German smīzan to smear, 
Gothic bismeitan, Old Swedish smēta to daub



Holofernes having been  
"smitten"
by Judith


What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give one's cloak if one's coat were taken?-Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

poor Anna.


For it had not been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured. -Melville's Moby  Dick


Thereupon she approached him, turned the coverlet back, and saw that he was stiff and cold-- that he had died suddenly, as though smitten with a stroke. Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk


A lad whose face had borne an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. Crane's Red Badge of Courage



& it will not be easy
for that sensation to charm, to cavort- to be kittenish  will indeed overtake you.

when it does
resist &

think of A.E.Housman's prophetic words:

O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.

& think of Judith.




read and see the story in paintings of Judith and Holofernes at It's About Time. 
no links to posts with smitten, or kitten cited .

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