2016

Happy New Year everyone. I've never been keen on making New Year's resolutions and nothing has changed in that regard. But I am going to try and post something here on my blog at least once per week in 2016. Why? Because I miss my blog. I miss writing stories that begin with a pair of socks and somehow traverses my childhood, cars, b.b. guns and cocktails before concluding. My dashboard has been so cluttered with life stuff and my focus has been so compromised over the last year-and-half that there's not been the energy for randomanalia and impertinabula over here.

And of course, there's tumblr--the MSG of blogging. I can't prove it but I do think that tumblr poaches some of my juju that would otherwise be directed here. Plus it's just easy and mindless, like MSG. F.Scott Fitzgerald used to poach his novel caliber drafts and ideas and sell them to magazines as short stories when he was pressed for cash. Some argue that he might a had another novel in him had he not stolen from his own cash register of material. With that said, the main was still one hell of a conjugator.

But I do have things that I want to write about. Things like LFG and my missing Piggly Wiggly t-shirts. We had several versions of the iconic pig and they're currently AWOL. Damn.

And I am going to write about my buddy and surrogate father, "PoPo Baker" who landed on Omaha beach on D-Day plus one. 

And I've got at least two stories about Chelsea and my boy Jimmy Whistler whose infamous White House (the hansom is stopped in front of it) was the talk of Tite street and then some.

And then there's a story about small paintings. Like this one by a young whippersnapper originally from Northern California who made his way to London and Paris and the tutelage of Whistler. He died at age 37 from blood poisoning after being accidentally stuck by a hat pin at a dance. I kid you not. Damn I love sleuthing and uncovering the proverbial back story.

And our boy over at The Old Law is about to be the daddy of a little girl.

And I declared on tumblr that I had no additional advice for him after Tommy Tevlin et al showered him with great wisdom. But then I remembered Meg Meeker's book. It's a must read.

West Evans street in my hometown. I never wrote a proper story about the haberdashery that spawned my sartorial addiction. I was busting to write it not long after my mother died. The fact that Toad and I stood in the entryway of this hallowed spot one night was a key motivator. And by the way, where the hell IS Toad?

Ok. So sit tight and let's see if my once a week commitment is sustainable.

Onward.

ADG II

Flusser Apologetics and JMW Turner Unapologetically

I kinda miss ole Daddy. ‘specially now since I’m a full-fledged orphan. Daddy this time being God, aka Alan Flusser. God you say? Yep. He’s a reluctant owner of the moniker but not too reluctant. I mean really, it makes no difference if you are a nice Jewish boy turned Buddhist from the upper middle class enclaves of the Garden State and then four decades Gotham habitué or like me, a country-ass redneck from the Palmetto State. Everyone loves a bit of adulation.  But my life circumstances have had me missing Alan’s Washington visits and my scant Gotham sorties haven’t offered Flusser Fellowship in over a year.

I started it. I’m the one who first called Alan God. I’ve admired him since way before he ever befriended me and started taking a lot of my money. And I’ve said it a zillion times and I’ll say it again to you knuckleheads who say “Alan Flusser? What happened?” Nothing has happened, dumbasses. Alan’s riding the waves of time just like the rest of us. 

And the “What happened?” question seems always posited on those forums in context to thirty year old publicity/jacket cover photos of Alan. Unless you are splashing on embalming fluid every morning, I’d bet that a thirty year progression of your mug shots would show us a journey not dissimilar. So back off of Daddy.

I’ve aged ten years in eighteen months. Shut up.

I too used to hang on to the idea of Alan Flusser, circa 1984 just like I did with Ralph Lauren, circa 1978. These were my Ed Sullivan moments for both Beatles-esque sartorial acts. The moments when they not only forever installed themselves in my sartorial and aesthetic register, but when they were also both on f_cking fire. Shut up. These were Ralph’s horse blanket Shetland plaid sport jackets (made in the USA by Lanham) moments and Alan's horizontal dress shirted, gut end braces, chalk striped drapy trousered, double breasted days.

But things change—all life is transitory and that includes sartorial epochs. Bruce Springsteen said “every now and then you have to break your own narrative” and National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones said that “if we don’t question our patterns, they become our prisons”. Alan and Ralph have never strayed too far from their core strategies but for the sake of their own engagement, relevance, and perhaps amusement, they mix it up a bit.

Artistic licence (If he’s is anything, he’s an artist) and relaxation would be two characteristics of Alan that I’d use to distinguish the current state of his evolution.  Alan is a grandfather and is long past the need care too much about the opinions of the general public or investors or journalists. So what if most of the world thinks he needs a haircut? I hope he grows it down to his ass and then sells locks of it. I'll buy some and a make a bracelet. Shut up.

Courtesy of Gentleman's Gazette

Look at the sockless daddy...with kick ass Gucci Deal Sleds on. Stronger than wolf nooky. Yep.The one-time arbiter of beltless, Thurston braced drapy trousers and made by Old Man Cleverley himself, buckled or laced shoes, now wears slip ons and flat front belted trousers almost exclusively. His two daughters flipped out when they discovered that he actually bought a pair of jeans. 

And the man is obsessed with comfort. Lora Piana drawstring lounge togs? If they exist, I bet Daddy Fluss has them on right now. Me? I’m in a dirty, terrycloth zebra print robe that I stole from the Hotel Monaco. 

Photo from The Trad

When scores of you suggested that I remove of couple of the dingy-ass cotton bracelets from my left wrist, I added three more. I only thinned out my circular fellowship of bracelets for my mamma’s funeral last week and I hope that Alan only grooms differently for such rare situations. I walked my sister down the marital aisle twice. I don’t think I’ll have to attend a re-do of my mamma’s send off so I’m going to reload my wrist. GTH.

And speaking of “GTH devotees”, I just saw the JMW Turner Late Pictures exhibition at the Tate Britain and was blown away. Every picture in this show was Turner aged sixty-five to his death at seventy-six. Nothing earlier. Radical. Mind bending. And imagine how imposing his pictures were to the aesthetic sensibilities of the Art Establishment of the time. Oh and here's a Turner self portrait as a young man. Probably idealized a bit but still, he was a young shaver when he painted it.

“The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free is the first exhibition devoted to the extraordinary work J.M.W. Turner created between 1835 and his death in 1851. Bringing together spectacular works from the UK and abroad, this exhibition celebrates Turner’s astonishing creative flowering in these later years when he produced many of his finest pictures but was also controversial and unjustly misunderstood”.

Turner even as a young man was always an incredible capturer of water and clouds. Water and air’s movement, energy and emotion are difficult to memorialize in any medium; watercolor, pastel, drypoint, tempera, or oil. And an artist’s attempt to convey it tests greatly their mechanical skill and even more so their talent for finding and then really, really seeing these magical properties.

Whistler had the same talent for seeing and conveying dawn, dusk and midnight. Anyone with basic artistic skill could capture a lush, painterly image of the old Battersea Bridge. But Whistler shrouded it in atmospherics. Twilights and dawn peeks, mists and vapors. He and Turner saw what others didn’t but that’s only one part of the gift. The artist must then transfer it. And this is the moment when talent and skill must congregate. Ralph and Alan. Congregationalists.

The volume of Whistler’s Venice pastels exist mainly because of chilly mornings and early evenings.  When he deemed it too cold to transfer artfully his mind’s eye capture on to an etching plate with a needle, he would bide his time drawing, courtesy of a little box of pastels and light brown cards that he kept in his pocket. 

When his hands warmed up, he’d tuck away his pastel kit and commence etching. I'm just happy that there were days when his hands were cold.

Photo Courtesy of My Damn Self

Folks, to be able to do that is talent and skill combined and Flusser has it out the ass. Still does. His eye remains unrivaled and his skill for conveying it courtesy of colors, textures, and mediums is as Turner-esque as ever. I deemed Flusser “God” long ago after manifold moments of him gently pulling me back from the crag where I’d unwittingly almost fall into the Canyon of Clowndom. Had Alan not steered me to this heathery green cashmere and wool option, surely I'd have ended up with some kind of bright green hootchie cootchie coat.

Photo from Off The Cuff DC

And I'd ape the hell out of Alan. There was a time when I’d simply see what Alan was wearing at the opening of a season or a trunk show and just say, “I’ll have that.” And that was always a good decision. Why try to knock off Turner and Whistler when you can simply have the Master create one for you?

Turner was sixty-five when he threw into overdrive his slaying  of the staid opinions and calcified mores of London’s Art Establishment. And he didn’t let up until he died eleven years later.  They literally thought Turner was demented. Maybe he was and thanks be to the neurosynaptic gods for it. Look at this picture. You almost need to dress for it. Barbour at minimum. Maybe a crash helmet too. 

Turner looked like this when he opened his final can of whoop ass, punching the Establishment right in the nose. Not quite the dashing fella of previous decades but still loaded with juice.

And how could I have rambled on about all this without including my friend and soothsayer of balance and restrained playfulness, the mighty eruditey, G. The Bruce. Boyer.  Bruce’s  afterburners didn’t even feel the need to kick in till he was into his fifth decade of extolling on things sartorial.  I know of no one who has more thoroughly enjoyed…reveled practically, in the digital age of sartorial expression. Like I’ve said before, nobody shit-talks Bruce Boyer.

Flussdaddy remains the go-to man, the unimpeachable control tower for the sartorial takeoffs and landings of stick and rudder Cessna guys like me who think they are the lead solo jet on the sartorial Thunderbirds.

Now get your b_tch ass in the kitchen and make me some pie.

Onward. Going home this week to mamma’s for Thanksgiving.

ADG2. Thankful. 

Cheever at Six

I’ve written about Cheever. God knows I’ve written about Weejuns—ad nauseam. I’ve even memorialized as my blog header; courtesy of my friend—the stunning on all counts, LPC, Weejuns as metaphorical currency when trading in stories that transcend just clothes and shoes. Writing about and for me, reading Cheever was a bit more onerous than scribbling about Weejuns. But I digress. Already.

Cheever wore size six Weejuns. Big whup, right? He was a little guy. Small enough to make me look less so. Rather like my favorite artist, American expat Whistler, who was referred to as a “pocket Mephistopheles.” Rather unlike Whistler, Cheever fought more devils than manifested them. Whistler wore attenuated little low-vamp pumps which accentuated his small feet. Cheever wore clunky shoes. But even clunky…or even Weejuns…in a size six…looks fey.

So AllanGurganus writes about the woulda now been a hundred years old, Cheever and his size six Weejuns in the New York Review of Books. And it motivated me to do this post for reasons beyond Cheever’s little Weejuns. First, it took me back to the onerous but couldn’t-put-it-down journey that I took a couple of years ago when I read Blake Bailey’s Cheever biography. Couldn’t put it down because I just couldn’t…in a drive-by-a-wreck-shouldn't-look-but-can’t-not…way. Onerous because I am Federico Cheever to my father’s John. And that shit still hurts and always will.

And second, I was reminded, through Gurganus’s voice, of the fine caliber of writer that comes out of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Rocky Mount North Carolina’s Gurganus is such a product. So was the lexiconically overwrought, lupus laden Flannery O'Connor. And a woman who I dated right after my divorce. Gurganus met Cheever there and, well, you can read the story here. But for now, I’ll share with you a few of Gurganus's lines that caught me.

"We peeked into Cheever’s classroom. He was seated cross-legged on a blond oak desk and looked like a Noël Coward leprechaun. Blue-and-white-striped Brooks Brothers shirt, unpressed khakis. John Cheever wore size-six Weejuns. (You know? I’ve always wanted to write that! For its interior rhymes, for its being factual, for its snappy attempt at sounding both as smart and clear as, well, a John Cheever sentence. So, yeah, “John Cheever wore size-six Weejuns.”)”

“Cheever’s fiction celebrates daylight as a form of salvation. Of course his pages creating brilliance had to be offset by a contrasting ink-jet blackness, as dark as the pitchiest corner of a Goya masterpiece. Cheever’s impish human essence showed that same ratio of dark-to-light. He later guilt-tripped me into attending an Iowa Episcopal service; there, in the bone-plain church, he dropped a mid-aisle contortionist’s genuflection that looked downright papal.”

“Confronting Iowa hostesses who looked too much like Margaret Dumont, he’d goose those ladies. He would. The wisest of them giggled, “Oh, now John, you bad bad boy. Not again!” He was Cole Porter one minute, Groucho the next, suddenly a drunken stumblebum, then the wisest of Chekhov’s cynics. John was selfish and ruined. He was a child, he was a genius. He was a scamp, he was a man.”

“John taught me and, later, without my knowing, sent and sold my first story to The New Yorker. When gentle William Maxwell whispered this news by phone to my one-room apartment, I said, “Yeah, and I’m Mae West, who the hell is this?””

“His habits and unhappiness had nearly killed him. By now his cough could clear waiting rooms. He was the Pompeii where cigarettes go to die.”

“John later introduced me to his wife and kids. They all forgave me for having forgiven him. Weren’t we all fellow sufferers of his snobbish exuberance?”

Onward. At six on Sunday morning. Now turning my vague-ass writing skills back over to…the man.

ADG II … Wage Slave.

LFG, Whistler and Boldini

I wasn’t being maudlin (any more than my steady-state of 24-7 mawkish treacle homeostasis dictates) when I snapped the photo of LFG’s overnight bag at my feet the other weekend. There wasn't too much of a heart string twinge or tug as I recollected the years of every other weekend visits. It was just a visual symbol of logistical recollection. Shut up.

The weekend ended up being a great one…as usual. But the weekends are a-changing as LFG gets older. It’s more of a transportation-finance-logistics commitment what with her various dance classes and birthday parties etc. Gone are the days of a clean slate awaiting my inputs for fun and frolic with a three year old. Her Highness did allow a brief foray into Cactus Cantina. I think I’m gonna buy the place.

But last weekend did avail a four-hour window on Sunday that offered, at LFG’s suggestion, visits to the Hirshorn and the Freer. LFG knew about the Warhol shadows exhibit so our first stop landed us at the Hirshorn to see the massive Warhol expanse. We’ve always loved our local museums and thanks…again...for your Federal tax dollars that avail these local aesthetics playgrounds to us. As LFG inches more towards the predictably reticent grunts and uh-huhs of early adolescent communication with me, museums seem to give us more to talk about.

And post Hirshorn and Warhol saw us with some time remaining so we tucked into the Freer for a bit of fellowship with Whistler. The Freer is my local home-church for art and aesthetic recharge. My visits are so frequent and the Whistler stuff is so rarely rotated, that a thirty minute flurry resets me just right. I've been known, in the midst of a frustrating work day, to hop the Metro to the Freer and wallow in the aesthetic salve between conference calls with corporate blowhards.

I came to know and revere Whistler the same way I became acquainted with all art. Vanity Fair caricatures. I can’t think of another gateway that would have been as intriguing as Vanity Fair prints. I’m satiated now but for years there was more to learn about them. I probably made the Vanity Fair collecting journey as erudite as anyone could ever hope for... too much so I suspect…for most people.

And the Whistler caricature by Leslie Ward (Spy) was and remains one of my favorites. Even Jimmy Whistler liked it and told Leslie Ward so. He kept extra copies of it and would give signed images to friends and patrons. So of course, I had learn more about this fella who until I acquired the Vanity Fair image of him, I knew only as the “Whistler’s Mother” guy. Oh, and that his mother was originally from the Wilmington North Carolina area.

So Vanity Fair led me to Whistler and then Sickert and … Tissot, Menpes, Degas, Sargent, Steer, Lavery, and of course, my runner-up to Whistler in my contrived “London Based Artists Liked by ADG” set, William Nicholson. Nicholson by the way, did the excellent woodcut of Whistler that adorns my hall.

And Whistler led me to etchings and drypoints. I love the art that emerges from scratching needles on copper plates but I’m equally intrigued with the technical processes and nuances involved in inking-wiping and pulling paper from plates.

Most artists will “proof” an etching or three…essentially giving their blessing to the ensuing run of an agreed upon numbers of prints…printed by the owner of the press. Whistler was an outlier in innumerable ways but he was an outlier and then some when it came to tinkering with the printing process.

He played around with various degrees of ink saturation on the etching plate. He wiped them loosely sometimes and other times he would spread the ink with a small feather to create even more nuanced conveyances when printed. He added a needle strike here and there to deepen the ominous presence of an early evening sky or a Thames cataract. Or he would work the plate with his little hammer…beating out a line or two if it fancied him. And as often as possible, he would pull the prints himself.

Oh, and he was crazy about different types of paper. Mortimer Menpes tells the story of Whistler leaving London for Holland in search of, based on rumor, a cache of 18^th century fine wove paper. I think Whistler’s toying around with materials and processes was nothing short of genius. And so of course, I began to accumulate a few etchings and drypoints as well.

LFG and I headed straight downstairs last Sunday when we rolled into the Freer. Why? I might have shared it before in a story or two but on the lower level there’s always a minor (major to me) little Whistler collateral exhibition on the hallway walls. It’s usually a niche cull from the turgid repository of Whistler goods en perpetu at the Freer. And for me it’s always a refreshing little splash of genius.

I love that Whistler worked in pastel, watercolour, drypoint and oil. And currently downstairs at the Freer, you’ll see a well curated flurry of each. It's... Sweet Silent Thought: Whistler's Interiors.

But what about Whistler as the subject of portraiture and caricature? Eric Denker wrote what I think became his Ph.D. dissertation, In Pursuit of the Butterfly. The National Portrait Gallery in tandem with Denker’s publication had an exhibition of the same title and it was Whistlerian nirvana.

The fodder for Whistler images was just too seductive for anyone during his time to pass up. To say that Whistler was pugnacious is an understatement so he was always creating some kind of Chelsea based shit- storm in the art and social realms of London. That’s fancy talk for being an easy target. So Denker’s book is loaded with evidence that Whistler in his prime was as much a subject of art as he was a creator of it.

I visited the Whistler exhibit probably a half dozen times, including one tour that Denker narrated. But kinda like the first of many times I saw the Allman Brothers; my maiden trip to the exhibition was more riveting than anything subsequent. You entered the gallery and Whistler, courtesy of Giovanni Boldini, greeted you. Boldini’s portrait is almost six feet tall and it captures, larger than life, the essence of what one sharp elbowed critic called Whistler… “a pocket Mephistopheles.”  If I was limited to one image of Whistler to illustrate his whateverishness, it would be the Boldini portrait. Those closest to Whistler, including Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell, declared the Boldini image of Whistler to be a remarkably accurate capture of the man. Whistler predictably, cared nothing for it.

Being the sucker for a collateral or back-story, I enjoyed learning about Boldini’s sneaky little drypoint of Whistler. The story goes that Whistler, while posing for the Boldini painting, would tire of posing and insist on a nap. So Boldini grabbed an etching plate and needle during one of these little snoozers and dashed off the image. Here’s a better characterization of it from our friends at Childs Gallery inBoston... “Gary A. Reynolds notes the incident surrounding the creation of this drypoint, in his catalogue "Giovanni Boldini and Society Portraiture": "In 1897 Boldini painted a seated portrait of Whistler, the most famous monument to their friendship. Edward G. Kennedy [Whistler's American dealer]...remembered that 'Whistler frequently got tired of doing what he had made other people do all his life - pose - and that he used to take little naps. During one of these, Boldini made a drypoint of him on a zinc plate." This incident is also noted in Elizabeth and Joseph Pennell's biography, "The Life of James McNeill Whistler" (1911), fifth edition, on page 346. Other impressions are in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.”

I have a fairly decent collection of Whistler images but the Boldini drypoint, an edition of less than fifty, has always been out of my financial reach.  No worries. One can’t nor should have everything. 

And besides; the drypoint of Whistler by Paul Helleu was one I coveted even more than the Boldini and at about ten to fifteen thousand pounds, I was never gonna own that one.

I've not acquired much in the way of art in the last several years. If anything, I've divested my walls of various treasures here and there. But the art market is hurting. Hell, almost every market is hurting right now. And the Boldini image came up at auction last week. I placed a low bid that surely wasn't enough but even so, I culled the necessary possessions to sell if indeed I did win it and needed the dosh to pay-up. I've done the deal on dosh raising and probably by this time next week, the Boldini image will be here, in fellowship with me, at CasaMinimus.

Onward. Boldly.  Avec Whistler and Boldini. Sans LFG...till Friday

ADG II