“My wife has always dreamt that her beauty would be immortal,” Frederic von Anhalt said, “I would like to show the plastinated body of Zsa Zsa Gabor in the context of a scene in one of her films.”

(from here)

bianca in turban.

and regarding the famous wedding trouser suit:

“My wedding suit and hat were designed by Yves St Laurent. Everyone thinks I was making a deliberate fashion statement by wearing the jacket without a shirt, but they didn’t realise I was pregnant with Jade when we married. “Yves made the outfit at the beginning of my pregnancy – by the time I married, the shirt was too tight.”

this season we make bread.

(photo)

(and a no-knead recipe)

In fact, the camel yesterday was smitten.
She left the other camels to come over.
You have a lovely liquid wraparound eye.
She stood there looking at me sideways.
They feed their racing camels caviar in Qatar.
The ruler of Dubai has said that he will try to buy Versailles.

(photo from La collectionneuse (1967))

“Believing it almost a sin to buy something he could make himself, Sandy would drop anything he was involved in, no matter how important, and beat out a roasting pan for Louisa or fashion a large-capacity serving ladle or a sieve. This do-it-yourself dictum was undoubtedly a carryover from their earlier, leaner days, but it had become an obsession with Sandy.”

A creative artist of any kind—writer, painter, musician—needs two conditions met in his outer life to be productive for the long haul: a physical space in which to work that he doesn’t have to think about, that is as natural for him to get to and be in as a kitchen table, and, just as important, people around him who are dedicated to smoothing his way, who will see to it that the washing is done, that visitors are handled deftly.

Calder had both of these, for nearly his entire career. His homes, in Roxbury, Connecticut and in Saché, France, had multiple workshops and each shop had multiple stations where dozens (and ultimately thousands) of works—mobiles, stabiles, gouaches, jewelry, kitchen goods—lay scattered about, with their attendant tools, waiting for their creator’s hand to turn to them again. To the outsider it looked like a sparkling chaos, but to Sandy it was like working in his own projected brain, with nearly finished thoughts readily at hand.

And for smoothing his way, Calder had Louisa.

(my father wanted to name me Louise.)

(text from here)

(photos of the calder home from here by way of a lovely desert)

(and something for the cold)

Once the camels reach maturity, in five years, the young males are driven out of the herd, whereas the females remain with their mothers.

(photo)

“There exists a sweet spot between chaos and order, gas and crystal, wild and tame. In that spot lies the powerfully creative force of self-organization (aka “order for free”) where we organize based on our strengths. In a polyculture (of more than one love) we breed not just one crop, but all the difficulties and joys that come with multiple crops. Seek that sweet spot where all of our abilities to perform, or even exceed performance, flourish next to each other.”

(i’m so happy you’ve returned to the garden. via wit*ness.)

(photo)

“My heart is like a sea which has little sad waves,” she wrote [to Rodin]. “But every ninth wave is big and happy.”

(painting: Gwen John, Young Woman Holding a Black Cat)

(on the hunt for Gwen’s letters to Rodin but in the meantime this )

For a while she had a tiny allowance from her father, but that ended with his first visit, when he saw her wearing a dress she had painstakingly copied from a Manet picture. “You look like a prostitute in that dress,” he told her. “I could never accept anything from someone capable of thinking so,” Gwen blazed back.

(from here)

(painting: Édouard Manet, Woman with Fans)