Nicola Samorì

The Italian painter Nicola Samorì composes his portraits with close reference to techniques of the Italian Baroque. Historical figures are precisely applied in chiaroscuro onto obscure backgrounds on wood, canvas and copper. However, Samorì then peels whole layers of paint off again, garbles mimics and gestures, thus revealing layers and priming below. Samorì (born 1977 in Forli, Italy) studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna. Samorì lives and works in Bagnacavallo.

GMC

Hans Holbein - écorché (estasi)

La Storia

Buen Retiro

J.V.

Terzi

Reverzo

I like this! The people in his portraits looks like they died and started to decompose, not only in their graves, but also in their portraits. Or like they were inflicted by weird diseases, or like their twisted mental states seeps through the canvas to reveal a more horrible - but possibly truer - portrait. Feels like I need to steal an expression from a friend here, and call these paintings "deliciously sick"...

Pin-ups of the 20s

Ever since the camera was invented, there has, obviously, existed a need to photograph naked or half naked women. I'm actually pretty glad about this. I think it's really interesting to see how people's view on what's beautiful and sexy has changed and evolved during the years. If it has changed at all...

During the 1920s young women got to experience a freedom unimaginable to earlier generations. They openly bobbed their hair, went out to jazz clubs, smoked, drank alcohol, drove cars and wore short skirts. Although people usually think about painted posters from WWII or Bettie Page when they hear the word pin-up, these girls have existed longer than that! In the 20s they were for the most part movie stars who represented this new class of liberated young women. Here are a few of them:

Vilma Banky

Bebe Daniels

Ruth Etting

Gloria Swanson

Mary Pickford

A Dreadful Hat

I have a friend called Fanny. Her sister, Agnes, is married to a guy named Leo. Leo once had dreadlocks. When he cut these off, Fanny's and Agnes' mother, Magdalena Kellerman, saved these locks and made a hat/fascinator. This little work of art is now mine!

It's fitted with a comb underneath to make it easy to slip into my hair. As you can see it has little roses and pearl flowers attached to it - and a pair of taxidermied squirrel legs. I know, this might seem a bit morbid. But that's one of the reasons why I really like this little fascinator - the morbidity of the legs from a dead animal coupled with the dainty flowers and pearls. I love when you put opposites together like that!

I bought it at Kellerman Vintage, and if you want one too, I can tell you that there is one left in the shop. It looks a little bit different though. It doesn't have the red roses, but a beautiful brooch in the middle instead. And the legs on that one is a pair from a little bird. This one is fitted with a brooch needle in the back. But if you want to use it as a fascinator, it can easily be fastened with a few hair pins. Or, a comb could be sewn onto the back of it.

The Shatter Dress

Once upon a full moonlit October night in Stockholm I happened to meet a very nice boy from New York. It turned out he is an artist, and since I love art I of course had to do some researching. Found his art page easily on the net. I simply had to google his name - Marc Boutges - and there it was! Do I have to say I liked his art?! It was especially one of his works that caught my eye. It is called "Shatter 1", and it was almost scary to see how well it reflected my mental state for the last 6,5 years, after I lost the love of my life - dancing - and dealing with the pain demon that's been living in my body ever since (he's not that mean anymore though).

Shatter 1

I said to Marc I wished I could print this painting on fabric and make a dress out of it, so I could wear this feeling on the outside, instead of on the inside. He thought it was a good idea, and sent me part of this work he had done in the 3D program Maya. It was the white edged shards you can see against the black background.

When I received this file I sent it to Spoonflower, who had it digitally printed on fabric for me. The only color they had problems printing was black. It becomes charcoal grey on the fabric. I chose a cotton sateen which has a bit of a shiny finnish, and when I received the fabric I was actually glad it wasn't completely black. It looks very elegant with the slightly shiny dark grey. The pattern I used was one from Simplicity, from the 50s. I was crawling around on the floor for quite some time, trying to get the shatters placed right on the different pieces, but in the end it turned out quite well. If I may say so myself. And with a black fluffy petticoat from Bettie Page Clothing, to give it some volume, I now have a dress I really love - not just because it's a pretty dress, but also for how it came to be and the meaning it has for me.

My photographing sister, Christine Engström, did a photo shoot with me wearing the dress. For this I put on my point shoes for the first time in six years! I felt a bit like Bambi on ice at first, but it was a wonderful feeling being up there again!

Floating Woman

In sticking to yesterday's theme about black and white photos from the 40s, depicting dead, or dead-looking, women, I felt I had to do a post on the photo below too. It depicts a woman floating in the aquarium at Weeki Wachee Spring in Florida. It was taken in 1947 by the photographer Toni Frissell.

The first time I saw it was when I stepped into a shop that sold prints of old photos in Gamla Stan in Stockholm. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it! The girl working in the shop told me she liked it too, but that many customers said they found it scary or disturbing. Except for the sheer beauty and serenity of the picture, I like it because you can't be sure if the woman is dead - possibly by her own choice - or if she's just floating around in the water, enjoying the soft, weightless feeling it gives you if you manage to relax enough to let the water carry you...

Evelyn McHale

It has been called the most beautiful suicide ever, when Evelyn McHale ended her own life by jumping off the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947. The photography student Robert Wiles was there to take a picture of her. This picture then ran in Life Magazine a couple of weeks after, with the following caption:

On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure.

In the NY Times, the obituary stated:

Empire State ends life of girl, 20:

At 10:40 A. M., Patrolman John Morrissey of Traffic C, directing traffic at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, noticed a swirling white scarf floating down from the upper floors of the Empire State. A moment later he heard a crash that sounded like an explosion. He saw a crowd converge in Thirty-third Street.

Two hundred feet west of Fifth Avenue, Miss McHale's body landed atop the car. The impact stove in the metal roof and shattered the car's windows. The driver was in a near-by drug store, thereby escaping death or serious injury.

On the observation deck, Detective Frank Murray of the West Thirtieth Street station, found Miss McHale's gray cloth coat, her pocketbook with several dollars and the note, and a make-up kit filled with family pictures.

Andy Warhol later used this photo for a print called "Suicide (Fallen Body)":

Dramatic story that ends in beautiful tragedy. After a fall like that it's amazing the way she looks. Almost like she's a model posing for a morbidly themed fashion shoot - "Fashion Suicide", or "Fashion Victim". Her arms perfectly positioned around her red lipped face. I have to say I prefer the one photograph before Warhol's print though. I think it's beautiful in it's sadness, and could actually put it up on my wall...

Anna's bachelorette party

Yesterday I rose at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am. Usually this is not ok according to me. But this day was special - it was time to kidnap Anna Boberg for her bachelorette party! We had all decided to wear 40s - 50s style outfits, with emphasis on film noir. Since this is what I usually wear, this fitted me perfectly! Although not many of us took the film noir theme so seriously, I wanted to envisage it on myself as best as I could. With this in mind I threw on a little black dress I had stitched together myself after a pattern from the 40s, over a vintage slip. I also felt this was the perfect time to bring out my black vintage pancake hat with a full veil.

After abducting Anna, we went to Johan's place, where we got a lesson in coffee. We got to try a few different kinds of this lovely beverage, amongst which one was the most expensive coffee in the world! This coffee was literary shit! It's called "Kopi luwak" or "civet coffee". The civet cat eats the coffee berries. After going through the cat's intestines the coffee bean then comes out through the other end of the cat - completely intact. These beans are then washed, dried and roasted so they then can be brewed into very costly coffee. And yes - it tasted like coffee, not shit. In the picture below Anna sips a cup of cat poo.

After this we brought the bride to be to Mosebacke, where we enjoyed a jazz brunch.

Then we went on to Långholmen for some bubbles and strawberries, before the croquet began. The rules of this game was slightly altered for the day - we were three people in each team, and we all had to hook up to each other while shooting. A girl from a nearby picnic actually came up to us asking us what we were doing...

When the croquet was over, we all relaxed for a moment while Tove read aloud from the Agatha Christie crime novel "Death on the Nile".

Then it was time to move on to the next destination, which was the Scandic Sjöfartshotel. There we ate dinner while going through one of their murder mystery nights. We all got assigned different characters we were about to play out during the dinner while trying to figure out who the murder was. My character was the aristocratic kleptomaniac Tratten von Finkel. One of the things I had to do during the night was to steal things (that belonged to the game) and sell them to the woman who was in charge of everything. I managed to get my hands on so many of the other participant's things and sell them I actually won a price for having the most money at the end of the game. I'm proud of myself!

When the murderer was finally revealed, and dessert had been eaten some of us went home. Others - including me - continued to Marios Gastro Dinner - a 50s style bar/bowling place - where we bowled, drank drinks/milkshakes and danced our butts off. I even bowled myself! Didn't make it all the way to the bowling cones though...Then the place closed and we all went home after a long, fun and tiering day...Well. All except Jacob, who went on to a bachelor party...

Yummy!!!!

Anna and Tove - girs with balls!

Jacob and Quaryn rocks the casbah

Johan, Anna, Tove, Jenny, Jacob