Lawrence Alma-Tadema

 I love oil paintings and my favourite painter of all time has to be nineteenth-century, realist painter, Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912). He's not a very popular painter and I've only seen one of his works at the Museum of Philadelphia but his neo-classicist style speaks more to me than anything else I've ever seen. I'm not a huge fan of contemporary art and I miss the excruciating detail and real talent that used to go into paintings before someone stuck a toilet in a museum or drew a couple of geometric lines and decided to call it art.

 A Favourite Custom (1909)

 Unconscious Rivals (1893)

 Silver Favourites (1903)

 Anthony and Cleopatra (1885)

 Caracalla and Geta (1907)

 

The Baths at Caracalla (1989)

The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888)

This last painting is my favourite piece of artwork ever. Legend has it that Alma-Tadema ordered giant shipments of roses from a faraway locale so he could get the petals just right and every time the flowers died, he'd order more so that he could always paint fresh velvety petals.

I do not consider Kim Kardashian's nude cover of W Magazine's "Art Issue" art, no matter how much the magazine tries to assert us that it is.

If Kim Kardashian Take Her Clothes off - Is it Art? -- The Atlantic Wire

J

Burberry Prorsum Spring 2011

Now that we've seen some typical light, fresh Spring looks, looks you can probably see yourself wearing while hanging out on a lazy Sunday, picnicking in the park, or al fresco dining under the summer night sky, I'd like to share with you Burberry Prorsum's Spring collection, a 180 from traditional spring fare.

Now the collection's got your typical neon brights and their signature Spring trench coats, perfect for rainy English weather, but this collection has a really hard edge to it, one you don't really associate with flowers or rainy days. Christopher Bailey's made some of the fiercest, most dangerous-looking motorcycle jackets that I've ever seen and I want all of them! 

I can't even pick a favorite! Can you?

J

J. Crew Spring 2011

A few pieces I'm liking from J. Crew's Spring/Summer Lookbook. I'm loving all the glitter and sequins pared down with soft neutrals and luxe fabrics.

 
 
 

 

J

J. Crew in Hollywoodland

Photos from J. Crew's Spring catalogue featuring Sam Page, aka Colin from Gossip Girl!

All photos courtesy of J. Crew.

J

The Bluest Eye

I finished Toni Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, about a week ago and I haven't gotten around to sharing my thoughts.

My experience with this novel was a little bit restless. It's about a black girl named Pecola Breedlove who longs for blue eyes so she can be treated better by her family and her small, black Southern community. Although it's a very poignant book about racism (especially racism against one's own ethnicity), sexuality, violence, and family, I was expecting it all to be about Pecola's struggles with her identity. This is what the back of the book advertises but the majority of the novel jumps back and forth between different characters around the town and different characters from the Breedlove's pasts. It's sandwiched by Pecola's experiences (kind of like how Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is largely about Oscar's family back in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is sandwiched by Oscar's life in the US) and when I reached the end, I realized why Morrison did this.

It's not as organized and as tightly wound as Beloved, Morrison's second novel which also jumps all over the place. There are some truly harrowing moments in The Bluest Eye and one episode in particular that truly caught me off guard. The subject of this portion is a despicable fellow whom nobody is supposed to like but Morrison describes him like any other person with neither a sympathetic nor a censorious tone. And when she explains the reasons for his deviance, I felt like Morrison had done something that a lot of great authors do and that is to make you see and understand something from a completely different perspective. I was surprised and shocked by my ability to exit my solipses and my subjectivity and not many writers are able to do that for me, to really make me think and go, "Wow, I've never thought of it like that before."

I think it's pretty amazing when you can disassociate yourself from yourself. It's like looking into a mirror and realizing that you're not the body but the reflection.

J

Aritzia Spring 2011

I started my work at Aritzia on Monday and I wanted to celebrate my first day with a few pieces from the new Spring collections but alas, the fashion show hasn't streamed yet so I'm linking to another blog that got its hands on some key pieces for the new season.

Check out a few sneak-peeks from Style + Substance. Brittany's spring picks include a lot of slouchy, over-sized tops (who can ever have enough black t-shirts?), army and cargo detailing, and the colour blush. I'm loving them as well.

I feel that everything by Wilfred is always a must-have piece, whereupon everything in their collection somehow feels essential to my wardrobe. God knows I can't own everything. The colour palette doesn't look too different from Le Fou by Wilfred's Fall/Winter collection but I'm not going to jump the gun here. I'm eagerly awaiting Aritzia's fashion show on Facebook, streaming live on Sunday, January 13th @ 5pm EST/8pm PST. Remember to like Aritzia on Facebook and you'll be able to see the collections front-row from the comforts of your own living room!

Hopefully I can start taking my own photos at Aritzia once I get settled in.

J

Ryan Gosling for GQ

I'm loving the January spread in GQ with Ryan Gosling where he models with shadows. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Gosling (even though he was born in my hometown) but what a clever idea for a photoshoot and what stunning pictures taken from Mario Testino.

The last photo is great because he's totally evoking the gruff Marlon Brando from A Streetcar Named Desire with his scowl and his clenched fists but he's dressed like a casual gentleman in the vein of a dapper Carey Grant.

J