The Four Seasons: Prints by Caviglia - KICKSTARTER

Hello, lovelies! I know it's been a long, long while and I apologize for my long absence. I do however, have some important news. I have launched a Kickstarter campaign which will serve to facilitate me getting my art to you.

I am thrilled to say that the campaign was funded in the first 24 hours - BUT, do not let that dissuade you. There is still much art to be had!

I'm offering illustrated prints depicting the four seasons of the year: Robot Winter, Halloween Inheritance, Summer Drowning and Binary.

"Robot Winter" is set in an imaginary snow covered 18th century garden. With a fawn, butterflies, and of course, a Robot.

"Halloween Inheritance" is inspired by classic haunted house movies. I'm sure we can all hear Vincent Price's voice speaking mellifluously from beyond the frame.

I draw a lot of octopuses and other cephalopods. In "Summer Drowning", I would like to make it clear that the giant tentacled monster is, in fact a part of the rescue effort, NOT a part of the drowning.

My final season is the one I like to call "Binary". I've long been fascinated by Ada Lovelace, writer and mathematician, although she referred to herself as "an Analyst (and Metaphysician)", and was one of the first visionaries who saw the path to what we now refer to as a "computer".

I'm having all four designs turned into museum quality giclee prints by the fabulous Skink Ink in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My files are proofed and in their capable hands as I type. All that needs to be done is for you to pledge, and for me to send them off to you.

So these, my friends, are my four seasons. I'm so thrilled to have had the opportunity to work on a larger, even more detailed pieces in the future! I hope you enjoy looking at them and inviting them into your homes as well. Thank you!

Please click through here to go to my Kickstarter page!

What Caviglia Did On Her Summer Vacation!: An Introduction

As has been briefly mentioned here, and as everyone is both buzzing and complaining and celebrating about: this June is madness. Theater abounds. Nearly everyone I know is involved in something. People are having birthdays, Same Sex marriage is now legal in Gotham. I'm at work on various projects, some involving pictures, some involving words, some involving both. And then there's the constant business of keeping it all afloat, AKA paying the bills. So there's been little time to spare to write it all up and I'm vaguely overwhelmed with the task, truth be told. But, never on to shrug off a challenge, here I go!

The following posts are a much boozier, artier, gorier version of the typical "What I did with my summer vacation" essay. At left is a picture I drew at Jazz & Sketch last Thursday at the Society of Illustrators (two minute pose, lovely model). Here at The Cabinet, we refuse to be either bored or idle in this City of our Dreams!

Zombies & Penguins

Longtime Cabinet readers may remember a post way back in 2009 about artist Greg Stones, and his paintings of penguins and zombies and monsters and such. I love them.

Well, he now has two books, both available on his site and (bonus!) has YouTube clips previewing them.

The first is Goodbye, Penguin, which is a Ten Little Indians style story in which a group of fifteen penguins go for a walk, and about their various (mostly tragic) fates. I have watched this an embarrassing number of times. The one who is flattened by a snow man and the one who was abducted (which you can see at above) are my favorites. Watch it below:



His second book, is the aptly titled Zombies Hate Stuff, which is all about stuff zombies hate. Some of these things include hippies, cavemen, war reenactors and sharing.



Both of his books (and the rest of his art and prints) can be purchased here. Apropos of nothing in particular, I would like to point out that my birthday is one scant month away. In case you happened to be wondering.

Mermaids of New York

Mermaids of New York is a new short film making the rounds which features the legendary and lovely Bambi the Mermaid, Dame Darcy (who will have an entire post devoted all to her, soon!) and other glitterey, finned cohorts. See a clip, below, featuring Bambi:



Dame Darcy sings a sea chanty, of which she has an entire album, which you can purchase here:



As an added bonus, Dame Darcy's lovely illustration, "Dolls plunder and pillage the ship. Then drown the pretty sailor lad." From her book Dollerium which can be purchased (totally worth it) here.

Phylum: Mollusca Class: Cephalopoda Order: Octipoda Species: Argonautidae

Oh, internet!

I just discovered the remarkable picture archive belonging to the Réunion des Musées Nationaux. I (unsurprisingly) searched the term "mollusca", and the following are a few of the images of the incredibly charismatic (but shy) Argonaut Octopus I found.

The above painting is of the female Argonaut Octopus. Painted in 1839 by one Mrs. Jeannette Power.

The above is by an unknown artist from the 1551 book, "L'Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins"

I feel as if I'm in danger of falling into an internet wormhole with this collection, emerging days later gibbering nonsense, gassy-eyed and unshowered.

Dixie Dugan: Show Girl In Hollywood

Oh, Alice White.

The only reason she's re-entered the public's consiousness is because she is the subject of seemingly dozens of utterly charming publicity stills from the late '20s and through the '30s. I have a strong suspicion that the vast majority of those who are won over by her adorableness have never seen any of her pictures.

A few weeks ago we emerged from Cabinet Headquarters and ventured over to Film Forum where we were lucky enough to catch the rarely screened 1930 flick, Show Girl in Hollywood. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I have a particular fondness for the early sound musicals. Show Girl, like all of them, is a backstage musical, this one based on J.P. McEvoy's novel of the same name, featuring his show girl creation, Dixie Dugan.

The novel was serialized in Liberty Magazine in 1929, and as in its comic strip spin-off, the chorus girl protagonist was modeled after that most problematic and interesting Ziegfeld alum, Miss Louise Brooks. See below:

A first, silent Dixie Dugan flick, titled simply "Show Girl" was made in 1928, also starring Alice White. Prints exist, but it's not available on either DVD or online, unfortunately. The real question is: why was Louise Brooks never even considered to play the part which was based on her? The ways of Hollywood were and are still inexplicable. Show Girl was made by First National and Brooks was signed to Paramount (though she had been loaned out to First National before), and the studio wanted to promote their own version of Clara Bow, Alice White. The picture didn't do that well (neither did Ziegfeld's stage version of 1929 starring Ruby Keeler with songs by Gershwin), but a sequel was made a couple of years later once sound was introduced.

Back to Alice White. She is, inarguably, adorable. But she's not much of an actor. She mugs and is stilted. Her singing voice is dubbed and she's a barely adequate dancer. But, as mentioned previously, she's super adorable, a trait which has launched the career of many a starlet past and present. But, adorable does not a career make and Miss White's floundered as she became enmeshed in a tabloid sex scandal (also not uncommon among starlets past and present) and her career never recovered. One way in which she does differ from many starlets is that she was a girl with a college education who began her career working behind the camera. She was Erich Von Stroheim's script girl, but he eventually fired her. She then worked for Charlie Chaplin, who first put her in front of the camera, a goal I have a feeling she may have achieved via the Chaplin casting couch.

White made lots of silent comedies and then segued nicely into sound, but never really hit the big time. One can't help but wonder what the Dixie Dugan series would have been like had Louise Brooks (below right) starred. Alice White's gigantic peepers and baby-doll Brooklynese are charming enough, but Brooks had a great deal more force and charisma and was sexy as hell. And she was an actual Ziegfeld star, unlike Alice White who only performed on film.

This film itself is more interesting as historical curiosity than for its own merits. It's one of the only early talkies that shows the actual movie making process. In the film, Dixie befriends a fading silent screen star, played by Blanche Sweet, aging silent film star. Though, please mind, I use the phrase "aging" advisedly. Sweet's character is written and filmed as if she's on the verge of Norma Desmond-hood, but then she cries out with anguish, "I'm thirty-two years old!". In the screening I attended, this was not greeted by the audience with understanding and pity, but with great big gales of laughter.

As with Glorifying the American Girl, the last reel of Show Girl in Hollywood was shot in color, but in this instance all copies have been lost, and only black and white versions remain. Like in the Ziegfeld movie, there is s scene in which actual stars attend the premier of Dixie's movie. We are then treated to one of the strangest musical numbers I've ever seen (which is saying a lot, as I've seen some very strange musical numbers indeed). The song is called "Haywire" and in order to demonstrate "crazy" the filmmakers have chosen to include these bizarre dancing... figures. They look like homeless people possibly, or maybe the legendary Mole People who supposedly live below the streets of New York. It is so weird. You can see the whole sequence below:

All my caveats aside, I am beyond pleased to have gotten to see this curious picture on the big screen. And though one can't help but dream of a Brooks inhabited alternate reality version, it's a fascinating and entertaining curiosity.

Mapp and Lucia and E.F. Benson

Much like with The Fountain Overflows, the covers of the most recent editions of E.F. Benson's Lucia books makes them look really boring so I won't be using them. Instead, I will be illustrating this post with Edward Gorey drawings. He never illustrated the Lucia books, but he was influenced by them and should have.

E.F. Benson is the sort of fiction writer that doesn't really exist anymore. He started off writing serious, historical novels that didn't go anywhere (and are reportedly dreadful), and then went on to write dark and witty indictments of high society, then many, many short stories in pretty much every genre imaginable. Of particular note are his ghost stories, which are still heavily anthologized and pretty easy to find. He also wrote mysteries, horror, adventure stories, comic pieces, satire and crime stories. He wrote volumes of history, too.

But, what Benson is most remembered for now are his six Lucia books. Most importantly: they are hilarious. They stand as the only books that have ever made me well and truly miss my subway stop - and they did it twice. I think the first time it happened was when I was reading about the "duel" in Miss Mapp, and the second time was when Captain Puffin drowns in his soup. But more on that later.

E.F. Benson was a member of a strange and illustrious family. His father was Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the Benson siblings were interesting and accomplished. One brother, a celebrated essayist, poet and Cambridge professor, penned the lyrics to Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" (which is a part of his Pomp and Circumstance, which we all recognize from every graduation ceremony ever). Another was a Catholic priest and popular novelist. Their sister was an artist, writer and Egyptologist. Sadly, the Egyptologist and the professor went mad, likely suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder - their father may have suffered from it as well. After the death of the Archbishop, his wife set up housekeeping with the widow of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury in a lesbian relationship that lasted the rest of their lives. It is likely that all the Benson siblings were also homosexual (E.F. certainly was).

The six Lucia novels span the years between the wars, the last one appearing shortly before Benson's death in 1940. They all (except for the previously mentioned Miss Mapp) star Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, who calls herself Lucia. She lives in the village of Riseholme and is constantly striving for social supremacy. She is elegant and snobbish and completely insufferable. All the squabbles and issues are ludicrous and overblown. I find the books incredibly difficult to explain as, if one is asked what they are about, the only answer is "a bunch of upper middle class middle aged English people who live in a village and bicker." Which is true. But they are so, so funny in an almost Fawlty Towers-ish kind of way. Lucia and her best friend Georgie pretend they can speak Italian, so of course Benson keeps throwing actual Italians at them. It's always hilarious.

Miss Mapp is introduced in the titular novel in which Lucia doesn't appear - but when the two of them meet in Mapp and Lucia, it is like clash of the titans. Lucia moves to Tilling, where Mapp reigns supreme and it's just great. They loathe each other. All the books are filled with comic set pieces and great characters. The Vicar who speaks in a made up Scottish accent. The young female painter ("Quaint Irene") who wears knickerbockers. The great opera singer who is always inviting Italians to stay. The medium who cons everybody. The local Riseholme museum that contains a taxidermied pug and some shards of pottery that everyone optimistically has declared Roman. The pages of intrigue surrounding Georgie's hair, or the "guru" with whom everyone is entranced who makes them do yoga.

There is no sex at all ("that horrid thing which Freud calls sex") and no children. I thought, at one point that there were, but then it was subsequently revealed that the character was actually around thirty but liked to effect a childlike pose. Gorey really should have illustrated them. What the books do, is turn a bunch of very ordinary, everyday people into stars of great drama. There was no television so they all had to make their own fun with their gurus and ouidja board and theatricals. Like all great leaders, Lucia is painted as being both monstrous and heroic, but the canvas she is painted on is miniscule. Women and gay men were so often portrayed in this period as depressed and thwarted or deviant. Benson was a very old fashioned writer, but in some ways he was radical. His open mindedness towards every brand of eccentricity and oddness is one of the things that makes the books so engaging. And they are, as I keep saying, very, very funny.

Vogue: Cover by Dali

I occasionally buy decades old issues of Vogue when I see them and have the cash. This 1944 issue, however, can't really be had for love or money (okay, maybe for love).

(image via kenodoxia.tumblr.com)

Gentlemen and Flappers

Don't we all sometimes feel like we have a flapper inside trying to get out? Even me, who is so broody and anti-social. That said, one sometimes forgets, that as radical as the changes for women were at the start of the last century, there were many changes for men, too. After the aestheticism of Oscar Wilde and after the stuffiness and formality of the Victorians were thrown over, men as well as women were done with being buttoned up and middle aged and embraced youth.

J.C. Leyendecker was likely the most successful commercial illustrator in the first decades of the 20th century (before that honor belonged to Norman Rockwell). Famous for his illustrations of the 'Arrow Collar Man' and for his Saturday Evening Post covers (He painted something like 300 covers for them). His most famous image today is from a 1922 Life Magazine (not that Life, the other one) cover, called The Flapper. But, flappers aside, Leyendecker likely more responsible for how we picture men in the early 20th century than anybody else. He used as his model his "live-in companion", Charles Beach, with whom he resided for many decades. Leyendecker never officially came out, so this is all really speculation but, I mean, really. It's just unfortunate he lived in a time when such subterfuge was deemed necessary.

Sadly, the decline of the collar industry hurt his career and his close identification with the decadence of the 20s didn't help either, after the crash in '29. He spent the remaining decades of his life in his estate in New Rochelle, living in near seclusion with Beach.

Some examples of his lovely and elegant work are below:

Arthur Rackham: Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

Arthur Rackham is one of the acknowledged geniuses of the Golden Age of illustration, and his pictures for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens have long been some of my favorites.

To my absolute delight (and hopefully yours), I learned today via the always wonderful BibliOdyssey that all fifty of his illustrations are now available online via the Harvard University Library.

lluminating Fashion: The Morgan Library

I often think about the semiotics of Fashion and Clothing (not exactly the same thing), so I'm champing at the bit to see Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands, an exhibit at The Morgan Library which opens today. In it, they purport to chart the evolution of fashion in (of course) France during the Medieval Era through illuminated manuscript illustrations.

So rarely do so many of my obsessions come together in one exhibition! Illuminated manuscripts are some of the earliest European illustrated books, mostly rendered in egg tempera, one of the hardiest mediums known to man. The surviving pictures are still as bright and fresh as they day they were painted.

For many hundreds of years, one was able to tell precisely where a person fell on the social scale just by glancing at them. Strict sumptuary laws prevented any but the entrenched nobility from wearing certain fabrics and colors and styles. It wasn't until the rise of the prosperous merchant class in the Renaissance that these laws began to be stripped away. Nearly all of what we know about what people wore in pre-modern times is from art as textiles rarely survive so long. Because of this, our understanding of undergarments is minimal. Fashions moved slowly in a time before travel was common and before Mr. Gutenberg invented his remarkable press. Great world events influenced dress remarkably - the Crusades and the opening of the East brought silks and velvets and brocade to Europe, and the shapes of clothing changed as well. The corset became de rigueur in the 14th century. So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing what the curators of this exhibition have put together.

For information about visiting The Morgan Library and Museum, go here. The exhibition runs from today through September 14th.

The Great and Wonderful L. Frank Baum

Yesterday, as reported elsewhere, the great and wonderful L.Frank Baum would have been 155 years old. 111 years ago, Mr. Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He devised it because he thought the world needed an American fairy tale, one for the modern age, for modern children, that would leave out both the horrors and moralizing of Grimm. As we are all aware, he succeeded marvelously. He had the great instincts of a true showman, and he pleased his audiences beyond measure. So much so, thirteen sequels followed.

It's always seemed kind of unfortunate to me that most people, if they have read any of his books, have only read the first Oz book, the one on which the movie is based, as I think it is one of the weakest. Compared to the amazing flights of imagination in (my favorite) Ozma of Oz, or in The Patchwork Girl of Oz for example, it seems a little bereft of whimsey. I've mentioned Ozma of Oz elsewhere in writing about modern steampunk, as Mr. Baum presents one of the very fist literary robots.

I don't know if there is another author who has ever been as attuned to what children want as Baum was. Something about his stories goes right to the center of childhood itself. I think it has so much to do with friendship and animals and the fact that nearly everything talks. If there's one dream shared by many, many children it's that one's toys and pets would talk back. In Baum's invented universe, they most often do. One of my favorite bits of retconning is in (I think) The Lost Princess of Oz, when all the animals ask Toto why he didn't begin talking like all the other animals from our world do upon entering the Fairy Land of Oz, and he says he just didn't feel like it.

Baum reportedly wanted to cease writing Oz books, as he had other stories to tell, so he kept on introducing elements such as the spell Glinda cast that would make Oz appear to outsiders as just a continuation of the Great Sandy Waste that surrounds it. All of this is documented in his author's notes at the beginning of each volume. Inevitably, he will end a book with Oz being cut off from us (and thus, Baum, The Royal Historian of Oz, will be unable to write any more installments). He also, inevitably, reports receiving a letter from a little girl in which she asks "What about wireless?", and his writing about Oz continues, as it did until his death in 1919.

His influence upon my life is incalculable. We had a full set of the Oz books when I was growing up and I read them all repeatedly. W.W. Denslow, who illustrated the first book, is considered one of the great illustrators of the Golden Age. But, John R. Neill, who illustrated the other thirteen books has always been more to my taste. I grew up trying to draw as much like him as I could, and his massive influence is still visible all over my work. I was a strange and lonely child, likely with an undiagnosed case of OCD, prone to list making of all sorts (I swear, I spent at least half my childhood alphabetizing). At one point, I went through all of Baum's Oz books and made a list of all the characters. I (of course) alphabetized them and then drew each one. I also remember drawing each of Princess Langwidere's thirty heads.

I haven't reread them all in years and years. I think it may be time to do so again. I will, of course, share my findings here.

Alfred Kubin: Symbolist Artist and Proto-Surrealist

Alfred Kubin, born in 1877, was a strange, reclusive and emotionally fragile artist and illustrator. When he was about 20, he attempted suicide on his mother's grave and suffered a series of breakdowns. It was around this time that he discovered the work of Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch and Max Klinger and was profoundly influenced by them. Previously apprenticed to a successful landscape photographer, he moved into working in mostly pen and ink and lithography and began traveling in German avant-gard circles.

His work is grotesque and nightmarish, and feels profoundly Freudian (lots of scary vaginas). One the war started he pretty much became a recluse, and remained one for the rest of his life, holing up in a 12th century castle in Austria. His work was declared "degenerate" and "decadent" by the Nazis (if one wishes to be strictly truthful, he was both. The question is really whether you have a problem with it or not), but they pretty much left him alone. Unsurprisingly, he illustrated work by Poe, E.T.A. Hoffman and Dostoyevsky.

He also wrote a couple of strange dystopian novels, all of which are sadly out of print in English (unless you have a Kindle!). It's all terribly evocative. I decided to feature him here because I found that once I started looking at his pictures, I simply could not get them out of my head. I haven't read his famous novel, The Other Side, but I've heard very good things. One wonders what went on in his mind as he worked alone in his castle. One looks at his work and shudders.

Au Revoir!

I'm usually not super interested in optical illusion illustrations - perhaps because we see the same ones again and again (It's a vase! It's a lady!), but this one was too good not to share. From a postcard c. 1905-1910

via firsttimeuser -> vintagegal

Castles and 18th Century Theatrical Design: Whee!

One day last week I had a few hours to kill between work and drawing at the Society of Illustrators, so I walked a bit in Central Park and wandered into The Met.

Whenever I visit this most glorious of New York City museums, I always start by seeing what they have up in the constantly rotating Drawing and Print Gallery on the 2nd floor. The current exhibit, which is pulled from the permanent collection, is pretty fantabulous. They've pulled out all the big guns with Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and William Blake well represented. I remember being twelve or thirteen and staring at the famous self-portrait Dürer drew when he was thirteen and being completely upset that I wasn't as good. Yes, for what it's worth, even when I was a child I compared myself with the Renaissance greats. One of my favorites is included, "The Sea Monster" (at left). I love the tortoise shell being used as a shield and the romantic castle of my dreams situated in the landscape.

Also on display, are a number of 18th and 19th century stage designs. Most are ink and watercolor. There are some glorious ones for a mid-19th century Magic Flute, and an 18th century design (at right) for a sadly unidentified production drawn by Johann Heinrich Ramberg that made me want to jump into my trusty (imaginary) time machine and create something in his glorious, repurposed space. There are more - beautiful Italian watercolors and chalk drawings and an interior of The Met Opera House from 1884 that put the currently used software to shame. Why is it that so many useful modern instruments also neglect to be beautiful?

The current exhibit is up through June 12.

I also made a quick sweep through the Alexander McQueen exhibit, and it even more wonderful than hoped. More on that later!

Ten Minutes

And she held this pose for ten freaking minutes. Anyone who has ever modeled knows that ten minutes can seem like a long, long time. Also, that isn't some comfy settee she's draped over, but a stool turned on its side with a wrap thrown over it. Art modeling is physically taxing work, and those who do it well deserve celebration and praise!

Nice Gams: the Art of Léo Fontan

For the past few months I've been neglecting my new found fascination with all the wonderful illustrators who worked for the early 20th century French periodical, La Vie Parisienne. So, let me introduce you to the lovely work of Léo Fontan. Among some other achievements, he is most well known for a delicious series of postcards that should delight both foot fetishists and everyone else. That is to say, they are illustrations of women's legs and feet.

He moved to Paris in 1909 after art school and I was thrilled to discover that his first paying gig was illustrating the cover of Arsène Lupin novels!

:::crickets:::

Okay, Clearly, I'm the only person who was thrilled to discover this. Everyone else just wants more pictures of pretty girls. Which there will be - but first this: Arsène Lupin is a glamorous, fictional, super-thief, created by Maurice Leblanc in 1905. He is kind of similar to the English Raffles (with whom I often confuse him), and he isn't enough read by classic mystery lovers in the English speaking world.


There is a contemporary French edition which still uses Fontan's illustrations!

Okay, back to the girls, as promised.

I don't know what Fontan's fascination was with women's stockinged legs (and I'm likely happier not knowing), but the results are charming. As mentioned above, he also worked for many popular periodicals, such as the rightly celebrated La Vie Parisienne.

During World War II he began specializing in portraits, which is what he mostly continued to do throughout his life. He continued to draw and paint until his death in 1965, even though he was plagued with failing eyesight.

R. Crumb Does Not Make Mistakes (With His Pen)

The second stop on our Saturday gallery hopping odyssey was at one of my usual haunts: The Society of Illustrators on East 63rd Street. It's one of those true New York treasures that not that many people seem to know about. Their gallery shows are always well curated and interesting - and free of charge. Each Tuesday and Thursday the have their Jazz & Sketch nights. They have live music, a bar and models. I've had the pleasure of drawing such luminaries as World Famous *Bob*, Amber Ray and Miss Saturn. And there's all kinds of thrilling art everywhere.

Their current exhibit, up only through April 30 is R. Crumb: Lines Drawn on Paper. Curated by the editor of the Blab! anthology, Monte Beauchamp, it focuses on work from the collection of Eric Sack, most of it from the late '60s through the early '70s. R. Crumb is a monster and a genius, and from the interviews I've seen him give, he seems like an all right person. He's funny and profane and wears his problems and obsessions on his sleeve. Like Dennis Potter, one of my great influences, it's hard to get all that upset at him for his failings, for he is so achingly aware of them.

There really is something to offend and delight most people, but after looking at the 90 or so works contained in the exhibition, something began to dawn on me. I've seen a lot of original comic drawings, and I work in pen and ink fairly often. I've written about it here, about how it is an unforgiving medium. Usually, when you see the original pages from comics, you see corrections. White out, bits pasted in, etc. Particularly as few (if any) of these artists ever anticipated the originals being seen. In the elaborate and beautifully drawn works in this exhibit I saw very, very few corrections.

Robert Crumb is an unerring draftsman and an artist of true brilliance. I mean, he can draw. He can really, really draw. His output is truly fearsome and all of it is all kind of perfect. You can't see one of his drawings without knowing who created it. Only someone trained in a Renaissance workshop or a single-minded obsessive could get this good.

So, yeah. Go. It's also fun to be in a gallery full of giggling people. My only criticism is that It would have been lovely to see more of his recent work: the Heroes of the Blues series or something from his Old Testament adaptation. These are just quibbles, though.

Find information and hours here. And it's FREE.

Renee French: The Ticking

Putting The Ticking by gifted illustrator Renée French in my wordless graphic novel series is sort of disingenuous, mostly because there are words. But not a great many of them, and they appear occasionally as captions, rather than in speech balloons as in traditional comics. Like Shaun Tan's The Arrival, The Ticking is mostly what I refer to as a grown-up picture book.

It was originally released in 2006, was out of print for a while, and now is happily back on shelves. It's not a book I see mentioned particularly often, which I think is a shame. Because it's lovely.

It tells the melancholy and funny story of Edison Steelhead, a deformed child (he has no ears and his eyes are on the sides of his head) whose mother dies in childbirth and whose father, who suffers from the same so-called affliction, takes him to live in a remote lighthouse. There he grows up with an interest in etymology and drawing. He makes masks for himself (and his stuffed animal) and wears them. He discovers his father's childhood was much like his, but he won't talk about it with Edison. His father takes him to a plastic surgeon, but Edison doesn't want the surgery, so it doesn't go forward. It's all so odd and heartbreaking. At one point Edison is introduced to his new "sister", Patrice, a baby chimp. Their relationship turns out to be remarkably sibling-like as Edison begrudgingly takes her out on bug gathering expeditions and then gets annoyed in typical big brother fashion when she eats his specimens.

It's a strange little book full of loneliness and silences. French draws simple little square panels with graphite on paper and they are lovely little pieces of art. So seemingly simple they almost feel like they belong in the realm of the folk. For some reason, I have a dream that The Ticking will one day be an animated film. Maybe Wes Anderson could tell this story as he seems to specialize in fathers and sons. And its odd melancholy whimsical tone would suit him, I think.

In the mean time, follow French's blog and read her other comics. She posts lots of drawings and photographs and works in progress.

Poor Evelyn Nesbit: The Crime of the Century, Part 3

There has been a slightly longer gap between the posting of this latest chapter of the lovely Miss Nesbit's odyssey than originally intended, so if you have missed the earlier installments click here for part one and part two.

Part 3.

Oh, Evelyn. Really, my heart breaks for her.

Just short of her eighteenth birthday, back home in New York City, the most beautiful girl in all the world. It should have been so easy. Men lined up round the block, more stage and modeling jobs than she knew what to do with, her brother in a fine school and her mother given an income and happy, and then finally married off to a kind and loving millionaire. Some chorus girls ended up those happy circumstances, but it's a fickle world and plenty ended their days in SROs in Times Square or worse.

Back in New York, an emotionally battered and physically exhausted Evelyn landed a chorus job (against doctor's recommendations) and did her best to avoid both White and Thaw, who returned to New York shortly after she did. Her mother was busy being romanced by an old family friend, a stockbroker who she would subsequently marry. She pretty much completely broke off all contact with Evelyn, as she had clearly found a new and far less troublesome meal ticket. So, Evelyn was on her own. Friends began telling her immediately upon her return that Harry Thaw is a crazy person and a morphine addict and super dangerous. To which, she responded, rightfully so, "Why are you telling me now? I mean, this could have been super useful information for me to have before I was stuck alone in Europe with him, right? " (I'm paraphrasing).

After ignoring his messages to her, White (pictured below) finally got her attention by saying he needed to talk to her about her mother. She immediately responded, asking if anything was wrong. He replied that it was a matter of life and death and he didn't want to discuss it over the telephone. So, she (of course) agreed to see him. He showed up and told her her mother was fine and proceded to berate her about Thaw. What both White and Thaw proceeded to do in the coming months almost broke Evelyn completely. They both coerced her into meetings and tried to make her sign affidavits and statements against the other. They both harangued her about the wickedness of the other. They both had evidence of the other's criminal behavior with minors (Evelyn and others). These two men were each obsessed with destroying the other and Evelyn (not yet 18) was caught in the middle, with no responsible adult to turn to or to help her out in any way. She moved from hotel to hotel but was always found by Thaw's private detectives. Understandably, she was sick and deeply depressed. In this state she agreed to start seeing Thaw again, but only in crowded public places.

Discouraged, Thaw returned to Pittsburgh and received his mother's (extremely reluctant) approval to pursue Evelyn's hand in marriage. His lawyers advised him to stay away from her until her eighteenth birthday. Somewhat surprisingly, he did so. White planned a party for the occasion, but on the day, Evelyn, thoroughly sick of him, refused to go and went out to dinner with a jubilant Thaw instead. White went berserk, waving a pistol around, threatening to kill "that son-of-a-bitch". Evelyn had already given Thaw's letters to her to White's attorney - she now gave White's letters to Thaw's hoping that if they each had equal ammunition they would cease all hostilities. She found it increasingly difficult to find work in New York as White was apparently using his considerable influence to blackball her.

For the next couple of years, Harry was on his best behavior and pursued Evelyn relentlessly. Thaw even sent her to Europe to study sculpture and art (with a proper chaperone, this time). He apologized repeatedly for his past acts, saying he had been overcome with fury at what had transpired between her and White. He said he forgave her. It's so awful to think of the series of events and the state of mind that enabled Evelyn to marry Thaw. She had been supporting her family since she was a child. Her mother never looked after her properly, she willfully put on blinders and used her own daughter to survive and abandoning her when the complications of Evelyn's life became inconvenient. Evelyn has been painted as being a gold-digger and a whore. But, it took Harry Thaw, with his 40 million dollars, almost four years to get Evelyn to marry him. When she was twenty, she finally did. The bride wore black.

Her married life was a gothic misery. She lived with Harry in her mother-in-law's mansion, constrained by their small-minded small town Presbyterian values. They looked down on Evelyn, feeling that Harry had thrown himself away on this worthless show person, while Evelyn found them mindless and anti-intellectual, with no interest in books, music or art. Just money and their narrow view of Christianity. In other words, she was bored senseless, and in one of her memoirs wrote that she prayed that she might have "the patience to bear the burden of her spiritual friends". One day a minister friend of Mrs. Thaw's was annoyed by one of Evelyn's little dogs, so he kicked him. Evelyn swore at him like a fishwife. Harry was increasingly obsessed with White, grilling Evelyn about him obsessively for hours. Years before, White has paid to have Evelyn's teeth fixed. Harry took her to a dentist and had all the work (fillings, everything) taken out - and redone identically. He also had a photographer come to the house and had him take pictures of Evelyn in which she posed as Bluebeard's dead wives (Seriously. You can't make this stuff up).

In June 1906, Mr. and Mrs. Thaw traveled to New York en route to London. They planned to take in dinner and a show at Madison Square Garden (an odd choice, considering Thaw's obsessive hatred of Stanford White). They had dinner at Café Martin, where they saw White across the room, who was there with his son. Evelyn began to panic, worried about what Thaw would do. They proceeded to Madison Square Garden to see a new show called "Mamzelle Champagne". The show wasn't very good and Evelyn said she would have been bored had sh not been so apprehensive about what would happen when White inevitably arrived, and sat at the table that was permanently reserved for him. The Architect arrived at the rooftop theater, a teenaged chorus girl on his arm. As the song "I Could Love a Million Girls" was sung, Harry got up from the table. A moment later, a gunshot was heard and pandemonium broke out as people realized Stanford White was dead, shot through the skull, and Harry Thaw was the killer.

Part 4: The Trial will appear shortly.