The dancing ladies man

This book is the second the author has written on Chiparus, the first was published in 1993 (reprinted in 1999) with 216 pages and commands remarkably high prices second-hand. Fortunately this new book has a lot more pages and visual content and I expect it will become the standard work on this remarkable artist.

Chipartus (1886-1947) though born in Romania is really part of that wonderful French, or should that be Parisian, Art Decorative movement inspired by the cities 1925 International Exposition. The book reproduces dozens of his statues based on themes from the Ballet Russes, Paris music halls, Egypt plus the 1922 opening of Tutankhamun's tomb and the art of the Orient. The dancing female figure was a Chiparus staple and classed as chryselephantine sculpture made from ivory and bronze, used because it could fill the smallest detail in a mould. An initial plasteline model was made (several of these are shown in the book with a page reference to the finished statue) and given to a foundry to cast in bronze, an ivory-carving workshop created the faces and other parts of the body not covered by clothing then all the pieces were screwed together for the final statue.

I found the reference to the foundry ivory-carving workshop interesting, it implies that a statue cast several times would have identical bronze clothing but the faces could be very slightly different because they were individual carved from ivory. On page 171 there is a photo of ‘Les girls’, five dancers with just their faces and hands in ivory, each face within the five is similar but not identical, other castings of the statue would have slight changes to each face, too.

Chiparus , not content with creating stunning figurines, wanted them to stand on an appropriate base, usually made from onyx or marble and carved into various abstract shapes. Looking through the book there doesn’t seem to be any repeated bases and the text mentions that the same statue available on a different base. Also a statue could be in two different sizes.

Throughout his life Chiparus was known as a sculpture but the book’s back pages reveal some other aspects of his creativity with examples of oil paintings, ceramics and terracotta work. I found these all rather bland when compared to his exquisite dancing ladies.

The book is a large, handsome (and heavy) production with three hundred colour illustrations beautifully printed on a matt art paper. No doubt soon to become the standard work on Mister Art Deco.

The ladies dance on and on...

Alberto Shayo makes an interesting point in the book's preface, there is no comprehensive catalogue of these statuettes because they were considered decorative pieces rather than art and though he doesn't mention it the fact that they were made in sizeable editions suggests commercialism rather than creativity. However, with the passing of the decades there is a growing interest in these delightful figures and the book will be useful to collectors as an excellent overview of the leading artists.

Twenty-four pages in the front of the book has an illustrated essay: The allure of Art Deco. This gives a brief description of the artistic influences that inspired craftsmen, mainly French, from 1914 to 1939 to make the female dancer into a distinctive style. The Plates section (211 pages) alphabetically lists the artists with a short biography and a selection of their work, oddly these pages don't necessarily reflect their importance. Chiparus only gets two photos despite being the leading artist in this field though he has twenty-four in the sepia printed catalogue section of the book (and the author has written the definitive book about Chiparus, recently published by the ACC) Preiss only gets two but Le Faguays gets eleven, Charol fourteen and Goddard twelve. I found the Plates section rather impressive because of the excellent colour photos of the statues. The book's back pages, apart from an in-depth Index has fifty-three pages reproducing Les Neveux de Jules Lehmann (LNJL) twenties and thirties catalogue pages. This Paris foundry and dealer made and displayed the leading artists until 1939.

Alberto Shayo has edited a fascinating book about one aspect of Art Deco style.

Floating style

I used the souvenir launch book of the Queen Mary to show more of the ship.  You can see the complete book here:

                   http://westread.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/queen-mary-souvenir-launch-book-1934.html

What a way to go! Though jets ultimately replaced these floating luxury hotels across the Atlantic the idea still lingers on in the cruise line industry. This lovely book covers a relatively short period of fifty years with a very detailed look at several magnificent liners. I think it's worth pointing out that the author's concentrate on maritime architecture and interiors rather than the engineering.

Up until the sinking of the Titanic liners had an enviable safety record and it was the only way to cross the Atlantic anyway. As well as transporting thousands of immigrants to the new world the steamship companies saw a market to exploit with luxury travel. The authors credit German architect Johannes Poppe as the first maritime designer. He created the Lahn, a pocket-size ship in the 1880s. From then on it was a race to launch ever bigger vessels and allow more and more space for the wealthy to enjoy themselves.

The Titanic and World War 1 stopped floating luxury travel until the twenties and then the prized customers were wealthy Americans, sold on the Grand Tour of Europe. Cunard, Canadian Pacific, French Line and Italian Line all competed strongly for up-market passengers. CP's Empress of Britain (at 42,000 tons it was almost as big as the Titanic) was as stylish as any previous liner and advertised the journey as '5 DAYS TO EUROPE' with a crew passenger ratio only matched by the later French Line's Normandie.

I thought the last chapter Climax and Conclusion: The grandest way to cross comparing the Queen Mary with the Normandie quite fascinating. The QM, probably rightly, comes off as a second best with a quote, at the time, from Architect and Business News: 'The general effect is one of mild but expensive vulgarity'. The Normandie (like the QM, floated on massive government loans) now seems to be regarded as the ultimate quality liner. How could any other liner match the sumptuousness of her windowless dining salon (the largest seagoing space to be air-conditioned up to 1935) lit like daylight with concealed and diffused lighting. There are thirty-two pages devoted to this extraordinary ship. Surely a tragedy that she was destroyed by fire in 1942 while being converted into a troopship.

I thought this was one of those books that succeeds because of excellent writing and brilliant visual coverage. The writing has a pleasant slight breezy style very well suited to the subject of over-the-top opulence. For example: To enter the main dining room of the Mary was to be engulfed in an acre of napery glimpsed beyond a Watts Tower of fruit, glazed and fresh, and great cornucopias of straw spilling out other delicacies like honey from a horn. The choice of color illustration can't be faulted. The landscape format is well suited to several brochure paintings of massive public rooms that these liners featured. Cabins, on deck and below deck activities of the wealthy mingling and plenty of profile illustrations of the ships gliding through calm seas probably helped sell plenty of tickets.

This large book can now be picked up quite cheaply.

Charles Rodrigues was an equal opportunity cartoonist, he offended everyone

If you remember his cartoons in the National Lampoon, from 1970 to 1993, you can relive the laughs with this chunky square book containing several hundred drawings. There is no doubt that he took advantage of every human foible, mental and physical so if you are incredibly sensitive, easily shocked or a paid up member of the religious Right I think you should avoid this book.

Not only great humor but wonderful, scratchy drawings done with pen and ink, I think his style added to the outrageousness of the jokes, his hand-lettering was pretty cool, too. Charles Rodrigues (1926-2004) was unique, the man who could find humor in any human tragedy.