Dear Diary:
At the Museum
What shall I say about David Garrard Lowe’s Henry James lecture at the Museum this morning? I’ll say that it was entertaining. The audience — mostly ladies of a certain age, not that I’m in any position to talk — responded with attentive laughter to Mr Lowe’s many little jokes, and when he encapsulated Turgenev’s affecting story about the serf who has to drown his little pooch, Grace Rainey Rogers was carpeted in a collective sigh of heartfelt pity. I did learn that James’s Paris address was in the Rue Cambon (right above Chanel!). Did Mr Lowe really say that The Ambassadors was worked in that flat on the deuxième étage? I’m even keener, now, to hear what he has to say about Edith Wharton next Wednesday.
After a quick lunch in the cafeteria, I looked around for the Pictures Generation show, but it found me first. The whole interest of this show for me is the chance to see actual Cindy Sherman prints, but I have bought the catalogue and was actually reading it this afternoon, one of the reasons for my being totally behind schedule, so I hope to be able to take other interests in The Cutting Edge Melody of 1977. Eventually.
Pictures Generation shares the exhibition space that I call “the big Tisch” with The Model as Muse, and it’s a neat juxtaposition. Pictures is all about young people being rebarbative. Model as Muse is all about young people being alluring and desirable. Young women, I should say. I liked the first part best, the part in which the young women — Dovima, Dorian Leigh, and Lisa Fonssagrives — didn’t look young at all. They didn’t look old, certainly. But they radiated a maturity that attested to their having all the right equipment, fully loaded. The minute Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy came on the scene, all I could think of was neoteny. I can’t imagine Dorian Leigh in high school, but I’ve never pictured Cindy Crawford anywhere else.
For dinner, I printed out a menu from the neat new site run by Kathleen’s cousin’s husband, Kurt Holm. I’ll be writing about NoTakeOut next week, in the Daily Office. For now, I’ll just say that Kurt’s lentil and smoked turkey salad, with a side of asparagus, was not only one of the easiest dishes that I have ever prepared but also delicious, all the moreso for being quite unlike the Francophile fare that one usually gets in this joint. Kathleen ate every bite, despite protests that there was too much on her plate.
I’d tell you what we’re doing tomorrow night, but you know how it is: plans announced at The Daily Blague never pan out. What I can tell you is that Ms NOLA had extremely good news today. You might say that she crossed the Equator.