artofemmanation - Tumblr blog

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Rita Hayworth on the cover of Time Magazine (November 10th, 1941)

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Monica Vitti in L'AVVENTURA 1960 | Michelangelo Antonioni

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Paolo Sebastian | Allora Domenica

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Aamito Lagum by Richard Phibbs for Harper’s Bazaar UK Magazine April 2019.

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Small correction: the photo of Norma Shearer is actually by George Hurrell, a young (and as yet) unknown photographer that Shearer had hired to take risqué pictures of her in order to break with her good girl ingénue image and convince her husband, producer Irving Thalberg, that she was right for the role in The Divorcee.

Ex-Wife, published anonymously in 1929, was a succès de scandale. The very title aggressively challenged American mores and morals; divorce was almost unheard of in the middle classes at the time. And Manhattan high life in the 1920s (the novel takes place between 1923 and 1927) gave the prurient everything they could wish: not just divorce, but promiscuity, abortion, smoking, and drinking.

And I had, for an instant, that feeling that New York was an altogether beautiful place to live, no matter what happened to me living in it—a comforting feeling that had come to me sometimes, of late, when I stopped looking to people for comfort.

Narrated by Patricia, it tells of her life after her husband walked out on her. She goes from grief and despair to acceptance to indifference while becoming increasingly successful as a advertising copywriter in fashion, and bedding numerous men. Her friend Lucia, a slightly older and more experienced divorcee, supports and mentors her.

Surprisingly, the book is vehemently anti-feminist. The 1920s were a time when women could vote and were free of Victorian behavioral constraints, but systemic sexism ran deep and went largely unnoticed—at least by Patricia and Lucia.

The book was filmed in 1930 as The Divorcée, starring Norma Shearer, who won her only Oscar for it.

Norma Shearer in The Divorcee

In the forward to the 2023 edition (whose cover is shown above), Alissa Bennett writes, "It's easy to get caught in the trap of Ex-Wife's nostalgic charm; there are phonographs and jazz clubs and dresses from Vionnet; there are verboten cocktails and towering new buildings that reach toward a New York skyline so young that it still reveals its stars."

The author's son, Marc Parrott, agreed. "The New York described here," he wrote in an afterward to the 1989 edition, reprinted in the current edition, "and this was true, I think, for 20 years or more—was much smaller, much more intimate, much safer and much cheaper than the city from the '50s on to the present. It was also cleaner. My mother called it 'shining.'"

This is how Patricia and Lucia react to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue:

"The tune matches New York," Lucia said. "The New York we know. It has gaiety and colour and irrelevancy and futility and glamour as beautifully blended as the ingredients in crêpes suzette." I said, "It makes me think of skyscrapers and Harlem and liners sailing and newsboys calling extras." "It makes me think I’m twenty years old and on the way to owning the city," Lucia said. "Start it over again, will you?"

Second & fourth photos: NYC Past Third photo: eBay

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1928 Loretta Young in a metallic lace evening coat, (or an incredibly fancy negligee!) photography by Ruth Harriet Louise. From Art Deco, Avant Garde and Modernism, FB.

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Madonna photographed by Richard Corman in Alphabet City, 1983.

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Magneto by Ramon Perez and David Curiel.

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Thank God for @shierak-inavva, fulfilling all our RogueXMagneto fanart needs!

something self-indulgent 💛

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April 1988. 'Ahh...the power of the flower.'

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Greta Garbo as Mata Hari (1931)

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Naomi Campbell by Arthur Penn for Vogue US 1992

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Malaika Firth by Jean-Baptiste Mondino for Elle France Magazine - March 2015

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1926 Painting of Marie-Jose Reix's grandmother by Alberto Vargas. From Marie-Jose Reix, FB.

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1824 Eduard Friedrich Leybold - Potrait of a young elegant lady, three-quarter length, in a red dress with an embroidered shawl, standing in a landscape

(Private collection)

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ᶜˡᵃʳᵃ ᴮᵒʷ ᶦⁿ ᵀʰᵉ ᵂᶦˡᵈ ᴾᵃʳᵗʸ (¹⁹²⁹)

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In what void can I scream about the last look they shared? Their locked eyes? His window to hope when everything else was lost? In what void can I release everything that shot does to me?

There are a million words in his eyes. A million things he wants to say, could have said, a million things he wants to take back - rushing at her at the same time.

And one simple plea in hers. One 'don't go'; 'not like this'. ‘I don’t understand and I don’t want it!’

How am I supposed to function? What beautiful writing; what amazing animations.