Commonplacing June

cat lady, heiress/revolutionary, donna summer for your wintry morning

1. Blue Cat - Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951)

   

2. Aw.

3. https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/2162/

   

4. RIP Marjane Satrapi

5. We have then, a basic social coin. With awe on one side and shame on the other. The audience senses secret mysteries and powers behin the performance and the performer senses that his chief secrets are petty ones. As countless folktales and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the mystery is that there really is no mystery; the real problem is to prevent the audience from learning this too. - Erving Goffman

6. Who am I? What willI I be? Why am I here? Where am I going?

- Stanivslavski.

7. Vale David Hockney. A great memory of taking to W to see his exhibition Current at the NGV in 2016 - all the colour, his gorgeous grand-scale landscapes. Pure pop.

8. Weird not-quite-successful Sissy Spacek movie based on real-life heiress and Weather Underground member Diana Oughton “one of four strong‐willed daughters of James Oughton Jr., one of the richest men in town.” Filmed like a docu-drama and features the Fonz! ehhh!

9. The art & life of Bill Traylor

https://www.studiomuseum.org/artists/bill-traylor

10. Foxes is playing at ACMI this weekend. What a film!

I wrote about it in my PhD - here’s a bit (nb: contains spoilers and the word ‘panties’:)

In the film Foxes, Jeanie’s bedroom is a haven, for her and her friends. The only problem is the presence of her Mom, nagging her to clean up all the time, resenting them because they’re all young and beautiful. I was obsessed with the novelisation of Foxes which itemised the visual ephemera. The first ten pages are basically a list of props: Jeanie in the window seat in “panties and a yellow t-shirt”, writing in a spiral notebook; Madge in “blue slippers and a white terry-cloth bathrobe”, plonking down on a yellow chenille bedspread, mimicking the pose of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers poster; Deirdre in red satin boxer shorts, “the word ROCKY, stitched in blue letters on the rear”; cushions; a chair with speakers nailed at ear-level, a fake Tiffany lamp, “hundreds of rock posters, magazine photographs, album covers, feathers, art nouveau brass jewellery, macrame hangings, ticket stubs and bumper stickers plastered over all the available wall space.”

In the story Jeanie dreams of a place of her own, where all her friends can just be themselves, be safe, amid the tumult and haze of late 1970s Los Angeles. In the third act, it seems they might have found this when they “housesit” the groovy Hollywood Hills pad of Madge’s secret older boyfriend. But word gets out, a party happens, the house is destroyed, the volatile Annie goes on the run and is killed. In the final scenes Jeanie is at the graveyard. Childhood is over. The film ends with Jeanie going away to college. She won’t take anything with her.