Le Pavillion Bleu ~

Paris 1900: City of Entertainment  through September 8, 2019 

Paris hosted the International Exposition of 1900, a chance for the countries of the world to show off what they could do in the arts, sciences, and technology and industry, and a chance for France especially to show off its capital. Fifty-one million people came to visit, and this exhibit hope to give its visitors a chance to know what that was like. Offering up more 200 items--many of them borrowed from French museums--including paintings, decorative arts, textiles, posters, photographs, jewelry, sculpture, and film, to create an immersive experience. And for those of us especially interested in fashion there is a special section la Parisienne—the chic woman of Paris. This was the era of Art Nouveau as well with all its swooping lines and curves. You see here at top an “Assyrian” Comb, made of horn, gold, enamel and sapphires, and then below, a poster for one section of the Exposition, the Palace of Optics, pretty fancy for what was a technical building.

My Saint Patroness, 1903

From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts at the Paris Municipality Petit Palais (Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris)

Author: Louis Welden Hawkins (1849-1910)

"Have One On Me" comparison:

-Focus on Sarah Bernardt-

As Joanna said in an interview, a model in a some Parisian art studio around 1920 in Paris (France) is one of the inspirations for the HOOM cover photo. Sarah Brenardt as we alrady seen, was having an interior appartement that looks quite the same than HOOM cover. Of cours I don't made that previous post by chance, as a longtime admirer of the art of Alphonse Mucha, I alredy knew those two were linked. Mucha becomes an overnight sensation after making an art poster of Sarah Bernardt. There was a lot of creativity in the air on the turnnig of 1900, and the czech artist, with a niew way of making print images, kind of invented the "Art Nouveau". This art and decoration mouvement, can't be credited to a single man. But many Art History books mensions this Sarah Bernardt depiction as a big step in the forming of that eurpean (and than worldwild) art mouvement. The theater actress was alredy famous, she became friend with him, and he made many portraits of her as well as theater posters for the plays in wich she was staring. Preparing this post, I was planing to show all the known images that the painter made of her. Than I noticed quite a magical detail… In three specifics prints of her, there is the exacts same stars that are painted in the background of HOOM!

So here we are, with the stars of Sarah Bernardt, side by side, with the stars of Joanna Newsom.