Word: salon
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...Only Cubist Town. The first two sections, dealing with the period 1900-50, are at least competent. The history they describe is more settled and hence readily encapsulated. The "period rooms"-unconvincing reconstructions of the Gertrude Stein salon at 27, Rue de Fleurus, the "291" gallery in which Alfred Stieglitz introduced Matisse, Brancusi and modern photography to a tiny coterie in New York, and Piet Mondrian's Manhattan studio, among other places-are tackily made and none too accurate. But the paintings fare better...
...cleverly maneuvers Elesina into the "salon," where poets recite new odes over cocktails and scholars extemporise treatises on Shakespeare at the dinner table. Irving Stein, who heads this circle, is a Jewish multimillionaire banker who heads this circle. His ideal in life is to create a "temple of beauty" at Broadlawns, his weekend estate. Clara, his unloved but valuable because Protestant wife, is "the centerpiece of his collection, the beautiful woman to whom the beautiful porcelains, the ivories and jades, the medieval tapestries and stained glass paid silent tribute," the "priestess for the shrine" in the suburbs...
...well-to-do American sculptress separated from her husband. She talked long hours in Peking with the priest and eventually became embittered at his total commitment to celibacy. Teilhard could willingly suffer the privations of expeditions into the northwestern wastes of China. But he seemed more at home attending salon gatherings with personalities ranging from Biologist Julian Huxley to Actress Linda Darnell...
Fellini has kept the color-indeed, heightened it-but drained away the life. He seems to have fastened on the legend only to repudiate it. Seen through his hostile lens, Casanova is a chilly fop whose salon manner is alternately tongue-tied and bombastic. How such a creature manages to charm so many women into the bedroom remains a mystery. Nor, once he gets them there, is it easy to see how they can derive much fun from the groaning calisthenics he puts them through. This is a film that earns its R rating not by making sin enticing...
...years Charles sporadically lived with Jeanne Duval, his "Black Venus," an actress of little distinction but a first-class nag-the last person to appreciate the extraordinary poems she inspired, like The Promises of a Face. More briefly a "White Venus" entered his life: Apollonie Sabatier, a famous salon keeper of the day. She elicited a series of poetic love letters-including To She Who Is Too Gay and The Spiritual Dawn. When, after five years, Apollonie wrote him a valentine, Baudelaire cut and ran. He could put a woman on a pedestal or in the gutter, but there...