May 9, 2005

• PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ME OUT

  Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)

  First off, the day being not quite over here in rainy Oregon, I’m wishing all xangan mothers a retrospectively lovely day and hope you soaked up some love. Here’s a mother I’d never heard of before who definitely got her share.

  Born in 1865 in France to an unmarried laundress, Suzanne Valadon was a strikingly beautiful girl who became a circus acrobat at 15 and after a fall ended that career took up artist modeling in Paris. She modeled for Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir and had affairs with them all. (Guess which painter did the paintings I posted. The last one is hers.) She also observed their techniques and became an artist herself. She was good enough as a painter to have acclaim and financial success but was overshadowed by her famous son, also born out of wedlock to a father whose identity she never revealed. Her son’s name was Maurice Utrillo. Valadon painted still lifes, floral art, and landscapes but was best known for female nudes. She also did portraits, including one of Erik Satie with whom she had an affair when she was 28. It was the only intimate relationship of his life. The following year she became the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. A perfectionist, she worked for thirteen years on her oil paintings before ever showing them. A free spirit, she was known to wear a corsage of carrots, keep a goat in her studio to “eat up her bad drawings,” and to feed caviar to her “good Catholic” cats on Fridays. At 31 she married a stockbroker but at 44 she left him for the 23-year-old painter, André Utter. She married Utter in 1914 when she was 49, but this marriage too did not last. She died on April 7, 1938 at 73. Amongst those who attended her funeral were her artist friends Andre Derain, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque. Today, some of her works can be seen at the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Now there’s a woman who must have said (like Molly Bloom) “yes I said yes I will Yes.” Lordy lordy. (Read another blogger’s take on her here.)
  

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  Deep Thought: “If you ever go temporarily insane, don’t shoot somebody, like a lot of people do. Instead, try to get some weeding done, because you’d really be surprised.”
  Today I am grateful for: Being lost and found
  Guess the Movie: “This is where they fought the battle of Gettysburg. Fifty thousand men died right here on this field, fighting the same fight that we are still fighting among ourselves today. This green field right here, painted red, bubblin’ with the blood of young boys. Smoke and hot lead pouring right through their bodies. Listen to their souls, men. I killed my brother with malice in my heart. Hatred destroyed my family. You listen, and you take a lesson from the dead. If we don’t come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were. I don’t care if you like each other of not, but you will respect each other. And maybe… I don’t know, maybe we’ll learn to play this game like men.” Answer: Remember the Titans, 2000. Winner: fashionaddict786.
  This Mother’s Day My Mom Wants to Know Where Did my Tax Money Go
  by Marc Pilisuk
  My mother is 97. She is very kind and also very wise. I sent her a necklace for Mother’s day, but she is going to tell me that she doesn’t really need it. Instead she wants to remind me that Mother’s day was started by women who did not want their kids to go to war. She wants to know why the government is trying to turn the very social security system that keeps her going into something of a gamble for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She suspects that it is because the really big benefits of this scheme will go to Wall Street bankers who are already pretty rich. Now that I managed to file my taxes, I have time for a few questions about what the government is doing with my money. I am seventy-one years old and still working so I can help my mom and also pay for care for my disabled wife to live at home. Naturally, I like to see my government making choices that benefit people with real needs. So I wrote to President Bush and asked him whether any of the programs he is supporting end up in larger returns for people like me, or do they all end up with returns that benefit people who are more like him. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day: 10:20 pm
  + = All in all, it was an okay Mother’s Day.
  - = Mice in the kitchen and rain in my brain and I can’t believe I’m up this late.

  • 1:10 am
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