My Marie Antoinette

Inside the Domain of Marie Antoinette.

It is difficult to say exactly what Marie Antoinette means to me, but her story is profound: a woman whose fate was the unimaginable fall from utter opulence to unspeakable degradation; a woman who was given very little power, yet was blamed for the ills of an entire nation; a woman whose story is still mulled over, misunderstood, mythologized, and debated hundreds of years later. Add to that Antoinette's connection to the arts--her appreciation for and patronage of everything from theater to painting--and I'm fascinated, breathless. So, when I visited Paris for a couple days a few weeks ago, I couldn't leave without strolling the halls of Versailles and paying tribute at Saint Denis, the queen's final resting place. If you have any interest in Marie Antoinette, these are the places you should seek out in and around La Ville-Lumière:

1) Versailles
If you can choose only one of the places on this list, go to Versailles. Just outside Paris, the huge, lavish former home of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI offers an intimate look (if your imagination can overcome the crush of tourists) at how French royalty lived in the 1700s. The best things to see are the king and queen's separate, private chambers, the chapel (where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were married), the jaw-dropping Hall of Mirrors (restored in 2007), the huge gardens outside the chateau (in the summer, stay to see the huge fountains erupt to classical music) and the Domain of Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette's private country residence, a bit of a walk, or a short ride on a rented bicycle, from the chateau). Get a nice look at the some of these sights here.

2) Saint Denis
In a suburb a short Metro ride from the Paris center, Saint Denis is one of the city's best-kept secrets. Mercifully untouristy, the beautiful Basilica, dating back to 475, contains exquisite monuments to French royalty, and the body of almost every French king. Most important to see if you are a Marie Antoinette devotee is the Memorial to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette (upstairs), with spectacular sculptures by Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot, and both of their graves in the crypt (downstairs). The couple's remains, originally buried unceremoniously in the churchyard of the Madeleine, were not moved to Saint Denis until 1815.

3) Carnavalet
This eye-candy museum with a fabulous garden focuses on Paris history and includes substantial documentation of the French Revolution, as well as some of Marie Antoinette's furniture and other possessions.

4) Tuileries
The palace where Marie Antoinette was forced to live after the royal family was taken from Versailles during the French Revolution no longer stands (it was looted both the French Revolution and burned during the Paris Commune), but the 63-acre Tuileries Garden (by the Louvre) where she used to roam looks much like it did when it opened in the 1660s, despite recent renovations. It was designed by Andre Le Notre, who also created the gardens at Versailles.

5) Conciergerie
This is the saddest stop: the prison (now a museum) where Marie Antoinette was kept during the last days of her life. Today, it's a little kitschy--with hordes of tourists and Marie Antoinette's cell filled with mannequins and sparse furniture meant to reconstruct the scene--but the spot, haunted by its bloody history if not the ghosts of dead inmates, is still worth seeing.

Want to know more about Marie Antoinette? Read the book Marie Antoinette: The Journey or watch the PBS documentary Marie Antoinette. Also great: Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, and The Private Realm of Marie Antoinette.

Knit Me Again

Knitted street art in NYC. Photo courtesy of Divine Harvester, via Flickr.

I hadn’t heard much lately about Knitta Please, so I was super stoked to hear the crew of ‘guerilla’ knitters that has been tagging up city light poles, signs, benches, and whatever else they can get their stitches on since 2005, is still at it. The group ‘of ladies of all ages, nationalities, and… gender,’ headed up by Magda Sayeg, who lives in Texas, will be covering 69 parking meter poles on Brooklyn’s Montague Street with bright, hand-knit sleeves on May 13, as part of a public art project commissioned by the Montague Street Business Improvement District. Knitta Please did a similar installation in Paris in 2007.

Gothamist has a great interview with Sayeg, who talks about this project, plus some of her favorite past creations–including throwing a knitted pair of sneakers over a power line, tagging the pedestal of an organ grinder in Mexico City, and covering an entire New York phone booth in stitches. ‘I like to stay connected to street culture, and what it inspires,’ she says.

Rock on, Magda.

If you’re a knitter in New York and would like to get involved with the Montague project, Knitta Please wants you! Call the Montague Street Business Improvement District at 718-522-3649 or visit the Web site. You can also get more info about the installation or Knitta Please and see more images of their work on their Web site or Facebook group.

(Note: I originally wrote this post for bust.com, where it appeared first. Yep, still multitasking...)

The Girl Project: Five Questions for Kate Engelbrecht

Photo courtesy The Girl Project.

New York-based photographer Kate Engelbrecht is on a mission to empower teenage girls through pictures. She started The Girl Project, a national collection of photos taken by American girls ages 13 to 17, in 2008. Each participant gets a disposable Kodak camera to capture self portraits and anything else that matters in her life. Then she sends it back to Engelbrecht, who is including the most compelling of those on The Girl Project Web site and in an upcoming book and a traveling exhibition scheduled kick off in 2010. Some of the results are heartbreaking, some are uplifting, and others are hilarious--but all the images are surprising and touching.

I recently chatted with Engelbrecht via email:

1. How did the idea for The Girl Project come about?
I became really curious about how much I "knew" about teenage girls regardless of the fact that I didn't know any and had not been one myself for a long time.

2. What was your goal for the project?
In the beginning I set out to explore whether or not if what I knew, or thought I knew, was true. Today its less about a question; it has become my own little mini mission to help share girls' perspectives of themselves. My goal is to compile the images in a high-end photography book as well as a traveling exhibition.

3. What are some of your most favorite/interesting photographs you have received so far?
Hmm... thats difficult to answer. There are so many images. The most interesting to me (in general terms) are those that reveal something really personal... where the girl completely goes for it emotionally and puts herself out there.

4. How many girls have participated so far?
Around 800. I hope to have 5,000 by the end.

5. What is the most surprising thing you have discovered doing this project?
For certain it is how innocent these girls are. They are so much more real than the world unconsciously leads us to believe.

Note: If you're a teenage girl who wants to participate in The Girl Project, sign up here.

Graffiti Queens

Photo courtesy McCaig-Welles Gallery.

Women have always been an imperative part of the urban art scene, with legends like Claw Money and Fafi making their mark on cities around the world. And although the man is making it more and more difficult for artists of both sexes to put up their work in public places, these ladies have still found ways to stay relevant and continue creating compelling art. Claw Money has her eponymous, ultra cool fashion line , Fafi did a collaboration with MAC Cosmetics, designing some insanely awesome, drool-worthy makeup bags, and Swoon, one of my all time favorites (not technically a graffiti writer but the consummate street artist), has launched her Swimming Cities expeditions and is represented by Deitch Projects. One of the best things about all this is that these artists have managed to break into the commercial world without selling out.

I’m really excited that the art and fashion worlds are starting to recognize truly talented graffiti writers, especially women, so I’m super stoked for this upcoming exhibition at McCaig-Welles Gallery in Brooklyn. Queens Arrive: International All Female Graffiti Artists Exhibition runs April 10-May 3. Artists featured include Fafi, Claw Money, Klor, and a whole lot more. The works of Martha Cooper, who photographed NYC subway graffiti during its heyday in the 1970s and 80s, also will be part of the exhibition.

(Note: I originally wrote this post for bust.com, where it appeared first. What can I say? I gotta multitask these days!)

Where You At, Jax?

Photo courtesy of Michelle Brea, via Flickr.

You might have noticed that I'm a little slow to post these days. I'm currently working on my grad school thesis -- three more weeks! -- as well as doing two internships, plus a freelance magazine project. Needless to say, Finding Five posts will be sporadic at best for the next few weeks. Bear with me and I'll get back to daily posts by mid-May!

-Jax

The Quay Brothers!

Film still from the Quay Brothers' Street of Crocodiles (1986).

Maybe it's too early to write about this-- but maybe I just wanted an excuse to mention the Quay Brothers. Parsons is mounting "Dormitorium: An Exhibition of Film Decors by the Quay Bros." July 15-Oct. 4, and you should mark your calendar because this will be the first time the tiny, macabre sets from the twins' shatteringly beautiful, spooky stop-animation films have been displayed in North America. The show will also include continuous screenings of some of those works.

"Exploring the design process in relation to how we construct narratives is an important part of a Parsons education, and Dormitorium is an exhibition that goes beyond retrospective to really investigate the nature of creative work," Parsons dean Lydia Matthews said in a press release. "This exhibition gives our students an opportunity to see how the Quay brothers create intricate fantasy worlds, from set design to finished film through their compelling engagement with literature, their command of sound and lighting design, their uncanny use of focus, color and texture, as well as their mastery of digital editing processes."

You don't have to be a student to go: The exhibition will be up at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, which is open to the public, and admission is free.

The Quay Brothers-- born in Pennsylvania in 1947 but living in London since the 1970s-- seem to scrape the cobwebs from the darkest corners of our minds, harvesting shreds of Eastern European literature and lore, fairy tales, and childhood nightmares, mixing them up, and pairing them with haunting music and sounds that hang and sparkle in the air. Disassembled dolls, lonely specters, and twisted storybook animals slink silently through enchanted shadow worlds. It's pretty much perfect.

Stephen and Timothy Quay described their films best in an interview with Paris Premiere, caling the works "an alchemy of silences and objects and things inhabited... They're frozen. They're caught in the last breath of Victoriana ... the beauty and sweetness of an epic that suddenly died... "

You have to see the films to appreciate them. Luckily, you don't have to wait until July to at least get a taste: Good excerpts from Street of Crocodiles (their most famous) and Are We Still Married (my personal favorite), are on YouTube, along with that Paris Premiere interview.

...Pleasant nightmares.

Women and Art

Sotheby's announced on Friday that it is mounting an exhibition April 2-14, focusing solely on women. Let me clarify. The artworks --everything from Andy Warhol's Turquoise Marilyn silkscreen to Henri Matisse's bronze Figure Decorative sculpture --all depict females. They are on loan from mega-collectors Steven and Alexandra Cohen.

While it's great that the Cohens are willing to loan works for a free show, it's always tricky mounting a show that focuses on gender, and it should always be done with deep consideration for context. It irks me that Steven Cohen's explanation for the "Women" theme is that he simply finds "focusing on one theme intriguing," and Sotheby's explanation, via The New York Times, is that it helps build the auction house's brand and relationship with the Cohens. What we have here is a huge missed opportunity to take a serious, in-depth look at how females have been depicted in art and how this has shaped our attitudes about women, sexual roles, sterotypes and attitudes toward gender. Given that Sotheby's announced the upcoming exhibition during March, National Women's History Month, it almost seems like a no-brainer.

Speaking of Women's History Month, the New York Public Library's blog has a month of great posts about female writers, artists, and others who have made a difference.