permanent illumination
“Everywhere you see brilliant stores, ostentatious displays, gilded caf’s, permanent illumination: from rue Louis-le-Grand to rue Richelieu, the light flooding from the shops allows you to read your newspaper. . . . People stroll through the streets where commerce keeps a radiant illumination going all night and makes it as bright as day.”
—Julien Lemer, from Paris au gaz, 1861. As quoted in Theatre, Performance, and the Historical Avant-Garde by G’nter Berghaus, 2005.
a white table, a white piano, and one hundred white pencils
“Grandson of a millionaire, [Cole] Porter spent his entire life surrounded by opulence, and his home at 13 re Monsieur was no exception.
In the entryway, black-and-white checked tile led from the front door to a finely cut marble staircase flanked on each side by columns. From the top of the stairs, a grand salon stretched out over much of the first floor, enclosing in its white paneling soft velvet couches, oriental-finished tables, and colorful rugs. Platinum paper coated the library walls, while elsewhere in the house zebra-skin rugs complemented ornate art deco furnishing. . . . Porter’s workroom . . . ,painted entirely in white, contained nothing but a white table, a white piano, and one hundred white pencils. The wall facing the courtyard was made of frosted glass with a small, clear porthole so that Porter could gaze outside for inspiration.”
—Luke Miner, from Paris Jazz: A Guide, 2005.
the Tabou
“For a brief period Tabou was the center of Saint-Germain’s existentialist youth movement, which married jazz culture with the intellectual life of the Latin Quarter. The extistentialist community was drawn to jazz, and in particular the new sub-genre of bebop, with its complex, lightning fast sounds. . . . These “existentialists” had their own dress code. The men wore multicolored cowboy shirts and canvas running shoes, while the women dressed in black shirts and pants. At its height, the Tabou was so poular that a membership card was required to gain entrance. Some of its more famous guests included Raymond Queneau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.”
—Luke Miner, from Paris Jazz: A Guide, 2005.
a golden arm
“For he had the touch, and a golden arm. ‘Hold me up, Arm,’ he would plead, trying for a fifth pass with the first four still riding, kiss his rosary once for help with the faders sweating it out and zing—there it was, A Little Joe or Phoebe, Big Dick or Eighter from Decatur, double trey the hard way and dice be nice—when you get a hunch bet a bunch—bet a dollar and then holler—make me five to keep me alive—it don’t mean a thing if it don’t cross that string—tell ’em where you got it and how easy it was.”
—Nelson Algren, from The Man with the Golden Arm, 1949. He was a card dealer, of course, but he becomes a junkie.
Her evening gown
“Her evening gown was of an ivory-colored taffeta. The billowing skirt did justice to the effect of the stiff, cold, voluminous taffeta, on which the grain of shifting light flowed and opened up its quiet, silver, dead, long, slender eyes. Color was provided by a cattleya pinned to her bodice. The faint yellow, pink, and purple velum, surrounded by violet petals, imparted the coquetry and shyness peculiar to members of the orchid family. From her necklace of little Indian nuts strung on a yellow gold chain, from her loose lavender elbow-length gloves, from the orchid on her bodice, the fresh odor of perfume like the air after a rain wafted its charms.”
—Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors, 1953. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred H. Marks, 1968.
A Blue-porcelain Night Sky
“The sky was alight—a blue-porcelain night sky where countless stars twinkled, like snowflakes frozen before they could fall.”
—Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors, 1953. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred H. Marks, 1968.
deepest black
“Shunsuk’ entered the study and looked for something on the shelf of original works in French literature, which was up fairly high. He soon found the book he was looking for. It was a special edition with rice-paper pages of Musa Paidica in French translation. Musa Paidica is a collection of poems by the Roman poet Straton, of the time of Hadrian. He followed in the steps of the Emperor Hadrian, who loved Antinous, and he wrote poems only about beautiful boys:
Let the cheek be fair
Or dipped in honey shades,
Of flaxen hue the hair
Or black with every grace;
Let the eyes be brown
Or let me disappear
Into those flashing pools
Of deepest black.
He of the honey-colored skin, the black hair, and the jet-black eyes must have been born in Asia Minor, as was the famous Eastern slave Antinous. The ideal youthful beauty dreamed of by second-century Romans was Asian in nature.”
—Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors, 1953. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred H. Marks, 1968.
nirvana
“Death will be unlike TV documentaries showing us life from outside
Death will be unlike the Buddhist nirvana the moth seems to seek in the light
Death will be unlike the Cities of crystal they build in a few grains of smack
Death will be unlike the long picture window the coffin looks through to a widow in black”
—Momus, What Will Death Be Like?, from the album Monsters Of Love (Singles 1985-90), 1990. This guy is a genius.
“white art”
“Earlier in the year [1968], John Lennon—under the new influence of his relationship with Yoko Ono—had staged a London art exhibition at the Robert Frazer Gallery of his “white art”. Called You Are Here, the show consisted of items like a huge circular white canvas with “you are here” appearing microscopically, and a machine that continuously inflated white balloons to be released over London with “you are here” labels attached.”
—Mike Evans, from The Art of the Beatles, 1984.
The “white” album
“The “white” album . . . was the ultimate . . . “art” album sleeve, minimalist in its plain white with “The Beatles” embossed subtly, and conceptual in that the Beatles decided that the first two million copies should bear individual “edition” numbers.
Inside the sleeve, however, there was ample concession to a more representational approach, with the inclusion of four colour photographs and a collage composition by Richard Hamilton.”
—Mike Evans, from The Art of the Beatles, 1984.