Everyone is Like a Butterfly

“Everyone is like a butterfly, they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.”

Drew Barrymore

Photo by Mark Seliger

Oct 4

To Be or Not to Be (The Melancholy Dane)

“To be, or not to be” is the famous opening phrase of a soliloquy in William Shakespeare‘s play Hamlet. Debate surrounds its meaning, and that of the speech, but most agree that it asks the fundamental question “why live?” and gives the desolate answer that death might be worse.

Hamlet speaks this on his entry to Act 3 scene 1 (known as the ‘nunnery scene’ because of the Hamlet/Ophelia dialogue after the speech) which is when Polonius and Claudius put into effect their plan, hatched in Act 2 scene 2, to watch Hamlet with Ophelia to determine whether, as Polonius thinks, his ‘madness’ springs from “neglected love”. They have planted her where it is his habit to walk and think and concealed themselves to observe the encounter. Until he notices Ophelia at the end of the speech Hamlet thinks he is alone.

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, with Yorick’s skull. Photographer: James Lafayette, c. 1885–1900)

John Barrymore in the greatest success of his theatrical career with Hamlet in 1922, which he played on for 101 performances as the Melancholy Dane, breaking Booth’s record. In February, 1925 he successfully presented his production in London despite the so-called apathy extended toward American Shakespearean actors in Britain.

Laurence Olivier’s 1948 moody black-and-white Hamlet won best picture and best actor Oscars, and is still, as of 2013, the only Shakespeare film to have done so. His interpretation stressed the Oedipal overtones of the play, and cast 28-year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet’s mother, opposite himself, at 41, as Hamlet.

The great Shakespearean actor Sir John Gielgud (who played Hamlet over 500 times in six productions), his protégé Kenneth Branagh and Sir Derek Jacobi in a BBC radio production of Hamlet .

Jul 2

American Flag on Harper’s Bazaar

Cover from July 1942

Cover from July 1943 by Erwin Blumenfeld

Sarah Jessica Parker by Patrick Demarchelier, February 2001

Meg Ryan by Patrick DeMarchelier. Harper´’s Bazaar Magazine [Australia], April 2002

Drew Barrymore by Alexi Lubomirski. November 2008

Jun 28

Bert Stern’s Muses

Shirley MacLaine, 1960

Sue Lyon, 1961

Liz Taylor, 1962

Sofia Loren, 1962

Marilyn Monroe, 1962

Natalie Wood, 1964

Marisa Berenson, circa 1965

Goldie Hawn, 1965

Barbra Streisand, 1966

Ali MacGraw (for a Vogue cover photo shoot wearing a bright printed silk dress with gold paillete trim by Oscar de La Renta), 1970

Madonna, 1981

Drew Barrymore, 1994

Jun 17

Child Is The Father Of The Man

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but … life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

Gabriel García Márquez

Popeye and Friends (1911), Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine

Kate Moss with children. Photos by Bruce Weber

Drew Barrymore as scout by Mark Seliger

French kids imitate Dizzy Gillespie’s cheeks in Nice (France) by Milt Hinton, 1981

Bob Dylan and kids, Liverpool, England, 1966. Barry Feinstein

Donovan. Photo credit: Chris Walter, circa 1965

Frank Zappa and Mothers of Invention. Art Kane, circa 1968

For this Life magazine session, Art Kane wanted to portray the musical group as a family and took the idea of mothers — and their babies — as a theme. He gathered some of the musicians’ infants, then booked about thirty more from a modeling agency. As soon as they began to shoot, one of the babies urinated, which inspired the others to do so as well, creating in Kane’s words, “the fountains of Rome.”

Brotherhood, Art Kane

Norman Rockwell at Oak Mountain School (Georgia)

Mar 31

Tender or Mischievous

Albrecht Durer, Young Hare

Vincent Van Gogh, Field with Two Rabbits

Drawing from original manuscript of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Lewis Carroll

John Tenniel, White Rabbit

Illustration by Arthur Rackham

Salvador Dalí, Down the Rabbit Hole

Norman Rockwell

According to Arthur Paul, the designer of the playboy logo, he chose the rabbit because of its “humorous sexual connotation” and also because the representation was “frisky and playful”. The playboy logo is undoubtedly mischievous in its nature.

Robert Crumb’s drawing

Andy Warhol

Terence Koh, Boy by the Sea (2008)

Jeff Koons

Illustration by Han Hoogerbrugge

Chuck Jones and Bugs Bunny

Rabbits (David Lynch,2002)

John Updike may have chosen the name Rabbit for his character for its echo of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt (1922). Previously to Rabbit, Run (1961),Updike had written a short story entitled Ace In The Hole, and to a lesser extent a poem, Ex-Basketball Player, with similar themes to this series.

“It had a bed, a table, and a chair. The table had a lamp on it, a lamp that had never stopped burning in anticipation of her return, and on the lamp perched a butterfly with two large eyes painted on its widespread wings. Tereza knew she was at her goal. She lay down on the bed and pressed the rabbit to her face.”

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis, 1989). The Wolf and other characters were based on Tex Avery’s Red Hot Ridding Hood.

The animation of Cool World (Ralph Bakshi, 1992) was strongly influenced by the house styles of Fleischer Studios and Terrytoons. Bakshi had originally intended to cast Drew Barrymore instead Kim Bassinger in the film’s leading role.