by Marty Coleman | Feb 16, 2012 | Coco Chanel, Style Lessons - 2012 |
It’s Fashion Week in New York and Fashion Week here as well!
What does this quote mean?
I understand most every quote I come across. I know what they mean to say and I understand why they are saying it. Not so with this quote. I saw it last week when I was planning out my style series and decided I would NOT do a napkin on it since I had no clue what Coco Chanel meant by it. I still don’t completely. But, here is a funny thing. Today I decided to just put the quote on the page, nothing else, then ask you what you thought it meant. I would then finish the drawing based on the feedback. But after I did the words on the page this idea of just a hand came to me, the ‘take to the hand’ hand. So I thought I would just draw the hand in the middle of the page, but that led to the face and I drew the arm funny so that led it to being a landscape then that led to deciding what she was refusing and that lead to me thinking…ah, maybe I do understand it after all…
But I am still not sure so I want your feedback.
- What does this quote mean?
- Does it reflect itself in your life, or in those you know and admire perhaps?
- How does elegance (and its definition in the quote) fit in with fashion and style?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who thinks fine dining is elegant.
Quote by Coco Chanel, 1883-1971, French fashion designer.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 15, 2012 | Marty Coleman, Style Lessons - 2012 |
In my non-Napkin Dad life I also consult, design and develop websites and blogs at times. I have recently been contracted to redesign and expand a style, fashion, and shopping blog and it has been great fun. It included a number of long conversations with the client about how to get just the right mix of elements into the website. That in turn got me thinking about what style really consists of and I came up with the Five I’s. I think I will spend some time digressing about the I’s eventually but before I do I would love to hear your understanding of the I’s as they apply in your own and other’s styles in fashion and other areas. Or add in new I’s or whatever other alphabet letter fits!
In addition, Let me know what you think style is, where it comes from, how you know it when you see it, and how it differs from fashion, trends, fads, etc.
Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman, who got 3 new hats this winter.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 10, 2012 | Michelangelo, Naked vs Nude - 2012 |
I’ll put my foot down and say, It’s the last day of Naked vs Nude week at the NDD!
This drawing and commentary was originally created and written in 2009, but it fit perfectly with the theme so I am using it again.
It is human to decorate oneself, but humanity starts without decoration and that is often forgotten. The puritan impulse that still flows through America and elsewhere looks for something wrong with the unadorned and naked. We do it without being conscious of it, like a remnant racist not being aware of their own prejudice.
A huge industry has made many people a lot of money building on this. I am not talking about pornography, which at least has some semblance of honesty about it. At least you know what they are trying to evoke in a person. I am not defending porn, just stating that we know what it is and what it is trying to do.
I am talking about marketing and advertising. That is the industry that plays us like a fiddle. That is the industry that tells you to look for the skin and in the next breath tells you to cover it up.
What Michelangelo knew was that for all the finery Florence and Rome in the Renaissance could display to the world, it could not outshine the beauty he found in the human body. And considering the fact that his nude sculpture, ‘David’ is probably the single most popular object of any sort from that era, his statement has been proven true.
See the complete ‘Naked vs Nude’ series here.
___________________
Drawing by Marty Coleman, who has a very nice big toe indeed.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 9, 2012 | Naked vs Nude - 2012, Oscar Wilde |
I was born to tell you – Today is day #4 of Naked vs Nude week at the NDD
I have a serious question, give your thoughts on it. Where and when did the emotion of shame come into the picture for humans and nudity? Why was it shame that Adam and Eve were said to have felt and not anger or fear or happiness or guilt or any of a million other feelings. Why was it shame?
__________________________
Drawing and question by Marty Coleman, who is only ashamed of his flabby pot belly. (why is that?)
Quote by Oscar Wilde.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 8, 2012 | Alyssa Milano |
I’ve got skin in the game so I best confess…It’s day 3 of ‘Naked vs Nude’ week at the NDD!
No one would ever say they sleep in ‘the naked’. Why is that? I bring it up once again, there is a difference between using the words naked and nude. Perhaps it’s because what John Berger said, ‘Nudity is a form of dress’ is true. You wear ‘nude’ to bed. that is why it is ‘the nude’. What do you think?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who doesn’t sleep in the nude because of the tornadoes.
Quote by Alyssa Milano, 1972 – not dead yet, American actor. She may or may not have orange sheets and a brown cat.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 7, 2012 | Naked vs Nude - 2012, Warren Buffett |
It would be a bare-ass lie if I didn’t admit it’s day #2 of Naked vs Nude Week at the NDD.
If all the pretenses, lies, masks, decorations, and shiny things of your life were stripped away would you be found to have been swimming naked? Obviously this is a metaphor. It’s not about swimming naked, which is fine and dandy if that’s what you want to do and you don’t scare small children and pelicans. What it is about is whether or not you have substance when your money, your track record, your resume is stripped away.
Since the quote is by Warren Buffett perhaps a financial example is in order. Bernie Madoff had all the bling life could bring. He had the home, reputation, cars, status, resume, business success, wealth and more. But what he did not have was a good and true foundation in character underneath it all. That is the ‘naked’ this quote is really talking about. When it all goes south, what remains?
By the way, in regards to our series title, ‘Naked vs Nude’, imagine this quote using the word nude instead of naked. Wouldn’t quite work, would it.
See the complete ‘Naked vs Nude’ series here.
______________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman who last skinny dipped in 1996.
Quote by Warren Buffett, who, rumor has it, once skinny dipped with Bill Gates after winning a Bridge Tournament.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 6, 2012 | Naked vs Nude - 2012, Peter Kunkel |
The naked truth is that it’s ‘Naked Vs Nude’ week at the NDD.
When I was in graduate school I read a book called ‘About Looking’ by John Berger. In it he proposes that there is a difference in art between someone who is naked and someone who is nude. Since I have been doing my ‘Artist I Love Winter Weekend’ series I have presented a number of art pieces in the ‘nude’ genre. That got me thinking about this difference between naked and nude that Berger suggests exists. I decided it would be fun to explore the idea with you.
One of the ideas Berger puts forth is that, while nakedness reveals itself, nudity does not. He says, “The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.” So, if nudity is a form of dress, wouldn’t it mean that both women in this drawing have some fashion sense? What do you think?
In particular, within your experience with nudity in art, film, life, do you think there a difference between being naked and being nude? Explain.
haha…By the way, if the clothed woman in this drawing has ‘fashion sense’ maybe being without clothes WOULD be better fashion!
See the complete ‘Naked vs Nude’ series here.
_________________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who admits he has been more than once.
Quote by Peter Kunkel, who I think would admit it too.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 3, 2012 | Catullus, Francis Bacon |
It’s the final day of ‘Quotes on Quotes’ week at the NDD. Any suggestions for next week’s topic?
All artists and writers copy. Copying is unavoidable. But all good and great artists and writers transform that which they copy into their own words, their own vision. The mediocre and creativity deficient are not able, or are lazy and thus unwilling, to do the hard work of creating their own work even while taking ideas from the past.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who seems to use a lot of quotes in his work.
Quote by Havelock Ellis, 1859-1939, British physician and writer.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 2, 2012 | Niels Bohr, Quotes on Quotes - 2012 |
The truth is it’s day #4 of ‘Quotes on Quotes’ week at the NDD!
Physicists understand very well that what seems to be is not always what is. The rest of us so often assume appearances and conventional knowledge are safe to follow. If we follow those we will pretty much have the truth, right? Well physics tells us that is not always the case in the scientific realm.
In our daily life that we can see and feel, touch and hear, the same is true. I have had two long relationships, my first marriage lasted 20 years, and I am now in year 8 of a relationship with my second wife. In both cases I have come to learn that their reality is often very different than mine. At times in both relationships we have all wanted to argue and believe that our reality is THE reality. The other person is not understanding, not obeying, not living by what are an obvious set of rules, methods, behaviors, thought processes that OF COURSE we all should go by. If they are broken then the other person’s motivations must be suspect.
I know I have been guilty of that, more when I was younger, but it still it comes up. I also know that both my wives have been guilty of it as well. And we have had to talk about it, sometimes painfully. Obviously my first marriage didn’t survive, but we actually were still able to understand each other better and not be so judgmental of each other towards the end of our marriage. My current marriage to Linda has had some of the same things, but because we are both older and wiser, we seem to be able to not be quite so rigid in our understandings and judgments.
It takes work but if you start from the assumption that you don’t hold the only profound truth about relationships and behaviors, then at least you have a way in to the conversations about how someone sees things differently than you. Not wrong, just different.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who is the opposite of who you might expect.
Quote by Niels Bohr, 1885-1962, Danish physicist. He also designed his own coat of arms for when he was awarded the ‘Order of the Elephant’ by the Danish government. It included a yin and yang symbol and the motto in latin “contraria sunt complementa” (opposites are complementary).
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 1, 2012 | Anonymous, Quotes on Quotes - 2012 |
And I quote, “It’s day #3 of Quotes on Quotes week at the NDD.”
The biggest, baddest, most humongous tome in the world may have drama, it may get a lot of attention, it may get it’s own mini-series, but that doesn’t mean it has substance that can actually help or nurture anyone.
Sometimes the small and anonymous does that better. So, don’t be under the delusion you need to be famous or powerful and an attention getting drama queen to contribute well to your world. Maybe all you need to do is be a flower.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who some day would like to see a real live person painted just like the person in the drawing.
Quote by Anonymous, who thinks the same thing.
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