2008-01-15

DENISE SIMMONS became the first openly Lesbian African-American woman to be mayor of an American city after her election by the city council of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Born

1880 -

British writer and critic LYTTON STRACHEY was born (d. 1932). He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. His 1921 biography Queen Victoria was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Educated at Cambridge, he became close friends with non-Apostles Thoby Stephen and Clive Bell, and they, together with sisters Vanessa and Virginia Stephen (later Bell and Woolf respectively), eventually formed the Bloomsbury group. Strachey is credited with having revolutionized the art of writing biography. In reaction to the copious dull scholarship and the lengthy panegyrics of the 19th century, he determined to write biographies that were swift, selective, critical, witty, and artistic.

His work includes Eminent Victorians (1918), a volume of short biographical studies; Queen Victoria (1921), his masterpiece; Elizabeth and Essex (1928); and Portraits in Miniature (1931). As a critic, Strachey was the author of such works as Landmarks in French Literature, a study of the classical spirit (1912), and Books and Characters (1922).

Though Strachey spoke openly about his sexuality with his Bloomsbury friends (he had a relationship with economist JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, who also was part of the Bloomsbury group), it was not widely publicized until the late 1960s, in a biography by Michael Holroyd. He had an odd relationship with the painter Dora Carrington. Allegedly, she loved him; it was unrequited, two months after Strachey's death, she burned all of Strachey's personal possessions and committed suicide.

1885 -

DUNCAN JAMES CORROWR GRANT was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes born on this date (d: 1978). He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group..

From c 1899/1900 to 1906 Grant lived with his aunt and uncle, Sir Richard and Lady Strachey and their children. When Grant was younger, he accompanied Lady Strachey to "picture Sunday" which gave him the opportunity to meet with eminent painters. Lady Strachey was able to persuade Grant's parents that he should be allowed to pursue an education in art. In 1902 Grant was enrolled by his aunt at Westminster School of Art; he attended for the next three years. While at Westminster, Grant was encouraged in his studies by Simon Bussy, a French painter and lifelong friend of Matisse, who went on to marry Dorothy Strachey. Grant was introduced to Vanessa Bell (then Vanessa Stephen) by Pippa Strachey at the Friday Club in the autumn of 1905. From 1906, thanks to a gift of £100 from an aunt, Grant spent a year in Paris studying at the Academie de La Palette, Jacques-Emile Blanche's school. During this period he visited the Musee du Luxembourg and saw, among other paintings, the Caillebotte bequest of French Impressionists.

In January 1907, and again in the summer of 1908, Grant spent a term at the Slade School of Art. In 1908, Grant painted a portrait of John Maynard Keynes (a gay man), who he had met the previous year, while the two were on holiday in Orkney. A year later, the pair would share rooms on Belgrave Road.

In 1909 Grant visited Michael and Gertrude Stein in Paris and saw their collection that included paintings by, among others, Picasso and Matisse. In the summer, with an introduction from Simon Bussy, Grant visited Matisse himself, then living at Clamart, Paris.

Grant is best known for his painting style, which developed in the wake of French post-impressionist exhibitions mounted in London in 1910. He often worked with, and was influenced by, another member of the group, art critic and artist Roger Fry. As well as painting landscapes and portraits, Fry designed textiles and ceramics.

His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major in the army, and much of his early childhood was spent in India and Burma . He was a grandson of Sir John Peter Grant, 12th Laird of Rothiemurchus, KCB, GCMG, sometime Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Grant was also the first cousin twice removed of John Grant, 13th Earl of Dysart.

Grant's early affairs were exclusively homosexual. His lovers included his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey, the future politician Arthur Hobhouse and the economist John Maynard Keynes, who at one time considered Grant the love of his life because of his good looks and the originality of his mind. Through Strachey, Grant became involved in the Bloomsbury Group, where he made many such great friends including Vanessa Bell.

He would eventually live with Vanessa Bell who, though she was a married woman, fell deeply in love with him and, one night, succeeded in seducing him; Bell very much wanted a child by Grant, and she became pregnant in the spring of 1918. Although it is generally assumed that Grant's sexual relations with Bell ended in the months before Anelica was born (Christmas, 1918), they continued to live together for more than 40 years. During that time, their relationship was mainly domestic and creative; they often painted in the same studio together, praising and critiquing each other's work.

Living with Vanessa Bell was no impediment to Grant's relationships with men, either before or after Angelica was born. Angelica grew up believing that Vanessa's husband Clive Bell was her biological father; she bore his surname and his behavior toward her never indicated otherwise. Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell had formed an open relationship, although she herself apparently never had any further affairs. Duncan, in contrast, had many physical affairs and several serious relationships with other men, most notably David Garnett, who would one day marry Angelica and have four daughters with her, including Amaryllis Garnett. Grant's love and respect for Bell, however, kept him with her until her death in 1961. Angelica wrote: "(Grant) was a homosexual with bisexual leanings"

In 2020, an extraordinary stash of more than 400 erotic drawings by Duncan Grant that was long thought to have been destroyed came to light, secretly passed down over decades from friend to friend and lover to lover.

In the 1940s and 50s Grant made hundreds of drawings, many of them explicit and often influenced by Greco-Roman traditions as well as contemporary physique magazines.

In May 1959, Grant gave his friend Edward le Bas a folder marked “these drawings are very private”. The mythology in Bloomsbury circles is that the drawings were later destroyed, probably by Le Bas’s sister. That was that until Nathaniel Hepburn, the director of Charleston, the beautiful Sussex farmhouse Grant and Vanessa Bell called home, was contacted with an offer of the drawings.

The offer came from the retired theatre designer Norman Coates, who for years stored the drawings in plastic folders under his bed.

Coates said the drawings were “extraordinary, so in your face. You can’t avoid them. When I’ve occasionally brought them out to show selected friends after dinner, after the initial ‘My God’ exclamation at these very explicit drawings, they mellow … the sexual element really doesn’t dominate.

“It is the painting and the skill of his drawing and the aesthetic of it which negates the sexiness of them. It becomes irrelevant that the subject is what it is … it is a very odd feeling. It just becomes a beautiful collection of pictures.”

Coates was left the drawings by his partner, Mattei Radev, who died in 2009. Radev, a Bloomsbury mainstay who as a younger man had had a secret and tortured affair with E.M. Forster, was left them by Eardley Knollys, who died in 1991.

Knollys, who ran the influential Storran gallery in London and had an affair with Jean Cocteau, was given them by Le Bas, a painter. Le Bas was given them by Grant, a man who the economist John Maynard Keynes briefly thought might be the love of his life.

Hepburn said the drawings were often explicit fantasies but, as a whole, they were something more.

“They are, I think, a body of work that talks of love. Of course at a time they were made, that is a love that was illegal,” he said. “Hewas never able to share the works. How we see them now will be very different.”

For more on the discovery and an interesting video:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54447684?fbclid=IwAR2vvUKpSPJ7ha4hKW3U5FqzAF8XT_W02I5tZ72jwHnWICQhFvntkMvF3Z4

1895 -

The best known Spanish fashion designer, CRISTÓBAL BALENCIAGA was born on this date. Regarded as the master of fashion, his classic designs inspired the fashion industry throughout most of the twentieth century and continue to exert influence.

Born in Guetaria, near San Sebastian, Spain, Cristóbal Balenciaga Eisaguirre was the son of a fisherman. He studied needlework and dressmaking with his mother until 1910. In 1915, he established his own tailoring business under the sponsorship of Marquesa de Casa Torres. By the early 1930s he had established a reputation as Spain's leading couturier. Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Balenciaga closed his three couture houses and left Spain.

After a brief stay in London, Balenciaga settled in Paris and in 1937 opened The House of Balenciaga on Avenue George V.

Balenciaga never married. This fact, coupled with his career in fashion, has led to speculation and rumors about his sexuality. A deeply private man, he never discussed his personal life publicly.

One particular incident reported by writer Jacqueline Demornex may, however, throw a little light on his sexuality. After an argument between the couturier Coco Chanel and Balenciaga, Chanel allegedly made the following observation to a mutual friend: "It is obvious that he dislikes them (women); look at the way he conceals blouses under suits, just to expose the wrinkles in their necks." Inasmuch as such charges are frequently made against gay male designers, Demornex ponders why Chanel attacked Balenciaga in such a way: was it his age, his way of dressing women, or his private life?

So flattering were Balenciaga's creations that women often ordered more than one of each design so that they could wear one while the other was being cleaned or so they could keep one at each of their houses. Remembered as a master of black, Balenciaga often favored a muted palette of colors, especially a combination of black and brown, inspired by the traditional dress of his native Spain. Spain was also the source and inspiration for his use of lace, his heavy embroidery with jet-encrusted trimmings, as well as the brilliant whites and the drama and dignity of stiff formal fabrics reminiscent of those painted by Goya and Velásquez.

In 1968 Balenciaga closed his business rather than see it compromised in a fashion era he did not respect. He retired to Spain and died in 1972.

1903 -

American chef and food writer JAMES BEARD was born (d. 1985). Recognized by many as the father of American gastronomy, throughout his life he pursued and advocated the highest standards, and served as a mentor to emerging talents in the field of the culinary arts.

According to the James Beard Foundation, "After a brief stint at Reed College in Portland," (from which he was expelled in 1922 for homosexual activity) in 1923 Beard went on the road with a theatrical troupe. He lived abroad for several years studying voice and theater, but returned to the United States for good in 1927." He trained initially as a singer and actor, and moved to New York City in 1937. Not having much luck in the theater, he and his friend, Bill Rhodes, capitalized on the cocktail party craze by opening a catering company, "Hors D'Oeuvre, Inc.", which led the publication of Beard's first cookbook, Hors D'Oeuvre and Canapés, a compilation of his catering recipes.

In 1946, he appeared on an early televised cooking show, I Love to Eat, on NBC, and thus began his rise as an eminent American food authority. Beard began lecturing, teaching, and writing books and articles. Child states, "Through the years he gradually became not only the leading culinary figure in the country, but `The Dean of American Cuisine'." In 1955, he established The James Beard Cooking School and taught cooking for the next 30 years around the country. He was a tireless traveler, bringing his message of good food, honestly prepared with fresh, wholesome, American ingredients, to a country just becoming aware of its own culinary heritage.

James Beard is the central figure in the story of the establishment of an American food identity. He was an eccentric personality who brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s. Many consider him the father of American-style cooking. His legacy lives on in twenty books, numerous writings, his own foundation, and his foundation's annual Beard awards in various culinary genres.

Julia Child accurately sums up Beard's personal life in an brief description: "Beard was the quintessential American cook. Well-educated and well-traveled during his eighty-two years, he was familiar with many cuisines but he remained fundamentally American.

He was a big man, over six feet tall, with a big belly, and huge hands. An endearing and always lively teacher, he loved people, loved his work, loved gossip, loved to eat, loved a good time."

Child's summary makes two significant omissions. The first is that he was gay. Beard's memoir states: "By the time I was seven, I knew that I was gay. I think it's time to talk about that now." The second was Beard's own admission of possessing "until I was about forty-five, I guess a really violent temper."

The New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman (who did not know Beard personally) describes him in a similar way: "In a time when serious cooking meant French cooking, Beard was quintessentially American, a westerner whose mother ran a boardinghouse, a man who grew up with hotcakes and salmon and meatloaf in his blood. A man who was born a hundred years ago on the other side of the county, in a city, Portland, that at the time was every bit as cosmopolitan as, say, Allegheny PA."

Craig Claiborne, Beard's contemporary (whose birthday is tomorrow) called Beard "an innovator, an experimenter, a missionary in bringing the gospel of good cooking to the home table. Physically he was the connoisseur's connoisseur. He was a giant panda, Santa Claus and the Jolly Green Giant rolled into one. On him, a lean and slender physique would have looked like very bad casting." Beard died of heart failure at the age of 81. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over the beach in Gearhart, Oregon, United States, where he spent his summers as a child.

After Beard's death in 1985, Julia Child had the idea to preserve his home in New York City as the gathering place it was throughout his life. Peter Kump, a former student of Beard's and the founder of the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's New York Cooking School), spearheaded the effort to purchase the house and create the James Beard Foundation.

Beard's renovated brownstone is located at 167 West 12th Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village. It is North America's only historical culinary center, a place where Foundation members, the press, and the general public are encouraged to savor the creations of both established and emerging chefs from across the country and around the globe. The annual James Beard Foundation Awards are given at the industry's biggest party, part of a fortnight of activities that celebrate fine cuisine and Beard's birthday.

Held on the first Monday in May, the Awards ceremony honors the finest chefs, restaurants, journalists, cookbook authors, restaurant designers, and electronic media professionals in the country. It culminates in a reception featuring a tasting of the signature dishes of more than 30 of the James Beard Foundation's very best chefs.

The foundation also publishes a quarterly magazine, Beard House, a comprehensive compendium of the best in culinary journalism. The foundation also publishes the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Directory, a directory of all chefs who have either presented a meal at the Beard House or have participated in one of the foundation's out-of-House fundraising events. (This writer has cooked at the Beard House twice!)

1905 -

Fashion designer and icon CHRISTIAN DIOR was born on this date (d. 1957) in Granville, Manche, Normandy, France, the younger son of Maurice Dior, a manufacturer of fertilizer and chemicals, and his wife, the former Madeleine Martin. Dior had an elder brother, Raymond, whose daughter was the Nazi sympathizer Françoise Dior.

Acceding to his parents' wishes, Dior attended the Ecole des Sciences Politiques from 1920 to 1925. The family, whose fortune was derived from the manufacture of fertilizer, had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior only wished to be involved in the arts.

After leaving school he received money from his father so that in 1928 he could open a small art gallery, where he sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Max Jacob. After a family financial disaster that resulted in his father losing his business, Dior was forced to shut down the gallery. In the 1930s Dior made a living by doing sketches for haute couture houses. In 1938 he worked with Robert Piguet and later joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Pierre Balmain were the primary designers. In 1945 he went into business for himself, backed by Marcel Boussac, the cotton-fabric magnate. Dior's fashion house opened in December 1946, and the following February, he presented his first collection, known as Corolle. It was more famously known as the New Look.

The actual phrase the "New Look" was coined by Carmel Snow, the powerful editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the rations on fabric. He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying "I have designed flower women."

His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form. The hem of the skirt was very flattering on the calves and ankles, creating a beautiful silhouette. Initially, women protested because his designs covered up their legs, which they had been unused to because of the previous limitations on fabric. There was also some backlash to Dior's designs form due to the amount of fabrics used in a single dress or suit--during one photo shoot in a Paris market, the models were attacked by female vendors over the profligacy of their dresses--but opposition ceased as the wartime shortages ended. The New Look revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world after World War II.

Dior died at the health spa town Montecatini. Some reports say that he died of a heart attack after choking on a fish bone. Time magazine's obituary stated that he died of a heart attack after playing a game of cards. However, the Paris socialite and Dior acquaintance Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Rédé stated in his memoirs that contemporary rumor had it that the fashion designer succumbed to a heart attack after a strenuous sexual encounter with two young men. His companion, at the time of his death, was an Algerian-born singer, Jacques Benita.

Noteworthy

1926 -

VITA SACKVILLE-WEST writes a love letter, dated this date, to VIRGINIA WOOLF that begins their love affair. The affair between Virginia and Vita, who were both married, was not considered shocking within Virginia’s bohemian social circle — The Bloomsbury Group was accepting of bisexuality and open marriages.

Vita was a huge cheerleader for Virginia, trying to build her confidence to leave her self-imposed isolation and to believe in her skills as a writer. The letters between the two writers, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, have become one of lesbian history’s most treasured works, and Virginia’s novel Orlando was inspired by Vita.

They met in 1922 and were friends for a few years before the relationship turned sexual, as faithfully documented in Virginia's diaries. Although the affair ended in 1927 or 1928, they remained close friends.

Born

1938 -

British actor and former policeman JOHN SAVIDENT was born on this date. Best known for his role on TV programs like Yes, Minister, Coronation Street (as Fred Elliot, 1994 - 2006), Sharpe's Regiment, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. Savident also appeared in films including Waterloo), A Clockwork Orange, The Raging Moon, Galileo, Gandhi, Remains of the Day, and Othello.

Noteworthy

2009 -

The Swedish Parliament was presented with legislation that would allow Gay couples to marry in civil ceremonies or in the Lutheran Church, which until 2000 was the official church of Sweden. "The main proposal in the motion is that ... a person's gender will no longer have any bearing on whether they can marry. The marriage law and other laws concerning spouses will be rendered gender neutral according to the proposal," a statement from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's conservative Moderates said.

The proposal had wide backing in parliament. While heterosexuals in Sweden could previously choose to marry in either a civil ceremony or a church ceremony, homosexuals were only allowed to register their "partnerships" in a civil ceremony. Civil unions granting Gays and Lesbians the same legal status as married couples were allowed in Sweden since 1995. On October 22, 2009, the governing board of the Church of Sweden, voted 176–62 in favor of allowing its priests to wed same-sex couples in new gender-neutral church ceremonies, including the use of the term marriage. Same-sex marriages have been performed by the church since November 1, 2009

With the adoption of the new legislation, Sweden, became the first country in the world to allow Gay people to marry within a major Church. Under the proposal, Lutheran pastors are permitted to opt-out of performing Gay marriages if they have personal objections.

2009 -

ABC television station in Los Angeles refused to air a Public Service Announcement about Gay families claiming it was "too controversial" to run during inauguration coverage. KABC-TV in Los Angeles refused to run public service announcements from Get To Know Us First, a group that promotes acceptance of LGBT families. 2009 people...less than ten years ago.

White Crane Institute

2008-01-15

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