Notes: Spoilers for La Femme Infidèle, La Piscine, and Plein Soleil below.

There is a French actor named Maurice Ronet who I have seen in three different films, the most recent of which was this past week, in Claude Chabrol’s La Femme Infidèle. In this film, a married woman has an affair with a man (Ronet) she met at the cinema; her husband grows suspicious and hires a private investigator; the husband confronts the man at his apartment, and in a spur-of-the-moment rage, knocks the man with a bust and kills him (giggled a bit here because the trickle of blood in the scene clearly looked like red acrylic paint); the man’s body was then dumped into the water. Nothing in particular was special about this thriller that followed a conventional plotline. But it’s interesting when I note that in the two previous films I saw, Ronet also just happened to be the guy that they kill off: in La Piscine, he was drowned by Alain Delon’s character; in Plein Soleil, he was stabbed and thrown off his own boat (again by Alain Delon). Poor guy. Anyhow, all three are nice and easy summertime films to watch.

Last month, I learned of an Italian artist named Domenico Gnoli through an article in the New Yorker; the artist had a recent exhibition of his works at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in New York City. At first glance, I found his art quite exciting. Commonplace items — tie knots, shirt collars, bed and bedspreads, hairstyles — are all magnified and painted intricately. When I think of paintings, I usually picture the macro-view: a landscape, a portrait, an abstract piece of work. But here, one can take the time to inspect and scrutinize all the little details up close; to see the textures and patterns, all perceived from interesting angles.

A painting titled Il grande letto azzurro, depicts a queen-sized bed with a gold-accented teal spread. I find it fascinating how many details there are to look at: the gold flowerings, for example, was executed in a way that looks quite realistic, with the shimmer and brilliance of a metallic material, but the painting as a whole retains an element of fiction (I think it might be how flat it looks, despite having shadows to make it three-dimensional).

In Giro di collo 15 1/2, I like seeing the creases in the shirt, the very subtle variations in colors, that each line is ever-so-slightly wobbly — there’s a humanness to it; that the object belongs to someone or is a part of someone. I think there’s a perfectionism in all of Gnoli’s work, but it is the intentional imperfect streak that makes it captivating. One can split the painting in two halves and compare, but find that they won’t be exactly symmetrical.

In Busto femminile di dorso, the hair must’ve been done painstakingly. Each strand of curl is unique, reflecting the light differently.

From the fall of 2021 to early 2022, Fondazione Prada held a Domenico Gnoli retrospective that presented over 100 works of his. They also produced a companion catalog that is unfortunately out of print (and very much desired by myself). I couldn’t find too much literature on Gnoli. There was only one Gnoli picture book in a university library I visited and the images were in black-and-white. Domenico Gnoli died at the premature age of 36, in 1970.

See more of Gnoli’s work here and here.

The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (a fine arts museum) is quite the sprawling complex. Inside, I saw a playful structure hanging from the ceiling by Calder, with the initials CA inscribed on one of the metal flaps; a painting by Miro entitled Head that depicts what looks like a bird’s head silhouette in orange; a colorful impressionist landscape by Monet; and tucked near the elevators, a chess set by Salvador Dalí dedicated to Marcel Duchamp, in which some of the pieces took the shape of a finger, in typical Surrealist fashion. For too long a time, I had been meaning to make a visit to this very museum, to see the paintings but mainly, to see a Richard Avedon exhibition, called “Portraits of Aging.”

Richard Avedon was a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, for Vogue, for the New Yorker. The portraits displayed at the museum were curated around the theme of aging, all in black-and-white, most against a plain white backdrop. My favorite portrait of the bunch was Michelangelo Antonioni’s, the Italian filmmaker. (Did not expect to see his portrait there, so it was a pleasant surprise). His film La Notte is a favorite of mine. Antonioni looked smug in a suit with a patterned shirt, his wife Enrica, standing by his side.

On another corner hangs the portrait of Jorge Luis Borges, the revered Argentinian writer, also in a smart suit; Borges lost his vision later in life, and it inspired a number of poetry he wrote. Chet Baker, the jazz musician, was pictured in a melancholic expression that makes me want to cry a little; Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian writer and Nobel Prize laureate, looked kind and gentle; two pictures to the left, the portrait of the acclaimed American writer and (another) Nobel Prize laureate, Toni Morrison; Gloria Swanson, the actress who played in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, looked vivacious and animated; Marguerite Duras, the French writer, is pictured joyful in a small square portrait; also scattered throughout are: Ronald Reagan (American president), John Ford (filmmaker in the Western genre), Jean Renoir (French filmmaker, son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir), De Kooning, Ezra Pound, and Samuel Beckett.

I think these portraits are striking for their clarity; here are the subjects, presented in their nakedness, showcasing all the minuscule qualities that together make up their beings: pores, dents, creases, the differing slopes of ears and nose and mouth. If one observes closely and for long enough a time, emotions can be deciphered in their eyes. But more broadly, it also showcases our beings, as a member of the same human species: the wrinkles, the blemishes, sagging skin — all that is inevitable and natural and beautiful, as we age.

A selection of Avedon’s work can be found on his foundation website.

And c’est tout, thank you for reading. I hope you’ve been keeping cool from the heat, have a great week ahead.

Hello all, I hope you’ve had a great week and happy August 1st. As opposed to the usual Well Rounded or Zeitgeist issue, today I introduce Spectacles. Spectacles will be a highly visual letter, a collection of beautiful images and art. If you’ve enjoyed the curation on my Notes, this series will be similar in nature, but in more depth.

Before we get into it, let me tell you about my week.

I’ve been recently seeing lots of films and shows. Of them include Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas, Luca Gudagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, all of which highlight such great beauty.

Then earlier this week, I went to see Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), in theaters for its twenty-fifth year anniversary. I saw it at Cinema Moderne, in the hip laid-back neighborhood of the Mile End. The layout of the establishment is quite interesting: cafe in the front, cinema in the back. The cinema is a 54-seater single room theater. Although the room is compact, all the seats were full. I notice sitting in the row in front of me was a man in his 70s wearing an ‘A24’ cap with its logo just etched above the back strap.

After the movie, we (a friend and I) were back out on the streets and it was late afternoon just before sunset. The perfect time to be outside. I enjoyed the film; the picture was so crisp (4K restoration), the details so intentional. We walked a few blocks up (movie debrief on the go; “great film; yeah we never saw the faces of their spouses; the soundtrack was perfect”) to get gelato at this new place called Dalmata. Dalmata is a shoe-box sized gelateria but the space is alive, inside and out the shop. We queued on the sidewalk, both got Apricot Gelatos on a cone, then sat on the steps outside. The Mile End is nice because it’s one part suburb and one part city. Life feels slower here; less noise, less traffic, no towering objects, more dogs. There is this white convertible parked in front, that has ‘Carrera’ written in cursive. I’m not familiar with cars but after looking it up, I think it was a Porsche 911. Beautiful car.

What else? I burnt a finger the other day from touching a hot bowl fresh out the microwave and had to run it under cold water for a good twenty minutes to relieve the sting. But on the other hand (literally), I was reading a short story in the latest Paris Review titled ‘The Visit’ by Anuk Arudpragasam. It’s a story told from the perspective of a 30 year old daughter living in New York City when her mother came to visit; it’s half resentment half soft-spot for the relationship that they have, and Arudpragasam manages to capture the nuances well.

All of that to say, this might explain why a lot of the curation below is film-related. Regardless, I hope you enjoy and maybe you will find something that sparks inspiration.

Note: Due to the nature of how images are sourced on the internet, credits might be misattributed or not found at all. Please let me know if and where the name of the rightful artist/owner of the work is due. Images are only mine where specified.

The subtitle ‘Hong Kong, 1962’ is a reference to the time and place in which In the Mood for Love was set. In the 25th anniversary screening that I saw, there was a short bonus scene at the end, apparently one of the versions Wong Kar-wai was considering. Whereas red and green under dim lights were the aesthetics of the final film, the other version has a stark sterile fluorescent color to it, similar to that of Chungking Express. It just goes to show how big lighting played in setting the mood and tone.

Besides the color aesthetic of the film, one thing that caught my eyes were the beautiful form and patterns of Mrs. Chan’s dresses, called a qipao. I came across these spreads, courtesy of fragmentarchives, that detailed and interpreted the colors and motifs of 21 qipaos in the film. Amazing.

The Criterion Closet is pretty much a modern rite of passage for all the remarkables in film. The videos showcasing a subject’s picks can all be found on Youtube, but finding polaroids of said subject is rather sporadic. I’d like to see a section on the Criterion website that archives all the polaroids, that would be fun.

I’ve always enjoyed the design of an Aesop store. Each is influenced by local heritage, taking elements in from its environment. The one below is in Shanghai, China. The soft beige-and-brown tones, the flow of the circular room brings about a certain tranquil, calm, and grounded quality to its space. The concept of harmony is highly regarded in Chinese society and this interior reflects just that.

That is all. Thank you for tuning in for the first issue of Spectacles. All thoughts, comments, or additional details on the subjects mentioned are very welcomed. Besides that, I hope you have a great weekend! — C. S. Indoors.

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