Melons (1998) by Patty Chang

In Melons (At a Loss) (1998), a single-take video, Patty Chang narrates a monologue about an imagined cultural ritual of being given a commemorative plate of her deceased aunt, who passed due to breast cancer.

She simultaneously attempts to perform cutting, deseeding, and eating a cantaloupe that is held inside her long-line bra, all the while balancing a plate on her head. The melon appears to be uncannily synonymous with Chang’s breast. Chang takes a serrated knife to slice it open in an act of self-mutilation. Eating the melon, then, is also a form of a cannibalistic devouring of the self. The gesture paired with an attempt to sustain the monologue of imagined ritual becomes a site of production for the construction of memory, narrative, and gender.

“Melons is a video based on images and script about my aunt’s death from breast cancer and the emotion void in my memory. The text is a construction of rituals that plays with notions of the authentic. The act of juggling too much text and imagery immerses the viewer in a third, imagined narrative.”

Eve Oishi writes of Patty Chang’s work in Camera Obscura: “Her performance pieces can be best described as balancing acts, not only in the way she manipulates her body but in her ability to create works that juxtapose absolute stillness with explosive tension, sly humor with incisive revelation, and penetrating commentary with emotional force.”

Patty Chang (born 1972) is an American performance artist and film director living and working in Los Angeles, California. Originally trained as a painter, Chang received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, San Diego. It wasn’t until she moved to New York that she became involved with the performance art scene.

She has staged solo shows in major cities, including Patty Chang at Jack Tilton Gallery, New York (1999), Ven conmigo, nada contigo. Fuente. Melones. Afeitada. at Museo National de Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2000), Patty Chang: Shangri-La at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the New Museum, New York (2005), Flotsam Jetsam with longtime collaborator David Kelley at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014), and her most extensive exhibition to date, Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake, 2009-2017, at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2017–18).

35 Gorgeous Photos of Valentina Cortese in the 1940s and ’50s

Born 1923 in Milan, Italian actress Valentina Cortese made her screen debut in Italian films in 1940, leading to her first internationally acclaimed roles in Riccardo Freda’s 1948 Italian film Les Misérables, and the 1949 British film The Glass Mountain (1949), which led to a number of roles in American films of the period, but continued to make films in Europe with such directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and François Truffaut.

Cortese signed a contract with 20th Century Fox in 1948. She starred in Malaya (1949) with Spencer Tracy and James Stewart, Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949) with Richard Conte and Lee J. Cobb, The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), co-starring Richard Basehart and William Lundigan, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner and Edmond O’Brien.

In Europe, Cortese starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Le Amiche (1955), Gérard Brach’s The Boat on the Grass (1971), Terry Gilliam’s British film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), and in Franco Zeffirelli projects such as the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and the film Sparrow (1993). Her final American film role was in When Time Ran Out (1980).

Cortese was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in François Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973). She died in 2019 at the age of 96. Take a look at these gorgeous photos to see the beauty of young Valentina Cortese in the 1940s and 1950s.

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Miss-Cue Wearing an A-Bomb Crown to Illustrate Another Misfiring of the Operation Cue Bomb, 1955

One test in the Operation Teapot series, in early 1955, was used to evaluate the potential impact of a nuclear attack on civilian communities. This joint U.S. Atomic Energy Commission - Federal Civil Defense Administration program, known as Operation Cue, measured how well houses, household items, food, shelters, metal buildings, equipment, and mannequins wearing everyday clothing would survive at various distances from a nuclear blast.

After several delays due to high winds, personnel began calling the test “Operation Mis-Cue.” During one such delay, Cue personnel descended on Las Vegas where six U.S. Army personnel from Camp Desert Rock crowned an unidentified Copa Girl at the Sands Hotel, “Miss Cue.”

On May 1, 1955, the Sands Hotel released photos of the showgirl being crowned “to illustrate another mis-firing of the Operation Cue Bomb.” Her crown was, of course, a mushroom cloud.

The detonation finally occurred on May 5, 1955.

Portraits of Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey

Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey (1875–1905), styled Lord Paget until 1880 and Earl of Uxbridge between 1880 and 1898, and nicknamed “Toppy”, was a British peer who was notable during his short life for squandering his inheritance on a lavish social life and accumulating massive debts. Regarded as the “black sheep” of the family, he was dubbed “the dancing marquess” and for his Butterfly Dancing, taken from Loie Fuller, where a voluminous robe of transparent white silk would be waved like wings.

Paget swiftly acquired a reputation for a lavish and spendthrift manner of living. He used his money to buy jewellery and furs, and to throw extravagant parties and flamboyant theatrical performances. He renamed the family's country seat Plas Newydd as “Anglesey Castle” and converted the chapel there into a 150-seat theatre, named the Gaiety Theatre. Here he took the lead role, opulently costumed, in productions ranging from pantomime and comedy to performances of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and Shakespeare’s Henry V. Early performances from around 1899 were mostly variety performances of song and dance numbers, sketches and tableaux vivants in front of an invited audience of notable local people. In 1901, the Gaiety Theatre was refurbished and fitted out with electric stage lighting and re-opened as a public entertainment venue.

For three years Paget took his theatre company on tour around Britain and Europe. His wife disapproved of his lifestyle and obtained a decree nisi of divorce on November 7, 1900; the marriage was later annulled due to nonconsummation. The breakdown of his marriage effectively gave Paget more freedom to enjoy his self-indulgent lifestyle. By this stage he had already begun to mortgage his estates to raise money.

Paget's outrageous and flamboyant lifestyle, his taste for cross-dressing, and the breakdown of his marriage, have led many to assume that he was homosexual. There is no evidence for or against his having had any lovers of either sex: performance historian Viv Gardner believes rather that he was “a classic narcissist: the only person he could love and make love to was himself, because, for whatever reason, he was ‘unlovable’”. The deliberate destruction by his family of those of his papers that might have settled this matter has left any assessment speculative.

By 1904, despite his inheritance and income, Paget had accumulated debts of £544,000 (about £60 million in today) and on June 11 was declared bankrupt. His lavish wardrobe, particularly his dressing gowns from Charvet, and jewels were sold to pay creditors, the jewels alone realizing £80,000.

In 1905, Paget died in Monte Carlo following a long illness, with his ex-wife by his side, and his remains were returned to St Edwen’s Church, Llanedwen, on his Anglesey estate, for burial.

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40 Vintage Photos of Nanette Fabray From Between the 1940s and ’60s

Born 1920 as Ruby Bernadette Nanette Theresa Fabares in San Diego, California, American actress, singer, and dancer Nanette Fabray began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and became a musical-theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, acclaimed for her role in High Button Shoes (1947) and winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life.

In the mid-1950s, Fabray served as Sid Caesar’s comedic partner on Caesar’s Hour, for which she won three Emmy Awards, as well as appearing with Fred Astaire in the film musical The Band Wagon. From 1979 to 1984, she played Katherine Romano, the mother of lead character Ann Romano, on the TV series One Day at a Time. She also appeared as the mother of Christine Armstrong (played by her niece Shelley Fabares) in the television series “Coach.”

Fabray overcame a significant hearing impairment and was a long-time advocate for the rights of the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Her honors for representing the disabled included the President’s Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award.

Fabray died in 2018, at the Canterbury Nursing home in California at the age of 97 from natural causes. These vintage photos captured portraits of young Nanette Fabray from between the 1940s and 1960s.

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Beautiful Vintage Photos of Nina Simone in the 1960s

After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix Records and recorded a multitude of studio and live albums. Simone became a favorite performer in Greenwich Village after her live album Nina Simone at Town Hall was released. By this time, Simone performed pop music only to make money to continue her classical music studies.

In 1964, Simone changed record distributors to the Dutch Philips Records. She had always included songs in her repertoire that drew on her African-American heritage, such as "Brown Baby" by Oscar Brown and "Zungo" by Michael Olatunji on her album Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. 

On her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone in Concert (1964), for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song "Mississippi Goddam". The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some southern states. Promotional copies were smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips. It was after this song that a civil rights message became the norm in Simone's recordings and part of her concerts. As her political activism rose, the rate of release of her music slowed.

In 1967, Simone moved from Philips to RCA Victor. She sang "Backlash Blues" written by Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes, on her first RCA album, Nina Simone Sings the Blues (1967). On Silk & Soul (1967), she recorded Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and "Turning Point". The album 'Nuff Said! (1968) contained live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair of April 7, 1968, three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She dedicated the performance to him and sang "Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)", a song written by Gene Taylor. In 1969, she performed at the Harlem Cultural Festival in Harlem's Mount Morris Park.

Take a look back at Simone in the 1960s through these 18 fascinating portraits:

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Portrait of Madam C.J. Walker, the First Black Woman Millionaire in America

Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove; December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records. Multiple sources mention that although other women (like Mary Ellen Pleasant) might have been the first, their wealth is not as well-documented.

Portrait of Madam C.J. Walker, ca. 1914.

Walker was inspired to create haircare products for Black women after a scalp disorder caused her to lose much of her own hair. She came up with a treatment that would completely change the Black hair care industry.

Walker’s method, known as the “Walker system,” involved scalp preparation, lotions and iron combs. Her custom pomade was a wild success. While other products for Black hair (largely manufactured by white businesses) were on the market, she differentiated hers by emphasizing its attention to the health of the women who would use it. She sold her homemade products directly to Black women, using a personal approach that won her loyal customers. She went on to employ a fleet of saleswomen to sell the product whom she called “beauty culturalists.”

Madam Walker and several friends in her automobile, ca. 1911.

Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1905, with just $1.05 in savings in her pocket. Her products like Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine and Vegetable Shampoo began to gain a loyal following, changing her fortunes. Charles J. Walker moved to Denver in 1906 and they were married soon after. At first, her husband helped her with marketing, advertising and mail orders, but as the business grew, they grew apart and the two divorced.

In 1908, Walker opened a beauty school and factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania named after her daughter. In 1910, she moved her business headquarters in Indianapolis, a city with access to railroads for distribution and a large population of African American customers. She left the management of the Pittsburgh branch to A’Lelia. At the height of production, the Madame C.J. Walker Company employed over three thousand people, largely Black women who sold Walker’s products door-to-door.

The Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1911.

Walker became one of the best-known African Americans and was embraced by the Black press. The success of her business enabled her to live in homes that were a far cry from the one she had grown up in; her Manhattan townhouse became a salon for members of the Harlem Renaissance when her daughter inherited it in the 1920s. Walker’s country home, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington-on-Hudson, was designed by Black architect Vertner Tandy.

Walker’s reputation as an entrepreneur was matched only by her reputation for philanthropy. She established clubs for her employees, encouraging them to give back to their communities and rewarding them with bonuses when they did. At a time when jobs for Black women were fairly limited, she promoted female talent, even stipulating in her company’s charter that only a woman could serve as president. She donated generously to educational causes and Black charities, funding scholarships for women at Tuskegee Institute and donating to the NAACP, the Black YMCA, and dozens of other organizations that helped make Black history.

Gorgeous Portrait Photos of Kim Novak During the Filming of ‘Vertigo’ (1958)

Vertigo is a 1958 American film noir psychological thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The story was based on the 1954 novel D’entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor.

The film stared James Stewart as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson. Scottie retired, rather than face desk-duty, because an incident in the line of duty, which caused him to develop acrophobia (an extreme fear of heights) and vertigo (a false sense of rotational movement). Scottie was hired by an acquaintance, Gavin Elster, as a private investigator to follow Gavin's wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who was behaving strangely.

The film was shot on location in the city of San Francisco, California, as well as in Mission San Juan Bautista, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, and Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It is the first film to use the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie’s acrophobia. As a result of its use in this film, the effect is often referred to as “the Vertigo effect”.

Vertigo received mixed reviews upon initial release, but is now often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career. Attracting significant scholarly criticism, it replaced Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest film ever made in the 2012 British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound critics’ poll. The film is often considered one of the greatest films ever made. It has appeared repeatedly in polls of the best films by the American Film Institute, including a 2007 ranking as the ninth-greatest American movie of all time. In 1996, the film underwent a major restoration to create a new 70 mm print and DTS soundtrack.

In 1989, Vertigo was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Take a look at these vintage photos to see gorgeous portraits of Kim Novak during the filming of Vertigo in 1958.

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40 Handsome Portrait Photos of Robert Montgomery in the 1930s and ’40s

Born 1904 in New York, American actor Robert Montgomery began his acting career on the stage, but was soon hired by MGM. Initially assigned roles in comedies, he soon proved he was able to handle dramatic ones as well. He appeared in a wide variety of roles, such as a weak-willed prisoner in The Big House (1930), an Irish handyman in Night Must Fall (1937) and a boxer mistakenly sent to Heaven in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). The last two earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

During World War II, Montgomery drove ambulances in France until the Dunkirk evacuation. When the United States entered the war on December 8, 1941, he enlisted in the Navy, and was present at the invasion at Normandy. After the war, he returned to Hollywood, where he worked in both films and, later, in television. He was also the father of actress Elizabeth Montgomery.

Montgomery died of cancer in 1981, at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, aged 77. These vintage photos captured portraits of a young and handsome Robert Montgomery in the 1930s and 1940s.

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Stunning Photos of a Young Joan Crawford in the 1920s

Before debuting on Broadway, American actress Joan Crawford began her career dancing in the choruses of traveling revues. After her screen test was sent to producer Harry Rapf in Hollywood, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925.  The actress, then working under the name Lucille LeSueur, officially changed her name to Joan Crawford in 1925.

Growing increasingly frustrated over the size and quality of the parts she was given, Crawford embarked on a campaign of self-promotion. She began attending dances in the afternoons and evenings at hotels around Hollywood and at dance venues on the beach piers, where she often won dance competitions with her performances of the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Her strategy worked and MGM cast her in the film where she first made an impression on audiences, Sally, Irene and Mary (1925).

Within a few years, she became the romantic lead to many of MGM's top male stars. She appeared in Paris (1926), The Unknown (1927), Spring Fever (1927), Across to Singapore (1928), and Four Walls (1928), but it was her role as Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) that catapulted Crawford to stardom. The role established her as a symbol of modern 1920s-style femininity which rivaled Clara Bow, the original "It girl", and Hollywood's foremost flapper. A stream of hits followed Our Dancing Daughters, including two more flapper-themed movies, in which Crawford embodied for her legion of fans an idealized vision of the free-spirited, all-American girl.

Take a look back at a young and stunning Joan Crawford in the 1920s through these 30 stunning pictures:

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Cub Scouts Taking Part in Operation Shoeshine, London, 1972

Two Cub Scouts taking part in Operation Shoeshine, a seven-day campaign during Scout Job Week. Their first customer was British actress Caroline Munro. Showing Ian Kinkaid (left) and Nigel Heap of Southgate, North London, polishing Miss Munro’s boots, 1972.

30 Beautiful Photos of German Actress Ursula Thiess in the 1950s

Born 1924 in Hamburg, German actress Ursula Thiess began her career on the stage in her native Germany and by dubbing female voices in American films as Ursula Schmidt. After she married Georg Otto Thiess, she became Ursula Thiess and was featured in many German magazines, including several cover photos, as well as the cover of Life magazine, 1954, as an up-and-coming model, and she was dubbed the “most beautiful woman in the world.”

Ursula left postwar Germany at the urging of Howard Hughes and signed with RKO. She co-starred with Robert Stack in The Iron Glove (1952), Rock Hudson in Bengal Brigade (1954), Glenn Ford in The Americano (1955), and Robert Mitchum in Bandido (1956).

Ursula was known to be an excellent home decorator, gourmet cook, shadow-box maker, and UCLA Children’s Hospital volunteer. As the wife of Robert Taylor, she gave up her acting career to become a full-time mother and homemaker, though she generally accompanied her husband on film locations, often with her two younger children by Taylor. She even had a recurring role on his hit ABC-TV series, The Detectives. She was known to go hunting and fishing with Taylor, who was a passionate sportsman.

Ursula died natural causes in 2010 at the age of 86. Take a look at these vintage photos to see the beauty of young Ursula Thiess in the 1950s.

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