Things Are Getting Weird!

What Have We Seen? What Have We Heard?

Who stands at my window?  Who knocks upon my door?

Zohma & Jean Charlot | 1933

Zohma & Jean Charlot, photographed by Edward Weston, 1933.

Portrait of Jean Charlot by Henrietta Shore, 1927 on view at LACMA.

Although Jean Charlot was born in Paris and descended from parents he later described as “sundry exotic ancestors” – his father, a French businessman reared in Russia, and his mother, with her French, Mexican and Jewish lineage – Charlot was drawn to the Mexican part of his heritage. From the age of two, he was surrounded by pre-Hispanic antiquities.

He studied in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, exhibited in the Autumn Salon, and made the usual training tour of Brittany. In 1920, his mother introduced him to Mexico where he sketched for archeologists excavating Mayan ruins. In 1922, after fighting in the First World War he decided to move to Mexico. He shared a studio with the painter Fernando Leal and became involved in the booming artistic scene promoting wood engraving and lithographic techniques.

He quickly established himself in the art community of Mexico City and befriended Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco, main figures in the Mexican Mural movement of the early twenties known as the Syndicate of Painters and Sculptors. The movement quickly spread to the USA. Charlot is credited by Rivera for reviving and refining the art of true frescoes.

Read the full biography here (Courtesy of the Isaacs Art Center)

Inspiration, Study, Creativity
Fresco, 1967

Just Be Yourself | The Invisible Man 1933

All right, you fools. You've brought it on yourselves! Everything would have come right if you'd only left me alone. You've driven me near madness with your peering through the keyholes and gaping through the curtains. And now you'll suffer for it! You're crazy to know who I am, aren't you? All right! I'll show you! Here's one for you, and one for you. I'll show you who I am and what I am.

-The Invisible Man (1933)

Will to Power | Barbara Stanwyck in '33

Tyrone Powers and Barbara Stanwyck 

This movie is cited as being most responsible for the implementation of the private 'production code' in 1934. Barbara Stanwyck stars in this rags to riches story in pre-ww2 New York City, This clip contains a scenes cut from the final release, a breast grope and the entire rail yard 'exchange'. The Nietzsche speech here was also substantially changed. John Wayne has a small role here, as one of Stanwyck's early conquests.

Babyface (1933)

Early Magnifier Reading Glasses | Los Angeles