2008feb13. Excerpts from Lee Miller: A Life (2005), by Carolyn Burke.
Elizabeth’s compliant lovers flipped a coin to decide who would see her off. With the Millers, De Liagre, the victor, watched her ship sail down the Hudson in the morning sun while Argylle followed in his biplane, then swooped close to the sundeck to let loose a cascade of roses in Elizabeth’s honor. [pg 69]
Like Lee, [Tatiana Iacovleva] caused a stir when she entered a room. A tale went round Paris about the night when, finding herself across a crowded bistro from her friends, she walked the length of the room on the tabletops to join them. [pg 99]
At Marie Laure’s futurist ball, [Man Ray] photographed her sharkskin gown while guests in silver spacesuits glared at his outfit: a clothes bag with holes for limbs and a cap topped by a propeller. [pg 101]
By September, it must have been clear to Lee that her mentor Man saw her as a threat. The violence implicit in the many works of art that cut her in pieces became explicit in another of Man’s objects on the theme of vision. Some years before they met, Man had attached an image of an eye to a metronome; he called the work Object to Be Destroyed. During the summer of 1932, after her affairs with Aziz [Eloui Bey] and Julien [Levy], Man replaced the image with Lee’s eye, cut from one of his portraits, and gave the work a new title: Object of Destruction. As if warning her, he published a drawing of the object with instructions for its use: “Cut out the eye from the portrait of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.” [pg 127]
In December, the Royal Academy asked a number of painters, including Roland [Penrose], to contribute to their “United Artists” exhibition – an unprecedented effort by this conservative bastion to boost morale. Due to the language (“sex,” “flesh,” “arse”) with which he annotated one of his canvases, the committee asked him to replace it with something less vulgar. Roland followed Lee’s nose-thumbing suggestion. “What I did,” he wrote, “was ... get a card in deaf and dumb sign language from which I chose a four letter word S-H-I-T, and painted a row of hands saying this.” The committee hung this work opposite a portrait of King George, where it remained until a deaf and dumb cleaner “started hooting with laughter, and gave away what it said.” [pg 201]
Rationing was induced gradually (bacon, sugar, and butter, then meat, tea, and fats, and in 1941, eggs and milk). The Ministry of Food urged housewives to cook grains and vegetables. Dinner might consist of lentil sausages, mock goose (a gratin of potatoes and apples), and victory sponge (potato pudding with carrots). A soup for air raids could be made from root vegetables, the ministry explained: “A hot drink works wonders in times of shock.” [pg 208]
Iris Carpenter resented being assigned to an Allied hospital, but found that ambulances could be exciting when bombs fell all around her, shattering her eardrum. [pg 222]
About this time, Lee joined a group of GIs who were liberating the contents of a distillery. Spying a Red Cross jerry can meant to hold sterilized water, she filled it with framboise (raspberry brandy) and painted the can khaki. From then on, she took this “gasoline can” wherever she went. At a time when gas was more precious than gold, people were not surprised by this precaution, but some were taken aback when they saw her drink from it. When the “gas” ran out, she filled the container with whatever came to hand, making unimaginable new cocktails and keeping herself in good spirits. [pg 243]
