men, she felt, were ill-equipped to handle color with the same ease.
This is why she felt that to truly portray women realistically one must free them from the shadows of black-and-white photography. She wanted the men to stop telling them that they were beautiful only if photographed in a series of grays; color simply made them stand out. Made them unmissable, even if it was all in fun. (Paradoxically, Madame Amadora’s women, once they were portrayed in all those electric levels of color, were later thought to be extraordinary creatures of the imagination.)
Now Amadora didn’t just want color, she wanted amplified color, crazy color, layers of red on red on red, or blues taken with blue cellophaned lights. Color filters. She wanted definition, sharp contrast; none of the gentle blurring of the traditional portrait. She wanted surrealism, whimsy, and Paris. She wanted color as it had never been seen in a photograph—no gentle hues, no heavenly glow, no delicate hand-tinted pictures. She wanted it as a painter may crave color. As an artist.
“You did it,” said George as he and Amadora kicked off their fancy shoes in the wee hours of the morning following her gallery show featuring her color portraits.
“I did, didn’t I?” Amadora stretched and smiled, lying the length of the sofa.
The pictures on display were of her usual stage, movie, and literary stars, the same stiff nobles and their wives. Only this time they were in gowns of every hue, and dark uniforms festooned with gold braid and multicolored medals, red and blue floor-length capes about the shoulders. They stood before backgrounds of tiny gold stars against a field of white drapes.
There was a woman with red hair, red lips, wearing a red dress in front of a red wall.
Another woman appeared lost in thought as she sat before a pale blue sky hung with large, white cutout paper stars as she contemplated an enormous world globe.
All of Madame Amadora’s props were here: the clouds of butterflies in iridescent blues and greens; the stuffed birds and a bull’s head; the schools of glass fish; the masks; the fake flowers; the stars, small and golden, large and white; the tiny songbirds. It was as if she had raided Deyrolles on rue du Bac.
The centerpiece of the show was her series of twenty-four Greek and Roman goddesses. The models were all titled Englishwomen only too delighted to dress up as the immortals of Madame Amadora’s dreamy firmament without understanding her sly, extravagant feminist view. She had learned to charm and flatter years ago, at Lallie Charles’s studio, without ever changing her politics; her pictures were all about equality for women, whether it was a glamorous “housewife” hanging laundry that consisted only of French silk lingerie or a nude woman, plastic flowers in her hair, hard at her sewing machine, running through yards and yards of tulle.
But these women of means missed the humor and wit because they were beguiled by the glamour of Madame Amadora’s interpretation of Andromeda, chained to a rock in a three-thousand-dollar Fortuny gown, girdled with a belt of cheap seashells. They couldn’t see beyond Europa embracing a stuffed bull’s head wearing a crown of silk flowers. Arethusa’s hair was tangled in glossy green metal seaweed as she bent to a bouquet of tiger lilies, a parade of glass fish passing by.
Ceres was a fantasy in orange and gold; Hecate, Dido, Helen of Troy were cold and lifeless statues under blue filtered lights.
Venus was pink tulle and pearls, while Daphne was ladies-who-lunch pearls and lost within a laurel tree.
The Queen of the Amazons was clad in an off-the-shoulder spotted fur bathing suit, with a fur necklace that held a deadly arrow in her neck.
Medusa, the showpiece, was an arresting beauty with unnaturally dark lavender eyes, who stared out from the picture, her hair a mass of painted rubber snakes, studded with the occasional rhinestone, with more snakes coiling around her
This is why she felt that to truly portray women realistically one must free them from the shadows of black-and-white photography. She wanted the men to stop telling them that they were beautiful only if photographed in a series of grays; color simply made them stand out. Made them unmissable, even if it was all in fun. (Paradoxically, Madame Amadora’s women, once they were portrayed in all those electric levels of color, were later thought to be extraordinary creatures of the imagination.)
Now Amadora didn’t just want color, she wanted amplified color, crazy color, layers of red on red on red, or blues taken with blue cellophaned lights. Color filters. She wanted definition, sharp contrast; none of the gentle blurring of the traditional portrait. She wanted surrealism, whimsy, and Paris. She wanted color as it had never been seen in a photograph—no gentle hues, no heavenly glow, no delicate hand-tinted pictures. She wanted it as a painter may crave color. As an artist.
“You did it,” said George as he and Amadora kicked off their fancy shoes in the wee hours of the morning following her gallery show featuring her color portraits.
“I did, didn’t I?” Amadora stretched and smiled, lying the length of the sofa.
The pictures on display were of her usual stage, movie, and literary stars, the same stiff nobles and their wives. Only this time they were in gowns of every hue, and dark uniforms festooned with gold braid and multicolored medals, red and blue floor-length capes about the shoulders. They stood before backgrounds of tiny gold stars against a field of white drapes.
There was a woman with red hair, red lips, wearing a red dress in front of a red wall.
Another woman appeared lost in thought as she sat before a pale blue sky hung with large, white cutout paper stars as she contemplated an enormous world globe.
All of Madame Amadora’s props were here: the clouds of butterflies in iridescent blues and greens; the stuffed birds and a bull’s head; the schools of glass fish; the masks; the fake flowers; the stars, small and golden, large and white; the tiny songbirds. It was as if she had raided Deyrolles on rue du Bac.
The centerpiece of the show was her series of twenty-four Greek and Roman goddesses. The models were all titled Englishwomen only too delighted to dress up as the immortals of Madame Amadora’s dreamy firmament without understanding her sly, extravagant feminist view. She had learned to charm and flatter years ago, at Lallie Charles’s studio, without ever changing her politics; her pictures were all about equality for women, whether it was a glamorous “housewife” hanging laundry that consisted only of French silk lingerie or a nude woman, plastic flowers in her hair, hard at her sewing machine, running through yards and yards of tulle.
But these women of means missed the humor and wit because they were beguiled by the glamour of Madame Amadora’s interpretation of Andromeda, chained to a rock in a three-thousand-dollar Fortuny gown, girdled with a belt of cheap seashells. They couldn’t see beyond Europa embracing a stuffed bull’s head wearing a crown of silk flowers. Arethusa’s hair was tangled in glossy green metal seaweed as she bent to a bouquet of tiger lilies, a parade of glass fish passing by.
Ceres was a fantasy in orange and gold; Hecate, Dido, Helen of Troy were cold and lifeless statues under blue filtered lights.
Venus was pink tulle and pearls, while Daphne was ladies-who-lunch pearls and lost within a laurel tree.
The Queen of the Amazons was clad in an off-the-shoulder spotted fur bathing suit, with a fur necklace that held a deadly arrow in her neck.
Medusa, the showpiece, was an arresting beauty with unnaturally dark lavender eyes, who stared out from the picture, her hair a mass of painted rubber snakes, studded with the occasional rhinestone, with more snakes coiling around her
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