Social Scene

Jordan Hellmuth • September 12, 2013

Fashion lovers and philanthropists alike flocked to Fusion de Filantropia & Fashion Show June 6 to support the American Diabetes Association’s National Capital Area Step Out to Stop Diabetes.

It was a night of fashion, community and philanthropy, hosted by Stacy Adams and her personal fitness training business, Fitness Together, in the center of Georgetown Court between Prospect and N Streets. The event featured displays of Mark Roscoe Design’s custom neckwear and fine women’s couture line, followed by an after-party fashion show at Karen Millen on Wisconsin Avenue.

Chicago-based couture designer Mark Roscoe, who has been involved in the fashion industry for 30 years, is also still a full-time, practicing trial lawyer. His family, among those of others in attendance, has been greatly affected by diabetes. Fifty percent of the items purchased or ordered from his Roscoe’s line and other proceeds, including privately donated items from the evening, benefited the American Diabetes Association.

Among those present were celebrity guest host Paul Wharton of Paul Wharton Style, Michelle Obama’s makeup artist Carl Ray, L.A. writer Liz Fraley, fresh off of covering the Cannes Film Festival, former NFL player John Booty and Rokas Beresniovas of the Georgetown Business Association. Those sporting Roscoe Designs ties included ABC7’s Scott Thuman and Mr. District of Columbia 2012 Hirsh Singh.
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Mary Bird •

An opening night celebration at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens on June 4 showcased the elegant life style of Marjorie Merriweather Post. Guests enjoyed an outdoor reception before proceeding to the Lunar Lawn for a tented dinner that included Mrs. Post’s frequently served Salmon en Papillote. Hillwood Executive Director Kate Markert called the exhibit, “a singular tribute to a life lived artfully.” Mrs. Post’s granddaughter and Hillwood President Ellen MacNeille Charles said, “Little did you know that the reason to be here is to celebrate my birthday.” As “a way of life that is fast disappearing,” she said that her grandmother was not embarrassed about her wealth but loved to share it. Guests had a first look at previously off-limit areas such as a recently renovated fallout shelter and personal massage room. [gallery ids="101339,152103,152066,152099,152071,152094,152078,152083,152088" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The Washington Hilton was party central at “Washington’s Black-Tie Gala for the Four-on-the-Floor Crowd” on June 8. Festively attired canines proudly escorted their humans and urged them toward the special Bark Bar courtesy of Barkley Square Gourmet Bakery and Boutique. News anchor Scott Thuman again served as Master of Ceremonies, sharing that his schedule requires 3 a.m. dog walks. WHS President and CEO Lisa LaFontaine spoke of the growth of programs for the “human-animal bond” and expressed her appreciation to Bark Ball Co-Chairs Terri Fariello and Beth Viola. Established in 1870 as the country’s only Congressionally chartered animal welfare agency, WHS provides protection, care and enrichment for some 30,000 animals each year. [gallery ids="101346,152275,152238,152271,152243,152267,152248,152253,152261" nav="thumbs"]

Rachel Scola •

On June 15, the National Museum of Women in the Arts seemed to transform into Jay Gatsby’s home itself. The International Club of DC hosted the Great Gatsby Ball presented with the Museum as one of their calendar events for club members, but was also an event for the Young pARTners Circle, a group through NMWA who promotes women artists and connects young professionals through an array of events. There was live music, a photobooth and a variety of delectable desserts served. Drinks began pouring and couples started dancing and suddenly it was 1925 again. About halfway through the night the dance troupe Fidgety Feet took the floor to perform The Charleston and livened up the entire crowd. It was quite a spectacle and memorable night, no doubt one for the books for both the International Club and Young pARTners Circle. [gallery ids="119082,119075,119087,119093" nav="thumbs"]

Jordan Hellmuth •

Luigi Parasmo Salon, co-owned by Luigi Parasmo and Javier Calvo, gave guests with the royal treatment June 10 at their one-year salon celebration in Georgetown. Dressed to the nines, Luigi and Javier wore all black suits, completing their evening looks with just the right amount of hair product as they greeted more than 150 guests. “This was the biggest dream of my life,” said Parasmo. “Luigi’s dream is my dream,” added Calvo. [gallery ids="101344,152190,152173,152186,152180" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The predictions of dire weather forced the Hotel Monaco to relocate its June 13 festivities indoors, but spirits were hardly dampened. Music resounded on several floors as Kimpton loyalists enjoyed inventive cocktails and nibbles from the chain’s talented chefs and mixologists. Poste provided pork rillettes, Alexandria’s Brabo offered blinis generously laden with salmon and crème fraiche, the American Brasserie in Baltimore tempted with a bacon sausage dog, Urbana near Dupont Circle proffered chilled pea soup, and there was ever so much more. The party atmosphere was fueled by the equally tempting libations. [gallery ids="101343,152157,152151,152145,152140,152168,152133,152172,152176,152163" nav="thumbs"]

Kelley Hudak •

The Second Annual YWCA U.S.A. Women of Distinction Awards Gala at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill June 7 honored five women who serve as role models for women and girls around the world: Sharon Love, mother of Yeardley Love, Patty Stonesifer, Commander Zoe Dunning, Victoria Dinges of Allstate and actress and activist Eva Longoria, who received the Dorothy Height Racial Justice Award. The event was emceed by Cynné Simpson of ABC7/WJLA-TV. The YWCA, also known as the Young Women’s Christian Association, is the largest provider of battered women’s shelters and domestic violence services in the country, serving more than 500,000 women and children annually. Allstate Insurance was also recognized for its domestic violence awareness programs and pledged to double the amount of YWCAs in the program. [gallery ids="101342,152128" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

For nearly a century, the Arts Club of Washington has promoted and celebrated the visual, performing and literary arts at its historic I Street location, which was formerly the home of President James Monroe. On June 7, the club held an opening reception for the current exhibition featuring works in a wide variety of media by Arts Club artists. Painter Vicki Doyle is the featured artist in this cooperative gallery. Painting Chair Susanne Eisinger welcomed members and guests who were encouraged to “keep creating.” [gallery ids="101341,152130,152112,152127,152118,152123" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

On June 5, Mark Ohnmacht was presented the “Ovation” Award for Outstanding Choral Music at the Clarendon Ballroom. He follows in the distinguished footsteps of previous honorees J. Reilly Lewis, Robert Shafer and Norman Scribner. The Choralis Foundation, founded by Artistic Director Gretchen Kuhrmann in 2000, is dedicated to nurturing a passion for choral music in our area, which one guest speaker termed the “choral capital of the United States,” through offering excellence in choral performance and providing educational outreach. This year’s recipient said, “It’s great hanging around choral people,” and, “my favorite musical instrument is the human voice.” The Choral Arts Society of Washington’s Artistic Director Scott Tucker led the on tune crowd in two musical tributes. Guests departed with a wine glass festooned with a page of sheet music [gallery ids="101340,152114,152101,152110,152107" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

When Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso joined forces in 1909, the two young painters were in their late twenties. The artistic landscape in Europe had already been razed, scoured and rebuilt many times over the previous century, starting with Impressionism and continuing through Fauvism and the fractured perspectives innovated by Paul Cézanne. The cultural atmosphere was roiling, disparate and wild. For Braque and Picasso the iron was hot, and they had the collective vision and sheer force of will to strike.

Cubism was a style of painting that synthesized the artistic innovations of the previous century and blasted them like a human cannonball through a steel grate. Working side-by-side in the early 1910s, they produced hundreds of canvases, many of them still life studies, that are nearly indistinguishable between one artist and the other. The pursuit of their ambition was a gamble that required the hubris and stamina of youth, and an unusually clear vision for a new era. This pictorial language, the folding surface planes and abrupt shifts of shadow and light, living in a space both intricately dimensional and completely flat, forever altered the course of art.

At the Phillips Collection through Sept. 1, “Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life” examines Braque’s career from 1928 – 1945, a time between the two World Wars when the artist honed his cubist innovations and individual style through the motif of the still life.

While Picasso enthralled audiences with his reinvention of the human figure and a sort of animal wildness, Braque upheld the quiet poetry of landscapes and still life studies. The act of painting for Braque was the ultimate expression of intellectual and corporeal fulfillment, and it is easy to get caught up in this sensation—the catharsis of his thickly slathered brush strokes across the canvas. However, the still life is a bizarre subject for early 20th century Europe.

First, take a moment to really consider the still life. It is the utmost depiction of vanity, an ode to stuff, effects and amenities. Owning a gold-plated tea set or a Greek vase is a gentrified privilege, let alone hanging an homage to those goods on your wall.

Meanwhile, Europe was ravaged by the Great War; President Wilson and Herbert Hoover, under the American Relief Administration, had been spearheading humanitarian efforts across central Europe and Russia to prevent entire populations from starvation.

Yet Braque was painting vases, woven silk tablecloths, plates of fish and lush mountains of fruit, pulsing with thick colors and self-sustaining mythos.

It is an anachronism that Braque’s focus moved against the social tableau, but it is unlikely that he was unaware of the implication. Coming from a working class family—his father and grandfather were housepainters, with whom the artist trained as a young man—he was not immune to the effects of war. He abandoned his prolific partnership with Picasso in 1914 to enlist in the French Army, where he suffered a severe head wound in combat.

Art is a unique form that is capable of succeeding in presenting and exploring a problem without a clear resolution—artists spend their entire careers trying to crack the foundation, not repair it. This might be why Braque was comfortable painting the trappings of luxury while so many suffered. To quote the artist in a 1939 interview with the French literary journal Cahiers d’Art, “The painter lives through the age. But his work depends too much on the past for him to accommodate the changes of the hour… Let us distinguish categorically between art and current affairs.”

Of course, all of this assigns a hefty and misleading political bent to Braque’s paintings, as if they are commentaries on the very indulgences they exhibit. If anything, Braque did seem to get occasionally distracted by his own success. Some paintings throughout the exhibition feel like they were made more for stylistic branding than the pursuit of an artistic agenda. His colors and compositions get richer and bigger through the show’s timeline. Wallpaper and carved table legs are paid increasingly more attention. Even his explorations of light and shadow, while usually rendered with the exploratory reverence of Cubism, become densely refracted by irrelevantly ornate wall molding.

Not that the work isn’t beautiful. It is just worth deciphering the real painting in the show from the more decorative, because the real stuff is truly breathtaking.

“Pitcher and Newspaper (The Greek Vase)” is largely void of Braque’s usual patterned flourish, with a green-grey composition that showcases his style with masterly sensitivity to tonal balance. Much like the objects in the painting—lemons, a pipe, a cup, a newspaper and a vase—the canvas feels simple and lived in, beholden to a particular moment. It strives not to be grand but content as an étude (a French word meaning “study,” frequently used in music), which is lovely.

“Fruit, Glass, and Mandolin” is a triumph of color. Mixing his paint with sand to add texture, the delicate shades of pink that fill the canvas seem plucked from the hem of a Raphael “Madonna” or a breezy Rococo scene by François Boucher.
In “Vase, Palette, and Mandolin,” a black background frames in blocks and fragments a still life with loose and flowing pastel colors, which dance as if split from a prism, broken by thin lines and intricately distorted objects.

There is the rough discordance of line and color in “Pitcher, Candlestick, and Black Fish,” the exorbitance of “Mandolin and Score (The Banjo)” and the blocky coarseness of “Blue Guitar.” These are the works where Braque seems to turn his full attention toward an unfettered love of painting.

A photograph of his studio at the entrance to the gallery perfectly captures Braque’s devotion to his work. Thick drapes blanket the walls and stacks of paintings lean against them among a few large empty frames, while others hang on the wall. The wood floors are dark and clean, and a rocky landscape of half-used paint on a wide palette sits upfront on a table among jars of solvents and linseed oil and countless brushes. It is hedonic in painterly richness, a masterpiece in itself. It looks like Henri Matisse’s 1911 portrait of his own studio.

Braque never painted a seminal canvas to rival the cacophonous grandeur of Picasso’s “Guernica” or “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” His masterpiece is his oeuvre, perfectly complete in itself, even in considering occasional distractions by the very id of his subject. Here his paintings come together as one fluid movement, just as they must have in his studio amidst the swell of creation. ?
For more information, visit www.PhillipsCollection.org