A Life in Art

I went to the cinema at the weekend, for the first time in two years, to see the latest film by Wes Anderson called The French Dispatch. Although it’s not my favourite of Anderson’s films, of which I am a fan, all of his trademark whimsy, meticulous attention to detail in design and dialogue, and sumptuous colouration are there to enjoy. Set in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé, the film is composed of different episodes, to replicate the various articles in the lovingly presented magazine of the film’s title. A journalistic outpost of the Kansas Evening Sun, the magazine is edited by the fiscally indulgent but lachrymose-intolerant, (“No crying in my office”), Arthur Howitzer Jr., played by Bill Murray (Who else? This is a Wes Anderson film, after all).

My favourite ‘article’ was the one written by the art correspondent, J.K.L. Berensen, played by Tilda Swinton with a pair of teeth last seen on Sister Wendy Beckett. I made an audible gasp - much to my daughter’s disapproval - when Swinton first appeared, presenting a lecture on the ‘French Splatter School’. With magnificently coiffured red hair and wearing a vivid orange kaftan that would have been de rigueur at Abigail’s Party, she was a vision in tangerine!

Swinton’s performance was, naturally, pitch-perfect and I was interested to find out more about the real-life inspiration for her character. The name Berensen conjures up the great Renaissance svengali, Bernard Berenson, but Swinton and Anderson looked to another sophisticated connoisseur of the American art scene, Rosamond Bernier.

Bernier was extremely well-connected and as much at home at an Astor family party in Northeast Harbour, Maine, as the lecture theatre at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Having started lecturing as an occasional hobby, she became one of the most in-demand speakers of the 1970s and 80s. Tickets to hear her speak sold out months in advance. As a journalist, she had written for Vogue in Paris and started her own cultural magazine, L’Oeil. Both elegant and eloquent, she would glide across the podium at her talks, often lit by a single spotlight as she blended erudite scholarly research with personal anecdotes. She had met Picasso and Matisse; Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. A life-long lover of music, she frequently entertained Aaron Copeland and Leonard Bernstein at her home. Her audiences could be assured of hearing a speaker of great quality and charm.

I can’t promise the kaftan, or copious quantities of hairspray, but I hope I can entertain and inform with some of the flair and love for the subject of Rosamond Bernier.