Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about an artist who has kind of been
Speaker 1: on my radar for a while, but definitely as a
Speaker 1: bit of a backgrounder. And then one of my very
Speaker 1: dearest friends suggested her because there is a really fabulous
Speaker 1: exhibit of her work going on at the DeYoung Museum
Speaker 1: in San Francisco right now, not for a whole lot longer,
Speaker 1: It's up until February ninth, and I one hundred percent
Speaker 1: scrambled for a minute to see if I can make
Speaker 1: it out there, but my schedule is not being cooperative
Speaker 1: with that plan, so I ordered a bunch of books
Speaker 1: and spent a ton of time researching her instead. So
Speaker 1: many thanks to my dear friend Kristen, who I adore,
Speaker 1: for setting this idea in motion tomorrow. The Olimpica was
Speaker 1: a trailblazer with an incredible, very fresh style that really
Speaker 1: defined and influenced the Art Deco movement. She lived a
Speaker 1: life that was focused on originality, both artistic and personally.
Speaker 1: She is a lot of personality heads up as we
Speaker 1: talk about her that there is very brief mention of
Speaker 1: domestic violence in this episode. Tamara Gerwick Gorshka was born,
Speaker 1: according to her own account, on May sixteenth, eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: probably in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents were Boris Gerwick Gorshki,
Speaker 1: who was a lawyer, and Malvina Gurick Gorshka. As she
Speaker 1: always told her personal story, her family moved to Moscow
Speaker 1: and she was still very, very tiny, but there's really
Speaker 1: been a lot of debate about whether that was the
Speaker 1: case or whether she was actually born there after the
Speaker 1: family moved. The timing of that move also suggests that
Speaker 1: she would have been born several years ear earlier than
Speaker 1: she actually claimed, so it's now believed that she was
Speaker 1: actually born in eighteen ninety four. To add even more
Speaker 1: confusion to the story of her entry into the world,
Speaker 1: her first name appears in three different ways in addition
Speaker 1: to Tamara. Sometimes this is recorded as Maria and other
Speaker 1: times as Rosalia. There are also recorded entries where the
Speaker 1: name is some combination of two or those three possible
Speaker 1: first names. She had an older brother named Stanzik and
Speaker 1: eventually a baby sister named Adrian. There are additional question
Speaker 1: marks in Tamora's childhood, some of them quite tragic. Her father, Boris,
Speaker 1: possibly died by suicide, although Tomorrow always stated that her
Speaker 1: parents had divorced while she was still young. If you're
Speaker 1: starting to think, wow, she told a lot of stories
Speaker 1: that don't really always connect with what's verifiable that is accurate,
Speaker 1: and you might want to just be accustomed to that.
Speaker 1: Boris was not part of her life though. After her
Speaker 1: very earliest years, regardless of the nature of the end
Speaker 1: of the marriage, Malvina took her children and moved back
Speaker 1: to Warsaw, where she had grown up and where her family,
Speaker 1: which was quite wealthy, assisted in raising the children. As
Speaker 1: a teenager, Tamara benefited from her relationship with her grandmother, Clementina,
Speaker 1: in that the two of them traveled extensively together. Tamara
Speaker 1: got a lot of exposure to arts and culture, and
Speaker 1: because of her family's wealth, she was also able to
Speaker 1: attend a Swiss finishing school while staying with relatives in
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg. Sometime between the ages of eighteen and twenty one,
Speaker 1: Tomorrow met a young man named Todayus Lempiqui, and today
Speaker 1: Us was handsome. He was a lawyer. He was very
Speaker 1: prominent in the Saint Petersburg social scene, and the pair
Speaker 1: quickly fell in love and got married. Things seemed perfect
Speaker 1: at this point. The couple ran in very stylish and
Speaker 1: wealthy circles, and today Us was on track together had
Speaker 1: an appointment as a lawyer for the czar. But that
Speaker 1: meant that when the Russian Revolution started in nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: and the Bolsheviks came to power, Today's was on the
Speaker 1: wrong side of the revolution and he was arrested. The
Speaker 1: exact reason is a little unclear. He was arrested in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, and Tomorrow was not told why.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow's family had already left Poland, which was occupied, and
Speaker 1: they had headed to Copenhagen, but Tomorrow's stayed in Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 1: where the couple had been living, and looked for him.
Speaker 1: She even visited prisons to see if he was there.
Speaker 1: That didn't turn up anything, so she started asking anybody
Speaker 1: she could for help, and finally got some assistance from
Speaker 1: the Swedish consul. It's not really spelled out anywhere, but
Speaker 1: it seems like she may have had an affair with
Speaker 1: the consul. He promised that he was working on Today's case,
Speaker 1: but also urged her to get out of Russia, which
Speaker 1: she eventually agreed to. He got her to Finland and
Speaker 1: then the Console returns to Russia with the promise that
Speaker 1: he would keep working on freeing her husband. Tomorrow went
Speaker 1: to Copenhagen and eventually the Console was able to secure
Speaker 1: Todais's release. He was able to join his wife, and
Speaker 1: from there they moved to Paris and sort of resettled there.
Speaker 1: They had their daughter, Maria Christina. She was born in
Speaker 1: Paris shortly after the move, and they called her Casette.
Speaker 1: She would become a huge part not just of Tomorrow's life,
Speaker 1: but also of her art. Yeah, there is some insinuation
Speaker 1: in most biographies that that Console kind of was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I will help you if you help me by sexual favors.
Speaker 1: So Tracy just referenced Tamara's art career, and that art
Speaker 1: career began in Paris. At this point, the family had nothing,
Speaker 1: and it seems that Todayo's was really struggling regarding a job.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow's sister Adrianne is often credited with advising her sibling.
Speaker 1: This is written different ways, but basically, get a career
Speaker 1: and you won't have to depend on your husband. And
Speaker 1: this sort of makes it sound like today Is was
Speaker 1: just kind of kicking around like a deadbeat, but it
Speaker 1: is a lot more complicated than that. He had just
Speaker 1: spent six weeks as a political prisoner, and he was
Speaker 1: very changed by that experience. He was not the happy,
Speaker 1: go lucky playboy that he had been when the couple met.
Speaker 1: But Tamorrow also didn't have any patience for this change
Speaker 1: in personality. Although she did step up to financially support
Speaker 1: the family, Today's, for his part, was not kind to
Speaker 1: her either. He turned down jobs that he was offered
Speaker 1: because he felt they were beneath him, and this led
Speaker 1: to arguing, and that arguing escalated to the point where
Speaker 1: Today's became physically abusive. Both of these people were miserable
Speaker 1: as she was looking for ways to bring in an
Speaker 1: income through art. She was incredibly sad about doing so.
Speaker 1: One of the things she did at this time was
Speaker 1: to add the DA to her name to become Tamora Olimpica.
Speaker 1: She had a strong knowledge of art from her travels
Speaker 1: to museums around the world with her grandmother, but in
Speaker 1: Paris she started studying art formally with Maurice Deni and
Speaker 1: andrelt Lot was particularly influential on her, although she did
Speaker 1: soon go past him in skill. According to an interview
Speaker 1: with Tamara's great granddaughter and a state manager, Marisa d'limpica,
Speaker 1: that was part of a short documentary prepared by the
Speaker 1: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in connection with that
Speaker 1: exhibit we mentioned at the top of the show, Tomorrow
Speaker 1: once told her quote, you know, Marissa, when we left
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg, we had to flee. We lost our house,
Speaker 1: we lost many of our friends, we lost all of
Speaker 1: our possessions. We arrived in Paris with nothing. I decided
Speaker 1: I was going to become the most important painter in Paris.
Speaker 1: And after every painting I would sell, I would buy
Speaker 1: myself a diamond bracelet. So that may sound like a
Speaker 1: frivolous move, and certainly Tomorrow was a very showy human being.
Speaker 1: She was like such a peacock in all the great ways.
Speaker 1: But as her great granddaughter Marissa goes on to explain,
Speaker 1: those purchases actually achieved two things. So one, that stack
Speaker 1: of bracelets that did grow on her forearm telegraphed how
Speaker 1: successful she was. And two those valuable pieces of jewelry
Speaker 1: served as a sort of insurance policy. Tomorrow knew that
Speaker 1: if her life once again turned on a dime like
Speaker 1: it had in Russia and she was left with nothing,
Speaker 1: she could use those bracelets as a potential financial cushion,
Speaker 1: basically selling them off to live. After we take a
Speaker 1: quick sponsor break, we'll talk about the way her career
Speaker 1: really took off. By nineteen twenty two, Dlimpica was ready
Speaker 1: to start showing her work. The first painting that she
Speaker 1: became known for in Paris was portrait of a young
Speaker 1: Lady in a blue dress. This is an image of
Speaker 1: a woman named Ira Perrault, with whom Tamara had a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship. This painting doesn't feature the very stylized appearance
Speaker 1: that Dylmpica's work would eventually become known for. It shows
Speaker 1: Ira from the waist up and she appears to be
Speaker 1: sitting and wearing a very simple, drapy blue garment. It
Speaker 1: says it's a blue dress. Honestly, it looks like a
Speaker 1: piece of fabric draped across her. Era's dark hair is wavy,
Speaker 1: it looks slightly tozzled. It's framing her face, and her
Speaker 1: face has an orange red lip, and her dark eyes
Speaker 1: are outlined with coal. Compared to Dlmpica's later work, it
Speaker 1: looks quite naturalist. Another painting, portrait of a polo player,
Speaker 1: is most likely a painting of her husband, Todaus. This
Speaker 1: image is also a pretty straightforward portrait. The man that
Speaker 1: it features is facing slightly down and away from the viewer,
Speaker 1: so his eyes are shadowed and his expression is fairly neutral.
Speaker 1: His clothes are shades of beijas, tans, and browns. Another
Speaker 1: painting from her early showings once again shows a person
Speaker 1: close to her life, this time her daughter Cosette. This
Speaker 1: painting is called Portrait of a Little Girl with her
Speaker 1: Teddy Bear, and it shows Cosette sitting down with her
Speaker 1: teddy Bear seated next to her. One of her arms
Speaker 1: is draped around the bear's shoulders. They kind of look
Speaker 1: like they're sitting on a stupora set of stairs. This
Speaker 1: painting is a little less detailed than the other two
Speaker 1: we've mentioned, with more expressive brushstrokes that are still dramatic
Speaker 1: in contrast, but they're often softer than in the era
Speaker 1: in today's portraits. She doesn't use outlines in this one,
Speaker 1: so all of the vibes are very soft on it. Overall,
Speaker 1: Dlimpica's early works reflect the development of her personal style
Speaker 1: after her studies with Denie who was a symbolist at
Speaker 1: Loote who combined Cubism with more natural styles, and her
Speaker 1: early art shows that she is working towards becoming a
Speaker 1: unique voice in the Paris art scene. She later noted,
Speaker 1: and she said this many times in a variety of ways,
Speaker 1: my goal is never to copy, create a new style,
Speaker 1: clear luminous colors and feel the elegance of the models.
Speaker 1: Over the next several years, Stylmpica's singular style started to
Speaker 1: really coll less in her work. Throughout the years from
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty four, she was showing
Speaker 1: her work alongside other artists in salons, but just a
Speaker 1: few years into her career, she also had her first
Speaker 1: solo show that was in Milan. After the Milan exhibit,
Speaker 1: Tamara's rise to fame as an artist was quite rapid.
Speaker 1: She later attributed this speedy career progress to her technique
Speaker 1: and style, noting quote, I was the first woman to
Speaker 1: paint cleanly, and that was the basis of my success.
Speaker 1: From one hundred pictures, mine will always stand out, and
Speaker 1: so the galleries began to hang my work in their
Speaker 1: best rooms, always in the middle, because my painting was attractive,
Speaker 1: it was precise, it was finished. So she wasn't wrong
Speaker 1: about aspects of this. Her work is very distinctive. I
Speaker 1: will say, if I could just travel back in time
Speaker 1: and bottle like a tenth of her confidence, that would
Speaker 1: be spectacular. Yeah, that must be a great headspace to
Speaker 1: live in. By the late nineteen twenties, she was making
Speaker 1: enough money to purchase a home on Paris's Left Bank
Speaker 1: and to have it renovated in very luxurious Art Deco style.
Speaker 1: A big factor in that financial success and stability was
Speaker 1: the patronage of doctor Pierre Bouchard, who had made a
Speaker 1: fortune by inventing an indigestion cure, and he had purchased
Speaker 1: some of Dlimpica's work before he offered her a two
Speaker 1: year contract for a series of portraits of his family,
Speaker 1: and she used the money from that deal to set
Speaker 1: herself up in her home, including creating a very beautiful
Speaker 1: studio to work in. Her lavish tastes were not isolated
Speaker 1: to art and design, though Dlimpica became well known as
Speaker 1: a party fixture, on the Paris social scene, and she
Speaker 1: definitely engaged in a really sex, drugs and alcohol lifestyle.
Speaker 1: She was a work hard, play hard kind of woman
Speaker 1: who had an intense work ethic that meant she would
Speaker 1: paint for nine to ten hours at a time and
Speaker 1: then would unwind with some champagne in a massage before
Speaker 1: heading out for the evening. She had affairs with both
Speaker 1: women and men, and a lot of them became subjects
Speaker 1: of her work. That work was inherently sexy. The subjects
Speaker 1: always looked really glamorous. Her portraits of women show them
Speaker 1: in very clingy, satiny garments, so they're by bodies are
Speaker 1: really evident beneath their clothing. A lot of her paintings
Speaker 1: are nudes, where she depicts women's bodies without making it
Speaker 1: about the gaze of the viewer. These scenes are really
Speaker 1: self contained, with the subjects looking anywhere but out from
Speaker 1: the canvas. Yeah, even when her subjects were dressed, often
Speaker 1: there would be like one breast peeking out, or you know,
Speaker 1: you could totally see everything about their body in them.
Speaker 1: Tamara had never been faithful to her husband. She told
Speaker 1: friends a story of meeting a handsome man at a
Speaker 1: reception just before her wedding, and then running into him
Speaker 1: again shortly after she and Today's returned from their honeymoon
Speaker 1: and starting an affair with him. That affair went on
Speaker 1: for quite some time, and that was merely the beginning
Speaker 1: of a long line of affairs and lovers. In a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases, these were sort of long term affairs,
Speaker 1: many of which seemed to go on sort of simultaneously.
Speaker 1: One of her frequent painting subjects Ida Perrot, who we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, was her girlfriend for years and years, but
Speaker 1: she would have sort of intense periods where she saw
Speaker 1: one person a whole lot, and then a different person
Speaker 1: a whole lot, and kind of moves through all of
Speaker 1: these people that were part of her circle. This unconventional
Speaker 1: way of life is reflected in a quote of hers
Speaker 1: that is often cited, quote, I live life in the
Speaker 1: margins of society, and the rules of normal society don't apply.
Speaker 1: In the margins. She often would just approach beautiful women
Speaker 1: in the street and ask them to model for her,
Speaker 1: and it was then not unusual for her to begin
Speaker 1: sexual affairs with those models. But Today's was a lot
Speaker 1: more socially conservative than his wife. He seems to have
Speaker 1: tolerated all of Tomorrow's affairs for a while, although he
Speaker 1: really didn't like them, but friction between the two of
Speaker 1: them ultimately escalated to a point where the marriage ended.
Speaker 1: This actually evidence is a double stated. In Tomorrow's life,
Speaker 1: she had a lot of affairs but never left the marriage. Today's,
Speaker 1: in contrast, met another woman, fell in love with her,
Speaker 1: and then left Tomorrow. Tomorrow was really devastated and felt
Speaker 1: completely betrayed. She begged him to reconcile, and eventually he
Speaker 1: did agree and they tried again. The family went to
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo, where Tomorrow often traveled with Casette, to see
Speaker 1: if they could work things out, but instead they had
Speaker 1: just a colossally huge fight in front of their daughter.
Speaker 1: In that fight, he listed every infidelity that Tomorrow had
Speaker 1: ever had in their marriage. She told him it was
Speaker 1: just because he was weak and not enough, and that
Speaker 1: was the end of that. A portrait of Today's that
Speaker 1: Daylimpica had started working on in the late nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: near the end of their marriage, includes one sad and
Speaker 1: pretty telltale detail. The left hand, where his wedding ring
Speaker 1: should have been is unfinished. Tomorrow's relationship with her daughter
Speaker 1: through all of this was not great. Although she used
Speaker 1: Cosette as a model for a lot of her paintings,
Speaker 1: she wasn't exactly what you would call a loving mother.
Speaker 1: She sometimes used her daughter almost as a prop in
Speaker 1: her fabulous lifestyle, but then she wouldn't always acknowledge her
Speaker 1: as her daughter publicly. She often told people while they
Speaker 1: were out that Casette was her younger sister. In the
Speaker 1: preface of a biography of Tomorrow that Casette worked on
Speaker 1: with a co author named Charles Phillips, Phillips writes, quote,
Speaker 1: as anyone who knew both Cosette and her mother will
Speaker 1: tell you the two of them spent oft and on
Speaker 1: a difficult half century together. Tamara was an artist and
Speaker 1: a mother in that order, and her daughter's life, like
Speaker 1: her own, was ruled by the dictum of what we
Speaker 1: call below the artist's hunger work. Before all, although Dlimpica
Speaker 1: had risen to fame in Europe, she was also quickly
Speaker 1: sought after by clients in the United States, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen twenties she traveled to New
Speaker 1: York to work on several commissions. One of these commissions
Speaker 1: was a wedding portrait of Joan Jeffrey, who was marrying
Speaker 1: Rufus T. Bush. Both Joan and Rufus were from extremely
Speaker 1: wealthy families. Joan's grandfather had made a fortune in the
Speaker 1: early automobile industry, and Rufus's family made their money in
Speaker 1: railway yards. The portrait, though, had a strange life. The
Speaker 1: Bush marriage did not work out, and it ended in
Speaker 1: divorce after only a few years. Dylympicus's painting went into
Speaker 1: storage and it was forgotten. But hang on to that thread,
Speaker 1: it will come back. Yes. Dlimpico was in New York
Speaker 1: on October twenty eighth, nineteen twenty nine, Black Monday, when
Speaker 1: the stock market crashed and sent the US headlong into
Speaker 1: the Great Depression. The Depression happened at the same time
Speaker 1: that a lot of European nations were also ex experiencing
Speaker 1: economic strife. So the world that Tamorrow lived in, and
Speaker 1: specifically the wealthy circles of luxurious partying, had again changed.
Speaker 1: But unlike her experience in having to leave Saint Petersburg
Speaker 1: with nothing, d Olimpica was able to weather the depression
Speaker 1: and continued to paint and make a living as an artist.
Speaker 1: In a moment, we'll talk about a few paintings from
Speaker 1: Olympica's huge body of work. First, though, we'll hear from
Speaker 1: the sponsors that keeps stuffiness in history class going. One
Speaker 1: of the Olympica's most famous paintings is her Self Portrait
Speaker 1: in a green Bugatti, created in nineteen twenty nine. This
Speaker 1: painting is often regarded as an iconic piece of imagery
Speaker 1: that shows a woman who is in charge of herself
Speaker 1: and her future self possessed. It's a close up on
Speaker 1: the artist from the point of view just outside the
Speaker 1: driver's side door and a little in front of it.
Speaker 1: She wears a sleek driving cap with a blonde curl
Speaker 1: just emerging from it on each side. Her eyes look sly,
Speaker 1: and her skin is a creamy white, and her pale
Speaker 1: gray clothing is sort of piled around her. Aside from
Speaker 1: the light green of the car body, the main pop
Speaker 1: of color is the deep red of her lips. This
Speaker 1: painting is a little bit claustrophobic in terms of it
Speaker 1: feeling like a very small space, but it is also
Speaker 1: incredibly striking. But it is very artificial in terms of
Speaker 1: its subject matter. That Self Portrait was a commission for
Speaker 1: the magazine Didama, a German women's magazine. It featured the
Speaker 1: most modern of women and ideas. Dlimpica had met the
Speaker 1: magazine's editor in Monte Carlo while she was on vacation,
Speaker 1: and the commission was born of that meeting. But this
Speaker 1: was not a version of Dlimpica that actually existed. She
Speaker 1: didn't own a Bugatti. She drove her a know her
Speaker 1: car was yellow, not green. She changed up these details
Speaker 1: to create a piece of art that she thought would
Speaker 1: be more alluring, but would also carefully portray her in
Speaker 1: a way that was sort of personality propaganda. It made
Speaker 1: her look wealthier than she really was, and colder portrait
Speaker 1: makes her look like a woman that's really fully in
Speaker 1: control of her life and her world, which is a
Speaker 1: contrast to anybody's reality, really. But this was definitely true
Speaker 1: of Dlimpica, who had created a life that was very
Speaker 1: glittery and very glamorous, but also kind of primed for
Speaker 1: turbulence because of all the drugs and alcohol in the
Speaker 1: stream of lovers that she engaged with. This kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of we all have that friend who is
Speaker 1: just always embroiled in a million dramas and they will
Speaker 1: swear to you that they hate drama and they don't
Speaker 1: tolerate it, and I'm like, but there's so much though
Speaker 1: you cultivated. Another important painting in her ouvra is portrait
Speaker 1: of Irra Pee, which she completed in nineteen thirty. This
Speaker 1: one's really really striking because, aside from the subject's skin,
Speaker 1: which has, you know, a faint kind of peachy cream tone,
Speaker 1: the dominant tones of the painting are white, black, and red.
Speaker 1: Ira is wearing a white clingy dress and she's holding
Speaker 1: white caliiies, all of which is sharply contrasted with black shadowing.
Speaker 1: But then there is a bright red scarf woven through
Speaker 1: the image, and IRA's fingernails and lips are that same
Speaker 1: color red. Dilipica created portrait of Marjorie Fairy in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two. Like the portrait of Era we just mentioned,
Speaker 1: the model is clad and white, but this image feels
Speaker 1: more intimate and that the white is not clothing but
Speaker 1: simply a cloth that's draped around the subject. Her body
Speaker 1: is turned away from the viewer and she looks back
Speaker 1: over her shoulder. Her blue eyes really jump off the
Speaker 1: canvas in an icy stare. She has blonde hair, which
Speaker 1: reflects the cubist influence of Tomorrow's early art education, because
Speaker 1: it looks like it's almost made out of ribbon. There
Speaker 1: is another interesting story of how Tamara ended up married
Speaker 1: a second time, and it is actually tied to one
Speaker 1: of her paintings. She had met the Hungarian baron Raoul
Speaker 1: Kufner in her heyday. He was a fan and a patron,
Speaker 1: and he had purchased a lot of her works before
Speaker 1: they met. In the late nineteen twenties, Tamara painted a
Speaker 1: portrait of the baron's then mistress, Nana de Herrera, as
Speaker 1: a commission for the baron. This portrait was not especially flattering.
Speaker 1: Delipica described not having been very inspired by her subject,
Speaker 1: writing quote, when she came to my studio, she was
Speaker 1: badly dressed. She was not elegant, she was not chiekh.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh no, I don't want to paint her.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that's the famous Nana de Herrera. In
Speaker 1: her account, Tamoraw resolved to try to do the painting anyway,
Speaker 1: and she details getting Nana to undress, in which state
Speaker 1: she was per the artist a little more interesting to
Speaker 1: look at. You can tell looking at this painting that
Speaker 1: she was not very inspired. The most beautiful aspects of
Speaker 1: it are the flowers that dot the scene. But this
Speaker 1: painting is often referred to as an assassination on d
Speaker 1: Lempica's part, because soon Nana was out of the picture
Speaker 1: and the artist was the one dating the baron Tomorrow
Speaker 1: married Koufner a few years later in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1: Not long into her second marriage, Tamara's work started to
Speaker 1: fall off. She showed some signs of depression and was
Speaker 1: painting less and less as a result. The works she
Speaker 1: did produce during this time were darker in tone and
Speaker 1: less glamorous than her earlier paintings. It's as though the
Speaker 1: indulgence of the Roaring twenties had really fueled her lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and as that unsustainable lifestyle of constant parties and hedonism
Speaker 1: faded in Paris, it took some of her spark with it.
Speaker 1: One of her post nineteen twenties paintings, Beggar with Mandolin,
Speaker 1: which she created in nineteen thirty five, reflects this shift.
Speaker 1: It depicts an older man with white hair playing his mandolin.
Speaker 1: His face is a lot more realistic than most of
Speaker 1: her glamorous paintings, and his eyes, which look up and
Speaker 1: to the left of the painting are sorrowful, and they're
Speaker 1: set into a face that is puffy and wrinkled. He
Speaker 1: wears many layers of clothing, and while he doesn't actually look,
Speaker 1: as the title suggests, like someone destitute, the overall effect
Speaker 1: is a sad one Gone is the glitzy verve of
Speaker 1: her more famous works from the prior decade. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is also all a reflection of the economic
Speaker 1: crisis was happening global one hundred percent as World War
Speaker 1: two looms tomorrow and the Baron decided to leave Europe
Speaker 1: and moved to the United States. They bought a home
Speaker 1: in Connecticut. Although Dalyimpica was really all the time on
Speaker 1: the go, bouncing from coast to coast, she was still
Speaker 1: very much in demand as an artist, and there were
Speaker 1: multiple exhibitions of her work in Los Angeles and New York.
Speaker 1: But once the United States entered into World War Two,
Speaker 1: the art exhibitions really dwindled. Yeah, it wasn't just her.
Speaker 1: Everybody was kind of you know, galleries were not staging
Speaker 1: big exhibits anymore. It was not a time to worry
Speaker 1: about that. Everybody was really focused on the war effort.
Speaker 1: But then after the war Dlimpica, who was hoping to
Speaker 1: find a new voice to match this new era, really foundered.
Speaker 1: Her work moved into abstract paintings that shared some of
Speaker 1: the shapes and line forms of her portraiture, but they
Speaker 1: didn't generally feature any sort of subject and these did
Speaker 1: not go over especially well. Like if someone wanted an
Speaker 1: Olympica and they got this, it was not what they
Speaker 1: were hoping for or anticipating, and her popularity really dwindled.
Speaker 1: Earl died in nineteen sixty two after having a heart
Speaker 1: attack aboard a cruise ship, and Tomorrow was really devastated.
Speaker 1: The two of them had been married for thirty years
Speaker 1: at that point. She really unmoored herself from the New
Speaker 1: York scene completely. After he died, she sold all of
Speaker 1: her things and started traveling constantly. She circled the globe
Speaker 1: on a series of cruises three times actually, But if
Speaker 1: she was looking for some sort of solace out in
Speaker 1: the world, it does not seem like she found it.
Speaker 1: After all of these cruises, she moved in with Cosette
Speaker 1: and her husband and their two daughters. They were living
Speaker 1: in Houston, Texas. She traded Casette pretty poorly while they
Speaker 1: lived in Texas together. Tomorrow seemed to think that Casette
Speaker 1: was her personal assistant and expected her to just handle
Speaker 1: everything from her finances to her travel arrangements, while Tomorrow
Speaker 1: tried to take over Casette's social circle. Even people who
Speaker 1: were very close to Tomorrow during this time have acknowledged
Speaker 1: that her behavior toward her daughter was hyper critical and
Speaker 1: often really cruel. She dictated the way that Casette had
Speaker 1: to dress and style her hair if she wanted to
Speaker 1: be seen in public with her mother, and was just
Speaker 1: generally very deeply controlling. Dalipica also seemed to go through
Speaker 1: the kind of challenges that often befall people as they
Speaker 1: age and struggle to find their way in an ever
Speaker 1: changing world. She often bemoaned that her art was suffering
Speaker 1: because she couldn't get the same kinds of art supplies
Speaker 1: that she could purchase years earlier in Paris. She even
Speaker 1: made her son in law, who was a scientist, mix
Speaker 1: paints for her, but she was never pleased with the outcome,
Speaker 1: and she also often stated that people had changed so
Speaker 1: much from when she was young, and that they were
Speaker 1: no longer stylish or educated, or that everyone was now
Speaker 1: of poor breeding. In nineteen seventy two, there was a
Speaker 1: retrospective exhibit of Tomorrow's works mounted in Paris, and this
Speaker 1: breathed life into her career briefly, but it did not
Speaker 1: garner the level of popularity that she probably hoped for. Then,
Speaker 1: when there was a potential follow up exhibition in New York,
Speaker 1: Tomorrow made a lot of demands about the gallery that
Speaker 1: was interested in exhibiting her work, including that it would
Speaker 1: have to knock through an exterior wall to put in
Speaker 1: a new window. Her behavior really soured the gallery on
Speaker 1: the deal. This New York exhibit never happened. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, Dilepica moved to Quernavaca, Mexico, to retire. She
Speaker 1: had visited Quernavaca many times, and as her place in
Speaker 1: the art worlds of New York, Paris and other cities
Speaker 1: had dwindled, this had really begun where she went for solace.
Speaker 1: She lived there the rest of her life, in a
Speaker 1: home called Tris Bamboo. She often harangued Cosette to come
Speaker 1: and visit her, and told her daughter that she felt abandoned,
Speaker 1: but Cosette was dealing with her own family situation. Her
Speaker 1: husband had cancer, and in prioritizing him in his care
Speaker 1: Cosette had, according to Tamara, betrayed her mother. Dlimpica frequently
Speaker 1: rewrote her will during this time, often cutting Cosette out
Speaker 1: completely and insisting that her friends would instead get everything
Speaker 1: when she died. When Cozette's husband, Harold died in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, Cosette, whose daughters were grown, moved to Cornovaca
Speaker 1: to be with her mother and take care of her
Speaker 1: full time as her health was declining. It was just
Speaker 1: a few months later, on March eighteenth, nineteen eighty, that
Speaker 1: Tomorrow Olympic had died in her sleep. She had already
Speaker 1: made all of the arrangements for her funeral and paid
Speaker 1: for everything, but her final wish was to have her
Speaker 1: ashes spread at the volcano pubol Kotta Pedal, which her
Speaker 1: daughter and several of her friends managed to do by helicopter.
Speaker 1: There have been a number of fairly triumphant codas to
Speaker 1: tamorawd Olimpica's life and career since her passing. We mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that portrait of Missus Joan Jeffrey Bush that was forgotten.
Speaker 1: That painting stayed stored away, untouched for almost six decades.
Speaker 1: After Tomorrow's daughter, Cazette, published the first edition of her
Speaker 1: book about her mother, Passion by Design, in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Jones's daughter read it and realized that their family might
Speaker 1: still have that lost painting. That lost art, which wasn't
Speaker 1: so much lost as just forgotten, was located and in
Speaker 1: the intervening years commanded four point six million dollars at auction.
Speaker 1: That auction took place more than twenty years ago, so
Speaker 1: the value of the piece will have risen significantly. And
Speaker 1: it is a very spectacular piece with the subject cladd
Speaker 1: in red, and it almost looks like it could have
Speaker 1: been painted in the nineteen eighties in the style of
Speaker 1: Patrick Nagel. That story and another about a lost Olympica,
Speaker 1: were shared by her great granddaughter, Marissa Olimpica in a
Speaker 1: new forward to Casette's book when it was reissued in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. The second story of lost art is actually
Speaker 1: one of a theft in two thousand and nine another
Speaker 1: painting that Tamara made the same year as the portrait
Speaker 1: of Missus Bush. This one, titled La Musicienne, was stolen
Speaker 1: from the sharing a museum of realist art in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: That theft included another painting, which was Adolescence by Salvador Dali.
Speaker 1: In a remarkable twist, though these two artworks are in
Speaker 1: the tiny single digit percentage of stolen art that's actually
Speaker 1: successfully recovered. Both of them were found by private investigator
Speaker 1: Arthur Brand, who specializes in art recovery, and was able
Speaker 1: to locate the work in the hands of a criminal
Speaker 1: organization and negotiate with them to get them back. I
Speaker 1: really feel like we've talked about something that Arthur Brand
Speaker 1: has recovered on Unearthed before, probably because his name pops
Speaker 1: up everywhere when you talk about art. He did a
Speaker 1: season on Criminalia of Art Heist and he came up
Speaker 1: several times. Yeah. So this piece was also sold at
Speaker 1: auction in twenty eighteen for a whopping nine million dollars.
Speaker 1: In February twenty twenty, Christie's put Delympica's nineteen thirty two
Speaker 1: painting portrait of Marjorie Ferry up for auction with an
Speaker 1: expected range of eight million to twelve million pounds where
Speaker 1: they thought it was going to sell, it sold for
Speaker 1: sixteen million, three hundred and eighty thousand pounds equivalent to
Speaker 1: twenty one point two million dollars. The only other woman
Speaker 1: artist who has sold a piece for more than that
Speaker 1: is Georgio Keef, who's Jimson Weed slash White Flower Number
Speaker 1: one sold her forty four zero point four million in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Not all the modern critics of her work
Speaker 1: have been ebulliant, however, In two thousand and four, Fiona
Speaker 1: McCarthy wrote in The Guardian quote Daylimpica was an artist
Speaker 1: of the fascist superworld. Her portraits were allied to the
Speaker 1: call to Order movement, the return to monumental realism in
Speaker 1: European art. Her art exudes the dark and dubious glamour
Speaker 1: of authoritarian discipline. When she paints the Duchess de la Salle,
Speaker 1: the Duchess is in jack boots, one hand thrust in
Speaker 1: her pocket, in an attitude of menace. It is a
Speaker 1: tremendous portrait painted with the sheer, theatrical enjoyment, the unerring
Speaker 1: sense of decor of d Olympica's best work. Uh So,
Speaker 1: even in the beauty some see a very clear dark note.
Speaker 1: Dlimpica continues to captivate and inspire today. Uh Madonna has
Speaker 1: used her art immuse videos and a stage decor in
Speaker 1: live shows. So if you are a fan of Madonna,
Speaker 1: you've seen Olympica's work for sure, but she has also
Speaker 1: inspired fashion like the Giorgio Armani preve Fall Winter twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two twenty twenty three collection, and there have been
Speaker 1: stage adaptations of her life story, and last year a
Speaker 1: documentary about her titled The True Story of Tamara d
Speaker 1: Olimpica and the Art of Survival that is limited enough
Speaker 1: availability that I have not been able to see it. Dlimpica,
Speaker 1: while she is a very complicated character, remains very iconic,
Speaker 1: and her work is instantly recognizable, and she has a
Speaker 1: lot of very dedicated fans, all of which probably would
Speaker 1: have delighted her. Do you also have some listener mail?
Speaker 1: You know that I do. This listener mail is in
Speaker 1: fact about Christmas. This is from our listener Kira. I
Speaker 1: hope I am saying your name correctly. Who writes Hi?
Speaker 1: Tracy and Holly, thank you for all the wonderful hours
Speaker 1: of entertainment and knowledge. I just listened to your episode
Speaker 1: on Christmas decorations. I have never had a Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: without live candles on the tree. Live candles are still
Speaker 1: very common in Denmark, with about forty percent of households
Speaker 1: having live candles on the Christmas tree. While it is
Speaker 1: more dangerous than electric lights, I want to share why
Speaker 1: it is not as dangerous as it might seem. The
Speaker 1: lights are special Christmas tree lights, slightly larger than a
Speaker 1: birthday cake light, with wings that stop about a centimeter
Speaker 1: before the end of the candle, thus preventing the candles
Speaker 1: from burning down. We usually only put up our tree
Speaker 1: on the twenty third so it is still fresh. We
Speaker 1: never leave a tree with lights on without observation and
Speaker 1: always have a bucket of water, etc. Close by. Never
Speaker 1: had to use it. For me, the lighting of the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree is the most special part of Christmas. While
Speaker 1: I see the tree during the day, in the evening,
Speaker 1: everyone goes into a different room while one person lights
Speaker 1: the tree. Then we all go in to look at
Speaker 1: the tree and join hands. I'm choked up. This sounds
Speaker 1: so sweet walking around the Christmas tree singing Christmas songs
Speaker 1: and carols. Beautiful. Kira attached photos of her tree. There's
Speaker 1: also a sparkler on top, which is, she says, a
Speaker 1: tradition in her family, but less common in general. It's very,
Speaker 1: very beautiful, I will say, and her kids look just
Speaker 1: full of wonder. It also still terrifies me. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I have just grown up in the the
Speaker 1: US era of UL safety tags on everything that tell
Speaker 1: me that it's all going to go up in flames
Speaker 1: that I'm like, I don't know, but it's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I completely understand. And it is one of those things
Speaker 1: where I bet if it is something that happens for
Speaker 1: like an hour in the evening, it feels extra magical
Speaker 1: and beautiful. So thank you, thank you, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for sharing this with us. It got me choked up.
Speaker 1: It's so sweet and it is quite quite beautiful. Even
Speaker 1: if I'm scared, you can write to us and make
Speaker 1: me cry. If you'd like a history podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also subscribe to the podcast on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.