Susan Gutfreund ,Alexander McQueen : An Answer to MY SONS and Co

drawing by marguerita

Shocked by the death of Alexander McQueen, I ran parallels .His vision,which is similar to only few on this planet, can be only a direct and frank answer to the status quo.Here I share his vision.Yes,as an artist and individual on my own, I dare to continue my battle.I am called very strange names,by some,I am told by so many to shut up, that I talk too much.....

The man a young man, Alexander McQueen, so formidable and pure,a wonderful visionary,an artist who reached the pinnacle of all one dreams of , only to discard it all,to which I am sorry for his act.He succumbed.

Mc Queen demonstrated in very clear terms, that living in an atmosphere beyond Dante's imagination,one needs an incredible faith and hope to see that or we stop the mendacity or we are in fact into a real descent into the Dark,which even Nature herself with the earthquakes,snow,tsunami does not stop to cry out loud..

Susan Gutfreund on the other hand,can symbolize and express honest feelings,when she talks about " I accepted it, I’m a hausfrau. I think that’s why I feel that I’m good at what I do with my decorating. I care about running houses. I think there’s nothing better than being a housewife. I love my house. I love entertaining. I lovethe kitchen. I love to put flowers. I love the details of a house."

I stand here about to be homeless,destitute, like a character of Beckett, in Waiting for Godot, I am told that I

should accept a" combo"?? ne,being the only one from two large families turned into ashes in the Holocaust.Yes, I know about Death.And I saw Death.Therefore my art is emotional, fearless and true.Oh yes, I speak from the heart, yes like Saint Valentine,oho.oh..not fancy hearts,as much as I wear my heart on my skin..Death is the final frontier,which man through time seems to disregard or treat with great disrespect.Memento Mori, is a thought by the Latins to remind oneself about the marvels of being alive.Of accepting Love and in turn celebrating Life.But ha.... man and woman instead ,create barricades as possible, to ruin the pleasure of this gift we receive when we land here.We create pain, injury to our minds,souls and bodies.We create nuclear bombs and spread fear and tension.We mock Life and challenge Nature.And then wait for the results expecting blue skies all over me, nothing but blue skies can I see..... courtesy of Willie.

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/the-loss-of-alexander-mcqueen/

It is a strange thing these days that one has to defend a love of home, or running a household. Exactly. But I have to also tell you that I know some very important business tycoons that watch the food channel! I won’t mention names, but you wouldn’t believe me. What do you like to cook? Oh gosh, I would say … in French we would say ‘la cuisine de bonne mère’. You know, ‘nursery food’, they would call it in English … anything that brings back memories of our youth.

and I think that people don’t want to understand that when you marry, maybe not today, but 30 years ago, when you married a man, you became his world, he wouldn’t automatically take on your world. So consequently he was the New Yorker. I was invited where he was invited. I think that’s why I feel that I’m good at what I do. I care about running houses. I think there’s nothing better than being a housewife. I love my house. I love entertaining. I love the kitchen. I love to put flowers. I love the details of a house.

Bernard Madoff ,where did the money go?

drawing by marguerita
Here one possible scenario.....

It has become the biggest mystery to emerge from the $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal:
Where did the money go?
Federal investigators are likely to take months trying to answer that question as they dig through the disgraced investor's records and attempt to unravel what may be the biggest financial fraud in history.
But several theories are being discussed among financial experts and at Wall Street watercoolers, Palm Beach Country clubs and the offices of university accounting professors.

Among the theories: Madoff lost a bundle in bad investments; paid some of the money out to investors; stashed cash in foreign banks; and spent some on his lavish lifestyle. There is also the possibility he inflated his claim of $50 billion in losses.
"He has plenty of houses and yachts, but not certainly enough to account for all this money," said Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at New York University. "It is tough to really lose 100 percent."

Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock market chairman, has become one of the most vilified people in America since news broke Dec. 11 that he allegedly had been running a giant Ponzi scheme, paying returns to certain investors out of the principal received from others.
The scam included a global roster of investors, from retirees on Long Island to the International Olympic Committee, to charities worldwide. So far, investors have said that they have lost more than $30 billion, according to an Associated Press calculation.

By RACHEL BECK AP Business Writer

The Associated Press

The Devil is in the details | New York Social Diary
People were eager to meet him, to put their money with him.

Madoff : Ole!

drawing by marguerita
He added:
"That was the most important thing; he was looked on as someone who could make you money.
Really make you money."
Recommendations, word of mouth.
That’s how it was done.”
“He was very well known.”
There were wider worlds to conquer.
The only thing that struck the Swiss banker as odd was the bull memorabilia strewn about his office.
“It seemed strange for a guy to have all these bulls, little sculptures, paintings of bulls,” he recalled. “I’ve seen offices with bears. This was bulls.”

Madoff and WallStreetlization: Theme & Variations

drawing by marguerita
12/19. Yesterday was a not very cold three-days-from-winter day in New York.

was about ... one guess ... Bernie Madoff and his Made Off with Billions. The discovery is still on-going for as widely revered as he was in his world, he was unknown, or almost, to so many others ... and, it turns out, even to those who knew him. Or thought they knew him.Madoff Mania | New York Social Diary
The revelation that Bernard Madoff — brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought), philanthropist, pillar of the community — was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend.Op-Ed Columnist - The Madoff Economy - NYTimes.com
"As your father cleans his lamp to have good light, so keep clean your spirit... By prayer, Huw. And by prayer I don't mean shouting and mumbling and wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think. Think well what you're saying. Make your thoughts into things that are solid. And that way your prayer will have strength. And that strength will become a part of you -– body, mind and spirit." –-Mr. Gruffydd.from How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn, a939's novel.
Note- I met the writer in Sao Paulo,Brazil ,if my memory is correct around 1964 0r 65.
His birthdate year happened to be also the same one of my father !906.

Ship of Fools (painted c. 1490–1500) is a painting by Hieronymus Bosch which shows prodigal humans wasting their lives by playing cards, drinking, flirting, eating, etc. instead of spending it in "useful" ways. The painting is dense in symbolism:

• The owl in the tree is symbolic of heresy,^{[citation needed]} as is the Muslim crescent on the pink banner that flies from the ship's mast.
• The lute and bowl of cherries have erotic associations.^{[citation needed]}
• The people in the water may represent the sins of gluttony or lust.^{[citation needed]}
• The inverted funnel is symbolic of madness.^{[citation needed]}
• The large roast bird is a symbol of gluttony.^{[citation needed]} The knife being used to cut it down may be a phallic symbol or it may be symbolic of the sin of anger.^{[citation needed]}
• A monk and a nun are singing together. This has some erotic overtones^{[citation needed]} (especially with the presence of the aforementioned lute) since men and women in monastic orders were supposed to be separate.

The painting as we see it today is a fragment of a triptych that was cut into several parts. The Ship of Fools was painted on one of the wings of the altarpiece, and is about two thirds of its original length. The bottom third of the panel belongs to Yale University Art Gallery and is exhibited under the title Allegory of Gluttony. The wing on the other side, which has more or less retained its full length, is the Death of the Miser, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The two panels together would have represented the two extremes of prodigiality and miserliness, condemning and caricaturing both.

The painting is oil on wood, measuring 58 cm x 33 cm (23" x 13"). It is on display in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction. This concept makes up the framework of the 15th century book Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant, which served as the inspiration for Bosch's famous painting, Ship of Fools: a ship--an entire fleet at first--sets off from Basel to the paradise of fools. In literary and artistic compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, the cultural motif of the ship of fools also served to parody the 'ark of salvation' (as the Catholic Church was styled).

Michel Foucault, who wrote Madness and Civilization, saw in the ship of fools a symbol of the consciousness of sin and evil alive in the medieval mindset and imaginative landscapes of the Renaissance.^{[citation needed]}

Apropos Made Off: Carl Sagan would say,Millions,& millions and billions......... far away.

collage-drawing by marguerita
“Our task is to find the records and follow the money.”
We do not dispute his number — we just have not calculated how he made it,” he said.
But a question still dominates the investigation: how one person could have pulled off such a far-reaching, long-running fraud, carrying out all the simple practical chores the scheme required, like producing monthly statements, annual tax statements, trade confirmations and bank transfers. The 17th Floor, Where Wealth Went to Vanish - NYTimes.com
There are harsh opinions — besides the angst and the fear — about some of these men within that community. Many were most arrogant, which is, after all, a common affliction amongst the rich. We all live in a world where rich = smart even in many cases when we know it’s stolen or ill-gotten.- DPC in New York Social Diary
The fallout from Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50bn fraud spread through the global financial system on Monday as more banks revealed exposures to his firm and the beleaguered hedge fund industry braced for withdrawals from worried clients.
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial - Madoff's madness

Parma is not only famous for cheese (“Parmigiano”) and ham (“prosciutto”). It also seems to be something of a cradle of sophisticated financial fraud.


FT.com / Companies / European companies - The Parma connection

As the Rich Get Poorer,what about the Socialisters?

drawings by marguerita
for title sequence of O Rebu,
for Tv Globo 1974/75
Rio- Brazil
Suddenly, the tables are turned.
Oh yeah????
Since when the Earth is not a potato?

“I really want him to feel it and save it and spend it so he knows that money goes away,” Mr. Pollack said. “If he wants to treat all his friends to a movie, that’s great. But he needs to see that it bottoms out. Where else are they going to get that experience?
well, well and now Socialisters????”
As the Rich Get Poorer, Teenagers Feel the Crunch - NYTimes.com
Welcome | New York Social Diary