White Trash Art

Irish Traveller Couture no.2

acrylic on paper 9"x12"

Irish Traveller Couture no.1

acrylic on paper 9"x12"

The New Obsessive Issue 11

edited by David Turpin

cryptic messages and death notices!
brilliant artist personal ads!
bat shit!
eat a peach!
homophobic Latinas!
Jackie O French Dipped!
Exhibitions! Performances! Depraived Acts of Lewdness!

Bat Guano and What It Can Do for YOU

pen, acrylic on vellum

for TNO

Relics From the Church of Helen Gurley Brown

mixed media with LED lights. vanitas piece.

 

 

 

New Obsessive Issue 006

featuring:

Battle Fish!
Cat Lady Fashion!
How To Manage Your Dictatorship, Now That You've Conquered!
Aero Disaster Omelets!
Must-See London Travel Sites!
Barfing In The Bread Bin!

American Heroes and Madmen #9: Little Edie Bouvier Beale

"The Great Dancer"

12x16 acrylic,ink on vellum

Born into a gilded fairy tale of high society royalty akin to what F. Scott Fitzgerald spun into "The Great Gatsby", pretty little Edie had a successful attorney father and a beautiful socialite mother who's dowry was plucked from the ample fortunes of the Bouvier empire. Edie chirped and charmed her way through childhood with dance and French lessons from the finest schools in NYC. Beautiful teenage fashion model Edie was a much sought after piece of ass among uber rich titans of industry: her dance card was cluttered with names like Joe Kennedy Jr., Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and later the married Secretary of the Interior Julius Albert Krug.

Back home, "Big" Edie Beale was having troubles. She pursued a singing career, and had a questionable relationship with her piano accompanist. Her wealthy husband hit the bricks, leaving Big Edie behind in the summer cottage for a new wife and a Mexican divorce. The Bouvier family money had been absconded with by Edie's brother, a dirty drunken and abusive bastard nicknamed "Black Jack". Black Jack Bouvier, notably, was the father of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - who, along with her sister Lee, ended up with the lion's share of the family trust. Big Edie's health began to fail. Little Edie moved into the Grey Gardens summer cottage in the Hamptons to be with her mother.

Little Edie suffered from alopecia and her hair began falling out in clumps at some point. When she left NYC at age 35 she was unmarried, a failed actress, bald, publicly screwing a married old man, and likely suffering from major psychiatric problems (a relative said that he witnessed her climb a tree and set her remaining hair ablaze). She would not be invited to many cotillions from now on.

The two Edies lived in near isolation among their former stinking rich peers. For thirty years the house crumbled around them as they sold off pieces of jewelry to stay alive. Legions of cats and raccoons joined the family and had the run of the house. Little Edie dreamed up choreographed routines and pieced together costumes for grand floor shows from her imagination by picking through old clothes in the attic. She pirouetted and tap danced around piles of cat shit and rotting garbage as her mother laid on a mattress upstairs - living on canned pate and pints of ice cream - singing along to her old records and dreaming of lovers past.

By the mid 1970's the neighbors had enough of the collapsing hovel up the block. Out of the kindness of her heart Jackie O swept in to have the home brought up to code and avoid having her aunt and cousin embarrass her any further by becoming homeless. Likely much to the former first lady's chagrin, the whole kerfuffle brought enough attention to the two Edies that a documentary crew saw the opportunity to film the train wreck that their life had become. The two aging beauties were paid a small amount of money to be filmed in their "cleaned up" home for a few months.  Raccoons picked up where they left off, deconstructing an entire wall during the course of filming. A cat was filmed taking a shit next to a huge commissioned oil portrait of Big Edie in her charmed youth. A camera swept past Big Edie's feet, highlighting a horror show of long yellow old person toenails set against a mattress blackened with filth and piles of animal diarrhea within inches of the old woman. The two argued and reminisced, planning birthday parties and impromptu recitals in these surroundings, oblivious to the squalor.

With the release of "Grey Gardens", Little Edie got the big break she had been after for 35 years. The film is mesmerizing. As Little Edie prances and coquettishly flirts with the film makers, one can draw direct correlations of her theatrical every day musings to both "Sunset Boulevard" and "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" Oddly enough, it's hard to decide if the Edies are truly absolutely fucking koo koo, or just denied any sort of tangible survival skills by their privileged upbringing.

Little Edie's signature 'do-rags, constructed of towels or old sweaters to cover her chrome dome, have become a favorite look for some of Hollywood's more famous wealthy ragamuffins (think the Olson twins, Nicole Richie, or any other anorexic pseudo-star you've seen donning a kerchief on her head in the last 3 years). She has become a rock-solid American cult icon.

Big Edie died not long after the film as released. She reportedly received none of her promised fee for participating. Little Edie died in 2002, still being cared for through the kindness of others - and with a few loyal "fans".

A Tragic End To An Amazing Life

After purchasing her book "The Beautiful People's Beauty Book" several years ago, I have been a big Princess Pignatelli fan. Her candid quips about being a fabulous European socialite in the swinging 1970's are purely irresistible. Completely free of shame for her awesome hair, body, face and wealth, she would lay it on the reader - unabashed.

She was no hausfrau, and she made no bones about it. And if her volumes indicate her demeanor at all, she didn't give a flying fuck who thought she was bitchy.

I learned awhile back that Princess Luciana Pignatelli had passed on. In months past, details of her death were sketchy (even with diligent and compulsive googling), and just today I happened on an article that described her suicide with gin and pills after learning her investments had taken a huge dump on her perfect Italian bone structure. Distraught over being not only old, but poor - two conditions she could never entertain - she desperately ended her own life.

I say a heartfelt ciao bella, princess. You gave me big wonderful taste of what it was like to be you.

Here's a few Pignatellisms I've collected, previously published on my page Feelin' Pretty in 2005.

"You see, I'm very gourmande, which means I should be given all the more credit for not getting fat."

"In my ex-husband's house, everyone was unhappy, even the parrot.  It was my fault, too.  With two strong personalities, either you pull together or you destroy each other.  What does this have to do with beauty?  Lots!"

"It does not matter what you start with, try to get by on nature alone past 30 and you are finished."

"For heightened perception without drugs plus rapid weight loss, nothing beats the oldest known treatment for obesity: total starvation."

"Every woman over 30 needs a homosexual in her life."

Join the Princess Luciana Pignatelli Appreciation Society on Flickr, which is run by another big fan.

The New Obsessive Issue 004

Brains the size of cantaloupes
The cleaved head of a famous British thespian
Lusty, salty sea-dogs
beehive diplomacy
additions to the English vocabulary
muthafuckin WORDSEARCH!

and, adventures in pube grooming.

Coiffure D'elegance

for The New Obsessive