The French Dispatch (2021)
Tilda Swinton: J.K.L. Berensen
Photos
Quotes
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J.K.L. Berensen : The French Splatter-school Action group. A dynamic, talented, lusty, slovenly, alcoholic, violent pack of creative savages. They inspired, and very often personally attacked each other for two decades and more. I'll have my drink now. Remember, in those days, as you know, it was much more socially acceptable for a painter or a sculptor to hit another fellow with a chair or even a brick or walk around with a black eye or a broken tooth, and so on. Indeed, I'm jumping ahead, but in my own experience, Rosenthaler could be quite unpredictably impulsive. Uh, meaning, I refer to the, uh, pigment locker beneath his studio in the Boulevard de Plombiers, on one occasion, he grabbed me and put me in there, and inappropriately, sort of, tried to fuck me, against the wall in the corner of that pigment locker. He was crazy. Officially certified. The Cadazios, of course, represented them all.
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J.K.L. Berensen : [seeing a nude of herself in a kimono has ended up in her presentation] Good God. Wrong slide. That's me.
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J.K.L. Berensen : Certain women do gravitate toward incarcerated men. It's a recognized condition. Something about the captivity of others enhances the experience of their *own* freedom. I assure you, it's erotic.
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J.K.L. Berensen : Rosenthaler continued to work in confinement. Strikingly, the artist favored raw materials sourced exclusively from within the prison-asylum domain. Powdered eggs. Pigeon blood. Shackle grease. Coal, cork, and dung. Fire, of course. Bright yellow scullery soap. And fresh cream of millet as a binding agent.
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J.K.L. Berensen : Simone liked to stand still. Indeed, she was Olympian in her ability to hold extremely challenging positions for extended periods of time. She exhibited very little vulnerability to extremes of heat or cold. After even the most adverse forms of exposure, her skin remained unburned, unblemished, un-goose-pimpled. Another tidbit. She genuinely enjoyed the smell of turpentine and in later years actually wore it in the application of her toilet. She was more than a muse.
