There’s one week left until winter break is over and I’m back to class. I managed to get some funny Valentine‘s Day cards out of the way in the middle of the night but managed to experience a little vertigo afterwards… phfffft. If you get the references, congrats.
I started drafting this this commemorative piece a month ago, and it could’ve been out weeks ago for the second anniversary of Kim Novak’s interview with Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning, but I always found something I wanted to fix regarding the quotes and lettering, even as I was typing this up. I changed the quote on the bottom left three times yesterday.
Anyway, this post is not going to be about the artist’s acting career — or maybe it will, we’ll see where it’ll take me — but about her art. My formal introduction to this gem of a person was not her films but the Rocca interview that opened with her art exhibit at The Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio. Actually, I think I saw “Bell, Book and Candle” for the first time the holiday before, but it was the last few minutes of it on a broadcast, and I wasn’t as familiar with the performers in it back then.
If I had to describe Novak’s work, I’d say, and this may be a stretch, it’s as if Renoir and Dalí’s paintings had a child but it also had poetry and riddles to share as well. Her paintings are not as unusual or surreal as Dalí’s, perhaps more expressive than Renoir’s in regards to color and technique. Then again, I’m not a fine arts critic, but I can tell that her emotion is in it and that each work is its own unique masterpiece.
Novak received two scholarships to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but she’d work a summer as a model, be discovered, and become a film star instead. After leaving the film industry in her 30s, she managed to go back to what she loves doing.
Other than that, the instances where Novak would stand up for herself so she could have things her way are admirable. She was adamant about her name, her contract, and the way she looked, as highlighted in articles about the production of “Vertigo.”
She’s not only the fierce, animal-loving artist she is today but a mental health advocate coming to terms with herself.
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Dearest Reverie 