Gloria Vanderbilt 1954

Gordon Parks made this image of Gloria Vanderbilt with, I’m guessing, a camera, and probably some film. What is so fantastic here is that the painting behind her looks like it was made by Cy Twombly. And Cy Twombly looks like he was dressed by Gloria Vanderbilt. Of course, I wasn't there and don’t know for sure. But she’s leaning right up against that wall! And look at the brushstrokes! So confident, smudgy, and unresolved. The tonal scale of the painting is very close to her skin tone and all this tonality makes it feel like the painting is her aura, or that she is the painting’s aura! Parks must have been thinking about the cross-pollination of ideas, and how artists are constantly in conversation with one another. And maybe, just maybe, how social class plays into it all.