Bridget Bate Tichenor
Encyclopedia
Bridget Bate Tichenor also known as Bridget Tichenor or B.B.T., was a Mexican surrealist
painter of fantastic art
in the school of magic realism
and a fashion editor. Born in Paris and of Britsih descent, she later embraced Mexico as her home.
and Sarah Gertrude Arkwright (also known as Vera Bate Lombardi
), and was reputedly descended from George III
. Bridget spent her youth in England and attended schools in England, France, and Italy. She moved to Paris at age 16 to live with her mother where she worked as a model for Coco Chanel
. She lived between Rome and Paris from 1930 until 1938.
Fred Bate carefully guided Bridget with her art. He recommended she attend the Slade School in London, and visited her later at the Contembo Ranch in Mexico. Bate's close friend, surrealist photographer Man Ray
, photographed Bridget at different stages of her modeling career from Paris to New York.
Vera Bate Lombardi, Bridget's mother, was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge
and Duke of Teck
, and was the public relations
liaison to the royal families of Europe for Coco Chanel
between 1925 and 1938.
Bridget's grandmother, Rosa Frederica Baring
was a member of the Baring banking family. Rosa Baring was a descendant of Sir Francis Baring, founder of Barings Bank
, which established ties with King George V, beginning a close relationship with the British monarchy that would endure until Barings Bank's collapse. Because of the Baring family marriages, Bridget was distantly related to many European royal family members; Diana, Princess of Wales
was a distant cousin to Bridget as her ancestor Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer
married Margaret Baring (1868–1906) in 1887 and they were both direct descendants of the Baring family.
on October 14, 1939. It was an arranged marriage
, devised by her mother Vera through Cole Porter
and his wife Linda
's introduction, in order to remove Bridget from Europe and the looming threat of the World War II. They had a son in Beverly Hills, California
on December 21, 1940 named Jeremy Chisholm. When the child was six months old, they gave him to a relative of Hugh Chisholm, who cared for him until later when he went to live with his father. Jeremy Chisholm was a noted businessman and equestrian
in the USA, United Kingdom and Europe, who died in Boston in 1982.
In 1943, Bridget was a student at the Art Students League of New York
and studying under Reginald Marsh
along with her friends, the painters Paul Cadmus
and George Tooker
. Acquaintances have described Bridget during this time as "striking", "glamorous", and a "long-stemmed beauty with large azure eyes and sumptuous black hair". She lived in an apartment at the Plaza Hotel
and wore clothes by Manhattan
couturier
Hattie Carnegie
. It was around this time that the author Anaïs Nin
wrote about her infatuation with Bridget in her personal diary. Bridget was at a party in the Park Avenue
apartment of photographer George Platt Lynes
, a friend who used her as a subject in his photographs, when she met Lyne's assistant, Jonathan Tichenor, in 1943. They started an affair in 1944 when her husband Chisholm was away and working overseas for the US government, and she divorced Chisholm on December 11, 1944 and moved into an Upper East Side
townhouse
in Manhattan that she shared with art patron Peggy Guggenheim
. She married Jonathan Tichenor in 1945, taking his last name as Bridget Bate Tichenor, and they moved into an artist's studio at 105 MacDougal Street
in Manhattan.
formulas that artist Paul Cadmus taught her in New York in 1945, where she would prepare an eggshell-finished gesso
ground on masonite
board and apply (instead of tempera) multiple transparent oil glazes defined through chiaroscuro
with sometimes one hair of a #00 sable
brush.
, Irving Penn
, John Rawlings
, George Platt Lynes, her career as a Vogue
fashion editor in New York with Condé Nast
art director Alexander Liberman
between 1945 and 1952, and her magic realism painting career in Mexico that began in 1956. The title of the film, Rara Avis, is a Latin expression that comes from the Roman
poet Juvenal
meaning a rare and unique bird, the "black swan." Rara Avis was screened at the 2008 FICM Morelia
international film festival
.
n cultures and her international background would influence the style and themes of Tichenor's work as a magic realist painter in Mexico. In Mexico she was among a group of surrealist and magic realist female artists who came to live in Mexico in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her introduction to Mexico, along with painter and novelist Leonora Carrington
, was through her friend and cousin Edward James
, the British surrealist art collector and sponsor of the magazine Minotaure
that was published in Paris. James lived in Las Pozas, San Luis Potosí
, and his home in Mexico had an enormous surrealist sculpture garden
with natural waterfalls, pools and surrealist sculptures in concrete
. Tichenor had first met him in Paris in the 1930s. In 1947, James invited Bridget to visit him again at his home Xilitia, near Tampico
in the rich Black Olmec
culture of the Gulf Coast
. Edward urged her for many years to receive secret spiritual initiations that he had undergone. Bridget's lifetime change and artistic direction came with her epiphanies that occurred on this trip. After visiting Mexico, Tichenor obtained a divorce in 1953 from her second husband, Jonathan Tichenor, and moved to Mexico in the same year, where she made her permanent home and lived for the rest of her life. She left her marriage and job as a professional fashion and accessories editor for Vogue behind and was now alongside expatriate painters such as Carrington, Remedios Varo
, Alice Rahon, and photographer Kati Horna.
Having lived in varied European and American cultures with multiple identities reflecting her life passages, Tichenor recognized the Pre-Columbian
cycles of creation, destruction, and resurrection that echoed the events of the catastrophes of her own life mounted within the dismantling and reconstructive context of two World Wars. The openness of Mexico at that time fueled her personal expectations of a future filled with endless artistic inspiration in a truly new world founded upon metaphysics
, where a movement of societal, political, and spiritual ideals were being immortalized in the arts.
At the time of Tichenor's move to Mexico in 1953, she began what would become a lifetime journey through her art and mysticism, inspired by her belief in ancestral spirits, to achieve self-realization. While painting alone and in isolation, she removed her familiar and societal masks to find her own personal human and spiritual identities; she would then reposition those hidden identities with new masks and characters in her paintings that represented her own sacred beliefs and truths. This guarded internal process of self-discovery and fulfillment was allegorically portrayed with a cast of mythological characters engaged in magical settings. She painted a dramatization of her own life and quests on canvas through an expressive visual language and an artistic vocabulary that she kept secret.
In 1958, she participated in the First Salon of Women's Art at the Galerías Excelsior of Mexico, together with Carrington, Rahon, Varo, and other contemporary
women painters of her era. That same year, she bought the Contembo ranch near the remote village of Ario de Rosales, Michoacán
where she painted reclusively with her extensive menagerie of pets until 1978.
Tichenor counted painters Carrington, Alan Glass, and artist Pedro Friedeberg
among her closest friends and artistic contemporaries in Mexico. In 1971, Friedeberg introduced his friend and former apprentice, American artist and spiritist Zachary Selig
, to Tichenor in Mexico City. She spiritually adopted Selig as her protégé and became his mentor until her death in 1990. In 1978, Selig introduced Tichenor to fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo
who photographed her portrait.
Between 1982 and 1984, Tichenor lived in Rome and painted a series of paintings titled Masks, Spiritual Guides, and Dual Deities. Her final years were spent at her home in San Miguel de Allende
, Guanajuato
, Mexico.
-style country villa cross-shaped designed brick and adobe two-story structure that Bridget built with her P'urhépecha
n lover Roberto in 1958. Ario de Rosales was named “place where something was sent to be said” in the P'urhépecha language. Tichenor became an artistic channel for the place that she chose to call her home.
Many of the faces and bodies of her magical creatures in her paintings were based upon her assorted terriers, chihuahuas, and Italian mastiffs, sheep, goats, monkeys, parrots, iguanas, snakes, horses, cows, and local P'urhépecha servants and friends.
The light, colors and landscapes of Tichenor's paintings were inspired by the topography of the volcanic land that surrounded her mountaintop home. There was a curvature of the earth that could be seen from her second-story studio where the pine tree covered red mountains cascaded towards the Pacific Ocean. There also was a waterfall with turquoise pools of water that traversed her property.
in her youth and had introduced Lombardi to Chanel. Comte Léon de Laborde's grandson, economist Carlos de Laborde-Noguez, his wife Marina, his brother Daniel de Laborde-Noguez and his wife, Marie Aimée de Motalembert became Tichenor's most respected allies, trusted friends, and caretakers at the end of her life in their home in Mexico City. There were no living family members with her at the time of her death, nor were any relatives included in the last will and testament
of her estate.
, Mexico City. A comprehensive retrospective exhibition was held at the Instituto de Bellas Artes de San Miguel de Allende in February 1990, nine months before her death. She left 200 paintings that were divided between Pedro Friedeberg and the de Laborde-Noguez family. Her works became a part of important international private and museum collections in the United States, Mexico and Europe that included the Churchill and Rockefeller
families. They were sought after for their refined esoteric nature with detail in master painting technique.
Two 1941 gelatin silver print
portraits of Tichenor by avant-garde
artist Man Ray were auctioned by Christie's
London in 1996. Another 1941 gelatin silver print photograph of Tichenor by Man Ray was auctioned by Sotheby's
New York in 1997. A silver gelatin print of fashion photographer Irving Penn's 1949 photograph of Tichenor and model Jean Patchett, titled The Tarot Reader, resides in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
. Two paintings by Tichenor were auctioned by Christie’s in July, 2007 at New York's Rockefeller Plaza, and both received almost 10 times the original estimates in the auction of Mexican actress María Félix
's estate. Tichenor's oil on canvas titled Domadora de quimeras, featuring the face of María Félix with details by painter Antoine Tzapoff, went for $20,400 USD
, which was several times higher than its original low estimate of $2000 USD. Another painting by Tichenor, Caja de crystal, also sold for much more than its estimated price.
In 2008, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
held an exhibition of Tichenor’s work, including her paintings among 50 prominent Mexican artists such as Frida Kahlo
. It was titled History of Women: Twentieth-Century Artists in Mexico. The exhibition centered on women who had developed their artistic activities within individual and diverse disciplines while working in Mexico.
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
painter of fantastic art
Fantastic art
Fantastic art is an art genre. The parameters of fantastic art have been fairly rigorously defined in the scholarship on the subject ever since the 19th century. There was a movement of science fiction and fantasy artists prior to and during the Great Depression, which were mainly cover art and...
in the school of magic realism
Magic realism
Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
and a fashion editor. Born in Paris and of Britsih descent, she later embraced Mexico as her home.
Family and early life in Europe
Bridget was the daughter of Frederick Blantford BateFrederick Blantford Bate
Frederick Blantford Bate was an American broadcaster of the early 20th century, and was a representative for NBC in Britain during World War I.. He was the husband of Vera Bate Lombardi, the British socialite, and the father of Bridget Bate Tichenor, the surrealist artist.-Career:Frederick...
and Sarah Gertrude Arkwright (also known as Vera Bate Lombardi
Vera Bate Lombardi
Vera Bate Lombardi, born Sarah Gertrude Arkwright, was a British socialite and close associate of Coco Chanel. The mother of Bridget Bate Tichenor, she may have been the illegitimate daughter of Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge...
), and was reputedly descended from George III
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
. Bridget spent her youth in England and attended schools in England, France, and Italy. She moved to Paris at age 16 to live with her mother where she worked as a model for Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
. She lived between Rome and Paris from 1930 until 1938.
Fred Bate carefully guided Bridget with her art. He recommended she attend the Slade School in London, and visited her later at the Contembo Ranch in Mexico. Bate's close friend, surrealist photographer Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, photographed Bridget at different stages of her modeling career from Paris to New York.
Vera Bate Lombardi, Bridget's mother, was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge
Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge
Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge, GCB, GCVO, CMG , born Prince Adolphus of Teck and later The Duke of Teck , was a member of the British Royal Family and a younger brother of Queen Mary, the consort of King George V...
and Duke of Teck
Duke of Teck
Duke of Teck was, in medieval times, a title borne by the head of a principality named Teck in the Holy Roman Empire, centered around Teck castle in Germany. That territory was held by a branch line of the Zähringen dynasty from 1187 to 1439, known historically as the first House of Teck...
, and was the public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
liaison to the royal families of Europe for Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
between 1925 and 1938.
Bridget's grandmother, Rosa Frederica Baring
Rosa Frederica Baring FitzGeorge
Rosa Frederica Baring FitzGeorge , was the second daughter of Mr. William Henry Baring, J.P. and Elizabeth Hammersly, of Norman Court, Hampshire, England. She was a descendent of the famous Sir Francis Baring of the 18th Century English Baring banking family that had rescued the British Royal...
was a member of the Baring banking family. Rosa Baring was a descendant of Sir Francis Baring, founder of Barings Bank
Barings Bank
Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995 after one of the bank's employees, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million due to speculative investing, primarily in futures contracts, at the bank's Singapore office.-History:-1762–1890:Barings Bank was founded in 1762 as the...
, which established ties with King George V, beginning a close relationship with the British monarchy that would endure until Barings Bank's collapse. Because of the Baring family marriages, Bridget was distantly related to many European royal family members; Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
was a distant cousin to Bridget as her ancestor Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer
Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer
Charles Robert Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer KG, GCVO, PC, VRD , styled The Honourable Charles Spencer until 1905 and known as The Viscount Althorp between 1905 and 1910, was a British courtier and Liberal politician. An MP from 1880 to 1895 and again from 1900 to 1905, he served as Vice-Chamberlain of...
married Margaret Baring (1868–1906) in 1887 and they were both direct descendants of the Baring family.
New York and the United States
Bridget married Hugh Joseph Chisholm at the Chisholm family home, Strathgrass in Port Chester, New YorkPort Chester, New York
Port Chester is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The village is part of the town of Rye. As of the 2010 census, Port Chester had a population of 28,967...
on October 14, 1939. It was an arranged marriage
Arranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...
, devised by her mother Vera through Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
and his wife Linda
Linda Lee Thomas
Linda Lee Thomas was an American socialite, the wife of musical theatre composer Cole Porter.A descendant of the Lee family of Virginia, daughter of Louisville banker William Paca Lee and his wife, née Lily Hill, Linda Belle Lee was, in her youth, a noted beauty...
's introduction, in order to remove Bridget from Europe and the looming threat of the World War II. They had a son in Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
on December 21, 1940 named Jeremy Chisholm. When the child was six months old, they gave him to a relative of Hugh Chisholm, who cared for him until later when he went to live with his father. Jeremy Chisholm was a noted businessman and equestrian
Equestrianism
Equestrianism more often known as riding, horseback riding or horse riding refers to the skill of riding, driving, or vaulting with horses...
in the USA, United Kingdom and Europe, who died in Boston in 1982.
In 1943, Bridget was a student at the Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
and studying under Reginald Marsh
Reginald Marsh (artist)
Reginald Marsh was an American painter, born in Paris, most notable for his depictions of life in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Crowded Coney Island beach scenes, popular entertainments such as vaudeville and burlesque, women, and jobless men on the Bowery are subjects that reappear...
along with her friends, the painters Paul Cadmus
Paul Cadmus
Paul Cadmus was an American artist. He is best known for his paintings and drawings of nude male figures. His works combined elements of eroticism and social critique to produce a style often called magic realism...
and George Tooker
George Tooker
George Clair Tooker, Jr. was a figurative painter whose works are associated with the Magic realism and Social realism movements...
. Acquaintances have described Bridget during this time as "striking", "glamorous", and a "long-stemmed beauty with large azure eyes and sumptuous black hair". She lived in an apartment at the Plaza Hotel
Plaza Hotel
The Plaza Hotel in New York City is a landmark 20-story luxury hotel with a height of and length of that occupies the west side of Grand Army Plaza, from which it derives its name, and extends along Central Park South in Manhattan. Fifth Avenue extends along the east side of Grand Army Plaza...
and wore clothes by Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
couturier
Couturier
A couturier is an establishment or person involved in the clothing fashion industry who makes original garments to order for private clients. A couturier may make what is known as haute couture. Such a person usually hires patternmakers and machinists for garment production, and is either employed...
Hattie Carnegie
Hattie Carnegie
Hattie Carnegie was a fashion entrepreneur based in New York City from the 1920s to the 1960s. She was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary as Henrietta Kanengeiser....
. It was around this time that the author Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...
wrote about her infatuation with Bridget in her personal diary. Bridget was at a party in the Park Avenue
Park Avenue (Manhattan)
Park Avenue is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east....
apartment of photographer George Platt Lynes
George Platt Lynes
George Platt Lynes was an American fashion and commercial photographer.Born in East Orange, New Jersey to Adelaide and Joseph Russell Lynes he spent his childhood in New Jersey but attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts. He was sent to Paris in 1925 with the idea of better preparing him...
, a friend who used her as a subject in his photographs, when she met Lyne's assistant, Jonathan Tichenor, in 1943. They started an affair in 1944 when her husband Chisholm was away and working overseas for the US government, and she divorced Chisholm on December 11, 1944 and moved into an Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...
townhouse
Townhouse
A townhouse is the term historically used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and in many other countries to describe a residence of a peer or member of the aristocracy in the capital or major city. Most such figures owned one or more country houses in which they lived for much of the year...
in Manhattan that she shared with art patron Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
. She married Jonathan Tichenor in 1945, taking his last name as Bridget Bate Tichenor, and they moved into an artist's studio at 105 MacDougal Street
MacDougal Street
MacDougal Street is a one way street in Greenwich Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The approximate six-block street is bound by Prince Street and West 8th Street. It has been the subject of many songs, poems, and other forms of artistic expression. MacDougal Street has been...
in Manhattan.
Painting technique
Tichenor's painting technique was based upon 16th century Italian temperaTempera
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...
formulas that artist Paul Cadmus taught her in New York in 1945, where she would prepare an eggshell-finished gesso
Gesso
Gesso is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these...
ground on masonite
Masonite
Masonite is a type of hardboard invented by William H. Mason.-History:Masonite was invented in 1924 in Laurel, Mississippi, by William H. Mason. Mass production started in 1929. In the 1930s and 1940s Masonite was used for many applications including doors, roofing, walls, desktops, and canoes...
board and apply (instead of tempera) multiple transparent oil glazes defined through chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....
with sometimes one hair of a #00 sable
Sable
The sable is a species of marten which inhabits forest environments, primarily in Russia from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, in northern Mongolia and China and on Hokkaidō in Japan. Its range in the wild originally extended through European Russia to Poland and Scandinavia...
brush.
Rara Avis
Bridget Bate Tichenor was the subject of a 1985 documentary titled Rara Avis, shot in Baron Alexander von Wuthenau's home in Mexico City. It was directed by Tufic Makhlouf and focused on Tichenor’s life in Europe, her being a subject for the photographers Man Ray, Cecil BeatonCecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
, Irving Penn
Irving Penn
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.-Early career:Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from which he was graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he...
, John Rawlings
John Rawlings
John Rawlings was a Condé Nast Publications fashion photographer from the 1930s through the 1960s. Rawlings left a significant body of work, including 200 Vogue magazine and Glamour magazine covers to his credit and 30,000 photos in archive, maintained by curator Kohle Yohannan.Rawlings was in the...
, George Platt Lynes, her career as a Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
fashion editor in New York with Condé Nast
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
art director Alexander Liberman
Alexander Liberman
Alexander Semeonovitch Liberman was a Russian-American magazine editor, publisher, painter, photographer, and sculptor. He held senior artistic positions during his 32 years at Condé Nast Publications.-Biography:When his father took a post advising the Soviet government, the family moved to Moscow...
between 1945 and 1952, and her magic realism painting career in Mexico that began in 1956. The title of the film, Rara Avis, is a Latin expression that comes from the Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
poet Juvenal
Juvenal
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
meaning a rare and unique bird, the "black swan." Rara Avis was screened at the 2008 FICM Morelia
Morelia
Morelia is a city and municipality in the north central part of the state of Michoacán in central Mexico. The city is in the Guayangareo Valley and is the capital of the state. The main pre-Hispanic cultures here were the P'urhépecha and the Matlatzinca, but no major cities were founded in the...
international film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
.
Life in Mexico
MesoamericaMesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
n cultures and her international background would influence the style and themes of Tichenor's work as a magic realist painter in Mexico. In Mexico she was among a group of surrealist and magic realist female artists who came to live in Mexico in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her introduction to Mexico, along with painter and novelist Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington
Leonora Carrington OBE was a British-born Mexican artist, a surrealist painter and a novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City.-Early life:...
, was through her friend and cousin Edward James
Edward James
Edward William Frank James was a British poet known for his patronage of the surrealist art movement.-Early life and marriage:...
, the British surrealist art collector and sponsor of the magazine Minotaure
Minotaure
Minotaure, published between 1933 and 1939, was a Surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira in Paris. The editors were André Breton and Pierre Mabille. It was a luxurious publication, sporting original artworks on its cover by prestigious artists like Pablo Picasso...
that was published in Paris. James lived in Las Pozas, San Luis Potosí
San Luis Potosí
San Luis Potosí officially Estado Libre y Soberano de San Luis Potosí is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and its capital city is San Luis Potosí....
, and his home in Mexico had an enormous surrealist sculpture garden
Sculpture garden
A sculpture garden is an outdoor garden dedicated to the presentation of sculpture, usually several permanently sited works in durable materials in landscaped surroundings....
with natural waterfalls, pools and surrealist sculptures in concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
. Tichenor had first met him in Paris in the 1930s. In 1947, James invited Bridget to visit him again at his home Xilitia, near Tampico
Tampico
Tampico is a city and port in the state of Tamaulipas, in the country of Mexico. It is located in the southeastern part of the state, directly north across the border from Veracruz. Tampico is the third largest city in Tamaulipas, and counts with a population of 309,003. The Metropolitan area of...
in the rich Black Olmec
Olmec
The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....
culture of the Gulf Coast
Gulf Coast of the United States
The Gulf Coast of the United States, sometimes referred to as the Gulf South, South Coast, or 3rd Coast, comprises the coasts of American states that are on the Gulf of Mexico, which includes Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and are known as the Gulf States...
. Edward urged her for many years to receive secret spiritual initiations that he had undergone. Bridget's lifetime change and artistic direction came with her epiphanies that occurred on this trip. After visiting Mexico, Tichenor obtained a divorce in 1953 from her second husband, Jonathan Tichenor, and moved to Mexico in the same year, where she made her permanent home and lived for the rest of her life. She left her marriage and job as a professional fashion and accessories editor for Vogue behind and was now alongside expatriate painters such as Carrington, Remedios Varo
Remedios Varo
Remedios Varo Uranga was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement...
, Alice Rahon, and photographer Kati Horna.
Having lived in varied European and American cultures with multiple identities reflecting her life passages, Tichenor recognized the Pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
cycles of creation, destruction, and resurrection that echoed the events of the catastrophes of her own life mounted within the dismantling and reconstructive context of two World Wars. The openness of Mexico at that time fueled her personal expectations of a future filled with endless artistic inspiration in a truly new world founded upon metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, where a movement of societal, political, and spiritual ideals were being immortalized in the arts.
At the time of Tichenor's move to Mexico in 1953, she began what would become a lifetime journey through her art and mysticism, inspired by her belief in ancestral spirits, to achieve self-realization. While painting alone and in isolation, she removed her familiar and societal masks to find her own personal human and spiritual identities; she would then reposition those hidden identities with new masks and characters in her paintings that represented her own sacred beliefs and truths. This guarded internal process of self-discovery and fulfillment was allegorically portrayed with a cast of mythological characters engaged in magical settings. She painted a dramatization of her own life and quests on canvas through an expressive visual language and an artistic vocabulary that she kept secret.
In 1958, she participated in the First Salon of Women's Art at the Galerías Excelsior of Mexico, together with Carrington, Rahon, Varo, and other contemporary
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
women painters of her era. That same year, she bought the Contembo ranch near the remote village of Ario de Rosales, Michoacán
Ario, Michoacán
Ario is a municipality located in the Mexican state of Michoacán. The municipality has an area of 694.60 square kilometres and is bordered to the north by Salvador Escalante, to the east by Tacámbaro and Turicato, to the south by La Huacana, to the west by Nuevo Urecho, and to the northwest by...
where she painted reclusively with her extensive menagerie of pets until 1978.
Tichenor counted painters Carrington, Alan Glass, and artist Pedro Friedeberg
Pedro Friedeberg
Pedro Friedeberg is a Mexican painter.-External Links:*...
among her closest friends and artistic contemporaries in Mexico. In 1971, Friedeberg introduced his friend and former apprentice, American artist and spiritist Zachary Selig
Zachary Selig
Zachary Selig is an American artist, author, interior designer and spiritist.-Biography:His first publication as author and illustrator was the bestselling Kundalini Awakening - A Gentle Guide to Chakra Activation and Spiritual Growth.Selig is a magic realist painter...
, to Tichenor in Mexico City. She spiritually adopted Selig as her protégé and became his mentor until her death in 1990. In 1978, Selig introduced Tichenor to fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo
Francesco Scavullo
Francesco Scavullo was an American fashion photographer best known for his work on the covers of Cosmopolitan and his celebrity portraits.-Biography:...
who photographed her portrait.
Between 1982 and 1984, Tichenor lived in Rome and painted a series of paintings titled Masks, Spiritual Guides, and Dual Deities. Her final years were spent at her home in San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende is a city and municipality located in the far eastern part of the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico. It is 274 km from Mexico City and 97 km from the state capital of Guanajuato...
, Guanajuato
Guanajuato
Guanajuato officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 46 municipalities and its capital city is Guanajuato....
, Mexico.
Contembo Ranch
The architecture of Tichenor's house at Contembo Ranch in Michoacán was a simple TuscanTuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
-style country villa cross-shaped designed brick and adobe two-story structure that Bridget built with her P'urhépecha
P'urhépecha
The P'urhépecha, normally spelled Purépecha in Spanish and in English and traditionally referred to as Tarascans, are an indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of the Mexican state of Michoacán, principally in the area of the cities of Uruapan and Pátzcuaro...
n lover Roberto in 1958. Ario de Rosales was named “place where something was sent to be said” in the P'urhépecha language. Tichenor became an artistic channel for the place that she chose to call her home.
Many of the faces and bodies of her magical creatures in her paintings were based upon her assorted terriers, chihuahuas, and Italian mastiffs, sheep, goats, monkeys, parrots, iguanas, snakes, horses, cows, and local P'urhépecha servants and friends.
The light, colors and landscapes of Tichenor's paintings were inspired by the topography of the volcanic land that surrounded her mountaintop home. There was a curvature of the earth that could be seen from her second-story studio where the pine tree covered red mountains cascaded towards the Pacific Ocean. There also was a waterfall with turquoise pools of water that traversed her property.
Death and legacy
After her son Jeremy Chisholm's death in 1982, Tichenor had no contact with any of his family. At the time of Tichenor's death in the Daniel de Laborede and Marie Aimée de Montalembert house on the Calle Tabasco in Mexico City in 1990, she chose to be exclusively with her close friends. Tichenor's mother Vera Bate Lombardi was a close friend of Comte Léon de Laborde, who was a fervent admirer of Coco ChanelCoco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
in her youth and had introduced Lombardi to Chanel. Comte Léon de Laborde's grandson, economist Carlos de Laborde-Noguez, his wife Marina, his brother Daniel de Laborde-Noguez and his wife, Marie Aimée de Motalembert became Tichenor's most respected allies, trusted friends, and caretakers at the end of her life in their home in Mexico City. There were no living family members with her at the time of her death, nor were any relatives included in the last will and testament
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
of her estate.
Works of art
Interest in Tichenor's paintings by art collectors and museums has been increasing in recent years, as well as collections of art photographs with Tichenor as the subject. Tichenor's paintings were first sold in 1954 by the Ines Amor Gallery in Mexico City, and then later by her patron, the late Mexican art dealer and collector Antonio de Souza at the Galeria Souza in the Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City. In 1955, the Karning Gallery, directed by Robert Isaacson, represented her. In 1972 and 1974 she exhibited at the Galeria Pecanins, Colonia RomaColonia Roma
Colonia Roma is a colonia or neighborhood located in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City just west of the city’s historic center. The area was a very shallow part of Lake Texcoco, dotted with tiny islands and one small island village of Aztacalco during the pre-Hispanic period...
, Mexico City. A comprehensive retrospective exhibition was held at the Instituto de Bellas Artes de San Miguel de Allende in February 1990, nine months before her death. She left 200 paintings that were divided between Pedro Friedeberg and the de Laborde-Noguez family. Her works became a part of important international private and museum collections in the United States, Mexico and Europe that included the Churchill and Rockefeller
Rockefeller family
The Rockefeller family , the Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller , is an American industrial, banking, and political family of German origin that made one of the world's largest private fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th...
families. They were sought after for their refined esoteric nature with detail in master painting technique.
Two 1941 gelatin silver print
Gelatin-silver process
The gelatin silver process is the photographic process used with currently available black-and-white films and printing papers. A suspension of silver salts in gelatin is coated onto a support such as glass, flexible plastic or film, baryta paper, or resin-coated paper...
portraits of Tichenor by avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
artist Man Ray were auctioned by Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
London in 1996. Another 1941 gelatin silver print photograph of Tichenor by Man Ray was auctioned by Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
New York in 1997. A silver gelatin print of fashion photographer Irving Penn's 1949 photograph of Tichenor and model Jean Patchett, titled The Tarot Reader, resides in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
. Two paintings by Tichenor were auctioned by Christie’s in July, 2007 at New York's Rockefeller Plaza, and both received almost 10 times the original estimates in the auction of Mexican actress María Félix
María Félix
María Félix was a Mexican film actress and one of the icons of the golden era of the Cinema of Mexico and also one of the myths of the Spanish language Cinema for her life style and personality...
's estate. Tichenor's oil on canvas titled Domadora de quimeras, featuring the face of María Félix with details by painter Antoine Tzapoff, went for $20,400 USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
, which was several times higher than its original low estimate of $2000 USD. Another painting by Tichenor, Caja de crystal, also sold for much more than its estimated price.
In 2008, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey is one of the leading museums of contemporary art in Mexico. MARCO organizes major exhibitions with regional and international contemporary artists. It is located in the heart of Monterrey next to the Macroplaza and Barrio Antiguo...
held an exhibition of Tichenor’s work, including her paintings among 50 prominent Mexican artists such as Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....
. It was titled History of Women: Twentieth-Century Artists in Mexico. The exhibition centered on women who had developed their artistic activities within individual and diverse disciplines while working in Mexico.
External links
- Photo of Bridget Bate Tichenor by fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, 1978 The Peerage website
- Bridget Bate #159288 The Peerage website
- Morelia Film Festival, Mexico
- artnet: Bridget Tichenor, past auction results for Domadora de quimeras
- artnet: Bridget Tichenor, past auction results for Caja de cristal
- Bridget Bate Tichenor biography
- Royal Musings
- The First Biography of the Life of Bridget Bate Tichenor by Zachary Selig, 2010, Scribn.com