Should Botticelli Be Part of Your Beauty Regimen? Fiorella Valdesolo
The ubiquitous Calgon commercials from the 1980s all followed the same formula: Exasperated woman rattles off her woes (The boss! The baby!) before crying out,“Calgon, take me away!” and being immediately transported to the blissful solitude of a bubbly bathtub. Over the course of this past year, my version of that Calgon bath wasn’t a bath at all but looking at art; scrolling through a museum’s neatly archived online collections teleported me to a similarly euphoric place. The soothing palettes of Etel Adnan; Jacqueline Marval’s pastoral scenes of women lounging around in beautiful frocks; Edward Hopper’s lovely depictions of solitude; and countless images of New York especially photos chronicling its nightlife and street life by Meryl Meisler and Robert Herman to remind me of my home’s pre-pandemic spirit.