Let Them Eat Pancakes!: Re-imagining Marie Antoinette.

Disclaimer: I'm super excited about my last project of the semester, but as with all good things in my life, something has gone slightly awry. I recently had to do a little purge on my phone for lack of available memory and accidentally lost many if not all of the images of my progress. Nevertheless, I do have many photos of the last few steps and the end result. 

I'm not sure what IHOP and 18th century France have to do with one-another but somehow, in my mind, they are connected. I'd like to think it has to do with the sweet pancakes + syrup combo and Marie's love of sweets and confections, but I doubt there's any remotely logical explanation for my thought process. Now you may be wondering why I'm rambling about breakfast foods and establishments that claim to be international but probably are not...but it was during a drive to IHOP that I got the idea for this 3D project.

Like I said, I can't really give you a good reason why this came to mind, but on the road to IHOP, I just got to thinking about how Marie Antoinette got a really bad rap. She was very much like today's celebrities, in that she was a constant target of the media, the TMZ and Enquirer of her time. In case you are unaware, allow me to break down the glamorous tragedy that was her life, in a few bullet points:

• She was a very bad student, as a child, but excelled in the arts.
• At 15 years old, she was in an arranged marriage with the Dauphin of France. She was Austrian. Austria and France were NOT friendly.
• She was the hybrid Justin Beiber + Kim Kardashian of her time: people loved her and hated her all at once, but in Marie's case it was through no fault of her own. France was going thorough a depression due to bad investments and her husband's trust in shady advisors. 
• She was France's first teen idol, in the modern sense of the word. She was known for throwing wild and lavish parties and spending exorbitant amounts of money on fashion. 
• She suffered MULTIPLE miscarriages and only of her 2 children lived, but neither of them had children of their own.
• She never uttered "Let Them Eat Cake," the one-liner that she is infamous for.
• She taught herself to read and write proficiently to prove people wrong about her...and because she was a genuinely curious person.
• She was a casualty of the French Revolution: she died looking nothing like herself. 
• She had put on very noticeable amount of weight, 
• her hair had gone completely white practically overnight (google "Marie Antoinette Syndrome") 
• she had lost much of her hair over the course of her reign
• she could barely walk on her own
• She contracted TB and developed cancer while in captivity of the revolutionaries
• her hair was cut off...and then her head was.
• She died at 37.

Those a just a few points in her life, she lived a short albeit very interesting one. Can you tell I'm a huge fan of hers? 

So, anyway, I had this idea that I could give her some dignity in her death by recreating the scene. She was decapitated at the guillotine during October in Paris. Paris in Autumn is very much the typical scene. I chose more Spring-like colors because they are more cheerful and Spring is representative of renewal and rebirth. Also, the pastoral theme has some historical relevance; as she matured, she spent at lot of her time at the garden chateau on the Versailles grounds. She revamped the location and made it her place of peace.

I put her head in a basket because, when a head was decapitated at the guillotine, it was allowed to roll off the platform and into a catching basket. I like the loose weave of the basket I purchased because I believe it seems organic as well as a decent representation of baskets of the time. 

Originally, I was going to stack her hair to a large height and place objects within it; Marie was known for the  highly decorated pouf hairstyle that she popularized in her youth. I found that it would be a difficult and near impossible task without proper structure. I later opted to recreate the more refined hairstyles of her later life, but swith some stylization and modernization. 

The first thing I did was use my fingernail to outline the desired shape of her hair directly onto the foam head. From there, I used yarn wrapped in a concentric pattern within the outline as well as on the smaller foam ball. This was very time consuming.

After that, I began to work on a flower crown for her. I wanted it to look full but not overly pre-thought. I went into it blindly, based off of the the little experience I had making flower crowns as a child. I guess there are some things you don't really forget, because I really like the way it came out. At first I wished that I had used more flowers all the way around, but once I wrapped the wire gems around the stems, it gave it a complete look, and I really liked it. It looks dewy. If anything, next time I'd work on making it flatter as far as the wrapped flower stems go: it was a little bit hard to manipulate on the head when it was complete. 

Next, I created little pom-poms with pink yarn. I made a bunch of little ones of varying lengths because I thought I'd want to place them sporadically around the larger foam ball. Then, I changed my mind and decided that I'd do the pattern on the smaller ball instead. I started to hold them in a bundle and realized they looked a lot better together than they did apart (sort of like an abstract bush or flower of some kind) so I began gluing them down in extremely close proximity to each other. I really like the way it turned out and that it gave the yarn some variation in texture, as opposed to the neatly wrapped yarn. 

Using the pom-poms for a different purpose left the issue of the large foam ball unresolved. I had purchased little glass tiles to place in the hair when I had originally chose to stack it high, but when I decided to do the hair in a more abstract in symbolic way, I had forgotten all about the tiles. I started to do a mosaic/stained glass type of pattern, but didn't care for the way it looked. It really didn't add anything to the piece, and it made the foam ball extremely heavy and unbalanced. I ended up using white feathers to cover the ball. I much prefer this look as it lends to the garden style, and of course, the feathers resemble hair in some way. 

I then painted the face silver. I had first thought that I would paper-mache the face but decided against it after remembering the "creepy" critique of the unicorn. The decapitated head is creepy enough. I didn't want to push the envelope and play too much with the morbid aspect of it. I went with silver (and later an antique gold wash) because I thought that, not only is the metallic a nice neutral, it also was representative of the persona someone of royalty, or anyone in the public eye for that matter, must put on when faced with rumors and criticisms. Icy, metallic, cold, robotic...even if it is just a facade. I used greyish silver, and iridescent silver paints, then took a metallic antique gold paint mixed with water to wash across the face to warm up the silver a bit and give it an antique-y look.

Though you cannot really see it at first glance, there is a half-ball foam shape underneath the neck. It keeps the neck propped up and gives it height. I did not paint that piece because I didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to it. Instead, I wrapped it in lace, created pleats, and made a high-neck ruffle collar type of design. I even placed a pearl strand around it. I glued it down to the basket then placed the head on top of it. I used more lace to blend the neck and half-ball before gluing the whole thing together with both hot-glue and styrofoam glue. 

I bought what's known in the textile-world as a fat quarter; it happened to be printed with a texture cloth pattern. I draped the fat quarted around the inside of the basket filling any gaps that may have been a distraction after the other foam balls were glued into their final place. Also, traditionally catching baskets tended to have some scrap of fabric lining the basket to catch the blood and, later, help lift the head out of the basket.

Finally, I used the birds and butterflies to finish off the basket. Days prior, when the basket began to take shape and I knew what I was working with, I started to place the larger decorative items; when it was time to finalize their locations, I had an idea of where I wanted them. I have one black and one white feather on either side of the basket to symbolize life and death. I even purchased little eggs to arrange inside of a little nest that I also purchased. That was one of my favorite parts of the process, ironically, I think that the faux animals really brought the piece to life.

I am really pleased with my final project. Next time, I think I would better try to plan out the structure for the hair pouf, if I chose to do so. I think it has pieces of historical relevance but maybe I would add things to make it more obvious. I don't know if I would though. I quite like the idea of being ambiguous to those who may not have an understanding of her life story. 

I hope I made Madamoiselle Marie proud. :)