Few can boast a 100-year career. Erte, as Romain de Tirtoff was known, lived from 1892-1990, and worked as an artist since early childhood. This eccentric fellow veered from his heritage of Russian military aristocracy to saturate the world with flamboyance, plumage, and endless other fabulousnesses, for nearly a century. The sheer energy of Erte’s phenomenal reign is insane. He made thousands upon thousands of drawings: he was the designer of just about every theatre set, costume, opera, textile, and stage show in the last century. Close your eyes and picture ‘art deco’ and you are likely summoning up Erte. But the 20s came and went, and they were very early in his life’s work. I fell in love with Erte’s dozens of bronze sculptures at a New Orleans gallery. These ornate masterpieces showed a vivid world where the female form reigned supreme. There was little I’d ever experienced that so beautiful as these bejeweled, stylistic mermaids and mythic heroines.
Not even Madonna rivals this effeminate, utterly elegant little character; in career longevity and creative output…she’s only going on silver! His autobiography showed him to be a fierce, fearless, live-and-let-live type, a man who loved nothing more than his work, cats and solitude. He loved intensely, polishing off a ‘til –death-do-us-part that lasted 20 years and still left him ‘widowed’ in his mid-30s. He told the world about his life, art, love, theatre, opera, and Hollywood: his autobiography, Things I Remember, astonishes with dry, spare humour and deep warmth. Erte was a man of great refinement and absolute manners, hobnobbing with fashion designers and actresses, opera divas and prominent personalities- yet there’s no indication anywhere that he was ever a snob. There’s a peculiar warmth that underlies the memoirs of this graphic maverick. Even when he is scathing, as high camp personalities are wont to be, he is polite and elegant. “I firmly believe, too, that every human being has a duty to make himself as attractive as possible,” he writes in his epilogue.
Though Erte stated famously that he couldn’t ever retire because his work is his life, he did write Things I Remember to make a sweeping summary of his career. He was 80 at the time, so how long he had was anybody’s guess. I was mildly upset that he didn’t write at all about his sculptures. I just assumed that for a man who produced thousands of elaborate projects, mentioning the bronze sculptures just didn’t come up. Then I found out Erte hadn’t even STARTED making his best art yet…the sculptures were all made in his 80s!
Erte worked fearlessly, and he was blessed with strength and confidence and intuition. While the theatre world was long a haven for the queer, the early 1900s weren’t exactly an ideal era to burst out of the closet in. Will and Grace had not yet brought camp into everybody’s normal social circle. Madonna had not yet rolled out the red carpet. Furthermore, Erte was the only son of a Russian Imperial Fleet admiral. Still, his gayness must have been obvious even to those who had never known or heard of such a thing. Even as a child, Erte looked effeminate. He wanted to be a ballerina! He hated war passionately, unlike all the men in his bloodline who lived for their military duties. Erte had beauty, not violence, in his heart. “When I was five years old, I designed an evening dress for my mother,” he writes. Indeed, his mother had the gown made up, and wore it to a ball. “Around her décolletage was a garland or real roses. I was absolutely enchanted.”
Surely the redder necked among us will point to such examples to say, see; it IS the mother’s fault! But most of us see that sublime moment for what it was – as Erte felt, the pivotal moment where his fate was realized. Every last piece of his work was a celebration of women’s exquisite beauty.
Romain de Tirtoff, his real name, enjoyed variety in his work, his social life, his world travels, and his love life. He was adventurous, though he mentioned that he was so spacey that he often forgot who or where he was. For this reason, his daring never led to opium, cocaine, or other drugs that may have been in vogue in his many circles. While he enjoyed meeting new lovers on trains and at parties, he did not care for a Hollywood orgy he attended, sensing that the pleasures felt forced, awkward, and pretentious. But despite the conservative, military bloodline he was born to, Erte never wasted a moment on foolish regrets. His first ‘rendezvous’ was at age 13. “I wasted very little emotional energy in trying to fight my own nature, even less in punishing myself with feelings of guilt. Rather, I looked forward to many more delightful adventures. I was not disappointed. Sex has always played an important role in my life, and still does,” Erte wrote in his geriatric years. “But my greatest love has been my art. Other desires and relationships have always taken second place to this ruling passion.”
Indeed, he attributes indulgence and its moderation as the force behind his longevity- including the two, and only two, cigarettes per day that he enjoyed for most of his life. He also enjoyed dressing up- back in the early days, he referred to ‘drag’ as ‘in costume.’ A petite, elegant harlequin of a man, no one knew. Sometimes it wasn’t drag, per se, but such over-the-top outlandishness that his presence was unforgettable. Erte liked to intrigue his dinner companions by modeling various Asian robes, wearing a different one for every course served! But even when he dressed fashionably male, he was often mistaken for a woman.
Regardless of his unorthodox adventures, Erte was still a deeply religious person, though he preferred to pray in private. “Throughout my adult life, (prayer) has been a source of great comfort and strength. But, since I feel that religion is a private matter, I am likely to do my praying in empty cathedrals,” he wrote. He also dabbled in some salon spiritualism in the days that ghost-raising séances were the fashion. But he felt too intensely a portal, and didn’t care to experience the spirits beyond that.
Though Erte loved festive soirees, operas, and gala celebrations with the rich, famous, and royal, hobnobbing with everyone from the deeply eccentric Marchesa de Casati to Barbra Streisand, he loved his cats most of all. “Being alone is vitally important for me and my work. I am a solitary person…The cat is a solitary animal, very independent, very quiet by nature. Like cats who hide themselves away when they are ill, I cannot stand people visiting me when I am indisposed. I want to be left alone.”
Lorette C. Luzajic is the girl at thegirlcanwrite.net. Writer, artist, editor- her various art creations are everywhere. Visit her site for biography, client testimonials, links, or to hire her for your next writing project. Please order her amazing poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife.
