CHATEAU DE GROUSSAY

Thanks to a very gracious invitation from Jean-Louis Remilleux, the owner of the Château de Groussay, we visited the chateau and toured the rooms with Mr. Remilleux himself. As you may know Groussay was the home of Charles de Beistegui from 1938 until his death in 1970. Throughout that period Beistegui remodeleled the 1815 house, adding rooms in various historic styles and building a series of follies in the park. Beistegui's heirs sold his meticulously chosen furnishings at auction several years ago, however Mr. Remilleux has done a splendid job of reconstituting Beistegui's fantastic vision.

http://www.chateaudegroussay.com/

FRANCE - NORMANDIE

I'm back from France and still recovering from my state of exhaustion. I will be posting pictures from the trip in installaments. After arriving in Paris we commenced our whirlwind itinerary with a visit to the Musee Jacquemart Andre, http://www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com/fr/jacquemart/, followed by dinner with Liz O'Brien (http://www.lizobrien.com/) who was in Paris for the Biennale des Antiquaires.

Musee Jacquemart-Andre:

The next morning we left Paris to spend a few days in Normandie with my friend artist River Dillon, aka Denis Angus, aka Denis Dandurand, in his beautiful beachfront home at Grandcamp-Maisy were we joined a delightful, international group of friends:

http://www.riverdillon.com/

http://riverdillon.blogspot.com/

http://riverdillonlife.blogspot.com/

Denis and me:

Lunch on the lawn:

Beach in the background:

The house:

More coming soon . . .

Off to Paris

I leave tommorow for two weeks in France! I'll be attending, and reporting on, the Biennale des Antiquaires (http://www.bdafrance.eu/) and visiting River Dillon in Normandy (http://riverdillon.blogspot.com/), the Chateau de Groussay (http://www.chateaudegroussay.com/), the Musee de l'Ecole de Nancy (http://edn.nancy.fr/web/index.php/portail) and a hundred other wonderful places (I'm exhausted already). Gorgeous photos of the 1966 Biennale below.

ALIX PEARLSTEIN AT THE KITCHEN

A vintage Yves Saint laurent gold lamé blouse and a wild mink coat by J. Mendel make star appearances in Alix Pearlstein's bold, ambitious and strikingly successful video/installation After the Fall, now on view at The Kitchen. In the piece, which surrounds the viewer with projections on four sides, a cast of eight is divided into two "teams"--red and gold--suggesting opposing social groups. According to the artist (in an exclusive interview with me) the glittering metallic blouse "was the inception for developing a group identity that is flashy/trashy/glamorous/Hollywood-Vegas, in opposition to the other group that is utilitarian/sporty/abstract/bright--night and day: two different logics that are detailed and specific but can't be precisely identified in terms of time and place." The piece is absolutly mesmerizing: you are surrounded by moving figures on four sides--you move, they move, and the black box that you/they inhabit extends without limit in time and horizon. This major work is complemented by two smaller pendant pieces making this a spectacular presence in the Fall art scene. In Goldrush "a seemingly invaluable object - a white rectangular panel - is placed in the middle of a black box theater. A group of nine, each wearing an article of metallic gold clothing set upon the task of ripping it apart. They tear it to shreds, taunting, fighting and climbing all over each other to greedily gather every last shard of it for themselves." Two Women suggests a runway fashion show and, as with all the artist's work, is a hypnotic study of performance and relationship.

http://www.alixpearlstein.com/

http://www.thekitchen.org/

LAWRENCE COPELAND IN SILVER MAGAZINE

My article on silversmith Lawrence Copeland is now out in the September/October issue of Silver magazine (http://www.silvermag.com/). Some examples of Copeland's work from the early 1950s are shown below. Lawrence Copeland is one of the least well-known mid-20th century American silversmiths but as a student, craftsman, designer and teacher he interacted with some of the most important personalities of the mid-century crafts scene and contributed to some of the most prominent crafts institutions and enterprises. He studied silversmithing at Cranbrook and in Sweden with Baron Erik Fleming. Copeland's work was exhibited at America House, Shop One and the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair. Now 86 years old, Copeland lives in retirement in Colorado.

NEW DESIGN AT PARSONS

Wow, a show of contemporary design that I REALLY liked, and I really liked almost everything in it. The winning entries in the ID Magazine (ID--as in Industrial Design, not "ID" the London fashion magazine) Annual Design Review are now on view in the new Sheila C. Johnson Design Center galleries at Parsons--The New School For Design. ID has conducted their Annual Design Review since 1954 and the 2008 review is a tightly edited selection, despite the choices having been made by a jury of more than 20 design "experts." The installation is beautiful, with most of the 131 objects set on one huge white table (much more sophisticated and visually complex than it sounds). The Babyfaces wall panel by Badham/Norris is shown below in a colorfully lit photo but they are actually, and very succesfully, flat, pure white. In form and content they are a brilliant combination of eerieness and purity. I'm not an advocate of bottled water but the YWater bottles are designed (by Fuseproject) to be reused to create interlocking toys, sculptures or structures: great for kids, as is the fabulous YWater website. The Blossa Glogg bottle acheives a contemporary look without abandoning traditional design elements. The exhibition runs until 28 September at 66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street in Manhattan.

http://www.newschool.edu/johnsondesigncenter/subpage.aspx?id=14434

Babyfaces wall panels by Badham/Norris

http://www.badhamnorris.com/

YWater http://www.ywater.us/, designed by Fuseproject, http://www.fuseproject.com/:

Blossa Glogg, www.blossa.se, designed by BVD, http://www.bvd.se/index.html

Decorative Arts Society

The Decorative Arts Society now has a website: http://www.decartssociety.org/. The Society is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the encouragement of interest in, appreciation of, and exchange of information about the decorative arts. The Society sponsors meetings, programs, seminars, and a newsletter on the decorative arts. The newsletter includes information about all the major, and many minor, decorative arts exhibitions at museums throughout the US. Well, no exhibition is minor, in my opinion, but you know what I mean

Margo Grant Walsh

My article on modern silver collector Margo Grant Walsh appears in the August/September 2008 issue of American Craft, which is out now. An excerpt is below. If you are in Houston you can see a large selection from her collection until 10 August at the Museum of Fine Arts: http://www.mfah.org/. Check out some of the other contents of the magazine at: http://www.americancraftmag.org.

Margo Grant Walsh spent decades in a career designing sleek corporate interiors in executive positions at Skidmore Owings and Merrill and Gensler, two of the biggest and most prestigious global architecture firms. Visitors to the New York apartment of this distinguished interior architect might expect to find furniture by Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe, but instead of the shine of chrome and glass they will discover the warm glow of hammered copper and the cool gleam of hand-made silver. All around, on shelves, in bookcases and on tabletops is the magnificent clutter of one of the most important collections, anywhere, of silver and metalwork from the late 19th century to the present. The emphasis in her décor is on comfort rather than cachet and Margo Grant Walsh herself and her splendid collection provide the latter in abundance. . . . In a recent conversation Grant Walsh discussed how her collection began, how it evolved and where it is going. Her guiding principles have always been design, form and function, not surprising for an interior architect: "I collect for design and everything I have you can use: I don't collect anything that could be called table sculpture." . . .

Margo Grant Walsh:

Muffineer by Charles Robert Ashbee, 1905:

Coffee, Chocolate and Tea Service by Charles Boyton, 1947:

Pietre Dure at the Metropolitan Museum

RUSH to the Metropolitan Museum as soon as possible to see "Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe." Actually you have until September 21st to see this spectacular exhibition, but time flies and the next thing you know this once-in-our-lifetime assemblage will be dispersed. The show includes examples of hardstone carving and inlay from the early Renaissance to the neo-classical, from massive, wildly ornamented cabinets to exquisitely delicate and refined miniatures. Pietre dure craftsmanship has never dissapeared but the curators have, perhaps wisely, left out the mid- to late-nineteenth century when, as I wrote elsewhere about certain examples in the Gilbert Collection, technique exceeded taste. As much as I love all things nineteenth-century some of the pictorial hardstone inlays circa 1890 are pretty atrocious. Unfortunately it is that type of thing that turns off some people who, even more unfortunately, are inherently lacking in discernment . . . like James Gardner, an alleged art critic for the reactionary New York Sun newspaper who opened his review of the pietre dure exhibition with the statement that "there is nothing quite like those two little words, 'decorative arts,' to send all but the most committed museumgoers heading for the exit . . . any attempt to entice viewers with largely anonymous heirlooms from the ancien regime is probably a fool's errand. To date, the Metropolitan Museum has had only one notable popular success in this regard, the gorgeous two-part tapestry show that occupied its galleries this past autumn." I guess he didn't see the Herter Brothers exhibition and hasn't heard of the Wrightsman galleries, etc. Although his review is favorable he inexplicably calls the exhibition "oddly charming" as if it was a show of tiny, tacky bibelots rather than a collection of many of the greatest masterpieces of design and craftsmanship of all time and place.

The fabulous tabletops shown below depict allegories of air and water, made in 1761 in the Grand Ducal Workshops in Florence. Okay, so they are more elegant than imposing but, believe me, this show does not lack for imposing, authentic masterpieces.

Carlton Hobbs

Carlton Hobbs always had the most magnificent booth at the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show (in October at the 7th Regiment Armory). He hasn't shown there in a number of years but he now exhibits all year-round in his own townhouse in Carnegie Hill: http://www.carltonhobbs.com. In 1999 at the Armory he showed this outrageous Venetian mirror, 71 x 70 inches, circa 1720. I scanned it from the catalogue of the show, which is now going in the garbage along with a ton of other stuff that I decided I can live without--I had to save this image though.