Kind Hearts and Minarets
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Category: Art
Paint the Town Bed
Oh yeah baby. Bring. It. On. It’s the five star hotel with a museum standard art collection. Peter van Lint’s Pool of Bethesda; Sir John Lavery’s Portrait of Eileen Lavery; Louis le Brocquy’s Woman in White: you name it. Dublin’s finest. Then some. The one and only Merrion. Lustre between the canals. Architectural Digest raves about it. The Merrion’s frontage is unmistakably Dublin Georgian. Architectural historian Jeremy Musson once observed, “Irish Palladian houses somehow seem more perfect that many of their English contemporaries.” He was referring to country houses but the same could be said of their urban counterparts: Georgian Dublin. A vigorous typology, the pure geometry of their window to brick gaps ratio and half umbrella fanlights reads perfection. Easy to architecturally digest. Step aside inside.
Architectural historian Mark Girouard once observed, “There tends to be something impersonal about English plasterwork of the Adam period; Irish work of the same date, though often less sophisticated, has at its best a certain gaiety and freshness that has survived from the rococo period.” There is nothing staid about stuccadore Robert West’s birds and baskets made from lime and crushed marble. Below the 18th century drawing room plasterwork ceilings, a 21st century social carousel whirls in finite graceful circles. Smashing. Slip away. And so to bed. Yup, 400 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. Colourway inspired by a Paul Henry painting in the staircase hall. Italian Carrara marble bathroom. Got it.
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Retreat and Rebellion
“It’s a virtue of the venue,” affirms Dr Hope Wolf. “There should be friction between an exhibition and its setting.” A lecturer at the University of Sussex, Dr Wolf is the curator of a major London exhibition on Sussex Modernism. It explores two questions. Why were radical artists and writers drawn to rural Sussex in the first half of the 20th century? Why was their artistic innovation accompanied by domestic, sexual and political experimentation?
That venue. Now owned by The Bulldog Trust, Two Temple Place is an extraordinary neo Gothic mansion nestling next to Victoria Embankment. Its tip to toe carvings and coloured glass form quite a backdrop to, say, the De La Warr Pavilion architectural model. “It’s mostly a contrast but sometimes there’s less than you think,” she points out. “The Victorian emphasis on arts and crafts is a connection that runs through to Eric Gill’s work.” What a brilliant juxtaposition in the staircase hall though: three musketeers atop newels gazing down on Salvador Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa!
“Designed by John Loughborough Pearson to satisfy William Waldorf Astor’s fantasies, Two Temple Place is something of a dream house. But his vision is demure when compared with the explicitly sexual imagery on display.” The curator acknowledges this tension in her choice of first exhibit. It’s a marble mini coffer decorated with an eroticised nude and filled with poems by the likes of Ezra Pound. In 1914 he and five other young poets presented to the Sussex writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, whom Ezra called “the last of the great Victorians”. The admiration wasn’t mutual. “Wilfrid was a traditionalist. He hated the artwork and poems,” says Dr Wolf. “He kept the coffer but positioned it facing a wall to hide the nude.”
Retreat and Rebellion is a multimedia exhibition. While Dr Wolf lectures on British Modernist Literature and is a Director of the Centre for Modernist Studies, she has a background in history. “The University of Sussex takes a multidisciplinary approach to learning. This exhibition was a chance to include literature and music as well as art. There’s lots of media in the upstairs gallery but all the artists – Serge Chermayeff, László Moholy-Nagy, Henry Moore, John Piper and Eric Ravilious – actually knew each other.”
Those questions. This exhibition argues that a rural retreat provided an escape from the metropolis to explore alternative living. It illustrates how the regional setting both amplified the artists’ and writers’ contrary energies and facilitated their attempts to live and represent the world differently.
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White Cube
Missed it, impossible. An enigmatic form; a legible plan. Classical with precedence; original with credence. Absence of colour; presence of brilliance. Monochromatic look; colourful character. Box clever; clever box. The morphemes of negative space; the polyphemes of architectonic afterimage. Lines of beauty; the unlocked grid. Complexity; contradiction. Cool design; hot property. If architecture is frozen music, The Music Box is a timely sculpture in ice. Above the arches; above the commuter belt; above the parapet; above the radar; above the norm. Blue sky thinking. Right side of the tracks. Rooms with a view. A place for living; a space for learning. Thinking outside the (Miesian) box, Trevor Morriss, Principal of SPPARC Architecture, is a bright young(ish) thing, a rising star in the architectural firmament that is London. The sky’s not the limit. The Music Box is his latest meteor to strike across the galaxy. Taylor Wimpey Central London’s mixed use scheme of 55 apartments suspended over a music college will inspire generations to come. List it, imaginably.
“The scheme is in two parts: the upper element adopts the vertical proportions of the golden section. A cube shaped residential building is delicately positioned over a 15 metre high base with a large glazed section, providing both prominence onto the street and glimpses into the music college. This purity of form is reflected in the simplicity of the external surfaces. The strong base is faced with a white ceramic brick interrupted by a textured three dimensional band representing rhythm which accords with the positioning of the rectilinear punched apertures. But it is the erosion of this cubic form that truly defines the building. A ‘missing’ street corner acknowledges the strong horizontality of the adjacent railway line, in parallel creating a longitudinal distinction between the music college and apartments. The upper residential storeys are distinguished by a hierarchical layer of vertical solar spines intersecting glazed fabric. The top of The Music Box is a continuous glazed kerb regularly punctuated by the extension of the solar spines: a profile reminiscent of a hammer and piano keys.”
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Water Feat
The art and architecture worlds were shocked by the death of Pritzker Prize winner Dame Zaha Hadid last Easter. Age 65 is young to die and even more so for an architect. That’s the age when many of the greats’ careers are really taking off. The Zaha Hadid Design Studio in Clerkenwell, that well of London overflowing with creative, showcases her designs from paintings to shoes to sculptures to maquettes. And, as it transpires, bathrooms. Porcelanosa, the super high end bathroom company handily next door, has taken over the basement display space.
It’s a chance to see her last work before the final curtain fell on Zaha’s glorious career as the world’s best female architect. A career which, ironically, only got going full steam in the UK following the brouhaha over the disastrous design competition for Cardiff Bay Opera House. Cardiff’s loss; rest of the UK’s gain. London’s slick Olympics Aquatic Centre and Serpentine Sackler Gallery would follow. As would a flow of high profile international projects. What a curriculum vitae! Masterpiece Fair 2016 posthumously commemorated her non architecture talents. Porcelanosa is celebrating the future of the polymath’s legacy: bathroom architecture. Arbor vitae must keep growing. Zaha’s professional confidant Patrik Schumacher has stepped up to run the architecture practice.
Vitae is a collection of handcrafted ceramic pieces created by Zaha Hadid Design for Porcelanosa’s specialist bathroom company Noken. Maha Kutay, Director of Zaha Hadid Design, at the design launch: “Being an architectural practice and working on hospitality and residential projects, it was only natural for us to look at developing a bathroom range to complete our interiors. The design has been informed by a fluid language connecting each piece visually to create a wholesome experience.”
The Lebanon born architect joined the practice straight from university. Initially involved in architectural projects, her career veered into design. “I’ve worked on the Roca showroom in London, various exhibition and fair stands such as Design Miami and Design Miami Basel, and products such as the Citco marble collection.” Zaha had a fearsome reputation but Maha says working for her was rewarding. “She kept you on your toes. She knew exactly your potential and pushed you to achieve this.”
High tech advancements haven’t watered down the cutting non edged design of Vitae. Quite the reverse. Zaha’s practice has always been at the forefront of the interface between architecture, landscape, geology and importantly, technology. Computer systems enabled her early designs to be executed. Technology had to catch up with Zaha, not the other way round. “Zaha Hadid’s vision redefined architecture for the 21st century, capturing imaginations across the globe. Her legacy endures within the DNA of the design studio she created.” Magistra vitae.
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The Last Battle You’re Free
Nestled in the Monsanto Hills, on the city’s edge, glimpses of modernity far below, sits the Fronteira Palace. The seat of the Marquesses of Fronteira, it is Portugal’s premier example of a 17th century Italianate palace and gardens. A tapestry of sunburnt red walls, yellowed white trimmings, cerulean blue screens and enigmatically black loggias elevates the elevations from architecture to art. This being Lisbon, tiles are aplenty too. Or azulejos as they’re locally named, lifting the prosaic to the mosaic. Founder Dom João de Mascarenhas, 2nd Count of Torre and 1st Marquess of Fronteira, was clearly good with colour.
‘The little owl, and the great owl, and the swan’
Following the 1755 earthquake which smashed up the family’s city centre home, the former hunting lodge was upgraded to palace. At this time, the 5th Marquess Dom José Luis de Mascarenhas added a family wing perpendicular to the gated entrance. And that was that. And this is now. If architecture is frozen music, then Fronteira Palace is frozen history. But there are bills to be paid. “Very few family owned historic houses in Lisbon are open to the public,” says the guide. “The main rooms are hired out as they are for weddings. We don’t clear the furniture away. The family wing is completely private.”
‘And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle’
The gardens are the stuff of Capability Brown nightmares. A maximalist dream of terraces and terracotta, clipped bushes and stone tushes, box hedging and bucks’ antlers, urns and turns, airs and parterres. In their midst, unbeknownst to the casual wanderer, a red eyed red beaked black swan, a magnificent beast, a silent risk, patrols his territory: the lake and then some. “He attacks people!” warns the guide. This palace is now the black swan’s hunting lodge. The hunted has become the hunter. Ha! An epistemological fourth quadrant – this one has legs.
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The Shock of the Old and the New
It’s the Van Loon Museum of Lisbon: historic interiors with contemporary interventions. A strictly guarded circuit ensures visitors view all three floors, six centuries, 27 galleries and 2,000 objects in a mannerly fashion. “To the left!” “Up the stairs!” Turn right!” “Down the corridor!” Like another of its cultural continental cousins, the Baccarat Museum, the Medeiros e Almeida House Museum fills a Parisian (style) townhouse. Originally built for a lawyer in 1896, the house was bought by António Medeiros e Almeida 47 years later.
Successful businessman António and his wife Margarida emerged in the mid 20th century as great European collectors. On a quest for beauty, the glamorous pair filled their home with fine and decorative works of art. Following Margarida’s death in 1970, and with no children, he established a foundation to keep the eclectic collection intact. António added an extension covering the garden to accommodate yet more art. He died aged 90 in 1986 and at the turn of the 21st century his wish came true. The Medeiros e Almeida House Museum was opened to the public.
A glass fronted café spills out onto a courtyard between the old and new wings: a leafy oasis in the business district of Barata Salgueiro. Perfect for whiling away the daylight hours over a frothy coffee (€1.50) and savoury twiglets (grátis). Post tour, of course. A magnet on the café’s fridge door spells ‘Food with Art’. Always back a winning formula.
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Drill Thrill
Dream | Light | Water. World renowned Chinese born Hong Kong based London visiting Masterpiece exhibiting jewellery creator and artist extraordinaire Wallace Chan talks exclusively to Lavender’s Blue about nature, gemstones and the dentist. “When I see a flower fade it makes me feel sad. I want to capture the moment before that happens,” he says, dwarfed by the 2.2 metre high Rise of Heart next to him. Wallace informs us this fuchsia hued extravaganza is of honed titanium butterflies encircling a flower of amethysts, citrines and 1,000 rubies. “Do flowers attract butterflies or is it the other way round? I wonder about that relationship.” Wallace reveals, “I’m always very curious! I like to study the sky and earth, to capture the universe in my works. The universe is my teacher!” Yes, but what about the dentist? “I remember visiting the dentist when I was 12. I thought the drill could be used in the creation of jewellery. So, a visit to the dentist is a piece of memory!” And, it transpires, a lesson in craftsmanship. Today, Wallace Chan uses a modified dentist drill to carve designs in gemstones for his exhibition pieces.
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Here Come The Men in Red Coats
“Almost 75 percent of Kensington and Chelsea is covered by conservation areas,” Rock Feilding-Mellen duly told us over dinner at Clarke’s Restaurant on Kensington Church Street. He’s Deputy Leader of the Borough. “We’re very very proud of our built environment and the legacy we have inherited. The Royal Borough is held in high esteem here and around the world.” Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital Chelsea is one of the jewels in the prestigious Borough’s tiara. It’s fast becoming as renowned for an annual temporary replica in its grounds as the original 17th century quadrangular forerunner.
Another year, another masterpiece. Another year, another Masterpiece. Only in its seventh year, whatever did we do before this gaping lacuna in the social calendar was filled? Mind you, the Victorians managed just one Great Exhibition. It’s time to mingle with the well addressed sort of people who live in a house with no number (we’ll allow Number One London or at a push One Kensington Gardens as exceptions). Hey big spenders: there are no pockets in shrouds. Superprimers at play. From the Occident to the Orient, Venice to Little Venice, Dalston Cumbria to Dalston Dalston, the Gael to the Pale, Sally Gap to Sally Park or Sallynoggin, Masterpiece is like living between inverted commas. Among this year’s prestigious sponsors are Sir John Soane’s Museum and The Wallace Collection. That familiar conundrum: Scott’s or Le Caprice? Best doing both. Home of tofu foam Sinabro would approve. It’s not like we’ve hit the skids ourselves, as they say. The choice of champagne is even less of a dilemma: it’s Claridge’s favourite Perrier-Jouët on (gold) tap.
The Bantry House Siena Marble Tables, each spanning two metres, take pride of place at Ronald Phillips. This princely pair was purchased by the 2nd Earl of Bantry in the 1820s for the tapestry crammed entrance hall of his West Cork country house. The black marble supporting columns retain the original paint used to simulate the Siena marble tops. Thomas Lange of Ronald Phillips describes Siena marble as “the Rolls Royce of marbles”. Dating from George III times, they are priced £100,000 plus. Another Anglo Irish masterpiece is The Hamilton Tray. Commissioned by the 1st Marquess of Abercorn, this priceless piece of silver dates from 1791.
Symmetry and the art of the perpendicular abound in the Masterpiece salons (displays being much too modest a term). Lady Rosemary “I hate furniture on the slant” Spencer-Churchill would approve. Tinged with temporality, touched by ephemerality, the rooms are nonetheless paragons of authenticity. Exhibitors’ choice of wall covering is all defining. At Wallace Chan, velvety black is not so much a negation as a celebration of the totality of all colours. The kaleidoscopic crystallinity of a heist’s worth of gems is a welcome foil to the solidity of the backdrop. Jewellery designer and artist Wallace tells us, “I am always very curious. I like to study the sky and the earth. I seek to capture the emotions of the universe in my works.” Pre-Raphaelite stained glass windows by Henry Holiday cast an atmospheric rainbow over Sinai and Sons. Such a whirl of interiors – Min Hogg would approve. Purveyors of Exquisite Mind Bombs, Quiet Storm, add to the glamour. An exchange of fabulosity with Linda Oliver occurs. Moving on…
This year’s theme of women is encapsulated by a masterpiece painted by a female of a female courtesy of Stair Sainty Gallery. “Why Vigée Le Brun is regarded as one of the finest and most gifted of all c18th female portrait artists” the gallery succinctly tweeted. Stair Sainty do though deservedly devote 3,290 words on their website to Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s oil portrait of Yekaterina Vassilievna Skavronskaia (Countess Litta to you), a member of the Russian Court. A favourite of nobility and royalty, Madame Lebrun was tasked with softening the French Queen Marie Antoinette’s image through a series of family portraits. Despite the artist’s outstanding talent, this PR attempt was about as successful as Edina Monsoon recruiting Kate Moss (incidentally the model pops up in Chris Levine’s laser tryptych She’s Light priced £25,000) as a client in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie. The premiere clashes with the Masterpiece Preview but we’ll stick to one red carpet at a time…
The late great Zaha Hadid, a regular visitor up to last year at Masterpiece, is now the subject of a commemorative salon. Interior designer Francis Sultana has curated an exhibition revealing Zaha wasn’t just the world’s greatest female architect – she was a dab hand at painting, jewellery and crockery design. Undisputed queen of Suprematism, curvature is her signature whatever the scale. Francis remarks, “Zaha never really believed in straight lines as such.” Across the boulevard, a moving arrangement by the Factum Foundation centred round a life-size crucifix is a reminder amidst this earthly wealth and glamour of the importance of faith and preservation. “Art is intention, not materials,” believes Adam Lowe of the Factum Foundation.
Montaged onto a bright blue sky, it’s time the red and white multidimensional Masterpiece marquee was designated as a listed building. Seasonal of course. Talking of the (changing) Season, whatever next? Proms in Peckham? Disney at Montalto? We’ll settle for tomorrow afternoon’s London Art Week Preview, a jolly round the galleries of St James’s with The Wallace Collection’s architect John O’Connell.
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The Cloud Capped Towers Shakespeare in Soane’s Architectural Imagination
Hot on the unclad heels of Sarah Lucas’s show at Sir John Soane’s Museum comes an exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. London is awash with Shakespeare festivities from Somerset House to Dr Johnson’s House. The Soanian exhibition is the best, the most intriguing, and is set in a superior interior. The playwright’s connection to the architect is far from tenuous. Quite the opposite in fact.
“Soane comes halfway between Shakespeare’s time and ours,” muses Dr Frances Sands, Curator of Drawings and Books at the museum. Last spotted leading a tour of 20 St James’s Square, Fran is one of a trio of erudite academics on duty. “The bard’s reputation was really only fully established in the 18th century Georgian period. He wasn’t a national hero before then. It kicked off, in part, with the actor David Garrick. And the Shakespeare Ladies Society! Soane, as an educated gentleman, was a collector of Shakespeariana.”
Professor Alison Shell of University College London, Guest Curator of the exhibition, adds, “Bibliophilia gathered pace as the 19th century progressed. Bibliomania! The madness of books! Soane acquired all four Shakespeare folios, a feat a private collector could never match now. One of the folios belonged to James Boswell. Shakespeare was something of a religion to Soane who venerated great men. Soane was a Romantic with a capital R!”
The exhibition space occupies two first floor galleries in the house to the left of the museum’s famous façade. “It was too tempting not to get out all four folios to make the point! Lovely!” smiles Alison. “It’s a celebration of the imaginations of Soane and Shakespeare.” The patronage of Dr Johnson’s friend Garrick is on display through actors’ portraits and theatre designs. Garrick commissioned both Soane and Robert Adam so another celebrated architect is represented. Indeed, Soane astutely purchased the full set of Adam’s office drawings.
Tying various artistic strands together is Soane’s drawing of George Dance’s front elevation of the Shakespeare Gallery on Pall Mall. Short lived and commercially disastrous, the design of the Shakespeare Gallery nonetheless was inspirational to Soane. Its flying saucer domes would later reappear at the Dulwich Gallery.
Museum Archivist Sue Palmer points to a diary, “Rather charmingly, when Eliza and he went to visit their son studying architecture in Liverpool, Soane noted their visit to plays in Stratford-upon-Avon. So that’s rather fun!” All three academics concur that Soane was the most literary architect Britain has ever had. In 10 out of his 12 Royal Academy lectures he quoted Shakespeare. His interest in theatre, a medium obsessed with illusion, befits the great conjurer of space. Soane promoted Shakespeare as the supreme embodiment of English literature. The architect never knowingly undersold his talent. No doubt Soane was heavily hinting that he was the supreme embodiment of English architecture.
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Power in Woman
Forget Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Breakfast at Soane’s is where it’s at. A private private view at sunrise in the North Drawing Room. Soane wasn’t afraid of breaking convention. Neither are the museum curators. At first glance it’s an alarming intervention: three contemporary sculptures of females from the waist down sitting, one cross-legged two open-legged, in a 19th century interior. British artist Sarah Lucas certainly has form. At second glance the plaster sculptures may be viewed as a development of Soane’s in situ collection of classical casts. Admittedly none of Soane’s have cigarettes protruding out of orifices. In a nice twist, the pale sunset yellow of the North Drawing Room inspired the colour of Sarah Lucas’s British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
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The Violet Hour + Anne Davey Orr
First there was London’s hottest hotelier. Then there was Ireland’s most charitable chairman. Hot on their high heels comes the polymathic Anne Davey Orr. For once, Lavender’s Blue are lost for words. Maybe that’s what happens when we interview the suave former editor and publisher of the UK and Ireland’s longest running architectural publication. The Violet Hour, an unmissable annual event, this time round is one mega quote. Easy!
Anne was born in Downpatrick and spent her early childhood in Killyleagh, County Down, a town dominated by a fairytale castle built in 1180 and strategically located overlooking Strangford Lough to defend the town against the Vikings. It was adapted in the 1850s by the architect Sir Charles Lanyon. The castle has a colourful history which includes murder, a contested inheritance and a Judgement of Solomon. It’s now inhabited by the Rowan Hamilton family and is marketed as a self catering destination. Anne remembers going with her mother to the castle’s market garden to buy vegetables.
Educated at the St Louis Grammar School, Kilkeel, County Down where she boarded for seven years while her family moved to County Louth, her fondest memory is of her teacher Sister Mary Gertrude who also mentored the famous singing trio The Priests. Anne completed a Craft Diploma at Belfast College of Art and a Diploma in Art at Edinburgh College of Art, now Heriot Watt University, where she specialised in sculpture. She was awarded a Postgraduate Scholarship and two Travelling Scholarships, one to France where she studied the work of Rodin, and one to Italy where she studied Marino Marini. During her postgraduate year she had a studio in Inverleith Place Lane, Edinburgh, and was surprised one evening to have a visit from a short dark man to enquire about her studio. It had been his he said. Only later did she find out she’d had a visit from the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. His mosaic at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station was partly removed to make way for Crossrail. The parts removed have found a new home in Edinburgh University
While at Edinburgh she was elected President of the Sculpture and of the Drama Society whose former President was the playwright John Antrobus. She wrote and produced two plays one of which is now in the archive of the Traverse Theatre in the city. Anne’s interest in theatre stems from her association with the legendary Mary O’Malley, founder of the Lyric Players Theatre Belfast, as a scene painter. In later years Anne was elected to chair the theatre’s board, setting in motion a review of its governance.
This process led to the creation of the theatre’s new award winning building by O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects. Through Edinburgh Drama Society, Anne met the film director Peter Watkins and at his request marshalled a design team to work on his ground breaking BBC film Culloden shot in the Scottish Highlands. Peter then invited her to London to work on his film The War Game for BBC. Both films attracted considerable attention. Culloden, because it was an entirely new format for television drama and The War Game because it was considered too realistic to be broadcast at the time and was only shown in selected cinemas until comparatively recently. Subsequently Anne joined the BBC, initially training as a designer in London. She worked on high profile programmes such as Doctor Who and Top of the Pops. While at the BBC, she won Vogue Magazine’s Young Writer | Designer of the Year Award. Anne was subsequently sent to train as a producer, joining Arts Features. She was production assistant on the BBC2 film Rather Awake and Very Eager and worked with the producer Julien Jebb. She also directed the nationally broadcast Take It Or Leave It literary quiz which featured the writers John Betjeman, Anthony Burgess and Antonia Fraser among others.
Anne then moved to BBC Belfast to work in design and production. She initiated and directed a series called Where Are They Now? which revitalised interest in the careers of personalities that had been forgotten. Anne designed a series of schools programmes written by Seamus Heaney for the producer David Hammond. For a number of years Anne covered visual arts and theatre in Northern Ireland for The Guardian and Irish Times.
Anne took a sabbatical when her children Leon and Mary-Ann were born and moved to County Kilkenny with her husband the architect Harry Orr. There, she revived her art practice setting up Legan Castle Design Studio. She won an Irish Arts Council Travel Award to study traditional mosaic making in Ravenna’s Accademia di Belle Arti and exhibited during Kilkenny Arts Week. Her exhibition about The Troubles, titled Images of War, transferred to The Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in Wicklow through the sponsorship of the journalist Kay Hingerty and the encouragement of the late Jack White, Head of Programmes at RTE, who opened the exhibition.
When Plan magazine needed a Northern Correspondent, Anne was approached. That association led to the publication of a brochure for the Festival of Architecture in Belfast for the Royal Society of Ulster Architects which subsequently evolved into the Ulster Architect magazine of which Anne was the founding editor. In the 1980s she purchased the magazine and set up a company to ensure that it would continue in publication. As publisher and editor of an architectural magazine she covered all the main building projects in the UK and Ireland with an eye to the visual arts and heritage projects. She personally interviewed high profile people including Max Clendinning, Edward Cullinan and Richard Rogers as well as covering stories throughout the UK and in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Holland, Italy and Norway. Her company was selected to take part in an entrepreneurial programme between University of Ulster and Boston College. Anne spent six months in the media department of a large advertising agency, Hill Holiday Connors Cosmopolous.
She completed an international publishing course at Stanford University, California, and is one of the founding editors of the art magazine Circa. Anne also published and edited the cross community Irish magazine Causeway as well as Scottish Arts Monthly. Anne also contributed to Building Design, Creative Camera and World Architecture. Somehow, sometime in between for six years she sat on the Historic Buildings Council, chaired the Visual Arts Committee of the Arts Council and chaired the Board of the Lyric Theatre. Other extramural activities included a nine year stint on the Regional Committee of the National Trust. She was a member of the judging panel for the Diljit Rana Bursary at the Department of Architecture, Queen’s University, where she tutored sixth year students on the presentation and marketing of their work. In 2004 Ulster Architect was taken over by a Dublin based company which Anne estimated had the resources to take the publication fully into the digital age. She stayed with the company during the handover period and then determined to return to what she had originally set out to do: paint.
What made her switch from painting to study sculpture, first in Belfast and then in Edinburgh – a move Anne made partially influenced by the stories brought back by her friend the painter J B Vallely – she doesn’t recall. Her period at Edinburgh College of Art was marked by considerable success. It was enhanced further when she was awarded a Royal Scottish Academy Best Student Award, a Postgraduate Scholarship and met her external examiner, the sculptor F E McWilliam. One of Ireland’s best galleries just outside Banbridge is named after him. In 2007 she completed a part time foundation course at the Southern Regional College in Newry which led to a 10 week Foundation Course at Slade School of Art in London, specialising in painting. From there she completed a BA Hons in painting at the University of Ulster gaining a First.
While completing her BA, Anne undertook a project for the European Movement in Northern Ireland which culminated in an exhibition of the national flowers of the nation states of the European Union. The subject was compatible with her coursework and increasing interest in aspects of landscape and landscape painting. The collection of 30 paintings was initially shown at the Harbour Commissioners’ Office, Belfast. Through the sponsorship of Speaker’s Office at Stormont and the Office of the European Commission in Belfast, the exhibition In the Garden of Europe transferred to the Great Hall in Stormont in 2014. It was the backdrop to a visit from the European Economic and Social Committee hosted by the Vice President Jane Morrice, formerly a founder of the Women’s Coalition Party. At Jane’s invitation the exhibition transferred to Brussels in 2015 with an accompanying monograph on the Language of Flowers written by Anne and illustrated with images of her paintings. It subsequently transferred to the offices of the Northern Ireland Executive in Brussels where it is on permanent display.
On completion of her BA in 2012 Anne moved to London to undertake a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of the Arts. In 2014 she was one of only two artists from Wimbledon College of Arts to have her work selected for the University’s Made in Arts London, an organisation which selects the best work from across the component colleges to promote throughout the capital. Three works were selected and exhibited at the Hampstead Art Fair in 2014. Anne has also exhibited at The Rag Factory, Brick Lane; the Norman Plastow Gallery, Wimbledon; the Image Gallery, Camden; and alongside artists such as Will Alsop, Philida Law and Greyson Perry at the Oxo Tower in London for The National Brain Appeal. Her work for The Rag Factory exhibition was site specific, responding to the factory’s history when it was used by Young British Artists Tracey Emin and Gary Hume as studios. Tongue in cheek, Anne produced a triptych in the form of a religious icon featuring Charles Saatchi, svengali of the YBAs, as a central Christ-like figure holding the catalogue for his Sensation exhibition in which their work was exhibited. Highlighting his midas-like influence on their careers, Tracey Emin’s coat and Gary Hume’s shirt are depicted as monumental relics on either side of him. Images of two of her large paintings were selected for Volume X of International Contemporary Artists published in New York in 2015. Anne is currently working on a narrative portrait of the nurse Edith Cavell who was executed by the Nazis. To mark the 100th anniversary of her death, the painting will hang in the patients’ waiting room of the Edith Cavell Surgery in Streatham Hill.
My Favourite London Hotel… Because I live in London I don’t often stay in hotels in the city but I did stay in the Tower Hotel at Tower Bridge when my daughter was married in London. It’s in a spectacular location with magnificent views of the bridge and the River Thames. Quite a few years ago I found The Manhattan Hotel in Covent Garden almost by accident. Named after Lord Louis Mountbatten, in the opulently relaxed colonial interior, you could almost transport yourself to India as it was when he was the last Viceroy. It’s now part of the Edwardian Hotels group so has probably changed somewhat since then.
My Favourite London Restaurant… I always take advice from my brother Damien and his wife Imelda when they come to London. They are both great foodies who keep me on my toes gastronomically. They lived in London before moving to France about 20 years ago but still visit regularly. So I don’t really have a favourite but I have had really good experiences with them at Brasserie Zédel in Piccadilly which is a slice of medium priced Paris in London, and Vinoteca, Beak Street, Soho. Great atmosphere in both and good value.
My Favourite Local Restaurant… My favourite food is Middle Eastern so I like Beyrouths in Streatham Hill which serves simple Lebanese food, great mint tea and delicious homemade lemonade. For French food I found three courses recently at Côte Brasserie on Battersea Rise faultless. The subdued interior in muted green is cleverly lit to soften the glow over the clientele and again good value.
My Favourite Weekend Destination… It used to be Ragdale Hall Health Hydro and Thermal Spa in Melton Mowbray where I took my family one year for a total chillout divorced from the commercialism of Christmas. Now I think it is Kelly’s Hotel in Wexford, Ireland. Architecture as such has bypassed it in that it has grown like topsy over the years due to its popularity, particularly with families. Situated right on the beach on the Wexford coast, it has one of the best private art collections in Ireland, a selection from it hanging on the hotel’s walls: Hockney, Picasso, Miró, and good contemporary Irish art as well. Sculpture defines the surrounding gardens and the collection is catalogued in a book which can be purchased at reception. The labels of their own very good wine collection and the menus for their creative and wonderful food are designed by the artist Bill Corzier.
My Favourite Holiday Destination … I have great memories of holidaying in Gozo, the neighbouring island to Malta in the Mediterranean. A stay at the wonderful Ta’ Cenc Hotel would be a real treat. A trip to La Colombe d’Or in Saint-Paul de Venice, one of the oldest medieval towns on the French Riviera near Nice, would be an alternative. Famed for its association with glitterati, Catherine Deneuve, Courtney Love and Meryl Streep have rented rooms there. It is a 16th century stone house which boasts a private collection of paintings by Braque, Matisse, Miró and Picasso. The artists paid for their lodgings by donating works. The town of Saint-Paul de Venice winds around the hilltop crammed with artists’ studios and little boutiques all under the brooding eye of Rodin’s Le Penseur at the top. Close by is The Foundation Maeght with its Miró Garden and superb galleries.
My Favourite Country House… While I am drawn to return to the Villa Saraceno, one of the mansions designed by Andrea Palladio near Vincenza in the Veneto in northeast Italy which inspires a deceptive sense of grandiose living, the less grandstanding Rathmullan House in County Donegal wins me over largely because of its location on a seemingly endless beach – blue flag and with spectacular views of the Fanad Peninsula. It was built in the 1760s and is a typical Georgian house of the period used as a bathing house by the Bishop of Derry. One of Ireland’s leading architects, Liam McCormick, designed a new pavilion extension in 1969 and the hotel has been extended several times since then. In spite of that it still feels like visiting someone’s home because many of the original features of the house have been retained and the staff are wonderfully friendly.
My Favourite Building… I have written about many buildings over the years for various publications so I have a number of favourites including Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and the buildings of the architect who most influenced him, Louis Henry Sullivan – an almost forgotten figure – known as the father of the skyscraper which he saw as very specific to America. Although seldom credited with it, he coined the phrase ‘form follows function’. Louis’ Transportation Building for the Chicago World Fair of 1893 is a wonderful expression of architecture on the cusp of change and the National Farmer’s Bank of Owatonna in Minnesota of 1908 has been described as the most beautiful bank in the world. Tragically his life ended in poverty and alcoholism. My favourite building by a living architect is Ted Cullinan’s Downland Gridshell, Weald and Downland Open Air Museum of 2002. It’s a wonderful organic expression of contemporary design using traditional techniques. Ted is founder of Cullinan Studio. I sat beside him at a dinner at Queen’s University when he talked about admiring the traditional blue barns he observed on his way in from the airport. A puzzled look fell over the surrounding faces. Was this part of our architectural heritage we had missed? Was it not a case someone asked of whatever paint fell off the back of a lorry at the time they were being painted. Like the time I was suggesting programme ideas to the BBC in Belfast. I’d noticed all houses on the Shankill Road were painted dark reds, browns and ochres but houses on the Falls Road seemed to favour more pastel colours such as light grey, pale blue and yellow. Was this evidence of a significant cultural difference we should be looking at? Someone asked me had I never noticed what colours the ships in Belfast docks were painted. Aha – no expression of social significance involved at all.
My Favourite Novel… A hard one for me because I read so much and have very catholic taste. Almost anything by Eric Newby but particularly Slowly Down the Ganges and Round Ireland in Low Gear. They are laugh-out-loud books as is another favourite called Skippy Dies by Dubliner Paul Murray, recommended to me by a Welsh rugby player at the Old Alleynians Rugby Club in Dulwich College where my son used to play rugby. I also like the works of Sebastian Barry – On Canaan’s Side and A Temporary Gentleman, and Colm Toibin’s The Testament of Mary, dramatized in 2014 by Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw at The Barbican which is provocative, moving and beautifully written.
My Favourite Film… Another difficult choice because I have very schizophrenic taste in film. My favourites include Last Year in Marienbad by Alain Resnais, written by Alain Robbe-Grillet and starring Delphine Seyrig; Jules et Jim by Francois Truffaut starring Jeanne Moreau; Rocco and His Bothers by Luchino Visconti starring Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale; Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Weekend and the surreal Un Chien Andalou by Louis Bunuel and Salvador Dalí. On the other hand I loved the broad sweep of Lawrence of Arabia with that wonderful score by Maurice Jarre. I have just seen Spotlight which I think is brilliantly made. Directed by Tom McCarthy, it is my favourite film of the moment.
My Favourite TV Series… They are all legal dramas, two are American and one is British. Suits was written by Arron Korsh. The Good Wife was created by Robert and Michelle King and BBC’s Silk created by Peter Moffat in which Maxine Pike steals the show.
My Favourite Actor… At the moment Aidan Turner but I also keep an eye on Gabriel Macht who plays Harvey Spector in Suits.
My Favourite Play… I thought it was going to be Hangmen by Martin McDonagh whose work I love. It is on at Wyndham’s Theatre at the moment, transferred from the Royal Court where it got rave reviews. But I didn’t find it as good as his other plays such as the Lieutenant of Inishmaan, The Beauty Queen of Leenan, and in particular Pillowman which I saw at the Cotteslow. So I have to say that my favourite at the moment is Red which I saw at the Donmar Warehouse starring Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne. It was brilliantly written by John Logan and brilliantly acted by Alfred Molina. To make a play about how Mark Rothko painted riveting was an incredible feat which Michael Grandage, the director, and John Logan pulled off with incredible brio.
My Favourite Opera… Mozart’s Magic Flute. I have loved Mozart since my school days when I did a study of Symphony No 41, better known as the Jupiter – his last. On a visit to Italy after the Venice Opera House had been burned down, a French opera troop presented a very modernistic version of The Flute in a specially constructed temporary theatre in Venice. Travelling by motor launch to this very French off-the-wall interpretation heightened the whole experience making it unforgettable. La Fenici was reconstructed “as it was, where it was,” as he said, to the designs of architect Aldo Rossi before he died.
My Favourite Artist… I have two: Peter Doig because he imbues his landscape paintings with a sense of ‘presence’. There is a feeling of ‘the hour before the dawn’, of menace and the unknown with an uncategorisable technique. My second favourite is the East German artist Anselm Kiefer. I went to his retrospective at the Royal Academy last year and was almost speechless at the breadth of his work. Mostly I admire him for how he stepped up to German history with all its connotations and for his continued experimentation with various forms of expression and media.
My Favourite London Shop… Cornelissen + Son, the artists’ supply shop on Great Russell Street. This is the sort of shop I could eat. I am like a child in a sweetie shop when I go in. Its list of famous customers is endless and includes Francis Bacon, Audrey Beardsley and Rex Whistler. It was here that I learnt that Francis Bacon preferred to paint on the wrong side of the canvas.
My Favourite Scent… Jo Malone at the moment but I have been a follower of Estée Lauder for years mainly because my mother used her fragrances.
My Favourite Fashion Designer… I like classic clothes and good tailoring so I have a soft spot for Jean Muir. I also like the simplicity of Armani. When I am in Donegal I call on Magee to have a look at their tweeds. My mother gave me a magnificent tailored coat in a beautiful mix of Donegal tweed which, unfortunately, I need to lose a few kilos to wear.
My Favourite Charity… I support The National Brain Appeal and was delighted that a watercolour I donated to an exhibition at the Oxo Tower last year sold in aid of the charity.
My Favourite Pastime… Definitely reading and – running almost neck and neck – drawing.
My Favourite Thing… At the moment my MacBook Air.
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Architecture in Harmony
A rondo is a piece of music in which the main theme keeps recurring between different episodes. Antonio Diabelli’s Rondino was written for the piano in the 18th century. Essentially a ternary or three element form, two repeats elongate this rondo into a five part composition. It opens in mezzo piano, rising through a crescendo then a forte section, before softening through a diminuendo back to mezzo piano.
Rondino is typical of the classical era of the arts. It is symmetrical with a regular rhythm set in harmonised yet contrasting elements strung out and repeated. Articulated notions of Beauty, the Sublime and the Picturesque underscore the symbolic sensibilities of the piece. This is a work from a maestro at the height of his creative gamesmanship.
The same could be said of Russborough, an Irish neoclassical house designed by the Richard Castle. The Palladian ideal of dressing up a farm axially to incorporate the house and ancillary buildings into one architectural composition flourished in 18th century Ireland, especially under German born virtuoso architect.
The central block of Russborough is seven bays wide by two storeys tall over basement. Bent arcades link two identical lower seven bay two storey wings. This five part superfaçade is constructed of silvery grey granite. Straight retaining walls extend from the wings to terminate in gateways at either extremity, like encores. Little wonder Johann von Goethe called architecture “frozen music”.
Awesome, yes. But it combined form with function from an 18th century perspective. One wing contained the servants’ quarters and kitchen; the other, the stables. The two gateways led to the separate stable yard farmyard. In the central block, the high ceilinged piano nobile was used for public entertaining. The low ceilinged first floor was for private family use. The basement housed vaulted wine cellars and yet more servants’ accommodation.
Such is the genius of the place, and its architect, that this arrangement has adapted well in subsequent centuries. When Sir Alfred and Lady Beit flung open their doors to the great unwashed in 1978, a neo Georgian single storey visitors’ centre was neatly inserted behind the eastern colonnade. The west wing was restored in 2012 and discreetly converted into a Landmark Trust holiday let.
The Beit Foundation has ensured the survival of Russborough despite no less than four art robberies from an ungrateful element of the recipient nation. This is no picnic in a foreign land. A tour guide as graceful as Audrey Hepburn glides through the echoing halls and velvety staterooms; the latter, counterpoints in texture to the stony exterior. Not so, other Irish country houses. Carton, Dunboyne Castle and Farnham just outside Dublin were converted into boom time hotels with varying degrees of success. Uncertainty lies over the fate of Glin Castle in County Limerick and Mountainstown House in County Meath, both for sale in an unstable market. Worst of all, Ballymacool (County Donegal), Castle Dillon (County Armagh) and Mount Panther (County Down) lie in ruins, home to wandering sheep and ghosts.
Contemporary composer Karl Jenkins has brought Palladio back to the forefront of orchestral music. Literally. Inspired by the 16th century Italian architect, Palladio is a three movement piece for strings. Completed in 1996, Karl was influenced by Palladian mathematical proportionality in his quest for musical perfection.
Palladio’s pursuit of perfect proportions can be traced back to the Vitruvian model of ‘man as a measure for all things’. He reinterpreted the architectural treatise of Vitruvius, a 1st century Roman architect, for a new audience. Vitruvius believed symmetry and proportion created a harmonic relationship with individual components and their whole, either in music or architecture. He developed ratios based on the human body which were later used by 18th century composers. Michelangelo’s Vitruvian Man illustrates the concept.
Like other Roman architects, Vitruvius revered the work of Ancient Greek scholars. Their macro theses argued that the entire cosmos vibrates to the same harmonies audible in music. Pythagorean formulae quantified the relationship of architecture, music and the human form. Even the cyclical nature of the resurgence of classicism, skipping generations like beats, only to be revived in repetition and reinterpretation, has balance and form.
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We Shall Have A Ball
It’s been a quarter of a century since our last visit. But still there’s an air of inevitability about it. A case of when, not if. Indulging in afternoon tea at Britain’s most expensive hotel (not forgetting the 15 percent tip), that is. Lavender’s Blue intern Annabel P rocks up wearing half a diamond quarry’s worth of rocks. More (late) breakfast with Tiffany’s than Breakfast at Tiffany’s. All in a day’s work.
Storming past the trompe l’oeiled reception and faux tented lobby, we take in the tiered Céleste at The Lanesborough, a glazed roofed internal pavilion looking heavenwards. It’s Wedgwood blue now. A jasperware temple. Regency, just like the building. Last time round, the wildly eclectic gothiental Conservatory as it was then called was flamingo pink. Sometime in between, lurking here for four years was a greyish art decoesque intruder named Apsleys. The hotel has changed hands as well as hand painted wallpaper, but is still Middle Eastern owned. Once Rosewood managed, Oetker Collection has adopted it as an English half sister to Le Bristol Paris.
Christian our sommelier ensures Blenheim Palace Sparkling Natural Mineral Water is on tap. Always glad to support enterprising duchesses. Egg mayo with celeriac sandwiches are a particular hit. Even trumping the cucumber and mint. Although not quite up there with sketch Mayfair’s fried quail’s egg sandwiches (zany has a new). Dominik our waiter refills the plate. Oh! We’ve spotted another firm favourite. No, not the (mother’s) Ruinart. Caviar. Maybe not on the same scale as That Lunch at Comme Chez Soi but an effective enough Russian invasion of the Scottish salmon sandwiches.
A careless magpie’s droppings of edible gold and silver leaf are liberally sprinkled across afternoon tea, even landing in the clotted Devonshire cream. We skip the lemon curd for strawberry preserve on the freshly baked scones (enveloped in pristine linen) but yearn for coloured sugar crystals (a dead cert at Marlfield House) to melt in the coffee. Although technically this is afternoon tea. Pastry chef Nicholas Rouzaud’s celestial array of hazelnut, caramel, chocolate and lemon meringue fantasies arrive. They quickly do a Lord Lucan.
In another quarter of a century a Victorian revival will be due. Brown will be the new black. Or at least the new greige. Expect heavy oak panelling, heavier drapes (again) and half a dead zoo’s worth of taxidermy in the revamped Céleste. It will be renamed Charlotte at The Lanesborough in honour of our newly married princess.
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Hotel nhow Berlin + David Bowie
Right Here Right nhow | Take Two
Hard edged dockside architecture meets playful futuristic design. Nowhere is the status of a city and its wellbeing better reflected in its music than Berlin. The two are intertwined. Think the Weimar Republic and its jazz cafés. Of course the legend of a libertarian culture destroyed by fascism was propagated by the film Cabaret. Fast forward a century and post war Berlin’s inherent appeal was again its openness. It was an anomaly, an oasis of extremity created by the Cold War. Here, anything could happen.
David Bowie arrived in Berlin towards the end of the 70s. He became immersed in the German music of the period. It was saturated in absence, loss and distance. Bands such as Kraftwerk influenced his craft, his work. Bowie’s piece V 2 Schneider reverberates to the rhythm of an S Bahn train. He recorded two thirds of his Berlin Trilogy – Low and Heroes but not Lodger – at the city’s legendary Hansa Studios. As the curtain fell on communism and the 20th century, techno music would emerge, climaxing with the euphoric blaze that was Love Parade.
Which brings us to right here right now. nhow Berlin is iridescently present, a tangible addition to the waterscape, a representation of contemporary immediacy. Its roots materialise from the city’s relationship with music – more anon. With the hotel’s opening, a new layer of meaning is added to the decadence and disharmony of the not so distant past.
Positioned along the River Spree, the old line between the East and West, nhow Berlin is a fusion of Sergei Tchoban’s architecture and Karim Rashid’s design. Russian born Sergei’s creation is a cubist arrangement of boxes piled high, the top one perilously cantilevering over the others by a gravity defying 10 metres. The underside is clad in reflective steel. Sergei says he is seeking to “convey the image of a ‘crane house’”. Other planes are covered by an aluminium or brick skin punctured by square windows. It’s all about clean lines, perpendicular angles and understated colourways. Enter the tinted glass doors – white outside; pink inside – and a whole new world unfolds.
New Yorker Karim’s interiors celebrate the German capital’s zeitgeist. He employs a progressive language to describe his oeuvre. The terms ‘infostethic’, ‘blobject’ and ‘technorganic’ are given three dimensional form. Karim says, “My vision engages technology, visuals, textures, colours, as well as all the needs that are intrinsic to living in a simpler less cluttered but more sensual environment.” Strata of irregular lines, asymmetric shapes and psychedelic patterns constantly redefine the hotel experience. Here, anything can happen.
Take the reception desk. It’s a pink amorphous sculpture with inset lighting. Beyond lies an expanse of white space stretching to a glazed wall overlooking the river. A giant continuous profile of Mussolini made of gold lacquered fibreglass hovers over the bar. Piped music radiates across the ground floor by day; live gigs rock it by night. Art or seating? The luminous voluptuous organic and ergonomic sofas are both. The restaurant is segregated from the bar by sheer curtains lined with a radio wave digipop pattern.
The hot pink rooms of the East Tower take their cue from sunrise. Sky blue dominates the rooms of the West Tower. The rooms of the 10 storey Upper Tower are calming grey to counteract the vertigo inducing views. Televisions double as radio wave shaped mirrors. Floors are acoustic friendly laminate painted with the digipop pattern. Guests can rent a keyboard or guitar in their room.
Two recording studios on the eighth floor of the Upper Tower are run by the co directors of the Hansa Studios. An adjacent music lounge is equipped with the latest multimedia technology – and a pink jukebox. The lounge, conference rooms and even the roof terrace are all directly wired to the studios. This allows for impromptu recordings.
nhow Hotel is in Osthafen, a destination of the new Berlin. It’s between the offices of MTV and Universal Music. Yet history is on its doorstep. Fragments of the Berlin Wall are a stone’s throw away. David Bowie could easily have been gazing out over the dizzying panorama from the music lounge when he penned Thru These Architect’s Eyes, “All majesty of a city landscape | All the soaring days in our lives”. Back in London, a few years ago David Bowie called in with Tracey Emin to Christ Church Spitalfields. He was there to see the Richard Bridge Organ, once played by Handel. Bowie voiced the desire to play the organ once it had been restored. The Richard Bridge Organ was restored in 2015. David Bowie died in 2016. Here, anything may happen.
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Adam Fine House
It’s a bit like painting a Siamese twin onto the Mona Lisa. And plonking a hat on her head. That’s what happened in architectural terms more or less (mostly more) at St James’s Square off Pall Mall. Number 20, Robert Adam’s 1770s townhouse was duplicated side on (throwing in an extra middle bay between the two for good measure) and heightened by an attic storey plus mansard thanks to Mewès and Davis in 1936. It looks like the three bay three storey original façade has taken steroids to become a seven bay five storey palazzo. Two faces in Portland stone, both beautiful, one a grisaille. Number 20 is currently a double page thrill in Country Life, sexy images of Adam interiors splashed across a centrefold. Its four bay doppelgänger, Number 21, is 20th century offices. The Irish Georgian Society London Chapter gets a privileged evening sneak peak of 20 St James’s Square before it changes hands.
Dr Frances Sands, Catalogue Editor of the Adam Drawings Project at Sir John Soane’s Museum, leads the tour with added artistic insight by Irish Georgian Nick Sheaff. Fran arrives armed with copies of a few of the 8,000 Adam drawings under her management. “It’s very unusual for an Adam townhouse to have been built from scratch,” she says, holding court on the steps. “It was difficult to obtain a plot. This one is generously long and wide for London.” Following the unravelling of an entail – very Downton Abbey – the alliterative Sir Watkins Williams Wynn got his way. He promptly demolished the existing building and employed “the greatest architect of the day”. Fran highlights that “the house hasn’t changed much since the Adam engraving in the Soane. Number 21 is a whole different story…”
“We’re going to move around as if we’re guests of Sir Watkins,” Fran announces. Invisible sedan chairs pull up and we’re off. “Every single square inch of the entrance hall is Adam. His hallways should be cool, masculine, stone. Strong colours are Victorian. This scheme is calm, demure, authentic.” Holding court on the stairs, Nick tells us the baronet’s salary was £27,000 a year. Not bad. No wonder he was able to splash out on the “grandest staircase in any London townhouse” according to Fran. “Let’s progress as guests into the first of three first floor reception rooms.” We’re in the ante room: “a rather nice space articulated by resonances of Wedgwood’s jasperware”.
We’re lead through the ante room into the first drawing room but there’s a technical hitch. No lights. The Irish Georgians’ 21st century solution – waving mobile phone torches – allows the Adam splendour to be viewed surprisingly authentically. “This is where we will dance, talk and play cards!” Pointing to the wide shallow chimneypiece in the flickering light, Fran observes “this is deeply reminiscent of the work of Piranesi”. The period gloom soon wears thin. “We’ve languished in the dark quite long enough.” The double doors of the second drawing room are thrown back. “Adam’s interior becomes more and more elegant building to a crescendo at the back of the house!” she exclaims. “The second drawing room is fairly bling – the gilding is later. Aren’t the painted door panels rather wonderful? All this decoration would’ve been ruinously expensive!”
“The ceiling design makes the barrel vault appear heavier,” she remarks. “It alludes to Kenwood’s great library but the barrel vault and apses there are much more depressed. It is a huge misconception that Adam always designed carpets to match his ceilings. There’s often a resonance in the geometry but they generally don’t copy each other.” Great windows closed to the south. “Adam’s rebuilt screen is rather wonderful,” Fran observes, holding court over the yard. “Now we’re going to have an intimate reception in Lady Williams Wynn’s dressing room off the second drawing room. We are very close friends of her ladyship.” This mesmerisingly imaginative tour continues with a health warning about the repro work to the rear of Number 20: “Feel the jar as you step from original Adam to Adam style.” After all this first floor socialising, Dr Sands will lead us downstairs to the eating room and afterwards we will be serenaded by silent harps in the music room.
- Interior mood shots: 1/60, F14, 10,000 ISO
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Cool Lud | Kingdom Come
“And your Church in the Spittle-Fields, is it near complete?” Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd. “Carl Lentz of Hillsong in New York City, Phil Williams of East London’s Christ Church Spitalfields, Reverend Sally Hitchiner, Senior Chaplain at Brunel University… a raft of hip young Christians is credited with breathing new life into the church,” read Vogue as edited by Kate Moss. The model had been to Christ Church Spitalfields – not for a service but for an Alexander McQueen fashion event (the church building must earn its earthly keep to serve its heavenly purpose).
Turns out Kate was particularly interested in the historical plaques of this 18th century marvel. Church really shouldn’t be about people watching but at candlelit Christmas Eve Midnight Mass there’s a good chance you may be singing carols next to Vivienne Westwood or Bianca Jagger. Or one or two of the newsworthy neighbours on Fournier Street be it Tracey Emin, Jeanette Winterston or Gilbert + George. An Evening Standard spread of Phil Williams and his fellow Anglican Pastor Darren Wolf as bearded and tattooed Christian poster boys of our time has only widened Christ Church’s appeal.
It’s hard to believe that not much more than a decade ago Christ Church lay derelict, the congregation meeting round the corner in Hanbury Hall (where Charles Dickens once performed readings). The timely arrival of Reverend Andy Rider in autumn 2003 more or less coincided with the restoration of the church. At least from ground upwards. Christ Church the building was reborn. Then came the congregations. Plural. Now there’s an 8.30am Book of Common Prayer service for early risers (everyone heads to Spitalfields Market for breakfast afterwards), two hours later a family service, a Bengali service at 4pm and The Five for late risers. “It’s used a bit like a cathedral,” Andy observes.
The services become livelier, younger and better attended as Sunday progresses, culminating in a congregation of several hundred mainly 20 to 30 somethings by the evening. A lunchtime service for city workers is held every Tuesday. Diverse in worship and worshippers yes, but there’s a common thread: theologically sound, intelligent, life changing sermons. One service it might be Andy on “A Joyride through Philippians”. The next, Darren on “The Holy Spirit of Promise” (Ephesians) or Antje a German born lay preacher on “Sent to Make the Deaf Here” (Mark) or Pieter-bas a Dutch born lay preacher on “Sent to Change Hearts” (more Mark). In between Sunday afternoon services, the nave is open to the public. Described in the Evening Standard as “the best building in London”; breathlessly praised by historian Harry Goodhart-Rendel “it remains doubtful whether of its date and kind there is any finer church in Europe”; and haled by all as Hawksmoor’s masterpiece, it’s unsurprising this horizon piercing Grade I landmark is an international visitor attraction.
Christ Church has only taken three centuries to complete (usual build period of a contemporary London development rarely tops 24 months). Wren’s student Hawksmoor laid the cornerstone in 1714 but the builders focused on completing the above ground work. Below, throughout the passage of time the crypt remained a sculpted unfinished shell, a ribbed skeleton in need of fleshing out and dressing up. The guardianship of Reverend Rider and his accompanying holystic vision changed all that. Meanwhile, above the crypt, Europe’s finest baroque organ (once played by Handel) recently thundered one fine Sunday morning, notes marching ‘cross the aisle, filling the nave, floating up through the clerestory, ending four decades of silence after a multimillion pound restoration by the Friends of Christ Church Spitalfields.
“The biggest challenge of the crypt project was having no obvious financial provision during the first seven years of my ministry here,” says Andy. Over £3 million was needed. “We still appointed architects and moved the concept towards design. It was when the finance became available through the generosity of The Monument Trust that our biggest challenge was overcome.” Nothing is incidental or accidental; minutiae were agonised over by Andy and the property team. Midnight oil burned in the Fournier Street Rectory while taps were chosen, lights selected and rugs argued over. “Above all,” he states, “I am proud of the church family members who gave themselves to the property team who I believe God deliberately brought to Christ Church for this chapter of its history.”
Dow Jones Architects were tasked with lending the labyrinth meaning, cracking the carapace, unleashing the dust of myriad wooden voices, listening to Andy and the property team. Wearing her erudition ever lightly, Biba Dow expounds on the challenge: “We began by stripping out all the partitions so that we were left with just Hawksmoor’s structure. We revealed the stone piers and beams. The brickwork vaults were limewashed to dematerialise the existing structure into light while retaining the form and texture of the material. Then we inserted a series of oak rooms into Hawksmoor’s space. We wanted to maintain a sense of the scale of the crypt. This is apparent when you walk down the ramp into the crypt and see along its length and then arrive in the café and see its width. We also wanted the windows to light the public spaces and connect them to the city outside. The oak rooms have an outer set of glazed doors and an inner side of oak doors. This allows them to be used in different ways… The oak walls to the main spaces have staggered boards – a contemporary version of plank and muntin panelling. The back of house spaces have narrower tongue and grooved oak walls.”
Another paragraph worthy quote from Biba, “Our concept came from the position of Spitalfields within the mythos of London. It’s a transitional zone, culturally and physically, beyond the city walls. Hawksmoor stacked two triumphal arches on top of each other to form the church’s west front. The city gate is an architectural type that reconciles the centre with the edge. Hawksmoor’s façade explicitly expresses this marginal condition. It’s a juxtaposition which has brought and continues to bring an extraordinary cultural dynamic to the neighbourhood. We wanted the crypt to be part of Spitalfields. The wide ramp entrance brings the York stone pavement down into the space to make a public place. Our idea for the oak panelling was to make something which defines the place in between the edge and centre. The oak sits within the structure of the church building, making a place of habitation. We wanted the new fabric to be clearly contemporary and reversible so that you understand the primacy of Hawksmoor’s space.” Metalwork is bronze. Fabric is from Bute.
Criss crossed cryptic Christian chrysalis. A northern light, a southern kirk, an eastern revivification, a western Gesamtkunstwerk. Take the chapel door. Leading glass artist Nikki Cass was commissioned to create an artwork of fired coloured collaged glass to be inserted into the door of this thin place. “Your grace abounds in deepest waters,” goes the Hillsong hit Oceans. Biblical verses delivered divine inspiration as blues and greens and reds and yellows flowed. “The river of the water of life as crystal flowing from the throne of God” (Revelations). “Whosoever believes in the stream of living water will flow from within him” (John). “No one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and spirit” (John again). Nikki’s artwork has even spawned an accompanying book. Then there’s the kitchen – a stainless steel work of art worthy of a double Michelin starred restaurant (Comme Chez Soi, anyone?).
Rest unassured, life as an urban Anglican rector isn’t quite all afternoon tea in the garden (although Christ Church Rectory does boast a walled oasis of tranquillity the envy of the neighbourhood). Count preacher, teacher, theologian, author, property developer, landlord, host and agony uncle among Andy’s demanding roles. He’s also Area Dean of Tower Hamlets and Honorary Chaplain to Langley House Trust. No room for boredom then which is as well as the Anglican retirement age is pushing three score and 10. As guardian of a portfolio of properties, mostly listed, inevitably Andy has faced both triumphs and travails. A long drawn out and unnecessary legal action by misguided individuals against the new school and community building adjoining the church garden was definitely one of his less rosy moments. Right now, he’s on a hallelujah high with the rebirth of the crypt.
“We cannot leave Christ Church without mentioning the curious detail of the windows (which is echoed in the street-facing wall of Truman’s Brewery, Brick Lane) – the pull that is set up by the sequence of small circular portholes above tall narrow lower windows. This is the symbol at the heart of Munch’s iconography – and relates to a whole chain of meanings and resonances – the grail-cup above the lance – the cauldron and the sword – female and male – the setting sun and the molten light over the waters – the pill about to be dropped into the test-tube – stylisation of the phallus and generative spurt – volatile/active – demanding the leap of energies – repeated symbols of the unconsummated – invitation.” Lud Heat by Iain Sinclair.
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Total Eclipse of the Art
It was as if Elizabeth Bowen was in Masterpiece London and not The House in Paris: “Heaven – call it heaven; on the plane of potential not merely likely behaviour. Or call it art, with truth and imagination informing every word.” Now in its sixth year, Lavender’s Blue have covered the last four but as Liz B declared, “Any year of one’s life has got to be lived.” Red carpet Dysoned, #MPL2015 has arrived. The greatest show on earth is back in town. Millennia of masterpieces filling a groundscraper marquee (12,500 square metres), a pneumatic Royal Hospital Chelsea, full blown Wrenaissance, Quinlan Merry, painted canvas under printed canvas. Arts and antiques gone glamping. Something to tweet home about lolz. An upper case Seasonal fixture and celebration of unabashed luxury. Masterpiece is truly the cultural epicurean epicentre of civilisation, from now (Grayson Perry’s Map of Days at Offer Waterman) to antiquity (Head of a Young Libyan AD 200 at Valerio Turchi).
Everyone’s here at the preview party, the upper aristocracy and upper meritocracy of globalisation chic to chic. Royalty with their heirs and airs, gentry with their seats and furniture, oligarchs with their bodyguards’ bodyguards, Anglo Irish with their Lords and Lourdes, nouveau riche with their Youghal to Youghal carpet, celebrities with their baggage and baggage, Londoners with their Capital and capital. And a very bubbly Eamonn Holmes. Stop people watching. Stare at the felicitous ambiguity of Geer van Velde. Wonder at the dense opaque impasto of Freud. Gaze at the transparent golden glaze of Monet. Study the descriptive precision of Zoffany. Blog about the parallel lines of Bridget Riley. Instagram a selfie beside The Socialite, Andy Warhol’s portrait of New York realtor Olga Berde Mahl shyly making her first ever public showing courtesy of Long-Sharp Gallery. Better late than never.
“If you think about it the clue is in the name,” muses artist Anne Davey Orr. “Masterpiece – a creation that is considered the greatest work of a career, or any work of outstanding creativity and skill. And Masterpiece is certainly the best in its field. From the faux façades to the faux colonnades, and the exotic festoons by Nikki Tibbles of Wild at Heart, Masterpiece exudes a professionalism which avoids the tackiness that sometimes attaches to other art fairs. The accompanying directory of 300 high end galleries alone, contents apart, sets it in a league of its own.”
Newly introduced Cultural Partners such as the Wallace Collection lend added weight to #MPL2015. Every discipline in the design art market is represented. The reflection is so perfect in Edouard Lièvre’s rosewood mirror in Didier Aaron. Hot on the jewel encrusted heels of Wartski is a cool £22 million Bling Ring’s worth of rubies and diamonds at Van Cleef and Arpels. “It’s hard to find rubies over five carats,” notes PR Joan Walls. “The Vermillon earrings are 13.33 and 13.83 carats. Their pigeon blood red colour is so rare, so wonderful. They’ve pure consistency with very few inclusions. The Vermillon earrings are underscored by corollas of pear shaped marquise cut diamonds.”
Another Masterpiece first is a piano. Cue Steinway and Son’s 600,000th instrument The Fibonacci designed and handcrafted by Frank Pollaro. Random renditions of Für Elise aren’t recommended. Sipping Ruinart and devouring pea and mint canapés while chatting to Stephen Millikin is. “Fibonacci is a geometric representation of the golden ratio. It’s found in nature and art, brought together in this piano,” Stephen explains. He’s Senior Director of Global Public Relations at Steinway and Sons, based at 1155 Avenue of the Americas, New York. “The piano is made from six logs of Macassar Ebony. A Fibonacci spiral is inset in the veneer. This motif resonated with Frank Pollaro.” At £1.85 million it’s not going for a song but nor should it. The Fibonacci was four years in the making from concept to completion. Maths star piece.
Vaulted boulevards of dreams, deep white fissures, lead to panoplies of intense colour. Galerie Chenel’s Pompeiian red, empire yellow and lavender’s blue niches fade to black in the shadows of exquisite statuary. There is no vanilla at Masterpiece. Lacroix clad Lady Henrietta Rous and Suzanne Von Pflugl rock up to Scott’s (Mount Street has decamped from Mayfair to Chelsea for the week). The conversation is fashion houses and fashionable houses. “I’m wearing my Ascot hat!” proclaims Lady Henrietta. “I tried on all the hats on King’s Road! Ossie Clarke was a good friend. I edited his diaries.” Annabel P recognises mention of Suzanne’s childhood home now lived in by her brother, Milton Manor House. “It’s perfect for weddings. At the last one Henrietta was still going strong on the dancefloor at 2am!” jokes Suzanne. “It was the vintage music!” blames Lady Henrietta.
“Tamarisks flying past the rainy windows were some dream,” imagined Elizabeth Bowen, “not your own, a dream you have heard described.” Carriages; horses for courses. All aboard golf buggies to vacate the Royal Hospital estate. Not so bound the Honourable Mrs Gerald Legge, Countess of Dartmouth, Comtesse de Chambrun Viscountess Lewisham, Viscountess Spencer. A Rolls Royce pulls up and Raine slides into the back seat. Blacked out windows slide up, no time for a Snapchat. And so, the chimerical layering vision that is Masterpiece London, so emblematic of a progressive spirit, is over for another year. Here’s to #MPL2016.
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Making a Statement
Most recent news stories about Mayfair focus on how it’s changing. Mount Street, once a commercial backwater, now hosts Britain’s chief fleet of fashion flagships and international designer powerhouses. Waves of overseas money are buying up former English aristocrats’ homes on Rex Place and Balfour Mews. “In the last 10 years the number of antique shops and galleries in Mayfair has fallen,” observes Jamie Sinai. “Nevertheless London as a whole remains a strong centre for antiques.” Indeed sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what fair is when. Bada, Battersea, Lapada, Olympia and best of all, Masterpiece. There are still a few art and antique galleries on Mayfair’s South Audley Street including Mayfair Gallery and Sinai and Sons. The former was started by Jamie’s Iranian born father; the latter, his uncle.
“My dad set up Mayfair Gallery over 40 years ago,” explains Jamie. “Prior to that he gained a wealth of experience in the hustle and bustle of Jaffa. That’s where he first traded in collectibles and antiques before moving to London. Dad put his entrepreneurial spirit and international experience to good use by establishing Mayfair Gallery.” Jamie sees the core business as adding to the extensive inventory, providing professional art and design advice, maintaining a good shop front and attracting serious customers. It’s successful. “My dad has a great eye for new pieces. He looks for unique well made pieces showing quality artistry and craft.” Jamie oversees the day to day running of the Gallery alongside his younger brother. His English born mother also works in the family business. “We all muck in!” Stock is mainly 19th century with some earlier, some later pieces.
The internationalisation of world cities has affected business. “We do still have some UK buyers,” he says, “but the main interest is from overseas. We’re starting to see more Chinese and Indian customers. The US was strong at one point, in the Eighties and Nineties, but less so now. The Middle East continues to do well.” So far, so good. Jamie’s role at the Gallery, though, is to take it forward into the next decades of the 21st century, to move into new areas. Holding regular exhibitions – the most recent was on the Impressionists – is one innovation. Gallery as shop as gallery. The website features a 360 degree tour of the interior which is linked to the Google Street View of South Audley Street. Virtual shopping at its integrated best. “One of my challenges is to communicate to people yes we’re high end but we also sell smaller pieces at a medium price point.”
“It’s a slow changing industry compared to others,” Jamie reckons. “That’s not always a bad thing but it takes time to implement change. The auction houses have embraced change better.” His wider mission is to alter the way people view antiques, to make them more relevant, more appealing to the younger generation. “I like placing really fine antiques into very contemporary settings. Overly traditional interiors can be cluttered and overwhelming. On the other hand, minimalist rooms are often cold and lacking. Bringing the best of the two together you get a very nice harmony. I want to try and promote that style and look, to celebrate the vibrancy of antiques in a new context.”
Jamie started working life as an auditor for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. It sounds a world away from art and antiques but he believes it equipped him with an outsider’s insight into the industry. “Clients ranged from small retailers right up to FTSE 100 companies. It was a real eye opener into how businesses are run.” He believes it will take time to change the public’s perception of antiques. “Taste is definitely cyclical. It’s driven by the media. Right now, everyone is being swept along by the big craze for technology. Look at the queues outside stores when a new smartphone is released! There’s not much individuality but that will come back.” He reckons people will get bored of spending money purely on functional items and will start looking for belongings with character. “For me, it is very exciting to continue to explore new ways of promoting antiques.” Jamie Sinai is a breath of fresh air in an industry in danger of becoming stale. It’s time to say goodbye to safe greige interiors and hello to statement antiques.
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Art Transplant
Back at Jumeirah’s Grosvenor House Apartments, yes hot to foxtrot in Mayfair, General Manager Astrid Bray introduces WW1 Centenary Works the latest exhibition of artist in residence Mark Humphrey. Fires roar casting dancing shadows across the charcoal grey and burnt amber upholstery of the atrium. “I first came across Mark Humphrey’s work at the new St James Theatre,” Astrid announces. “There was this amazing marble staircase. It blew me away! I said I’d really like to meet whoever designed it. A few phone calls later, a Christmas tree commission followed, and two years later Mark is still our exciting artist in residence!” After several of Grosvenor’s trademark cheese and asparagus cones are consumed, South Ken bound it is, as the theme of art, hotels and a Lake Wobegon High reunion takes over.
The Exhibitionist Hotel, London’s latest, may be a pair of twin four storey early Victorian terraced houses but it’s not stuccoed in the past. Its façade has been fashionably Fa’ow Ball’d a shade of Vole’s Breath or Elephant’s Back or Banker’s Wife’s One Shade of Grey with details like the Doric porticos and piano nobile balustrades picked out in crisp folded linen white. Neighbours are as eccentric eclectic as the interiors. The polychromatic stonework of the Natural History Museum looms over Queensberry Place; opposite the hotel is the byzantine brickwork of Institut Français. A few doors down lurks the intriguingly named College of Psychic Studies. Several streets away in Roland Gardens lingers Anoushka Hempel’s Blakes Hotel where the whole boutique rage took off.
The name Exhibitionist Hotel shrieks streaks of “clothes optional” but while there are no shrinking violets at the opening, the only wallflowers being fabric, it’s actually a play on nearby Exhibition Road plus having lots of its very own gallery space. Has anyone else a loaded pistol? Yes. Le Gun. The art collective takes the hotel by storm with large scale drawings and murals. Standing sentinel at the door is a mannequin suitably unclothed except for a lampshade on his head. It’s an artwork by Jimmie Martin, otherwise known as Jimmie Karlsson and Martin Nihlmar. Queen of pop Madonna commissioned Jimmie Martin to design a golden throne for her Super Bowl half time performance and it’s easy to see why. They don’t hold back. “We paint on things to create progressive art,” says Jimmie. “Bondage meets luxury I guess!” Martin adds, “Upcycling antiques at our studio on Kensington Church Street, that’s our thing.” London based Jimmie Martin and Squint designed the penthouse suites.
Hotel founder Manhad Narula commissioned designer Steve Crummack to oversee the interior concept. “Cool pieces and vintage furniture,” is how he sums it up. “We wanted to retain the period feel while also focusing on the weak points and having fun with them.” That explains the psychedelic fake flower faux grass filled lift rising to hippy heaven next to the drawing room marble fireplace. “You can see right through the reception desk,” he laughs, “so that leg candy is visible!” Steve designed the three basement suites. “They have their own private entrances so you can have fun, invite your mates over for a party. The suites pay homage to the era of fabulous travel!” In the ground floor Abstract bar, cocktails prepared by mixologist Isaac Muigai vie with installations for colourfulness. Rough Luxe is so last year. Lux Lisbon and Art Luxe are so now, so so now. Drown your joy in beauty. A pair of female legs stick upright from an urn. Has a guest made an exhibition of herself? Zany has a new.
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Grecian 2015
Destination known. Another evening, another ambassador. Diplomatic community. Greek Ambassador to the UK Konstantinos Bikas co hosted a party along with his cohort the Governor of Crete Stavros Arnaoutakis at the National Geographic Store opposite Harrods and basking in the afterglow of The Lansbury. It was the London Launch of a celebration of all things Cretan. Incredible Crete.
Stavros commented, “Over half a million people from the UK have visited Crete this year. Tourism makes up 70 percent of our GDP. We have 1,000 kilometres of coastline and one third of all five star hotels in Greece are on our island.” Woody Allen ponders in Love and Death, “I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer?” The island is after all where the first civilisation in Europe began and later home to Titus, recipient of an epistle from St Paul.
The accompanying photographic exhibition illustrated the built and natural wonders of Crete. The ghost of Crete. Shot in 1905 and then again 101 years later. Previously the only evidence of the rural legend of the Cretan wildcat was a couple of pelts purchased at the turn of last century by palaeontologist, zoologist and ornithologist Dorothea Bate. An expedition by the Natural History Museum of Crete and the University of Perugia rediscovered the Cretan wildcat in 1996. One was captured, photographed, studied, tagged, released and tracked for a few months across its habitat on Psiloritis Mountain.
Notes were swapped at the soirée on the travels and travails of reportage with The Fly Away American, a Texan turned serial expat. Snappy wordsmiths at work. Isle of Olive (say it quickly) did the catering. “We’re based in Broadway Market,” said Christie Turlington Paulina Filippou, who owns the company with her husband. “And sell a range of natural Greek products.” The healthiness of the Mediterranean diet was on display. Dittany by Votania, artichokes, cheese, tomatoes, olives and olive oil by Lyrakis and of course, no meat. Nothing tastes as good as skinny Dakos. Destination next also known. The Tom Dixon lunch @ The Mondrian.
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The Most Beautiful House in England
A letter to Country Life from Simon Herrtage sets the scene. “What a catalyst for action the ‘Destruction of the Country House‘ exhibition was and how much we owe to Sir Roy Strong for staging it. On visiting it as a young man, I was immensely moved by the plight of these buildings, so when my father died in 1978, I sought out a house in need of help and bought 18th century Island Hall in Cambridgeshire, a fine structure that had been converted into flats following service occupation in the Second World War and subsequently suffered a disastrous fire. With the help of the late Peter Foster of Marshal Sisson Architects, the house was saved and, in return for grant aid from the then Historic Buildings Council, we opened the house to the public and enjoyed several happy years there. Had it not been for the exhibition, who knows what the fate of that house might have been – but, given that it was viewed as ‘beyond reasonable repair’ I think we can guess.”
After this structural restoration was successfully completed, Simon advertised the house in Country Life to allow someone else to carry on the good work as custodian. “Drive on,” warned Lady Linda Vane Percy when her husband Christopher, the distinguished interior designer, purposefully slowed down outside Island Hall in 1983. Two weeks later, they bought it. Christopher had good justification to be interested. The property had previously been in his family’s ownership for almost two centuries save for the rickety 20th century patch when Simon Herrtage rescued it. “We are proud of Island Hall’s war record,” admits Christopher. “In 1943 my grandfather’s cousin was given 48 hours to leave his house. It had been requisitioned. Things unravelled again when it was requisitioned a second time under the Emergency Housing Act. With its odd assortment of tenants it became like a grand version of Rising Damp!”
Things went from bad to worse. “In 1977 a fire broke out in what is now our telly room,” relates Christopher. Hell. “The tenant in this part of the house was a milliner and her materials caught fire.” Lady Linda adds, “I was recently sent an East Anglia Television video of the event. Even now it is rather unnerving seeing what was later to become our home in flames.” Otherwise, conversion into 15 flats wasn’t all bad news for Island Hall. “The alterations looked brutal but architectural features were boxed in which protected panelling and chimneypieces,” he recalls. The Georgian organ visible in an early 1900s photograph of the entrance hall wasn’t so lucky. It ended up on a bonfire. This historic photograph shows the entrance hall crammed full of gas lamps, occasional tables, rugs, prayer chairs, nursing chairs, dining chairs, more chairs. The staircase is shown partitioned off by a bizarre Gothick screen – eclecticism taken a jarring step too far. “The house was waterproofed and almost entirely heated by the time we bought it,” says Christopher. “We quietly worked our way round restoring columns, rerunning cornices, replacing missing chair rails and recovering Georgian colour schemes. The staircase had been repainted bright orange!”
It’s an Irish Georgian Society London Chapter tour and the entrance hall which fills the central three bay block, front to back, is laid out with rows of chairs as it can be for weddings. Island Hall is available for hire. A choir of clocks chimes. “The house was built in the 1740s by a Mr Jackson for his son John’s combined 21st birthday and wedding present. The Jacksons went bust two generations later when another John described his home as ‘this family wreck’. It’s just like Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode engravings in our hallway. Money, fortune, affairs, debts.” Limbo. Christopher continues, “A certain Mr Fisher was a debtee of my great great grandfather Jacob Julian Baumgartner, a naturalised British citizen of Swiss birth. Island Hall was for sale at an auction in nearby Huntingdon and Mr Fisher bought it for £2,008 and 16 shillings. Island Hall fitted the bill, the debt! My ancestor was given the house by Mr Fisher on condition he paid 50 guineas to John Jackson. My family settled here. I come from a long line who did no Victorian or 20th century improvements. John Jackson would recognise the pale green colour of the entrance hall walls.” Save perhaps for the Quinlan Terry style stone dressing up of the central windows sometime in the 19th century. This relative lack of change to the house may be in part explained by a predecessor who didn’t believe in primogeniture, dividing the estate in 1874 between his 11 children. “We’ve been poorer ever since!”
“Even though there are 250 acres of flooding meadow nearby we’re situated above the 100 year flood level,” he continues. “The Georgians knew where to build! Island Hall was built on a brownfield site – a tanner’s yard and two or three timber framed houses. It was positioned to enjoy east and west vistas.” The east vista across the road in front of the entrance front has long been redeveloped but the west vista still stretches across a croquet lawn and on to the rebuilt rococo Chinese Bridge leading to the two acre island after which the house is named. “We redesigned the gardens to incorporate borrowed vistas,” says Christopher. “We’ve had a lot of fun. To quote Sir Roy Strong, ‘At least we didn’t have to resort to flowers!’ Our 32 years living here have gone by in a complete rush.” Topiary sculptures contrast with shady informal corners. Green is the new black.
Grade II* Island Hall is perfectly symmetrical, save for the attached dormered mews house topped by a cupola and weathervane, and unusually both main elevations are the same. No bows, no bays. An architectural spot the difference – trick question, there aren’t any. Its face to the world, village facing, is the same as its face to its owners, island facing. Two storey two bay wings abut a three storey three bay pedimented breakfront. The dentilled pediment floats on plain corbels set in from the corners of the projection. This is just one of many quirky charms of the architecture. Perhaps Mr Jackson himself had a strong say in the design?
The panelled interiors are quintessentially English, grand yet intimate, majoring in studied elegance. Heaven. A metal urn in the hallway piled high with trilby hats balanced at jaunty angles is a foretaste of what’s to come. Mixing toile de jouy wallpaper with mirrored Indian furniture in one bedroom illustrate Christopher’s originality of talent and taste. Debretts, after all, lists President of the International Interior Design Association among his many accomplishments. The first floor drawing room stretches across the middle three bays of the entrance front and is decorated in rich tones of crimson and burgundy. The walls are lined with gilt framed oils of ancestors. Christopher is a direct descendent of the Gunpowder Plotter Thomas Percy. His great grandmother insisted the family add her surname Vane. Lady Linda’s family are the Grosvenors. Her father was the 5th Baron Ebury and her brother is the present Earl of Wilton. “Island Hall is important,” finishes Christopher, “but the people it has nurtured are absorbed into the very fabric of the house.
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Algebra The Reunion of Broken Parts
The artist, concept and venue are familiar. We last saw Wolfe von Lenkiewicz at Portland Place in the Edwardian space where that interminable yawn The King’s Speech was filmed. A couple of years before that, we popped up at the House of the Nobleman in one of Nash’s terraces overlooking The Regent’s Park. Our jaunt to the French Renaissance styled Il Bottaccio for an Italian job was just a few weeks ago. Combine the three and here we are back at 9 Grosvenor Place. Sometimes, familiarity breeds respect. A New Master | curation as an art form | heritage assets.
It’s a private view, so private it’s Lavender’s Blue* and Wolfe touring the two floors which have been transformed by museum lighting and, of course, art. “You don’t have to go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa!” exclaims the 48 year old British artist. The French surroundings are immediately rather apt. “Some paintings are so iconic they seem unapproachable. But think of how artists like Duchamp and Warhol reinterpreted famous historic art.”
This Mona Lisa for the 21st century – although it will later transpire that time is not of the essence in the House of the Nobleman exhibition – is a recognisably intimate version of its predecessor. Same scale, same pose, same serenity, different detail. On closer inspection the painting is actually a medley of motifs found across Leonardo da Vinci’s oeuvre. The trees to the left are from his Annunciation; the trees to the right, The Virgin and St Anne; the shoulder ribbons from La Belle Ferronnière, and so on. He condenses Leonardo’s artistic output into a single enigma. It’s conceptual without being conceptualist.
Wolfe reveals he chose the Renaissance as a platform for experimentation because it was an age when artists attempted to root the making of art in a mathematical and aesthetically programmable formula. He renders his pencil and oil studies with a careful craftsmanship that seeks to replicate the original conditions and painting practices of Renaissance artists. It’s an exploration of the possibility of algebraic multiplication in reverse, drilling down an aesthetic object to its essential numbers. And onwards, to its prime number. Wolfe presents a Wittgensteinesque proposition that an artwork requires no further description to be in and of itself.
“These works represent a nonlinear flattening of history,” he relates. “They’re inspired by centuries of art… Botticelli, Michelangelo, Bruegel, Stubbs, Riley, Hirst. Why not Rupert Bear too? Inspiration doesn’t always have to be highbrow art or even art! On the surface, Wolfe transfixes and seduces us with his rare technical ability. Dig deeper beyond his respectful grasp of iconography. Yes, he succeeds in reviving the algebra of art, liberating it from the confines of history to a newness of meaning. In this way, Wolfe’s latest works question the notions of resolution and finish while maintaining the utmost respect for his forebears.
*wherever there’s design there’s Lavender’s Blue
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The Great Exhibition
Masterpiece 2014. Preview breakfast, launch and supper. Ruinart on tap. There are so many celebrities this is the only day of the year you’ll get a table at Chiltern Firehouse. Everyone is beautiful, above average. Take the regal Susan Hampshire – Lady Kulukundis to you – monarch of the glen, queen of all she surveys. Average doesn’t exist at Masterpiece. It’s Lake Wobegon for real. And Lavender’s Blue have a great lakeside view.
Made in (Royal Hospital) Chelsea. We haven’t been here since, oh, the Chelsea Flower Show at least two weeks ago and before that, somewhere in the mist of time the Celeste Dell-Anna soirée. But first it was the warm up, Pimlico Road Summer Party. Jamb was jam full (sorry) of monolithic mantels and who knew Soane has the best roof terrace, make that twin roof terraces, on the stretch?
At Masterpiece, over 3,000 years of art history and culture are on offer from museum quality antiquity at Ariadne Galleries to museum café quality antipasti at The Mount Street Deli. The international who’s who of exhibitors from around the world in 80 cities includes Galerie Steinitz based on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, a musket shot from Champs Élyées. “This is one of our special antique interiors,” says Guillaume Garcia-Moreau. It’s like twirling inside an exquisite jewellery box. “The panelling is Louis XVI although we’re not exactly sure where it originally came from. It was installed in Lucien Guitry’s hôtel particulier at the end of the 19th century. The stucco insets are original and the carved wood is of the highest quality.”
All that glitters is gold at Adrian Sassoon. “It’s all gold, even the lining is gold,” explains artist-goldsmith goldsmith-artist Giovanni Corvaja about his Golden Fleece. “Technology has allowed myth to become reality.” That plus 2,500 hours’ labour and oodles of talent. This hat is made from five million gold threads, each one a fifth the radius of a human hair. “The very ancient mythology of the Golden Fleece, the idea of making fabric from gold, fascinated me. It’s the stuff of kings. The gold looks like fur but touch it. It’s cold and quite heavy.” The Golden Fleece is priced £350,000. More golden ratio than gold is Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura for sale for £60,000 by Peter Harrington. As well as studies of Roman temples, it includes Palladio’s retrospective of his own designs. A one man Taschen show. “The four books date from 1570,” says Sammy Jay, “although their provenance is enigmatic. The binding is late 18th century.”
Luxed out, we leave for another year. We catch glimpses of primary colour and primal lack of colour in the verdant setting as our golf buggy (it’s the chauffeur’s day off) whizzes up the driveway. Ranelagh Gardens in the hospital grounds has been turned into a sculpture park to celebrate Philip King’s 80th. Here’s to #MPL2015.
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A Treatise on Georgian Architecture In Five Paragraphs
The Ghosts
“Riddled!” shrieked the 5th Countess of Clanwilliam, after years were already gone since irony, when faced with the prospect of sharing her matrimonial home Gill Hall with more ghouls than an episode of Rent-a-Ghost. “Simply one damned ghost after another!” A card game later, or so the rural myth portends, the lucky Earl won neighbouring Montalto House from a gentleman surnamed Ker. “Phew!” she exclaimed, sinking into a sofa in the first floor Lady’s Sitting Room with its Robert West stuccowork of scallop shells and a brush and comb and a cockerel and fox. The only spirits ever at Montalto are the Jameson bottles rattling on drinks trolleys. Over a wee dram, it’s worth catching sight of the resident albino hare in the 10 hectare gardens on the 160 hectare estate. His son the 6th Earl, in between sewing tapestries, demolished the ballroom and a chunk of the servants’ quarters, shrinking the size of the house by a half. Under the ownership of JP Corry, a famed timber merchant, the east wing and rear apartments also had to be chopped following a calamitous fire in 1985.
The Arts
Country houses form distinctive works of architecture, with appropriately furnished interiors, and considered as part of a demesne, conceived in all its complexity as a picturesque ensemble of gardens, woods and buildings, they represent what is justly described by John Harris in The Destruction of the Country House as ‘the supreme example of a collective work of art’. But whatever else a country house may symbolically constitute, it was always conceived to be decorated and furnished quite simply as a habitation, and it is that incomparable sense of home that the restitution, restoration and refurnishing of Montalto has sought to preserve for today and tomorrow. The Earl of Moira commenced construction in 1752 by which time a prosperous Irishman could have confidence that his home would remain his castle without having to look like one.
The Orders
Ballyfin is the Montalto of the South, beloved by the Kanye–Kardashian kouple and all known cosmopolitan denizens. It is no coincidence both houses have benefitted from the hand of heritage architect John O’Connell, plucked from a slim pantheon of heroes. Nor does he spin. Ballyfin is the Morrisons’ masterpiece. John also led the restoration of Fota, another Morrison great. Both Fota and Montalto have Doric porches. He designed a Doric temple for Ballyfin. Order, order! First there were the three orders of Vitruvius’ treatises: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Architect George Saumarez Smith, himself author of a treatise, calls Doric “solid and muscular; Ionic “graceful and light”; Corinthian “grand”. Then Renaissance men Alberti, Filarete, Palladio, Serlio and Vignola added Tuscan (a plainer Doric) and Composite (a hybrid Ionic and Corinthian). The five orders became the established canon, a sacred alphabet related to the laws of nature. Now that’s a tall order. Return to Montalto. Tall round headed windows and niches cavalierly skim the carriageway like crinoline skirts. The central shallow porch is set in a canted bay. In 1837 unlucky owner David Ker excavated the rock under the house promoting the basement to ground floor. Not without precedent, Hilton Park and Tullylagan Manor are other examples of the elevation of an elevation. Tripartite windows and more canted bays on the sides of the house overlook nature tamed as topiary taking the form of spherical shrubs and conical box hedges. The rear elevation with its generous wall to window ratio is a 20th century repair following fire and demolition. Its sparseness, bearing the greyness and eternity of a cliff, recalls Clough Williams-Ellis at Nantclwyd Hall.
The Interior
A sense of order framing majestic comfort prevails indoors with eight pairs of Doric columns guarding the entrance hall, sentinels in stone. It’s flanked by the dining room and library. Straight ahead the staircase leads to the long gallery, of more than average beauty, an axis in ormolu, a spine of gilt. Trompe l’oeil and oeil de boeuf and toile de jouy abound. The interior, like beauty, is born anew every hundred years. Montalto is a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it – then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance, the fragment of a sentence, cherishing all beauty and all illusion.
The End
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Period Drama
There are whistlestop tours and there’s a 30 minute stopover till the Gatwick flight from Terminal 2 Dublin Airport departs to check out a centuries old castle complete with famous gates, a gatelodge, even more famous stables, cottages, a walled garden, an orchard, a ruinous church and graveyard. Oh, and did we mention squeeze in a coffee in the kitchen with the owners, an artist and historian, their film director son and dogs? Welcome to Shankill Castle, 45 minutes from the airport. If the heel is very firmly to the steel up the M9, that is.
The house is full of surprises. A playful Gothic exterior gives way to a wintry panelled entrance hall. “The 17th century chimneypiece without a mantelpiece is of an unusual design,” says Elizabeth Cope, the bold and brilliant artist in permanent residence. “There’s a similar chimneypiece in the National Trust house Dyrham Park just outside Bristol. This one’s made of Kilkenny marble. Did you know Kilkenny marble is actually polished limestone? Look at how tall and slim the Queen Anne doorcases are. They’re so elegant.” The hall, like all the rooms, is a wonderfully eclectic mix of period details, antiques and of course Elizabeth’s vivid paintings, bursting with life – and in some cases death. In the middle of the hall is a drum rent table with several dummy drawers for security and symmetry.
Beyond the entrance hall lies the dining room with a great boxy bay window overlooking the geometrically shaped lake at the back of the house. Dozens of wine glasses are laid out on the dining table. “It’s my son Reuben’s 30th birthday on Friday. The theme is The Great Gatsby. You must come! I love throwing parties. I always think no one will come and then at the last minute everyone turns up. This house is made for parties. There’ll be dancing through the night.” The drawing room is a gloriously summery space with wide windows opening onto the driveway and side garden reflected in 16 foot tall mirrors. Faded Edwardian wallpaper is the perfect backdrop to several of Elizabeth’s life size nudes. They’re as colourful and vivacious as the artist herself.
Through the former billiard room and ante room, now an interconnecting study cum office cum art store, to the bow ended staircase hall. “Look at the walls,” points Elizabeth. “They were lined with Sienna marble in 1894.” We’re heading towards the back of house now, literally and metaphorically. “Keep to the left!” We descend the precariously angled stairs to the basement. Along a veritable rabbit warren of domestic quarters: boot room, lamp room, gun room, scullery, wine cellar with no wine – “We’ve drunk all the wine!” – past a row of numbered servants’ bells we finally arrive at the kitchen, once the servants’ hall. “Different rooms have been used as a kitchen down the years,” explains Elizabeth. “Owners tended to move the kitchen in tandem with whatever room they used as a dining room.” Flagstone floors are gently worn by the passage of time.
The tour continues outside. “The nine sided sundial next to the lake is 36 minutes behind London time. Geoffrey my husband says more like 36 years behind London.” Elizabeth sighs wistfully. “London is the only place. We’ve sold our house in Kennington but I still exhibit in London. I recently had a show at Chris Dyson’s gallery in Spitalfields. Tracey Emin came. She wanted to buy the sofa in the gallery. I should’ve partied more in London when I was younger. What a waste!” she laughs. The Copes bought Shankill Castle in 1991. “It was as if the house was destined to be our home. We know the previous owners, the Toler-Aylwards. In fact they’re my daughter Phoebe’s godparents. Phoebe lives in Scotland – she’s an artist too.”
Time is pressing; we’ve broken into a run. Elizabeth cuts quite a dash. “Come quick and see the stables. They’re by Daniel Robertson.” She strikes a pose. Even though Elizabeth has a studio in a stone outbuilding which would be the envy of any artist, she exclaims, “I paint everywhere, in the garden, on the bus, you name it! I paint through the chaos of everyday life. If I was to wait for a quiet moment I’d never paint. I believe painting should be like dancing. The real ‘work of art’ is not so much the canvas when the paint is dry. Rather it’s the physical rhythm of the process of painting it.”
Beautifully restored estate cottages and the east wing of the castle are available to let. “The things you do to keep a place like this going,” says Elizabeth as we leap through the ruins of the church to the side of the front lawn. ‘Shan-kill’ is derived from the Irish for old church. “We throw a ScareFest every Halloween where I dress up and lie in a coffin to spook visitors. What people don’t know is it’s my real coffin. I was ill a couple of years ago so I thought I better get fitted out for one, just in case.” A full calendar at the castle includes the Midsummer Fair, Murder Mystery, Drawing Marathon, Wand and Quill Making Workshop, artist residencies and a new music festival Light Colour Sound.
It’s time to go, to drive by the haha and the trees planted in the 1820s to frame the view of Blackrock Mountain, leaving behind Shankill Castle, a world of its own.
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Inside the Box
Thanks to a certain Sunday evening wind down from the wild weekend historisoap, Highclere Castle is as recognisable as the Houses of Parliament. Golden Bath stone Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite pilasters framing corner turrets ascend to a parapet – a tumultuous riot of strapwork, tracery, heraldry, pinnacles, plaques, coronets, colonettes, rosettes and finials. Jacobethanaissance architecture with Perpendicoco interiors. Handiwork of Sir Charles Barry, circa 1840.
A drawer in an upper floor of the V+A contains a perspective drawing commissioned by the architect to show his client Lord Grantham Carnarvon how the redesigned castle would look. It was originally displayed at the Royal Academy. Who says artists’ impressions and exhibitions are recent tools of self promotion for savvy architects? Architectural models are another tool. British design company Linley has developed expertise in creating scaled down versions of buildings – with a twist. They are functional, whether a humidor, bureau or writing desk. Robert Smythson meets Frank Smythson.
Mavisbank, Monticello, Monte Carlo Casino, Marino Casino. The latter a miniature in wood of a miniature in stone. Chairman David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, son of the late Princess Margaret, nephew of the Queen, drops his title and abbreviates his name to David Linley in business. “Something of lasting value is most important,” he says, “beautifully made with the best possible materials. We search out wonderful woods.” Accuracy derives from photographs, drawings, surveys and even aerial views from helicopters.
Highclere Castle is the latest building to receive the Linley treatment. Honey I shrunk the treasure house. It’s a jewellery box. Constructed of maple, 11,000 individual pieces of marquetry have been meticulously selected and pieced together by highly skilled craftsmen. This architectural box, lined in faux suede, has three main drawers plus a trademark secret drawer. Costs £65,000, price of a car or parking space.
At Lavender’s Blue we’re good with colour. So is Linley. Upmarket London shops must have their signature colour. Liberty: regal purple; Selfridges: canary yellow; Harrods: Pantone 574c green; Linley: aquamarine blue. David says, “We needed a striking colour to stand out cause, in a senses, the logo needs to be something you can see from far away… so that when you see a bag being carried down a street you know it’s that colour. Therefore it must be Linley. It’s rather nice when you see one – oh, that bag’s come out of the shop.”
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The Whole of the Moon
Like a scene from the movie Night at the Museum, the V+A is transformed as darkness falls. A rainbow of lights sends the angels in the architecture spinning in infinity to the melody of a violin quartet. Mere mortals fill the echoing marble halls below, indulging in stilton cheese on lotus oat crisps; scallops on a bed of seashells; vermicelli coated prawn sticks dipped in wasabi mayo; and Earl Grey macaroons. Psychedelic cocktails reflect the lights.
It’s the launch of the 2014 Chinese Lunar Year of the Horse coin by Royal Mint. A trained vet turned artist, Wuon-Gean Ho explains, “I have this dual heritage. I feel incredibly lucky! I grew up in Chinese culture but trawled antique shops and art galleries around Oxford where I lived.” Experienced in a range of media, Wuon-Gean won the commission to design the UK’s first legal lunar coin. “I made my first print when I was 12 years old. It was a linocut of a cat!”
“As a vet you have to observe animals closely,” she says. “I also drew horses at stables in Hackney. My dad is a vet. It is possible to get considerable detail on a coin design. Just think of the Queen’s head on the obverse side of the coin which even shows her earrings! I wanted the strong image of the horse in the foreground with the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire subtly placed behind.” Wuon-Gean holds a BA in History of Art from Cambridge. Her reverse coin design is the first of 12 zodiac animals to be featured in the Royal Mint’s Shēngxiào Collection. Prices range from £82.50 for the silver one ounce coin up to £1,950 for the gold one ounce.
Shane Bissett, Royal Mint’s Director of Commemorative Coin, emphasises the coin’s importance: “This is in effect a piece of public art with a likely circulation of 40 years. The Royal Mint’s Chinese Lunar coins lend a unique British angle to an ancient tradition. At Lunar New Year gifts and tokens are often exchanged, particularly money in red envelopes. This symbolises good wishes for the recipient’s health, wealth and prosperity.” Shane was previously responsible for growing Waterford Crystal’s UK market share: “I brought this experience of working with another heritage brand to Royal Mint.”
Wuon-Gean doesn’t think the Chinese community has that high a profile in London. “It’s best known for food,” she observes. It should, in her case, also be known for art. Capturing equine movement in millimetres is no mean feat. As for coins in envelopes, all are welcome at Lavender’s Blue. Usual address.
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A Knight in London
A life in sound bites and superlatives; there’s no hiatus in the hyperbole. Friday evening. Thomas Heneage Art Books is back to back with aristos and aficionados. It’s the launch of Robert O’Byrne’s brilliant biography of Desmond Fitzgerald, the late last Knight of Glin aka the Black Knight. We’re on Duke Street St James (even the road has a double-barrelled name). Names, names, Madam Olda Fitzgerald and her daughters, son-in-law Dominic West, Min Hogg, Johnny Lowry-Corry 8th Earl Belmore, James Peill, Lindy Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava and more Guinnesses than last orders at the bar from Desmond downwards. My Goodness! My Guinness!
John O’Connell: “Easton Neston today; Chatsworth tomorrow.”
Robert O’Byrne: “You must do Curraghmore.”
Susan Crewe: “We’re really quite eclectic at House and Garden.”
William Laffan: “I seem to remember a lively lunch at St Pancras Hotel.”
Desmond Guinness: “Is Maurice Craig’s book Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size or Middle Class?”
Hugo Vickers: “I’m on a break between biographies.”
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Back to the Future
Largely a philosophically driven art movement that arose in tandem with the industrialisation of its host country, Italy, Futurism embraced the now and the not yet of the new century, last century. It wasn’t greeted with universal enthusiasm. Even avant garde artists and critics expressed a certain repugnance at the lack of structure and the new kind of description in Futurist painting and sculpture. Despite their adulation of technology and the apparent adaptation of new scientific principles to their work, the Futurists succeeded in alienating many contemporaries, even those who similarly recognised the relevance of scientific discoveries to art.
The Cubists’ primacy of form was invoked in protest against the dissolution of objects inherent in the less tangible Futurist schemata. Guillaume Apollinaire, who blew both hot and cold in his support of the Futurists, reckoned they had no concept of the meaning of plastic volumes and simply produced illustrations. Jacques- Émile Blanche complained that Futurism was a mechanical process, merely rendering the sensations of dynamism and obliterating the very objects which caused these sensations. Blanche’s aphorism, “One cannot make any omelette with eggshells,” appraises its pictorial limitations through his eyes. Futurist forms conveyed information and ideas without provoking the necessary aesthetic emotions was the underlying message.
Other critics were more direct. Futurist artists were derogatively referred to as photographers and moviemakers. Gino Severini’s Pan Pan at the Monico was slammed for revealing the cinematographic character of his work. Robert Delaunay, who was contemptuous of the engineered mechanical appearance of their forms, confided to his notebook, “Your art has velocity as expression and the cinema as means.” Cubism supporters warned that it was folly to depict movement, analyse gestures and create the illusion of rhythm by reducing solid matter to formulae of broken lines and volumes.
Unsurprisingly this view was vehemently denied by Umberto Boccioni, the group’s most vociferous spokesman. His denial is understandable due to the difficult relationship between art and photography in the early 20th century. Yet the critics were reaching toward the crux of the matter. Why and how had these Italians mutilated their subjects? What were the sources of these new forms?
The Futurists’ strident pronouncements praised a universal dynamism and oneness in the arts. They had discovered a new beauty in their modern world. Victories of science: aeroplanes, trains, cars, factories. Buildings under scaffolding became beautiful symbols of a frenetic mood. They coined the word ‘noctambulism’ to express the exhilarating activities of a city by night, lit by electric moons and garlanded by incandescent necklaces. Futurist poets like Luciano Folgore and Paolo Buzzi sang praises to the daemonic character of the machine, to the sensations of flight, the launching of torpedoes, to war itself.
Henri Bergson’s philosophy of change was central to the Futurists’ ideas. Intuition is the essence of life. Knowledge is for life. Life’s not for knowledge. Action constitutes being. I do therefore I am. Reality is cinematographical. Between 1910 and 1914 no fewer than seven books about the French philosopher were printed in Italian. Bergman’s favourite substantive, too, was “dynamism”. In the dense metaphysics of Matter and Memory he describes a psychical physical in which the immediate past, present and future effervesce in some sort of spatial continuum. He ruminates, “My body is acted upon by matter, and itself acts upon matter and must transform itself into movement. The material of our existence is nothing but a system of sensations and movements, occupying continually different parts of space.”
In the Futurist conception of a new literature expounded by Filippo Marinetti, ‘liberated’ words can be formed into images which make direct contact with the imagination. Conventional syntax is equated with the optical logic of ordinary photographic perspective. The manumission of literature, like that of painting, is seen in the utilisation of a multiple, simultaneous, emotional perspective. And through the typographical prisms of ‘word free’ paintings, the transient sounds and appearances of the industrial environment are refracted. Marinetti saw analogies between the narcissistic metaphors traditionally used by writers and the adulation of ordinary photographic images. Nevertheless he betrays his excitement about the ‘miracles’ of experimental cinema.
The Futurists’ analysis of objects in motion, their reduction of solid forms to equations and the multiplication of their sensations in order to create an illusion of rhythm had significant prototypes in photography, especially the work of Étienne-Jules Marey. This physiologist’s chronophotographs were pictorial verifications of Bergson’s ‘transformed man’, in keeping with the Futurist machine aesthetic. The Futurists’ references to rhythms in space; interpenetration of forms, fusions and simultaneity; and vibrating intervals can all be explained in terms of Marey’s multiple exposed photographs. So too can the statement that a galloping horse has 20 legs, not four. Boccioni’s enigmatic comment that a horse’s movements are triangular is corroborated by Marey’s linear diagrams. In creating a sense of continuity by means of lines of force emanating from the central object, the dynamism of that object is given substance, its movements are delineated.
Those artists who believed that the important thing is not to present the speeding car but the speed of the car were working in a similar vein to Marey. He had scientifically explored not just the particularised somatic appearances of his subjects in instantaneous phases of movement but also the peculiar patterns caused by the multiplication of their images in space. Through these kinetic recordings Marey was able to obtain graphic representation not only of a man or bird in motion but of the motion of a man or bird – a consequential prefiguration of the Futurists’ concern with the vestigial signs of movement.
Enter Michel-Eugène Chevreul, the discoverer of the laws of simultaneous contrasts of colours and himself a protean figure in the development of progressive aesthetic concepts. He observed how a figure clothed in black moving against a black background could transcribe its own trajectory of the linear graph of its movement by means of a light spangle placed on parts of the subject or by a luminous stripe placed along the length of the limbs. Either by exposing the single plate intermittently or by holding open the shutter for the duration of the action, Chevreul recorded linear oscillation patterns and trajectories.
A comparison of Marey’s 1880s chronophotographs showing an athlete during a long jump and Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space is highly revealing. Aside from the obvious similarities, Boccioni’s sculpture demonstrates the inability of the sculptor to express the transparencies and rupturing of form caused by the inevitable superimpositions and interpenetrations intrinsic to the photograph. The blurred interstices between more clearly registered phases of movement lend themselves more readily to the greater stratagems possible with canvas and paint. Boccioni fuses the figure with its environment.
There was substance in those criticisms which attacked the decomposition of Futurist works, the forms reduced to analytical statements about motion, time and space. In his statement of 1913 defining the difference between Futurist dynamism and contemporary French painting, Boccioni said that the Futurists were the first to assert that modern life was fragmentary and rapid. He claimed that Futurism encapsulated dynamism and not merely the trajectory and mechanical episodic gesture. He insisted that the Futurists had always contemptuously rejected photography, deliberately ignoring the distinctions between Marey’s genre of photography and those which simply reproduced natural scenes. Certainly the direct accusations that the Futurists were mere photographers and moviemakers owes much of its venom to the fact that the dilemma of art and photography had not been resolved.
Yet ironically the Futurists were instrumental in resolving it, if not for themselves, then for the more or less anti art movements which followed in their wake. The incipient machine aesthetic of Futurism and the fierce proselytising that accompanied it was a powerful stimulus on all subsequent artists who in one way or another were orientated to technology. The importance of photograph, photogram and photomontage to the Bauhaus, Constructivism, Dada and Surrealism, with the fundamental emphasis placed on impersonality and anonymity, the individual in cahoots with the machine, was clearly an extension of the Futurist ideology, the disdain for self expression in the arts and its insistence on contemporaneity.
