Category: People

MODERNISM IN METROPOLIS

Picture Two sisters leaving la Scala in Milan one evening of thick fog. Trying to find their way to their hotel. They stumble across a for sale sign on a large plot of land in the middle of the city. In spite of the dark and unknown. Surroundings, their hearts make a surprising decision. The plot would be theirs.

This is the beginning of one of the most exceptional villas in. Milan inhabited until 2001 by one of its original owners, the. Villa Necchi Campiglio. In 1932, Gigina Necchi, married to Angelo. Picture Two Campiglio, and her sister Nedda, commissioned the work of the house to Piero Portaluppi. He was a local architect of renown and a figure who reflected the conflicting political and.

Social undercurrents of the period. He was given free rein to design a villa that displayed the status of the occupants, a wealthy. Family of industrialists from Pavia. They imposed only two requirements: a state of the art functional habitat and the.

Use of the best materials of construction. The result is a sublime example of late modernist architecture, infused by touches of Art Deco and the. Purity of rational architecture. The light flows into the house through large rectangular windows and the spaces reveal strong geometric. Forms only tempered by fine decorative details. It is majestic and sober at the same time.

Unfortunately a few years after finishing the construction, the monumental building overwhelmed the. Necchi Campiglio who rushed to temper the impression by asking another architect Tomasso. Buzzi to adapt the interiors to a more conservative eighteen century taste. The conflictive and unresolved association of two opposing styles is still on view today.

After the death of Gigina and in the absence of heirs, the villa passed into the hands of the. Fondo Ambiente Italiano, an institutional network of historic. Buildings that opened it to the general public. Its allure remains intact hypnotically entrancing the visitor. It is one the hidden treasures of the city.

Bigg Boss OTT 3 Contestant Armaan Malik, Said This As He Compared Himself To Sidharth Shukla

Sidharth Shukla In an exclusive interview, Bigg Boss OTT Season 3 contestant Armaan Malik recently made headlines as he drew comparisons between himself and the late actor Sidharth Shukla. The talented singer and reality TV star shared his thoughts on their journey, personalities, and achievements, shedding light on the similarities and differences between the two popular personalities.

Armaan Malik, known for his melodious voice and charming persona, spoke candidly about his experience on Bigg Boss OTT Season 3. Drawing parallels with the beloved actor Sidharth Shukla, Armaan expressed his admiration for the late star’s immense fan following and the impact he had on the audience.

“I have always looked up to Sidharth Shukla as a role model. His charm, talent, and connect with the audience were truly remarkable,” Armaan mentioned during the interview. “While our journeys might be different, I aspire to create a similar impact in the hearts of people through my music and presence in the entertainment industry.”

Armaan Malik

Also acknowledged the differences between himself and Sidharth Shukla, highlighting their respective fields of expertise. While Sidharth had carved a niche for himself in the world of acting and television, Armaan has consistently impressed the masses with his soul-stirring music and vocal prowess.

The young artist further emphasized the importance of authenticity and staying true to oneself. “Sidharth and I may have different paths, but what matters is the passion and dedication we bring to our craft. It’s about being genuine and connecting with the audience on a deeper level,” Armaan explained.

During the interview, Armaan Malik also expressed his gratitude towards the Bigg Boss OTT platform for providing him with an opportunity to showcase his talent and connect with a wider audience. The show, known for its entertainment quotient and intense interpersonal dynamics, has become a stepping stone for many aspiring artists, including Armaan.

Sidharth Shukla

Fans of both Armaan Malik and Sidharth Shukla eagerly await the upcoming season of Bigg Boss OTT, hoping to witness the talent and charisma that both personalities bring to the table. The comparison drawn by Armaan has sparked a lively debate among their respective fan bases, who are intrigued by the similarities and excited about the unique qualities each individual possesses.

As Armaan Malik continues to make his mark in the world of music, his journey on Bigg Boss OTT Season 3 will undoubtedly provide a platform for him to further showcase his talent and establish his own identity. With his mesmerizing voice and captivating personality, Armaan aims to create a lasting impact in the hearts of his fans, just as Sidharth Shukla did during his illustrious career.

MILAN FUTURISTA

Collecting art demands time, considerable wealth and space. Antonio Boschi and his wife. Marieda Di Stefano seemed to have the former but not the latter. Yet, the surprising gathering of more than 2,000 items accumulated in their apartment.  During their lifetime is a testament to their passion for the modernist and futurist period in which they lived.

In a drabber than usual corner of Milan, on via. Giorgio Jan, stands a building vaguely more remarkable than the uniformed constructions of the street. Yet as one steps into the lobby, signs of a more peculiar architecture capture one’s attention. We are again in Piero Portaluppi‘s territory.

One of the construction company‘s associates was the father of Marieda and the newly married couple were among the first  dwellers. Antonio Boschi was an engineer working for Pirelli, with a penchant for innovations. Marieda was a ceramicist. Both participated in the effervescent circles of intellectuals and artists of the Milan between the wars. They believed in progress, in explorations of color and form, in the blend of technical advances and aesthetics. All of the above were shared by the artists they encouraged and collected. The paintings hang from floor to ceiling pressed against each other, ignoring the skills of effective display, just determined to be present. It is an orgy of color, an overdose of some good and some excellent art and a unique environment.

Works of De Chirico and his brother Alberto Savinio hang next to works of Umberto Boccioni, Mario Sironi and Lucio Fontana. Sironi completed a dining room set of furniture also on display. The reduced and crammed space is not a hindrance to the spectacular richness of the exhibits. Milan and the pictorial research of the first sixty years of the XX century are there on the walls as a symbol of the vitality of a period and of a couple who witnessed the before and the after of the Second World War carnage.

TAKE THE STAIRS

As all architectural items, stairways fulfill a dual function: a utilitarian one connecting two vertical planes and an aesthetic one enhancing the decorative aspect of a building. On both accounts, they are the spine of a complex space, and like its. Biological counterpart they channel and connect all traffic from above to below and the other way around.

Unlike doors or windows, stairways express with. The strongest voice the language of a building. Hollywood made them the focal point of many a movie’s narrative. Film stars descend them as drama reaches its climax. Think of Gloria Swanson in. Sunset Boulevard”. Or ascend them to tragedy as. Kim Novak did in the ever hypnotic “Vertigo.” Busby Berkeley in a much lighter. Mood concocted his candied choreographies around fanciful stairways.

Experimental, royal, magnetic or prosaic they are leading supporters. Of some powerful scenography.  They sustain the manner of thinking from which the rest of a building assembles its personality. Being primordially a functional feature, they insist on conveying something else, of radiating a message.

Filipppo Juvarra must have reflected upon them three hundred. Years ago when he designed a magnificent baroque palace attached to the old medieval castle in the center of Torino, the Plazzo Madama. The project was never. Completed, except for the façade and the internal stairwell. This work of theatrical proportions stands, deprived of its organic parts, as a radical example of architecture. As an accidental folly, a majestic ornament without its natural audience. Yet, fully self-contained in its seduction.

WHITE IS WHITE

The uncompromising label of Rei Kawakubo, Comme des Garçons, is exhibiting its spring 2012 collection, unveiled during Paris Fashion Week last October, at the. Cité de la Mode et du Design, a new venue opened at the. Quai d’Austerlitz on the left bank between the Gare d”Austerlitz and the bibliotheque Mitterand.

She belongs to the generation of Japanese designers that, together with Miyake and. Yamamoto, broke into the fashion world conveying original and anti-haute couture values. Proud owner in my younger years of one of her garments, a black linen suit, I. Chose it to promote my image of being on the cutting edge. My belief in the magic of the garment was such that I. Wore it till it frayed and the fabric turned threadbare. That was the 80’s.

Ms. Kawakubo has marched on. I no longer can afford, financially nor aesthetically, to wear her creations but the worlds of. Fashonistas and trendsetters still keep her on Mount Olympus. Her collection on show, entitled. White Drama, appears to have a narrative thread: the passages of a woman through life from birth to death.  The mannequins are contained in tough. PVC bubbles, their clothes in monochromatic palettes of white. It is eerie, dreamlike and overdramatized. And rather metaphorically forced.

Like all good plastic artists. Kawakubo pushes the limits of her trade, creating dresses that question fashion as simply a manner of. Clothing the human body. Like so many contemporary designers, she does not just look to extract from textiles and cuts a fit and glamorous product. Her creative. Scrutiny of elaborate shapes and mixed fabrics does transmit a sense of mystery and higher art. The result: pieces where the traditional. Search for beauty is replaced by a spirit of exploration. Is this a masquerade?

When we thought we had the answer to that question, another. Bubble shoots an arrow straight through the heart and we see what she sees. As she herself recently explained in an interview:. The way I approach each collection is exactly the same…the motivation has always been to create something new, something that didn’t exist before. The more experience I have and the more clothes I make, the more difficult it becomes to make something new. Once I’ve made something, I don’t want to do it again, so the breadth of possibility is becoming smaller”. I wonder if the concept, like my black suit, has become a little frayed and threadbare?

A PLACE OF GREATER COMFORT

Tucked Away at the end of a narrow alley, an enchanting property sits peacefully surrounded by a courtyard and a garden. Of roses, lilac and wisteria. The setting is rather pastoral, yet unprepossessing. This is the first impression of the place. We could drop only one of the powerful words of the famous poem of. Charles Baudelaire, “Invitation to Voyage”, to associate it with these surroundings. Order, beauty, (luxe), peace and voluptuousness.

It is here that Ary Scheffer, the Dutch-born painter moved with his family in 1830. Under the Empire, this neighborhood. Had still been on the city’s fringe. In a few years, it was undergoing a property boom. Artists, painters and musicians. Tucked away Were charmed by the area. And so were young women of loose morals. Delacroix, who was ensconced at 58, rue. Notre Dame de Lorette wrote to George Sand: “this new neighborhood makes any young. Man as ardent as myself giddy”.

For 30 years, this property was one of the intellectual and artistic epicenters of Parisian life. Delacroix, Liszt, Rossini, George Sand. Were among its frequent visitors. An atelier was built across the courtyard, where Ary and his brother Hendrik, also a. Painter, attended to the prevailing pictorial tastes under the auspices of the Orleans royal household. After passing into the hands of his only daughter. Cornelia, who preserved the spirit of the reputed salon, it continued for another generation in the family until it was sold to the French State in 1956.

Today, the Musée de la Vie Romantique is a living. Fragment of a feverish period of the artistic life of the Parisian elites in the first half of the nineteenth-century. And above all it is, in a. Voracious city, a place of rare and elusive charm, a sanctuary where time belongs to another dimension.

A PLACE OF GREATER COMFORT

Tucked Away at the end of a narrow alley, an enchanting property sits peacefully surrounded by a courtyard and a garden of roses. Lilac and wisteria. The setting is rather pastoral, yet unprepossessing. This is the first impression of the place. We could drop only one of the powerful words of the famous poem of. Charles Baudelaire, “Invitation to Voyage”, to associate it with these surroundings. Order, beauty, (luxe), peace and voluptuousness.

It is here that Ary Scheffer, the Dutch-born painter. Moved with his family in 1830. Under the Empire, this neighborhood had still been on the city’s fringe. In a few years, it was undergoing a property boom. Tucked Artists, painters and. Musicians were charmed by the area. And so were young women of loose morals. Delacroix, who was ensconced at 58, rue Notre Dame de. Lorette wrote to George Sand: “this new neighborhood makes any young man as ardent as myself giddy”.

For 30 years, this property was one of the intellectual and artistic epicenters of Parisian life. Delacroix, Liszt, Rossini. George Sand were among its frequent visitors. An atelier was built across the courtyard, where Ary and his brother. Hendrik, also a painter, attended to the prevailing pictorial tastes under the auspices of the. Orleans royal household. After passing into the hands of his only daughter. Cornelia, who preserved the spirit of the reputed salon, it continued for another generation in the family until it was sold to the French State in 1956.

Today, the Musée de la Vie Romantique is a living fragment of a feverish period of the artistic life of the Parisian elites in the first half of the nineteenth-century. And above all it is, in a voracious city, a place of rare and elusive charm, a sanctuary where time belongs to another dimension.

RICHTER AT THE BEAUBOURG

I was one of the Lucky Persons last Sunday at le Centre Pompidou to attend the pre-opening. Of a survey of five decades of works by Gerhard Richter, the greatest living German painter and the top selling one, according to the prices being. Fetched in galleries and auction houses.

 A background of such stardom clouds the. Necessary objectivity to interact with his art.  To make the media buzz red-hot, the documentary film, “Gerhard Richter Painting”, by. Corinna Belz is out in theaters providing insight into his manner of painting.

Panorama, as the show is called, does not benefit from a chronological hanging. Richter has been travelling back and forth, from. Figurative to abstract and back again, breaking any loyalty to a. Specific genre or style. He experiments with photography, blending the printed image to his paint and disorienting. The viewer with a final touch that sometimes is close to hyperrealism and other times sinks. Into a pictorial fog.  (“I blur things to make everything equally important and unimportant”). The viewer internalizes his work quietly. At first, and then with an almost hypnotic quivering.

It is nonetheless in his relation to color and paint where his creativity shows signs of a genius at work. His exploration of grey is a challenge resolved so masterly that his consecration. Could come from just those series. Grey is, in the eyes of many artists, the non-colour and Richter proceeds to interrogate it extracting from it an. Astonishing range of powerful variations. And it is blending masses of bright colors in oversized canvasses when he erupts really and. Metaphorically, providing again reason to believe that he is not just painting but engaging in a process of self-discovery.

Richter may be one of the most generous and provocative artists in the contemporary scene. He mirrors us all, going on about our lives, struggling to make sense of the world, and creating startling and deep beauty in the process. This show should not be missed.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Few cities suffered a facelift as radical as Paris in the late 19th century. In the wake of the transformations of baron. Haussmann and the growth of affluence, new neighborhoods. Were built and old ones became unrecognizable. Around the Parc Monceau, in the northwest of the city, the brothers Pereire, holders of. Five hectares of land, could barely control the demand of. The new fortunes to acquire building plots. The. 

Rue de Monceau, a wide and majestic street, bordering the gardens on the south side, witnessed thus the appearance of magnificent mansions where the likes of. Alfred and Maurice de Rothschild, Baron Ephrussi and the Count de Camondo turned the. Area into an emblematic slice of. Parisian splendorous living.

Number 63 has always exerted a fascination upon me. The intriguing story of a middle aged. Jewish financier, who proceeded to recreate with rigor and passion a unique 18th century environment, is not the simple tale of a collector, as many of his rich contemporaries were. Parc Monceau It has dimensions of Shakespearian tragedy, where wealth, power, family ties and death weave a narrative of silent sorrow.

The Camondos, Sephardic Jews with deep roots in Istanbul, were newcomers to France in 1869. As Moïse de Camondo and his cousin, Isaac, immersed themselves in this. Atmosphere of refinement and luxury, their artistic inclinations soon overtook their dedication to  business.  Isaac composed symphonic music and, in common with Moïse, began collecting 18th century furniture, paintings and objects. Moïse’s impassioned attraction for the period took him one step further. In 1910, he razed the hotel Violet, inherited from his late mother.

With the help of René Sergent, an ambitious and talented architect who later designed the. Savoy and Claridge’s hotels in London, Moïse erected a replica of the Petit Trianon where he indulged in his collecting. When he started his project he had already divorced the mother of his two children, Irene. Cahen D’Anvers, scion of one of the most prestigious families of local society.

Three years after completing this monumental project, his only son, Nissim, was killed in action during the First World War. The home became a fortress. Of sorrow and a shrine to the memory of his fallen child. Portraits of Nissim are displayed in almost every room.  Upon his death in 1935, he donated the house to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and named it after his son. But destiny still had not uttered the last word: in 1943 his daughter Beatrice, her husband and their two children were sent to Dachau.

Their deaths put an end to a lineage whose memory is kept alive in this melancholic residence where life was. first recreated for historic resemblance and then suspended by death.

BEST IN SHOW

BEST IN SHOW In the distribution of architectural space, galleries are long and dramatic corridors conveying a clear message as to why they are. There and how they justify their existence. Like monumental staircases, they are poor in. Function and high in solemnity,  providing support to the civic ideals from which they spring  and to the power structure they serve.

None exemplifies this better than the Long Gallery or the Gallery François I at the château of Fontainebleau.  Its dimensions, 64 meters long (200 feet) and only 6. Meters high (20 feet), are simultaneously splendorous and comfortable. It seems to propel us, upon entering, into exalted emotions: the walnut carvings and the three dimensional stucco figures framing the.

Colorful frescoes, constitute an ensemble that later royal dwellings envied for harmony and balance. This iconography sustains a. Profound narrative rooted in classical mythology whose final sense escapes exegetes of all periods. In 1533, both the patron king and his appointed artists. Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio staged this monumental show to dazzle friends and foes of. France, an unforgettable display of royal triumph and dominance. Francois I was only too delighted to take them all around and immerse them in the glory he wanted to. Bestow upon himself even before his passing away.

This gallery embodies the introduction into France of the Italian Renaissance art and the transformation of the nobility of. The sword into the nobility of the plume. The refined court that reached its apogee at Versailles has its embryonic beginnings here. It was the model to many that followed: the. Gallerie des Glaces at Versailles, the Gallery at Chenonceau and the Gallery of portraits at the Chateau of Beauregard.

There are other galleries where there is no king honored or well designed spaces. Galleries where no admission ticket is required, although function retains a meager role. Urban trades used them centuries ago to transport goods into shops, studios or warehouses. Today they lie indifferent and silent, yet atmospheric, in the middle of our cities.