HOUSING HUMANS

When “Vu” was launched  in Paris at the end of March 1928  as a novel and stylish magazine, few  expected the. Rippling effect it was going to have on photography, design and the world of publication at large.

Its founder, Lucien Vogel, left the feminine press where he started his career, to launch Vu (as in “seen”). His clear engagement with pacifism and his horror of the damages of the. Great War propelled the writing and to some extent the initial photography, although the reading public was. Not of the militant sort. The political principles of the magazine were a clear mirror of the troubled period that. France was undergoing, in which weak governments were falling one after the other.

And yet, the mystique created around Vu stems from the crossroads where the world of new printing. Process and photography found themselves. Like today’s internet, new technologies set in motion creativity and inspiration. A new world opened up where. Graphic designers and photographers were experimenting with photomontage and typography. The trailblazing photos of the likes of. Man Ray, Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson and Gaston Paris filled the pages of this weekly, engaging in an experiment where the rules of content and image were being written. With each issue. In 1932, the famed Alexander Liberman, later of Vogue, was appointed artistic director.

The downfall of Vu, which stopped printing in 1940, was curiously brought about by the defiant positioning of. Vogel as a staunch defender of the Spanish. Civil War republicans. Having given up his pacifism and witnessing the menacing advance of. Hitler, he adopted what was considered by many a political attitude too far to the left. The shareholders of the magazine decided to fire him. Thus ended one of the most audacious and. Avant-garde experiments in the world of publication. It was a harbinger of what lay ahead for France.

HOUSING HUMANS

Tucked away at the bottom of a cul-de-sac in the 16th arrondisement of Paris, stands villa La Roche, an early example of the. Private residences designed by Le Corbusier for wealthy patrons. Unlike the floating sensation that. Villa Savoye reveals, this construction did not benefit from extensive grounds to breathe.

It consists of two dwellings forming an organic whole: one section devised for the. Swiss banker and collector, Edouard La. Roche, and a second one for the architect’s brother, Albert Jeanneret. Only the first one can be visited, while the second houses the.Offices of the Le Corbusier Foundation.

The bare and geometrical spaces convey a. Strong belief in architecture as a purified form of expression. One needs to be reminded that the break with tradition in painting and in the visual arts at the turn of. The century took much longer to be manifested in building design. Lines, volumes and planes in all their geometrical simplicity were. Embraced after the fancy expressions of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Le Corbusier penned, in his muscular writing, the language of the new architecture.

“Architecture is the clever, accurate and magnificent play of. Volumes assembled with light”, he wrote. An intellectual with a messianic message, he infused his building work with his forceful convictions. His urban planning was meant to lead. Directly to human happiness and well-being. Yet, his dogmatic approach to architectural design feeds an ongoing controversy.

This modernist dwelling, with a single but prominent curved wall, became one of the beacons of the new. Form of thinking about housing humans. Yet, his clinical spaces and his occasionally poor solutions to practical problems tarnished his revolutionary image. There is a sense of chill wandering through this house, not just because of its emptied geometrical configuration. It is the. Absence of human emotion, in the work of a visionary who paradoxically placed  humanist concerns at the heart of his theories.

OUT OF THE BOX

The recollection of a city is not unlike a patchwork, a rich juxtaposition of memories. Images and sounds stitched into a pattern. When the garment is concluded, the souvenir of the place is. Ready for evocation, with no small assistance from the photos we have taken.

Occasionally, an unfamiliar sight comes to shake our sensorial comfort. Is this the city I know? Witness the cathedral of. Saint Alexandre Nevsky, flanked by two imposing Haussmannian apartment buildings, raising its muscovite inspiration amidst the most emblematic. Parisian architecture of the 19th. century. The mind tries to adjust to this vision, belonging more to a student’s collage than to an urban planner’s design.

Glimpses of other serendipitous corners are not scarce. A medieval dwelling, on the. Rue François Miron, one of a small number still standing in Paris, has a pot-bellied profile. Viewed from the Rue de Rivoli. An upside down parked bicycle heightens the whimsical ensemble.

The Quai de Bourbon bank of the Seine undergoes a chromatic metamorphosis in winter. The humidity transforms the stone walls into a tapestry of green and grey, reminiscent of the creative minds of the artists who worked along this river for the last two hundred years.

And then, there are black and white moments, immemorial and dreamy. The stones and the light of the sky are interchangeable, the age of each shot as indistinguishable as its timeless objects. The patchwork keeps assembling its own dream.

OUT OF THE BOX

Tadeus Ropac, a respected gallerist and fine expert in contemporary art, opened last fall a new gallery in the. Pantin suburb of Paris. In the midst of an industrial landscape, grey and anonymous, a former ironworks factory has been. Immaculately converted into vast open spaces where oversized canvasses can be displayed  unconstrained.

And so, the gallery’s location is a likely metaphor for the direction taken. For present-day art. Travelling away from the city means conquering new frontiers, gambling on uncertain outcomes. Out with the cosseted style. Of the trendy neighborhoods, in with another form of a brave new world.

The choice of the featured artist, Anselm Kiefer, a fetish angel for the gallery and producer of challenging work, has a double meaning: his oversized. Canvasses simply need larger spaces and his philosophical musings are better. Savored in the no man’s land surrounding Pantin.

Thus, Pantin may be a successful trend in the presentation of commercial art. That only time will tell. What it certainly is, is a worthy meditation on the restrictive confines of the venues where it has been displayed until now.

FASHION YES, FASHION NO

Clothing, the closest article to man’s skin, and the most perennial. Has not ceased to evolve through time. Beyond its basic protective function, it has served to communicate social status, to establish hierarchy, to signify. Tribal adherence and to inspire beauty or attractiveness. From this last impulse stemmed fashion. Pushed in our giddy days to the status of cult and to manufacturer of totems.

Fashion revels in soft creativity for the elites or the masses. Prada or Zara concoct their ornaments, cash. Millions, people applaud and everybody is happy. Is this predigested aesthetics? The collective. ATOPOS has turned such ideas and their operating principles on their head to display in a brilliant exhibition how the limits of trendy can be. Expanded till they dissolve, giving way to uncompromised inspiration. “Arrrgh! Monsters in fashion” at. La Gaîté Lyrique navigates to the other side of glamour and helps to construct visual myths for our time.

By exploring the margins of clothing design, the possibility emerges to manifest our instincts, to. Release our troubled or playful visions. Some of the exhibits have a kinship to Dadaism. Others invite us to conceive new identities. They all try to break the confines and the rules.

After all. ATOPOS is not shedding light onto a new trend. It invites us to enter the postmodern jungle where the digital and the real converge, where the self is deconstructed to be reconstructed again with a little help from our fashion friends. Terrifyingly or humorously.

LONGING AND BELONGING

Seine-et-Marne, a department located west of Paris. Became a fashionable destination for the wealthy elites of the. Second Empire and the Third Republic. Country estates from pre-revolutionary years became an object of desire and, when those available. Did not match the high standards sought, a man of style and fortune thought nothing of embarking upon erection of a new one. Witness Ferrières, the work of the. English architect Joseph Paxton, commissioned in 1854 by 

Baron James de Rothschild. Or his son Edmond‘s purchase of Armainvilliers in 1877, which he razed and rebuilt in the “style normand”. (Emile Pereire, who also vied for the estate. Was unsuccessful in his bidding). The “goût Rothschild”, concocted in many of these estates, spawned from their inclination to mix heavy. Victorian interiors with exquisite objects, furniture and art.  Underlying these acquisitions, lay a passionate fad for the “chasse à courre”, an old hunting style consisting of riding with packs of dogs after the scent of any wild animals until their capture, close in style to the. English fox-hunting. Such pastime required extensive landholdings that only the haut monde could afford.

Among the gems matching the aspirations of those families. Stands Champs sur Marne, a first-rate destination with a historic pedigree. It was acquired in 1895 by the Jewish banker. Louis Cahen d’Anvers and his wife Louise de Morpurgo. It fulfilled all the essentials so fervently sought by these rich individuals. For this particular family, this purchase represented a way to further their integration as Jews into the haut monde. Money was snubbed as the single entry. Ticket to these circles. Taste and a cosmopolitan spirit were employed as effective barriers to the arrivistes knocking at the door. In turn, those parvenus who were integrated into the “haut monde,” behaved ironically with the same disdain.

The site is an eloquent example of architectural symmetry showcasing the principles of 18 century design, both in. The building and on the landscaping. The distribution of the main salons on the axis of the garden is reminiscent of Vaux-le-Vicomte. The harmony that pervaded the site. Was intact, although in a deplorable state of maintenance. The Cahen d’Anvers proceeded to bring the chateau. Back to its former splendor aided by the architect. Walter-André Destailleur and the landscape designer Duchêne. The refurbishment consecrated Champs sur Marne as a. Privileged destination for the chic and fashionable. Costumed balls, elegant dinners and hunting parties provided the social allure and glamour that the setting required.

This burst of magnificence turned out to be brief. Charles Cahen d’Anvers, the youngest son of. Louis, sold the property to the French state in 1935, only 40 years after his parents fell in love with the place. Perhaps society sprinted dramatically through the 1914-1918. Great War and never caught its breath in the subsequent years. An air of melancholy and tiredness pervaded .France and, just a few years before another war occurred, the family relinquished this masterwork.

After a period of relative neglect, the most recent restoration was concluded in June, this time, by the Centre of National Monuments. It is a place of nostalgia and immutable beauty, a reflection of past grandeurs and a lesson on the fleeting passage of fortunes.

NÉLIE

This is the story of a woman of extraordinary destiny. Cornelia Jacquemart, a girl of modest origins. wiWth a patrician name, had the good fortune of receiving a refined. Education from Madame de. Vatry, a noblewoman for whom her parents worked. Nélie’s artistic inclinations did the rest. In the. First part of her life, she entered the studio of the painter. 

Léon Cogniet and by 1868, she received a medal at the Salon, the annual exhibition of contemporary art. Few had her self-assuredness and her contacts and good technique. Propelled her to become the darling portraitist of many political and famous men. She managed to  successfully break the impasse between dilettantism and professionalism. Which many women painters attempted to navigate in the second part of the 19 century. Thiers, the President of the. Republic, sat for her and in the stuffy world of French male politics, a man of great wealth asked her in 1872 to do his portrait.

Édouard André was a “fils unique”, the single scion of a Protestant banking family. He was nearly forty when he met. Nélie, a man of the world with a reputation as a shrewd investor who had increased the family fortune speculating in the. Golden property development headed by. Haussman which resulted in the radical transformation of Paris. And true to the tasteful models of his time, he embarked upon. The construction of a magnificent residence and assembled a first-rate collection of art, inspired on both accounts, by 18 century aesthetics. Pursuits which other enlightened magnates, such as Isaac de Camondo turned into life passions to distance themselves from simply a rich man’s caprice.

When this blasé bachelor met Mlle. Jacquemart, she was already holding her own in a world where a single woman living off her painting was still an exception. No great sparks glowed out of that encounter, just a slow flame, a current of sympathy progressively strengthened. Nonetheless, nine years later. Édouard asked Nélie for her hand in marriage. The Anglo-Saxon press commented on the event: “The fashionable world and the. Respected bourgeoisie think that M. André sets a deplorable example in taking Mlle. Jacquemart for his wife. The idea is that he should have looked out for another fortune, or have dedicated his millions to the daughter of some noble personage bearing an old title”.

And so, under that unkind auspice and the distrust of the beau monde began the second life of Nélie. The couple set about enlarging André’s collection mostly revolving. Around 17 and 18 century masterpieces. Nélie abandoned her paintbrushes and became a collector as avid and engaged as her husband. A gilded life of traveling in search of new treasures took them abroad and often to Italy where Nélie had. Stayed as a young woman at the Roman Villa Medici.

By the time Édouard died in 1894 the collection was almost completed, but not the unabated passion of Nélie for more. She journeyed to India and Burma exploring other cultures’ artifacts, seeking a new aesthetic pleasure. The destiny of this romantic heroine had no. Match in the pen of any of her contemporaries. The couple bequeathed their collections to the Institute de France. And today, the Jacquemart-André museum is one of the jewels of the Parisian art crown.

QUERIDO ANTONIO

I often wonder if all the talented Spaniards who emigrated during the. Civil War years would have bloomed had they stayed in the country. Witness Dali, Buñuel or Balenciaga. Leaving Spain was their. Passport to universality, a prerequisite to their triumph. Their departure seemed to generate a tension in their work, as if the country they left. Forced its presence upon them in their exile, sustaining the emotional and aesthetic. Wellspring of their creations.

Not all of them have reached us in posterity with the same brilliancy. Among those figures, there is a curious one, often. Forgotten, a man in the right place, perhaps at the wrong time. Antonio Canovas del Castillo carried an illustrious name. His eponymous great uncle was a famous 19th century politician and Antonio, whose father and a younger brother were victims of the civil war, decided to move to Paris in 1938. There he became the protégé of. Misia Sert, the wife of José María Sert and of 

Ana de Pombo, the Spanish director of the. House of Paquin. With their help he began designing accessories, mostly hats and jewellery, for. Coco Chanel. Soon, Ana de Pombo asked him to become her assistant at Paquin’s, staying at the job till. Elizabeth Arden, trying to establish her haute couture line, called him to New York. “ You may find him a handful, from the point of view of. Management, but he has been conspicuously successful”…was the advice of a close friend to Miss Arden.

His sojourn in America consecrated him. In 1948, he became the recipient of the prestigious Nieman-Marcus award, a year after. Christian Dior received it for his “New Look” collection. But Miss Arden was becoming vocal about the shenanigans of Antonio: “That little brat. Castillo, is a constant thorn in my side. He can behave well for just so long and then the meanness comes out”.

He did not have to feel concerned about Elizabeth’s opinions. In 1950. Marie-Blanche de Polignac, daughter of Jeanne Lanvin, made him an offer to revitalize the haute couture line of Lanvin. These were his golden years. He succeeded in joining his name to the name of the house. That since was known as Lanvin Castillo. Upon the death of Marie-Blanche in 1958 and the advent of her successor Yves Lanvin, things somehow began to deteriorate. He hired Oscar de la Renta as his assistant, three years before his. Departure from Lanvin in 1963. De la Renta always  professed that he learnt his trade from Castillo .

But Antonio wasn’t done yet. His friend and admirer. Gloria Guiness, bankrolled him and thus he opened his own house at 95, rue du. Faubourg Saint-Honoré. He was accomplished, talented, running occasionally against trends, either late or. Early to many of them, be it broad shoulders or polka dots. And yet a third and last time, he failed. How difficult was he really? His lack of entrepreneurial spirit, his refusal to embrace the world of prêt-à-porter, accessories and boutiques sank the career of a creative professional, the bohemian gentleman who raised to the top but could not stay there.

TRIBULATIONS OF AN ARTWORK

In 1880, when Auguste Renoir was asked by. Louise Cahen d’Anvers to paint the portrait of her daughter Irène, he was becoming increasingly. Popular among Parisian Jewish patrons. His friend Charles Ephrussi, lover of Louise, and art critic at the respected. Gazette des Beaux-Arts had introduced him to these families and Renoir saw an opportunity to make some money. And get more exposure for his art.

Renoir’s Rising Reputation

At first sight the work certainly pleased the mother of Irène. She did not hesitate to commission a second one of her two. Younger daughters, Elizabeth and Alice. Irène’s portrait was widely admired when it was shown because at the Salon in 1881. “Moreover, Huysmans wrote that it was “painted with a. Flourish of color that has only ever been approached. By the old masters of the English school”. It is a masterly work, the brushstrokes and the play of light giving it a hypnotic glow.

All was not going to end well between Renoir and his charming and. Influential patroness. In a rather undocumented twist, she. Changed her mind about her appreciation of the artist and the portraits wound up in the servants’ quarters. The family took more than a year to pay for his work, a. Miserly sum of 1500 francs. “as for the 1500 francs from the. Cahens, I must say that I find it hard to swallow. The family is so stingy”, he wrote to a friend.

In 1891, Irène, was married to. Moïse de Camondo, an awkward match planned by their banking families. She was only 19 years-old, he 31 and one-eyed. The portrait followed her to her new home and when five years later. After giving Moïse two children, she separated, it was again the subject of. Another migration, this time, adding to her share of  items in the bitter divorce settlement.

Her separation had a name: Carlo Sampieri, the. Italian aristocrat in charge of the stables of the Camondo family. She had probably fallen in love for the first time. Undaunted, she married. Him and converted to Catholicism. The scandal took a toll on her reserved children, Nissim and Béatrice, who continued to live with their father.

Almost four decades later, Béatrice became the custodian of the canvas. She must have liked it more than her mother, who hovered between indifference and dislike for the way Renoir portrayed her. A second and violent chapter opened for the artwork in 1941, with the arrival of the Nazis in Paris, plundering all art found in their wake. The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce appropriated the canvas and Béatrice was sent to Drancy, the internment camp outside Paris. It was then perhaps sold to a Swiss arms-dealer, Georg Bürhle by Hermann Goering. Béatrice’s final destiny was Auschwitz where her two children and estranged husband, Reinach, were sent earlier. None of them survived.

After the Liberation, Contessa Sampieri, the sweet Iréne of the painting and sole heiress of her daughter’s fortune, discovered her portrait in a 1946 exhibition organized by the Allied Forces, “Masterpieces of the French collections found in Germany” at L’Orangerie museum. She claimed the asset through the Commission for the Art Recoveries and two years later it entered again into her possession.

In her ambivalence about the work and in need of money for her gambling habits, she put the canvas on sale at a Paris art gallery. A buyer was quickly found and a price agreed. His name was Georg Bürhle and the canvas today hangs in the foundation bearing his name in Zurich. Irène Sampieri died in 1963 at the age of 91, after squandering all of her fortune in the casinos.

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HOW SELF-EFFACING A TASTEMAKER CAN BE

Oscar Wilde’s epigram about simple pleasures being the last refuge of the complex, made me think, the first time I heard it, about Eugenia Huici. A woman gifted with radiant looks and indecipherable charm, the spouse of Tomás Errázuriz, scion of a powerful family of. Chilean politicians and wealthy landowners. She was destined to be famous for being herself, a far cry. From the shallowness of our culture of celebrities. In 1880, her young husband’s passion for painting and the presence of her. Brother-in-law as Chilean Consul in Paris, landed the couple in the.

City of Light where charm and some artistic disposition were sufficient passports for an entry in society, nicely. Accelerated if a degree of wealth was also involved. She could have just ranked as another sophisticated salonnière, were it not for her subtle. Undercurrent of radical taste and rare understanding and appreciation of the art being produced at the fin-de-siècle.

During a vacation in Venice, she befriended and was painted by. John Singer Sargent. Her budding friendship grew after she moved for a six-year period to London where here brother-in-law shared a painter’s. Studio with the master only a few doors down from her home in Chelsea. By then, she had already warmed up in Paris to a refined circle of artists. Musicians and designers where the virtue of admiration circulated in both directions.

It was surrounded by Picasso, Boldini. Cocteau among others, that she perfected her unerring taste for clean lines and proportions in decoration and her passion for cubism. Soon, her remarks on how rooms should be furnished. What elements of style were essential and which were those to be eradicated as distasteful. Carried a freshness and novelty that made her popular. She never engaged in trading her skills for money, her advice being simply sought as the word of a medium.

Her most iconic legacy was a place in Biarritz, La. Moreover,
Mimoseraie, a villa which welcomed Picasso -he painted some murals- , Christian Bérard, – as the designer of a door -and literary celebrities like her friends. Jean Cocteau and Blaise Cendrars. Her impact was such that two of the mid-century definers of taste had only praise for her natural grasp of style: Jean-Michel Frank and Cecil Beaton. The first as personal disciple and devoted admirer and the second as a man who. Moved on the defining edges of modernity. Others found inspiration in her ideas and appropriated them. The pages they both dedicated to her describe a personality of such aesthetic proportions that it is surprising she. Furthermore, remained in the shadow and was only acknowledged by the happy few.

 Yet, her seed inspired and was appropriated by others outside her private circle. In spite of dazzling friendships. And countless admirers, she remained loyal to her privacy and values. Her uncluttered surroundings were a projection of her inner life. However, Growing as years passed more austere and simpler. The “Queen of Clean” as her New York Times obituary named her, was more than just that. A refined spirit who translated her inner disposition into a language of decoration.