 |
A 15-year-old GSCE art student has made a wedding dress out of divorce papers for her final exam.Demi Barnes posted a picture of the completed dress, which took her 10 hours to make, on Facebook where it has gained 47,000 "likes". |
↧
Demi Barnes wedding dress.
↧
Brand new british Brand.
Well & Truly is an original independent British company focused on the design and creation of premium accessories. The collection comprises handcrafted products that possess great integrity and style together with practicality and flair. Each piece, from our beautiful silk pocket squares to our striking cufflinks, is fashioned with great passion and care.
Well designed and Truly British.
↧
↧
The Hare with the Amber Eyes.
The Netsuke Survived
By ROGER COHEN
Published: September 3, 2011 in The New York Times / http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/cohen-the-netsuke-survived.html?_r=0
PEOPLE start collections for many reasons — because they can, because they wish to contemplate beauty, because of the associations an object stirs. Perhaps a secret memory lurks in a loved bibelot: Proust muses that the collector’s pleasure “was always for reasons which other people didn’t grasp.” Certainly exile, which is loss, can make a salvaged collection doubly precious.
The odyssey of 264 netsuke — Japanese carvings not much larger than cherry tomatoes — lies at the heart of Edmund de Waal’s extraordinary book “The Hare with Amber Eyes.” The carvings in ivory or boxwood with subjects as various as a persimmon or a copulating couple were acquired by Charles Ephrussi in Paris in the 1870s. Ephrussi, a forebear of de Waal with a discerning passion for art, was a very rich man.
He was also a Jew, a descendant of the Ephrussis of Odessa who became known as the kings of grain. Diversifying around Europe they amassed wealth once comparable to the Rothschilds’. Then everything goes up in smoke. De Waal’s book is a meditation on Jewish upheaval and loss.
It is all here: the Jewish striving, the patriotic pride as emancipation opens doors, the balls, Charles Ephrussi with his Légion d’Honneur, Baron Ignace von Ephrussi of the Viennese branch with his Iron Cross Third Class — all of it as brittle as aged Japanese parchment. Delusion is tenacious and it makes you weep.
Charles was an aesthete who furnished inspiration for Proust’s Swann. Two generations had delivered him from Odessan dust to Parisian delicacy. He bought Manet and Monet and Morisot to adorn his mansion. There, on green velvet in a mirrored vitrine, he placed the netsuke. They came from across the world but shared with Impressionism a fascination with the captured instant.
France takes the collector in, but there are rumblings. Edouard Drumont, the anti-Semitic demagogue, published his book “La France Juive” (“Jewish France”) in 1886: “Jews, vomited from all the ghettos of Europe, are now installed as the masters in historic houses.” The Ephrussis were targeted as epitomes of the nomadic, money-grubbing Jew. Soon the Dreyfus Affair breaks, dividing France over the fate of a Jewish officer, the wrongly accused Alfred Dreyfus. Salon doors slam shut on Charles the Dreyfusard.
In the turmoil Charles sends the netsuke as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna. It is 1899. Change of scene but not of grandeur: in the dressing room of Viktor’s gorgeous wife, Emmy, who spends a lot of time lacing into corsets for the Opera, the netsuke find a new home.
The couple’s children play with the carvings. One of them, Elisabeth, de Waal’s grandmother, who will become a lawyer and poet, befriends Rilke and is thrilled by his words: “All art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end.”
The end is coming. Drumont’s Austrian counterparts inveigh against “the Jew, the sucking vampire.” Imperial collapse feeds frenzy: Elisabeth and her brother Iggie are thrown out of their Alpine Club to keep the peaks clean of Jews. The Ephrussis linger too long, unable to imagine jackbooted terror.
To imagine this: The Gestapo going through the silver, the books, the paintings, the tapestries, the netsuke — cataloguing all the Jews have “robbed” from Aryans. The family scatters to the United States, Mexico, England. Emmy commits suicide. Cousins are killed in the camps. A century’s endeavor is eviscerated.
Only the netsuke endure. They are hidden by the family maid, Anna, and recovered by Elisabeth in Vienna after the war — almost the only “restitution.” In England, she gives them to Iggie, a trader who is assigned to Japan and takes them “home.” It is in Tokyo that de Waal, a ceramicist, first sees them.
This is a book about Jewish credulity. The Ephrussis believed they were pillars of society; they were deluded. In 1896, three years before the netsuke left Paris for Vienna, Theodor Herzl, appalled by the Dreyfus Affair and convinced that combating anti-Semitism was futile, wrote “The Jewish State,” arguing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine — his Zionist answer to the Ephrussis’ diaspora submissiveness.
De Waal shuns politics. But part of the sadness of his story is that the German question that so ravaged Europe has been solved, while the Jewish question remains open. It took almost 120 years from the founding of the modern German state to reach resolution. On that scale, with the modern state of Israel, we may be halfway to the inevitable but elusive peace.
I said sadness. That is only one aspect of this saga. What are the netsuke? They are “inconsequential gobbets of reality” — a woman with a crying child, an amber-eyed hare — that an artist has labored for years to immortalize. The stubborn artist has seized the moment. And now de Waal’s children in London stroke the netsuke. What they hold in their hands is wisdom — and consolation.
Edmund de Waal on Proust: The writer behind the hare
The potter and award-winning author of The Hare with the Amber Eyes, memoirist Edmund de Waal, explains why Proust is at the heart of his family’s story.
By Edmund de Waal 01 Apr 2011 in The Telegraph / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8418199/Edmund-de-Waal-on-Proust-The-writer-behind-the-hare.html
I have just come back from Paris. The Hare with Amber Eyes, my attempted retracing of the history of my Jewish family over 200 years through a very large collection of very small objects, was being launched in France. I had a round of interviews and lectures to survive. The book’s new name, La Mémoire Retrouvée, could not be more Proustian and I was convinced this was a hostage to fortune. My very first radio interview was short. The interviewer was svelte and cross. You are an Englishman, she told me, and I believe you are actually a potter. Your book seems to concern Proust. How has this come about?
So I start to tell her that my great-uncle Iggie in old age, sitting in his armchair in his Tokyo apartment after an autumnal lunch with plums from the orchard of his country cottage in Izu, began talking of the plum dumplings mit schlag made by their cook in Vienna. That when my grandmother Elisabeth died and I inherited her 14 black-bound volumes of Proust, printed on cheap thin paper by Gallimard, the ink smudged, I found that they were interleaved with postcards and photographs and scraps of pocketbook jottings marking — what? I start to say that I simply didn’t know that when this journey started six years ago, airy with ambition and purpose, I would be charting a journey into memory. I start and she has packed up her microphone.
I had no intention to let Proust into my book. My story started in Belle Epoque Paris as that was the home of the first collector of these little Japanese carvings, a glamorous and ridiculously rich mondain cousin of my great-grandfather’s called Charles Ephrussi.
But as I haunted the archives and paced my routes between old houses and offices, vagabonding in museums, aimless one moment and over-purposeful the next, I kept coming across the places where Charles Ephrussi and Charles Swann intersected. Before I started my journey I knew in the broadest terms that “my” Charles was one of the two principal models for Proust’s character – the lesser it was said, of the two. I remember reading a dismissive remark on him (“a Polish Jew… stout, bearded and ugly, his manner was ponderous and uncouth”) in the biography of Proust published by George Painter in the Fifties and taking it at face value.
But as I started to trace Charles’s passage through Parisian life, his early friendships and love affairs, his passionate and partisan collecting, his attempts to learn to write on art, I fell under the spell of this first owner of my collection of ivories. And I kept coming on Proust. Proust seen whispering to Charles in the corner of a salon. Proust asking his advice on his translation of Ruskin, using the library at the Gazette des Beaux-Arts where Charles was editor, visiting the apartment at the Hotel Ephrussi in the Rue Monceau to see Charles’s new paintings, the 40 Manets, Renoirs, Degas, Sisleys. One of his Monets, a painting of the break-up of ice on the Seine, is alive in Proust’s description of it: “A day of thaw… the sun, the blue of the sky, the broken ice, the mud, and the moving water turning the river to a dazzling mirror.”
As I tried to map the straightforward correspondences that my Charles and the fictional Charles share, the lineaments of their lives, I grew more and more confident of this metamorphosis. They were both Jewish. They were both men of the world. They had a social reach from royalty (Charles conducted Queen Victoria around Paris, Swann was a friend of the Prince of Wales) via the salons to the studios of artists.
They were art lovers deeply in love with the works of the Italian Renaissance, Giotto and Botticelli in particular. They were both experts in the wildly arcane subject of Venetian 15th-century medallions. And they were both collectors, patrons of the Impressionists, incongruous in the sunshine at a boating party of a painter friend. At the very back of Renoir’s Boating Party, slightly apart from the louche drinking and the flirting in singlets and loose dresses, is Charles, dressed for the opera rather than this late lunch. And Proust weaves him in: “A gentleman… wearing a top hat at a boating party where he was clearly out of place, which proved that for Elstir he was not only a regular sitter, but a friend, perhaps a patron.”
Both write monographs on art: Swann on Vermeer, my Charles on Dürer. They advise society ladies on which paintings to buy. They are both dandies, both chevaliers of the Legion d’honneur, both infatuated with unsuitable, complex women.
But there was something beyond this delight in finding that the collector of the netsuke had this other reimagined life in Proust: both Charles Ephrussi and Charles Swann were Dreyfusard. For my family found that their carefully constructed life in Parisian society was deeply riven by their Jewishness, when “the precarious structure of assimilation”, in Walter Benjamin’s words, came crashing down around him. They were reviled in the anti-Semitic press, excoriated in pamphlets, threatened.
Paris changed for Charles. He was a mondain with doors shut in his face, a patron ostracised by some of the artists he had supported. He collects only “Jew art”, says Renoir. And the clearest, most potent expression of this fissure comes in Proust. I think of what these times must have been like, and recall Proust writing of the Duc de Guermantes’s anger: “As far as Swann is concerned… they tell me now that he is openly Dreyfusard. I should never have believed it of him, an epicure, a man of practical judgment, a collector, a connoisseur of old books, a member of the Jockey, a man who enjoys the respect of all, who knows all the good addresses and used to send us the best port you could wish to drink, a dilettante, a family man. Ah! I feel badly let down.”
Swann, gravely ill and shocked by this illumination of his place in society, is grateful to Dreyfus for revealing “the paths that his forebears had trodden and from which he had been deflected by his aristocratic associations”. It is as if this terrible light causes him to reassess who he is. I am moved when I find that my Charles, terminally ill at the moment of Dreyfus’s partial rehabilitation in 1905, helped endow a school in Odessa for indigent Jewish boys. The place where he and his brothers came from is still in his life.
And so, though of course I wanted him to be Swann – driven, loved, graceful – I didn’t want Charles to disappear into source material, into literary footnotes. I feared losing him to Proust Studies. And I cared too much about Proust to turn his fiction into some Belle Epoque acrostic. “My novel has no key,” Proust said, repeatedly.
During the years of travelling and researching, recalling conversations and attempting to replace memories with actual rooms and streets, this slippage between what was “real” and what was in fiction became one of the greatest complexities for me. For the family turned up in the novels of Joseph Roth and the stories of Isaac Babel – often, I have to say, as terribly arriviste.
Proust played with the interpenetration of the real and the invented; his novels have a panoply of historical figures who appear as themselves mingling with characters reimagined from recognisable people. Elstir, the great painter who leaves his infatuation with Japonisme to become an Impressionist, has elements of both Whistler and Renoir, but has another dynamic force. And Proust’s characters stand in front of actual pictures. The visual texture of the novels is suffused not just with references to Giotto and Botticelli, Dürer and Vermeer, Moreau, Monet and Renoir, but by the act of looking at paintings, by the act of collecting them, remembering what it was to see something, the memory of the moment of apprehension.
So as I try to track down what my great-grandfather saw on the way to his office off the Schottengasse in Vienna a century ago, or what pictures hung in his salon, I am attempting to bring alive a memory of an early morning walk on a dusty street, the memory of real pictures lost, looted and scattered.
And so, to answer the radio journalist, I am an Englishman but I have to think of Proust.
The Ephrussi family were a Ukrainian Jewish banking and oil dynasty.
Family members made their fortune controlling grain distribution in beginning in Odessa (then Russian Empire, now Ukraine) and later controlled large-scale oil resources across Crimea and the Caucasus. From 1856, members of the family established banking houses in Vienna, Paris, and Athens. By 1860, the family was the world’s largest grain exporter. The Austrian branch of the family were elevated to the nobility by the Habsburg emperor.
During the 19th century, the family possessed vast wealth, owning many castles, palaces, and estates in Europe. The family were known for their connoisseurship, intellectual interests, and their huge collections of art.
The family's bank and properties were seized by the Nazis after the March 1938 German annexation of Austria.
The family name is considered to be a variation of "Ephrati", a Jewish family name attested in various countries since the 14th Century and still current in present-day Israel, in this case transformed through the Ashkenazi pronunciation (Ephrati-Ephrassi-Ephrussi).
Notable members of the Ephrussi include:
Béatrice de Rothschild-Ephrussi (1864-1934) - part of the Rothschild family
Boris Ephrussi (1901-1979), influential French geneticist (his wife, Harriet Ephrussi-Taylor, 1918-1968, was also a geneticist and crystallographer)
Charles Ephrussi (1849-1905), art historian, proprietor of the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", an inspiration for Charles Swann in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu
Ignaz von Ephrussi (1829-1899), Austrian banker
Jules Ephrussi (1846-1915), French banker
Marie Juliette Ephrussi, Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge, (born 1880) - Princess de Faucigny-Lucinge
Maurice Ephrussi (1849-1916), French banker
Michel Ephrussi (1845-1914), French banker
Viktor von Ephrussi (1860-1945), Austrian banker
Fanny Reinach
Properties included:
Palais Ephrussi is a Ringstraßenpalais - Vienna.
Villa Ephrussi - Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the Côte d'Azur
Hôtel de Breteuil, 12 Avenue Foch, Paris
Hôtel Ephrussi, 81 Rue de Monceau, Paris
Hôtel 11, Avenue d'Iéna, Paris
Villa Kerylos on the Côte d'Azur
 |
Hôtel Ephrussi, 81 Rue de Monceau, Paris |
Villa Ephrussi - Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the Côte d'Azur.
 |
Villa Kerylos on the Côte d'Azur |
 |
Palais Ephrussi is a Ringstraßenpalais - Vienna. |
Charles Ephrussi (born Odessa, December 24, 1849 - died Paris, September 30, 1905) was a Ukrainian-French critic, art historian, and art collector. He also was a part-owner (from 1885) and then editor (from 1894) as well as a contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the most important art historical periodical in France.
A member of the wealthy Ephrussi family, he spent the first ten years of his life in Odessa, a major port on the Black Sea where his grandfather was a grain industrialist in Ukraine, before moving to Vienna. His father Léon and his uncle Ignace were in charge of establishing branches of the family business in Europe.
In 1871, Charles Ephrussi moved to the newly built Hôtel Ephrussi, 81 rue de Monceau, in Paris, with his parents and brothers. The next year, he traveled to Italy, where he began to collect art. On his return to Paris, he became more involved in both the purchase of art and writing about it, publishing his first article in Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1876. Like most of his publications, it concerned Renaissance art. He also gave two works of art to the Louvre at this time.
In about 1880, Charles Ephrussi became interested in the art of the Impressionists and, within the next few years, purchased some 40 works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro, among others. He has been identified as the man in a top hat standing with his back to us in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party (Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.). An account of the collection hanging in his study appears in a letter written in 1881 by the Symbolist poet Jules Laforgue (later published in La Revue blanche). But, to the distress of some of the Impressionists, he continued to buy other types of art, including pictures by his friends Gustave Moreau and Paul Baudry.
It also was at this time that he began to collect Japanese lacquers and netsukes, the subject of Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) which also devotes considerable attention to Charles' life and artistic interests.
In 1891, Ephrussi moved with his brother Ignace to a grander Parisian hôtel at 11, avenue d'Iéna. His taste had changed, and he decorated his part in the Empire style. By this time, he was a well-established figure in the Paris art world, and a welcome guest at some of the most famous salons. He was one of the inspirations for the figure of Swann in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; titled Remembrance of Things Past in the first translation).
All of this changed with the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, which polarized France and caused many doors to be closed to Jews. The Ephrussi family was very prominent and thus became the target of anti-Semitic attacks.
Charles died in 1905, before Dreyfus was exonerated. He had never married, and left much of his estate to his niece Fanny Kann and her husband Théodore Reinach
↧
.1959 The Year that Changed Jazz .
DURATION: 1 HOUR
1959 was the seismic year jazz broke away from complex bebop music to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express. It was also a pivotal year for America: the nation was finding its groove, enjoying undreamt-of freedom and wealth; social, racial and upheavals were just around the corner; and jazz was ahead of the curve.
Four major jazz albums were made, each a high watermark for the artists and a powerful reflection of the times. Each opened up dramatic new possibilities for jazz which continue to be felt: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue; Dave Brubeck, Time Out; Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um; and Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come.
Rarely seen archive performances help vibrantly bring the era to life and explore what made these albums vital both in 1959 and the 50 years since. The programme contains interviews with Lou Reed, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Joe Morello (Brubeck's drummer) and Jimmy Cobb (the only surviving member of Miles' band), along with a host of jazz movers and shakers from the 50s and beyond.
BBC.
↧
Article 2
↧
↧
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House (1 of 3).
Mies van der Rohe: Less is more.
Edith Farnsworth: We know that less is not more. It is simply less!
↧
Trouble in Paradise. The troubled story of the glass-walled Farnsworth House.
Mies van der Rohe Gets Sued
The troubled story of the glass-walled Farnsworth House
By Jackie Craven, About.com Guide / http://architecture.about.com/od/houses/a/farnsworth.htm
Critics called Edith Farnsworth lovesick and spiteful when she filed suit against Mies van der Rohe. More than fifty years later, the glass-walled Farnsworth House still stirs controversy.
Dr. Edith Farnsworth was outraged. "Something should be said and done about such architecture as this," she told House Beautiful magazine, "or there will be no future for architecture."
The target of Dr. Farnsworth's fury was Mies van der Rohe, who had built for her a house made almost entirely of glass. "I thought you could animate a predetermined, classic form like this with your own presence. I wanted to do something 'meaningful,' and all I got was this glib, false sophistication," Dr. Farnsworth complained.
Mies van der Rohe and Edith Farnsworth had been friends. Gossips suspected that the prominent physician had fallen in love with her brilliant architect. Perhaps they had been romantically involved. Or, perhaps they had merely become enmeshed in the passionate activity of co-creation. Either way, Dr. Farnsworth was bitterly disappointed when the house was completed and the architect was no longer a presence in her life.
Dr. Farnsworth took her disappointment to court, to newspapers, and eventually to the pages of House Beautiful magazine. The architectural debate mingled with 1950s cold war hysteria to create a public outcry so loud that even Frank Lloyd Wright joined in.
When Dr. Farnsworth asked Mies van der Rohe to design her weekend getaway, he drew upon ideas he had developed (but never built) for another family. The house he envisioned would be austere and abstract. Two rows of eight steel columns would support the floor and roof slabs. In between, the walls would be vast expanses of glass.
Dr. Farnsworth approved the plans. She met with Mies often at the work site and followed the progress of the house. But four years later, when he handed her the keys and the bill, she was stunned. Costs had soared to $73,000 -- equivalent to nearly half a million dollars today. Heating bills were also exorbitant. Moreover, she said, the glass-and-steel structure was not livable.
Mies van der Rohe was baffled by her complaints. Surely the doctor did not think that this house was designed for family living! Rather, the Farnsworth House was meant to be the pure expression of an idea. By reducing architecture to "almost nothing," Mies had created ultimate in objectivity and universality. The sheer, smooth, unornamented Farnsworth House embodied the highest ideals of the new, utopian International Style.
Dr. Farnsworth sued, but her case did not stand up in court. She had, after all, approved the plans and supervised the construction. Seeking justice, and then revenge, she took her frustrations to the press.
In April 1953, House Beautiful magazine responded with a scathing editorial which attacked the work of Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and other followers of the International Style. The style was described as a "Threat to the New America." The magazine insinuated that Communist ideals lurked behind the design of these "grim" and "barren" buildings.
To add fuel to the fire, Frank Lloyd Wright joined in the debate. Wright had always opposed the bare bones architecture of the International School. But he was especially harsh in his attack when he joined in the House Beautiful debate. "Why do I distrust and defy such 'internationalism' as I do communism?" Wright asked. "Because both must by their nature do this very leveling in the name of civilization."
According to Wright, promoters of the International Style were "totalitarians." They were "not wholesome people," he said.
Eventually, Dr. Farnsworth settled into the glass-and-steel house and begrudgingly used it as her vacation retreat until 1972. Mies's creation was widely praised as a jewel, a crystal and a pure expression of an artistic vision. However, the doctor had every right to complain. The house was -- and still is -- riddled with problems.
First of all, the building had bugs. Real ones. At night, the illuminated glass house turned into a lantern, drawing swarms of mosquitos and moths. Dr. Farnsworth hired Chicago architect William E. Dunlap to design bronze-framed screens. The next owner, Lord Peter Palumbo, removed the screens and installed air conditioning -- which also helped with the building's ventilation problems.
But some problems have proved to be unresolvable. The steel columns rust. They frequently need sanding and painting. The house sits near a stream. Severe flooding has caused damage that required extensive repairs. The house, which is now a museum, has been beautifully restored, but it requires ongoing care.
It's difficult to imagine Edith Farnsworth tolerating these conditions for more than twenty years. There must have been moments when she was tempted to throw stones at Mies's perfect, glistening glass walls.
 |
Mies van der Rohe: Less is more. Edith Farnsworth: We know that less is not more. It is simply less! |
The Farnsworth Saga: 1946-2003
I was famous before. She is now famous throughout the world.
Mies, of Edith Farnsworth, under oath
Mies reminded me of a mediaeval peasant.
Edith Farnsworth, of Mies
I think the house is perfectly constructed, it is perfectly executed.
Mies, about the Farnsworth House, under oath
In 1945 Edith Farnsworth, a Chicago physician, purchased nine acres of an old farmstead bordering the Fox River near Plano, Illinois, sixty miles southwest of Chicago. The seller was Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The sale price was $500 per acre. A farmhouse and several outbuildings stood on the property, but Farnsworth wanted something new. In an unpublished memoir from the 1970s, she recalled her project’s beginnings:
One evening I went to have dinner with Georgia [Lingafelt] and Ruth [Lee] in their pleasant old- fashioned apartment in the Irving. Also invited that evening was the massive stranger whom Georgia, with her peculiarly sweet smile, introduced, as I slipped off my coat: “This is Mies, darling.”
I suppose he must have formed a few syllables as we had dinner, but if so, I do not remember them. My impression is that the three of us chatted among ourselves around the granite form of Mies. I related in detail, probably too much, the story of finding the property, the dickerings with Col. McCormick and the final acquisition of the nine- acre plot….
All of this came to naught, conversationally speaking, and I concluded that Mies spoke almost no English; how much he understood remained problematical. We moved back to the sitting room after dinner and both Ruth and Georgia disappeared to wash the dishes.
Farnsworth continued, addressing Mies:
“I am wondering whether there might be some young man in your office who would be willing and disposed to design a small studio weekend-house worthy of that lovely shore.”
The response was the more dramatic for having been preceded by two hours of unbroken silence. “I would love to build any kind of house for you.” The effect was tremendous, like a storm, a flood or other act of God. We planned a trip to Plano together, so that I could show him the property…. We set out for a day in the country, to inspect the property with a view to the ideal weekend house. It was either late autumn or late winter [of 1944–45] when I stopped at 200 East Pearson to call for Mies, and he came out wearing an enormous black overcoat of some kind of soft, fine wool which reached well down toward his ankles. Installed beside me in the little Chevrolet he put up only feeble resistance to the advances of my white cocker who sprawled across his knees for the duration of the trip.
Finally we reached the dooryard of the farmhouse and I could open the car doors. The emergence of Mies and the cocker was spectacular, as it turned out that the latter had yielded most of his white coat in a soft frosting over the black wool of that splendid overcoat, and we had nothing on board with which to remove it.
We walked down the slope, through the frozen meadow grass and dormant brush, and I worried for fear a European might be unable to see the beauty of the mid-west countryside at so unfavorable a season; but midway down, Mies stopped and looked all around him. “It is beautiful!” he said, and I didn’t doubt the spontaneity of his exclamation.
This is the beginning of the tale as remembered by Farnsworth, then in her seventies. Remarkably, we have Mies’s quite different version of the same events, offered in 1952 as testimony in the action Van der Rohe v. Farnsworth:
Question, to Mies: Will you state what your conversation was with Dr. Farnsworth that evening?
Answer, by Mies: After dinner Dr. Farnsworth said that she had a site in Plano, and she would like to talk with me about a house she had planned there and then we were left alone and we talked about the site. She told me she wanted to build a small house and asked me if I would be interested in doing that. I said normally I don’t build small house but I would do it if we could do something interesting.
Q: Did you explain what you meant by “interesting”?
A: No.
Mies added that he learned that before she met him, Farnsworth had asked Chicago architect George Fred Keck to design the house. Keck, said Mies, would undertake the project only on condition that he “can do what he wants, and she didn’t seem to like that.”
Reprinted with permission from Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, New and Revised Edition, by Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
 |
My night in a ‘Glass House’.. By Grlfashionista / http://20somethingrl.wordpress.com/tag/harris-yulin/ Harris Yulin as Mies van der Rohe and Janet Zarish as Edith Farnsworth What a treat to witness acting at it’s finest in June Finfer’s Glass House with leading lady Janet Zarish(Public Theatre, Primary Stages appearances), who plays the self-sufficient Edith Farnsworth and it’s leading man Harris Yulin, a prominent Broadway actor (Hedda Gabler, Julius Caesar) and film star as Mies van der Rohe, a German architect. Directed masterfully by Evan Bergman and appearing in conjunction with Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder, Resonance Ensemble’s, The Glass House, tells the true story of a German architect, Mies van der Rohe(1886-1969), and the opportunity he was given to create a live-able work of art for Chicago Doctor Edith Farnswarth who was in search of a weekend getaway. Well, true in the fact that it is based on actual people, not neccesarily events. That is writer June Finfer took Mies and her other characters and created an emotionally driven play chopped full of affairs, betrayals, and passionate 4th wall monologues with Mies talking to the audience about his desire to create this skin and bones glass house not only for Farnsworth, but for his own desire to create something new, something with purpose. Taking place over a ten year period(1945-1955), we see the developement of not only the house, but of the relationship between Mies and Farnsworth, which comes to a crashing halt in the last 20 minutes of the oddly blocked show. A play that not only forces you to question what is art and its role in the modern world, but to what extent art can frame the way in which an individual leads his/her own life. The highlight of the evening, for me, as an actor, was witnessing impecable and flawless acting by Zarish and Yulin. Yulin’s performance was perfection. Emotionally she connected bravely with her high strung, indecisive Doctor and had I not known that I was watching a play I would of thought that she was merely a stranger who had wandered off the streets of midtown, found her way on to a stage and begun a conversation with Yulin. Her naturalistic style is refreshing and inspiring and it never falters at any point in time throughout the play, but instead grows with every scene creating a living, breathing human being that you expect, after the show ends, to go back to her lab or wherever she came from and carry on with her life. And I’m sure having Yulin as a support would make it even easier for someone who is already as talented as Zarish to be able to create an even more enriched performance. Yulin, I think, has heard enough praise to know that he is one of immeasurable talent. I’m sure that many critics have commented on the beauty and simplicity of his acting. I would, of course, agree with their criticism as it is undeniable that Yulin’s talent exist beyond the capacity of words. I can merely say that it was a joy to watch him perform and a honor to sit in a theatre with someone of such seasoned skill. Not to mention that his German accent was dead on and he played perhaps the best grumpy old man I have ever seen. Not that your old, Yulin. In regards to both Yulin and Zarish it was if the audience didn’t exist and they were both carrying on with their lives, playing off each other smoothly, creating tension, love, hate, co-existing and growing within the ten years, and portraying how in real life, it all ends. Quite simply, a magnificent work of Art. In all my awe and although, in general, I highly enjoyed Glass House there were a couple of things that bothered me. Number 1, the sets. Now, it didn’t bother me so much that between the succession of each year the lights dimmed, jazz music played, and the set was changed, what bothered me was that the set moves seemed, for lack of a better word, pointless. With no more than maybe two chairs and a desk on stage, it seemed distracting to me that stage hands, dressed smartly in the decades attire, would come on to move a desk in a different position, change the utensils on a table, or to take away every other scene the same table and chairs. Had it been done quicker it might not have been much a nuisance, but I found myself concentrating on how long it would take for the sets to be changed rather than what was going to happen next. With such a strong play that has so much to say about art and life and with such strong point of view, why would you distract by creating unnecessary obstacles such as moving the same desk 10 times? Less, as Mies would have seen it, would have been more in this instance. Number 2: The two minor actors. Gina Nagy Burns(Skylight, The Heiress), who plays Mies’ ex-love Lora Marx, delivers a tolerable performance, but lacks the fire that it acquired of her character. As Meis’ artist lover, a sculptor, who takes it upon herself in the earlier scenes to break her relationship with Mies due to his drinking and dependency, I find that the character may have required someone with a more powerful presence. Someone who could stand up to Mies when he forcefully asked her why she was leaving. Someone that could center herself, stand her ground, and deliver the well thought out text with powerful purpose and zeal. Here it seems that when Meis and Marx are conversing, Mies seems to be having one-sided conversations, and at points he leans in hard to distract from the actresses not delivering her lines with intention. This may be because I am over critical or it could be because this actress may not have fully understood who her character was and was not given good direction. The second minor character, Philip Johnson, played by David Bishins(We Declare You a Terrorist, Incident at Vichy), who is Mies’ protege and a curator at the MOMA, actually delivered a commanding performance, but I find, and this may be silly, that the voice he chose to use for his character was distracting. It is a shame because you can tell, from the audience, that Bishins is actually a very talented actor, but he made a bad choice and that in some parts he falls out because he is thinking more about his smoker voice rather than his beats. From the minute he opened his mouth at the beginning of the play, I knew that it would be a problem. While I realize that the span of the plan takes place in the 50′s and 60′s and that the cliché is the raspy, sexy voice of a male cigar smoker, when you begin to lose the actor’s words, therefor the text, therefore the play, it becomes a problem. And besides this forced, if I think about it makes my throat hurt, raspy voice, his performance was actually delightful, light, airy, and an almost comic relief from the sometimes heavy tension that lived between the three other characters. Charming and snub at times, Bishins played a convincing role of student and what it is not only to please your teacher, but to find out that at some point you have to live your own life. What an interesting lesson for Art to teach. |
↧
Deyrolle ... after the fire.
Terrible incendie a ravagé le cabinet de curiosités, la salle dentomologie et une grande partie des collections historiques. Mais Deyrolle se reconstruit progressivement, les premières salles sont ouvertes et de nombreux projets voient le jour : une vente aux enchères chez Christies, une exposition au Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, deux livres chez Gallimard et Beaux Arts Editions, de nouvelles planches pédagogiques... Tel le phoenix, Deyrolle est en train de renaître de ses cendres plus beau et plus fort !
Réalisation, images et montage de Sébastien Hannaux
↧
Paris : la maison Deyrolle, curiosités en tout genre
↧
↧
DEYROLLE ...
DEYROLLE
46 Rue du Bac, 75007 Paris, France.
Telef. +33 1 42 22 30 07
Open:
m. 10:00-13:00, 14:00-19:00
T. 10:00-19:00
w. 10:00-19:00
T. 10:00-19:00
v. 10:00-19:00
S. 10:00-19:00
S. Closed
station: Rue du Bac
Since 1831, Deyrolle offers to Nature lovers and professionals, schools, universities, museums, scientific or medical centers, materials for natural science such as zoology, botanic, mineralogy, conchiliology, teaching apparatus of many sorts as well as insects and shells collections, mounted animals of many kind, natural wonders and collection pieces.
The principle of Deyrolle was always to bring to human nature the sence of observation and description : ‘an image is worth a thousand words’, so If one want to protect nature, one has to know it, understand it and overcome the cycles of reproduction of species as well.
In february 2008, a terrible fire severely damaged the Cabinets of Curiosities (also known as Wunderkammer or wonder-rooms) as well as the entomology room and a large part of the historical collections. Deyrolle was saved because of the extraordinary enthusiasm of so many of its fan including Hermes, numerous artists that worldwide contributed to realise piece artwork for an auction done by Christie’s last November. As a result, the entomology room has been opened during the fall 2009.
Today, the store is as beautiful as ever, with still collection of large mammals, magnificent mounted birds and other beautiful and astonishing natural wonders.
In http://www.deyrolle.fr/magazine/spip.php?rubrique93
↧
The Women. Frank LLoyd Wright and his many wives.
↧
"The Women". Frank LLoyd Wright and his many Wives.
"Local gossips noticed Wright's flirtations, and he developed a reputation in Oak Park as a man-about-town. His family had grown to six children, but Wright was not paternal and the brood required most of Catherine's attention. In 1903, Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah Cheney was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for almost 20 years. Often the two could be seen taking rides in Wright's automobile through Oak Park, and they became the talk of the town. Wright's wife, Kitty, sure that this attachment would fade as the others had, refused to grant him a divorce. Neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even before the Robie House was completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney went together to Europe, leaving their own spouses and children behind. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States.
Scholars argue that he felt by 1907 that he had done everything he could do with the Prairie Style, particularly from the standpoint of the single-family house. Wright was not getting larger commissions for commercial or public buildings, which frustrated him.
What drew Wright to Europe was the chance to publish a portfolio of his work with Ernst Wasmuth, who had agreed in 1909 to publish his work there. This chance also allowed Wright to deepen his relationship with Mamah Cheney. Wright and Cheney left the United States in 1909 going to Berlin, where the offices of Wasmuth were located.
The resulting two volumes, titled Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, were published in 1911 in two editions, creating the first major exposure of Wright's work in Europe. The work contained more than 100 lithographs of Wright's designs and was commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.
Wright remained in Europe for almost one year and set up home first in Florence, Italy – where he lived with his eldest son Lloyd – and later in Fiesole, Italy where he lived with Mamah. During this time, Edwin Cheney granted Mamah a divorce, though Kitty still refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright's return to the United States in October 1910, Wright persuaded his mother to buy land for him in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The land, bought on April 10, 1911, was adjacent to land held by his mother's family, the Lloyd-Joneses. Wright began to build himself a new home, which he called Taliesin, by May 1911. The recurring theme of Taliesin also came from his mother's side: Taliesin in Welsh mythology was a poet, magician, and priest. The family motto was Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd which means "The Truth Against the World"; it was created by Iolo Morgannwg who also had a son called Taliesin, and the motto is still used today as the cry of the druids and chief bard of the Eisteddfod in Wales.
On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a workman; and another workman's son. Two people survived the mayhem, one of whom helped to put out the fire that almost completely consumed the residential wing of the house. Carlton swallowed muriatic acid immediately following the attack in an attempt to kill himself. He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail. Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack, despite medical attention.
In 1922, Wright's first wife, Kitty, granted him a divorce, and Wright was required to wait one year until he married his then-partner, Maude "Miriam" Noel. In 1923, Wright's mother, Anna (Lloyd Jones) Wright, died. Wright wed Miriam Noel in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the separation but while still married, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg at a Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at Taliesin in 1925, and soon Olgivanna was pregnant with their daughter, Iovanna, born on December 2, 1925.
On April 20, 1925, another fire destroyed the bungalow at Taliesin. Crossed wires from a newly installed telephone system were deemed to be responsible for the blaze, which destroyed a collection of Japanese prints that Wright declared invaluable. Wright estimated the loss at $250,000 to $500,000. Wright rebuilt the living quarters again, naming the home "Taliesin III".
In 1926, Olga's ex-husband, Vlademar Hinzenburg, sought custody of his daughter, Svetlana. In October 1926, Wright and Olgivanna were accused of violating the Mann Act and arrested in Tonka Bay, Minnesota. The charges were later dropped. During this period, Wright designed Graycliff (1926–31), the summer estate of Isabelle and Darwin D. Martin.
Wright and Miriam Noel's divorce was finalized in 1927, and once again, Wright was required to wait for one year until marrying again. Wright and Olgivanna married in 1928."
Architect of desire: Frank Lloyd Wright's private life was even more unforgettable than his buildings
While Frank Lloyd Wright designed some of the most beautiful buildings of the 20th century his personal life was falling down around his ears. On the 50th anniversary of his death, Marcus Field tells a tale of axe murder, madness, drugs and redemption
BY MARCUS FIELD SUNDAY 08 MARCH 2009 in The Independent / http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/architect-of-desire-frank-lloyd-wrights-private-life-was-even-more-unforgettable-than-his-buildings-1637537.html
March 1985: a grave in a dank, mossy cemetery near Spring Green, Wisconsin, is quietly opened, its contents removed and the earth piled untidily back into the ground. Only a handful of people know the body of the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright is being taken from its resting place of more than 25 years to be cremated in nearby Madison. The papers requesting the exhumation had been signed by Wright's daughter, Iovanna, by his third wife Olgivanna, whose dying wish had been that the ashes of their two bodies should be mixed together and interred at Taliesin West, their winter home in Arizona nearly 2,000 miles away.
"Grave-robbing" is what Wright's son David called it when he found out. After the news became public, local officials wrote to Arizona to ask for the return of the remains. "Much more than ashes have been taken from Wisconsin – the citizens of the state have lost one evidence of our history, spirit and genius." Another of Wright's sons, Llewellyn, described the act as a desecration, while his granddaughter Elizabeth Wright Ingraham said: "I tried to sit on the fence, but I thought it was a gross miscalculation." But Iovanna stood firm and the ashes remained stored for several years in Arizona until a memorial garden was finally built.
Today, Taliesin West is the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and a major attraction for fans of the architect's work. But the memorial garden is not on the public tour and there are no plans to mark the 50th anniversary of Wright's death on 9 April this year. All discussion about whether the ashes should be returned to Wisconsin has been shelved. Instead, there is a desire to move forward.
"We have a duty to protect and preserve Wright's work," says Phil Allsopp, the British CEO of the foundation since 2006. "But we also have a duty to play a role in debates about the sustainability of the environments we make for ourselves. Architecture's influence on our environment is virtually nil. We want to change that." To this end, the school of architecture Wright established now runs accredited BA and MA courses and a popular summer school, while a major exhibition opening at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in May will explore, says Allsopp, "how buildings can work with nature, how they can fit into the landscape".
Allsopp believes the foundation can become like Harvard or Yale, an intellectual powerhouse known for the quality of its ideas rather than the sensational stories of the guy who gave it his name. But escaping from the shadow of a man once described as "perhaps the greatest American of the early 20th century" is easier said than done. Of course Wright's buildings are iconic – 10, including the Guggenheim, which has its 50th birthday this year, are on a tentative list for World Heritage status. But even these magnificent buildings struggle to compete with Wright's life for sensation value. '
The myth-making began in his lifetime – he was a skilled self-publicist who basked in scandal, and enjoyed the speculation that he was the inspiration for Ayn Rand's 1943 bestseller The Fountainhead. But since his death, aged 91, in 1959, the legend has only grown. There have been biographies and memoirs, as well as exposés such as The Fellowship, which delved into the cultish community Wright built around himself. Novelists have also returned to the field, the latest being TC Boyle with The Women, out last week. But can anything in fiction be more extraordinary than the facts?
Wright was born in Wisconsin in 1867 of Welsh stock. His preacher grandfather, Richard Lloyd Jones, had crossed the Atlantic in 1844, bringing his wife and children with him. The Lloyd Jones family settled in Helena Valley, a fertile slice of the Midwest close to Chicago, and this sublime landscape became not only an enduring influence on Wright's work, but also the site of Taliesin, his beloved home. "I turned to this hill in the Valley," he later wrote, "as my grandfather before me turned to America – as a hope, and a haven."
Wright's apprenticeship in the offices of several prominent Chicago architects served him well and he soon made his mark. In 1889, aged just 22, he designed and built a house for himself and his young wife, Kitty, in Oak Park, a new suburb on the edge of the city. It is a handsome example of the Arts and Crafts style, but in its first incarnation there is nothing to suggest its owner was anything other than a modern member of his profession. Soon, however, telltale signs of Wright's character show through. In 1893, after he was sacked from his job for moonlighting, he set up his own practice and began to extend the house to accommodate his growing family and office. His additions included a barrel-vaulted playroom entered, for dramatic effect, through a low, dark passage. His studio is a single-storey building of Japanese inspiration, which he built around a tree, an early example of how he incorporated nature into his work. His son John later recalled life with Wright at this period: "He was an epic of wit and merriment that gave our home the feeling of a jolly carnival."
As Wright's designs became more experimental – his elongated, open-plan Prairie Houses are of this period – so his appearance and behaviour changed. He began to sport broad-brimmed hats, a red-lined cape and a cane; an ensemble that became his customary dress. One Spring Green resident remembered him coming into the bank in his suit and Stetson, but with bare feet. "You could do this," he said to the wide-eyed manager, "if you weren't so strait-laced."
In 1909, the extent of Wright's midlife crisis really began to show. At 42, he left his wife and six children and ran away to Europe with Mamah Cheney, the wife of one of his clients. His impetuosity, especially where women were concerned, affected him all his life. "I am a house divided against itself by circumstances I cannot control," he wrote to his mother in 1910.
In 1911, the couple returned and began to build what the local paper termed "a love bungalow" in Helena Valley. Soon they were living in such open adultery that the papers demanded an explanation. Wright issued a statement: "It is infinitely more difficult to live without rules. But that is what the really honest, sincere thinking man is compelled to do."
The "love bungalow" turned out to be Taliesin, named for a Welsh bard, and was one of Wright's greatest achievements. The free-flowing house embraces courtyards and gardens, and hunkers down against the hills of his childhood. "No house should ever be on a hill or on anything," he later explained. "It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other."
But, just a few years after its completion, on 15 August 1914, tragedy struck. It was a Saturday and Wright was working in Chicago when Cheney sat down to lunch with her two children and several workers from the estate. Julian Carlton, a servant who had recently been threatened with dismissal, was due to serve them. Instead, he poured paraffin around the building, locked all the doors, set fire to the house, then proceeded to hatchet seven of the nine occupants to death. Cheney and her children were among those killed. Carlton survived, but later died in custody after drinking acid.
Wright was devastated. "All I had left to show for the struggle for freedom of the five years past that had swept most of my former life away, had now been swept away," he later wrote. But he wasted no time in rebuilding Taliesin, making it more elaborate than ever. He threw himself into his work and spent the next decade building the luxurious Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Site workers there were astonished to see the diminutive architect arrive in velvet suits, cuffed trousers and high-heeled shoes. Wright loved the culture of the country and assimilated many ideas from its buildings.
Yet, after returning to Taliesin in the early 1920s, he struggled to find work. News of the international style, epitomised by Le Corbusier, had arrived in America and Wright, now in his fifties, seemed washed up. "You see I am bad, bad to the core, so what's the use," he wrote to a friend of his financial worries. For a while he tried working in LA, where his son Lloyd had a successful practice. There he designed Ennis House, a Mayan-looking structure that appears in Blade Runner; and Hollyhock House, an enormous folly for an oil heiress which had a sitting-room so large that the fireplace had a moat. But Wright was not a city lover and soon returned to Taliesin.
In November 1923, after his divorce from Kitty became final, he married Miriam Noel, a bohemian clairvoyant and fantasist whom he first met in 1914. She addressed him as "Lord of my waking dreams" and he wrote to her, "I had not loved you much until I began to understand my hungry need... and your gifts came to me in the dark like a ray of hope." Their marriage was short and tempestuous, and after her behaviour became increasingly erratic, Wright discovered she was a morphine addict. Later, in the divorce proceedings, he was accused of beating her and calling her "vile, vulgar, indecent and abusive". She, in turn, admitted drawing a knife on him and threatening to use a gun.
Noel and Wright were already estranged by December 1924 when a new, exotic addition joined the Taliesin household, a place where Wright's assistants lived in a proto-hippy community, growing their own vegetables and making music together in the evenings. Olgivanna Hinzenberg, a mystic and dancer from Montenegro, had followed her first husband to Chicago to sue for divorce. She already had a daughter, Svetlana, but was soon pregnant with Wright's child.
But before the birth of the baby, tragedy struck again at Taliesin. In April 1925, an electrical fault caused a fire that burnt the house to the ground. It was insured for $39,000, enough to pay for the rebuilding but not to cover the loss of Wright's art collection, which was valued at around half a million dollars. His home was ruined and he was broke again, but he remained steadfast. "I suppose it's just a question of how much punishment one can stand," he wrote to a friend.
Then, after the birth of his daughter Iovanna on 2 December, yet another scandal broke: when Miriam heard about the birth, she tracked Olgivanna to the hospital, demanding to see "my husband's baby" and later tried to have Wright arrested under the Mann Act, designed to prevent the trafficking of immigrant prostitutes. He could have been forgiven for giving way under the pressure, but Wright rallied and soon staged the most remarkable comeback in architectural history.
In 1928, the year he and Olgivanna were married, the pair decided to invite paying students to live at Taliesin and study Wright's holistic approach to design by following his daily routine. By 1932, a small group had enrolled and the Taliesin Fellowship was born. It was a strictly unconventional education, and the architect expected his apprentices to work in the fields, cook and listen to the renditions of Bach and Beethoven he played on a Steinway grand in his studio. Indeed, Wright's vanity was legendary – he was once overheard singing "I am the greatest" to himself – which didn't make him easy to work for. One apprentice, the Austrian Rudolph Schindler, described Wright in a letter to his friend the architect Richard Neutra, thus: "He is devoid of consideration and has a blind spot regarding others' qualities. Yet I believe, that a year in his studio would be worth any sacrifice." And on meeting Wright himself, Neutra wrote: "He is truly a child, but not a well-behaved one."
When questioned about his vanity, Wright justified himself by saying: "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility; I chose honest arrogance." Even those who suffered under his firm hand – his son John described "a lifelong struggle to avoid being destroyed" – agreed that Wright had saving graces. "He had so much life and energy; it shaped everyone around him," said his son-in-law Wes Peters.
The arrangement at Taliesin helped support the household during the Depression. It also led to some of Wright's most important commissions, including Fallingwater, the exquisite house he built over a waterfall in Pennsylvania for Edgar Kaufmann, the father of one of the Taliesin Fellows.
Fallingwater revived Wright's career, and during the last 25 years of his life he designed as many buildings as he had in the busy period from 1893 to 1911. The Guggenheim, the perversely round building in a city of straight lines, is probably the most memorable. But it is Wright's winter home near Phoenix that is the most beautiful. In 1937, he bought several hundred acres in Paradise Valley and built a "desert camp" where his school could relocate for the cold months of the year. Wright christened the house Taliesin West and its open-plan living quarters are furnished with rugs and low-slung chairs like a Bedouin tent. Seventeen of the original men and women who helped build it continue to live there today.
Wright and Olgivanna ran Taliesin West as a community loosely based on the teachings of George Gurdjieff, the Armenian guru with whom Olgivanna had lived and studied before she met Wright. As well as a belief in the value of creative work, Gurdjieff's teachings called for daily forms of dancing, making Taliesin the subject of much derision. All this continued under Olgivanna's supervision after Wright's death, and later under the watchful eye of Wright's ageing apprentices.
For decades, Wright's reputation suffered, with the teaching at Taliesin regarded as crackpot and his buildings preserved as historic monuments rather than living architecture. But with increasing interest in low-energy, low-impact buildings, schemes such as Taliesin and Taliesin West are relevant again: both Wright's homes were built using local materials and were designed to be cool in summer and warm in winter without relying on mechanical ventilation.
There will also always be a fascination with the private life of a man who lived so large. The novelist Boyle, for example, became interested in Wright after he bought a Prairie House designed by the architect in 1909. His new work tells the story of Wright's three wives and Cheney, and after months of research, Boyle feels he understands his subject better. "Was he just a womaniser? I don't think so. He needed challenging, attractive women by his side. He could only create with his back against the wall and his relationships were essential to his work." As to whether his novel rakes up old dirt, Boyle is adamant that the architect's genius will always win through. "My book only adds to the sum of the legend. What really matters is that he made great buildings. Nothing can detract from that."
'The Women', by TC Boyle, is published by Bloomsbury at £12.99. Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward is at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, 15 May to 23 August
'Slow Pay Frank' and his many wives
Sarah Churchwell is entertained and frustrated by the story of a great architect's failings
Sarah Churchwell
The Guardian, Saturday 7 March 2009
Like so many self-styled great men, Frank Lloyd Wright appears to have elevated selfishness to a fine art. TC Boyle's 12th novel, The Women, opens with an epigraph attributed to Wright: "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility; I chose arrogance."
As the story opens, it is 1932 and Boyle's narrator, a fictional Japanese apprentice named Takashi Sato, is travelling to Taliesin, Wright's Wisconsin estate, to join Wright's "Fellowship", which, as Sato soon discovers, is a grandiose term for "milking money out of those gullible enough to think that [Wright's] aura could communicate anything bankable to them". Wright puts Sato to work along with the rest of his "apprentices" chopping wood, peeling potatoes, washing dishes. And what did Sato learn about architecture from his near-decade of domestic servitude? "I learned," he says, "that Taliesin was a true democratic and communal undertaking, save for the god in his machine who presided over it all in his freewheeling and unabashedly despotic way, and I saw too that a practising architect was like the general of an army, like the general of generals, and that a whole host of amenities, civilities and mores had to be sacrificed along the way to the concrete realisation of an inchoate design."
As Boyle's story makes clear, it wasn't just amenities, civilities and mores that had to be sacrificed: like most people of ruthless ambition, Wright was quite prepared to sacrifice others as well - always excepting those he currently deemed necessary to his emotional wellbeing. The Women tells the story of three of the four women who had that dubious honour, working backwards from 1932, as Wright is living in comparative domestic stability with his third and last wife, Olgivanna; to his profoundly unstable second wife, Miriam Maude Noel; and finally back to the lurid tragedy that shocked and titillated the nation, and which provides the horrifying climax to Boyle's tale, the appallingly violent death of his mistress and "soul mate", Mamah Borthwick Cheney, for whom Wright built Taliesin as a retreat from the scandal created by their adulterous affair.
Poor Kitty, Wright's first wife and the mother of six of his seven children, gets short shrift in fiction as in life: Boyle spares her little time or attention, preferring, like Wright, the more flamboyant personalities of the three women who became Wright's mistresses, because his current wives were curiously unwilling to grant him divorces upon demand. Boyle begins with Olgivanna, a former dancer and disciple of the mystic Gurdjieff, who finally had the backbone and survivor's instinct to hold Wright's almost comically entropic enterprises together. When Olgivanna and Wright met, he was still married to wife number two, Miriam Maude Noel Wright, southern belle, artist manqué and morphine addict, whose deranged jealousy drives much of the plot. Boyle is brilliant at recreating her drug-fuelled volatility.
Although Miriam had already left Wright when he took up with Olgivanna, she didn't go without putting up a tremendous fight. In what Boyle wonderfully terms "a fugue of litigious ecstasy", she threw every accusation at him she could think of, while also accusing Olgivanna of being an undesirable alien. She tried to take possession of Taliesin, pursued them from the midwest to California, had them arrested, harassed him with phone calls and letters, and broke into their house and smashed it up with an axe. She finally submitted to the divorce when Wright paid her off.
At which point the story jumps back in time to the beginning of Wright's affair with Miriam, as she pursued him in the wake of Mamah Cheney's murder. Their tempestuous relationship was punctuated by break-ups during which Miriam sent Wright histrionic letters, addressing him as "Lord of My Waking Dreams". Miriam knows that she is competing not only with Mamah's ghost, but also with two women very much alive, Wright's formidable mother and his jealous housekeeper, Nellie Breen, who responds to being fired by accusing Wright of violating the Mann Act by bringing Miriam to Wisconsin across state lines.
Once Wright's mother dies, Miriam is able to take over Taliesin, but she can't marry Wright until Kitty grants him a divorce. Meanwhile, they travel together to Japan, where Wright has been commissioned to build the Imperial Hotel, where they part and reunite; the section ends as they finally marry.
Then the narrative jumps back to the first affair, the first wronged wife, as Kitty confronts Wright's affair with Mamah, and Mamah decides to leave her own family in the name of free love. They flee together to Europe, where Mamah begins translating the Swedish feminist and advocate of free love Ellen Key, and eventually try to build a life together at Taliesin.
But they are shunned by neighbours outraged in equal parts by their living in sin and "Slow Pay Frank's" perennial refusal to honour his debts. As one cook explains to Mamah as she tenders her resignation: "It's sinful, that's what it is. And sin and pay is one thing, but sin and no pay I just can't abide." And so Wright hires a Barbadian couple, Julian and Gertrude Carleton, as cook and house-servant, and goes to Chicago to work on the Midway Gardens. While he is away, Julian Carleton takes an axe to Mamah, her two children, and four other members of the extended household, before burning Taliesin to the ground.
Because of the reverse plot arc, the reader knows Mamah's fate, more or less, from the outset. What remains in suspense is Carleton's motive. In fact, no one really knows why Carleton went on his homicidal rampage, although his imminent dismissal seems implicated, but Boyle adds a schematic and unconvincing contrivance: Mamah tries, quite absurdly, to educate Carleton in feminism and free love, and then fires him for beating his wife.
The real irony of The Women is that of all the formidable and often admirable women in Wright's life, only the unhinged Miriam really comes to life. The others remain underdeveloped, more gestures than fully realised characters. This seems primarily a consequence of Boyle's unnecessarily convoluted and repetitive structure, and his excess of mediating perspectives. Sato intrudes regularly, not only in the personal reminiscences that open each section - and which do bring Wright rather more to life than the rest of the narrative, partly because they focus on architecture, rather than on sex - but in arch footnotes that are presumably meant to be funny, but are more often distracting and pointless.
Whether it is Sato or Boyle who doesn't trust his reader to draw obvious connections is unclear. However interesting, and formative, the women in Wright's life may have been, the unavoidable fact remains that they are interesting in so far as they were involved with Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest architects in history. But architecture remains in the margins of the tale, something Wright is off doing while his women pine. When we do encounter Wright, he is comically conning the locals, or "fully aroused, his face gone rubicund and his ears glistening like Christmas ornaments in the quavering light, [as he] breathed his answer against the soft heat of her lips". Really, I'd rather not. It's the (in Boyle's phrase) "continuous architecture" of Wright's mind, rather than of his relationships, that is missing from this rollicking, entertaining, frustrating story of a great man's failings.
↧
A Morning with Paul Smith
↧
↧
Paul Smith ...
Paul Smith’s introduction into fashion was completely accidental.
At the age of 16, with no career plans or qualifications, Paul Smith was propelled by his father into a menial job at the local clothing warehouse in his native Nottingham. However his real passion was sport and his ambition was to become a professional racing cyclist, until aged 17 years when cycling-mad Paul was in a terrible accident.
Six months in hospital followed and during this time Paul made some new friends. After leaving hospital he arranged to meet them again and by chance the meeting place was a local pub that was popular with the students from the local art college.
They talked of Mondrian, Warhol, Kokoshka, David Bailey and listened to the Rolling Stones, Miles Davis and much more. It was then Paul knew he wanted to be a part of this colourful world of ideas and excitement.
Within two years, Paul Smith was managing his first boutique in Nottingham and with the encouragement of his girlfriend Pauline Denyer (now wife) and a small amount of savings, opened a tiny shop in 1970. Paul started to take evening classes for tailoring and with the help of Pauline (an RCA fashion graduate), Paul was able to create what he wanted. By 1976 Paul showed his first menswear collection in Paris under the Paul Smith label.
In business for over 40 years Paul Smith had established himself as the pre-eminent British designer. Paul Smith has an ability to anticipate, and even spark off trends not only fashion but in the wider context of popular culture. He manages to transmit a genuine sense of humour and mischief mixed with his love of tradition and the classics
Today there are 14 different collections; Paul Smith for men and women, PS by Paul Smith, Paul Smith Jeans, Paul Smith London, R.Newbold (Japan only), Paul Smith Black, Paul by Paul Smith, Paul Smith Accessories, Paul Smith Shoe. Paul Smith rugs, china, spectacles and fragrance are made under license. Designed in Nottingham and London, the Paul Smith collections are primarily produced in England and Italy while the fabrics used are mainly of Italian, French and British origin.
The Paul Smith shops reflect the character of Paul and his designs, an unmistakable Englishness augmented by the unexpected. Each and every Paul Smith shop is totally different, from a shocking pink building with movie set styling on Melrose Avenue, LA, to a Japanese garden at the heart of the Jingumae store in Tokyo. Each shop is a showcase for diverse and eccentric objects complementing the clothing collections with an extensive selection of jewellery, books, art and antiques.
Paul explains his eclectic aesthetic: “We’re a leading and uniquely British brand. We mix up one-off antiques with high quality tailoring: the chair you sit on when you buy a suit is for sale and we can wrap the suit and have the chair waiting for you when you get home.”
Paul Smith is global - the collection is wholesaled to 66 countries and has 17 shops in England. Paul Smith shops are found in London, Paris, Milan, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Antwerp, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, U.A.E. – and over 200 throughout Japan. Paul remains fully involved in the Japanese business; designing the clothes, choosing the fabrics, approving the shop locations and overseeing every development within the company. Paul Smith also has impressive and diverse showrooms in London, Paris, Milan, New York, and Tokyo.
Paul Smith continues to be an integral part of the company; he is both designer and chairman. Paul Smith is continually involved in every aspect of the business and as a result, Paul Smith Limited retains a personal touch often lost in companies of a similar size.
http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/company/
1946
Paul Smith is born
1970
First shop opened at 10 Byard Lane, Nottingham
1976
First Paul Smith collection shown in Paris
1979
First London shop opens at 44 Floral Street, Covent Garden, WC2
1982
Second London shop opens at 23 Avery Row, London, W1
1983
Third London shop opens at 43 Floral Street, Covent Garden
1984
Paul Smith Ltd. signs license contract with Japanese company, C.Itoh
1986
Paul Smith toiletries collection launched
1987
First shop opens in New York, 108 Fifth Avenue, NY
1987
Fourth London shop opens at 41/42 Floral Street
1989
London showroom opens at 7/8 Langley Court, London WC2
1990
Paul Smith franchise shop opens in Hong Kong
1991
Paul Smith Childrenswear Launched (January)
1991
Paul Smith receives British Designer for Industry Award
1991
Paul Smith receives BKCEC award (November)
1991
Flagship shop opens in Tokyo making a total of 60 shops in Japan
1992
Showroom/Press office opens in Paris (May)
1992
Showroom/Press office opens in Milan (July)
1993
Paul Smith launches Accessories collection
1993
Shop opens in Paris at 22 Blvd Raspail, 75007 (January)
1993
Autumn/Winter 1993 collection is shown in Florence, as guest of Pitti Immagine (January)
1993
Covent Garden shops extended to include “The British Room”, a shoe shop and children’s wear
1993
Shop opens in Singapore (April)
1993
First R. Newbold store opens in London at 7/8 Langley Court, W1 (September)
1993
Launch of the first Paul Smith Women collection (Spring/Summer 1994) (October)
1994
First Paul Smith Women shop opens in Paris, at 22 Boulevard Raspail, 75007 (January)
1994
Autumn/Winter 1994 collection is shown in Cologne, as guest of Kölnmesse (February)
1994
Second Paul Smith Women shop opens at 40 Floral Street (February)
1994
Launch of Paul Smith Spectacles collection (February)
1994
Launch of Paul Smith Luggage collection (April)
1994
First PS.Paul Smith Jeans shop opens at 9/11 Langley Court (September)
1994
First Paul Smith for Children shop opens at 44 Floral Street (September)
1994
Spring/Summer 1995 collection is shown in Barcelona, as guest of Gaudi Barcelona (September)
1994
Launch of Paul Smith Watch collection (October)
1995
Paul Smith Limited awarded The Queens Award for Industry for export achievement (April)
1995
Launch of men’s underwear line (Spring/Summer)
1995
Observation display at the Victoria & Albert Museum (June - November)
1995
Paul Smith True Brit book published by Conde Nast Italia to coincide with exhibition (October)
1995
Paul Smith True Brit exhibition at the Design Museum in London (October 95 - April 96)
1995
Paul Smith website goes on line (October)
1996
Paul Smith True Brit exhibition in Glasgow as part of Festival of Design (September)
1996
Exhibition of ‘Uniforms’ by Steve Pyke in the R Newbold Gallery (26 September - 5 October)
1996
Third PS Paul Smith Jeans store opens at 66-68 Bridge St, Manchester (October)
1996
Exhibition of ‘Parking Allotment’ by Max Jourdan in the R.Newbold Gallery (6-16 November)
1996
Paul awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City of Nottingham (February)
1997
Paul Smith True Brit exhibition at the Nottingham Castle Museum (15 May - 31 August)
1997
Paul Smith Women shop opens at Sloane Avenue, SW3 (3 September)
1997
Shop opens in Lee Gardens, Hong Kong (29 August)
1997
Exhibition in R. Newbold Gallery by photographers 664 entitled ‘Boys’ (8-22 October)
1997
Exhibition in R.Newbold Gallery by Mike North entitled ‘Into The Dee’ (3-21 November)
1997
Shop opens in Manila, The Philippines (November)
1997
Exhibition in R Newbold Gallery by Unit 2h entitled ‘Advent’ (1-24 December)
1998
Paul Smith Women first catwalk show (London Fashion Week - 24 February)
1998
Launch of Paul Smith Mini ‘Art Car’ available in the UK and Japan only (April)
1998
Westbourne House opens at 122 Kensington Park Road, London (9 May)
1998
A bespoke tailoring service is offered for the first time at Westbourne House (9 May)
1998
Paul Smith True Brit exhibition travels to Japan (Tokyo, Kobe and Fukuoka)(September)
1998
Portrait of Paul Smith by James Lloyd unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery (December)
1998
Paul Smith Ltd. signs footwear collection agreement with Overland Group (December)
1998
Paul Smith Ltd. and Inter Parfums SA sign a 12 year licensing agreement (December)
2000
Launch of ‘Paul Smith Men’ and ‘Paul Smith Women’ fragrances (June)
2000
Paul Smith awarded a knighthood by HM the Queen (24 November)
2001
Shop opens in Milan, at Via Manzoni 13 (February)
2001
Accessories shop opens opposite Westbourne House (September)
2001
An additional floor opens at Floral Street shop stocking women’s collections (September)
2001
Launch of Paul Smith rug collection for the Rug Company (September)
2001
Publication of the book ‘You Can Find Inspiration in Everything…’ (October)
2001
Shop opens in the Royal Exchange, London City (November)
2002
New York showrooms open at 121 Greene Street, NY 10012 (January)
2002
Shoe shop opens in London at 44 Floral Street (February)
2002
Shoe shop opens in Paris at 24 Boulevard Raspail, 75007 (April)
2002
Launch of Paul Smith line of furniture for Cappellini (April)
2002
Shop opens at Heathrow, Terminal 3 (May)
2002
Launch of ‘Extreme’ men and ‘Extreme’ women fragrances (October)
2002
Paul Smith opens the first free standing Women’s shop in Japan, stocks Blue, Black, Pink and Accessories. Its location is in the Aoyama Area, exactly Minami Aoyama. (October)
2003
London showrooms and headquarters open at 20, Kean Street, WC2B 4AS (January)
2003
Milan showrooms and headquarters open at Viale Umbria, 95 (January)
2003
Launch of Swiss-made Watch collection (January)
2003
Paul Smith judges at the Design Museum ‘Designer of the Year Award’ (June)
2003
Paul Smith wins ‘Men’s wear Designer of the Year’ and ‘Women’s Contemporary Designer of the Year’ at the British Style Awards (September)
2003
Launch of the ‘Furniture and Things’ collection (September)
2003
Launch of ‘Bespoke’, a Paul Smith upholstery textile for Maharam (November)
2003
Publication of paperback edition of ‘You can find inspiration in everything…..’ (November)
2003
Launch of the PS30 Watch (December)
2004
Launch of Paul Smith London fragrances for men and women (July)
2004
Launch of Swiss-made women’s Watch collection (September)
2004
Shop opens in mainland China, Plaza 66 mall on Nanjing Road
2004
Shop opens In Hong Kong at the Landmark, the Central District
2004
Shop opens in Tawain in the Breeze Centre Taipei
2004
Franchise opens in Thailand The Emporium Mall, Bangkok
2004
Franchise opens in Kuala Lumpur in KLCC Mall.
2005
Flagship shop opens in Nottingham Willoughby House, 20 Low Pavement, Notts NG1 7EA
2005
Shop opens in Beijing China, Oriental plaza mall, No.1 East Chang An Street (February)
2005
Paul Smith won the 'Great Britons Award for Business' at the Great Britons '04 event organised by Morgan Stanley, RSA in association with the Daily Telegraph
2005
Paul Smith opens Paul Smith Pink + , his first Women's 'Pink' shop in the Daikanyama area of Tokyo, Japan
2005
Paul Smith collaborates with Triumph motorbikes, customizes nine bikes and designs a capsule clothing and accessories collection
2005
Paul Smith collaborates with Burton Snowboards to design an exclusive bespoke stripe snow board jacket and pant
2005
Paul Smith launches a new women’s fragrance, ‘Floral’
2005
Paul Smith opens Furniture and Things shop in Mayfair, 9 Albemarle St, London (October)
2005
Paul Smith opens first shop in Melrose Ave, LA
2005
Paul Smith opens his second shop in Dubai (November)
2006
Paul Smith opens Jeans shop in London’s Borough Market (January)
2006
Paul Smith opens three shops in Japan – Kyoto, ‘Happy’ & ‘Peace’ (January-March)
2006
Paul Smith opens flagship shop in Tokyo, Japan. ‘Space’ (April)
2006
Paul Smith opens flagship shop in New York, 142 Greene Street (October)
2006
Paul Smith launches new men’s fragrance Paul Smith STORY
2006
Paul Smith collaborates with Mercian Bikes, personalising a Track and Tour bike
2006
Paul Smith opens a shop in Moscow’s Red Square, Russia (October)
2006
Paul Smith opens flagship shop in Paris, Rue Faubourg St Honore (October)
2007
Paul Smith opens new Men’s shop in Kanazawa, Japan
2007
Paul Smith is awarded Honorary Fellowship of RIBA – Royal Institute of British Architects
http://www.class-of-its-own.com/2012/09/fashion-paul-smith/
↧
Petticoat Lane, London (1926)
↧
LONDON IN 1927
↧
Famous Colour footage of London in the 1920s by Claude Friese-Greene.
Colour footage of London in the 1920s allows us to be tourists in our own past
The full-colour silent era footage that caused so much excitement online recently is almost like science-fiction
London looks itself and other in this footage. For a 21st-century viewer it is like watching a science-fiction film in which almost everything is the same until you notice little differences that betray a completely alien quality. The past is another country, but in Claude Friese-Greene's film of the capital's streets and sights it is a place disguised as our own.
This is because this 1926 footage, which is currently a Twitter talking point, was shot in colour. Friese-Greene and his father William pioneered their own method of shooting in colour, back during the silent era: it is a byway of cinema history, an experiment that never caught on. In fact, it is part of a lost history of rival technologies in which Britain was an early leader – the Friese-Greenes fought a legal battle in the House of Lords with the rival Kinemacolor method before both were eclipsed by the American success story of Technicolor.
So there's this haunting little film, in which Claude Friese-Greene demonstrates his colour method by revealing the green embankment, the brown Thames, the dark stones of the Tower, the blue of a policeman's uniform as he directs traffic.
It's easy to see why this clip from Friese-Greene's documentary The Open Road has become an online hit. It mirrors our nostalgia perfectly, in this age of revitalised royalism and Ukip-ish invocations of England's lost green and pleasant land. Here is an uncanny full-colour glimpse of a time when even London looked innocent.
The policeman directing traffic is a case in point. There is plenty of traffic on the roads – carts and drays as well as motor vehicles – but it all stops timidly when a London Bobby raises his hand. People cross the road under his protective eye, then he lets the traffic move forward.
On the pavements, people walk by in small quiet groups. Even crowds filmed at Petticoat Lane market are properly dressed, in brown suits and hats, and mill with what can only be called gentleness.
Another friendly policeman appears patrolling the Embankment in a scene that is captioned as a "romantic" view of London. Beyond him the Houses of Parliament glow in sunlight, in a vision of an orderly, humble, relaxed Britain.
Of course it is an illusion. The film was made to show in European cinemas and gives a tourist view of the great city. In reality, there were tanks on the streets of the capital during the 1926 General Strike.
But we are all tourists in our past, a place that gets sweeter with distance. Eerily silent as it may be, this placid vision of London tickles fantasies of a kinder, more secure age. It is a national idyll in living colour.
The full-colour silent era footage that caused so much excitement online recently is almost like science-fiction
London looks itself and other in this footage. For a 21st-century viewer it is like watching a science-fiction film in which almost everything is the same until you notice little differences that betray a completely alien quality. The past is another country, but in Claude Friese-Greene's film of the capital's streets and sights it is a place disguised as our own.
This is because this 1926 footage, which is currently a Twitter talking point, was shot in colour. Friese-Greene and his father William pioneered their own method of shooting in colour, back during the silent era: it is a byway of cinema history, an experiment that never caught on. In fact, it is part of a lost history of rival technologies in which Britain was an early leader – the Friese-Greenes fought a legal battle in the House of Lords with the rival Kinemacolor method before both were eclipsed by the American success story of Technicolor.
So there's this haunting little film, in which Claude Friese-Greene demonstrates his colour method by revealing the green embankment, the brown Thames, the dark stones of the Tower, the blue of a policeman's uniform as he directs traffic.
It's easy to see why this clip from Friese-Greene's documentary The Open Road has become an online hit. It mirrors our nostalgia perfectly, in this age of revitalised royalism and Ukip-ish invocations of England's lost green and pleasant land. Here is an uncanny full-colour glimpse of a time when even London looked innocent.
The policeman directing traffic is a case in point. There is plenty of traffic on the roads – carts and drays as well as motor vehicles – but it all stops timidly when a London Bobby raises his hand. People cross the road under his protective eye, then he lets the traffic move forward.
On the pavements, people walk by in small quiet groups. Even crowds filmed at Petticoat Lane market are properly dressed, in brown suits and hats, and mill with what can only be called gentleness.
Another friendly policeman appears patrolling the Embankment in a scene that is captioned as a "romantic" view of London. Beyond him the Houses of Parliament glow in sunlight, in a vision of an orderly, humble, relaxed Britain.
Of course it is an illusion. The film was made to show in European cinemas and gives a tourist view of the great city. In reality, there were tanks on the streets of the capital during the 1926 General Strike.
But we are all tourists in our past, a place that gets sweeter with distance. Eerily silent as it may be, this placid vision of London tickles fantasies of a kinder, more secure age. It is a national idyll in living colour.
When Britain was a rose-tinted spectacle
A nostalgic voyage round the Twenties is about to grace TV screens following the loving restoration of the first-ever colour documentary. Simon Garfield saunters down memory lane
The Observer, Sunday 9 April 2006 / http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/apr/09/television.features
Frank Malcolm is in his late eighties and his memory is holding up well. He sits in the kitchen of his Edinburgh flat in the shadow of Murrayfield rugby ground, remembering the names of the leopards, elephants and chimps in the nearby zoo. His father was head keeper and Frank lived there as a boy, occasionally sharing his playpen with bear cubs.
It is early November 2005 and Malcolm has company. A BBC crew has brought trunks of gear and presenter Dan Cruickshank to ask him stories about the animals and their keepers. He is obliging and funny, even as the shoot drags on and breaks for inconsistent light and ambulance sirens. Cruickshank shows him some unusual colour film from the mid-1920s on a battery-operated portable monitor and the silent clips contain some old friends.
'That's Topsy,' Malcolm says. 'A European bear. We rescued her and brought her up on the bottle ... she used to plant a sloppy kiss on your cheek. She eventually had a mate, but she wouldn't accept it.'
An elephant appears on the little screen, and the sequence has a green and rosy glow to it, a hand-tinted quality resembling a vintage picture postcard.
'Oh, Sundra,' Malcolm says. 'She used to come and investigate my pockets ... '
'Oh look, the polar bear,' Cruickshank announces a while later. 'That's Starboard,' the head keeper's son remembers. 'He was the best polar bear we had.'
Then the sun bursts through the kitchen window and Emma Hindley, the BBC series producer, decides on a brief interval. 'Frank, your stories are fantastic,' she says. 'I want you to go over a couple of things. I'd like you to go over the leopard story, because he effectively stopped your dad working ... '
'Well he didn't,' Malcolm observes.
'Don't tell me now,' Hindley continues. 'Save it for when you're filming! And the other thing is the reptile house, because it opened in 1925, so it was new. And the other thing, when you were talking about Topsy, did you feel Topsy was like a sister?'
'Yeah. I told Dan about the sloppy kisses.'
'So let's finish Starboard, do Topsy, and then do the leopard story again.'
A pause; the sun disappears; the camera rolls. Dan Cruickshank says: 'Ah, this looks like Starboard ... '
Making films today is a little different from the mid-1920s, when Claude Friese-Greene set off on a 1,500-mile journey to film Edinburgh Zoo and Frank Malcolm's furry friends. Malcolm does not remember Friese-Greene arriving in his soft-top Vauxhall with his large camera; he may have been at school. A man filming moving images would have been a rare enough sight and someone making films in colour unheard of.
Like his father William, Claude Friese-Greene was a pioneer. His camera and film stock established a new way of tricking the eye and his enterprise is now the subject of three entrancing BBC documentaries that illuminate Britain at a time of sudden transformation. We discover Malcolm's animals in Edinburgh, but before then, we travel through St Ives, Plymouth, Weston-super-Mare, Cirencester, Carlisle and Blackpool - the entire Land's End to John O'Groats extravaganza long before it became popular as a charity trek - and we glimpse a place of harmony and beauty, a travelogue from the interwar years of great social value and some mystery.
Not that this was the film-maker's sole intention. Friese-Greene had developed his father's novel mechanical colour process with an eye on fame and fortune, but in the early 1920s, he encountered a serious problem. The technique involved not only a particular camera but a special projector and, to encourage cinema owners in Europe and the United States to invest in his vision, he needed a demonstration film.
The result was The Open Road, 26 reels shot between 1924 and 1926 on a car journey through a Britain infused with optimism and sunshine, a place where the First World War has been forgotten and a second one will never happen. Much of it looks like a long bank holiday; even the work scenes are studies in contentment. It is a picture devoid of cynicism and one where poverty is never regarded as hardship. By default, it is the first comprehensive colour tourism film: come to Britain, where everyone smiles as you go by and where many things are unnaturally turquoise and red.
The Open Road was donated to the British Film Institute National Film and Television Archive by Friese-Greene's son in the 1950s and the job of restoration and explanation has taken several decades. Snippets have been shown here and there, but until now it has been a curiosity to ensnare and confound film historians. The literature expands upon 'colour-sensitive panchromatic negative film that was shot through a red filter on every other frame ... alternate frames were exposed to the red component and then all the light from a scene. When this negative film was processed and printed, the alternate frames were tinted orange-red and blue-green so that the orange-red exposed frame was projected in orange-red light and the alternate frame in blue-green light'.
At a particular speed, the alternating frames suggested a naturalistic colour and our own temptation to see it as quaint should not detract from the contemporary view of it as 'Britain's greatest technical film triumph' (Daily Express).
When Cruickshank first saw a brief showreel of The Open Road three years ago, he was 'slightly underwhelmed' by the images and unimpressed by the 'rather disturbing, humourless' captions that Friese-Greene had used to accompany them - the Welsh miners, for instance, who were in good need of a bar of soap.
'Even when I saw the whole film, which lasts three hours, it seemed rather clunky and I wasn't that excited. I couldn't fully see the potential for making something really interesting with it.'
But he came on board once a good idea emerged: he would recreate Friese-Greene's journey in a few months, travelling in a similar car ('beastly hard work - horrible') and talk to people who recognised the locations and people in the films; twice he would meet people who recognised themselves.
Cruickshank had recently finished presenting The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon, the hugely successful series based on the 800 rolls of nitrate film discovered a few years ago in two sealed barrels in the basement of a shop in Blackburn. The films were 20 years older than those of Friese-Greene and featured crowds at factory gates, football matches and social celebrations. They stunned the viewer with their detail and joie de vivre. That was also a BFI/BBC collaboration and its international acclaim created delays on the Friese-Greene project; a victim of its own success, the BBC now had to outbid several rivals for the second archive.
'Fortunately, we managed to get almost exactly the same team together,' Emma Hindley says a few weeks after her meeting with Frank Malcolm in Edinburgh. It is mid-December and Hindley is now in an editing suite in Oxford Street, examining her footage of a notable discovery: 90-year-old Grace, who was one of several unnamed children filmed by Friese-Greene in an unidentified village on his way to Blackpool. A local historian recognised her and her siblings and she was traced to Devon.
'How many were you?' Dan Cruickshank asks her. 'Seven children ... Dad died just before I was born. And that's my brother Dick, he was my favourite of the lot, he was a good lad to Mother.' She tells of clogs, jam butties and pets. It's a compelling story, a true demonstration of the power of film and memory. 'Ain't I a little beauty?' Grace asks at the end, examining herself 80 years before.
When I talked to her last week, Hindley was justly proud of her films, pleased with the atmosphere they create and their lack of cloyingness. She was in Tibet to interview the Dalai Lama for a programme tentatively called The Lost World of Tibet - a veritable franchise. 'We've put Claude back on the map,' she said. Perhaps
his relatives will get royalties, for Friese-Greene's original films never made his fortune. The United States had other schemes for colour and their inventors had studio backing and marketing clout.
But 80 years later, the Americans are finally interested. Last week, Jan Faull, archival footage sales manager at the BFI, was at the TV festival in Cannes with her Friese-Greene DVDs. 'It's all very exciting,' she said on her mobile from France. 'People just seem to fall in love with it.'
↧
↧
Le Corbusier: why he is adored and detested
↧
Le Corbusier controversial sympathies ...
“Here is the great problem facing the French government. We are in the hands of a conqueror whose attitude could be devastating. If he is sincere in his promises, Hilter could crown his life by an overwhelming creation: the accommodation of Europe. This is a stake that may tempt him, rather than a preference for a fruitless vengeance… Personally I believe the outcome could be favorable. France, barring a criminal transplantation or a German invasion, is a mouthful not to be chewed, and if the problem consists of assigning each nation its role, getting rid of the banks, solving real—realistic—tasks, the prognosis is good. It would mean the end of speeches from the tribunal, the endless meetings of committees, of parliamentary eloquence and sterility. Such a revolution will be made in the direction of order and not without consideration of human conditions” (Weber, Nicholas F. Le Corbusier: A Life. New York: Knopf, 2008. 487).
DATE: 07 OCT 2010 in http://www.artlyst.com/academic-articles/was-le-corbusier-a-fascist
Letters published in a 2008 biography of the seminal 20th century modern master, Architect and Painter suggest that the radical urban planner was a Nazi sympathizer whose Fascist thinking went above and beyond previously documented perceptions. In one letter written shortly after Hitler conquered France and much of Western Europe, the Swiss-born architect expresses clear enthusiasm for his intervention. In a letter written to his Mother Corbusier wrote, "If he is serious in his declarations, Hitler can crown his life with a magnificent work: the remaking of Europe." This is not entirely surprising in light that Le Corbusier aligned himself with the French far-right in the 1930s and accepted a post as a city planner for the Vichy regime that ruled France and collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
Born Charles Edouard Jeanneret in the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Corbusier thought of himself as a visionary who could reshape mankind by creating a new form of city. Many other respected French Artists including, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Kees van Dongen flirted with Fascism before and during the war. It doesn’t make them better or poorer at their craft, but in our present society it casts a shadow over their accomplishments as Artists. Separating Art and politics is a difficult concept. Perhaps we should just accept and honour Artists for their artistic merits, disregarding personal beliefs and actions during times of sweeping political change. Picasso was a committed communist and reflecting on the murderous trail of Josef Stalin’s rein of terror in Europe, his work has never been scrutinized in the same light as Derain, Vlaminck and VanDongen. Picasso was also part of the resistance to the Vichy Government bravely refusing to leave his studio in Paris for the duration of the war. In many ways he is regarded as a National Hero for his commitment to a free France. This latest bash at Le Corbusier is proof that, 'the wrong politics' can be detrimental to an Artist’s legacy. Corbusier’s face adorns the 10 Franc Swiss note and several Swiss cities have honoured him by naming streets and squares after the master. However, in light of these latest revelations, Zurich authorities decided not to name a square next to the central train station after the Architect. The authorities believe that this was a reasonable response to a delicate subject. The debate continues.
 |
Why Politics Matter: Le Corbusier, Fascism, and UBS 10AUG2011 by Samuel Jacobson Articles Politics Theory and History Anti-Semetism Fascism Le Corbusier Switzerland UBS / http://www.archdaily.com/149885/why-politics-matter-le-corbusier-fascism-and-ubs/ Le Corbusier’s politics are a divisive issue for architects and rightly so: his work is still highly influential, in both adoration and enmity, and his expressed political views are at odds with contemporary western democratic values. It’s easy for the discussion of those views to lapse into a sort of ethical debate by-proxy, devolving into a discussion about whether or not Le Corbusier should continue to be included in the canon of twentieth century architects considering his apparent anti-Semetism and sympathy for the Nazi party. Such narrow and moralistic inquiry negates other issues pertinent to Le Corbusier’s place in history. It is possible to both be aware of Le Corbusier’s political affiliations and to discuss his work as an architect, urbanist, and designer for its own merits. By way of explanation, I would like to revisit a recent controversy concerning Le Corbusier. Swiss bank UBS dropped an ad campaign featuring the Neuchâtel-born architect on September 29, 2010; personal correspondence suggesting that the architect was a Nazi sympathizer was frequently cited as context for UBS’s decision. A widely-circulated AP article on the UBS campaign, “Nazi Praise Sparks Swiss Rethink of Le Corbusier” by Bradley S. Klapper, quotes an October 1940 letter from Le Corbusier to his mother. “One letter shows Le Corbusier expressing clear enthusiasm for Hitler,” Klapper writes, “ even if at other times he calls the German leader a monster. ‘If he is serious in his declarations, Hitler can crown his life with a magnificent work: the remaking of Europe.’” Nicholas Fox Weber’s translation of the letter in his 2008 biography, Le Corbusier: A Life, is equally damning, and worth quoting at length: “Here is the great problem facing the French government. We are in the hands of a conqueror whose attitude could be devastating. If he is sincere in his promises, Hilter could crown his life by an overwhelming creation: the accommodation of Europe. This is a stake that may tempt him, rather than a preference for a fruitless vengeance… Personally I believe the outcome could be favorable. France, barring a criminal transplantation or a German invasion, is a mouthful not to be chewed, and if the problem consists of assigning each nation its role, getting rid of the banks, solving real—realistic—tasks, the prognosis is good. It would mean the end of speeches from the tribunal, the endless meetings of committees, of parliamentary eloquence and sterility. Such a revolution will be made in the direction of order and not without consideration of human conditions” (Weber, Nicholas F. Le Corbusier: A Life. New York: Knopf, 2008. 487). As Klapper states in his article, such fascist inclinations should not come as a surprise for anyone familiar with Le Corbusier’s life, “as it has long been known that Le Corbusier aligned with the French far-right in the 1930s and accepted a post as a city planner for the Vichy régime that ruled France and collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.” The campaign in question was intended to woo back clients who left UBS during the 2008 financial crisis. UBS was bailed out by the Swiss government in late 2008, but posted strong results in the first quarter of 2009. Advertisements ran across Europe and Asia, and featured an ad showing a black-and-white photo of Le Corbusier holding his head with the captions: “Because we’ve drawn a clear line” and “We want to deal with our past and look with confidence into the future.” The decision to drop Le Corbusier from the UBS campaign came after Jewish groups, including Schweiz-Israel, accused Le Corbusier of being an anti-Semite. This hit a raw nerve with the bank, which suffered a crisis in the 1990s over revelations that it prevented Jewish claimants from accessing Holocaust-era accounts belonging to their ancestors, leading to a $1.25 billion settlement. The connections between the ad, the October 1940 letter, and UBS’s past abuses are obvious, although probably unintentional. According to Jean-Raphael Fontannaz, spokesperson for the Swiss banking giant, the company dropped advertisements featuring the architect because controversy undermined the goals of the campaign. “For UBS, the most important thing in our campaign is the message we wish to communicate,” he said in a September 2010 statement. “We don’t want the message to be lost in a discussion about Le Corbusier. We also don’t wish to hurt the feelings of anyone.” It’s easy to dismiss the UBS affair as too moralistic or nationalistic for our concern as architects. In this case, I am not interested so much in the particulars of the controversy and its various ethical entanglements but rather how UBS dealt with the problem at hand. Considering the tenor of the campaign, it was a pragmatic and acceptable choice on the part of the bank to remove Le Corbusier from their ad campaign—the associations with Nazism and anti-Semitism are too much of a distraction. It is clear in Fontannaz’s statement that the bank’s decision was not a judgment about Le Corbusier’s worth as an architect, or as an important Swiss figure. For that reason it’s understandable that the UBS decision was not followed by a similar decision the Swiss 10 franc bill, as some thought might happen. Similarly, Le Corbusier’s political views have not affected his removal from architecture’s historical record. It can be said that Le Corbusier’s politics have little meaningful bearing on his worth as an architectural genius. Architecture is primarily concerned with the production of built objects or spaces; more than anything else it is an aesthetic practice. It is worth noting that, according to Nathan Fox Weber, nearly 400 architectural monographs on Le Corbusier’s work had been published by the time he released his book in 2008. His was the first full-length biography. Architects seem to be more interested in Le Corbusier’s body of work than Le Corbusier the man. As a historical figure, then, all we are really left of Le Corbusier is genius in the sense of guiding character or spirit. This is not to discount the value of the political in his work. One can argue that Le Corbusier’s work as an urbanist, for example Ville Radiuse and Ferme Rediuese, were at least in part intended as spatial models for the industrial syndicalism fashionable among the French far-right in the 1930s and 40s. However, it also possible to evaluate these projects outside of a political context. I cannot in good conscience go so far as to say that the political ambitions of Le Corbusier and his work are irrelevant, especially from a historical perspective, but considering our field’s aesthetic tendencies Le Corbusier’s controversial views are only important insofar as they are controversial. Le Corbusier’s work continues to have value because it can be and has been recognized repeatedly and in a wide range of contexts. Whether that recognition is praise, pilgrimage, or scorn is irrelevant except in as much as the three seem to feed back into one another. It is for this reason that Le Corbusier’s politics matter—because they really don’t, as such, in particular, but do as a means for gaining recognition. Whether one believes that his fascist, anti-Semitic, and anti-humanist beliefs are latent in his work, and that that is repulsive and as such his work repugnant; or one believes that his designs, in their focus on light, material, and personal expression are in fact humanist in nature and for that he deserves apology or even simply praise; or one simply tries to emulate his work, who cares why, any discussion thereof provides the sort of outside recognition that architecture needs in order to have worth—and it is because Le Corbusier and his work are discussed to such a great extent that he is an architectural genius. Unless one is concerned with matters of the historical record, the particulars of Le Corbusier’s political views don’t really matter—he is an important figure, and will remain so until people stop talking about him. |
↧
Tatler Perfumery. Bologna
Gianfranco: “When I decided to open Tatler, I didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t ask for advises. I didn’t want them. You know, people are generous with advises and some of them are actually punctual and right … so inevitably you start thinking about them and … The think is that I wanted to make my own mistakes and to do exactly what I wanted to do. A place where to meet new people and old friends, a place to share. Fragrances work just as trait d’union to link all my interests, and this is probably why I chose them, because they can go well with anything, art, people, books…”
Gianfranco: “All sort of people come to Tatler. Business man as well as young people who are still studying or have just got a job (or lost it). We talk, about life, about the current situation in Italy, about ideas. Someone asks me for advises. What I personally think is that we should always try to fly high, to have strong ideas that guide us and to keep following them. And be honest with ourselves even when things are difficult to admit.”
Text by Valeria Racemoli, Photo by Claudia Falcomatà [Bologna] // 24.06.2012
 |
Da sinistra: Luca Zarattini, Eleonora Sole Travagli e Gianfranco Salomoni. |
↧