AIR_Empire Aviation_May'2012

Issue Twelve | May

2012

mil a Kunis

Produced in International Media Production Zone

l of The It Gir on d o o w y ll Ho roa d he r roug h m o rd a st to

speed thrills Bugatti’s undimmed desire to own the world’s fastest car

damien hirst The fascinating story of the world’s richest living artist

now in store why Harrods is adding Michelin starred-chefs to its luxury offerings

mad for it Jon Hamm on why the best things come to those who wait

190 YEARS AGO

A MAN INSPIRED BY HORSE RACING CHANGED WATCHMAKING FOREVER. In 1821, at a horse race in Paris, Nicolas Rieussec successfully tested his revolutionary invention that allowed time to be recorded to an accuracy of a fifth of a second. The chronograph was born. A tribute to a visionary man, the Montblanc Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph Automatic is centred on the essence of his invention, the rotating disc technique.

Monopusher chronograph,

self-winding manufacture movement, second

time zone, 30 min. and 60 sec. rotating disc counters.Crafted in the Montblanc Manufacture in Le Locle, Switzerland.

Montblanc Boutiques DUBAI Burjuman | Deira City Centre | Dubai Mall | Emirates Towers | Festival Centre | Grand Hyatt | Ibn Battuta | Jumeirah Beach Hotel Mall of the Emirates | Mirdif City Centre | Wafi | ABU DHABI Abu Dhabi Mall | Marina Mall | AL-AIN Al-Ain Mall

www.montblanc.com

CONTENTS / FE ATURES

Managing Director Victoria Thatcher Editorial Director John Thatcher Advertisement Director Chris Capstick chris@hotmediapublishing.com

Thirty Four

Mila Kunis

Group Editor Laura Binder laura@hotmediapublishing.com

On unerring ambition, gruelling physical training and the pressure of life in the public eye – the screen siren reveals her rocky road to the top.

Sub Editor Hazel Plush hazel@hotmediapublishing.com Designers Adam Sneade Vanessa Arnaud

Thirty Eight

Damien Hirst What’s next for the richest living artist? Hirst talks immortality, universal truth, and how much he earned from that dead shark...

Production Manager Haneef Abdul Senior Advertisement Manager Stefanie Morgner stefanie@hotmediapublishing.com

Forty Six

Mad about the boy

Advertisement Manager Sukaina Hussein sukaina@hotmediapublishing.com

Mad Men’s Jon Hamm was waiting tables aged 29 – now he’s Hollywood’s most sought-after gent. AIR learns how to play the fame game.

Agency Sales Manager Jad Hatem jad@hotmediapublishing.com

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CONTENTS / REGUL ARS

Fifty

Motoring AIR gets behind the wheel of the world’s fastest production roadster – yours for a cool $2.6 million.

Sixteen

Twenty Eight

Fifty Nine

What’s on and what’s new this month – including a nifty flying sports car...

Priceless Picasso pottery, plus the latest from glassmaster Jean Claude Novaro.

Discovering the rich histories of one of the UK’s greatest greens: Gleneagles.

Twenty Three

Thirty

Sixty

A space-age masterpiece from Omega, plus the rarest of Patek Philippe at auction.

The pick of hot-off-thepress books, films, theatre and art world-wide.

Cultural awakenings in Kiev and San Sebastian – and a gastro-getaway in Venice.

Twenty Six

Fifty Four

Seventy Six

Ivanka Trump reveals the inspiration behind her new collection to hit the UAE .

AIR meets the Michelinstarred chefs behind Harrods two new eateries.

Life lessons from Adam Goldstein, CEO of Royal Caribbean International.

Radar

Interiors

Timepieces

Tel: 00971 4 364 2876 Fax: 00971 4 369 7494 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from HOT Media Publishing is strictly prohibited. All prices mentioned are correct at time of press but may change. HOT Media Publishing does not accept liability for omissions or errors in AIR.

Jewellery

Critique

Gastronomy

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Golf

Travel

What I Know Now

The Musician’s Penthouse The seven exceptional two-storey penthouses at Corinthia Hotel London offer the highest level of elegant and spacious accommodation – up to 5,000 sq ft / 465 sq m.

The Musician’s Penthouse, a bold, grand space, features the classic Steinway Model O piano and an expansive terrace with views towards The London Eye, St. Paul’s and the City.

COrinTHia HOTEL LOndOn, WHiTEHaLL PLaCE, LOndOn SW1a 2Bd +44 (0)20 7321 3000 | PEnTHOuSES.LOndOn@COrinTHia.COM | corinthia.com /london

EMPIRE AVIATION GROUP

May 2012

WELCOME ONBOARD

Welcome to this issue of AIR, Empire Aviation Group’s lifestyle and onboard guest magazine.

The decision to buy a business jet is just the first step in owning and enjoying the benefits of a valuable aviation asset. The management of an aircraft is a highly specialised business, demanding very specific skills and knowledge of every aspect of the operation, from crew to maintenance and administration.

In this issue, we cover the fundamentals of aircraft management and highlight the distinctive approach Empire Aviation Group offers to our managed aircraft owners.

Our management services are tailored to the specific needs of individual owners, some of whom may want to retain their business jet for private use whilst others may want to offer their aircraft for charter. But every owner wants the same high standard of maintenance and operation, which is where our unique approach comes in.

The flexibility to meet these varying owner requirements has been fundamental to our success in aircraft management and our goal is to extend this service to owners/aircraft beyond the UAE. Our personal relationships with owners are more akin to business ‘partnerships’; they are built on personal trust, openness and transparency.

What better way to complement our aircraft management and charter services than by offering an online hotel booking service that offers a vast selection of business and leisure hotels at preferential rates anywhere in the world – read more below.

Steve Hartley Executive Director

Contact details: info@empire.aero empire.aero

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Paras Dhamecha Executive Director

EMPIRE AVIATION GROUP NEWS MANAGING YOUR AIRCRAFT ASSET

Buying a business jet really is just the beginning and the immediate consideration for any owner is where to register and base the aircraft, and who will manage it.

Aircraft management is where EAG focuses its distinctive asset management approach – helping owners acquire and then optimise their investment in the business jet, by operating and maintaining it to the standards required to protect its long term value.

In the UAE, the aircraft must be managed by a licensed operator with an AOC (Air Operators Certificate) issued by the UAE’s GCAA (General Civil Aviation Authority).

So, how do you choose the right aircraft management company?

Every management company has a different offer, based on its approach and structure; for example, Empire Aviation Group offers a flexible, integrated asset management approach to owners to meet different business models, such as owner-user; partial use and charter only.

Each management company also has a different cost structure – so the owner needs to look at the management company’s costs and infrastructure, as well as their know-

how, experience, and staff. For established aircraft owners, this is a natural process but it is more challenging for a new owner.

For the management company, it’s all about understanding the objectives of ownership because each owner is a distinct business model and needs a tailored business plan to optimise the aircraft.

This is the basis of the EAG approach; to focus on its core skills – aircraft asset management – and sub-contract other specialised activities, such as physical maintenance, to the best and most cost effective service providers for the job. The responsibility and accountability for the standard of maintenance and operation still resides with EAG, as the aircraft manager, which is why we have a team of over 15 professionals working in this area, to manage the airplane in the best interests of the owner.

Because of the substantial amounts of money invested in aircraft, owners take a keen interest in management - an interest EAG actively encourages so that close working ‘partnerships’ are formed with owners, agreeing objectives and working with them in a very open way.

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AIRCRAFT SALES

“With our exstensive knowledge and understanding of the new and used aircraft sales market, we are able to assist customers with unbiased options.”

AIRCRAFT MANAGEMENT

“We eliminate the hassles associated with aircraft ownership.”

AIRCRAFT CHARTER

“We care about providing the right tailored solutions to suit our valued customer’s needs.”

Our dedicated charter specialists are on hand 24/7 to assist you with your flight requirements.

FLIGHT OPERATIONS

“Our flight operations team is on hand 24/7 to ensure we provide first class service at all times.”

Unit F-06 Dubai Airport Freezone, P.O. Box 293827 Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tel: +971 4 2998444 Fax: +971 4 2998445 Email: info@empire.aero, aircraftsales@empire.aero, -- 11 11 --charter@empire.aero, lifestyle@empire.aero www.empire.aero

EMPIRE AVIATION GROUP NEWS Everyone at EAG plays a part in supporting the owner; from the company principals working directly with the owners, to all the other levels of operation and maintenance, as well as the support of the operations team 24/7.

Because the value of an aircraft is a function of how well it has been maintained, EAG has an experienced team of specialists working on all aircraft within the fleet, supported by a dedicated quality team. The whole management process is open to the owner, with every dollar of cost itemised and books open to owner audits.

With a large and growing mixed fleet of business jets, EAG offers its owners valuable economies of scale in everything from fuel to insurance and even hotels, via an online hotel booking service.

The fundamental requirement for a successful aircraft manager-owner relationship is trust, built on openness and transparency. EAG’s next step is to develop this core management service and take it beyond the UAE, so that the company is able to support owners and aircraft from Europe to the Middle East and India.

BOOK ONLINE AND FLY WITH EMPIRE AVIATION GROUP

EAG’s online hotel booking service allows private jet charter clients, travelling on business or for leisure, to search and reserve luxury hotels at preferential rates – all conveniently online.

Clients logging-on to EAG’s website can search a database of more than 200,000 hotels in 165 countries, including independent, luxury boutique properties and international 5-star hotel chains. The service is available in 41 languages.

EAG works with one of the world’s leading online hotel reservations agencies by room nights sold, attracting many millions of unique visitors each month via the Internet from both leisure and business markets worldwide. More

than 300,000 room nights are booked every day through the service.

Caron Gledhill, Director of Corporate Affairs at Empire Aviation Group, comments: “Convenience is an important component of the service we provide to our private jet charter clients and EAG’s online hotel booking section offers an extensive range of business and leisure hotels with some fantastic savings.

“In addition to the low rates, there are no booking or administration fees and in many cases room cancellation is free of charge. We offer simplicity and convenience, which lets the client have full control of the process, which is what they want.”

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> Long before Linda, Christy and Cindy there was Twiggy (pictured right), the UK-born starlet who, through the photographs of Justin de Villeneuve, became the world’s first supermodel.

She was known for her androgynous look, becoming the face of the swinging ’60s and the cover girl for the fashion titles of the day – a 1967 issue of Vogue described her as an “extravaganza that makes the look of the sixties”. A wide selection of the images that catapulted Twiggy to such a standing are to be shown at Proud Gallery on the King’s Road, London, at the exhibition Faces of the Sixties: Photographs

by Justin de Villeneuve.

It runs from May 17 to July 8 and will include rare and sometimes previously unseen images of the elfin model alongside other famous faces of the time, comprising a fascinating pictorial account of the decade’s taste-makers. proud.co.uk

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British model Twiggy wearing a a peasant-style dress in a promotional shot for Ken Russell’s ‘The Boy Friend’, 1970 © Justin de Villeneuve

RADAR

RADAR > He defected from Dubai at the beginning of the year, closing his restaurant Verre, but this month scourge of the censors Gordon Ramsay reappears in Doha, opening not one but two restaurants within the St. Regis Doha hotel. First up is the eagerlyanticipated finedining Gordon Ramsay Doha, reservations for which are now being taken.

> Four one-of-a-kind versions of Hermès Passe-Guide handbag go under the hammer at Christie’s this month.

The bags, designed in tribute to the United Kingdom and Ireland, can be bid for online only, with the auction opening on May 14 and closing May 31. The estimate on the Irish Green bag is highest at £22,000-24,000, with the others reckoned to achieve £8,000-10,000.

Scotch off the rocks It was one of London’s most iconic music venues and a hip hangout for the rock aristocracy of the time, hosting a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix for an impromptu UK debut in 1966, as well as the likes of the Beatles, the Stones and Stevie Wonder. Now The Scotch has been refurbished and reopened as a discreet speakeasy. Set across two floors and located in Mason’s Yard (next to the gallery where John Lennon first met Yoko Ono at a showing of her work), the new venue will be reminiscent of the original, with added features (including a private screening room for films) and accessible on an invite-only basis to a carefully selected few and ‘those in the know’. the-scotch.co.uk - 18 -

RADAR > Juxtaposing the cultural differences between two of the world’s greatest cities through engaging graphics and insightful witticisms, Paris versus New York is a great flick-through that holds the same appeal no matter how many times you delve inside its pages.

It’s the work of Vahram Muratyan, a Paris-based graphic designer who is also the author of an engaging website devoted to the same, and is now available to buy in hardback form, comprised of over 200 highly colourful pages. us.penguingroup.com

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RADAR

> Stamps can prove to be rather shrewd investments, with no shortage of collectors on hand to snap up the rarest of those issued.

Stamps commemorating London’s last staging of the Olympic Games in 1948 have steadily climbed in value over the years, and these, commemorating London 2012, are sure to do likewise. That’s thanks to them having been designed by Sir Paul Smith, who is selling them at his stores throughout the globe.

> If you’re tired of sitting in traffic jams, this is the perfect purchase.

It’s a flying car, which has just successfully completed test flights in its homeland of Holland. It flies through the air like a gyrocopter and drives like a sports car on the ground, reaching speeds of 180kph doing either. pal-v.com - 20 -

> One of the most ambitious exhibitions of fashion takes place at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this month, running until August 19.

Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations details the affinity between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, the two famed Italian designers from two different eras. Set across seven themed galleries, the exhibition will show in excess of 100 pieces, and feature videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by the brilliant Baz Luhrmann. metmuseum.org - 21 -

TIMEPIECES

PW1.

WW1.

WW2.

> Taking inspiration from the precise time-keeping instruments used by bomber pilots during the Second World War, Bell & Ross has issued the Vintage WW2 Observation Watch, a timepiece designed to emphasise the display of minutes – afforded its own central hand and digits that are sand coloured

against a jet-black dial – which had to be clear for pilots to navigate and plot speed effectively. It follows on from the brand’s other military-influenced watches: the PW1 Pocket Watch and Vintage WW1, designed to mimic the original wristwatches worn during the First World War. bellross.com

Watches at Auction

years, reference 2499 was made in four series in a total production of only 349 pieces, the majority in yellow gold. This first series in rose gold was never listed, mentioned in literature, nor offered at a public auction before, and is being sold directly from the family of its original owner. It’s expected to achieve $1.3-1.9 million.

Another rarity on sale is the Rolex stainless steel triple calendar wristwatch with moon phases, reference 8171. It, says Aurel Bacs, International Head of Christie’s Watch Department, “is one of only four known examples of this model, and belongs to the elite of the elite of top vintage wristwatches”. It has an estimated value of $225-325,000.

The Event Christie’s Important Watches The Location Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues, Geneva The Date May 14 Some of the finest wristwatches ever made will go on sale in Geneva this month, among them some exceptional Patek Philippe items. Certain Patek Philippe wrist watches are so rare that in whatever condition they come to the market the event is significant – the ultra-rare rose gold version of reference 2499 (pictured right) is one such timepiece. Over a period of 35

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> A little over half a century ago in the US, a man walked into a Houston-based jeweller and bought himself a watch.

The man was astronaut Wally Schirra, the watch, an Omega Speedmaster, which Wally would later wear on his wrist the day he boarded Mercury Atlantis 8 for its mission into space. The 50th anniversary of that occasion has now been honoured by the launch of the Speedmaster First Omega in Space timepiece, a numbered edition – engraved on the caseback – that pays homage to the original and adopts its legendary manual-winding calibre 1861. omegawatches.com

> Arriving in the UAE in June is the Datograph Up/ Down from German watchmaker A. Lange & Söhne. It’s an updated version of the Datograph, which many consider to be the benchmark in superior chronograph design – most striking visually is the setting of the outsized date and two subsidiary dials in an equilateral triangle. The new addition to it is the extension of its power reserve to 60 hours (an increase of 24 hours), now clearly displayed by the up/down indicator at 6 o’clock, and slender baton hour markers. It’s housed in a platinum case, and held together by a handstitched crocodile strap and solid-platinum buckle, topping off what is an incredibly stylish timepiece. alange-soehne.com

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> In 1963, Jack W. Heuer started work on a new chronograph specifically designed for drivers and fans of motor racing. The following year he was to call his final version of this mechanical, manual-wound chronograph the Carrera, a watch that would win a legion of admirers. Almost 50 years later the 2012 versions of the Carrera Calibre 1887 Chronograph are equally sought after – and worn by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio. If you want the most striking option available, buy the 43mm version, with its matching anthracitecoloured dial and alligator strap. tagheuer.com

JEWELLERY Tell us about your new collection, Bow The Bow Collection is incredibly feminine. It incorporates rose gold and diamonds in a way that is understated but chic.

The Lady is a Trump On the exclusive launch of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelery in Dubai’s Harvey Nichols, AIR talks over its elegant designs with the woman herself…

It’s a very graceful collection – what inspired your designs?

I was inspired by the ladylike elegance of the 1950s; most memorably personified by Hollywood starlets like Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly.

What is your favoured piece of the collection?

I love the pave bow ring. It is a great cocktail ring for the spring/summer season.

a sensational piece. The rough black diamond briolette is expertly handcut, giving it an amazing sparkle. It is really a show stopper and my go-to piece whenever I have to get dressed up.

Your ‘Lace’ collection is now in Dubai, too – why do you think it’s fitting for the UAE market?

The Middle Eastern influences can be seen in the intricacies of the patterns in the jewellery.

My Lace collection features extremely fine black enamel detailing that took months to perfect in my workshop.

The patterns were inspired by the mosaic patterns I saw in Turkey as well as the

beauty of the written Arabic language. There are also several cocktail rings that are encased in diamonds and white gold which were influenced by Byzantine architecture.

What type of woman do you feel your collection is best suited to?

The women of Dubai seem to have a strong appreciation for my classically-inspired jewels.

These women are looking for modern jewellery that they can pass on to generations – they want to make an investment in a superior quality, high-style piece, which is what I am offering.

And the most valuable?

The collection includes a couture, one-of-a-kind, platinum-set bow necklace that has over 27 carats of diamonds.

Which piece would you wear yourself to an event?

The black diamond tassel necklace is such

Montete by Bulgari For ancient Italian appeal look to Bulgari’s new collection of bracelets, necklaces and pendants.

The brand’s respect for tradition and heritage comes alive through its use of ancient coins, reigniting the past by placing them in the present.

Décolletage or wrists can be adorned with one piece, lending a Dolce Vitastyle look that’s sure to be lusted after. Settings come in pink gold with juxtapositions of timeless mother-ofpearl. Classic, beautiful and wearable for almost any occasion – each one is set to become a signature piece. bulgari.com

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Couleurs de Paradis

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

Meaning ‘Colours of Paradise’, Van Cleef & Arpels’ new collection launches in the UAE this month – and those with a penchant for bold pieces and beautiful colour accents won’t be able to resist its charms. The collection’s key inspiration comes in the winged form of graceful birds, along with dreamy dragonflies and feather-light butterflies. Whichever piece most catches your eye, its stones ensure each pick is precious: look to Oiseaux de Paradis (Birds of Paradise) this May for spectacular earrings – Lovers Birds sees feather-tailed birds, wings spread wide with white and pink diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and turquoise beads. Exquisite.

With the wedding season upon us, look to bridal rings that will have her uttering ‘I do’

Versace Forever Forever solitaire with diamond

Harry Winston Belle Engagement Ring

Piaget Yves Piaget Rose

Start the Bidding…

Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels, 14 -15 May A woman can never have enough jewels, and Sotheby’s Geneva’s coming auction – Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels – will present over 700 lots from which to choose. The two-day event will collate gems of historical note and those formerly owned by illustrious European families. But the piece everyone will be fawning over is the Beau Sancy; deemed one of the most important diamonds ever to arrive at auction. (Expect to part with $2-$4million for the pleasure.) If the Beau exceeds your needs, however, the auction shall open with the treasures of Suzanne Belperron – one of the 20th century’s most influential designers – bringing vintage gems to the fore. sothebys.com - 27 -

Gilan White diamond solitaire

INTERIORS

SARA COSGROVE

The new 22,000 square feet technology room at Harrods has its head of design in a spin – she shares its must-have gadgets, and how even a true technophobe can acquire a cutting-edge home…

The very latest in home computing, audio-visual, photographic, cellular and digital lifestyle collections can be found at Harrods’s new technological space, which features leading brands – Loewe, Bang & Olufsen and Porsche Design among them. (Also, look out for exclusive collections by Jean Michel Jarre, BlackBerry and Oscar de la Renta.)

All the latest gadgetry led me to ponder the importance of today’s technology and how it is incorporated into our homes. Communication, security, sound and vision are now an intrinsic part of everyday life with top luxury residences providing mood lighting, electronically-controlled blinds, TVs and high-tech systems as

standard to ensure convenience for clients’ demanding lifestyles.

So what are the must-have gadgets for this season? For the film buff who wants to bring the ultimate cinema experience into their abode, look to the 152-inch TV from Panasonic (priced at just under £600,000).

Adding the icing to the technological cake is the latest invention from Apple – the iPad 4; fabulous for chatting with friends, checking the weather at your next destination, organising travel photos and managing that busy schedule.

Part of our service is custom installation so even technophobes can have the most up-to-the-minute homes. thestudioatharrods.co.uk

Priceless Picasso Christie’s presents a rare bidding opportunity next month with the auction of handpainted ceramics

by Pablo Picasso. The Madoura Collection, which was made by the artist at Madoura Pottery in France, comes courtesy of the painter’s friend Alain Ramié – son of the very family to first inspire Picasso’s entry into the world of pottery in 1946 (an artistic love affair that continued into his final years). The 550 pieces on sale – which trace Picasso’s trademark style as it emerges in the form of vibrant faces, birds, fish and animals – offer the last opportunity for collectors to purchase such works. Unrivalled and in perfect condition, keep a particularly keen eye for the Grand vase aux femmes voilées, 1950, and iconic Vallauris plate, 1963.

Christie’s South Kensington showroom, 4pm June 25 and 10am June 26. christies.com

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Jaime Hayon for The Rug Company Those seeking a quality rug with which to dress marble and tiled floors should look to Jaime Hayon – the Spanish artist/designer has teamed up with The Rug Company to bring three stylish designs: Captione (a three-dimensional diamond print), Silhouette (floral and whimsical) and Vases (soft, shiny vase motifs). Intricate and contemporary, each incorporates fine fabrics (wool and silk) to ensure they not only look divine but feel equally splendid underfoot. therugcompany.ae

weighed 13 kilos – it gained a place in the Guiness Book of Records as the largest hand-blown coupe ever made.

Glass Works The vibrant works of French glass blower Jean Claude Novaro are sought-after the world over by art connoisseurs, galleries and celebrities – and have even broken world records. AIR spoke to the proclaimed ‘King of Glass’ on his first Middle Eastern partnership with Dubai’s Royal Treasures Gallery How would you describe your design style?

It is different from other artists I have seen and this is what I like.

It is universal art: classic and modern at the same time. Most of my art is abstract too.

To the Manor Born There are few better ways to place quintessential country charm upon dining tables than with the new Country Estate collection from Juliska. Spreads will appear the picture of English charm when laden with plates and bowls depicting handpainted country scenes. The dinnerware is perfect for al fresco parties, while the tea-cups will look the epitome of elegance for afternoon teas. Hand-pressed in Portugal and painted by the renowned Deborah Sears of Isis Ceramics, the results are fit for the landed gentry. And if rural motifs aren’t quite your cup of tea, take note of its sister collection – plum-hued glass goblets, plates and bowls.

Exclusive to Bloomingdale’s Home, The Dubai Mall.

What can we expect from your latest collection at the Royal Treasures Gallery?

I have made a new design with heavy pieces: big bubbles covered with a small, coloured layer which looks like a small hat on the top of the bubble.

Who are your key clientele?

I have many different kinds of clients: the people who want a beautiful interior for their home, their hotel or restaurant, to the top collectors worldwide – celebrities, presidents and ministers. Glass is magic and my clients are glass lovers.

What is the most unusual piece you have created to date?

For me, it was a monument I created that comprised of 340 glass fishes.

It formed a huge statue which is now on display in Nice airport. Then of course there was the piece of art I made in February, 2012, that

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What does it take to create one of your pieces?

A piece of glass always starts in the same manner; we place some glass in the oven at 1,000 degrees Celcius to create a ball of glass named ‘pos’.

Around the pos we take different layers of glass in which we design with air, pigments and gold, enamels and metal oxides. A piece can have six layers of glass and reach over 10 kilos in weight. When the piece is completed we cook it for two days at 580 degrees.

You’ve worked with glass for over 50 years. What inspires you to this day?

Every new day is a new source of inspiration for me; colours, people, architecture… The most important thing for me is to move and to observe. When I produce a new collection it means I have had it in mind for several years. royaltreasuresantiques.com

CRITIQUE

Film

The Moth Diaries

Mary Harron When the mysterious Ernessa arrives at a boarding school, a darkness descends on the students. Rebecca,

a young girl haunted by her father’s suicide, becomes obsessed with her new classmate.

AT BEST: “The film draws sexy frisson from the ambiguity of black

magic bedeviling an all-girls boarding school.” Boxoffice Magazine AT WORST: “The plot doesn’t have enough psychology to be intelligently creepy.” The Globe and Mail

Bernie

Richard Linklater Bernie Tiede, the endlessly generous funeral director of Carthage, Texas, is a friend to all – especially the miserly (but very wealthy) Marjorie Nugent. But when her body is found stuffed in her freezer, Bernie is the prime suspect and the small town is sent into disarray.

AT BEST: “An opportunity for Black to sink his teeth into a role unlike any he’s ever played before.”

Hollywood Reporter AT WORST: “Mercilessly overdone... it’s all so obvious and unfunny.”

Boxoffice Magazine

2 Days in New York

Julie Delpy Marion and ber boyfriend Mingus live in New York, each with a child from a different relationship. But when Marion’s jolly father and oversexed sister come to stay with the couple for the weekend, mayhem ensues.

AT BEST: “A tantalizing Franco-American stew for audiences with a taste for bawdy humor and nutty characters.” Hollywood Reporter AT WORST: “The movie goes off the rails, [and] there’s little [Rock] can do to bring the movie back.” Screen International

Marvel’s The Avengers

Joss Whedon The world is teetering on the cusp of disaster, and only a crack team of superheroes can save it. Enter the line-up of a lifetime: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow... in glorious 3D. AT BEST: “A shiny, caged beast of a film that delivers on its every promise.” Little White Lies AT WORST: “It’s been a lucrative enterprise if not a consistently thrilling one.” Variety

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Books In 2008, Shin Dong-hyuk published Escape to the Outside World, an autobigraphical account of his escape from North Korea’s most infamous political prison. The world read the tales of beatings, torture and routine public executions in abject horror, but when journalist Blaine Harden was commissioned to interview the 23-year-old man, something didn’t add up. Four years later, after rigorous research, Harden has published Escape From Camp 14, which strives to unveil the truth of the escape – and is described by Ross Southernwood in Sydney Morning Herald as a “rare insight” that “deserves to be read”.

The book reveals how Dong-hyuk prompted the executions of his mother and brother by telling guards that they were planning an escape. Janet Maslin in The New York Times explains: “Mr. Shin admitted to Mr. Harden that he had made this trade-off to get more food and an easier job. And he said he had done it without regrets.” Ideas of love and guilt are explored throughout the account, but while the revelations are shocking, Maslin is concerned that Harden fails to grasp the real concern: “[The book] offers no easy answers about how Mr. Shin can deal with a newly guilty conscience, a lack of introspection, a checkered work history and the difficult adjustment to post-traumatic life.”

Yet more uncomfortable questions are raised in Simon Lelic’s The Child Who, the fictional story of a 12-yearold boy who murders his classmate.

The attribution of guilt is the main theme of the novel, as it gradually reveals the child’s experience of systematic abuse. Hilary Claire O’Hagan, writing in The National, is impressed with the novel’s sensitivity: “[It] shows sophistication in dealing with thorny and complex moral issues.” David Hebblethwaite is similarly affected, as he states in The Huffington Post: “[Lelic] approaches his subject matter from interesting

angles and explores thorny moral issues... In its complex portrait of the protagonist and his situation, The Child Who might just be Lelic’s most effective novel yet.”

Kevin Barry’s Dark Lies the Island, a collection of short stories that depict life in modern Ireland, is a much more lighthearted new release – at least in parts. The yarns roll across the Emerald Isle, with entertaining nuggets of national ideosyncracies, family relationships, and the islanders’ tumultuous relationships with the elements. Darragh McManus of Irish Independent is a fan: “The language [...] is wonderful. There’s true poetry here... Barry’s fiction is fiercely individual and authentic, with great imagination and a firm grasp on the mechanics of a story.” Across the water, Claire Kilroy of Financial Times is just as enthusiastic: “The stories function on many levels – they are funny, sad, troubling, illuminating... Barry is a writer alert to the concentrated shot of joy that the short story – and, indeed, the well-turned sentence can provide. His technique of coupling frayed nerves with a poetical sensibility proves to be a richly rewarding one.”

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CRITIQUE

London is currently enjoying a lengthy love affair with Picasso – at the expense, it seems, of his contemporaries.

Picasso and Modern British Art, halfway through its five-month stint at Tate Britain, has been examining the Spanish artist’s influence. He was quite the ringleader, as Sam Parker from The Huffington Post finds: “Our national artists reacted to Pablo Picasso’s genius with everything from sycophancy to self-conscious antagonism but rarely, oh so very rarely, [with] artwork that matched him.”

Indeed, it seems that rather than celebrating the works that Picasso inspired, the exhibition actually serves to highlight their shortfalls when compared with those by the master himself. The Guardian’s Laura Cumming shares this view: “[The exhibition] looks at three artists who paid sharp attention without being overwhelmed – Wyndham Lewis, Francis Bacon, David Hockney – and five more who swooned…. The comparison is frequently cruel.”

The death of John Chamberlain in December of last year was sure to spark a resurgence of popularity of the scrap metal artist’s work – not that it has suffered a lull since he began exhibiting in the ’60s. The first evidence of this is at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, in the John

Chamberlain: Choices retrospective. In The New York Times, Karen Rosenberg is won over by Chamberlain’s ambition: “He made deforming big chunks of automobiles look as easy as crushing a soda can or scrunching up a piece of paper... The suggestion of sudden violence gives his art much of its power.” Brett Berk, of Vanity Fair, also finds poetry in the jagged sculptures: “his best work reads [...] as if he were flaying the vehicular excess – cutting away at these overwrought slabs and reassembling the metal to showcase the litheness inherent in the material.”

In the UAE, Sharjah Art Foundation is showcasing the work of Lebanese photographer Ziad Antar in Portrait of a Territory. The exhibition features images of the Gulf coast taken since 2004, a record of the ever-changing landscape.

In an interview in The National, Antar tells Maey el Shoush: “[The photographs depict] the coastline with its changes, variations, the country, history, the crisis they passed, modern history, the boom.” Writing in L’agenda, Stéphanie Ravel is ebulient: “One finds cranes, skyscrapers, and shipwrecks beautiful... [It’s] an uncomfortable position, but one that inspires a seminal examination of our influence on our immediate environment.”

Image: Picasso and Modern British Art

Art

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Image: The Story of Mary Maclane by Herself

Theatre

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Broadway sparked dissent before it even hit the stage. Acclaimed composer Stephen Sondheim critised the production in The New York Times, calling it “dumb”, and slating plans to instate a happy ending. Fast forward to the play’s recent opening, however, and the old refrain ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ rings true yet again.

The seats are full, and it seems the adaptation is delivering the goods.

Joseph Horowitz of the Times Literary Supplement thinks so anyway: “The new Porgy and Bess is nothing if

not boldly conceived... We have new speeches, new harmonies, new accompaniments”. Writing in Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones praises Audra McDonald as a “beautifully voiced” Bess, but is critical of the casting of Porgy: “The famously crippled Porgy [played by Norm Lewis], does not seem like a radical departure for Bess.

With his physical handicap dialed back and his handsome body matched by the most gorgeous voice, [he] throws some of the necessary pathos on its head.”

Meanwhile, at the Apollo Theatre on London’s West End, the latest

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production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night is making critics coo – among them is Mark Shenton of The Stage: “Anthony Page’s production [...] pays dramatic dividends in the richly detailed and layered texturing of the performances behind it.” The play is an autobigraphical tale of the unravelling of O’Neill’s family through illness and addiction. It is harrowing stuff, as Charles Spencer of The Telegraph discovered: “At the end of this superb production I barely had the strength to get out of my seat.

The dramatic impact is shattering.

The raw pain, passion and even the occasional clumsiness of the writing are testament to a work of heroic honesty.”

The theatres of New South Wales are currently hosting a touring production of musical The Story of Mary Maclane by Herself, hot off the stage of Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre. The production is based on The Story of Mary Maclane, a biography of a lawless American girl at the turn of the 20th century. The scriptwriter Bojana Novakovic stars as Mary, and has received rave reviews: “[She] inhabits the role so entirely that it’s difficult to tell where character starts and actor begins”, writes Jodi McAlister in Australian Stage. Tim Rogers, Novakovic’s co-star and composer of the score, is given similar commendation by McAlister: “Rogers is such a charismatic and engaging performer that it’s hard not to want to see more.” Kate Herbert of Herald Sun isn’t quite as enthusiastic: “After an initial frisson of interest in Mary’s ramblings, the middle of the play is slow, repetitive and ineffective”. She does, however, find modern relevance in the historical plot, observing that Maclane has “plenty in common with the navel-gazing bloggers and twitterings in 21st-century digital media” – although it’s debatable whether that’s praise or not...

MILA KUNIS is a star very much on the ascendant.

The raven-haired Ukrainian is Hollywood’s latest ‘go-to’ actress, the current face of Christian Dior, and a fixture on every ‘hot’ list du jour. She’s also amongst the most down-to-earth celebrities in the business and, as AIR discovered when we met the 28 year old in her adopted US homeland, likes to opine on just about everything…

Words: Barnaby Smith

A

nyone who attempts to become a ballerina when in their mid-twenties will inevitably kill themselves [Kunis turned heads in last year’s ballet-based thriller Black Swan]. I trained four hours a day, seven days a week, for seven months.

I had one day off on my birthday and half a day off for the Emmys and the Golden Globes. On those days my ballet instructor worked with me from 5am to 11am, then I went to hair and make-up and on to the awards shows. I lost 20lb. Aesthetically, I had to look like a ballerina and hold myself like one. By the end, I was 95lb. All you saw was bone. It looked disgusting, but in photographs and on film it looked amazing. It took me five months to lose the weight, but just five days to gain it all back. Baths saved me. It’s what I looked forward to every night – a bath, with Epsom salts and a glass of wine. I dislocated my shoulder two weeks before production; in the first month of rehearsal I tore my calf ligament. I have scars. Everybody had injuries.

But an opportunity like this very rarely comes about. You feel like a baby if you make a fuss.

A Hollywood career is more like a game of checkers than a game of chess. You can’t plan. It’s impossible to think four or five steps ahead. I’m in a position now where I can sit back and wait for a project I want to do. I’m very lucky.

The film industry isn’t as competitive as the world of ballet.

I can’t even put into words how competitive the ballet industry is. It’s so small. They work their entire lives to try to achieve perfection that’s inevitably impossible. And their career ends at 35, at best. I think that’s why they compete so fiercely. Ballet is a self-contained world and ballerinas are unique creatures.

My award for Best Young Actress was shipped to me by FedEx. I couldn’t get the flight out to the Venice Film Festival because I was shooting at the Sony lot. That’s where I found out I won. I was doing a scene and my phone kept ringing, and I wondered if somebody was hurt. So I picked up the phone and it was Darren [Aronofsky]. I was panicking, asking if everything was OK, and all he said was ‘Congratulations!’ I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I had to hang up on him as I was in the middle of a scene.

I was offered the role in Black Swan on iChat. I opened my computer and there was Darren messaging me: ‘Are you ready to do this?’ I messaged him back: ‘Did you just offer me the movie?’ And even though he replied, I made him get on video chat to offer it to me semi-in-person, so I could see his face as he told me the good news. I had to call my agents and tell them I’d got the job – it was all done backwards.

I’m the black sheep of the family. My father is a mechanical engineer. My mother is a physics teacher. They have this hard-working son who’s a biochemist in San Diego, trying

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to cure cancer and who can barely pay the rent. Then they have me – this daughter who earns an obscene amount of money for not doing anything. They think my job is absurd.

Money isn’t where my happiness comes from. When I was seven and we moved to America, we were poor – really, really poor. Even though I was earning money from the age of nine making TV commercials, I was raised poor. Money to me never mattered. It still doesn’t. I didn’t know how much I was earning. My parents kept me very protected.

I would go to school, go to work, come home. I had to make my bed, do the laundry. My friends didn’t have pay cheques, so I lived my life the way they lived theirs. Where we lived was based on my parents’ pay cheques. If I needed money, I asked my parents for it. They took all the money I earned and put it in the bank. When I turned 18 they sat me down and explained what had happened to all my earnings. I was in shock. It was amazing, but it didn’t change anything.

Russell Brand is hysterical. I’m boarding first class to Hawaii to star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and a crazy man gets on. He looks totally weird, with a giant head of hair, wearing black and tight leather. And he’s following us.

Suddenly he comes up and says, ‘Hi, I’m Russell Brand and I’m in the film with you.’ Now I love him.

I hate men who look down on the guy who parks their car or the woman who serves their food. I like guys who are confident but not obnoxious. I was never aware I was sexy.

I don’t have a clue what men go for. I’m a one-man girl. I was with Mac [Macaulay Culkin] for eight years, but that’s not something I planned.

I was a total tomboy growing up in Ukraine. I liked to climb trees and get into scraps and I was always hurting myself. I learnt my lesson when I broke a rib snowboarding, thinking I was way better than I was. It was the last run of the day.

The sun sometimes hits the snow at a certain point so it looks flat but it’s not necessarily. I went over a bump where there wasn’t meant to be a bump – and I had no time to prepare myself.

Natalie [Portman] and I bonded over our love for bargain hunting. I’ve known her for about seven years, through mutual friends, but we bonded over a love of flea-market shopping. In fact, that’s how I first heard about Black Swan. We were in the market on a Sunday morning and I said, ‘What do you have to do after this?’ I remember her telling me, ‘I have to go to my ballet lesson.’ I was like, ‘OK!’ I didn’t make the connection at that point. Then Darren contacted me after seeing me in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Travel is my biggest extravagance. I’m always flying back and forth between New York and LA, Hawaii and London.

I’m not finicky about anything else, but I can’t deal with economy. So first-class travel is what I spend my money on.

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Images: Getty / Gallo Images Text: Barnaby Smith / Live Magazine / The Interview People

‘I hate men who look down on the guy who parks their car’

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‘I STILL BELIEVE ART IS MORE POWERFUL THAN MONEY’ DAMIEN HIRST has gone from mouthy upstart to global brand over the past 25 years – and become the world’s richest living artist on the way. Here he talks about money, mortality and his first retrospective in Britain

Words: Sean O’Hagan

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W

hen Damien Hirst was looking though his archive recently, in preparation for his retrospective at Tate Modern, he came across some film footage of an interview he did with David Bowie in the Gagosian Gallery in New York in 1996. “I’m sitting on a big ashtray talking nonsense,” says Hirst, laughing. “At one point, Bowie says, ‘So what about a big Tate gallery show, then?’ And I say, ‘No way. Museums are for dead artists.

I’d never show my work in the Tate. You’d never get me in that place.” He grins ruefully and shakes his head. “I was watching it and thinking, ‘how things change.’ Suddenly, I’m 46 and I’m having what they call a ‘mid-career retrospective’. It doesn’t seem right somehow.”

We are seated on a sofa beneath a big blue Francis Bacon in an expansive first-floor room in Science Ltd, Hirst’s central London HQ. It is a vast building on several storeys, and it contains more contemporary art than many mediumsized galleries. There are pieces by Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Sarah Lucas and, of course, several spin and spot paintings, and steel and glass medicine cabinets by the man himself.

Hirst’s Prada loafers are on the floor in front of us, but his signature tinted glasses are nowhere to be seen.

He looks stockier than the last time I saw him, just over two years ago, and a bit quieter, more reflective. “It’s mortality, mate,” he says. “My eldest boy, Connor, is 16.

A few of my friends have died. I’m getting older. I’m not the mad bastard shouting at the world any more.”

But you’re only 46, I say; it’s not as if the reaper has you in his sights. “I know, I know, but it’s more that realisation that you’re not young any more. I’ve always thought, ‘I don’t want to look back. Ever.’ I think I was obsessed with the new. That’s changed.” A mid-career retrospective will do that, I say, teasingly. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think it’s more that when you’re young, you’re invincible, you’re immortal – or at least you think you are. The possibilities are limitless, you’re inventing the future. Then you get older and suddenly you have a history. It’s fixed. You can’t change anything. I find that a bit disturbing, to be honest.”

The exhibition in question, simply entitled Damien Hirst, includes most of the greatest hits, as well as some not so well-known early work. “There’s stuff from my student days at Goldsmiths – gloss-painted frying pans I hung on the wall. Embarrassing stuff like that.”

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‘I don’t fit, do I? I can play the game, but I don’t really fit’

It was Nick Serota, director of Tate, who also insisted that Hirst show the early work, as well as the first piece from every series he has made ever since. “Putting the show together,” says Hirst, “was like a big 180-degree turn for me. I’m looking back at all this work and trying to make sense of it. Some of it is great, and some of it is unrealised and didn’t make it in there, and some of it is just rubbish.

It’s 25 long years of work and, of course, I’m proud of it, proud that I put the effort in, but there’s also one part of me going, ‘How did that happen?’”

How, indeed? It is a question that exercises the minds of his many detractors in the art world: how did a mouthy, working-class lad from the north of England, with hooligan tendencies, become the biggest – and the richest – artist on the planet?

The answer is long and complex, and has much to do with the radical shifts in culture that have occurred over the past 25 years or so, both in Britain and the world: the unstoppable rise of art as commodity and the successful artist as a brand; the ascendancy of a post-Thatcher generation of Young British Artists (YBAs) who set out, unapologetically, to make shock-art that also made money; the attendant rise of uber-dealers such as Jay Jopling in London and Larry Gagosian in New York; and the birth of a new kind of gallery culture, in which the blockbuster show rules and merchandising is a lucrative sideline.

At the centre of this ultra-commodified art world stands Damien Hirst, art superstar: the richest, loudest, biggest of all. Except that, no longer young, he seems – at the very moment when his canonisation by the art establishment is complete – to be in a long period of transition. When I last spoke to him, in September 2009, in his vast studio near Stroud, Gloucestershire, it was exactly a year after the astounding success of Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, his record-breaking Sotheby’s auction of 2008. Back then, just before the world markets tumbled, Hirst made headlines by bypassing his dealers, Jopling and Gagosian, altogether, and taking more than £111m in sales in two days of often-frenzied bidding. Right on the cusp of the recession, the Sotheby’s auction was a pivotal moment for Hirst – a grand farewell, he told me, to the “big work” he had been making for years. He also told me then that conceptualism was “a total dead end” and said: “You spend 20 years celebrating your immortality, and then you realise that’s not what it’s about.”

Since then, he has been relatively quiet on the creative (if not the commercial) front, working mainly on his own

paintings: that is, canvases on which he, and he alone, applies the paint. Many of them, including a series made after the suicide of his friend Angus Fairhurst in March 2008, were completed in a room in Claridge’s that his good friend Paddy McKillen (co-owner of the hotel) loaned him rent-free, in return for some paintings that now decorate the Connaught, another of McKillen’s London hotels. An exhibition of that work, No Love Lost, opened at the Wallace Collection in London in October 2009 to uniformly murderous reviews, the late art critic Tom Lubbock comparing Hirst to “a not very promising firstyear art student”.

Undaunted, Hirst has continued to paint, and when I travelled down to his country home in deepest Devon a few weeks ago, he showed me briefly around his garden shed, where a paint-splattered stuffed bear stood sentinel over a group of partially-completed canvases, featuring brightlycoloured parrots in lush landscapes and a single big painting of a human head in a wash of what you might call Bacon blue. A few stuffed parrots stood on perches in the centre of the cluttered room, bright yellow and green, as if staring at their painted selves. “When all else fails,” Hirst quipped, “get yourself a few dead parrots.” It all seemed a long way from a giant blue shark in a tank of formaldehyde.

“I’ve spent a long time avoiding painting and dealing with it from a distance,” he said. “But as I get older I’m more comfortable with it.”

The house in Devon, where Hirst currently lives with his wife Maia Norman and their three children, is one of several properties he owns. He also has a stately home, Toddington Manor, in Gloucestershire, that will one day house a collection of his own work. Near Stroud, he has another house with a vast studio attached, where, not that long ago, many of his 150-strong team of assistants laboured over his serial works: the spot paintings, spin paintings, cabinets and vitrines. He has a houseboat in Chelsea, a house in Thailand, where he spent Christmas, and another in Mexico, although he hasn’t been there for a while because “it’s a bit wild west out there at the moment”.

In London, as well as Science, his organisational hub, he also owns a big chunk of Newport Street in Lambeth, which is currently being turned into a new gallery that will open in 2014 and house his extensive contemporary art collection.

Over lunch in Hirst’s quayside restaurant in Ilfracombe, beneath a pristine glass cabinet full of pills, I ask him if it was always his motivation to be the biggest, the most successful? “I always wanted to be bigger, but not biggest.

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Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, ‘It can’t be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.’ That’s kind of stuck with me. Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.”

With Damien Hirst, though, it always seems to come down to three things: art, ambition and money. For that reason, as curator Ann Gallagher asserts in her catalogue introduction to the Tate Modern show: “Like no other artist of his generation, Damien Hirst has permeated the cultural consciousness of our times.” What that says about us – and about Hirst – is a matter of some debate. Writing recently in the New Yorker, the American art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote: “Hirst will go down in history as a particularly cold-blooded pet of millennial excess wealth.

That’s not Old Master status, but it’s immortality of a sort.”

Schjeldahl’s critical hauteur is not untypical. The bigger Hirst has become, the more he has become an object of scorn to some serious art critics, a symptom of all that

is wrong with contemporary art, as well as an easy target for the flak directed at conceptual art in general. “His work,” writes Gallagher, measuredly, “is characterised by its directness as well as its ambition; it is both deadpan and affecting, and provokes awe and outrage in equal measure.”

That, one senses, is exactly how Hirst – mellower these days, but still with attitude to burn – likes it. Is there a little part of him that still rejoices in the notion that he is, at heart, a working-class lad who is somehow sticking it to the toffs of the art world? “All of me, I’d say,” he replies, cackling. “I mean, I don’t fit, do I? I can play the game, but I don’t really fit. But you get older and you realise that rebellion doesn’t really matter to the market. I kind of learned that early on and I’ve never forgotten it.” How early on? “Well, I remember in about 1989, when I was still an outsider and all my mates were having shows and I wasn’t, and it really bugged me. As I was making the fly piece, I was thinking: ‘I’m gonna show you. I’m gonna kill you with this one, knock you down dead, and change the world.’ And I showed it to a few galleries and they all just turned round

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and went ‘Marvellous, darling.’ It didn’t have the effect I wanted. It had the opposite effect. I was gutted, in a way.”

As a young teenager, Damien Hirst wanted most of all to be a punk, but, as he now puts it, “I was just too young and not angry enough.” He remembers his mother melting his one Sex Pistols record to fashion it into a plant holder, and he remembers sneaking out, aged 12 or 13, with his “punk clothes” hidden in a bag, then changing into them when he was out of sight of his house. “I think that attitude crept into my art somehow. I was always looking for ways to sneak stuff into the art world and make it explode in their faces. I was an infiltrator.”

Growing up, Hirst was a handful for his mother, Mary Brennan, who worked in the local Citizens’ Advice Bureau.

His punk phase came just after the man he thought was his father walked out on the family when Hirst was 12. He also went through a brief shoplifting phase – he was arrested twice – before he was finally accepted on his second application to study an art foundation course at Jacob Kramer College in Leeds.

As a teenager, he made regular visits to Leeds University’s Anatomy Museum to practise drawing, and it was there he found inspiration for his first piece of shock art: a photograph mounted on a steel frame called With Dead Head, first exhibited in 1991, in which his 16-year-old self poses, grinning, beside the severed head of a middleaged man which sits on a mortuary table. It set the scene, if not the tone, for much of what was to follow.

Hirst moved to London in the mid-1980s, and for a time worked on building sites, before being accepted to Goldsmiths in 1986. There, under the tutelage of the artist Michael Craig-Martin, he realised that for the time being, at least, painting was over and that, in contemporary art, the idea was the be all and end all. “When I arrived there, I was this angry young painter looking at all the conceptual work being made there and dismissing it as pure rubbish,” he says, laughing. “But I got seduced by it. Initially, I was finding pieces of wood, banging them together, and slapping the paint on. It was Rauschenberg, de Kooning and a bit of Schwitters. It had been done to death and they

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told me so. I went back up to Leeds and I thought, ‘OK, I’ve got to deal with the world I live in – advertising, TV, media. I need to communicate the here and now.’ I realised that you couldn’t use the tools of yesterday to communicate today’s world. Basically, that was the big light that went on in my head.”

The rest is art history, though it took a while to be made.

By the time he left Goldsmiths, Hirst was already making spot paintings and medicine cabinets, both in highly formalised series, and made with the help of a small team of assistants. In 1991, he had his first solo show, In and Out of Love, in a disused shop in central London. His creative imagination had taken another leap. Visitors entered a room in which live butterflies fluttered around, having hatched from canvases embedded with pupae. In another room, dead butterflies were arranged on white canvases placed around a white table with four overflowing ashtrays.

All the Hirstian themes were already in place: life and death, beauty and horror, as well as the sense of spectacle that would become the defining aspect of his work.

At a Serpentine Gallery show that same year, Hirst met Jay Jopling, who would soon become his dealer.

Things moved even faster after that. For a show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Hirst referred in the catalogue to a work in progress that had been commissioned by Charles Saatchi. Entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, it comprised a 14ft-long tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde. It did not appear in the Saatchi Gallery until 1992, but when it did, it radically changed the world of contemporary art – and the course of Damien Hirst’s life.

Having been bought by Saatchi for £50,000, the shark in the formaldehyde-filled vitrine became an icon of contemporary art of the 1990s and perhaps the defining work of what would come to be known as the YBA movement. In 2004, the work was sold to an American collector, Steven A Cohen, for a reputed $8m.

In 2006, the original shark, having deteriorated, was replaced at Hirst’s insistence by a new formaldehydeinjected one, which was then loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is that shark that visitors to the Tate Modern show will see. (Both Hirst and Cohen seem unfazed by the big art-historical question of whether a replacement can ever have the impact of the original art work. Only time will answer that one.)

“It’s what Jeff Koons once referred to as a highmaintenance piece of art,” says Hirst, when I ask him about the practicalities of owning a shark in a tank. “The formaldehyde works are guaranteed for 200 years. I would like it to always look as fresh as the day I made it, so part of the contract is: if the glass breaks, we mend it; if the tank gets dirty, we clean it; if the shark rots, we find you a new shark.”

Since the shark first swam into the public consciousness in 1992, it has, as Hirst once admitted to me, “been hard to see the art for the dollar signs”. His astonishing earning power came to a head with the Sotheby’s auction in September 2008, when total sales were 10 times higher than the previous record for work by a single artist. By then, he already held the record for the most money paid in auction for a single work of art by a living European artist, the Emir of Qatar having paid £9m the previous year for Lullaby Spring, a steel cabinet containing 6,136 neatly arranged pills.

“Money is massive,” says Hirst, when I remind him of the above quote. “I don’t think it should ever be the goal, but I had no money as a kid and so I was maybe a bit more motivated than the rest. I do believe art is more powerful than money, though. I still believe that. And if I ever find out money’s more important, I’ll knock it on the head.”

For all that, Damien Hirst has become for many the epitome of the artist as businessman, entrepreneur and global brand. It is quite a transformation, given the wild years of the 1990s. Does he miss the good old, bad old days? “Nah. I’ve done it, man,” he says, shaking his head and reaching for a Diet Coke. “I had a beautiful 10 years and then, suddenly, it started to hurt. I just woke up one day and thought: ‘That’s it. It’s over.’ Haven’t touched a drop since.”

We talk about Louise Bourgeois, whom Hirst visited before her death last year, and I mention her belief that happy people could not make great art. Is he happy? He laughs. “Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There’s no better feeling. It’s beauteous. But it’s always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas. I don’t believe it’s about God-given genius, but I do believe somehow in the magic of art even though I don’t want to. I believe in science. I want clear answers.” He pauses for a moment.

“I want to make art, create objects that will have meaning for ever. It’s a big ambition, universal truth, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

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Images: Corbis / Arabian Eye; Photolibrary; Supplied Text: Sean O’Hagan / The Observer / The Interview People

‘Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms’

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Mad About The Boy As the best character in one of TV’s greatest ever series, Mad Men’s JON HAMM is proof that good things come to those who wait

Images: Supplied Text: Kaleem Aftab / The Independent / The Interview People

Words: Kaleem Aftab

W

hen Jon Hamm walks into a room, there is an aura about him that makes it easy to see why all the secretaries in the office swoon as he steps into his office as Don Draper in Mad Men. He dresses smartly, with a blazer over a shirt, has a more muscular than expected frame and gives off an air of confidence that comes from being one of the most sought-after actors on the planet.

Playing the mysterious marketing man in the 1960s-set TV series has made the St Louis-born star a household name across the globe. He’s been translating some of that charm onto the big screen recently, a welcome switch for

an actor who’s not long celebrated his 40th birthday.

“I guess the difficulty with playing in a television series is that you get to play the same role over and over again.

And while it’s fun and I love doing the show, it is nice to get the opportunity to do different things. What I’ve tried to do for the majority of my career is to do things that are challenging and exciting in different ways.”

To be in a position to do that, Hamm had to do it the hard way. He talks of how for 15 years post-school he struggled badly to make a living, working various jobs – barman, teacher and even set designer on risqué, straight-to-video films – to pay for no more than his rent.

And how he believes that inbuilt in all struggling actors is this confidence to get up each morning and face the

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‘I wouldn’t call myself a funny guy’

day, conceding that acting is an incredibly difficult life to choose, particularly if success doesn’t arrive early on. His career path almost mirrors that of George Clooney, who struggled for recognition until the right part in a TV series established him as a heartthrob.

Hamm claims that as a young actor he always looked ten years older than he was and so could not get parts that his peers were winning – at 26 he resorted to auditioning to play the parent of a teenager. He decided that if nothing much happened by the time he hit 30 he’d do something else, and was actually dropped by his agency before his luck began to change when, in 2000, he won a part as a fire fighter in the NBC TV drama Providence. He waited his last table aged 29.

One of the things that kept him going through this period was a sense of humour that veers into the characters he plays on screen. “I wouldn’t call myself a funny guy,” he opines. “I try to be light-hearted. Sometimes the work we do can be serious and so I try to – the English have a wonderful expression – take the p*** out of people.” Also influencing his work, and in particular the character of Don Draper, is his late father (he died when Hamm was aged 20, ten years on from when he lost his mother). Hamm recalls opening his father’s closet to find 40 suits and boxes full of watches, and remembers him as a coolness personified on the outside, and out of control within.

The actor has been dating actress Jennifer Westfeldt since 1997. In 2001 he appeared in Kissing Jessica Stein, in which his partner starred. And in 2009 the couple started the production company Points West Pictures.

In June it releases Friends with Kids, in which both Hamm and Westfeldt star. The film, also starring Megan Fox and Adam Scott, is about two friends who witness all of their friends having children and decide to have a child together while still dating other people.

The ability to work together and take their career into their own hands is a boon for the pair, whose heavy workloads can easily keep them apart for months at a time.

They work hard, he says, to ensure a work/life balance.

“She’s working on things, and I’m working on things, but you want to carve out time for living your life as well – and we’ve been very diligent about that and we’ve been lucky.

After all, it’s a good problem to have to have so much opportunity in our careers.”

On wearing the producer’s hat, he posits, “Well it’s all new to me. The worst part is that you hear ‘no’ a lot and you have to ask people for favours. The best part is that you get to create something from the very early stages.”

After his early career spent not having an opportunity to work, Hamm is finding life on the other end of the spectrum equally tough. “You have to make time; I could probably, if I wanted to, work 365 days of the year, but you do get exhausted. I did eight months straight with Mad Men, The Town and Sucker Punch. Life is too short; you definitely want to live life as well.”

Home comforts are definitely something that Hamm values in real life as much as his character Don Draper does on Mad Men. “We have very good friends in California, and we have good restaurants and it’s nice to unwind that way. And that’s what is good about having family: you know you can come home and the dog is there, there’s a fire in the fireplace and you can just let it all go.”

Hamm doesn’t think that the current series of Mad Men (Season Five) will necessarily be the last: “I think we’ll keep going as long as the story is interesting to tell – and I don’t know how long that will be. We’ve now shot five seasons, and I think there are a lot of deep dramatic stories still to be mined in that character. I’m glad I don’t have to think them up; I’m glad it’s someone else’s job. But I’ll keep doing it as long as they will have me.”

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MOTORING

THE NEED FOR SPEED

The release of the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse marks another speed record for the brand. Capable of hitting 410kph, this is the world’s fastest production roadster...

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A

t the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year, high-end car manufacturer Bugatti unveiled its newest model, the Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse – or as the Guinness World Record book will soon be calling it, the world’s fastest production roadster.

The specs are impressive – 1,200bhp of power from its 8-litre quad-turbocharged W16 engine, a 0-100 time of just 2.6 seconds and a top speed of 410kph. Of course, the opportunities you may have to drive at such a speed will be few, only on closed tracks, so an electronic limiter sets the maximum at 375kph for ‘everyday’ use. But who cares? With a price tag of US$2.6 million, that ridiculous performance, not to mention the posing factor available with the open roof, this car is more about making a statement than anything else.

And it seems to be statements that Bugatti is very keen on these days. The brand is no stranger to speed records, and achieved its first for a production car back in the early ‘90s with the EB110 GT, which could reach 336kph.

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Price guide: US$2.6 million 0-100kph: 2.6secs Top speed: 410kph Power: 1,200bhp Torque: 1,106lb.ft

It managed to hang on to that record for a year before Jaguar came out with something faster. Undeterred, the brand decided to make its next record breaker slightly harder to beat, and the original Veyron made its debut in 2005, hitting 409kph. It was 2007 before the SSC Ultimate Aero TT topped it.

The Veyron had been a huge aerodynamic and technological achievement – there must have been a way for it to regain its crown. Bugatti’s head of technical development and former CEO, Dr Franz-Joseph Paefgen, said at the time: “Developing the Bugatti Veyron was one of the biggest challenges I have ever faced. Constructing an engine with over 1,000bhp was only the start. We had to redesign every component from scratch, and they all had to be as light as possible, so we used titanium, magnesium, aluminium and carbon-fibre. The whole Bugatti team did an extraordinary job.”

It was such an extraordinary job that Bugatti would not give up on the Veyron, and pondered ways to make it faster.

As its technicians beavered away, it also released the first

us to increase the performance of the Bugatti roadster,” Durheimer stated. “Once again our engineers worked hard to demonstrate that we are constantly redefining the boundaries of what is technically feasible.”

The Grand Sport Vitesse uses the newer W16 engine developed for the Super Sport, but this is not merely the same car with the roof missing. This is more an aerodynamic, feature-filled version of the first Grand Sport, with an improved chassis and suspension among the necessary changes required to handle the power increase.

And to help promote the car in Geneva, Durheimer informed journalists that when reaching its top speed, wind buffering with the top removed is not noticeable until the driver exceeds 299ph. A new spoiler fitted to the rear should also help here.

But the potential top speed is still higher with the roof in place than removed, and annoyingly there is nowhere to store the targa-style roof in the car once it is taken off. We imagine this is something that will not deter its potential owners, however – especially in the Middle East – and the

Images: Supplied Text: Chris Anderson

‘As with all Veyrons, the cars will be assembled by hand and made in limited numbers’ convertible version of the car, the Grand Sport, in 2008, before the light bulb moment came – the Veyron needed a more powerful engine. Upping the power from 1,000bhp to 1,200bhp, and with more aerodynamic tweaks to the shell, the Veyron Super Sport emerged in 2010, hitting 431kph and beating the record of the Aero TT by over 16kph.

That made the Veyron Super Sport the fastest production car in the world, and according to Bugatti’s current CEO Wolfgang Durheimer, the brand intends to fight to keep its record. “There are always rumours around that someone, maybe Koenigsegg, could come and do another record,” he told Motor Trend magazine last year. “No matter where the Veyron project is, if someone comes… we would strike back.

So our thoughts about how we can make this car even faster and keep the premium position in terms of top speed for Bugatti are still ongoing.”

There is no doubt that ‘world’s fastest’ is an impressive accolade to have, but with nobody forthcoming with a challenge, what Bugatti have done for the time being is to fortify their achievements with the Grand Sport Vitesse.

Adding the world’s fastest production roadster to the lineup – and a car only 21kph slower than the Super Sport – gives the brand two speed records for other manufacturers to beat. “The rapid success of the Super Sport convinced

various styling touches will no doubt make it even more desirable. For example, special lightweight 20 inch Vitesse alloy wheels have found their way onto the car, while the interior is all carbon-fibre and aluminium, complemented by two-tone leather seats. As with all Veyrons, the cars will be assembled by hand at the Bugatti headquarters in Molsheim, France, made in limited numbers.

There are definitely a lot of selling points, but to the owner, like Bugatti, is the main attraction that awardwinning top speed? The 2010 record with the Super Sport was set by former F1 and Japanese touring car racer Pierre Henri Raphanel, the official test driver of Bugatti, who described afterwards what reaching almost 431kph in a Veyron felt like. “It’s basically a mental exercise. But at that speed, if anything happens, you can be sure you won’t be coming back to the pits to tell what was the problem.

And that is what is making the pressure, the excitement.

When you’re driving 250 in a Veyron, the car is completely solid, it doesn’t move… when you start to go 260, 265, 270, it’s like the tarmac is telling the car where to go. It’s a strange feeling.”

If you like the sound of that, our advice is to get your order in now. Or you could hang on until Bugatti release a faster car. Something tells us there won’t be a long wait.

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GASTRONOMY

Words: Chris Anderson

A TREAT IN STORE AIR takes a closer look at the restaurants in London’s iconic Harrods department store - including two new openings that will add more Michelin-starred chefs to its line-up

H

arrods is a name synonymous with luxury shopping, and a place to find the very best in designer names and gifts. But while this may be the first trait that springs to people’s minds, the Knightsbridge store is also home to a varied and indulgent dining scene, which seems to share a very similar philosophy.

“We have 28 restaurants in Harrods – so it’s a very big food and beverage operation,” says Paul Goodale, who has served as director of restaurants in the store since 2010. “We seek to

have restaurants that have global cuisine representative of what is such an iconic global brand. We try to offer something to everybody, and to a standard that our customers expect from us, which we define as being world class.”

Explore any of the floors at Harrods and you will find restaurants and cafés offering anything from rock oysters and slow-cooked Cornish lamb to delicate French pastries and afternoon tea.

And just as you are sure to recognise designer brands amongst the goods on sale, so too will you spot famous names from the world of cuisine. “It’s interesting how the dichotomy works,

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for something that is so large in itself, to balance with the core activity of the shop, selling luxury gifts,” says Paul.

“I thought if I could learn from my colleagues in the store and make sure that what we do in the restaurants reflects the best of the brands that we sell elsewhere, then that would be an experience people would find compelling.”

Just as any business looks to develop and evolve, so too is Harrods always trying to invigorate its restaurant scene and keep it exciting.

This meant the introduction of new outlets, along with redesigns to several of its other restaurants,

1.

and perhaps most impressive the involvement of renowned Michelinstarred chef Thomas Keller at a pop-up version of his famed French Laundry restaurant. This year has seen further development, and Harrods working primarily with British Michelin-starred chefs; the Galvin Brothers opening a café, Galvin Demoiselle, and Robert Corrigan working on an outlet of Bentley’s Sea Grill, one of London’s most iconic fish restaurants.

With his job overseeing all of the restaurants, how does Paul decide what is needed – or what is suitable?

“You need to act in a very considered way,” he says, “to make sure that what you do enhances a reputation in place since 1849. Any restaurant you look at will often be something our customers have asked us for, something we know they would enjoy, or something they have been enjoying in another location, such as Bentley’s in Piccadilly or Galvin Bistrot de Luxe in Baker Street.”

Something that Paul is keen to point out is that while Harrods may

recreate the food and experience of an established restaurant, often right down to the décor, it is never looking to be considered merely an imitation.

The chefs always immerse themselves in development of the Harrods version to create an accurate extension of their own brand. This was particularly evident when Thomas Keller arrived to open The French Laundry, the original of which can be found in California.

absolutely incredible to see somebody of that stature taking that much care, and leading by example. And I think for my brigade of chefs and managers, working alongside one of the world’s most respected chefs, who was working so hard, it was a humbling experience.”

The same can be said of the Galvin Brothers – Chris and Jeff. Their commitment was cemented by Chris

‘You need to make sure that what you do enhances a reputation in place since 1849’ “Thomas is really generous with his knowledge and his experience, his time, and he personally got so involved in the project,” confirms Paul.

“We brought in most of the ingredients from his garden in California, and in the first 10 days of opening, he was there, and he made sure he tried each dish. For that time he was the first guy in and the last guy out, and it was

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suggesting that his wife, Sara, be brought in to run the front of house.

“It gives the café a fantastic sort of warm, family feel, and it sits really well within the brand portfolio we’ve got at Harrods, with luxury retail and luxury restaurants,” says Paul. “Chris works downstairs, his brother works upstairs, and then Chris’s wife, Sara, is at the front. Again it’s an incredible

GASTRONOMY

2.

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1. Chris, Sara and Jeff Galvin 2. Galvin Demoiselle

experience for the young team you’ve got around them, seeing them getting stuck in, rolling their sleeves up and just providing fantastic hospitality.”

With names such as these behind the food, how does the store see its outlets sitting alongside independent restaurants offering similar fare?

“We’re opening restaurants to provide fantastic food, drinks and service to our customers, not to chase accolades,” says Paul. “If people think we deserve one, then that’s a fantastic tribute to everyone involved, but it’s not the main objective. We are not really competing with, or comparing ourselves to, other restaurants that those chefs might operate in.”

But whether it will ever appear on the radar of Michelin’s inspectors or not, it sounds like working with a name like Harrods is a reward in itself for those invloved. “We are thrilled to have opened a restaurant in such an iconic London landmark“, said Sara Galvin, whose enthusiasm for the host venue is echoed by Paul, “It is very exciting. I feel a big responsibility as a custodian of the brand that you take good care of it and leave it better than you found it – as you would with any job. With the logistics and the infrastructure, your imagination and creativity can become a reality, and that’s the great thing about it.If you come up with compelling ideas or concepts, you can then do them, so it’s a very enabling brand to work for.

We’re very fortunate to be in charge of something as iconic as Harrods.”

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GASTRONOMY

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? The revered head pastry chef of California’s hippest eatery, The French Laundry, shares the five famous figures she’d most like to cook for...

Mother Teresa

Named one of the ‘world’s best pastry chefs’, Britishborn Claire Clark has filled the plates of diners in some of London’s most revered eateries, The Wolseley, Claridge’s, The Ritz and Bluebird among them. She was the first pastry chef for the House of Commons, was awarded an MBE for her contribution to catering and has revealed her most treasured dessert recipes in a cookbook, Indulge.

Nelson Mandela

Auguste Escoffier

Joshua Bell

Aston Martin

She is someone I admire hugely; she was such an amazing woman, so humble and selfless and she gave so much.

I would have loved the opportunity to talk to her.

What I’d Serve: I think she would have loved plain, simple food so I would cook her something home-prepared and wholesome, like a broth with lots of vegetables.

My father was a vicar and when I was very young – too young to remember – Nelson Mandela came to one of my father’s garden tea parties. I was running around, doing what all little girls do, oblivious to the very special guest in my parents’ garden eating my mother’s wonderful homemade cake!

What I’d Serve: I would have to make him a delicious, traditional English homemade cake, like a Victoria sponge or a lemon drizzle cake, reminiscent of my father’s tea parties.

To me he is the master! If I could cook for only one person it would have to be this French chef and restaurateur.

What I’d Serve: The perfect soufflé – a harlequin soufflé, half chocolate, half vanilla. It is a real art to be able to get the two halves of chocolate and vanilla split perfectly down the middle.

I was fortunate enough to hear this award-winning violinist play at the Albert Hall as part of the Proms Season, just before he was awarded Violinist of the Year. The acoustics in the hall are just incredible; he was playing a solo and I remember being completely mesmerised.

What I’d Serve: Something hearty from his American homeland. I’d go all out with a Wagyu beef hamburger but with an English twist of triple-cooked chips.

My last inspiration is anyone who would be prepared to take me out for a spin in an Aston Martin DB7 Vantage!

It is a truly awe-inspiring car.

What I’d Serve: A wonderful curry inspired by Chef Vivek Singh’s book, The Cinnamon Club. It would be hot and sultry, just like the car!

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GOLF

COURSE YOU CAN ADVANCE TIPS FROM THE PROFESSIONALS LESSON #8 Have you ever wondered what makes the tour professionals so consistent?

Apart from the hours of practice, it’s the ability to take what they learn on the range on to the course.

There is no doubting that muscle memory, created by repetition, is the key to making a correct movement.

However, taking that correct movement into an environment that isn’t confined by high fences and littered with luminous yardage markers, poses as one of the biggest challenges a golfer can face. The secret here is to practice your preshot routine…

A pre-shot routine is as individual as one’s golf swing and can range anywhere from three to thirty seconds. To give you an idea, I personally start my routine from behind the ball – staring down my target line. At this point, I have two half practice swings and then step into the ball. Three waggles of the

Have you played here yet?

Gleneagles, Scotland

Set amid magnificent countryside just an hour from both Glasgow and Edinburgh, Gleneagles is one of Scotland’s greatest settings for a game of golf – and one of the most historically rich too. There are three courses here, the oldest of which, The King’s, dates to 1919, while the last to be designed (by Jack Nicklaus) will play host to the Ryder Cup in 2014, giving the ground staff plenty of time to replace the divots you’ll slice from the fairway. Once you’re done shooting under par, head inside the beautiful on-site hotel , where Scotland’s only two-Michelin-starred chef holds sway in the kitchens. gleneagles.com - 59 -

club while looking at the target, and then I fire. I think of my golf swing as actually starting from when I’m in the first stage of my routine, which is behind the ball. That way, if I’m disturbed during my routine, I start again, from behind the ball.

Practice your routine on the driving range until you can feel a certain flow to the entire golf shot.

This is especially more important when you’re nearing a tournament, as you’ll need to eradicate any confusing swing thoughts from your mind and focus on preparing for the most important thing to face you that day – the shot in front of you.

George Kasparis is a Senior Golf Professional, Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club.

> If you’re still mad at your caddy for recommending that nine iron, how about buying one of these?

It’s The F1 Lithium, a remote-controlled trolley that moves forward, back, left and right at the touch of a button. What’s more, it folds down to fit into the smallest of sports car boots. How many caddies can do that? stewartgolf.co.uk

TRAVEL

Taste of success

Follow the journey from plant to plate on these revered gastronomic getaways...

01. Ceylon Tea Trails, Sri Lanka In Sri Lanka’s luscious countryside, ensconced in a blanket of vibrant pastures, sits the Bogawantalawa Valley. Here you’ll find the Ceylon Tea Trails estate, a plantation and luxurious idyll, which hosts private tasting sessions. High tea is the order of the day, prepared and served by a private chef and butler. teatrails.com 02. Fortnum & Mason, London This British institution has been providing goods for the monarchy’s

table since 1863, and its resident bees are given free reign of the capital’s royal parks. The hives, perched atop the emporium’s roof, are designed in Roman, Chinese and Gothic styles, and have views of Buckingham Palace. Take a look for yourself on a rooftop tour… fortnumandmason.com 03. The Palms, Zanzibar The ‘Spice Island’ is a treasure trove of exotic flavours, with acres of clove trees, cardamom bushes, and sweet-

Arctic Ocean

01

Pacific Ocean

Sri Lanka

Indian Ocean

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scented lemongrass. The Palms, an exclusive resort, offers plantation tours on which you can sample the seasonings – and then enjoy a finelyspiced feast on your private terrace. palms-zanzibar.com 04. Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, Namibia You may not believe it, but the plains of the Kalahari Desert are brimming with truffles, and May is the prime time for harvesting the nutty delicacies. Tswalu Kalahari Reserve

offers the chance for aficionados to forage for their own. The luxury retreat features an airstrip, and accommodation for just ten guests. tswalu.com 05. Rabot Estate, St. Lucia Owned by haute chocolatier Hotel Chocolat, this peaceful plantation boasts private accommodation in the midst of its verdant cocoa crop, and hosts guided visits on which you can make your own bar by hand.

The elegant Boucan restaurant

London

05

St Lucia

features a chocolatey twist on many of its dishes, too – like rib eye steak with dark chocolate and port sauce. thehotelchocolat.com 06. Frégate Island Private, Seychelles The azure waters around this tropical retreat offer some of the world’s finest deep-sea fishing. Cast a line from your private vessel, and reel in a bounty of dorado, yellow-fin tuna and wahoo – or watch as an expert team do the hard work for you. fregate.com

02

Atlantic Ocean

Seychelles

06

Zanzibar Namibia

Southern Ocean

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03 04

San Sebastian Feast on a glorious menu of music, dance, and worldclass gastronomy in the heart of Spain’s Basque Region

The Spanish are known for their national pride, but in this peaceful city on the coast of Bay of Biscay it’s verging on zealousness. In San Sebastian, Basque culture isn’t something you have to seek out – it’s a way of life. Take tapas, for example. It’s known as pintxos here, and the myriad dishes are widely regarded as some of the country’s finest. You’ll find juicy king prawns, rich ratatouille, and veal cheeks so tender you hardly need chew – the tiny bars (you’ll find one on almost every street) are brimming with fresh concoctions, lovingly created by chefs from generations-old recipes.

Good food is so ingrained in local identity that it’s no surprise the city is glittering with Michelin stars. Arzak (00 34 943 278 465) which

specialises in contemporary Basque cuisine, has a neighbouring kitchen called Laboratory Arzak – a Blumenthal-esque workshop in which the restaurant’s dishes are perfected and updated.

And in the nearby town of Lasarte-Oria, the Martin Berasategui (00 34 943 366 471) tasting menu is truly accomplished – crowned by a chocolate frost dessert with asparagus, caramelcoated pumpkin and cocoa sorbet.

Bull fighting is big business here, despite being controversial throughout Spain. The Illumbe Bullring, a relatively new construction in the heart of the city, hosts regular events throughout the year for the bloodthirsty (and curious).

A night out at the bull ring is a lively way to get a flavour of the city and its love of the traditional

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Images: Corbis / Arabian Eye; Shutterstock

sport; it is ingrained in Basque culture, and the elaborate costumes and rituals give the events a real sense of history.

Every month, the city finds a new excuse to party – and over the summer it’s almost impossible to visit without stumbling across a fiesta. Semana Grande, in August, is a fiery introduction to Spain’s national pyromania: it begins with a traditional cañonazo (cannon shot), followed by seven spectacular days of fireworks, with a competition crescendo in which spectators choose the best display.

July sees the finest Latin performers descend on the city for Tango de Sitges, a festival of dance and music from throughout Spain and South America. Impromptu performances crop up all over the city, but watch out – even those with two left feet are encouraged to join in.

The Jazzaldia festival rolls into town in July, gathering both established and up-coming jazz and blues names – this year you’ll find Madeline Peyroux, Melody Gardot, and Antony and The Johnsons & Orkestra. The Musical Fortnight,

meanwhile, offers a more classical repertoire, is hot on its heels at the end of July; orchestras from all over the world are invited to perform in theatres throughout the city, attracting both popular and lesser-known works to the stage.

Tamborrada, a week-long festival of local culture, brings the city to life every January with al fresco bertsolari (improvised poetry) performances, as well as rowing boat competitions and sports such as stone lifting and oxen races. It’s a quaint reminder of the best of the Basque, but scoff at your peril – the events are taken seriously by locals, and it’s charming to see traditional past-times amongst a calendar of international events.

The city has come a long way since its origins as a sleepy fishing village, and it looks set to grow over the next few years; in 2016, the city will be a European Capital of Culture, which will no doubt bring an all-singing-all-dancing array of attractions. But the best thing about visiting now? You’ll have the place largely to yourself.

As well as all those Michelin-starred haunts...

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Kiev Ukraine’s glittering capital is home to some of Europe’s most important cultural treasures, but it still has ambitions for more

After shaking off its Soviet Era shackles, Kiev is fast becoming one of the most important cultural destinations in Europe. It’s one of the continent’s oldest cities, with roots that can be traced back over one thousand years – and its inhabitants are understandably proud. In fact, they make a point of showcasing its history at every turn; pick a century, and Kiev is sure to have a tale to tell.

As with most stories, the best place to start is at the beginning – so commence your visit at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra cave monastery.

It was founded in 1077, hand-dug by monks who lived there as hermits. A series of trails link the underground chambers, and today you can explore the candle-lit caverns. But this is no place for claustrophobes: it’s a tight squeeze, and the mummified bodies of the monks lend the experience a truly eerie ambiance. Back on ground level, the gold domes of the Pechersk Lavra building glimmer in the sun.

The National Art Museum of Ukraine holds some of the country’s rarest treasures: browse priceless Byzantine-era wooden reliefs, West-Ukrainian artwork dating back to the Middle Ages, and an impressive collection of Baroque paintings. The sense of history here is staggering, and it’s easy to see why the locals are so proud of their heritage.

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Images: Photolibrary; Shutterstock

Kiev’s State Museum of Ukrainian Decorative Folk Art holds exhibits that span from the 15th century to present day. The collection has taken over 100 years to amass, and now totals over 70,000 pieces of traditional folk crafts. There is a sizeable gathering of Soviet-Era artwork too – including clothing, glassware, embroidery and carvings – which gives a fascinating insight into life under Stalinist rule.

A short drive from the city centre, in a small village called Pirogovo, the Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life stretches out over 150 hectares. This is an open-air exhibition of national heritage, with traditional architecture from all regions of the country. Some of the structures are originals, others are faithful replicas – and the 40,000-strong collection of Ukrainian ethnography includes costumes, carpets, ceramics and musical instruments.

The museum’s highlight, however, is the ensemble of wooden windmills which form a backdrop for the summer folk music festivals.

Back in the city, the Andriyivskyy Descent links 18th-century Ukraine with modern-day life. Often described as the ‘Montmartre of Kiev’, the cobbled road winds steeply from the Upper Town area to Podil, a historicallycommercial hub. Teeter into baroque buildings,

antique bookshops (home to some of the city’s rarest tomes), and the charming One Street Museum which contains yet more exhibits from Ukraine’s colourful past. Kiev Day brings street entertainment, crowds in national costumes, and an abundance of places to sample traditional food – this year, the party falls on 30 May. For world-class dance and opera programmes, the Kiev Opera Theatre and Lesya Ukrainka Theatre attract big-name international tours as well as Ukraine’s finest acts. The Kiev Opera Group, which is based at the Opera Theatre, has an extensive repertoire of classical and contemporary works; the theatre boasts one of Europe’s largest stages, and the troupe’s spectacular performances attract audiences from all over the globe.

Looking to the future, the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Cultural Art and Museum Complex is set to breathe new life into the city’s artistic offerings. A number of its recital spaces are already hosting art exhibitions, shows and concerts, but more projects are planned.

Workshops, cafés, conference rooms and largescale exhibition centres will make this one of Europe’s most expansive artistic hubs – and its opening in 2014 is one of the city’s most ambitious cultural projects to date.

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TRAVEL

A TASTER OF VENICE

In Italy’s most romantic city, it’s the fresh, local produce that seduces Mark C O’Flaherty

I

f I lived within walking distance of the Rialto Market, I’d never buy groceries anywhere else.

As someone who acquires cookbooks on a seemingly weekly basis, the ancient mercantile heart of Venice feels like the most visually seductive and stimulating place on earth. This isn’t a Disneyfied attraction for tourists: this is where Venetians come for their weekly and daily shop.

On a golden Tuesday morning in late summer, the sun shines through crimson flags bearing the image of the winged lion of St Mark, across stalls full of the fishing spoils of the Adriatic, laid out on ice like fine iridescent jewellery. Stallholders sip their mid-morning spritzes in the shade while fabulously wizened nonnas in elegant pussybow-collared blouses shop for still-twitching crustacea, just-fished prawns with butterfly markings, and steaks from Mesozoically vast swordfish.

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TRAVEL

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Multicoloured spices are plated up in Missoni-like patterns in the window of Drogheria Mascari, and in the fruit and vegetable market the sweet smell of 20 different types of tomato drifts over beautiful, deep purple artichokes, boxed like dark velvet roses.

“So! What are we going to make?” asks Enrica Rocca. She’s not so much a chef as a force of nature, with a mane of curly hair and several generations of Venetian blood in her. When Rocca isn’t feeding 500 guests for Venice in Peril benefit galas, she hosts intimate day-long cookery classes that start with the creamiest cappuccino in the city – at Caffè del Doge – and then move on to the market, where she’s greeted by name at each stall. She surveys what’s good, explains why that is, bags it up and then takes her students back to her state-of-theart kitchen, fashioned out of the old laundry in her family’s palazzo. From the window, Enrica tells me, had I a rod, I could fish fantastic grey mullet from the canal below.

It’s more of a party than a class, although visitors do learn the vital importance of generosity with salt: “If you don’t eat junk food, salt is fine.

And when you cook pasta, the water should be as salty as the Adriatic.”

Her insider perspective on dining in the city is priceless. A one-day class is one thing, but a week’s holiday based around Enrica’s tips keeps the dreaded ‘tourist menu’ at bay, guiding you away from the Caffè Florian and towards local favourites – although there are still some inescapable, excellent clichés to enjoy.

‘The ancient mercantile heart of Venice feels like the most visually seductive and stimulating place on earth’

“The best bellini in Venice is on the rooftop of the Hilton,” she tells me over a spritz at Osteria alla Alba, a graffiti-covered bar several alleyways off the main tourist beat of the Rialto.

Later that week I dutifully take the ferry across to the Molino Stucky Hilton, once a vast 19th-century redbrick flourmill, now a grand hotel, and still a powerful, strikingly industrial presence on the banks of Giudecca, and the lift up to the Skyline terrace.

The view across the water to St Mark’s is glorious and the sunset painterly, but alas there aren’t any peaches. “I wasn’t happy with them today, so we’re not making bellinis,” says Marino, the manager. Instead, I float back across the water to another of Enrica’s recommendations, L’Osteria di Santa Marina. My waiter rattles off the day’s specials and I order a large plate of raw seafood and the tagliolini al nero di seppia alla

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busara. The jet-black pasta dish with squid is complex and wonderful, the pesce crudo, too. Over several trips to Venice, I’ve developed an obsession with raw prawns, whose soft and rich texture and flavour bear no relation to their cooked siblings. And at Santa Marina – a mid-range restaurant that shouldn’t cost you more than $70 per head – they’re particularly excellent.

I get my bellini the next day at the Cipriani – the best-known hotel in the city, its rooms and gardens oozing elegant, classic, matter-of-fact wealth.

This is as rarefied as Venice gets.

Its bellini, first created by Giuseppe Cipriani in the 1940, is the stuff of legend. Regular guests – and the most privileged of locals – are greeted in hushed tones at the poolside by title and surname. Walter, the head bartender, has been here since the 1970s, and remembers Enrica’s father and uncle well.

TRAVEL

If you ask him nicely, Walter will make you a bellini the old-fashioned way, painstakingly hand squeezing each white peach and blending it with raspberry, lemon juice and a one-third measure of Nino Franco Valdobbiadene prosecco.

Some of the Venetians’ favourite dining rooms are just a few steps from the main tourist thoroughfares.

The Metropole Hotel, adjacent to St Mark’s Square, is a family-run hotel and one of the loveliest places to stay in the city, with a tranquil garden and romantic, antique-filled rooms, walls swathed in heavy embroidered fabrics. It also has a two Michelinstarred restaurant, MET, which locals adore. Chef Corrado Fasolato doesn’t have a single tasting menu; he has a whole book full of them, themed on ingredients from the Veneto.

There’s nothing staid about the MET experience – staff wear Gucci ballet pumps and rock’n’roll frock coats – and the flavours are modern and revelatory, from scallops with a flourish of Parma violet to wholewheat bigoli pasta with sardines in oyster stew. A basil and tomato consommé prepared in a stove-top espressomaker has the whole table in raptures: “Alchemy!” declares Enrica.

Halfway down the Grand Canal, the restaurant at the Philippe Starckdesigned hotel Palazzina Grassi has, after months of residents-only exclusivity, opened to the public.

You can sit at the counter while chef Luigi Frascella cooks with a mix of Japanese and Italian styles resulting in what many – including Enrica Rocca – claim is the best food in all of Venice. “I buy all my fish in Santa Margherita Square rather than at the Rialto,” says Luigi. “It’s more expensive, but it’s entirely local.” He serves up a succession of exquisite plates: a raw fish with yellow tigerstripe iridescence that he says is “like

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Images: Corbis / Arabian Eye; Supplied Text: Mark C O’Flaherty / The Independent / The Interview People

‘The flavours at MET are modern and revelatory, from scallops with a flourish of Parma violet to bigoli pasta with sardines in oyster stew’

a turbot, but exclusive to Venice”; a cuttlefish dish surrounded by ink ragu; malfatti ravioli with walnut, ricotta and aubergine. He puts an Italian spin on tempura, creating his batter with prosecco and polenta.

The whole evening is inspired and destined for Michelin-starred greatness.

There are less rarefied specialities to enjoy in Venice. “You must go for mozzarella in carrozza at Rosticceria Gislon,” advises Metropole owner Gloria Beggiato, after my dinner at MET. “It’s a typically Venetian sandwich.” I find Gislon in an alleyway close to the Rialto: a bustling but largely unlovely counter-service café.

I try both varieties of deep-fried mozzarella ‘carriage’ – one with anchovy – washed down with an Aperol spritz, and they’re so greasy that afterwards I feel I could turn a palazzo wall transparent just by breathing on it. A half-sandwich would suffice.

Many of the vegetables I pass in the Rialto Market after my visit to Gislon still come from nearby islands out in the lagoon, although farming isn’t as big an industry as it used to be.

Similarly, locals’ restaurants out on the islands are disappearing. Trattoria alle Vignole, on the island of Vignole, is one of the few still in business. You get a water taxi or private boat – it’s not on any vaporetto route – to the gates of its garden, and eat al fresco in the shade of its trees.

Tourists seldom make it this far from the banks of the Grand Canal.

On my visit, I joined a table of locals who feasted on giant horse steaks, jet black pasta dishes, razor clams and stuffed, battered zucchini flowers. The menu was a comprehensive overview of brilliant and basic Venetian cooking, and the experience of eating there was as Italian as can be. At the end of the meal the captain of my boat finished his flute of prosecco, downed an espresso and motored me back at high speed to Enrica’s kitchen.

On my last evening in the Rocca palazzo, I deep-fried tiny prawns and ate them straight from the pan, hot and crunchy. Then I prepared a fresh tomato sauce with cherry tomatoes (“so you don’t have to bother with any peeling – they boil right down”) and a risotto nero with squid. As a group of five we roasted mackerel in caramelised soy sauce, pan-fried calamari with parsley, lemon and chilli, and simmered fagioli beans with rosemary, their marbled white and fuchsia patterns making the shelled fagioli resemble the most beautiful pieces of jewellery.

Nothing was complicated, everything was wonderful. “What goes in, comes out,” said Enrica. “Nothing more or nothing less.” Venice may be one of the most historic and ornate cities in the world, but the secret of its food rests in its freshness and simplicity. And, of course, the salt.

Never forget the salt.

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LIFE LESSONS

WHAT I KNOW NOW

Adam Goldstein

President & CEO, Royal Caribbean International I have learned many lessons during my 24 years at my current company. One of those lessons is the imperative of being able to sift through a lot of facts and material to get to the key points quickly.

I have learned that to lead, one must first envision oneself as a leader. Most people do not easily imagine themselves in a true position of leadership. Business leadership requires endless decision making with the certainty that a meaningful percentage of those decisions will be wrong. I need to be alert to changing circumstances and the input of my colleagues, to spot quickly where I need to make corrections.

At Royal Caribbean International, we talk about being above and beyond compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. In today’s society, the implication for a leader is that one must be above reproach at all times, both personally and professionally. The CEO sets the ‘tone at the top’ in every way and is evaluated both inside the company and externally across every dimension.

We live in a society where business leaders are treated as if they are the enterprise. This is not even close to the truth. In our case, Royal Caribbean International is a world class cruise brand because of the inspiring effort of the men and women who form our workforce.

When my children were very young, many people advised me to make sure I made time for them while they were growing up. I listened and applied that wisdom – this continues to be, without doubt, the most important lesson of all.

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