Neue luxury Issue 4

A GLOBAL DIALOGUE ON LUXURY IN THE ��ST CENTURY

Issue No.4 | AUD $14.95

neueluxury.com

L’ART DU CHAMPAGNE SINCE 1836.

WELCOME TO NEUE LUXURY A note from our Editor in Chief

EDITOR IN CHIEF Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com Telephone +61 3 9687 4899

JOHN ALBRECHT

EDITOR Roj Amedi roj@neueluxury.com EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Roennfeldt david@neueluxury.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lachlan Sumner lachlan@neueluxury.com PRODUCTION Maryanne Stanic maryanne@neueluxury.com

Welcome to the fourth issue of Neue Luxury. Our obsession issue.

Obsession is a strange beast. Heterogeneous in nature and more often than not stigmatised as being a negative affliction, condition or disorder to which we have no agency and to which we are in some way bound or subjugated.

For some, obsession can be liberating, a modus operandi of sorts that provides an effectual mechanism to sharpen resolve, channel effort or help clarify intent.

For others, obsession can be a burden of unease, compulsion, obligation, apprehension and fear. I must admit that in first thinking about the theme and narrative of this issue, I had never thought of obsession in negative terms, as something that if left unabated would result in a landscape of disadvantage, disruption or harm.

That’s not to say that I’m not obsessive or indeed obsessed. I admit to being (or having as the case may be) both of these things. Over the years I have ruminated about its origin, motive and indeed the legacy that obsession will have in determining who I am, what I will do and who I will become. My earliest recollection of obsession is at the age of four. I remember being resolute, controlled, determined and deliberate without doubt of ability or fear of consequence. I was focused on achieving that which I had set my mind to. And while my avocation at the time was to empty the contents of our kindergarten’s communal sand pit over the fence into the vacant adjoining property, I now come to realise that obsession takes many forms and has many dimensions. One cannot speak of obsession without understanding and interrogating motive.

Our September issue is obsessed with the iconoclasts, leaders, makers and brands that pursue their ideas relentlessly, unceasingly and with a singular vision that makes it possible for them to change our view of the world. We explore the art of edification and how the luxury bestowed upon the Roman Catacomb Saints (p2) played a role in abating the iconoclasm of the 17th century. We contrast the obsessions of Italian architect Achille Salvagni (p17) with that of curator, director and polygot, Adeline Ooi (p20). Without apprehension, fear or anxiety we obsess over the complex, evocative and monumental portraiture of artist Johan Van Mullem (p4) and contrast his oeuvre with that of botanical artist, Azuma Makoto (p7). In expanding our global footprint we also travel a few miles outside the Basque city of San Sebastián to speak with Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz—a man whose vision and culinary obsessions know no bounds (p9).

I trust that you will enjoy the issue. I know that our team has obsessed over every aspect of it in order to realise our vision and live up to our promise.

BRETT PHILLIPS Founder & Editor in Chief

FINANCIAL CONTROLLER Troy Roennfeldt troy@neueluxury.com SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com INTERNS Tom Clapin

INSIGHT

ACCOUNTS Gary Charman gary@neueluxury.com ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com PUBLISHER 3 Deep 35A/91 Moreland Street Footscray, Victoria 3011 Australia Telephone +61 3 9687 4899 Facsimile +61 3 9687 5133 Email: info@3deep.com.au Web: www.3deep.com.au © Neue Luxury MMXV ISSN: 2201-6309 SPECIAL THANKS:

John Albrecht, Roj Amedi, Donna Anthony, Fiona Banner, Les Banner, Niamh Barry, Hayley Bonham, Ashley Bramich, Daniel Burns, Mark Buxton, Fiona Byrne, Michelle Campbell, Mario-Luca Carlucci, Earl Carter, Rosanna Cator, Gary Charman, Tom Clapin, Derek Cohen, Alessandro Corallo, Stephen Crafti, Cara Cunningham, Neil Davies, Paola DiTrocchio, Aaron Dunn, Ray Edgar, Inge Fransen, Rainald Franz, David Gonzalvo Gargallo, Andy Gaunt, Sam Gray, Jonathan Hallinan, Briony Hamilton, Angela Hesson, Graham Imeson, Flavio Incarbone, Damian J Cessario, Karina Jessica, Paul Koudounaris, Shawn Kuruneru, David LaChapelle, Benjamin Law, Vincent Lazzara, Monique Le Grand, Bonnie Ledsam, Katarina Ljahovic, Andoni Luiz Aduriz, Azuma Makoto, Stephanie Marsh, Matthew Martin, Thomas Matyk, Peter McNeil, Kyungah Min, Sean Mulquiney, Eri Narita, Susana Nieto Muñoz, Adeline Ooi, Charlemagne Palestine, Ally Parry, Napoleon Perdis, George Pesutto, Brett Phillips, Angelika Pirkl, Allain Pool, John Poulakis, Mary Poulakis, Ross Poulakis, Steven Pranica, Marek Reichman, Michiel Reuevecamp, Tim Richardson, Georgio Riello, David Roennfeldt, Troy Roennfeldt, Noriaki Sakamoto, Achille Salvagni, Kathryn Simon, Tanit Sindin Cordery, Kaya Sorhaindo, Maryanne Stanic, Lachlan Sumner, Melvin Tanaya, Daniel Thawley, Paul Tierney, Sissel Tolaas, Natalie Toman, Megan Travers, Al Trombetta, Kathleen Twentyman, Lyna Ty, Walter Van Beirendonck, Johan Van Mullem, Natalie Van Mullum, Oscar Villegas, Lucy Waddington, Alice Walters, Samuel Willett, Christian Witt-Dörring, Carla Wood. 101 Collins Street, 3 Deep, Achille Salvagni Architetti, AKG Images, Art Basel, BPM, Corinne Vionnet, Cover to Cover, CTC Commercial Translation Centre, David LaChapelle, Execujet, Ferretti Group, Folie Á Plusieurs, Harrolds Luxury Department Store, IPG Media, Leonard Joel, MagCirc, MAK–Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, Mugaritz, Multyflex, National Gallery of Victoria, Publishers Internationale, Qantas, Song for the Mute, Sonos, Sutton PR Asia, Vranken Pommery, Walter Van Beirendonck.

Page footer image credits: Maimonides (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Blaisio Ugolino). Beau Brummell (commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BrummellEngrvFrmMiniature). Ugo Betti (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Indeciso42). Peter Saville (flickr.com/photos/dullhunk). Kanye West (lickr.com/photos/super45). Barbra Streisand (commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/User:lifescript). Paul Getty (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J_Paul_Getty_crop.jpg). Novalis (commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Novalis.jpg). Michelangelo (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michelangelo-Buonarroti1.jpg).

Henry Moore (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Moore_by_Wolleh.jpg). Tokujin Yoshioka (flickr.com/photos/ kartellpeople). IM Pei (flickr.com/photos/lge). Virginia Wolf (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virginia_Woolf_1939.jpg).

Ralph Waldo Emerson (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emerson_seated.jpg). Claude Monet (commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Claude_Monet_1899_Nadar.jpg). Lennard J Davis (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikilen.jpg). Henry James (flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house). George Santayana (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Santayana_2.jpg).

Aristotle (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jastrow). Zjou Weihui (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zhou_Weihui. jpg). Steven Spielberg (flickr.com/photos/x_trish). Samuel Johnson (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Johnson_ portrait.jpg). JJ Abrams (flickr.com/photos/shankbone). Michael Caine (flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one). Robert Bly (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poetry_Out_Loud_MN_finals_27.jpg). Robert Ly (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Poetry_Out_Loud_MN_finals_27.jpg). Robert Genn (flickr.com/photos/Clancy Dennehy). Michael Jackson (commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Jackson_(1988).jpg). Jeff Koons (flickr.com/photos/91293224@N02/). William Ellery Channing (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WilliamElleryChanning.jpg). Josh Billings (http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Josh_Billings_TCS_1.2486_cropped.jpg).

Neue Selects: Jean-Claude Ella (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Claude_Ellena). Bertrand Duchaufour. Photo by Mikael Vojinovic. For more: Jean-Claude Ellena: www.fredericmalle.com/eu/perfumers/jean-claude-ellena. Antoine Lie: www.nose.fr/en/noses/antoine-lie. Bertrand Duchaufour: www.artisanparfumeur.com. Mark Buxton: www.markbuxton. com. Jerome di Marino: www.linkedin.com/pub/j%C3%A9r%C3%B4me-di-marino/91/489/ba8. Jean Jacques: www. perfumeshrine.blogspot.com.au/2007/10/interview-with-perfumer-jean-jacques.html. Sylvia Fischer: www.nubeperfume. com/eng/concept.html.

Neue Collectors: Moon, 2013. 24kt gold-plated, antiqued finish cast bronze and glass, 43x24x8. Photo by Paolo Petrignani.

Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Angel and Devil, 2013. Cast bronze table mirrors, one polished and protected and one burnished and protected finish, 33x22x18. Photo by Maison Gerard. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Photo by Paolo Petrignani. Spider, 2013. 24kt gold-plated, antiqued finish cast bronze and burnished and protected bronze and back-lit onyx, 6x40W Clear E27, 53x190x151. Photo by Paolo Petrignani. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier.Bubbles, 2013. 24kt gold-plated bronze and backlit onyx table lamp with black Zimbabwe granite base, LED, 1.5watt bulbs,60x34x28. Photo by Maison Gerard. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Emerald, 2013. Varnished fiberglass on burnished cast bronze base, 45x42x50. Photo by Maison Gerard. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Gio, 2013. Royal oak with polished and protected smooth brass top, inset handles and decoration, tapered legs in burnished and protected smooth brass, royal oak interior, glass shelves, 90x115x35. Photo by Achille Salvagni Atelier. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Tango, 2014. Console in Noir Dorè marble top and cast bronze structure with both burnished and polished finish, 80x130x40. Photo by Maison Gerard.

Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Nemo, 2013.Conical onyx lamp base with polished brass decorations and polished brass finial with organic silk lamp shade, 85x40x25. Photo by Maison Gerard. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Oyster, 2013.

Concave patinated cast bronze and backlit onyx sconce with 40w clear E14, 50x60x15. Photo by Maison Gerard. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier. Saturn, 2013. Concave patinated cast bronze and backlit onyx sconce, 1x20W Halogen G4 Bi-Pin, 32x13. Photo by Maison Gerard. Courtesy of Achille Salvagni Atelier.

Disclaimer: Neue Luxury is published twice yearly by 3 Deep Design Pty Ltd. 35A/91 Moreland Street, Footscray Victoria 3011 Australia. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is strictly prohibited. Every effort has been made to ensure that all information is correct at the time of publishing. Opinions published are not necessarily those of the editor nor the publisher. Every effort has been made to trace accurate ownership of copyright materials used. Errors or omissions will be corrected upon request provided notification is sent to the publisher. The moral rights of the authors have been observed.

Cover image supplied courtesy of the artist: Johan Van Mullem Ink on kadapak, 180x140. Photo by Edwin Smet.

By Ray Edgar

Once upon a time collectors were as eclectic and obsessive as the grand auction house themselves and true collectors filled their homes with their obsessions. “It’s become too sanitised,” says John Albrecht, proprietor and managing director of Leonard Joel, lamenting a change in collecting habits.

Since its inception 95 years ago Leonard Joel has been a grand auction house. “We basically sell every category across every price point,” explains Albrecht.

However, in the world of collecting, it’s the collectors themselves who are the rare commodity. Architecture is partly to blame for changing tastes.

Once bountiful, baroque interiors—synonymous with the classic collector —have been replaced by far more minimalist interiors. Meanwhile values too have changed—price, not aesthetic, dominates discussion.

Albrecht marks the change occurring in the 1980s. “Pre-1980s was the period where connoisseurs loved things because they were beautiful, not because they were valuable. That is rarely found today.”

As part of the venerable auction house’s 95th anniversary celebrations, Albrecht produced a book on ninety-five treasures that captured the soul and eclecticism of collecting. Albrecht reflects on the public’s changing taste and obsessions.

RAY EDGAR: What’s the distinction between passion and obsession?

JOHN ALBRECHT: Obsession is passion out of control.

RE: What creates an obsession?

JA: People ultimately collect memories. If bottle-tops remind them of something, that’s usually where the obsession begins. There’s almost always an element of nostalgia driving a collector.

RE: Who are the obsessive collectors?

JA: I’ve never met a barrister that didn’t collect in an interesting way— anything from a stuffed piranha to a non-descript European painting.

RE: Do collectors fit a particular demographic?

JA: It’s not age specific, but they undoubtedly require the funding to make the initial investment.

RE: What’s the difference between collecting and hoarding?

JA: Collecting is a socially acceptable form of hoarding. I was discussing hoarding with a colleague from Christie’s London and the profound change in taste that’s occurred in the last ten years. She called it the end of horror vacui, ‘fear of the void’. In the Victorian period people just wanted to fill their houses with things. Now people are not afraid of space. They look more for a signature piece, rather than ten things to represent their tastes and vision.

RE: I’ve noticed that many of the items in the 95th anniversary book are quite unconventional.

JA: Collectors and buyers will pay attention to pieces that are both visually stimulating and quirky. Let’s say the Rare Late Victoria Diamond Pendant, It wasn’t René Lalique or 1920s Cartier, but it was very visually stunning.

That’s what I find satisfying. It doesn’t have to be a brand. The most extreme example was when Leonard Joel auctioned Andy Mac’s [pioneering] collection of street art.

RE: Who acquired Freeze Mutherstika − This is a fukup!, the mammoth 15m mural produced for the Big Day Out festival?

JA: Andrew King and Sandra Powell, who are both major urban art collectors in Melbourne. One of those rare couples that have the courage to sell their traditional collection and start again. It’s quite an emotional effort to free oneself of thirty years of collecting and start completely afresh. They sold a whole lot of traditional modern period art: Boyds, Becketts, Blackmans.

They now focus on urban street art.

RE: European emigres generated much of the post-war auction market, what’s the subsequent effect of Asian migration on the Australian art market?

JA: The most notable phenomenon in the last eight years has been a very affluent Asian community initiating the repatriation and reassessment of their own art and artefacts. The most notable example in the antiques industry is the 18th century Qing dynasty vase that turned up in an English provincial auction house, which was eventually sold for £65 million.

RE: What else is highly coveted at present?

JA: Anything in post-war modern design: furniture, objects, lighting, fittings.

RE: What’s driving the popularity of mid-century design?

JA: Globally there has been a profound change of taste in the past ten years and a movement away from the traditional. It’s being influenced by the way people live. Everyone has lots of windows and no walls. Architecture has had a profound affect on the way people collect.

RE: Out of all of the obsessive collectors, the people who unwittingly came across an object of extreme value, like the Rare Late Victoria Diamond Pendant or the Rare Antique Natural Pearl, are what seem to truly excite you.

JA: It was complete chance that the natural pearl survived in a box of costume jewellery for the best part of 50 years. It went to a Fifth Avenue jeweller in New York for $US130,000, and really made a difference in the lives of those who sold the piece. They had no idea what they had. They’re the stories I really like. When you have gracious undemanding sellers, you can often deliver a sensational result. I describe our industry as ‘the economy of beautiful things and interesting people’. When interesting people, with beautiful stories and beautiful things come together; that to me is exciting. It’s not necessarily about the most valuable things.

RE: The Rare Victorian Sterling Silver Mounted Novelty Claret Jug in the form of a Walrus seems more quirky than beautiful.

JA: It went to London in the end. If it’s quirky and challenging and a little bit spooky and not just pleasant, it will find a market. There was a whole Victorian period where it got pretty grotesque—attaching live beetles to brooches and rendering with animals. The Victorian period has a reputation for a reason, being sort of lavish, over the top and nonsensical.

RE: Yet the Victorian period usually suggests stuffiness?

JA: Both. Decadent and stuffy. But definitely decadent, completely decadent.

RE: Are we less decadent now?

JA: Now you’ve got a different type of collector. It’s not about accumulating as many Lalique or Moorcroft vases or Queen Anne silver. It’s just: ‘I’d love to own a piece one day and I know where it will live when I acquire it.’

I find that approach quite sanitised.

RE: Why are people obsessively collecting vintage luggage by fashion houses like Louis Vuitton?

JA: There is a big market for brand luggage internationally. Particularly Louis Vuitton and Hermès. When you buy something new, it doesn’t have a soul. The trend is also perhaps a reaction against the mass produced, the polished and the perfect.

RE: What’s the difference between imperfection and rarity?

JA: I don’t think imperfection generates rarity, but imperfection gives objects humanity.

RE: How does collecting challenge the idea of luxury?

JA: Luxury has become much more emotive now. We are ultimately buying and selling things imbued with a whole lot of other feelings. Luxury is not about being brand new. It’s about a beautiful weathered Louis Vuitton travelling case, which now can be something I can put my feet on. I love thinking about where it has travelled, that’s luxury. There is something emotional about it.

FOR MORE WWW.LEONARDJOEL.COM.AU

NEUE SELECTS Olfactory obsessions

When it comes to the world of niche and artisanal perfumery, it’s easy to obsess. As perhaps one of the most elegant and esoteric nomenclatures of art and science, haute perfumery has the ability to bottle the very best of artistic human endeavour. And while we know that scent stimulates the region of the brain responsible for authentic emotional engagement—its effect on our psyche stronger than sight, hearing, touch and taste combined —what of the sensory agents who engineer these triggers? Those who seduce, intrigue and move us to think and act. Neue Luxury peeled back the label to reveal seven of the brightest and most talented noses alive.

JEAN-CLAUDE ELLENA Jean-Claude Ellena is undoubtedly one of the worlds most celebrated perfumers. Born in Grasse, on the French Riviera, as the son of a perfumer, Ellena became the first student of the Givaudan perfumery school in 1968. In 1983 he joined Givaudan Paris as chief perfumer and in 1990 became one of the founding members of the Osmothèque, an international scent archive based in Versailles. Since 2004, Ellena has been the exclusive in-house perfumer for Hermès, as well as creating an incredible body of work for Amouage, Balenciaga, Bulgari, Cartier, Christian Lacroix, Frédéric Malle, Lalique and Yves Saint Laurent throughout his career. Ellena is inspired by daily life and often remarks “perfume is a poetry of souvenirs, and mainly the creation of the spirit”.

ANTOINE LIE Born in Strasbourg, France, Antoine Lie has always obsessed about the smell of things. Balancing the demands of an insatiable perfume industry with the artisanal sensibilities required to create lasting and memorable works, Lie has often been described as both subversive and commercial in the same sentence.

Supporting this claim is the dichotomy and depth of his work on a broad spectrum of unique scents including Wonderwood (Comme des Garçons), Eau de Protection (Etat Libre d’Orange) and RED +MA (Blood Concept). After working with the major perfume houses and luxury brands such as Ermenegildo Zegna, Givenchy, Kenzo, Tom of Finland, Valentino and Versace, Lie joined the Paris perfumery team of Takasago in 2011.

SYLVIE FISCHER Sylvie Fischer is somewhat of a rare ingredient in the olfactory world, as the daughter of a perfumer; she was raised in the world of fragrance. Driven by a deep love of art, Fischer commenced her apprenticeship at the age of twenty followed by an internship at French fragrance house Robertet. Having refined her skills under the watchful eye of Pierre Bourdon and Michel Almairac, Fischer then took up her current position at Takasago. Having been ‘the nose’ behind an incredible breath and depth of both commercial and haute fragrances, Fischer’s collaboration with master perfumers Francoise Caron, Antoine Lie and Nicolas Bonneville for fragrance house Nu_Be, is notable for its exploration of elements inspired by the origin of the cosmos.

JEAN JACQUES Jean Jacques began his career as an accomplished jazz musician, working with notes and tones of an entirely different nature. After securing his degree in biochemistry in 1993, he entered ISIPCA in France and began practicing at Quest International, working alongside Pierre Bourdon then Maurice Roucel. In 1994 he was recruited by Kao Corporation and in 1997 moved to Takasago. With Sergei Rachmaninoff noted as one of his great idols, it is no surprise that Jean Jacques has created a spectrum of intriguing and complex creations such as Balmya for Balmain, Absolutely for Givenchy, Pour Homme for Ted Lapidus, Tous Les Parfums for Masaki Paris, Sun Rise Women for Jil Sander and C’est La Fête for Christian Lacroix (co-created with Francis Kurkdjian).

MARK BUXTON Born in England and raised outside of Hamburg, Germany, Mark Buxton is above all a hedonist, wine connoisseur and talented cook with a passion for antiques. With over 25 years of experience in fine fragrance creation, Buxton has collaborated with leading international fragrance houses and luxury brands as diverse as Givenchy, Versace, Van Cleef & Arpels, Paco Rabanne, Lagerfeld, Burberry, Cartier, Chopard and Ferré. His unique sensory handwriting was discovered when he created the first fragrances for Comme des Garçons Parfums and which in turn quickly positioned him as a visionary in haute perfumery.

BERTRAND DUCHAUFOUR Bertrand Duchaufour commenced his career in 1985, working as a perfumer with the Florasynth Group in Grasse, France. Since 2008, Duchaufour has been a ‘perfumer in residence’ with L’Artisan Parfumeur, one of the worlds most unique and avant-garde fragrance houses. Following two fundamental principals, Bertrand believes that balance is achieved when opposites attract and that nothing is lost or created, only transformed. Distorting and deconstructing elements of nature, this olfactory artisan has created fragrances for many of the world’s best houses including Penhaligon’s, Amouage, Comme des Garcons, Givenchy and Christian Dior.

JEROME DI MARINO Having lived more than 10 years in Nice, a cradle in the perfume world, it was a natural evolution for Jerome di Marino to become a perfumer. In 2008, Marino joined Givaudan as a trainee alongside Nathalie Cetto and in 2011 joined Givenchy’s olfactive cell with Françoise Donche. Joining Takasago in 2012, Jerome started training under the guidance of Francis Kurkdjian. After following the mantra: ‘everything comes to those who wait’, we strongly believe that Marino’s time is now.

NEUE DIALOGUE –

Global perspectives on luxury, ideas and creativity.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI –

The bond that made Italian fashion stronger in the world was not just a creative idea and a style but also perfect execution.

FAUSTO PUGLISI –

Fashion is like a military job, you dream but at the end of the day you fight.

DAVID BECKHAM –

I’ve got this obsessive compulsive disorder where I have to have everything in a straight line or everything has to be in pairs.

SYLVIA PLATH –

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

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Photos by Paul Koudounaris.

CATACOMB SAINTS Material miracles

By Dr Angela Hesson

ART

Saint Auxelius’s head rests delicately upon an embroidered pillow, his face veiled in diaphanous muslin, one hand poised contemplatively against his cheek. His costume of elaborate gold filigree is decorated with precious jewels: rubies, sapphires, diamonds and pearls anoint his reclining form, from the pinnacle of his headdress to the tips of his slippered feet. That the saint has been dead for over 1000 years only compounds the strange, theatrical beauty of the spectacle, his creamy skull and the deep recessions of his nose and eye sockets providing ghostly contrast with the gaudy splendour of his adornments. Enclosed and exhibited in his elaborate glass tomb, his recumbent body incongruously juxtaposes the exquisite and the grotesque, part sleeping beauty, part grim reaper.

The story of Saint Auxelius and his lifeless brethren, the catacomb saints of Northern Europe, is a peculiar one, embedded in the post-Reformation crisis of faith that prompted a dramatic return to decorative materialism in practices of worship. Examined for the first time in a lavishly illustrated volume by art historian Paul Koudounaris, these holy bodies emerge as symbols of that most curious mingling of the corporeal and the metaphysical which characterises the relic tradition. Koudounaris traces the complex history of these figures, collected and reimagined with the explicit purpose of filling a spiritual, emotional and physical gap left by the Protestant Reformation purge of the Catholic Church’s most beloved icons. After countless formally sanctified relics were destroyed over the course of the 16th century, the need to source appropriate replacements led church officials literally underground, to the recently discovered ancient burial chambers beneath Rome, where the interred bodies of persecuted Christians had, for centuries, remained undisturbed.

VIRGIL ABLOH –

There’s culture, there’s trends, it can be superficial in a way, Or, you can take an approach to the art of fashion and tie it into the culture, music, and the real artistry of the time.

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The saints’ ambiguous status is further complicated by the fact that they were not, in any traditional or official sense, sainted. Transported across the Alps from Italy into German-speaking regions of Europe from the mid-1500s, their arrivals peaking in the 17th and 18th centuries, the catacomb saints were, in the vast majority of cases, the bodies of unknown people. Their internment dated from the early Christian era, and although lacking verifiable means of identification, the remains were widely believed to have been those of martyrs who sacrificed their lives rather than relinquish their faith. As such, while not formally beatified, nor, in the majority of cases, in any way actually connected to the saintly identities they were assigned, they were perceived nonetheless as legitimate conduits of the Holy Spirit. In order to differentiate these more informally sanctified bodies from those that had been officially designated by the Pope, they were collectively entitled the Katakombenheiligen (catacomb saints).

The process of conversion from decaying skeleton to ornamented icon, enthroned and enshrined, was a complex and protracted one, requiring the participation of numerous skilled workers, in many cases nuns specially trained in the preparation of relics. The most expert of these were the Dominican sisters in Ennetach in Southern Germany, who executed all aspects of a saint’s transformation, from the stabilisation of the skeleton itself to the application of decorative textiles. Upon arrival at the monastery, the condition of the bones would be assessed and those deemed sufficiently durable for more complex articulation and decoration would then begin their lengthy preparation for display. After the application of a stabilising animal glue, the bones were, depending upon their condition, set with wire, wrapped with gauze, and frequently reconstructed with wax, wood, or papier-mâché.

The application of precious stones, (or in the cases of less affluent religious

MAIMONIDES –

Not an art, it is a disease.

MORRIS BERMAN –

houses, their paste equivalents) was frequently undertaken by secular craftspeople experienced in working with metals and gems. After a saint’s official ‘translation’, he or she would be carried through the town and installed in a conspicuous position in the church, usually in a correspondingly lavish shrine or upon an altar or predella.

Saint Valerius, housed in the Augustinian monastery at Weyern, is an exemplar of the excesses of theatricality and ornament that characterise the

Katakombenheiligen. Adorned from head to toe in precious gemstones, rich textiles and goldwork, and crowned with a golden diadem, his visage is lent an incongruous liveliness by the addition of sparkling blue sapphires in place of the eyes, lidded with delicate folds of muslin. The saint’s teeth are physically and symbolically recreated in disks of tiny, delicately woven pearls.

His exposed ribcage is threaded with matching strings of pearls, and teardrop rubies nestle at his throat. That the skeleton itself is not so much concealed but augmented by the decoration is in itself significant. There is, inherent

Most Americans hate their lives, but to get through the day they talk themselves into believing that they want to be doing what they are doing.

BARBRA STREISAND –

in these constructions, the tradition of memento mori, the symbolic, evocative juxtaposition of glory and decay that serves as a reminder of human mortality and the fleetingness of material existence.

The status of the catacomb saints was, from the outset, politically charged, even propagandistic. They symbolised, in their newly appointed splendour, the defiant resurgence of a Catholic Church determined to visibly reassert its traditional practices of worship. In keeping with their revolutionary status, many of the saints’ associated attributes seem surprisingly militaristic.

Swords were among the most popular of these, and Koudounaris identifies a dual meaning in their inclusion, ‘referring to the saint’s own martyrdom, but also identifying the skeleton as a Miles Christi, or Soldier of Christ, risen and armed for battle.’1 Accordingly, costumes feature breastplates, tassets, gauntlets, and a profusion of abundantly jewelled helmets, often complete with visors theatrically raised to reveal the skull below. These elements, rendered not in steel but in the most luxurious gold threads, silks, filigree and gemstones, are both threatening and seductive, markers of material wealth and spiritual rebellion.

Despite the artifice inherent in their construction and the absence of traditional consecration, these bodies operated, both spiritually and culturally, in the role of the relics they replaced, and rituals of public display and celebration were integral to this. To this day, in the town of Roggenburg in rural Bavaria, the bones of Saints Severina, Valeria, Laurentia and Venantius are each year removed from their richly decorated crypts in the former Norbertine monastery church, placed on litters, decorated with flowers, and carried down the nave and around the church upon the shoulders of local teenagers. The ritual, known as a Lieberfest, has been enacted by the townspeople for over 200 years, functioning as a gesture of thanks to these

I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

UGO BETTI –

‘Mad’ is a term we use to describe a man who is obsessed with one idea and nothing else.

Neue Luxury, No.4

beloved icons for their centuries of service to the congregation, as well as for their imagined martyrly sacrifice. Roggenburg’s saints are among the more extraordinary of their kind. By the 19th century, after the initial excitement about their arrival had waned, the inescapable corporeality of their forms proved too confronting for some members of the local congregation. To assuage discomfort around such manifest reminders of mortality, the skulls

were fitted with papier-mâché masks painted in imagined likenesses of the living saints, an effect which, to a 21st century spectator, only compounds the eeriness of the spectacle.

Inherent within the relic tradition is the notion that these artefacts are, in a sense, active; that their spiritual agency extends beyond the realm of inspiration, and into that of the tangible. Accordingly, the catacomb saints gained much of their status through accounts of their associated miracles.

At the Capuchin convent in Stans, Germany, the newly arrived bones of Saint Prosper were immediately credited with the miraculous healing of the mother superior, who had, according to accounts, been suffering from a fever that

broke on the day that the skeleton was received. Such events endowed the relics, and their associated religious houses, with significant status, and led to the designation of the bones as those of a ‘healing saint’ to whom the local populace might subsequently appeal for cures of their own. Tales of miracles attributed to a martyr’s bones were kept in ‘miracle books’, which faithfully recorded the alleviation of ailments, from foot pain to incontinence to nosebleeds. The saints were also widely perceived to have powers of divine intersession in natural events: Saint Donatus of Detzem, Germany, was regularly called upon to protect the local populace from lightning strikes, having earlier been credited with saving the life of a priest who was, somewhat ironically, struck during preparations for the saint’s procession into the city.

Their great popularity among congregations meant that many churches and monasteries acquired large collections of saints, functioning not only as a source of spiritual succour to local people, but also as a means of income generated by visiting pilgrims. Regular donations made to the church in the saints’ honour designated their worldly value in addition to their more spiritually elevated role. Worshippers could also make more personal donations in the form of jewellery or other valuable ornaments, which would be added to the saint’s body or shrine. Rings were a particularly popular choice, and many saints’ hands grew crowded with these material manifestations of their devotees’ spiritual fervour.

Yet such devotions have never been without controversy. The relic tradition has always been a fraught one, coloured by anxiety about idolatry and framed, in Protestant terms, within the regrettable Catholic propensity for materialism and false worship. Even within the Catholic Church itself, the relationship with relics has been ambivalent. Relics could be used as devotional aids, but should never, it was decreed, be perceived as having their own power distinct from that of the deity. The distinction between veneration and worship was not always clearly defined or agreed upon, however. Anxieties surrounding the superstitious nature of some acts of devotion were ultimately attached to the catacomb saints, as they had been to the original relics destroyed in the Reformation spirit of pious austerity. Criticism was amplified by suggestions that the creation of the saints was, in effect, an act of calculated and perhaps mercenary fraud. The 18th century protestant bishop Gilbert Burnet declared that ‘the Bones of Roman Slaves…are now set in silver and gold with a great deal of other costly Garniture, and entertain the superstition of those who are willing to be deceived.’2

That the popularity of the saints waned as swiftly and dramatically as it arose is again testament to their highly emotive quality. As the 18th century gave way to the nineteenth, accusations of materialism and idolatry intensified, and the jewel-encrusted skeletons came increasingly to be perceived as potent and disquieting symbols of the Catholic Church’s capacity for morbidity and decadence. Many were actively destroyed or buried in anonymous plots. Some were simply removed from public view, secreted in crypts or vaults where they would not attract attention or censure. Others were sold to private collectors or museums, whether as private devotional aids, or as curiosities akin to the two-headed calf or preserved foetus in a jar.

Yet in isolated pockets of German-speaking Europe, affection for the saints persisted. A case study in this continuing attachment exists in the town of Rottenuch in Bavaria, where in 1803, the secular magistrate had elected to auction the town’s two saints. Their locations remained known, however, and in 1977, 174 years after the saints were sold, the townspeople raised sufficient funds to have them returned. To this day, Saints Primus and Felicianus continue to be publicly honoured in all of their disquieting, extravagant glory.

Those saints that survive intact exist not only as objects of extraordinary craftsmanship and uncanny fascination, but as inescapably physical reminders of the church’s complex, emotionally and politically charged vacillations between austerity and materialism, authenticity and artifice. They remain potent, fantastic markers of the obsessive corporeality and mysticism of the relic tradition, infused with the spirit, and fashioned of the flesh.

Footnotes 1. Paul Koudounaris, 2013. Heavenly bodies: cult treasures & spectacular saints from the catacombs. p. 85.

2. G Burnet, 1750. Bishop Burnet’s Travels through France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland: Describing their religion, learning, government, customs, natural history, trade, &c. London: Printed for T. Payne, in Koudounaris, p. 57.

EUGÈNE DELACROIX –

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

PETER SAVILLE –

The whole business is an exercise in mass mind control and triviality that enslaves people to consumption.

AGNES MARTIN –

When I think of art, I think of beauty.

In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

JOHN UPDIKE –

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

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3

JOHAN VAN MULLEM Mirrors to the other side

ART

By Dr Angela Hesson

“PAINTING,” EXPLAINS JOHAN VAN MULLEM, “IS A MIX OF INTUITIONS, MEMORIES, VISION. OUR CONSCIOUSNESS AND RATIONALITY ARE SO SMALL AND POOR COMPARED TO ALL THE THINGS OUR EYES, EARS AND HEART RECORD EACH SECOND.”

The statement, grounded in the supremacy of effect over reason, encapsulates much of Van Mullem’s creative oeuvre, devoted to deeply personal ‘imagined’ portraits and figures derived primarily from the artist’s own subconscious. The notion of a portrait in which the features are intentionally obscured is a peculiar one. That a genre conventionally so tied to ideas of specificity and recognisability should shroud the very physical structures conventionally perceived to characterise it, is in itself radical, bespeaking a profound sense of emotional ascendency.

Van Mullem’s monumental portraits are fluid, transitory, evocative things.

Rendered in generously applied oil-based ink on unprimed board, they retain a quality of wetness, an uncanny sense that their surfaces are in fact still shifting.

Van Mullem remains preoccupied with the idea of movement and with light and shadow, and the fluidity of his medium lends itself to the exploration of these inherently transitional themes. More than this, his portraits function as meditations upon the psychology of the imagined sitter and of the artist

Photo by Edwin Smet. Courtesy of Johan Van Mullem.

himself; evocative glimpses into a private, interior world that a literal rendering of features cannot convey alone.

In some works, the face of the subject appears to vaporise before the viewer’s eyes, merging into the darkened canvas in wisps of fleshy smoke. In others, features swirl together in a multi-coloured vortex or tornado, chaotic yet oddly contained in the residual form of the head. There is a luminous quality to the portraits, whether focused in halo-like bands or pin-pricks or flooding the image in a diffuse glow. The drama of these effects is compounded by the size of the portraits. With each canvas measuring over a metre, the kaleidoscopic faces that emerge from them are many times life-size. The depiction of psychological intimacy on a monumental scale has become something of a leitmotif of Van Mullem’s practice; however, the effect is not a thing that the artist has consciously calculated or considered. He writes, “emotion is independent of scale. A detail can provoke a storm.”

Van Mullem began making portraits as a five-year old, and the fascination has remained. From his early black and white figurative depictions of elderly faces rendered in Chinese ink, he arrived at a multi-coloured, increasingly abstract treatment of his subjects. It is, he explains, an evolutionary process, a combination of collective memories and personal history: “There is no intention to paint the present or the reality, therefore I don’t need any model to be inspired or to copy. A painting is an open door to personal introspection.

A mirror that shows the ‘other side’.’’ The role of memory is key here, infused also with a powerful sense of place.

The son of Flemish parents, Van Mullem was born in Isiro in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His diplomat father was regularly reposted, and so the family moved from country to country. From the age of seven to fourteen, Van Mullem lived in Tunisia, and he has spoken extensively about the importance of this period in the formation of his artistic imagination and practice. “Since that wonderful time, my heart has been there. I have been forever torn between my Flemish roots and that marvellous Mediterranean culture. No other country has had such an impact on me. It was there that I began to draw, to fill my notebooks, and I have never stopped.” The notion of compulsion arises repeatedly in Van Mullem’s accounts of his work; producing visual manifestations of his internal world and its external influences is, it seems, intrinsic to his sense of self.

Yet despite the artist’s early and continuing passion for painting, Van Mullem’s parents were not initially supportive of his artistic ambitions, believing the career path to be too insecure and insubstantial. In accordance with their wishes, he studied to become an architect, but never actually practiced. He describes his subsequent professional life as chaotic, moving from job to job to support himself, while remaining privately obsessed with the desire to become a painter. Becoming increasingly withdrawn, he began to draw in secret with a kind of fraught passion; his focus always upon the face, increasingly abstracted and suggestive of dark emotional struggles and complexities.

In mood and form, his works are evocative of both African and European traditions. There are, in their shadowy, organic pigments and expressive simplification, echoes of the African masks which the artist encountered during his childhood and adolescence in the Congo and Tunisia. Equally present are the haunting contemplations of Rembrandt, Goya, Blake, Munch and Bacon, whose dark meditations on human interiority seem to provide a kind of ancestral trail for Van Mullem’s portraits. Yet Van Mullem remains reluctant to ally his works to any particular movement, articulating instead an ideal of emotional expression independent of history or nation: “All the movements are different ways to go to the same place. Somewhere inside of ourselves where you can discover the universal dimension.”

The portraits are at once psychological in their subjects and inescapably corporeal in their surfaces. Van Mullem’s palette is consistently organic, calling to mind primordial soup or bodily fluid. The works have a sense of the primaeval about them, of evolution, and perhaps also degeneration. They seem, in their extraordinary, metamorphic forms, to address the shifting nature of the species as well as the shifting psychology of the individual. Van Mullem acknowledges this sense of broader transformation, but maintains that any formal ‘comment’ is unintentional: “I do feel my subject as something universal and timeless. But there is no intention in my work. It is based on energy and feelings. Therefore I try to stop the intervention of the brain.”

For an artist so committed to spontaneous expression, Van Mullem maintains a surprisingly disciplined schedule. The morning, he explains, is for reflection, emails, shopping and professional appointments. He arrives at the studio around 1.00pm and works until 7.00pm. Yet while the programme is structured, the creative process itself is far more variable. The energy of the

Photo by Vincent Everarts. Courtesy of Johan Van Mullem.

day, he says, determines the format of the work and the colours to be used.

Inherent within his process is an elusive notion of inspiration, and with it that eternally complex, subtle ideal of making the intangible tangible, of translating feeling into solid form.

Van Mullem has recently completed a sculpture period, experimenting for the first time with large three-dimensional works. Exploring similar themes of human psychology and emotion, these are created in a variety of mediums, including clay, bronze, polyester and plaster. It is a privilege borne of critical success that he is now able to experiment so widely. After fifty years of artistic longing, he has arrived at a point of relative expressive freedom, and his continuing gratitude for this is palpable.

For all of the frustrations of his youth, Van Mullem feels no regret about his path to artistic achievement, explaining, “It’s a long and difficult way, but when you have the chance to ‘accomplish’ yourself, you understand that everything you went through was necessary. I understand it is not the way which is difficult, but the difficulty that is the way.”

FOR MORE WWW.JOHANVANMULLEM.COM Photo by Vincent Everart. Courtesy of Johan Van Mullem.

Photo by Michael De Plaene. Courtesy of Johan Van Mullem.

VIRGINIA WOOLF –

All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.

4

JEAN PAUL GETTY –

My love of fine art increased—the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.

Photo by Vincent Everarts. Courtesy of Johan Van Mullem.

Photo by Michael de Plaene. Courtesy of Johan Van Mullem.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON –

Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an afterlife.

USHIO SHINOHARA –

Art is a demon, a demon that drags along.

It’s not something you can stop, even if you should

NOVALIS –

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

Neue Luxury, No.4

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Neue Luxury, No.4

AZUMA MAKOTO In Bloom

ART

By Roj Amedi

Azuma Makoto is a renegade in the art of floral sculptures. In his haute couture Tokyo based floral shop, Jardins des Fleurs, Azuma creates abstract forms and grand floral structures. His work has attracted coveted brands and individuals devoted to his artisanal skills. Azuma first established his flower business in 2002, and later founded an experimental laboratory Azuma Makoto Kaju Kenkyusho (AMKK) meaning Azuma Makoto Botanical Research Institute.

Here he explores new and innovative representations of flowers and plants, mixing flora with juxtaposing contexts. Wrestless with the lack of space suitable for his experimentation and wanting to explore his own methods, Azuma opened gallery AMPG in 2007. Giving himself two years to focus on the project with an aim to produce one piece per month, AMPG was to become a major catalyst for his future sculptures. Neue Luxury took some time to uncover how he continues to reinvigorate and reinterpret the concept of flora in art and sculpture.

ROJ AMEDI: How do you draw inspiration from flowers? How do flowers communicate with you on both a sensorial and spiritual level?

AZUMA MAKOTO: What I aspire to do is to capture and represent the ever changing beauty of flowers and plants from their birth to death. I believe I can receive inspiration from them by touching and feeling the subtle changes every day.

RA: Does your approach differ between your own private works, general commissions through Jardins des Fleurs and your brand collaborations? How so?

AM: When I work on my private works, there is just me and flowers and no compromise. On the other hand, when I work with businesses and the like to create commercial art or collaborate with brands, I make a conscious effort to equally represent all the players involved: the client, flowers and me. When you manage to find a place where they can coexist in harmony, you can create

something quite different from your private pieces, and I find that experience very inspirational and full of new discoveries.

Commissions through the boutique are much smaller and more personal, but they still have the same elements of client, flowers and me. I try to represent the client’s message while keeping all elements in equilibrium.

RA: How has Jardins des Fleurs evolved since its inception? Has your practice and methods changed significantly?

AM: I do not think Jardins des Fleurs has changed in a major way since opening.

It remains consistent with the original haute couture flower boutique concept.

However, I am always looking for and experimenting with new techniques and methods.

I have changed the kinds of flowers I use and also leaf works that surround them. As to the general taste, I tried arranging flowers more randomly than I had done before, in a way that is different from grouping (a method of placing flowers in groups of the same category). We are constantly attempting to break down, go beyond, and re-build our style to find new methods. I think this process is indispensable in order to keep offering fresh ideas to my clients.

RA: Your collaborations with the likes of Hermès, Dries Van Noten, Boucheron and Pierre Hermé have enabled a different manifestation of your work, whether through illustration, interior design, graphics or exhibitions and

AM: It really depends on each project. For Exobiotanica, I created a bouquet with flowers from all over the world and sent it up to space. For the Philippines project, we used a broad selection of local heliconia. I choose the main varieties and their composition depending on the concept and method I am using.

RA: Could you take us through one of your most recent trips to the Amazon?

Have you been able to connect with local people and specialists? Or do you immerse yourself on your own?

AM: We planned the project in the Amazon ourselves. A friend of mine who lives in Manaus helped coordinate the trip. It was of course a completely unknown world to me, but fortunately I met this local botanist, who had lived in the Amazonian forest their entire life, who agreed to be my guide. The forest was fierce and brimming with life. It makes you feel like you would be eaten alive if you stopped moving. Whilst there I worked with plants that were indigenous to the area, created pieces and then took photographs. It was a very surreal experience. I felt as if I was arranging flowers in a vase called the Earth.

installations. How were you first approached to contribute to these projects?

Were you already connected to these brands?

AM: It was different for each project. Hermès is one of my oldest clients and I have been providing flower arrangements for their Ginza Maison and many boutiques across Japan for many years. As for Dries Van Noten, Dries personally contacted me and asked for my contribution to the project.

In every case, I decided to collaborate with these brands based on whether I deeply agreed with and respected the brands values, what they expressed and their spirituality.

RA: What are the values and spirituality that you best connect to and look for in your partnerships?

AM: I try to understand whether they have passion and respect for craftsmanship, and whether they are earnestly searching for ways to share their vision with their customers. I look for partners with spirituality, who seek to make an impact or provide hospitality to people, and who want to create an emotional connection instead of mere mass production.

RA: What was the idea behind establishing and opening gallery AMPG? AM: I came up with the idea when I was looking for locations to experiment with and exhibit my work. During that period there weren’t many spaces like that in Japan, so I decided that I should create one myself. I wanted it to be a space where we could deal with the changing state of flowers on our own from blooming to death. Also, I wanted to do it properly, if I was going to do it at all.

That is why I set a timeframe of two years.

RA: How did you sustain the commitment to produce a piece every month during the two-year life span of AMPG? AM: It was not easy, but luckily I was always surrounded by plants and flowers and was interacting with them 365 days a year. They inspired so many ideas.

I was always trying to figure how best to represent and express the flora, and then how to incorporate them into larger works. I learned so much in those two years by experimenting with various plants, and it certainly broadened my thinking and perspectives as an artist.

RA: What was the biggest lesson for you and your studio during this two-year period?

AM: The experience from this period broadened my perspectives and provided the inspiration for future projects. In that sense, it was a great opportunity for me to rediscover and cement my particular style. I’m never satisfied and

constantly repeat the process of completing pieces, breaking them down, thinking, and then trying new physical manifestations of an idea. Some of the things I tried at AMPG did not work well, and some of the ideas guided me through later projects. I think I was chasing after the sensation of producing better work by constantly challenging myself.

RA: Your work involves botanical installations that typically take flora out of a natural context and often juxtaposes it with materials such as metal, glass and ice—in a way disrupting the connection to land and soil. What is your overall intent here?

AM: Plants are beautiful and complete as they are in their natural surroundings, so if we are going to alter them, it has to be done in a way that creates a different kind of beauty. That is why I visually disconnect them from the soil by exposing their roots or combining them with prosthetic materials. My intention is to create a sharp contrast between natural beauty and artificial beauty, which actually gives flora an opportunity to shine through in a unique way. My work is not an attempt to give them something or extend their lives, but to present

It is not easy to do projects like this while running a flower boutique, but we would like to stay true to our own style and methods that no one else shares.

RA: What projects are on the horizon?

AM: I have been traveling around the world on a project called In Bloom since last year. The basic idea is to place flower arrangements in places where no plant or flower can exist. For the first instalment, we went to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA and sent up some plants into space (stratosphere).

Then we went to the Philippines to create an enormous floating sculpture made of flowers off the shores of the Negros Island. I intend to continue working on this project. There are already some new installments in progress all over the world such as Dallas, New York, and we even have one planned in France.

I love seeing plants from all over the world with my eyes and touching them with my hands. It gives me so much inspiration and I would like to express it in a new form that is different from their natural state, to incite a new perspective and value.

them in a way that highlights every moment of their natural life cycles from various perspectives, and to bring out their beauty.

RA: Are all flowers created equal or do they live within a hierarchy?

AM: I think it depends on which aspect you are looking at. I would like to believe that just like human lives, all the flowers that are born to this world are equal and have the same value, no matter how small they are.

RA: What flowers are you using for your instalments? And how do you decide on what flowers to use?

FOR MORE WWW.AZUMAMAKOTO.COM WWW.JARDINSDESFLEURS.COM

All artworks by Azuma Makoto. Photos by Shiinoki.

CLAUDE MONET –

Color is my daylong obsession, joy and torment.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

RALPH WALDO EMERSON –

You become what you think about all day long.

JOSH BILLINGS –

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.

ASHLY LORENZANA –

I don’t possess these thoughts I have—they possess me.

I don’t possess these feelings I have—they obsess me.

MICHAEL CAINE –

Obsession is a young mans game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

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7

F O O D

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A R T. R E S P E C T

I T.

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ANDONI LUIS ADURIZ Counterintuitive gastronomy

GASTRONOMY

By Paul Tierney

A few miles outside the Basque city of San Sebastián, past roadside bars and verdant fields, lies Mugaritz; a restaurant so revered that people here talk about it in a kind of hushed awe. From the outside it appears fairly unremarkable; a large chalet-like building topped with a sloping roof and flanked by gardens that produce the delicate flowers, vegetables and herbs that contribute to its menu. To the side is a squat outbuilding housing a bar and meeting space and in the corner of the plot stands a large handsome oak, Mugaritz’s namesake. So far, so normal. However, walk around the side of the restaurant and you will witness myriad figures—cooks? chemists?—labouring away in a laboratory kitchen, like futuristic art-scientists on a mission. I peer through steamy windows, fascinated by the test tubes, paraphernalia and ongoing experiments, only to be met with quizzical stares. There is serious and potentially confidential business going on here, and prying eyes are not on the menu.

Opened in 1998, Mugaritz has delighted and confounded visitors in equal measure. This is no ordinary restaurant, but the brainchild of Andoni Luis Aduriz—a man whose vision and culinary genius knows no bounds. One of the world’s most celebrated chefs, he is at the forefront of a food revolution where humble ingredients are appropriated into esoteric plates of magic. Here, the practice of molecular gastronomy has been elevated to an art form. Guided by his expertise and seemingly limitless imagination, raw ingredients are transformed from the prosaic to the bafflingly romantic. It’s been described as ‘tech-emotional-Spanish’: food that shocks and delights in equal measure and designed to be provocative, tell a story or evoke an emotion. Alongside the now defunct elBulli (where Aduriz once worked), Denmark’s Noma, and Heston Blumenthal’s Michelin-studded Fat Duck; Mugaritz is among undisputed restaurant royalty.

Meeting the man himself on home turf is something of an achievement.

The chef’s demanding, almost to the point of manic, schedule has not been easy to infiltrate. He arrives 15 minutes late, bounding into the room like a cartoon blur, “Does someone here speak Spanish?” he ventures, not wishing to get lost in translation. “You do? Perfect.”

Chefs often carry the paunch and jowls that come with the territory, but Aduriz is compact and fairly slim and looks like a man happy with his lot.

“I have everything to live for,” he beams. When talking up his craft or demonstrating the techniques behind his sophisticated food on camera, he can come across as intense and not given to emotion. However, in person, this open man, fuelled by coffee and endless ambition, is charming company and more

than happy to discuss his alchemical ways with a contagious enthusiasm.

He didn’t grow up wanting to be a chef, but was guided into the profession by a prophetic, sage-like mother. By all accounts, Senora Aduriz, now eighty-five years old, has seen much trauma in her lifetime. As a girl she witnessed Guernica burn during the Spanish Civil War, and as a refugee lived in an apartment shared by twenty people at a time, often starving for food. “My mother has an old-fashioned mentality. She saw that I wasn’t a very good student. That I had no vocation or abilities, so she thought I was going to give her many problems.

I guess people never rid themselves of that indelible feeling after experiencing famine. So I was sent to kitchen school where she knew I would at least eat every day.”

Food has always looked large in his life, and he is quick to acknowledge that traditional Basque cooking has subconsciously formed his enquiring personality. “You know, when I was a teenager I thought that all families were like mine, with mother as a housewife and everyone returning home to have lunch. I used to think that the whole world was this way. Now I realise we were the exotic ones. Looking back, I was in the kitchen all the time. It was the space where I played. So in some way I have always lived with the aromas of cooking. Later on, I started to put my head in the pots, asking people how things were cooked. I have this memory of my mother telling me that the most important part of the squid was the ink because it gave added value.

“We strive to banish the customs that curtail our freedom,” comes the reasoning —as measured and evocative as anything you might find on a plate here.

The chef’s ethereal side comes to the forefront once again when he suggests, without hesitation, that infusing food with musical tone can actually improve its flavour. “I know there are psychological experiments made by the food scientist Charles Spence, where when you eat a French fry and amplify the sound twenty times through headphones, you perceive the crunchiness of the fry much more than normal. Spence talks about oysters soundtracked by the sound of the sea that you perceive to be far more salty than without the sound. Surely there’s a link here. But it has to be decoded by the client, otherwise it could end up feeling gimmicky.”

I venture that what he does constitutes art. “But am I an artist?” he retorts, preempting my next question. “I see myself as a creative person, but it is not up to me to say whether what I do is art. I debate the food/art thing all the time, especially with one of my favourite artists, Juan Luis Moraza. The question is: does it add something to the cooking? I don’t have the answer I’m afraid, and I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. I am much more excited about having an intelligent relationship with an artist than to be labeled one myself.

It’s insignificant. What I care about goes way deeper than that.”

It is fair to say that Aduriz is a man obsessed. “If by obsessed you mean being compelled to carry something out, or to have a deep-rooted desire to achieve something, then yes, you are correct. I would say, out of the blue, and without thinking too much, that probably my most overwhelming obsession has to be my complex. And by that I mean never wanting to disappoint. It’s something that I can’t, and don’t want to shake off. It’s what drives me, that constant striving for perfection. I think we achieve it here often, but perfection requires attention, so I can never be satisfied.”

And with that he is off, back to the laboratory, coffee in hand, firing off orders to his platoon of white-coated co-scientists. Off to create something you didn’t know you were going to like.

Spanish translation by David Gonzalvo Gargallo

That particular thought has always stayed with me.”

Musing on food comes easily. We talk about taste, appearance, and how humans react to the presentation of food served to them. Famously, Mugaritz takes things further than most by creating extensive, twenty course tasting menus that aim to stimulate all five senses. “We always give our senses responsibility,” he says, nudging clear rectangular glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What you see, what you smell, what you taste is important, but there is something I am much more interested in and that is how the brain decodes it. If you have a steak, the keys of the mouth and the stomach make an impression based on what you are expecting. But the keys of the brain are even more interesting. Because if I told you that the steak is actually a mouse, how would you evaluate it? It changes your perception completely. It’s very likely that it will make you feel repulsed and sick. But this is only what your brain is interpreting.”

Mice aside—and to my knowledge they have never featured on the Mugaritz menu—appearances can be deceptive. Perhaps his most arresting take on presentation is the ability to create food that is more than meets the eye. A prime example is one of his signature creations, a dish that appears to be a smooth grey stone. Your brain tells you that an attempt to bite this seemingly impenetrable object would result in shattered teeth. In reality, the stone is a specially baked potato, coated in kaolin clay that melts disarmingly in the mouth. It’s this playful handling of food that elevates Aduriz’s dishes to more than the sum of their parts. “We play with the concept of counterintuitive idea,” he explains. “The Brothers Grimm fairytales are full of counter-intuitive ideas, and that is part of their appeal. All the religious books: the Bible, and the Quran, are also full of counter-intuitive ideas. Logic tells you that this thing you have in front of you is not possible, so you have to stop, think, and decode it to your own understanding.”

Fuelled by his third cup of coffee in half an hour he is firing on all cylinders, pulling philosophical gems out of the bag at an alarming rate. His most fervent idea is to give the customer something they think they’re not going to like, but they invariably do. What excites him most is the notion that all his culinary efforts, their effects on the senses, and this fascination with

counter-intuition, pale in comparison to the performative element of his work.

“What we try to do is basically tell a story through presentation and atmosphere, and through a sense of theatre. It is these carefully planned, often subtle elements that make us who we are and what we stand for.”

Taking this attention to detail to new heights, nothing at Mugaritz is left to chance. Artfully broken plates on each of its seventeen tables eschew any sort of restaurant hierarchy, while extraordinary dishes that emit beguiling sounds and disappear in the mouth are the norm. From the wood-burning stove emanating a smoky aroma through the dining room, to the quirky place settings, every last nuance has been designed with emotion in mind.

FOR MORE WWW.MUGARITZ.COM

Paul Tierney stayed at the Villa Soro in San Sebastián: WWW.VILLASORO.ES

Photos courtesy of Andoni Luis Aduriz and Mugaritz.

ARISTOTLE –

No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

ZHOU WEIHUI –

Crazy people are considered mad by the rest of the society only because their intelligence isn’t understood.

MICHELANGELO –

Trifles makes perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

ERIC MAISEL –

This artist is obsessed in an everyday sense of the word—and more than happy to be so!

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

9

Bring on the Apocalypse, 2014. London Sunday Times Style. Fashion Director: Nicola Formichetti. Model: Brooke Candy.

TIM RICHARDSON Spiritual Animal

PHOTOGRAPHY

By Dan Thawley

Image making in the 21st century is a nuanced and revolutionary art, aspired to by many as a retreat from the mundane, and an opportunity to see the world from an enigmatic new perspective. With current trends in fashion photography leaning heavily on a nostalgia for analogue, there are a mere handful of photographers who are genuinely pushing the boundaries of their craft and Tim Richardson may be counted amongst them. Known for his bold digital experimentation and images pulsing with colour and movement, the Australian photographer has called New York home since 2005, a move he made after finding his feet in both art direction and photography in his hometown of Sydney. This year Richardson celebrated a decade in the Big Apple with the May release of Spiritual Machine, his second book that delves into the past five years of his work, and which he describes as “a crystallisation of many ideas—it’s a thematic approach, it is not a retrospective”.

Crystallisation is a fitting metaphor (and Richardson chooses his wisely) for his postmodern approach to photography, wherein the photographer’s possible space evolves through filmy layers of symbolism, techniques and effects that respect the classical ground roots of his work propelled forward by new technology and changing attitudes. It is a world of contrasts—aesthetic and otherwise—of which the book’s title Spiritual Machine is a succinct summation. “The name has a few meanings,” explains Richardson, of the Prestel-published book, which was designed by famed New York art direction bureau Baron & Baron. “It is sort of a deliberate fusion of two very opposite words. When I am working I use dualities to start ideas and create a context for what I am shooting. It is about humans and technology, which are sometimes diametrically opposed and sometimes unified. It is about that in between state. Now fashion is so influenced by media in terms of execution and representation. The way that design and business are fused; there are a lot of cross over points. The creative process can be compromised by the speed of things right now. I try to have a friction going on in my work, taking opposing aesthetics and trying to find magic when they meet. It is about

CHARLES BUKOWSKI –

My dear, find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all.

Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.

10

exploring tradition and blowing it up a bit with futurism.”

Scattered with quotes by his avant-garde heroes like James Graham Ballard, Philip Kindred Dick, Joy Division and American novelist William Gibson (whose novel Neuromancer ushered in the cyberpunk genre), Spiritual Machine embodies Richardson’s respect for great thinkers who imagined the unimaginable—each paving their own way with speculations on the 21st century’s dystopian and utopian possibilities. What it doesn’t explicitly reveal is Richardson’s learned sense of homage that is woven throughout his flickering, fragmented images, where references to Francis Bacon or perhaps

Japan took Francis Bacon’s transmogrified portraits as inspiration for a sexuallycharged series where leather harnesses, tuxedos and bare, virile flesh disappeared in flurries of movement like human smoke.

Dance itself enters concretely into Richardson’s oeuvre, with one series of stills immortalising 6 Breaths, a performance at the 2010 Venice Dance Biennale featuring dancer Richard Cilli, choreographed by the Sydney Dance Company’s choreographer Rafael Bonachela. “It was the first time I used 3D scanning,” explains Richardson, who was one of the earliest fashion photographers to adopt the technique. “It became a gigantic floating projection

Caravaggio float beneath the surface of his meticulously constructed fashion landscapes. “Everything in the book is based on the human figure,” continues Richardson, a subject that he both celebrates and deconstructs in myriad ways —from abstract portraits exploding in showers of digital confetti to wide, elaborate tableaus where models spin like dancers. “Dance and movement in general has always fascinated me,” he said, “I like to study the body in flux, the way it changes shape. A friend recently referred to it as transfiguration.”

One particularly evocative menswear shoot for the now-defunct Vogue Hommes

of marble figures assembled from fragments into a unified coupling, which then dissolve again into fragments in a cycle.” That project spawned another a year later entitled Perpetual Motion, in which Cilli’s acrobatic sequences were captured through time, distilled into swooping curvilinear forms, and transformed with chrome-like metal finishes to become extraordinary alien images. “Learning how to direct through time is such a different mind-set to shooting print,” explains Tim, referring to the industry demand for moving image that so often accompanies print commissions today, “Our generation

HENRY MOORE –

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

SAMUEL JOHNSON –

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

is having to perform in a much broader dynamic than ever.”

In order to produce such gripping visual studies, Richardson relies not only upon the computer’s 3D capabilities but the forward-thinking outlook of his collaborators. He counts stylists like Nicola Formichetti, Robbie Spencer, Michelle Jank, and makeup maven Pat McGrath amongst his confidantes. “It is funny how London stylists have given me the most room to experiment and try new things,” admits Richardson, citing a film work for Dazed Digital with Australian jeweller Jordan Askill amongst those early achievements. Entitled Crossing, the 2009 piece placed Askill’s delicate avian jewels in a masculine context, blurring lines between body and coastal landscapes. “Both the photography and film represent a symbolic journey” said Richardson, “a vision of the fragility of adolescence in the eternal presence of nature. ‘Youth’ becomes a mythic figure, floating above the ‘eternity’ of the oceans massive horizon-crossing the divide between the real and the imaginary.”

For all the fragility he attributes to his male subjects, Richardson’s women border on Amazonian—their contours and extremities accented with perspective and digital manipulation, a sensual athleticism defining their dramatic poses. Powerful figures like Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi, supermodel Guinevere Van Seenus, and New York socialite Michelle Harper count amongst Richardson’s subjects; each rendered almost superhuman in his exploration of multiple exposures and stitched images, floating diaphanous fabrics and fragmented post-production effects that offer a second life to the architectural jewels and props of his collaborating stylists. Nicola Formichetti in particular, known for his youth-driven futuristic punk style, has championed and complemented Richardson’s work, after a chance meeting in a New York bar saw them shooting Elle US just one week later. That shoot involved mounting a quest for their ‘digital muse’ during the super-stylist’s tenure designing Mugler in Paris: a project which was, as Richardson explains, “an embodiment of the way that technology, design and software came to be a part of how fashion is made. It was an allegory for all of that. It was a testing ground for me.” It is indeed Formichetti’s wild imaginings that have adorned

TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA –

At the beginning of my career, form was most important to me, but now I care most about human emotions. I like to give people a sense of elation.

Neue Luxury, No.4

Bring on the Apocalypse, 2014. London Sunday Times Style. Fashion Director: Nicola Formichetti. Model: Brooke Candy.

Hybrid Glamor, 2014. Models.com. Fashion Director: Nicola Formichetti. Model: Tao Okamoto.

Richardson’s images with a wealth of embellishment derived from both high fashion and street culture, with later shoots for V Magazine and Sunday Times Style incorporating intricate body jewellery, eyewear and millinery, all pushing graphic boundaries to question where the body begins and its decoration ends.

“I still look at the work of Hussein Chalayan,” said Richardson, of his own appreciation for fashion and the deep cultural references that mark the work of its greatest practitioners. “With Alexander McQueen being canonized right now (his exhibition Savage Beauty being presented at both The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to stellar reviews) there are some sweet spots in fashion that are so iconic that they are being recycled right now. It is interesting from an image-making perspective.”

Also intriguing is gauging to whom Richardson’s work has appealed, and to whom it has not—the fashion world’s dusty establishment can be a little slow on the uptake at times. Even today, his work remains primarily in avantgarde magazines, a fact the photographer is happy to concede. “There is an old mentality that comes from the purists,” said Richardson of his predecessors, the canonical top photographers whose work process remains unchanged for decades, “And another from our generation that can’t afford to be. It is about exploring techniques that were used in science fiction films and bringing them into print shoots and beauty campaigns. And I think my work, and my latest

book Spiritual Machine in particular, embodies that multidisciplinary process.”

Richardson feted his new tome during the New York edition of Frieze Art Fair, inviting his audience into his digital universe at Milk Studios through a large-scale photographic show and a video installation that Richardson explains as a mixture of animation and a 3D scanning. “When I did my first shoot with Guinevere, we ended up doing some 3D scans of her at the same time,” he said. “We scanned her to get her face and her body, and then I created the animation after with a company called Framestore. They are widely known for their special effects work for Gravity and produce really beautiful work. I basically had this idea of her being a kind of glass couture creature. You can see some Alien references, Prometheus and a few other things. I wanted to take some of that darkness and bring a bit of life to it.

It’s almost prismatic and crystal or gem-like.” Equipped with such ambitions to evolve contemporary fashion imagery through the exponential possibilities of the digital realm, Richardson is proving wrong the multitude of pretenders in his field. While others recycle and plagiarise the work of their predecessors under the guise of homage, Richardson’s vision transcends the traditional boundaries of the craft; bridging image-making disciplines to tell his dynamic tale of our stark, bright, hybrid future.

FOR MORE WWW.TIMRICHARDSON.TV

Hybrid Glamor, 2014. Models.com. Fashion Director: Nicola Formichetti. Model: Tao Okamoto.

Rise of Rinko, 2014. V Magazine. Fashion: Nicola Formichetti. Model: Rinko Kikuchi.

Spiritual Animal - IV, 2014.

Hybrid Glamor, 2014. Models.com. Fashion Director: Nicola Formichetti. Model: Tao Okamoto.

JJ ABRAMS –

I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it’s not necessarily ubiquitous.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

GRACE HARTIGAN –

I don’t see how you can create and not have the feeling that it is the most important all-consuming thing.

JOHN ALEXANDER –

It’s three o’clock in the morning, your back hurts, your arm hurts, you’ve been in there for ten hours, and there are no sounds except for the occasional fire truck.

Finally, you put the brush down and ask yourself, ‘Man, what am I doing here?’

IM PEI –

Perpetual Motion- III, 2011. Motion-Capture Study. Choreography/Performance: Richard Cilli.

Architecture is the very mirror of life. You only have to cast your eyes on buildings to feel the presence of the past, the spirit of a place; they are the reflection of society.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

11

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Copyright MAK.

STOCLET PALACE A total work of art

ARCHITECTURE

By Dr Rainald Franz

Adolphe and Suzanne Stoclet epitomised the early 20th century haute bourgeoisie aesthetic. As Edmond de Bruyn reflected in his memoir, “It was self evident that the floral decoration of the house—always kept in one colour tone—and the neckties of Monsieur Stoclet matched Madame’s dress.”1 The most obtuse and daring of their projects was the Stoclet Palace, a private mansion designed to transport its inhabitants into a wonderland of grandeur and luxury. Walter Benjamin described the mansion as a retreat into a ‘counter -world’, a case or shell protecting its occupants against the increasingly harried and hurried life of the modern big city, while the world outside of its façades armed itself for the First World War.2 The Stoclets commissioned Josef Hoffmann, a leading figure of the Vienna Secession Movement and one of the founders of the Wiener Werkstätte—a Vienna based community of visual artists. The mansion would become one of the rare examples of 20th century modern architecture and a Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art), appraised for its unity of style.

Like his father, Adolphe was a shareholder in the Société Générale pour Favoriser L’industrie Nationale (The General Society to Promote Domestic Industry) that built railways in several countries. Suzanne, in turn, was the daughter of the art critic and art dealer, Arthur Stevens, who had first sparked her interest in art. Together they had an insatiable hunger for art and architecture, often finding themselves on long walks to explore the architecture of Vienna. On one such stroll, the couple discovered a villa on the Hohe Warte, a residential area on the outskirts of the city, where Josef Hoffmann had built a colony of modernist houses for artists and supporters of the Vienna Secession Movement. The Stoclets were fascinated by the British influenced design of the villas, the most notable belonging to the painter and Secession member Carl Moll.

OSBERT SITWELL –

The only difference between an artist and a lunatic is, perhaps, that the artist has the restraint or courtesy to conceal the intensity of his obsession from all except those similarly afflicted.

12

Before Moll introduced the Belgian couple to Hoffmann, the Wiener Werkstätte had already come to the conclusion that a colossal investment made by a wealthy figure was the only way to fully realise their potential vision and demonstrate the possibilities of their modern design sensibilities. The Stoclet Palace would become the most prominent and prodigious project undertaken

by Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte. This fervent devotion to prove their

Brussels in 1904. Nevertheless, Adolphe persisted with the commission but only in a different location. On 8 April 1905, Adolphe Stoclet purchased the parcel of land on the Avenue de Tervuren in Brussels and construction began.3

To realise the ambitious building, Josef Hoffmann commissioned the best designers working with him in the Wiener Werkstätte including Koloman Moser, Carl Otto Czeschka, Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel, Emilie Schleiss-

design acumen did not come without complications; the project experienced constant delays and devoured extravagant sums of money. Yet, the Stoclets were so overwhelmingly convinced with the execution of the palace, they accommodated for its tumultuous development.

The Stoclet Palace was initially planned for the Hohe Warte until the sudden death of Adolphe’s father, Victor, forced the family to return to

Simandl; and notable artists such as Gustav Klimt, Richard Luksch, Georges Minne and Franz Metzner. The company Ed. Francois et Fils, of Etterbeck, was in charge of the construction with Emil Gerzabek assigned to supervise.

Hoffmann wrote, “The ground plan should be consistent with [Adolphe Stoclet’s] convenience and refined outlook. Light-grey Belgian [sic.] marble was the given material for facings inside and out. At the edges the slabs were

LENNARD J. DAVIS –

Modern society both needs and fears obsessiveness.

ROBERT GENN –

While obsessive behaviour may be an antisocial plague to societies and communities at large, it’s total moxie when lone practitioners catch it.

set in pressed metal parts of simple ornament, which provided for all possible cuts and joints”.4 Referencing both the English country house and the Baroque palace, the three-storey brickwork building with slab ceiling extended along the street on a rectangular footprint of approximately 37 by 13 metres. Both the façades, about 10 metres high, with a 20 metre high stairwell tower—reminiscent of the towers of Belgian city halls—were extensively clad in white Norwegian marble with all the windows contoured by oxidized copper moldings with gilded ornaments. The building shell was already completed to the full height of the first floor by the winter of 1906. The next intensive building phase took place in 1908 and then the mounting of the marble slabs on the façade in the autumn of 1909. Although the furnishings and appointments were not complete, the family moved into the Stoclet Palace in the spring of 1911. Josef Hoffmann, repeatedly distracted by new projects, amplified the unusually protracted building programme of five years. Exacerbated by the disjointed process, Adolphe Stoclet halted further payment in the hope of forcing the Wiener Werkstätte —already struggling with financial difficulties—to complete the construction.5

Every detail of the Stoclet Palace, from doorknobs to cutlery was designed according to the client’s wishes. When “utility objects are treated like works of art,” analysed the art historian Werner Hofmann, “all activities are given an aura of solemnity and the entire everyday routine becomes a ritual.”6 This was where the Wiener Werkstätte could put its potential to proof, and when the Stoclet family could personify the clientele that best suited their vision.

Even an organ perched on top of a stage was built into the music room, which was lined with yellow and black marble. As Hoffmann and Moser reflected in a 1905 Wiener Werkstätte publication, “As long as our cities, our houses, our rooms; our cupboards and cabinets; our utensils, our clothes, our jewellery, as long as our language and our feelings do not epitomise the spirit of our age

HENRY JAMES –

We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, our doubt is our passion and our passion our task.

The rest is the madness of art.

Neue Luxury, No.4

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Copyright MAK.

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Copyright MAK.

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Copyright MAK.

in a plain, simple and beautiful way, we are being left far, far behind our ancestors.”7 The family had subjected themselves to what the architect Adolf Loos in his parable Vom armen reichen manne (The Poor Little Rich Man), denounced as the “patronising dictates of art”.8 What Loos understood as the subjection of the human being to a dominating code imposed by the all-encompassing applied arts, was in fact an expression of a felicitous life in a private paradise for the Stoclets.

One of the most iconic elements of the mansion was the mosaic frieze that Klimt designed for the dining room. Having experienced several tumultuous years within the Secession Movement that eventually led to his resignation, Klimt was eager to produce a spectacular piece. The frieze and the preliminary drawings, which are today kept in the MAK: Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Arts in Vienna, Austria, are seen as masterpieces from the highpoint of his ‘Golden Phase’ (1899-1910). In his drawings for the monumental Stoclet frieze, Klimt conceptualised three mosaics—Tree of Life, The Expectation and The Knight—when connected represented a complex metaphor. In the centre is a blossoming tree symbolizing the Tree of Life. It is accompanied by two figures to the left and right: a dancer, The Expectation, and an embracing couple, commonly referred to as the ‘fulfilment’ to that expectation. Knight was designed for the small wall of the long dining room while the Tree of Life was mirrored in a mosaic on the second long wall of the room. Between 1905 and 1908, Klimt began his studies for the frieze, submitting the first designs as basis for a contract before the preliminary working drawings in original size. In 1910, according to surviving correspondence, the preliminary drawings were completed and the execution of the mosaic frieze began. In 1911 the frieze was carefully transported from Vienna to Brussels and installed under Klimt’s supervision. The drawings and mosaic frieze were to become the last monumental work Klimt was able to realise before his early death in 1918.

The Viennese art critic Ludwig Hevesi was the first to comment on the Stoclet Palace; he saw the model in the rooms of the Wiener Werkstätte and reported on 8 November 1905, “It is of course a supremely elegant house.

In Hoffmannesque white and black, but the white is formed by marble slabs on the walls across the whole building, and the black of the edges is black Swedish granite…as in Purkersdorf, the outside of the house is significantly characterised by a structure with projecting masses.”9 The mansion invariably became a symbol of the Stoclets social standing. As their guest book proclaims, they received members of the artistic avant-garde including Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev, Anatole France, Sacha Guitry, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Darius Milhaud, Karl Ernst Osthaus, and of course Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann.

Benjamin viewed the Stoclet Palace as a ‘dream house’. Few things could reproduce the atmosphere of the dining hall at night when a mixture of electric light and candlelight merged against the Stoclet Palace walls. Guests were able to enjoy the amenities afforded to them by the most advanced technology of the time, including electric sockets installed in the marble wall under the frieze, which supplied the energy to warm the rechauds as well as central heating system installed beneath the windows.

The Stoclet Palace plays an important role in representing a Modernist form of luxury. It not only influenced the style of the French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886-1945), a nephew of Suzanne Stoclet, but also became an iconic symbol of Art Déco style and American Modernist Luxury Architecture from 1920-1950. The synthesis between refined taste and bespoke design principles would only last for two generations and within the possession of the current generation of the Stoclet family. Although under UNESCO World Heritage protection and listed as a Belgian landmark since 1976, the Stoclet Palace has still experienced several cases of thefts as well as structural degeneration. Its future hanging in the balance by the fraught relationship between the four Stoclet grandchildren, who have struggled over conflicting attempts to both preserve and benefit from their grandparents legacy. This brings to question how such a monumental representation of artistic vision could be preserved. Nevertheless, Adolphe and Suzanne Stoclet held onto their vision until the end; their obituaries stressing that ‘such puritan grandeur’ demanded an ‘ascetic lifestyle’, indeed a lifestyle that made the very best of the Wiener Werkstätte and Secession Movement possible.10

Footnotes 1. “ ... il va de soi que les fleurs – toujours d’un seul ton – sur la table et la cravate de M. Stoclet s’assortissaient sur la toilette de Madame.” quoted in Edmond de Bruyn, ‘Adieu à Monsieur Adolphe Stoclet’ in Le flambeau: revue belge des questions politiques et littéraires, 1918. Bruxelles: Lamertin, p. 3.

2. Georges Teyssot, ‘Traumhaus. L’intérieur comme métaphore des sentiments’, in Andreotti, Libero, Jean-Paul Dollé, Marc Grignon, and Georges Teyssot (eds.), 2011. Spielraum: Walter Benjamin et l’architecture. Paris: Éd. de la Villette.

3. Annette Freytag, ‘Close to Paradise. The Stoclet House: Masterpiece of the Wiener Werkstätte’, in Noever, Peter, Valérie Dufour, Marc Hotermans, Heimo Zobernig, and Eduard F. Sekler. 2006.

Yearning for beauty: the Wiener Werkstätte and the Stoclet House. Vienna: MAK, p. 368.

4. Hoffmann, Josef Franz Maria, Peter Noever, and Marek Pokorný, 2009. Selbstbiographie. Ostfildern: H. Cantz, p. 97.

5. Wien Bibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna Town Hall Library), manuscript collection, quoted in: Europalia, Elisabeth Schmuttermeier, Wiener Werkstätte. Atelier Viennois 1902-1932, catalogue, ed. by Brussels, 1987, p. 22.

6. Werner Hofmann, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk Wien’ in Szeemann, Harald, and Susanne Häni. 1983. Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk: europäische Utopien seit 1800. Aarau: Sauerländer, p. 89.

7. Paulus Rainer et. al. ‘A Chronology of the Wiener Werkstätte’, in Noever, Peter, Valérie Dufour, Marc Hotermans, Heimo Zobernig, and Eduard F. Sekler. 2006. Yearning for beauty: the Wiener Werkstätte and the Stoclet House. Vienna: MAK, p. 81.

8. Adolf Loos, Von einem armen reichen Manne (The Poor Little Rich Man), Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 26 April 1900. Reprint in English: Sarnitz, August. 2003. Adolf Loos, 1870-1933: architect, cultural critic, dandy. Cologne: Taschen, p. 18-21.

9. Ludwig Hevesi, ‘Neubauten von Josef Hoffmann’, in Hevesi, Lajos, and Otto Breicha. 1986. Altkunst, Neukunst: Wien, 1894-1908. Klagenfurt: Ritter, pp. 220-221.

10. “ ... il va de soi que les fleurs – toujours d’un seul ton – sur la table et la cravate de M. Stoclet s’assortissaient sur la toilette de Madame.” quoted in Edmond de Bruyn, ‘Adieu à Monsieur Adolphe Stoclet’ in Le flambeau: revue belge des questions politiques et littéraires, 1918. Bruxelles: Lamertin, p. 3.

FOR MORE WWW.MAK.AT

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Copyright MAK and Georg Mayer.

PAUL CARVEL –

Passion is a positive obsession.

Obsession is a negative passion.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Private collection.

Photo courtesy of MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. Copyright MAK.

BEAU BRUMMELL –

If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.

CARLOS CASTANEDA –

If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

CS LEWIS –

A man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

13

SONG FOR THE MUTE Layered complexity

FASHION

by Samuel Willett

The entrance to the Song for the Mute atelier in Sydney, Australia, reveals exposed brick walls rising from the roughly polished black concrete floors.

Bare wooden beams cross the soaring warehouse ceiling, while large industrial lights give the space a warm hue. Garments line the perimeters, light capturing the hypnotizing textures of wool, sun-dried cotton, alpaca and mohair, rewarding curiosity and interaction at every step. There is a sense of cohesion to the space; no detail has gone unnoticed, every element speaking to the ethos that underpins the label. It’s clear the goal for Melvin Tanaya and Lyna Ty—the founders of Song for the Mute —is to create clothing that encapsulates their dedication and passion for craft and tell a personal story curated over many years.

Tanaya and Ty launched Song for the Mute in 2010 after identifying a need for directional artisanal clothing within Australian fashion. Tanaya’s background in visual communication and business combined with Ty’s fashion education from the Accademia Italiana Di Moda in Italy created the ideal milieu to share

their obsession with quality and innovation. “The clothes are unique, not only to anything I’ve seen in Australia, but quite frankly, anything I’ve seen in the world,” says Nick Wooster, a menswear authority with over twenty-five years experience within the fashion industry.

Tanaya and Ty understood the concept of the Song for the Mute brand very early, and that they needed to seek and collaborate with artisans and specialist garment makers to achieve their experimental methodology. This approach has informed and dictated the entire life cycle of their collections, from sourcing, to creation and final garment construction. Ty reflects, “I would estimate that 70 per cent of the design process is spent sourcing and developing

fabric—which can take up to two to three months.” This focus on curated fabric choice and development is the essential first step in the design process.

During their annual trips to Japan, the pair will spend days exploring fabric mills, sampling and examining the texture, weight, touch, and drape of each swatch. “It’s that gut feeling,” Tanaya explains. “We always choose those special fabrics that speak to us.” All of the critical fabric characteristics act as a catalyst, which then shape the concept and story for each new collection.

If orthodox methods of material production prove to be insufficient, the designers are known to revive long forgotten techniques. One such example is the reintroduction of the needle punch technique, where two different fibres are mechanically weaved and interlocked, seamlessly fusing them together.

The process can only be achieved by a small number of fabric mills in the world.

“The possibilities are endless,” says Tanaya. This unique process results in an emphatic visual outcome, distinct in depth and textural quality. If traditional methods cannot be revived, the duo research advanced technologies to provide additional elements to their chosen materials. Dream Care is a process utilised to make wool water repellent by coating each fibre thoroughly before the weaving process. Ty demonstrates these properties in the studio, pointing out how water beads glide down the soft and luxurious wool. She goes on to comment that these new modes of material production challenge consumer assumptions about natural fibres.

“We have to think about how the fabric will best react to the design idea, the construction, and particularly the comfort,” says Tanaya. By using a live model to shape and mould each new piece, Song for the Mute ensure that the initial pattern construction is directed by how these fabrics adapt to the contours of the human body, much like a second skin. From the placement of buttons along the waist to determine shape, to the angle and location of pockets and seams that best react to the body’s movement, each decision is repeatedly assessed until the duo reach a desired outcome. “It’s also extremely rare that we design something without knowing what fabric qualities we are working with, Lyna draws her designs with the cloth already in mind.”

This eye for detail extends to their design collaborations, with the most notable being established with Japanese jewellery designer Noriaki Sakamoto of IOLOM. Tanaya and Ty were introduced to Sakamoto through a mutual friend, Daisuke Nishida, the designer of cult Japanese label DEVOA. Sakamoto’s work shares many of the design principles distinct in Song for the Mute. “The Japanese don’t want to compromise on anything when it comes to quality and construction, they view their product as an extension of who they are,” explains Tanaya. Sakamoto handcrafted each silver hook in the shirting and tailoring of the latest season, preferring to use the highest quality .950 percent silver. These small touches add a provenance to each piece and bring a collections narrative to life.

“We started with a very specific vision, and admit to some failures and deviations along the way. With each season these realisations have helped shape our understanding of what best fits the Song for the Mute story,” says Ty. The design duo have shed the constant pressure to follow the status quo,

quickly learning that the best collections are produced when instinct is embraced over trend. Whether it be the immediately recognisable profile silhouette of the cocoon jackets, the asymmetric fastening details on leg and footwear, or the raw hems that evolve over a garments lifetime, the designs are subversive yet remain approachable. “People want quality products,” says Tanaya, “and we shouldn’t be afraid to follow that philosophy.”

Song for the Mute rewards inquisition of, and an obsession with, quality and detail. Both Tanaya and Ty’s collaborations are on a trajectory that feels both confident and inspired. “Our inspiration and creativity is constantly evolving, the aim is to open new areas of exploration at every step, so we’re pushing ourselves both technically and creatively. With progress there is always an element of uncertainty, but we wouldn’t have it any other way” reflects Tanaya.

FOR MORE WWW.SONGFORTHEMUTE.COM WWW.IOLOM.JP

Photos courtesy of Song for the Mute.

KANYE WEST –

Fashion isn’t practical, it’s more about emotion, it’s more about swag, it’s more about fucking, it’s more about club. It’s more about style.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

RORY NOLAND –

Perfectionism is one of the artists biggest battles.

YOHJI YAMAMOTO –

Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy—but mysterious. But above all black says this: ‘I don’t bother you—don’t bother me.

SKYE ALEXANDER –

The collectors appetite is never sated. Like the adventurer who is looking toward the next horizon, the collector is always in pursuit of the next acquisition.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

15

ACHILLE SALVAGNI Neue Collectors The interior artefacts and objects created by Achille Salvagni are deeply moving and considered objects d’art. Poised, eloquent and unquestionably luxurious, each piece is underpinned by unwavering commitment to detail, ideas and the use of the finest materials and craftsmanship.

These are not just interior decorations but timeless pieces infused with history, context and the imagination.

Led by its namesake, Achille Salvagni Architetti was founded in 2002 in Rome. The practice quickly established a global reputation for considered design and luxury. Working alongside eleven highly skilled designers, the atelier produces pieces for exclusive clients such as the Vatican and the Quirinal Palace, as well as supplying works to almost all the Noble Palaces of Rome. With a focus on creativity, respect for craftsmanship and armed with a couturier like attitude, we survey ten of Achille Salvagni’s most coveted artefacts.

MOON Achille Salvagni opened a temporary showroom in the deconsecrated 8th century church, Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, located in the heart of the Roman Ghetto. The Aldus pieces comfortably assimilate amongst the 13th century frescoes of the chapel. The Moon candlestick holders play with the sense of light and shade in the space, alternating between the day and night in a never-ending eclipse

FOR MORE WWW.ACHILLESALVAGNI.COM WWW.SALVAGNIARCHITETTI.NET WWW.ALDUSROMA.COM

SPIDER The Spider is the Achille Salvagni Atelier Collection’s most coveted piece.

The bronze and onyx structure is designed to fill the space it inhabits with a warm web of honey-coloured light. Inspired by Lucio Fontana’s series of works, The End of God, the piece canvasses with a constellation of holes paying homage to Serge Mouille’s satellite lighting systems. The rigid geometry of the pieces arms, contrast with the smooth curves and golden shapes that display the onyx light covers.

BUBBLES Achille Salvagni was originally asked to produce a table lamp for Jeff Koons, the proposal giving way to the creation of the Bubbles Lamp. The lamp is a sculptural display of skill and precision, composed of backlit onyx and 24 karat gold-plated bronze bubbles. Precariously balanced on a solid black Zimbabwean granite base, the jocose movement of the lamp is both playful and considered.

EMERALD Like gems scattered throughout a room, the Achille Salvagni Atelier’s Emerald little side tables is a playful experiment with informal geometry.

Sitting on guard like faithful pets, the side tables were created with intersecting wood grain faces, the mischievous spirit of each piece allowing them to maintain an individual patina that reflect light in different tones.

GIO One of the first pieces of the Achille Salvagni Atelier Limited Edition Collection, this exquisitely crafted double door bar cabinet is one of Achille’s favourite pieces. Standing gracefully on sleek burnished bronze legs and featuring a polished brass top, like a shining golden mirror at rest within the finest of Park Avenue apartments. Gio was conceived as a cabinet of pure shapes. The golden intersecting lines found upon its dark doors— like tails of shooting stars in the night sky—are contrasted with a cosmic explosion of inset handles and a setting sun upon its shining top. The exquisite finish of the piece is testament to fine metal craftsman and precision cabinetry.

OYSTER AND SATURN Having been inspired by the summer sky, Achille Salvagni’s Saturn sconce speaks to the bronze orbit of a backlit onyx planet, reflecting in a concave sphere, while Oyster emerges from calm seas with its magnificent onyx muscle shining from within a cast bronze shell.

ROXY PAINE –

When asked why not leave the chisel marks apparent? It’s about obsession, and bringing the same obsessiveness that one brings to the work conceptually to its methodology and materiality.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

JEFF KOONS –

Objects can achieve such ultimate states-of-being, while we humans cannot: we have to deteriorate.

ANGEL AND DEVIL Angel and Devil form part of the Aldus venture, a project born out of an artistic restlessness and a desire to take advantage of the exceptional craftspeople in Rome. The pair of cast bronze table mirrors combine elements of mythology and folklore. The angel reflects while the Devil deforms; this duality is encompassed in the two faces and two personalities that simultaneously unite and oppose one another.

HOLLAND PARK APARTMENT As one of Achille Salvagni’s most recent projects, the Holland Park Apartment is situated in one of London’s most prestigious neighbourhoods. Having been commissioned to realise several pieces that would complement the owners contemporary art collection, the Shield cabinet with its aluminium doors and cast bronze handles was perhaps one of the most striking. From the Achille Salvagni Atelier 2013 Collection, the piece was modified at the client’s special request and covered in goldfish skin.

TANGO A slender and graceful couple dancing in embrace was the inspiration behind the cast bronze structure of the Tango console. Their delicate movement effortlessly holding the weight of a Noir Dorè marble top that traces the movement of the performance. This piece is part of the Achille Salvagni Atelier Collection and seamlessly manipulates the movement of Futurist art with the materials and tradition of Ancient Rome.

MICHAEL JACKSON –

I do deeply believe in perfection.

I’m never satisfied.

NEMO The pointed thorn that pierces Nemo’s sinuous silk lampshade is softened by the playful golden polka dot pattern inlaid in its onyx base. The festive confetti glints, contrasting with the honed stone, creating movement in this iconic lamp table from the Achille Salvagni Atelier Collection.

BARRY X BALL –

Yes I’m a perfectionist, I butter bread very thoroughly but I also think there is a reason behind that. That I want the object to have magic.

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17

WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK Fascination and rituals

Photo by Frederik Vercruysse. Copyright Walter Van Beirendonck.

Photo by Dan Lecca. Copyright Walter Van Beirendonck.

FASHION

by Stephen Crafti

Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck quickly deflects the word ‘obsession’. “I don’t think I should talk about obsessions but rather fascinations or rituals,” says Van Beirendonck, who cites a list of rituals that are continually drawn into his world: animal, ethnic, folk and art rituals to the darker side, including sadomasochistic and voodoo rituals. Both of these dimensions are played out in his collections. Men in skin-tight latex complete with outstretched latex penises are juxtaposed with men in corseted garments.

Those who saw Walter Van Beirendonck’s 2011 fashion exhibition, Dream the World Awake, shown at the Fashion Museum in Antwerp, would have seen this duality come to life. “Most creative people are obsessed with something,” adds Van Beirendonck.

“As a youngster, I was always fascinated by David Bowie. It really started with his Ziggy Stardust look,” says Van Beirendonck, who was immediately drawn to the androgynous character Bowie created in the early 1970s. It wasn’t just Bowie’s distinctive jagged flame-red hair or outlandish makeup that captivated Van Beirendonck, but rather the singer’s words and delivery.

“I loved his looks and the way he communicated fashion through image and music.” Bowie’s highly individualist appearance intrinsically linked both fashion and communication. “I followed Bowie through his entire career. You could say it was an obsession. But it’s more about simply having an enormous respect for such a creative genius.”

Van Beirendonck has always been fascinated by the world around him, particularly in the characters he meets. In Fashion! Antwerp! Academy! 50 years of Fashion Academy, the book that marked the fifty year anniversary of the Antwerp Fashion Academy, leading fashion journalist Suzie Menkes wrote, “Van Beirendonck’s fourth year collection book (as a student) took ‘insects’ as its theme and nature—its importance, its endangered situation and the power of its shape and colour—has been intrinsic to his work.”

Characters have continued to inspire Van Beirendonck’s collections, including toys and creatures that have been abundant in his work. “I always work in a highly spontaneous way—from my gut. But I’ve always had a strong imagination and love it when there’s an explosion of ideas,” says Van

ANNA WINTOUR –

Fashion today is about individuality and reflecting a woman’s character than trends. Trends to me is a dirty word.

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Beirendonck. Many designs push the boundaries of men’s fashion. Bearded models, in Van Beirendonck likeness, regularly walk down the catwalk wearing underwear with a signature ‘W’ emblazoned upon their crotch. Other designs literally encase the wearer, with phallic-like extensions protruding from head to toe. “I’m always questioning the conditioned way of thinking. I love experimenting with shape, colour and social codes. You often find this method in the context of women’s fashion,” says Van Beirendonck.

The designer’s collections seem to have responded to all facets of life over the decades. Avatars, aliens, African warriors, Japanese geishas, sadism and masochism practitioners, techno fairytale characters and cyber culture all find their way into Van Beirendonck’s imagination. While phallic symbols are integrated into some of his collections, so are other elements from his fantasy world, including mushrooms; clouds, stars and moons; snakes, bears, rabbits and other animals. Nudity, including representations of the designer fully nude, is also likely to be expressed in various guises. “Sex is part of this world. It’s not an obsession. It’s just part of the broader state of mind,” says Van Beirendonck.

When asked about some of the strongest influences and those that have shaped his fashion world, Van Beirendonck is careful about his choice of words.

“Influence is the wrong word in the fashion world. I’m fascinated—not obsessed—by contemporary artists such as Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Folkert de Jong, and artists such as Grayson Perry. But that doesn’t mean I copy their ideas in my work. It’s more about the way their work opens up my mind and allows me to think and fantasise.”

In his fantasy world, good and evil compete within a landscape where a Bolivian-style devil mask or Darth Vader mask adorned with insects is not unusual. “It really could be any idea that starts up my fantasy world. Most of the time, I’m very spontaneous and research everything that inspires me at the time. When I finally have the content in my head, it’s only at that point that I divert to my sketch pad,” says Van Beirendonck, who adds that each collection is a learning process. “You want to constantly push your own boundaries. Each collection is like starting from something that’s new,” he adds. And while some of Van Beirendonck’s collections have stood out, some of his greatest fantasies live on, not only in his mind, but also with the broader public consciousness.

GEORGE SANTAYANA –

Sanity is a madness put to good use.

Photo by Dan Lecca. Copyright Walter Van Beirendonck.

Photo by Dan Lecca. Copyright Walter Van Beirendonck.

When asked to nominate collections that have resonated for several years, Van Beirendonck cites ‘Revolution, Sex Clown, Lust Never Sleeps and Home Sweet Home as some of his pivotal fashion moments. “You always want to create the best thing possible. And with each collection, you become more mature and ideas are easier to conceptualise,” says Van Beirendonck. One of Van Beirendonck’s memorable images is of himself wearing a pointed red hat with a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: ‘where I live, there are rainbows’ (taken for the Fairytale collection in 2006). “It’s how I think about fashion and dreaming. Dreaming is a strong tool to fight your demons and the world’s problems. I’ll continue to dream.”

The Revolution collection from Autumn/Winter 2001-2002 ingeniously evoked the 18th century dandy gentleman. The shirt collars and neckties were highly exaggerated—almost apron-like in their proportions. A basic starched shirt was subverted by combining it with bondage gear to create a contrasting aesthetic. While the proportions of the Revolution collection were highly exaggerated, Van Beirendonck further sought to emphasise these distortions by clashing polka dotted ties with gingham shirts. Tapestry-style coat jackets, reminiscent of the 1970s, were also added as the perfect foil for the wild shirt -and-tie combinations. “I’ve always felt comfortable clashing ideas and patterns together. Our world is really a huge clash in itself,” says Van Beirendonck.

The creatives who work closely with Van Beirendonck, including British milliner Stephen Jones (featured in Issue 2), share the designer’s ability to move into worlds where other designers fear to tread. Jones has been designing hats for Van Beirendonck since 1997. “At the time, Walter was gaining notoriety not only for his clothes, but for the way in which they were shown: on giant elevators, in the Paris Lido and, most exciting for me, with outrageous headgear,” says Jones. “My imagination soared and I was thrilled to be one of the new acts in Walter’s crazy world,” adds Jones.

Obsession does creep into the conversation when mentioned with the word beauty—particularly in association with his 1998 winter collection, A Fetish for Beauty—“We are now so overwhelmed by images of dead people, war, disaster, and killing, that we’ve lost the sensibility for beauty, an incredible and important sensibility for human beings. Everybody has the right to enjoy beauty,” says Van Beirendonck, who also sees the beauty when ideas clash

around him. “I’m always keen to reflect this chaotic world in my collections.”

Van Beirendonck continues to challenge traditional concepts in fashion.

In a sense, his ‘reflection’ or ‘obsession’ to make us think about fashion hasn’t changed dramatically since the time his first collection was presented in London, alongside his Belgian comrades. “What has progressed since that time is the advancement of communication. When we were in London with the Antwerp Six, we were communicating with only London. Now, you’re communicating your ideas with the entire world, a huge difference for the fashion world,” says Van Beirendonck. And whether the word obsession is used or not, according to Van Beirendonck, “creative people are always obsessed with something. I would say that it is completely normal”.

MICHELANGELO –

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.

FOR MORE WWW.WALTERVANBEIRENDONCK.COM WWW.ACADEMIEANTWERPENDKO.ORG

STEVEN SPIELBERG –

I still have pretty much the same fears I had as a kid.

I’m not sure I’d want to give them up; a lot of these insecurities fuel the movies I make.

Neue Luxury, No.4

Photo by Jean-Baptise Mondino. Copyright Walter Van Beirendonck.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

19

Photo courtesy of Art Basel in Hong Kong 2015. Copyright Art Basel.

ADELINE OOI Curator, Director and polyglot

ART

SAY YOU WERE HIRING THE NEW DIRECTOR ASIA AT ART BASEL, THE ORGANISATION THAT PRODUCES THE BIGGEST YEARLY ARTS EVENT, IN THE WORLD’S MOST POPULOUS CONTINENT. WHO WOULD YOU HEADHUNT?

It’s a sad, sad story, but it is the truth!” In her defence, however, IKEA posters being produced in her teens were reproductions of Monet and Matisse.

By the time Ooi finished school, all she knew was that she didn’t want to go to ‘normal’ school and study economics or accounting – “whatever it is a Chinese girl should do”. Instead, Ooi enrolled in a BFA in London, even though she suspected—even then—she didn’t actually want to be a practising artist. From day one at Saint Martins serious painters surrounded her, “people who basically ate and slept turpentine”. Although Ooi graduated with Honours, she says she never had a natural flair or command over the materials. “It wasn’t

On paper, the person who got the job seems to tick every possible box.

Malaysian-born, Singapore and UK-educated Adeline Ooi has the pedigree (BFA from London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins), the rigour (she’s worked as a curator, gallery director and academic), CV (previous roles including Art Basel’s VIP Relations Manager, South East Asia) and language skills (Ooi speaks six of them). For all intents and purposes, it almost looks as if Ooi’s been preparing for this role her entire life.

Ooi happily scoffs at the suggestion. “I keep looking back and think, ‘My god, how was I supposed to know what I wanted to do at the age of 18 or 19?’” she says. “I know this is the way life has been mapped for most people: you go to college; decide what to do in life; then: ‘This is it’. For me, it was really just blindly colliding into things I wasn’t sure about, or being thrown into situations I didn’t plan for. Even this position.”

In photos, Ooi is poised, elegant and looks directly into the camera with an expression that means business. In conversation, however, she’s prone to laughing and joking goofily. When asked what triggered off her passion in the arts, Ooi acts faux-flustered. “Quite a number of people ask me this question and I still don’t have the exact answer!” she says. Raised on a Malaysian palm oil plantation and educated in Singapore and England, Ooi wasn’t exactly surrounded by fine art or immersed in the industry at a young age.

Ooi offers sheepishly, “I mean … I do remember taking an interest in IKEA posters?” She chuckles, knowing how preposterous this sounds: that one of the most influential and important curatorial figures in Asia’s contemporary art scene had her artistic awakening at the Swedish mega franchise. “I know!

necessarily a sad realisation,” Ooi says, more a statement of fact.

It was only after Ooi graduated and started working as an intern for professional artists and galleries that she became fully aware of all the players in the arts industry ecosystem. “Back in the day, I thought there was just: art historian, artist and designer. Then I realised, ‘Oh gosh, there’s such a thing as curators, art managers and project managers!’ That’s when the art world truly opened up to me, and I began to understand what I was good at.”

Ooi quickly became renowned for her ability to multitask at near-extreme levels. In her late thirties, Ooi has already curated and program directed the Valentine Willie Fine Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, and was Art Basel’s VIP Relations Manager for Southeast Asia (covering Indonesia, Malaysia, the

By Benjamin Law

MERISSA BURY –

I think just accepting imperfection is the necessary ingredient to live a more peace, closer to perfect life.

20

ROBERT BLY –

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.

Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), whilst simultaneously directing RogueArt, the Malaysian-based cultural agency she co-founded in 2009. It didn’t phase Ooi that by the time she was hired as Art Basel’s Director Asia in late 2014, she only had three months to prepare. “It was very much hitting the ground running, jumping off the deep end—whichever metaphor you want to use,” she says. “I basically had to learn to catch every ball that came my way.”

For her first Art Basel show, Ooi says she didn’t come into it with an explicit mission statement. “The only mission statement I gave myself was really to watch, observe and learn,” she says. “I still needed to understand quite a bit of how the inner mechanics of the show; how the engine worked.” Now that the show has finished, to much acclaim, Ooi is thinking ahead to 2016’s show and beyond. What she’s keen to explore is how to best showcase Asia, a continent Ooi feels is home to cultures far more fragmented, diverse and alien to each other than outsiders might assume.

“When we say ‘Asia’, it’s such a broad sweep,” she says. “What do we mean specifically? Are we looking at North Asia? The Middle East? The Asia Pacific?” Then there are the cultural specificities of the countries and cultures themselves. “It’s exactly like Europe, from the French to the Germans to the Swiss to the Italians. There are cultural attributes that differ from one another.

There are stereotypes. We think we know each other, but we really don’t,” she says. “Even as a Malaysian, I feel there is still so much about Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, that we don’t know about, and we are, geographically speaking, a stone’s throw away.”

As much as cultural and geographical barriers challenge Ooi in her work, the region’s history of porousness is one of her personal obsessions. Stories of migration and journeys are often at the heart of contemporary Asian art and it’s an element Ooi adores. “Coming from South East Asia, I was always fascinated with our history of the region,” she says. “The notion of voyages; the old days of colonisation and the East India Company; the way people have moved from land to sea and other parts of the world. The stories of spices; how products and people and plants have moved. Globalisation, even before one knew what was ‘globalisation’.”

Part of this fascination, Ooi acknowledges, is personal. Ooi’s own story is

VINCE LOMBARDI –

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

one of non-stop geographical shifts. However, she also notes that to be a good curator, one has to be aware of their personal tastes and biases. As Ooi points out, Art Basel Hong Kong isn’t about her. It’s about the artists. “I know this may sound corny, but it is about making Asia proud,” she says. “It is about highlighting the breadth of what we have in this part of the world: the best galleries; the best talent; and our audience, as well. It is a very new audience, generally speaking, in Asia – the whole notion of art collecting is quite new.”

Ooi points out that 15 to 20 years ago, a culture of collecting contemporary art in Asia was relatively rare, with the exception of territories like Australia, Taiwan and Japan. Now, with the generation of new wealth and economic development, the regional arts industry is booming.

Which, of course, means more work for Ooi. “I don’t see work as work, though!” she says. “Every week is a different week for me. It is demanding and all-consuming, but you’ve got to really love it.”

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING –

Fix your eyes on perfection and you make almost everything speed towards it.

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Neue Luxury, No.4