SURFACE - ALEX ISRAEL / JORGE PEREZ - DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015

ISSUE 124 DECEMBER 2015 / JANUARY 2016

THE ART ISSUE

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J O RG E PE R E Z

ISSUE 124 DECEMBER 2015 / JANUARY 2016 THE ART ISSUE

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LET’S MEET UP.

NO. 124

CONTENTS departments 90 Art 92 Transport 94 Books 96 Material On Time 98 100 Survey 122 Executive 124 Endorsement 128 How It’s Made 240 Object

40 Masthead Editor’s Letter 42 44 Contributors 60 Select 70 Detail Know Now 72 74 Travel 78 Hotel 82 Bar 84 Restaurant 86 Store

S U RFACE

ALEX ISR AEL

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Photos: Arian Camilleri Paper Styling: Jennifer Tran Styling: Courtney Kenefick

THE ART ISSUE

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ISSUE 124 DECEMBER 2015 / JANUARY 2016

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ISSUE 124 DECEMBER 2015 / JANUARY 2016

CAPTION

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who’s on the cover?

Two isn’t always better than one, but this month, an exception was made. On one cover is Alex Israel (above left), an American artist who through his genre-defying work blurs the lines between Hollywood and contemporary art. On the other is Jorge Pérez, a billionaire who in addition to building a real estate empire in Miami spends much of his time (and millions of dollars) fostering creative talent, largely from Latin America. Both men, masters of branding, continue to leave indelible marks on the international art scene.

taste An NBA star collects art for both

enjoyment and to support emerging talents.

By Amar’e Stoudemire

208

gallery Works from a new book by Marvin

and Ruth Sackner about the art of typewriting and typewritten art.

46

ideas in design Los Angeles–based designers Nikolai and Simon Haas talk about chair testicles and art fair politics. The Line opens a new outpost on the West Coast. M.H. Miller’s meditation on the celebrity art collector.

224

culture club A photo portfolio of recent events in the Surface universe, including the Whitney Art Party in New York and the opening night of Performa 15.

36

CREDIT TK

SURFACE

PHOTOS: IDEAS IN DESIGN, PETER BOHLER. PRODUCT, ARIAN CAMILLERI. TASTE, MICHAEL RAVENEY. GALLERY, COURTESY THAMES & MORTON. CULTURE CLUB, COURTESY BFA.

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CONTENTS

Our exploration of art through patrons, from Hong Kong and Beirut to Miami and Paris.

146 f ree way

164

Even though he has never been there, Jean Pigozzi is one of the world’s preeminent collectors of art from the continent.

170 d ream house

Through his art, Alex Israel traverses the cultures, desires, and obsessions of Los Angeles.

154 c omplex arrangement

As she builds a home for the

out of africa

186

room for debate

With his non-profit Fundación Alumnos47, Moises Cosio Espinosa puts conversations about art front and center.

192

right at home

Tony Salamé’s Aïshti Foundation in Lebanon opens a building as daring as the art within.

176

conversation starter A fateful interview with Fernando Botero led Gigi Kracht to begin building a world-class art collection.

LUMA Foundation, Maja Hoffmann shows herself to be a patron with many orbits.

For Max Mara scion Maria Giulia Maramotti, art can get personal—really personal.

198

public minded Jorge Pérez shows himself to be the champion of art and culture in his home city. cover no. 1: Alex Israel in front of his “SkyBackdrop” (2012) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

160 d eep thoughts More than just collecting art,

Nicolas Berggruen gives money and focus to supporting big, impactful ideas.

180 eastern promises

Adrian Cheng’s foundation is

single handedly bringing Chinese contemporary art to the West and cultivating it at home.

cover no. 2: Jorge Pérez in the elevator lobby of the Marea development in Miami Beach, featuring murals by Markus Linnenbrink correction: On both the Contributors page and Commission fold-out in our November issue, we misidentified the borough of New York City where artist Shantell Martin is based. It is Manhattan, not Brooklyn.

38

CREDIT TK

SURFACE

PHOTOS: THE ART ISSUE, ALAIN DELORME. ALEX ISRAEL, PETER BOHLER. MAJA HOFFMANN, PAUL PLEWS. NICOLAS BERGGRUEN, LEWIS KHAN. JEAN PIGOZZI, ALAIN DELORME. TONY SALAME, DALIA KHAMISSY. GIGI KRACHT, ANJA SCHORI. ADRIAN CHENG, EGILL BJARKI. MOISES COSIO ESPINOSA, YVONNE VENEGAS. MARIA GIULIA MARAMOTTI, CAIT OPPERMANN. JORGE PEREZ, OGATA.

144 t he art issue

NO. 124

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When organizing our third annual Art Issue, we started with the idea of delving into the lives of some of the world’s top collectors. That quickly morphed into focusing on prominent patrons.

Which brings up the question: What exactly makes someone a patron? Words like “patronage” and “philanthropy” get thrown around so much in the arts that they’re practically meaningless.

(Same with “collector”; see our Critic column on page 58.) Does being a patron of the arts simply involve donating money to an organization or cause? Perhaps. But I think patronage should—and does—go deeper than that. Money is only money without significant thought behind where it’s going and why. Patronage requires a true, heart-felt vision, and the willingness to take risks. To be a patron in the truest sense is to be a thought leader. Personal wealth is secondary.

Most of the patrons featured on these pages have museum-worthy art collections, and yes, deep pockets. One of them, Related Group chairman and CEO Jorge Pérez (page 198), even donated $40 million to a Miami museum that’s now named after him. (Pérez plans to give his entire collection to the institution.) Another is Maja Hoffmann (page 154), founder of the LUMA Foundation, who’s creating a 20-acre campus in Arles, France, designed by architects Frank Gehry and Annabelle Selldorf. But these ambitious projects aren’t why we chose to cover Pérez and Hoffmann. Rather, both also do a lot of unpublicized, behind-the-scenes work fighting to make art as public and accessible as possible. Two others featured, Nicolas Berggruen (page 160) and Adrian Cheng (page 180), are globetrotters who through the organizations they’ve founded—the Berggruen Institute and K11 Foundation, respectively—bring an approach to patronage that’s philosophically based and about promoting ideas, not just artworks. So it is, too, with Moises Cosio Espinosa (page 186), founder of Fundación Alumnos47 in Mexico City, who told me this about his inclusionary approach: “Art is less and less about the object and more about the thought process. It’s really important to support and understand art as a way of social criticism.”

You may be wondering why we’ve also included the Los Angeles–based artist Alex Israel among this group. In large part, it’s because Israel is, in his own way, a patron. His practice—he calls it a “brand”—is democratic and approachable, unlike that of so many artists today. He’s creating art through the lens of celebrity, Hollywood, and pop culture, and in the process opening up new conversations and building an ever-widening audience. It’s time to stop thinking of patrons as simply those with the greatest resources. Conceiving a paradigm-shifting idea that makes the world a better place through art, then executing and following through on it—that’s patronage.

— Spencer Bailey SURFACE

42

PHOTO: KEVIN TODORA, COURTESY NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER.

Editor’s Letter

EDITOR’S LETTER

Contributors

PETER BOHLER Two of this issue’s most alluring sets of portraits—the Haas Brothers (page 46) and Alex Israel (cover and page 146)—were shot by the same person: Peter Bohler. “It’s great meeting artists,” he says, “and seeing the people and process behind the work.” He was particularly taken with the Haases, not simply for their combined artist output, but also their team’s office activities. “A few minutes after I arrived, eight of them started doing group stretches, which they do every morning.” Bohler is based in Los Angeles, but grew up in New Jersey, where his parents raised not only a very talented photographer but also sheep. In addition to Surface, his outlets include—but aren’t limited to—The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, GQ, and Monocle.

ARIAN CAMILLERI For his first contribution to Surface, Arian Camilleri lent his talents as a photographer—and his home—to our “Fine Lines” Product shoot (page 62). A crew including associate fashion editor Courtney Kenefick, paper stylist Jennifer Tran (whose crafty work is equally as impressive as Camilleri’s photo skills), and a gaggle of burley, diamond-packing security guards gathered in his Brooklyn loft-slash-studio to bring the jewelry pieces to life. Despite his aptitude for still-life photography, he doesn’t like to be pigeonholed. “I find it refreshing to branch out from doing the same style all the time,” says Camilleri, whose ongoing projects include a portrait series in collaboration with artist Rodney White called “Human Degree.” As cool as that sounds, he still plays favorites with his shoots, and has deemed this issue’s his “favorite of the year.”

ELIZABETH G. DUNN How does chef Tom Colicchio’s former assistant, now a James Beard–nominated food writer for The Wall Street Journal, end up penning a design story for Surface? Her editors here, for one, are gluttons—and not just for punishment. For Dunn, the author of this month’s Restaurant column (page 84) about Otium at the Broad Museum, it was a chance for her to think outside the lunchbox. “It was like a magical first date,” she says of her maiden voyage into this magazine’s universe.

“Usually when I interview chefs, I’m quite narrowly focused on their culinary methods and expertise, and for Surface, it was fun having the opportunity to talk to Tim Hollingsworth about his approach to design.” Dunn is pregnant with her second child, the sex of whom is unknown—at least to us—but come January, the Gunnison-Dunn family home in Harlem will have one more occupant. One thing is for certain: He or she will be well fed.

SARAH KHAN Sarah Khan, our unofficial Cape Town correspondent, has actually never written about South Africa for Surface. Her online alter-ego is the South AfriKhan, and yet we resist. She writes plenty about her adopted homeland for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Condé Nast Traveler, so our assignments are about anywhere but. For Surface, she’s covered a Hong Kong hotel (October), a Guadalajara restaurant (September), and for this issue, she’s taking us even further away from her backyard: Sydney’s new Old Clare Hotel in the heart of the city’s Chippendale district (page 78). “When I was there in March,” she says, “the hotel was just a hulking construction site.” It’s still very much hulking, but the construction is done, tempting Westerners to finally sell the farm and get on a plane to Australia. The South AfriKhan hails from the American Northeast and is a former Travel + Leisure editor. She’s happily married and fluent in Urdu. Two things we all aspire to be.

BEN WISEMAN “I enjoyed the article,” says Ben Wiseman, referring to this month’s Critic column by M.H. Miller (page 58) on the subject of celebrity art collectors, which he illustrated. “Art Basel Miami has always seemed to me to be my version of hell.” Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

Wiseman’s piece depicts art fair booths with a red carpet running up and down the walls, covering the works. The trope of the carpet is something he’s often drawn to, and avoids for this reason.

“But in this case,” he says, “if it works, it works.” Currently based in Brooklyn, Wiseman grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and is a graduate of Parsons School of Design. His work frequently appears in the The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Wired.

SURFACE

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11/3/15 10:46 AM

Ideas in Design

IDEAS IN DESIGN

STUDIO VISIT

The Haas Brothers

Nikolai and Simon Haas discuss art world shenanigans and their new “Afreaks” project from their sprawling Los Angeles studio.

INTERVIEW BY SHEILA MARIKAR PHOTOS BY PETER BOHLER This place is massive. You couldn’t get this sort of space in New York.

Nikolai: New York is an awesome place, but after a year here, you start to go, “Fuck, I would never leave.”

You have some construction you’re finishing up over there. What’s it for?

Nikolai: A music studio, a bathroom, and a place where we can sleep if we’re working late.

So who’s going to play in here?

Nikolai: Pop stars. They’ll come in and do some rad shit.

Will they be able to record here?

Nikolai: Oh yeah. A lot of the bands will be established, and other ones will be up and coming. The point of the music studio—and the reason that we talked to our other brother about doing it—is that we all play music.

We just want to integrate pop culture more into the art world. This entire place is meant to be an all-inclusive playground for all types of expression.

When are you hoping to have this fully running?

Nikolai: In a month. But it’ll probably be six months to a year before we start doing projects with other people.

How long have you been in this space?

Simon: About a year.

Where were you before that?

Nikolai: Downtown L.A. Why the move? > SURFACE

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12_203,

FLÂNEUR FOREVER

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IDEAS IN DESIGN

Simon: We needed more space, and we also just love this neighborhood.

Downtown was getting congested—it’s had an explosion. This neighborhood is really chilled out.

How did you both get started in design?

Simon: It was Nikki’s idea.

Nikolai: When we were 11 or 12 years old, our mom asked us to build her an office in the backyard. Literally. Foundation, electrical, plumbing, everything.

So the plan was in place as early as that?

Nikolai: There was no preconceived plan. I don’t think either of us saw ourselves as designers before we started doing the work. Eventually, our designs ended up becoming very high-end and entering this market where you get lots of money sort of thrown at it.

What was the very first thing you two collaborated on?

Simon: We made these slippers called “pussyfoots” when we were 14.

They were just a play on the word pussyfoot—like, “pussyfooting around.”

We thought it would be funny to make a vagina slipper that was a play on words.

How do you feel about your work being described as erotic and overtly sexual? Do you feel like that pigeonholes you at all?

Simon: That’s part of what we’re trying to agitate: that people will like something because it has a sex organ on it. That’s all anyone will talk about, and it’s kind of funny to us that that’s the case. These things have been present in artwork since the beginning of time.

You made a chair with testicles. Do you think people were prepared for that?

Nikolai: We’re toeing that line where all of a sudden someone’s like, “Whoa, you can’t do that!” Honestly, in the beginning, none of that agitation was intentional, but as soon as it happens and somebody resists you, you’re sort of like, “Why the fuck am I getting resisted? I’m not doing this to make somebody feel badly about themselves.” In fact, it’s the opposite—we’re trying to do something that makes people feel like, “Oh, well, I’m free to do whatever I feel.” As soon as we hit that agitation, we hit it harder and harder and harder until it breaks.

Nikolai: We had a sex-themed piece at Design Miami before that—it was our second year at Basel. We made an anti-shame piece called “Advocates for the Sexual Outsider.” What we fought against is being shamed for anything. The balls on the chair was a single piece that came out of the success of that. Our point was that everybody is a sexual outsider. Shame was the central point. We wanted to inspire feelings in people that maybe they don’t feel in their own reality all the time.

It’s almost like you’re having an ongoing public service announcement.

Simon: My only purpose is hopefully to reduce the amount of shame that someone is going to experience when they grow up. Which is already happening. That’s just the way that our culture is moving. We really want to be on that train.

Nikolai: We think of our work as a catalyst to speeding this up. That’s the point of being an artist: to create social change in ways that you see fit for the world.

Simon: We grew up with the Internet. The only people who really care about boundaries are the people who stand to profit off of them, or who grew up thinking that they are so rigid they can’t be changed. I find this age so exciting because there are so many opportunities.

Have you ever been approached by a big brand to do a design collection?

Nikolai: Yeah, we did a furniture line for Versace, one of our first projects.

Was there a set of rules?

Simon: There were very few constraints. They gave us the inspiration of Neoclassicism. I already find that funny because Neoclassicism is a rehash of classical. So what we did was a rehash of a rehash. We took Donatella as our inspiration because she’s one of the coolest people we’ve ever met—very youthful. Her stuff is also all about sexuality, freedom, and self-expression.

Nikolai: Versace is a large corporation that has existed for a long time, and they have a lot of responsibilities to investors because of the money involved. Yet they gave us way less censorship than Art Basel and Design Miami, which are supposed to be the purveyors of the next cutting-edge thing. As soon as you cut too hard, or you get too close to the cutting edge, they start to lie down. If their minds get bent too hard, they start to worry about how much money they’re going to make. >

You debuted the chair with balls at the FOG Art+Design fair in San Francisco in 2014.

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Assistants working on a commissioned Hex Tile project. (PREVIOUS SPREAD) The twins in their studio. (OPPOSITE) Ceramic accretion layering in the studio.

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Are you going to be showing work at Design Miami this December?

Simon: Yes, we had to fight our way in, but we’re in!

How do you feel about that? Is there any trepidation?

Simon: No, we were upset. We spent the last two years working on this one project and are so excited to show it. We never expected that this— out of any of our pieces—would be censored out.

Tell me about the project.

Simon: It’s called “Afreaks.” It’s beaded work by women from the Khayelitsha township outside of Cape Town.

Nikolai: It started when we were on a trip to Cape Town. We went to show some of our pieces there, and we came across a booth called Monkeybiz at a craft fair. They give beads to women who have very little employment opportunities and live in townships that are remnants of the apartheid era. They’re forced settlements, basically. We recognized the incredible expression, beautiful use of color, real talent. If you compare what they do to that table down there, it’s a similar thing in terms of how long it takes. We also noticed these beads are being sold in a tourist shop. They’re taken as a cheap thing and really shouldn’t be. The women making them are artists, and they’re spending an incredible amount of time on them. We felt like this craft—and the women themselves—were being overlooked. We wanted to get involved and collaborate with them.

As soon as we met the community, we saw this real wealth of expression, and a major level of underpayment to these women doing incredible work. Also, it’s no secret that South Africa is extremely racist. We saw an opportunity to bring in our privilege and give a piece of it to those who deserve it as much, if not more, than we do.

Simon: I think we’re talented and work very hard, but there are a thousand women in those townships who are equally hardworking, equally talented, and will forever be ignored. Just the way we were born—as white males— gives us a huge advantage. I feel like it’s rare for anybody who attains any level of success to point that out.

Nikolai: It’s a literal collaboration—they didn’t just fabricate it; they designed some of it, we designed some. No one will ever know what we designed or what they designed.

Simon: They are the artists as much as we are. We’re not going to just take all the money.

So what was the fair’s issue with it?

Simon: They called it “sensationalist.” We will probably never know what the motivations were behind it, but you can see that these are pieces of furniture. I don’t see how it couldn’t be admitted into a design fair. We presented a room full of sex toys before. I would understand if they wanted to call that sensational. This is about women, racial equality, and craft.

Nikolai: The objection is ridiculous because [the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum] has already accepted it [for a show to open in February]. It has nothing to do with the work; it has to do with the social work we did, I think. It has to do with the idea that we’re known for coming into situations and asking questions that make people uncomfortable.

Simon: No one really objects except for anyone who has a commercial interest.

Do you have any dream clients?

Simon: David Hockney. I would love to make anything for him.

Nikolai: I honestly wouldn’t want to have the type of relationship where I felt like I needed to please them. As cheesy as it sounds, we already have our dream clients. I’m a huge Mick Jagger fan—I would be stoked to know if he owned a piece. Or Beyoncé or Jay-Z. Simon: I would love for Apple to be a client. I think Apple has changed the world. I’m wearing the Apple Watch right now, and it’s changing my life. The iPhone makes Steve Jobs almost godly and a total artist.

Because you’re twins, is there a type of language—not just verbal but physical—you share when it comes to work?

Nikolai: Even when talking to you, you can tell we’re finishing each other’s sentences. We’re a single voice. We try to achieve the same goal together, and we know each other well enough that we almost never misstep in that.

Simon: There’s a division between form and surface. I’m kind of the surface guy, and he’s the form guy. But really that’s as much as you could separate us.

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(THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Nikolai Haas sculpting a form for the Hex Tile project. Another shot of the brothers in their space. A Beyoncle Accretion vase in the studio. (OPPOSITE) Studio artists and assistants doing group stretches in the morning. Tiling detail.

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IDEAS IN DESIGN

City View Garage

From the openings of museums, galleries, and luxury retail stores, to new event and boutique developments, the art and design industries have helped turn Miami into an international destination. At the center of this wave is the city’s Design District, where recently one of the most typical typologies found in American cities, the parking garage, underwent a transformation with the new City View lot. Located on the edge of the district along I-195, it has two facades—one designed

by Iwamoto Scott Architects, another by the firm Leong & Leong— connected by a metal screen devised by the artist John Baldessari.

Iwamoto Scott used its expertise in digital design to create a dynamic skin with varied diamond-shaped openings that maximizes the space available for parking. “The facade is a super important part of the garage

because they can’t afford to not have cars at the edge of the building,” principal Craig Scott says. “The question was how to make this facade more like a mural in three-dimensional relief than a traditional building envelope.” On the opposite side, Leong & Leong designed a perforated skin based on punched-out curvilinear openings that break down the scale of the building. Seen from the highway, the titanium-coated panels create a shimmering effect, but on street level, the texture is reminiscent of the foliage of palm trees. “It’s both a freeway building and a part of the neighborhood,” Craig says. You know you have something special when a parking lot can appeal to pedestrians. —David Basulto, editor-in-chief of Archdaily

EXHIBIT

Ritsue Mishima at Design Miami

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PHOTOS: RETAIL, COURTESY THE LINE. TECH, COURTESY GOOGLE.

There’s a certain metaphor for Art Basel Miami Beach in Champagne: Like much of the art sold at the annual fair, the bubbly concoction was developed in squalid conditions by people who didn’t always know what they were doing. (Dom Pérignon himself was still trying to rid his vintage of bubbles, which he viewed as an error, when he died in 1715.)

Imperfections though there may be, the results of both efforts have gone on to be enjoyed by playboys and duchesses around the world.

It’s appropriate, then, that Perrier-Jouët has once again partnered with Design Miami (which is affiliated with the more globally known art fair down the road) for an artist-designed take on the brand or its bottle, the latter originally designed by Art Nouveau forerunner Émile Gallé in 1902.

Though this year’s collaborator, the Japanese artist Ritsue Mishima, spends half her time in Venice—a city famed for its colored glass— she works with the medium in its classic clear form. While planning her proposal, she stayed at Perrier-Jouët’s Maison Belle Epoque, the onetime residence of the Perrier family that’s now home to a collection of Art Nouveau furniture and art. There, she let the influences effervesce into her practice. Axelle de Buffevent, the style director for PerrierJouët, notes that she was particularly taken by the idea of working with Mishima, because she sees a symbolic parallel evolution in the artist’s technique and the Japanese anemones that normally bedeck the bottle.

“Her proposal echoed so beautifully, and in a very unexpected way, who we are,” De Buffevent says. “It’s all about the refraction of light and how to bring life to a space, just with light.” —Dan Duray

PHOTOS: ARCHITECTURE, COURTESY IWAMOTO SCOTT. EXHIBIT, COURTESY PERRIER-JOUET.

ARCHITECTURE

IDEAS IN DESIGN

RETAIL

The Apartment by The Line

Like its first brick-and-mortar store in New York City, The Apartment by The Line’s new West Coast counterpart is a shoppable contemporary home above retail level (specifically, on the second floor of a Melrose Place building). Though the refined selection of clothing, beauty products, art, and home goods that deck out the space looks firmly established, everything doubles as sellable wares. “We’ve established our own aesthetic and identity,” says founder Vanessa Traina Snow of the by-appointment shop. “It was important to maintain that through the lens of the California landscape.” Indeed, the brand’s second home is decidedly more open, airy, and lighter than the Soho outpost. Traina Snow gutted the interior and turned it into a polished abode, more a living space than a retail outlet with its clean-lined furniture, framed works by Helmut Newton and Barbara Kasten, and ready-to-wear from J.W. Anderson, Lemaire, Protagonist, and more. There’s even a bowllike ceramic bathtub—the perfect spot to display Tenfold, The Line’s new home brand, which spans everything from washed linen duvets and cashmere throws to soapstone trays and a marble wine chiller. The collection was an important step for Traina Snow, who wants to “round out the lifestyle” that she has so discerningly established. —C.K.

PHOTOS: RETAIL, COURTESY THE LINE. TECH, COURTESY GOOGLE.

PHOTOS: ARCHITECTURE, COURTESY IWAMOTO SCOTT. EXHIBIT, COURTESY PERRIER-JOUET.

TECH

Google Chromecast Audio

Listen up, audiophiles: That vintage Harmon subwoofer you’ve been using as a side table is now capable of 21st-century music streaming.

That’s thanks to Google’s new Chromecast Audio, a brightly colored puck barely larger than a silver dollar, which plugs into any speaker and turns it into a Wi-Fi enabled device. “Your phone is many things,” says Google’s Michael Sundermeyer, director of user experience for Chromecast and the lead designer for Audio. “It’s a movie theater, a music jukebox, a game machine, a photo album.” Only one of those things isn’t compatible with the “cast” button on the original, TV-focused Chromecast: your tunes. This new addition to the Google family—made with recycled plastic and plant-based inks, and modeled after retro vinyl records—closes that gap, and ushers Google further into the brave new world of smart home technology. Already have a portable speaker for your Spotify D.J. needs? Sundermeyer points out that Wi-Fi streaming has advantages over Bluetooth, citing longer range, multiuser control, and higher quality—particularly since your tracks don’t need to get compressed as they transfer from phone to speaker. For the price, it’s a no-brainer. $35, google.com/chromecast —Nikki Ekstein

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BOOK

Artists Living With Art

An interior design tome with cultural edge, Artists Living With Art (Abrams) is a voyeuristic peek into the homes of artists who also collect: Chuck Close, Cindy Sherman, and the couple who brought Lena Dunham into the world, among others. The interiors here are often as interesting as the art (which shouldn’t be surprising, considering these homeowners presumably possess a certain visual sensitivity). The book shows a piece by Sol Lewitt, which he painted directly onto the wall at Pat Steir’s Greenwich Village brownstone, a seemingly modest backdrop for a collection of fossil stones on display. Across town in the black-painted parlor of Rashid Johnson’s Kips Bay townhouse, one of Glenn Ligon’s neonlight works hangs over the fireplace; in the living room, a sculpture by the Campana Brothers shares space with one of their chairs. At a time when the art world is so commercial that it seems like a farce, these collectors stand out for their earnestness. Or, as the painter and critic Robert Storr puts it in the foreword: “Unlike collectors who approach art like postage stamps or stock portfolios, artists acquire and put up things that mean something very specific to them, things that energize them and help them to make their work better and more distinctive.” Laymen take note.

—Hally Wolhandler

Ania Jaworska

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PHOTOS: LIMITED EDITION, COURTESY LOUIS VUITTON. RETAIL, COUTRESY MINOTTI.

“Architecture is very serious business,” says Ania Jaworska, tongue-incheek. The Polish-born, Chicago-based 36-year-old stood out among the dozens of other architects at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial for a tool, unusual in the industry, that pushes the discipline in a new direction: humor. To Jaworska, its complex range—from innocence to irreverence—provides rich means to initiate conversation. Likewise, her first solo show, now on view through Jan. 31 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, features bold, minimalist shapes that explore how common architectural forms communicate. “Gated Area,” a steel ring with an arched entryway, invites viewers inside while inherently creating a boundary; “Monument For Them” consists of two wood letters that appear to be on their knees, begging for attention, forming the word “hi.” Nearby, 16 screen-printed posters comprise “A Subjective Catalogue of Columns,” a series of new column typologies informed by buildings and everyday language: “Whoops,” a column that fails to touch the ground, hangs alongside “Boring Office” (an unadorned cylinder) and “The ’90s,” a rave-inspired group of skinny, multicolored rods. Together, they diminish the distance between architecture and contemporary culture, creating an index with references everyone can appreciate. Jaworska credits her time at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she earned her master’s degree, for her ability to articulate the playful side of her approach. “Humor helped me find my point of view within the field of architecture, which requires a lot of time, money, and power,” she says. “I use humor to undermine these conditions. It’s a form of critique, but also offers social relief.” —Tiffany Jow

PHOTOS: BOOK, COURTESY ABRAMS BOOKS. UP AND COMING, COURTESY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO.

UP AND COMING

IDEAS IN DESIGN

LIMITED EDITION

Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades Lounge Chair

“Travel constantly changes, inspires, and surprises you,” says Dutch designer Marcel Wanders. This sentiment is reflected in his recent creation for Louis Vuitton, a multifunctional lounge chair that wondrously converts from a pouffe into a chaise lounge or armchair.

The piece is the latest addition the brand’s Objets Nomades collection, an ongoing series of portable furniture and accessories made in collaboration with influential artists and designers. The full collection, including Wanders’s protean creation, will soon become an exhibition in Miami at Louis Vuitton’s Design District store—a fitting outpost, as so many of the limited-edition wares walk the line between objets d’art and hyper-practical travel goods. In a nod to the Magic City, the chair’s leather and suede upholstery is offered in what Wanders describes as “Ocean Drive turquoise.” (A classic Louis Vuitton tan leather is also available.) Despite its conspicuous utility, the designer insists that at conception, form preceded function. “We were able to design an object that adapts to space and allows those who experience it to connect with it,” he says. In that way, the piece mirrors the experience of travel itself. Louis Vuitton leather and suede upholstered carbon fiber chair, price upon request, louisvuitton.com —C.K.

PHOTOS: LIMITED EDITION, COURTESY LOUIS VUITTON. RETAIL, COUTRESY MINOTTI.

PHOTOS: BOOK, COURTESY ABRAMS BOOKS. UP AND COMING, COURTESY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO.

RETAIL

Minotti Miami

The U.S.’s fourth Minotti flagship store has landed comfortably in the heart of Miami’s Design District. The single-story building is clad in floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing contemporary home furnishings set against red partitions and a central white-lacquered two-sided fireplace.

Minotti Studio, the brand’s in-house design team responsible for devising the intricate layouts of all Minotti stores worldwide, conceived the architecturally sophisticated design of the store in collaboration with showroom DDC. And though the Milanese architect Rodolfo Dordoni has developed most of Minotti flagships, he didn’t have a direct hand in this particular store—though CEO Roberto Minotti notes that over an 18-year history of collaboration, the brand has absorbed his taste. “We’ve come to share the same views on almost everything,” he says, adding that while this new store is aesthetically connected to 30 other stores worldwide, he’s particularly excited about what makes this one singular.

“It celebrates the unique tastes and lifestyles of Miami.” —Lily Wan

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ILLUSTRATION: BEN WISEMAN

Celebrity Art Collectors

Like a bad bout of food poisoning, Art Basel Miami Beach has a way of sneaking up on you suddenly and feeling worse than you ever previously remembered it.

This year—between Aug. 31, when registration for credentials opened (more than three months before the fair), and the end of September, when I wrote this—I received no fewer than eight excitable press releases about “very strong projects” and the “premier line-up of international galleries” at Art Basel, each delivered with a carefully timed embargo, as if the information contained therein was some kind of important state secret.

It is the art world’s most carnivalesque gesture, clogging the city with exhausted dealers, over-lubricated journalists, and—the fair’s most exciting fixture—incognito pop culture icons, all inching along in an endless three-day traffic jam that levels any previous distinctions of class and wealth. Buying contemporary art is now common enough among the rich and famous that a movie star or pop singer talking aspirationally about collecting has become a trope in celebrity profiles.

“I’m going to slowly become an art collector,” Katy Perry told E! News last year. “I would love to collect at some point,” Drake said in Rolling Stone in 2014, though also claiming, “I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny,” a jab at Jay-Z, whose own collection has been estimated

to be worth close to $500 million. But despite his conceit, Drake wasn’t above gracing the cover of W’s art supplement the other month for his work composing soundtracks for Sotheby’s auctions. “The art [there] moved me like a song would,” he told the magazine.

December in Miami sees the peak of both the art world’s perverse interest in mainstream celebrity, and mainstream celebrity’s begrudging participation in the art world, each contaminating the city in equal measure.

I can sum it up nicely with a scene from last year’s fair. At a party hosted by the dealer Jeffrey Deitch at the Raleigh Hotel, Miley Cyrus performed a private concert, lighting a joint on stage and singing Beatles covers with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. As she played, news broke that a grand jury acquitted Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer that several months before had killed Eric Garner, an unarmed black man. Thousands of protesters had taken to the streets in New York. The art world elite posted knowing acknowledgements of the irony of this situation to Instagram, and then quickly moved on, snapping more photos of the pop star before them.

“You thought this was a respected place where you could escape me?”

Cyrus asked the crowd, who didn’t even have to answer. —M.H. Miller

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ILLUSTRATION: VICTOR KERLOW

CRITIC

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a subtle accessory and when unfolded turns into a work of art. As for the story behind the provocative and humorous, if disconcerting, smoking baby: It comes from Nod’s “Genius” (2008–2011), a collection of austere-faced children with smoldering cigarettes painted in the style of period pieces. The series is meant to juxtapose innocence and adulthood, and represent the childlike qualities of real life geniuses.

An unassuming piece, perhaps, for its wearer to handle such topics. Yigal Azrouël and Nir Hod cashmere-modal scarf, $450, paulkasmingallery. com —Courtney Kenefick

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Fashion designer Yigal Azrouël and artist Nir Hod, both born in Israel and working in New York, show their mutual appreciation for each other’s respective craft with two new limitededition scarves for Paul Kasmin Gallery’s PK Shop. Azrouël updated his cashmere-modal pieces with paintings by Hod, who has been lauded for his sculptures, videos, and paintings tackling subjects like beauty, loneliness, glamour, and death. Azrouël, by contrast, is praised for his draping techniques and ready-to-wear designs, despite having never attended design school. Their shared kinship led to collaborating on this piece, which when worn becomes

PHOTO: ARIAN CAMILLERI.

Smoke Signal

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Cuff, Dauphin.

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Earrings, Van Cleef & Arpels.

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Ring, Bulgari.

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Ring, Cartier.

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Bracelet, Piaget.

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Earrings, De Grisogono.

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Earrings, Kwiat.

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Necklace, De Beers.

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DETAIL

Karl Lagerfeld brought the classic Chanel suit quite literally into a new dimension for the house’s fall/winter haute couture collection. Laser sintering was used to create finely detailed 3-D fabric, which was then hand sewn into iconic silhouettes, like this jacket, and adorned with gold sequins.

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PHOTOS: MICHAEL RYTERBAND.

Chanel Haute Couture lame wattine suit, price upon request, (800) 550-0005

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Patron Saint

KNOW NOW

Dakis Joannou believes supporting the arts is about much more than simply buying work.

In this column, we ask our special projects editor, Bettina Korek, founder of the Los Angeles–based independent arts organization For Your Art, to select something in the world that she believes you should be aware of at this particular moment.

Patronage, which ideally means supporting creative energies, takes many forms.

The myriad of opportunities range from institutional, like joining museum boards or chairing a gala, to the more democratic, such as online platforms like Kickstarter.

For Dakis Joannou, founder of the Greecebased Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, patronage takes on a whole new scope.

“Whether it involves collecting, contributing to exhibitions, or simply organizing gatherings, patronage is a question of relationships, of building up networks of friendships through which you contribute to culture,” he says. “By that I mean something different from patronage in the traditional sense of the word.”

Like Deste’s exhibition program, driven entirely by Joannou, the foundation’s publications are known for their idiosyncrasy and by projects that are not bound by traditional constraints, like 1968, a book of his Italian Radical period design furniture collection shot by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo

Ferrari in the style of Toilet Paper, their irregularly published artist’s book-magazine of surreal staged photographs, or the co-publication with Paul Chan’s Badlands of a radical new translation of Plato’s Hippias Minor.

By taking what the book’s editors call an “unscientific approach,” Deste 33 Years: 1983–2015 retraces the development of Joannou’s foundation in a combination of oral history and archival format; 850 pages of photographs, press clippings, critical reviews, correspondence, and unabashed conversations reveal not only the ups and downs of the foundation, but offer an intimate glimpse into the state of contemporary art.

The spirit of the book is driven by Jounnou’s desire to empower artists to generate ideas and connect with contemporary culture.

Patronage for those with Medici-scaled aspirations and resources start their own museum. Some reflect trends but for Joannou patronage has always meant something personal. As he writes in the introduction to

Deste 33 Years, “For some, art is, above all, a luxury. But not for me. We don’t need it to survive, but we do need it. It’s what man needs to remind him that he’s human after all.” Joannou, who studied engineering and architecture in the U.S., initially set out to create a museum of contemporary culture when he established Deste (which means “look” in Greek) more than three decades ago. According to him, by building a collection, you’re saying, “This is what I believe.”

Jeffrey Deitch (left), Massimiliano Gioni (center), and Dakis Joannou (right) with Maurizio Cattelan at “Monument to Now” (2004) at the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art.

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PHOTO: COURTESY DESTE FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART.

BY BETTINA KOREK

Fine Arrangement

TRAVEL

This Mumbai-born jewelry designer has a new passion: giving street art an Indian touch.

PORTRAIT BY YAEL MALKA “We love shiny,” says Ranjana Khan, who references India’s ancient artform, embroidery, in her work. “Have you seen an Indian bride? She’s like a Christmas tree.” It’s safe to say they’re keen on color, too, as proven

by Khan’s new collection—her first in two years—that takes inspiration from the works of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo; it’s being shot for a catalogue as we chat in her Midtown Manhattan studio.

Khan grew up in Mumbai, where she modeled until an arranged marriage landed her in Toronto at age 24. Faced with a life in Canada that wasn’t true to her ambition, she did what any dreamer would do—fled to New York to “get lost,” cultural tradition be damned. “I didn’t like what I saw in Toronto, it wasn’t my thing,” she says. “Life is the road you choose.”

The road she chose led her to nowhusband, Naeem, a distinguished eveningwear designer who was apprenticing under Halston, in one of those serendipitous, made-for-Hollywood—or is it Bollywood?—moments. Unbeknownst at the time, the two had attended the same school and lived a couple of blocks away from each other growing up. Naeem introduced himself after recognizing her as “the girl from the billboards.” Their first date was at Studio 54; they were married a year later. Nowadays the couple returns to Mumbai twice a year to check in on their factory and the lo-

cal fashion scene. “It’s getting really fancy,” she says. “They have a fashion week now; the designers are so elaborate.”

It’s safe to say that Khan’s gamble has paid off. Her ascension to the upper realm of the social stratosphere started in ’70s Manhattan, when the city was gritty and artistic expression raw. She ran around with epoch-defining characters like Andy Warhol and Liza Minnelli to legendary counterculture clubs like CBGB. “It was pre-AIDS, so everyone was promiscuous and drugs were so open— it’s a very different world now,” Khan says.

It certainly is for her. These days, she keeps company with the Obamas. The first lady wears her jewelry (including a medallion necklace at a state dinner with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008) and is a big fan of Naeem’s gowns. Maybe Khan’s wistful for her freewheeling salad days because lately she’s been palling around with graffiti artists in Miami, where she splits her time. The reason: Her first-ever foray into the art world, a project she describes as “street meets runway,” makes its debut at Lemon City Studios during this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. “Graffiti is such a big part of the city. I was really inspired when I met some of the artists, hiring one to come paint my bathroom, and started thinking about collaborating with them,” Khan says. So she commissioned a team of nine to create works with spray paint in a

range of styles, then sent the pieces overseas to be hand-embroidered at her Mumbai factory with exotic materials like python snakeskin, semi-precious metal, and bone, among others.

So how do you assemble a crew of graffiti masters to collaborate on a groundbreaking genre? Go cruising in your G Wagon after dark. “I went out in the middle of the night, because that’s when the street artists are out,” she says. It’s how she found Ze Florist, known for his images of edgy flowers. She also befriended Trek6, who just retouched the famous Bob Marley portrait in Wynwood and did a massive canvas for Naeem’s show at New York Fashion Week in September, as well as Don Rimx, a Puerto Rican muralist known for his use of complex color—his drip-streaked portrait of Biggie Smalls now hangs in her son Zaheen’s apartment.

Consider Khan’s newfound passion the next act in a play that’s spanned many different theaters, from India to Canada to the U.S. “I just want to do something different.

Some people do the same thing all of their lives, one collection after the other, and are stimulated by that,” she says. “I’ve done jewelry for seven years. I’m back to having fun again.”

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PHOTOS: 01, COURTESY GALLERY CHEMOULD. 02, COURTESY BUNGALOW 8. 03, COURTESY TAJ MAHAL PALACE HOTEL. 04, COURTESY ATOSA.

BY NATE STOREY

TRAVEL

INSIDE GUIDE TO MUMBAI

BY RANJANA KHAN 01 “I love contemporary art,” Khan says. When she’s in town, she always tries to stop by the family-run Gallery Chemould, one of the city’s most well-regarded culture stops that’s been showcasing experimental Indian artists for more than 50 years. 3rd floor, Queens Mansion; 91-22-2200-0211; gallerychemould.com 02 Bungalow 8, owner Maithili Ahluwalia’s concept shop beneath a cricket stadium, is a favorite among passing-through celebrities like Madonna and stocks everything from Baroque picture frames to locally made cotton dresses. “They carry jewelry, furniture, and womenswear—with an Indian twist.” Wankhede Stadium; 91-22-2281-9880; bungaloweight.com 03 Khan cherishes her memories at the 1903 Edwardian-style Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, especially the Sea Lounge, which she’s been visiting since she was 13 years old. “You can see the Gateway of India monument and the Armenian Sea from the window,” she says. “I love the tea time, sandwiches, and ginger tea.” Apollo Bunder; 91-22-6665-3366; tajhotels.com

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PHOTOS: 01, COURTESY GALLERY CHEMOULD. 02, COURTESY BUNGALOW 8. 03, COURTESY TAJ MAHAL PALACE HOTEL. 04, COURTESY ATOSA.

04 Khan says the globally focused boutique Atosa, housed in a bungalow on a peaceful lane in Khar, is another can’t-miss spot for the style crowd. “They carry contemporary designers, and I never leave the store empty handed.” Aman Villa 6B; 91-22-26052509; no website

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1 P E N T H O U S E B AT H RO O M

O N E TO F O U R B E D R O O M P E N T H O U S E S AVA I L A B L E F O R P U R C H A S E N O W STA RT I N G AT $ 3. 1 M I L L I O N O N - S I T E S A L E S C E N T E R O P E N 7 D AYS P E R W E E K 102 24th St, Miami Beach FL 33139 786.220.0887 1hotels.com/homes /miami

ORAL REPRESENTATIONS CANNOT BE RELIED UPON AS CORRECTLY STATING THE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DEVELOPER. FOR CORRECT REPRESENTATIONS, REFERENCE SHOULD BE MADE TO A PURCHASE CONTRACT AND THE OTHER DOCUMENTS REQUIRED BY SECTION 718.503, FLORIDA STATUTES, TO BE FURNISHED BY A DEVELOPER TO A BUYER OR LESSEE. THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE AN OFFER TO SELL CONDOMINIUM UNITS IN ANY STATE WHERE PROHIBITED

BY LOCAL LAW AND YOUR ELIGIBILITY FOR PURCHASE WILL DEPEND UPON YOUR STATE OF RESIDENCY. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY.

True Grit

HOTEL

BY SARAH KHAN

A guest room at the Old Clare Hotel in Sydney.

“I’m really into unloved buildings in unloved neighborhoods,” says hotelier Loh Lik Peng.

“It might be an unusual strategy for hotels and restaurants, but I like being in areas with an adventurous edge and local flavor.”

Unusual or not, it’s a strategy that’s served him well: his Unlisted Collection portfolio spans Singapore, London, Shanghai, and now Sydney, with properties occupying a neglected red-light district home, former army headquarters, and an erstwhile town hall, among other structures with unexpected provenances. For his first foray into Sydney, he transformed two historic but derelict edifices in the Chippendale district—the 19th-century Carlton & United Breweries administration building and the 1930s County Clare pub—into the slick new Old Clare Hotel.

When Peng first fell in love with the heritage buildings in 2011, Chippendale was a run-down inner-city neighborhood that Sydneysiders preferred to pass through quickly, if at all; by the time the hotel opened this fall, the area was teeming with avantgarde art galleries and a clutch of top restaurants. Peng might just be the hotel industry’s Midas, turning every project he touches to real-estate gold.

“My vision was not to over-restore it,

but to maintain the grittiness and the industrial, urban feeling of the building while respecting its history,” Peng says. And so he set Tim Greer, design director of Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects, to work. “It was a pretty unspecific brief; he said to make something that Sydney doesn’t have,” Greer recalls. “We spent quite a bit of time undressing the structure we inherited—it’s as much about unbuilding as creating.” The result is a protean space, raw and rugged, but also sublimely sophisticated.

Rooms The 62 rooms are clad in timber and steel, and accessorized with custom-made desk lamps by U.K.’s Rag & Bone Man that were fashioned from chunks of machinery. Some rooms are duplexes, some have antique bars salvaged from the brewery, and all come with upholstered vintage chairs collected by Peng; there may be seven categories, but no two rooms are exactly alike. The pièce de résistence is the C.U.B. suite, which occupies the former boardroom—porcelain urinals from the executive men’s restroom have even been restored.

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PHOTO: COURTESY OLD CLARE HOTEL.

This new hotel is the showpiece of a Sydney neighborhood’s makeover.

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Public Areas

PHOTOS: COURTESY OLD CLARE HOTEL.

The laneway between the two buildings was transformed into the hotel’s lobby: “There’s actually a third building, to stitch the two buildings together with curtain wall glazing,” Greer says. “To one side we literally cut a slice out of the building—from top to bottom, through brickwork and timber and steel, and as you look out from the stairs you see the backside of original facade.”

The buzziest new restaurant openings in Sydney these days all seem to share the same postal code, so it’s no surprise that Old Clare adds three high-profile spots to boost Chippendale’s burgeoning culinary cred even further. Chef Clayton Wells—formerly of Momofuku Seiobo in Pyrmont—is at the helm at Automata, whose moody ambience and industrial design came courtesy of Matt “Machine” Darwon (the centerpiece of the dining room is a Rag & Bone Man chandelier crafted out of a World War II aircraft engine). On the opposite end of the spectrum is the light and airy Silvereye by chef Sam Miller, all blond oak and Scandinavian minimalism, likely inspired by his time as Rene Redzepi’s right-hand man at Copenhagen’s Noma. Kensington Street Social, from prolific British chef Jason Atherton of London’s Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social, is scheduled to open in early 2016.

In the end, Greer and his team executed Peng’s vision, however unspecific, in a way that’s anointed the Old Clare as Sydney’s most novel hotel. “It’s not all sophisticated or all raw, but it moves between these two states,” Greer says. “It’s a building with mixed emotions—you have to really get it to want to stay here.”

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PHOTOS: COURTESY OLD CLARE HOTEL.

HOTEL

(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) The hotel’s outdoor pool. The Clare Bar. (OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) A staircase in the hotel. The secondfloor dining room at Automata.

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A local design firm creates a shamanic temple to cocktail culture in Mexico City.

Garden Party

BY JENNY ADAMS

Estudio Atemporal—from the Spanish meaning “timeless study“—is a multidisciplinary group of architects and interior designers who formed in 2011 to create spaces that both spark current conversation and endure as the years progress. Where better, then, to find inspiration for their latest bar project than shamanism, the ancient philosophy of astral projection?

Xaman is located on a dark alleyway in Colonia Juarez, a neighborhood whose creative energy is the result of ’60s-era artists and writers from the Ruptura movement colonozing an area that was once home to the city’s affluent class, but fell into disrepair.

Architect Luciana de la Garza spent two months designing the space, which is accessed via an unmarked door and a staircase to a subterranean lair. Many visitors get lost trying to find it for the first time—a cornerstone of the design. The bar is meant to be a discovery and a journey into the unexpected.

The wonder begins at the entryway as patrons emerge into what feels like an ancient greenhouse. Dozens of live plants—from spiky Mexican succulents to tiny trees with twisting trunks—grow heartily in dim light. Glass terrariums full of earth flank strange relics; some acquired from healers, others reproductions of antique pottery.

Art director Christopher Lagunes created custom, interior-lit display shelves from polished wood with a thin slat design that’s duplicated on the ceiling. Soft light pours through, creating lined shadows on the walls, and the cabinet openings repeat a curvy arch pattern that offers a game of hide-and-reveal as you move through the space. “This is one of my favorite and most delicate elements in the bar;

it’s a tiny museum that tells a story,” de la Garza says. “I like to see people when they first enter because they stare for a while.”

Growing living plants in a windowless basement presents challenges. Artificial lighting systems that mimic the sun are used during off hours to keep the photosynthesis cycle normal.

The species are rare: all endemic herbs, trees, and cacti used by shamans in the country since pre-Hispanic times.

Behind the dark marble bar in the main room, apothecary jars hold mysterious infused liqueurs and tinctures. Elevated cocktails have been a subject of recent popularity in Mexico City, and Xaman’s are made with dynamic Mexican ingredients such as aromatic hoja santa, or “sacred leaf,” and xoconostle, a sour cactus fruit used in traditional medicine.

They’re buoyed by touches like dried grasshopper salt and glasses carved from gourds.

The space reminds of Russian nesting dolls, as a private room off the dance floor gives way to a smaller social area, which then leads to a hidden five-seat nook.

Xaman succeeds and nearly supersedes in its intended vibe as a house of shamanic ritual, a model example of Estudio Atemporal’s design philosophy. Surprising. Distinctive. And everchanging, just like its plants. For the staff, it’s equally a place to learn about highballs and horticulture—and perhaps the only bar in the world where you can get fired for turning off the lights when you leave.

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BAR, COURTESY ESTUDIO ATEMPORAL. COCKTAIL, COURTESY MORGANS HOTEL GROUP.

BAR

BAR

Xaman Sour INSPIRED BY XAMAN It would’ve been natural to use tequila in this drink, but inspired by the woods, plants, and the bar’s name, I used an aged cachaca as the base.

Burn one ear of corn over a flame or using a blowtorch. Strip kernels and infuse into one bottle of aged cachaca for two hours, then strain.

2 oz ⁄2 oz 1 ⁄2 oz 1 ⁄2 oz 1 1 1

infused cachaca lemon juice passionfruit juice forest honey water egg ear of corn

Shake all without ice, then shake with ice and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with baby red shiso and micro cilantro.

BAR, COURTESY ESTUDIO ATEMPORAL. COCKTAIL, COURTESY MORGANS HOTEL GROUP.

Bartender Ryan Chetiyawardana is the owner of London’s White Lyan and Dandelyan at Mondrian, which won Best New International Cocktail Bar 2015 at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans.

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The Broad museum’s new rustic accent is a Napainspired restaurant.

BY ELIZABETH G. DUNN

flexible and welcoming.

Wood, copper, steel, and glass combine to give the space a bucolic yet raw vibe. “Tim spent the better part of his career up in Napa, so we wanted to bring a little Napa down to Bunker Hill,” Bleier says. In that spirit, a botanical mural by Sagmeister & Walsh with a swirling vine motif occupies the rear wall of the main floor. Upstairs, on the mezzanine, a forest of 24 vertical “garden towers” immerses guests in the restaurant’s own version of a rooftop farm.

Logs used to feed Hollingsworth’s wood-fired rotisseries and oven sit stacked in plain sight.

Many of Otium’s decorative elements, including tables, chairs, ceramics, and light fixtures, were designed by local artisans, contributing to the “perfectly imperfect” handmade charm of the space.

Similarly, the food that Hollingsworth produces at Otium is designed to be approachable. His menu consists of a simple list of items, without categories or sections, meant to appeal to everyone from the solo museumgoer looking for a snack at the bar to large groups in for a multi-course dinner. The dishes themselves have a homey, but elevated, feel; they rely heavily on rustic wood-fire cooking, and many have been devised with sharing in mind—a slice of Napa-style conviviality, in the heart of downtown L.A.

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PHOTO: ANTONIO DIAZ

The distance between Napa Valley’s rolling, vine-covered knolls and the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles is 411 miles. There, standing along Grand Avenue watching people in suits skitter between stark granite high-rises, it feels even farther. It seems like the last place Timothy Hollingsworth, the former chef de cuisine of Napa’s famed French Laundry, would choose to open his first solo project, but a glimpse of Otium serves as an explanation.

The purpose-built, two-story space sits atop a bridge that spans Hope Street, on the grounds of the new Broad museum, at the end of a long pedestrian plaza planted with 100-yearold olive trees transported from Northern California. Inside, a skin of chestnut-colored Ipe wood serves as a warm contrast to the sterile concrete and stone surfaces that dominate the neighborhood. “There’s an adult tree-house feel to the project,” says Greg Bleier of Studio Untld, one of two firms responsible for the restaurant’s interior design, the other being House of Honey.

Otium—“leisure time,” in Latin—as with so much of Bunker Hill’s recent revival, has philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad to thank.

In the 1980s and 90s, the duo was instrumental

in raising funds to build the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Frank Ghery– designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, bringing a new energy to the stoic financial district; now, they’ve added the Diller Scofidio + Renfro– designed Broad museum as a repository and display space for their art collection. For the museum’s recently opened restaurant, the Broads tapped restaurateur Bill Chait, who brought Hollingsworth on board. Together with a team including Studio Unltd, Riley Architects, and Osvaldo Maiozzi, the group has collaborated on a project aimed at endowing this austere section of downtown L.A. with a new sense of warmth and motion.

“There are a lot of restaurants out there, so for me, there had to be a larger mission,” Hollingsworth says. “How do you become more than just a restaurant? It’s important that you look at your environment and how you can fulfill your roll, which in this case, is activating a forgotten area.”

The surrounding plaza has already become a magnet for pedestrians: Olive tree stumps avail themselves for relaxing, reading, and lunching. Hexagonal ceramic tile flooring, crafted by Granada Tile, spills from an exterior patio into the building, drawing guests inside. Once there, a massive open kitchen is a focal point of the space, inviting diners to watch Hollingsworth and his team at work.

A wide range of seating options—including a lounge area, bar, high-top tables, banquettes, and traditional dining tables with chairs—were included as a way of making the restaurant feel

PHOTO: MICHELLE PARK.

Warm Welcome

RESTAURANT

RESTAURANT

Dish by Timothy Hillingsworth INSPIRED BY OTIUM Otium is about community, interaction, and collaboration—the completely open kitchen is essentially the focal point of the dining room. Called a donabe, the Japanese clay pot used for anything from cooking rice to making stews, is as well (our version is used for smoking). Eating out of a donabe is a wholly interactive experience. The food is still technically cooking once is comes to the table, and you create your own bites right out of the pot. This dish is a pastrami-brined and rubbed hiramasa, sliced thin and arranged on a series of grates within the donabe. The hiramasa is surrounded by roasted red and gold beets, potatoes, rye crisps, and garden greens. The donabe is filled with cherry wood chips lit to an ember, which causes smoke to fill the vessel—a dramatic reveal at the table. As it’s a play off of the traditional pastrami on rye with Russian dressing, we serve the donabe with a Thousand Island dip The Sagmeister & Walsh mural on our wall reads “Inside Out, Outside In,” which is an idea that has been the foundation of the restaurant’s culture and design from the very beginning. The Donabe Smoked Hiramasa Pastrami is the perfect representation of that. Once it comes to the table, the smoke billows out of the clay pot, inviting guests in. It blurs the lines between the kitchen and the dining room, and creates an interactive and collaborative eating experince.

Timothy Hillingworth is the chef at Otium. He formerly worked under Thomas Keller at French Laundry in Napa and at Studio City barbecue restaurant Barrel & Ashes.

Pastrami Rub coriander seeds black peppercorns yellow mustard seeds brown mustard seeds salt juniper paprika garlic powder onion powder Coat the brined hiramasa in the pastrami rub, and slice thinly Accompaniments beets potatoes olive oil salt sugar thyme garlic Toss quartered beets and potatoes in the olive oil, salt, sugar, thyme, and garlic. Roast at 400 degrees.

Arrange sliced hiramasa, roasted beets, potatoes, and seasonal garden greens on the Donabe grates.

Place cherry wood chips (lit to an ember) at the bottom of the donabe, arrange grates over the lit wood chips, and cover with lid for at least 30 seconds.

Thousand Island Relish cornichons tomatoes pickled red onion pickled mustard seed thickened pickling liquid Mix all ingredients together.

Horseradish Aioli egg yolks prepared horseradish salt grated garlic clove lemon juice mustard oil

PHOTO: ANTONIO DIAZ.

PHOTO: MICHELLE PARK.

Mix all ingredients except oil in a robot coupe until it’s well incorporated.Slowly stream in oil. Plate alongside the Thousand Island relish.

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Sac de Coeur

STORE

The aesthetic of a popular online retailer’s first brickand-mortar post takes cues from its fashionable totes.

derwall was enlisted to create a sleek, neutral white space that highlights the vibrant colors and forms of the bags to dazzling effect. The architect, whose harmonic and clean-lined style can be found in outlets such as Colette and Uniqlo, “brought a clear vision to the project,” says Signoles.

“He looks at everything—space, light, layout—from the consumer’s point of view.”

The result is a 300-square-foot jewel box–like setting full of natural finishes and brilliantly lit cubbies that line the walls from floor to ceiling. In keeping with the minimalist vibe, each bag is numbered, not named, and is showcased in backlit cubes that are further highlighted by the designer’s LED glass pendants. “Design is a form of communication. L/Uniform’s products should be the material of this place,” Katayama says. “The flooring is derived from their graphic pattern; the brand’s attention to detail is expressed in here.”

Large school bags—a take on the traditional messenger carryall—backpacks, petite pochettes, not to mention simple computer sleeves and phone charger cases, are all crafted from lightweight, stainproof fabrics available in-store. They can

be further customized by special order in any combination of canvas hues, leathers, and cloth edgings. A parquet-lined workshop in the back of the space showcases color-blocked designs as well as silkscreened samples that further personalize the L/Uniform range, one that is already developing a cult-like following on both sides of the Atlantic. “I wanted this space to be full of inspirations, in order to create personalized bags,” Katayama says. “The bags have different stories, and I wish customers to enjoy the journey of the process. I wanted it to be place where you can imagine your life with a new bag.”

Much like the bags, the shop “has the spirit of Saint Germain, but made modern,” says Signoles.

“My favorite waiter at Le Voltaire down the street worries about what he calls the ‘massification’ of the area.

He loves the store and when he gave us the nod of approval, I knew we had created something wonderful.”

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CREDIT TK

“I wanted to build a store in a special, authentically Parisian place,” explains Jeanne Signoles, co-founder of the elegant, utilitarian handbag line L/Uniform. Her choice of the Quai Malaquais, a tree-lined street fronting the Seine in stylish SaintGermain-des-Prés, was a natural one that mirrors her classic but contemporary collections. “There are no big brands here, and locals really do come to shop,” she says of the area that has long been home to artists, architects, and the fashion-forward.

Signoles, along with her husband, Alex, are not new to accessory design—his family owns Goyard—and they worked in the business before launching L/Uniform.

Inspired by simple worker, messenger, and tool bags, their versions are handcrafted by artisans in the fortified French town Carcassonne using treated cotton or linen canvas, Spanish calfskin edging, and sculptural gold hardware. And while the business has been largely focused on the web, Signoles wanted this Paris retail environment to be a “cabinet of curiosities,” she says. “Not a museum or precious boutique, but a practical place with a great energy.”

Masamichi Katayama of Japan’s Won-

PHOTO: COURTESY L/UNIFORM.

BY CHRISTINA OHLY EVANS

Game Changer

TASTE

An NBA star collects art for both enjoyment and to support emerging talents.

BY AMAR’E STOUDEMIRE PORTRAIT BY MICHAEL RAVENEY

Stoudemire with artworks in the lobby of the W South Beach hotel.

My interest in art started maybe six years ago, and I’ve been collecting for about four. I’m really into fashion, and I think that developed my taste for art. My fashion collection is built on pieces I want to keep in my collection forever, and so is my art collection. I approach them both the same way.

When I first started to be interested in art, I asked my friend Swizz Beatz about how the art world works, and how to be involved. I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing as far as buying. I educated myself on the art business before I purchased any paintings.

In general, my taste depends on how I feel about a certain work. I love street art, and I’m really drawn to portraits of musicians and athletes. I’m primarily into contemporary art. You can put those pieces around your home, and they can sit there forever for you to appreciate.

I’ve become really good friends with artists like Rob Pruitt, Mr. Brainwash, and Retna—I actually just bought a piece of his. I told Retna I wanted something dope, something fresh, something no one has, and he created it for me.

I also bought a Basquiat painting not too long

ago, and I have a brilliant Patrick Pettersson painting and a Warhol.

I look for pieces that are going to appreciate—pieces that I can keep in my collection forever, but that I could make money off of if I ever decided to trade or sell them. Even though I keep this in mind, I’ve never sold a piece and don’t plan to. They’re all displayed throughout my home in Miami.

First and foremost, I like to assist up-andcoming artists. I like to be ahead of the curve with them, and help give them the exposure that will allow them to grow in the art world.

I’m actually going to start an art company called the Melech Collection—Melech means “king” in Hebrew. Through Melech, I’m planning to start buying art on more of a consistent basis, and collaborating with young artists whose careers I can inspire. My goal is to be a game-changer in the art world and enhance young artists, to get them to the proper platform.

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Jamaican Bold

ART

“On a series of late nights [during Art Basel], I the new additions as ‘ruins,’ showing the urban started asking people what they would think if sprawl that took place on the site as its use I developed an art space in Jamaica, and most varied over the years.”

Barrett has devised a program split into 80 importantly, would they support it?” she says.

The response was incredible, and, according to percent educational initiatives and 20 percent Barrett, one thing led to another. It was time exhibitions. She hopes it will be a “network for her to move home to see things through. of _spaces” on islands across the Caribbean.

Barrett, who started as a dancer, studied art “To truly evolve the conversation concerning

BY MARINA CASHDAN history and literature at Colgate University in contemporary art, one needs to start at the root, central New York, followed by stints at fash- with the youth,” she says. While only showing PHOTO BY STORM SAULTER ion magazines in New York City; she finished international artists, _space will invite local her studies at Sotheby’s Institute in London. curators to connect the exhibitions to aspects Two years ago, Rachael Barrett had a eureka “My parents have always collected art, and my of the local arts landscape. Her primary aim: moment. “I was home [in Jamaica] looking mother is particularly interested and involved to activate the Jamaican community, which has into taking office space to work on an export in the local literary arts scene in Jamaica. I’ve largely been outside of the contemporary art project,” she says. “Like most Jamaicans living basically always been socialized to be involved world. She is hoping to expose edgier genres, abroad, I’ve always wanted to find a way to with the arts.” She adds, “I do love the business mediums, and concepts in contemporary art to do something back home.” Barrett turned to of the art world, and so that’s something I just regular folk. “The weirder, the better.” friend and mentor, London-based architect pursued across different avenues as opportuniDavid Adjaye. “He has long been encourag- ties arose.” ing me to do something more to connect my Located on the estate of late filmmaker Perry experience in the international art world with Henzell—who helped make Jimmy Cliff’s the Jamaican-Caribbean art community. This career with his film The Harder They Come— just made sense.”

Adjaye worked with local firm Atelier Vidal to This was the seedling for _space, Jamaica’s restore the historic building. “The architecture first contemporary art kunsthalle, designed of the site is a testament to the evolution of

by Adjaye, which opens this month with an culture in Kingston,” Barrett says. “The idea exhibition of work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. is to preserve and restore them, and to leave

Rachael Barrett’s new kunsthalle brings an unusual, global sensibility to the Caribbean island.

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EXPLORE THE VIPP KITCHEN IN OUR NEW YORK SHOWROOM PLEASE CALL +1 917.580.2148 TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT VIPP.COM

L.A.’s Petersen Automotive Museum avoids expected routes with its controversial new building.

BY JONATHAN SCHULTZ “How do you make history interesting? You can educate people, but if you’re not entertaining them, then they won’t be coming back,” says Terry Karges, executive director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. He’s not talking animatronics or foam-board dioramas. Having led a $125 million capital campaign that saw the 21-year-old institution embraced in a ribbon-like steel facade, Karges will inaugurate a wholly revamped Petersen this December.

Galleries have been revamped, pedestrian flow rerouted, 175 flatscreen displays wired up, and some of the world’s rarest automobiles given sumptuous new parking spaces.

When automakers redesign an iconic model, they must weigh careful iteration against overhaul. The Petersen’s transformation is staggering, turning what was once a drab, poorly lit redoubt of car-geekery on L.A.’s Museum Row into a state-of-the-art facility for a broader cross-section of L.A. museumgoer. Indeed, Karges sees the Petersen in league with new cultural institutions such as the Diller Scofidio + Renfro–designed Broad

contemporary art museum, in L.A.’s revived downtown. (The two buildings, it must be noted, bear absolutely no resemblance.)

“What we set out to do was create a 21stcentury museum,” Karges says. “We went around the world, trying to learn how to best present the information and objects we have.” The field trip comprised 30 museum visits, including stops at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Louvre, the Delugan Meissl–designed Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, and BMW Welt in Munich. Despite the Petersen’s focus on the automobile—that most ubiquitous if fiendishly complex object of industrial design—the exercise taught the museum team “not to over-tech things,” Karges says. “Otherwise you risk losing the warmth.”

About that warmth: There’s the Mullin Gallery, which presents 19 cars under the permanent exhibition name “Rolling Sculpture.” Peter Mullin is perhaps the world’s foremost collector of pre-war French automobiles (as well as chairman of the Petersen’s board), and the gallery will count at any moment 10 of his sensuous Delahayes, Bugattis, and Talbot-Lagos. Two floors down and roughly 85 years removed, students from the ultra-prestigious Transportation Design program at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design can be observed using CAD software, 3-D printers, and clay modeling knives under the direction of Stewart Reed, the program’s longtime director. In between, museumgoers may be distracted by

one of 10 Forza Motorsport racing simulators, or Saddam Hussein’s glossy black 1978 Mercedes-Benz 600 Landaulet limousine, or a children’s educational exhibit virtually guided by Pixar’s Cars personalities.

That is, presuming people get past the front doors. “Polarizing” is a diplomatic descriptor of the new exterior design, though far less charitable things have been levied against it. “The Guy Fieri of buildings,” wrote Curbed. “The Edsel of architecture,” noted an Instagram user quoted by the Los Angeles Times, a reference to a notoriously unloved—but now collectible—Ford from the ’50s. Karges doesn’t welcome the controversy, but he isn’t shaken by it, either.

“Take a Ferrari Testa Rossa,” he says.

“Some people might say it’s uncomfortable.

Well, those people don’t get the Testa Rossa or what it was meant for. We needed to make a change. It used to be that you could drive right past our building and not notice it. It needed a facelift. It was pretty ugly.”

Singular Edsels have brought more than $100,000 in recent years. The Petersen may just be, like some of the cars in its care, ahead of its time.

A view of the new facade of the Petersen Automotive Museum.

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PHOTO: COURTESY PETERSEN AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM.

Changing Course

TRANSPORT

Books

BOOKS

On Steve Hiett’s 21st birthday, his parents gave him a Samoca 35 mm camera and a

Honer Senator guitar. He would use both to create bold pop-culture content, but eventually the camera prevailed. After a stint as the frontman for psych group Pyramid, Hiett shifted gears in the late ’60s and became a fashion photographer, shooting for publications including British Vogue and Lei, and brands like Piaget and Roberto Cavalli. Beyond Blonde (Prestel) compiles a decade-bydecade retrospective of his striking images.

As the years progress, the compendium tells the story of shifts in trends and fashion, but one thing remains throughout: Hiett’s distinct work, marked by saturated color, unorthodox movement, and attention-grabbing compositions.

Le Corbusier is a name that holds almost as commanding a presence as the buildings the man designed. In the 50th-anniversary year of his death, editors Olivier Cinqualbre and Frédéric Migayrou have compiled an impressive body of building designs, lost sketches, schemes, and sculptures produced during the life of one of modern architecture’s most celebrated and debated pioneers. Le Corbusier: The Measures of Man (Scheidegger & Spiess) was created to accompany a retrospective celebrating Le Corbusier’s early

successes and lasting influences that was up at the Centre Pompidou earlier this year. The book and exhibition’s creators “thought it our duty to enable new generations of visitors to discover this architect’s work,” Alain Seban, president of Centre Pompidou, writes in the foreword. Its pages rich with nearly 500 images, The Measures of Man guides any longstanding connoisseur, critic, or new admirer through the intricacies of Le Corbusier’s process and legacy.

Bruno Munari’s ’60s and ’70s writings on shapes—Circle, Square, and Triangle—are short but seminal texts. Half a century later, they’re finally being published as one stout but essential book: Square Circle Triangle (Princeton Architectural Press). The great Italian designer, whom Picasso once compared to Leonardo Da Vinci, wrote that the “square is the finest expression of a spatial idea complete in itself.” But the book Square feels more complete now that it is joined to its two counterparts, Circle and Triangle. Like shapes structured into a pattern, the works form something greater than the sum of their parts.

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PHOTO: MICHAEL RYTERBAND.

The silhouette of two rhinos mating against a fiery sunset. An old woman cuddling a llama for emotional support. Margaret Thatcher as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. These days, upon first glance at any of these images, you wouldn’t even blink an eye. The world we live in is often loud, profane, and heavily Photoshopped.

And we get to see it all any time we want (as well as many times we don’t). Twenty-five years ago, though, the weird of the world wasn’t so widely broadcasted. In 1991, the magazine Colors was born and published the aforementioned scenes. Founders Tibor Kalman and Oliviero Toscani set out to prove diversity is good and image is powerful; each issue was produced at the Fabrica research center in Italy and focused on a single topic of pressing social and cultural importance, tracing it all over the globe. Francesco Bonami writes in the foreword of a new eponymous book published by Damiani and Fabrica that “creating a magazine like Colors today would likely be an impossible feat.” Essentially a 240-page collage, the book macrothematically remixes text and images from all published issues.

Spanish brand AtarĂŠs specializes in turning slabs of marble into mosaic art. After cutting material into tesserae, or small stone squares, each piece is optically analyzed for tone and then catalogued. The blocks are meticulously arranged by a robot and retouched by hand to accurately mimic the desired image.

Selected by Material Connexion vice president Andrew Dent, Ph.D.

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PHOTO: MICHAEL RYTERBAND.

Piece Offering

MATERIAL

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Team Effort

ON TIME

Graphic designer Philippe Apeloig’s graceful typeface helps a new Hermès watch subtly stand out.

BY KEITH W. STRANDBERG

The 39.5mm Slim d’Hermès watch in rose gold with an alligator strap.

Whenever Hermès sets out to do something, the French brand focuses on craftsmanship at every step. For a recent watch collaboration (and no, not the just-launched, muchdiscussed one with Apple), that exacting approach included typography. “We wanted to create a font for the dial that differed from what’s currently on the market,” says Philippe Delhotal, the artistic director of La Montre Hermès. “We were looking for an elegant, classic, but also contemporary piece that speaks to the essentials of the brand.”

To create the new Slim d’Hermès timepiece, Delhotal turned to lauded Paris-based graphic designer and typographer Philippe Apeloig. Thames & Hudson has published a monograph of Apeloig’s work; he won the overall prize at the 2009 International Society of Typographic Designers Award in London; and he’s even had a solo show at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris—but he’d never previously designed typography for a watch.

“I focused on sobriety and minimalism,” says Apeloig, who has also done work for the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Instituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, and the silversmith Puiforcat (the latter of which is under the wing of the Hermès group).

“I built in constraints, limiting the number of shapes—circles, triangles, curves, dashes— that I could use to create the numbers. Each is drawn using a continuous line in which small cuts are made.”

The main challenge was to make the watch feel light, and Apeloig’s work achieves this handily. Another challenge: to make a timepiece wholly its own and not replicable.

There are no plans to use the typography from the Slim d’Hermès on any other watch.

Manufacturing-wise, the piece also utilizes Hermès’s rich portfolio of companies.

“It is important to highlight that the new Slim d’Hermès showcases Hermès’s vertical integration,” Delhotal says. “The movement comes from Vaucher [which Hermès has a 25 percent stake in]; the strap is made in the Hermès leather workshops; the dial at Natéber, which is owned by Hermès; and the case is made at Joseph Erard, also owned by Hermès.” Now that’s care for craft.

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PHOTO: COURTESY HERMES.

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Parisian firm Pagnon et Pelhaître is behind Ligne Roset’s new Space shelves, which mix three different stackable modules. The units can rest on the floor or be put up on a wall. ligne-roset-usa.com

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Designed by longtime Minotti collaborator Rodolfo Dordoni, the brand’s Catlin coffee table top comes in either glass or polished Arabescato Purple or Sahara Noir marble.

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Another Dordoni design for Minotti, the Elliot collection of coffee tables takes influence from Milanese design of the ’50s and ’60s and is available in marble and metal options. minotti.com

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Apparatus’s Portal coffee table is made of thick sandblasted ash, in bleached or blackened options. It was designed with ancient structures and primitive furniture in mind.

Italian designer Mauro Lipparini conceived the Ravello table for the Casa International’s Italia collection. An elaborately paneled underside makes it architecturally compelling.

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Driade’s eye-catching Sereno coffee table, by Fredrikson Stallard, is loud but elegant in polished cast metals (aluminum, gold-plated, and stainless steel).

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The Ercole e Afrodite console is the first piece created by in-house research center Driade Lab. Crafted of popolar chipboard, tubular steel, and oak, it’s both unusual and useful. driade.com

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Holly Hunt’s London showroom recently presented this pedestal table, a collaboration with the artist Paula Crown. It comes in Nero Assoluto marble with a brass inlay on top.

Poltrona Frau’s Ilary coffee table collection comes in a variety of top finishes, including saddle leather. French designer Jean-Marie Massaud created them for the Italian brand.

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The Galvanized shelving unit, designed by Peter Marigold, is part of SCP Editions, a special collection made to mark SCP’s 30th anniversary. It’s made from laser-cut, hot dip galvanized steel that is later hand-finished. thefutureperfect.com

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The To Turn You On coffee table is the brainchild of French interior designer and architect Damien Langlois-Meurinne, who created it for Pouenat. It comes in a number of metal finishes. pouenat.fr

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Paying homage to Oscar Niemeyer, Living Divani’s Brasilia table is made of curvy but paper-like metal sheets. It was designed by David Lopez Quincoces for the Italian brand. livingdivani.it

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Plate Tableware or part of a watch movement?

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Nendo’s Border tables are sculptural yet delicate, blending into environments seamlessly while making their mark. They were created specially for a solo exhibition at the 2015 Tokyo Designers Week.

Not a lot of high-end furniture is made of rubber, but this credenza from Brian Thoreen is. The Los Angeles–based designer used the material’s natural properties to create drawer handles.

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The Nudo Basic table from Sancal stays true to its roots. Made of solid oak, it’s named for the knots found in wood. A special hard-wearing matte treatment makes the grains stand out. sancal.com

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Barcelona-based designer Mario Ruiz created the Kiri series of round coffee tables for Expormim. Rattan legs are topped by three tabletop finishes: solid wood, lacquer, and marble. expormim.es

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Marcel Wanders designed the Mad dining table for Poliform, a growing collection the Dutch designer began with the Mad chair. Oak legs are outfitted with a range of marble tops.

Award-winning architect and designer Antonio Citterio realized Flexform’s Tindari collection of tables, using woven hide leather, wood, marble, and metal tubing.

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Inspired by traditional Chinese furniture, Lema’s walnut Winston cabinet belies a lively interior: It’s a bar featuring bottle holders, a cocktail surface, drawers, and more. A mirrored inside and leather details add edge.

A playful sliding tray distinguishes the Piero Lissoni–designed Lochness cabinet for Cappellini, which is crafted of wood and lacquered panels, and comes in a range of colors and sizes.

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New drawer units update B&B Italia’s Surface collection by Belgian designer Vincent Van Duysen, who was inspired by a Piet Mondrian painting and the sculptures of Donald Judd. bebitalia.com

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Ipercolore, a collection of sideboards by Piero Lissoni for Porro, are at once minimalist and playful, with bright but deep lacquered colors.

They’re made of stainless hemlock and have burnished brass finishings.

Cassina’s Dadà collection puts a twist on the usual modular shelving solution. Designed

by Japanese designer Kazuhide Takahama, the units can be composed in various ways, whether used as side tables or storage.

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Cool Headed

EXECUTIVE

CEO of 1stdibs, David Rosenblatt fosters a start-up vibe and doesn’t worry about the investors.

BY HALLY WOLHANDLER PORTRAIT BY PASCAL PERICH You don’t have a design background.

So how did you get involved in the business?

My exposure to design is less as a professional and more as a customer. I knew the investors in this company. They called me in about working here, which coincided with my wife and I decorating a new apartment. So I was actually spending quite a bit of time in and around 1stdibs—but as a customer. That whole experience really elicited an interest both in the design world, for the sake of design, and also in the business of design.

You mentioned that you chose the art in this office, and right now the space is all decked out for Halloween, and “She Wolf” is playing. You guys seem to have fun. How would you describe the company culture?

In many respects, the design of the office is a metaphor for the culture of the company. We’re equal parts a design company and a technology company. Because of the former, the aesthetic of the office itself is important, and I think all of us are highly sensitive to the appearance and presentation of what we do and how we do it.

We need to have many of the beautiful things

that we offer for sale on the site in the office.

I guess every company has to be a startOn the other hand, half our company is engiup now. You raised $50 million in venture neers and product managers, so a lot of how capital this year. When you get that much money, what’s the end game? we run the company is reflective of Internet culture. We’ve got a bar in the office—it’s a youthful culture. We’re unstructured in terms We don’t plan specifically for achieving a finanof when people come to work, when people cial return. My belief is that it’s much more leave work, and we’re much more focused on important to focus on our mission and our what they do than how they do it. We try to strategy. If we accomplish that, because we’re create an environment where they can be as in a big market, we will create value. I don’t creative and productive as possible. spend a minute thinking about how that value is realized by our investors.

So it’s kind of like a West Coast start-up?

What do you look for when you hire?

Yeah, I think there’s a West Coast vibe to this company.

What people always say about stocks is that past performance is not an indicator of future Would you consider it a start-up? It’s performance. It’s the diametric opposite with actually been around for 14 years. people. I look for a record of success, and intelligence. My high school basketball coach We’re as entrepreneurial as any six-month-old used to say you can’t coach height. If you have mobile app company, but we have millions height—if you have curiosity and you have of customers and thousands of dealers and intelligence—that helps a lot. The third thing galleries who really depend on us to do their I look for is loyalty and commitment. What jobs well. I think we’re kind of equal parts I don’t look for is domain-specific experian entrepreneurial, early-stage company and ence—meaning people who have worked in an established presence. Balancing those two this industry. If you have the three things I things is what we’re about—and what makes mentioned, you can figure almost anything life interesting. out over time.

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EXECUTIVE

Since you mentioned culture again—what do you think is essential to company culture for success?

What’s important to me is having a culture of curiosity that rewards questions and skepticism—and a culture of ambition, meaning a desire to change this industry rather than just be successful by operating within the industry.

To define it requires a level of vision and ambition that’s above the norm.

How do you create that collegiality from the top down?

It’s really a combination of two things.

The most important is to hire people who themselves believe in that and therefore can propagate it among their different teams. I also try hard to set an example through my own behavior.

What’s the best advice you ever got?

My first manager at DoubleClick [the internet ad company, sold to Google in 2008, where Rosenblatt was CEO] asked me, about a month into my job, to write down my top three priorities. I did, and then he said, “Okay, now draw 123

a line through No. 2 and No. 3, and that’s the only thing I want you to do for the next month or so.” I had never thought that way, and it taught me the value of focus. I now try to apply that sort of orientation to everything from my own time to the time of people on my team, to the priorities of the company itself. Focus wins.

What companies do you consider to be your competitors? Paddle8 or eBay perhaps?

We have very little direct head-to-head competition in terms of companies that have the same model as we do. We sell premium quality objects at premium prices, and I do think the competition is lower quality items that are also lower priced. The burden is on us to communicate the value of owning pieces that will retain and grow in value as opposed to optimizing for short-term cost and ending up with something that has no value at all in three or four years.

You said 1stdibs is 50 percent design and 50 percent tech. How do you make people joining one side of the business care about the other side?

By focusing the company on a small set of very clearly defined goals. Many of those are kind

of internal to what we do; some of those are external and strategic. But if people are working toward a common goal, then that serves to unite them, and actually the differences between them becomes highly additive. It’s really the differences of people on the team that creates that special sauce. If everyone were the same, it’s very difficult to create anything truly new.

What advice would you give to someone for success in life and work?

Find the intersection of what you love to do and what you’re good at. If you only do things you love to do and it turns out you’re not as effective at that as at other things, it’s going to be hard to be successful. If you conversely only do the things that you’re really good at but you don’t love, then you’re not going to be happy.

If you find the intersection of those two things, your life will take care of itself.

Rosenblatt in his New York City office.

The Jungle Book

ENDORSEMENT

A new tome explores the multilayered yet simple landscape designs of Raymond Jungles.

BY IAN VOLNER PORTRAIT BY OGATA

More than a century ago, a German immigrant left the Old World and settled in the U.S. Things went well for him and his descendants until the outbreak of World War I, when it was decided that the family name, probably Jüngling or Jungels, was in poor taste—so they decided to change it, opting for something a bit more wholesome and Anglo.

Flash forward to 2015, to Miami, on the grounds of some of the city’s newest and ritziest high-rise condominium projects. Here, beautiful new gardens have been sprouting up just yards from the beach, with gorgeous native plantings crowding in on each other—intimate and lush private Edens for the buildings’ wellheeled occupants.

The man who’s creating them? Jungles.

Raymond Jungles.

In a turn that would make Charles Dickens blush, Jungles has become South Florida’s go-to designer for high-end landscapes that pop with color and greenery. “Usually people’s first question is, ‘Is that your real name?’” he says, just a little wearily. “I’m used to it.” The old Latin phrase nomen est omen—name is destiny—has never seemed more accurate.

But there’s a lot more to Jungles’s story.

“When I was younger, I had long hair—people called me Tarzan or Crocodile Dundee,” the

landscape designer says. “I grew up in love with wild places, and that’s why I do what I do for a living.”

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Jungles was a nature boy from the start, and from the moment he first saw the turquoise-and-emerald ambience of Miami, he was seized with a special passion for it. “I was 18,” he remembers. “I saw the beach and the sky and the bikinis, and it just seemed natural that I’d gravitate to this place.”

Following studies at the University of Florida, where he did a thesis exploring Isamu Noguchi’s proposal for Miami’s Bayfront Park, and falling under the tutorship of famed Brazilian landscape genius Roberto Burle-Marx (he of the wavy Copacabana beach promenade), Jungles committed himself to a landscape ideology that favors organic, regionally inspired elements arranged in unruly simplicity. His new book from Monacelli Press, Cultivated Wild, expands on that thinking, explaining in words and images how “people can have a close relationship with the natural world” through landscape interventions that bring a little wildness back into the urban environment.

Jungles is doing just that on a larger scale than ever before, with a suite of new projects connected with some of his hometown’s most high-profile projects. In the new Faena SURFACE

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A view of the Jungles-designed landscape from the uppermost guest cottage at Golden Rock Inn on the island of Nevis.

District, in the shadow of buildings by Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster, and Brandon Haw, Jungles has placed thick copses of waving palms alongside meandering paths (including a very Burle-Marx-ian walkway). For the Grove at Grand Bay in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood, where he’s been paired with Danish dynamo Bjarke Ingels, he’s draping low, ivy-ish growths over above-ground walkways. And at Jade Signature in Sunny Isles, he’s working with previous collaborators Herzog & de Meuron—Jungles also collaborated with the Swiss firm on the famed 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage—creating a surreally sylvan setting for a winding, Jetsons-esque driveway.

“Basically, what we like to do is just let whatever would grow on the beach drift through the

properties,” says Jungles, himself drifting down the beach by car, headed back to his downtown studio. (He lives in an Arquitectonica-designed home in Coconut Grove, where he works alone most Tuesdays and Thursdays.) Even as he branches out with new projects in Singapore and elsewhere, Jungles seems a designer very much in his element along Biscayne Bay. It’s hard to imagine him doing anything else— though just think: Where would Miami be had his family stuck with Jüngling?

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PHOTO: STEPHEN DUNN.

ENDORSEMENT

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How It’s Made A deep dive into Delpozo’s process that brings its embellished garments to life.

HOW IT’S MADE

Spanish Accents

OPPOSITE A watercolor sketch from Delpozo’s spring/summer collection.

At fashion house Delpozo’s Madrid atelier, delicate haute-couture techniques add dramatic affect.

BY COURTNEY KENEFICK PHOTOS BY JAVIER TOMAS BIOSCA

“My starting point for each season is taken from a recent exhibition I visited, a trip I took, a book I read,” says Josep Font, the creative director of Delpozo. “Several ideas start circling in my mind, and then I try to combine them.” For the Spanish brand’s spring/summer 2016 collection, he referenced poet Federico García Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads, a 1928 book that explores the passion and emotion of the wanderer lifestyle.

He fused that with the fiery spirit of artist Gustav Klimt’s storied young lover and muse, Emilie Flöge. The result: a hybrid, free-flowing story of bohemia and romantic feminine structures, told in the context of Delpozo’s intricate embroidery and beading processes. As with his previous collections, Font continues to use skilled in-house talent to push the garments beyond ready-to-wear

and into the prêt-à-couture (or demi-couture) category.

With this, both Font’s training in architecture and fashion and his eye for hyper-feminine dressing contribute to the modernization of the label’s decades-long history of using assiduous hand-sewn methods.

“I try to reclaim these artisanal techniques and combine them with fresh designs,” he says.

“For this collection, we concentrated on organic shapes of contemporary architecture to define the silhouettes for volume.” In the weeks leading up to New York Fashion Week, where the collection is shown, Font works with his creative team to perfect the dramatic contemporary fit and coruscate adornments that Delpozo’s show has become synonymous with. Here, a look at how his inspiration turns into a fairytale runway experience.

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HOW IT’S MADE “I need to have done an extensive process of research before moving onto the sketches,” Font says. “I work on colors, shapes, and of course, fabrics and materials that will create the volume or silhouettes I want to achieve.”

THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM Swatches hang with a paintng by Gustav Klimt. Watercolor paints are used for sketches.

OPPOSITE A preliminary sketch illustrates the “Delpozo girl.”

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THIS PAGE Spools of thread in the colors of the collection. Hardware for zippers.

OPPOSITE Bolts of fabric at the atelier. This season, Font used linen, poplin, chiffon, flourescent jacquards, lurex organza, and embossed cotton.

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“Our team of embroiderers have been trained at [French embroidery school] Ecole Lesage, which adds that knowhow of traditional handwork that we value,” Font says. “This does not mean it is only applied for the embroideries.

Many designs have handmade finishings and details that are done by our seamstresses.”

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THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE Close-ups of the fabric.

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“Craftsmanship is key to the brand,” Font says. “We use artisan techniques in all our creations. The handmade embroidery is created with the most exquisite materials using techniques from couture.”

THIS PAGE Hand sewing flowers that will later be appliqued to a garment.

OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM Handmade elements ready to be applied to fabric. A close-up of the handiwork.

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HOW IT’S MADE THIS PAGE A dress in its beginning stages. “I work with my team to model fabrics on mannequins to achieve architectural volumes, and study the reaction of the materials with each shape,” Font says.

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT A pattern. Dressing a mannequin.

Studying measurements. “My team of pattern makers are fundamental to translating the designs into real pieces,” Font says.

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“I’m a perfectionist, so it’s hard for me to say ‘Okay, it’s finished,’” Font says.

“That said, it’s a huge satisfaction to see the collection worn by women after all the effort that has gone into the process.”

THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE Font adds finishing touches to his designs.

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ABSTRACTIONS OF PAINTINGS BY HENRI PAUL BROYARD.

The Art Issue Our exploration of art through patrons, from Hong Kong and Beirut to Paris and Miami.

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Free Way

Los Angeles artist Alex Israel traverses the cultures, desires, and obsessions of his home city through his work.

(OPPOSITE) Alex Israel in Los Angeles.

(FOLLOWING SPREAD, LEFT TO RIGHT) Israel’s “Casting” (2015).

Israel’s “Self Portrait (Psychic Neon)” (2014–2015).

INTERVIEW BY SHARON JOHNSTON AND MARK LEE PORTRAIT BY PETER BOHLER

At 33, Alex Israel has quickly become a fixture in the art scene of Los Angeles, where he was born and raised, but also globally. As the city’s cultural profile has risen, so has Israel’s.

The two have largely if unintentionally grown in tandem. His works have been added to the permanent collections of institutions including the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in the Netherlands, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as the private collections of industrialist Peter Brant, LVMH executive Delphine Arnault, and Ivanka Trump.

What makes Israel’s paintings, sculptures, and videos stand out is that they capture Hollywood and celebrity culture in a playful, refreshingly subtle way. Through his art fantasy and reality merge into a timeless netherworld, a place that’s both fresh in sensibility yet rooted in history. His work, in other words, is very L.A. Unlike many artists, who 147

describe what they do as a “practice,” Israel prefers the term “brand.” This approach manifests itself most obviously in his role as the founder and president of the sunglasses company Freeway Eyewear, which he launched in 2010 shortly before receiving an MFA from the University of Southern California (he graduated with a B.A. from Yale in 2003). He’ll be the first to tell you, though, that the sunglasses are not artworks. His art is a separate thing entirely.

The name of his company, however, reflects an unavoidable aspect of L.A. life that’s echoed in his art: driving on the freeway. The name also references the free way so many Angelinos, Israel included, go about their daily lives. The culture of the city isn’t necessarily laissez-faire, but it’s certainly not uptight or hard charging, either. It is most definitely not New York. Somehow, there’s efficiency within L.A.’s relaxed pace. Through vivid

use of color and eccentric references, Israel explores many of the city’s inner workings in his art, which can be viewed in the exhibition “Sightings” at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (through Jan. 31) and at a site-specific intervention at the Huntington Art Gallery in San Marino, California, opening on Dec. 12 and on view through July 11. (His work also showed earlier this year at the Almine Rech Gallery in Paris.)

Another L.A. entity on the rise, the architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of the firm Johnston Marklee, recently spoke with Israel for this issue.

The firm—which designed the Maison Martin Margiela store in Beverley Hills and is at work on the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston—is collaborating with Israel on the design of his new L.A. studio.

Here, the three discuss the specialness of L.A., and how it continues to influence their various projects. >

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Alex Israel: Yeah, I was born and raised here.

What about you?

Sharon Johnston: I was born here. I grew up in Malibu. I think my L.A. life as a child was probably the inverse of the typical L.A. experience: the beach, no Hollywood.

Lee: I was actually born and raised in Hong Kong, but moved here in 1983 and stayed.

Technically, Sharon and I have been in L.A. for just as long, although I came with a lot of baggage in my head already. [Laughs]

Israel: I’ve been here one year longer than you, Mark. [Laughs] I was born in 1982 at the UCLA medical center in Westwood, and I grew up in Westwood.

Lee: You’ve been in L.A. pretty much your entire life, except for your time at Yale, right? Afterward, you came back and worked with the artist Jason Rhoades,

Israel: I went to Yale, came back, and was working at MOCA as an intern. I was

part-time at MOCA and then also part-time at Blum & Poe [gallery] for about a year. Then I moved to New York to work at Sotheby’s in the contemporary art department. I lasted there for about three months. It wasn’t for me.

[Laughs] Then I moved back to L.A. So I lived in New York for about six months—I moved there for that job, and then I moved back. I’ve been in L.A. ever since.

Lee: After you moved back, you studied at the University of Southern California, correct?

Israel: Yeah, I started working for Jason after I moved back. I worked with Jason on the “Black Pussy” project in L.A. Then I worked for Hauser & Wirth, one of the two galleries that represents Jason’s estate, and while I was working there, I mustered the courage to apply to graduate school and ended up going to USC. Lee: Did being away from Los Angeles— being at Yale, being in New York—give you a different perspective of Los Angeles that you didn’t see when you were growing up here?

Israel: Absolutely. Moving away gave me literal distance from the city and that really helped me to see it. When I was away at Yale, I got really homesick. All of the work I was making as an undergraduate art major

was about missing Los Angeles, wanting to be home. Removing myself from the city, I learned not to take it for granted—and I began to really appreciate its magic.

Johnston: I’m curious about your experience at Yale. Were there seminal people at Yale or USC who were important in helping you crystallize things? You talk a lot about how your vision of L.A. was formed when you were a young person.

Israel: I had amazing professors at Yale. One of the most inspiring, formative classes I took was a class on modern architecture that Vincent Scully taught. It was really interesting for me because we went through the history of modern architecture, and at the very end of the semester we arrived in Los Angeles. That was how it ended. I thought, “Well, wow, that’s an amazing thing. Here we are now, at the end of this history, and we’ve ended up in L.A.” So L.A. became the starting point. It was given the torch, and now was its time to run. Seeing this firsthand in this class, understanding it, that was very inspiring.

Lee: There’s a John Baldessari quote in which he said he loves L.A. because no one really cares about Warhol in L.A. I think this points to L.A. being its own element, that you have a certain type of freedom here.

Being situated in L.A., do you feel that?

You’re also very connected to different SURFACE

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PHOTOS: JOSHUA WHITE.

Mark Lee: Alex, we’ve known each other for a long time, but this is the first time we’ve gotten to sit together properly and talk about you and your work. Why don’t we start talking about Los Angeles? The city is somehow intrinsic in your work. You were born and raised here.

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realms, not only the art world but also the social world.

Israel: I don’t know if I agree with the idea that people in L.A. don’t care about Andy Warhol, considering it’s here where he had his first show [at the Ferus Gallery in 1962], but I do agree with the idea that you can find freedom in Los Angeles. I think that has to do with a lot of factors: the landscape, the environment, being able to isolate yourself amidst the sprawl, or while driving alone in a car. There’s also the fact that L.A. is younger than many other major American cities. There’s less an anxiety of influence here. There are fewer burdensome precedents to overcome on the path to creativity.

Do you agree?

matter for Ed Ruscha.

Israel: Less Than Zero is one of my favorite books. It’s also one that had a direct impact on my creative thinking. I read it as a college freshman on the airplane home from Yale for Thanksgiving break.

Johnston: I remember talking with you, Alex, a few years ago—you were not that long out of USC—and we were discussing how it was important to you to not have a gallery in L.A. Why did you feel that way?

PHOTOS: JOSHUA WHITE.

Johnston: I feel really free here. I think part of it is because we have a stronger connection to our architectural colleagues in Europe than in the United States, and certainly in L.A. We work on projects in L.A., we teach in the East Coast. For us, the idea of L.A. being isolated is really liberating. We’re very focused on our work, and when we travel to the East Coast or to Europe, that’s where we have our most fruitful discourse with our colleagues. In a way, there’s a kind of efficiency in that, too, just about focusing on work, collaboration, and outward production when we’re not here.

Lee: L.A. has a healthy separation. On the one hand, it’s a metropolis. The city is there.

But if you want to be alone, if you want to be isolated, the city allows you to be. It’s not like people are piling on top of one another. Having that choice makes us want to think of L.A. as home and some place that we are part of the city and the scene.

I actually was just thinking about the book Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.

That was one of the first books I read independently. I remember the first line of the book: “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” There’s something about that freedom and isolation, but at the same time everyone is going in the same direction. That very much encapsulates some spirit of Los Angeles. I also realize that your eyeglasses are called Freeway Eyewear, so there’s always this type of Los Angeles-ness underlying your work. I think the freeway is the subject matter of your work as much as Hollywood is the subject 149

Israel: At the onset of my commitment to making art professionally, it was really important to me to have a certain amount of freedom in the city where I lived. I prefered to not be aligned with a gallery here, because that came with a whole string of obligations and time commitments and associations. I was just trying to develop my work on my own, to have time and space to incubate.

Lee: That idea of separating the art production from the art consumption—that it happens in two different spaces—allows you to have a type of freedom. Since we’re talking about art production, and because we’re

starting to design your studio with you on Pico Boulevard, we should make use of this conversation to know more about the space you’re envisioning. When you think about the history of great art spaces—Warhol’s factory, Brancusi’s sculpture studio, or Francis Bacon’s painting studio—they have very specific characteristics. I’m curious if you’ve put any thought to how your studio will be, given you work with Warner Brothers and that you have very different locations where your work is made.

Israel: I make my work at a variety of different locations, and in a variety of cities. I’ve been working mainly with the scenic art department at Warner Brothers in Burbank to produce my paintings. I work with a plastic factory in Italy and an aquarium company in Las Vegas to make my lenses. And I’ve worked with other various fabricators, from Orrefors in Sweden to the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington.

And I’ve kind of always worked from home.

When I was just out of school, I had a studio in the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood—it was part of a program they had initiated to bring artists into the center’s vacant spaces. While there, I was able to set up a television set to shoot my talk show “As It Lays,” and since then I’ve always planned to do a second season. I’ve been planning to do this for a while, and I finally felt, “Okay, well, I really need to get the space to do this.” I also like the idea of moving my work out of my home and into a place where I can centralize all of these different projects—not in my kitchen! [Laughs] So I started looking at spaces.

The main criterion for the space was that I wanted it to have enough room for an office, some storage, and additionally enough space to create a set for “As It Lays 2.” In my thinking about and looking at buildings, I realized I also wanted some space to hang my work, to look at it, spend time with it, and experiment with ways of installing it.

Johnston: You’ve also talked about having friends or aligned practices being a part of the space…

Israel: Well, the space I’ve found on Pico is a little bit bigger than what I need, so I’m going to try to find someone to take space within it, someone who has a creative project that would be complimentary, and potentially even collaborative, with mine. We’ll see. >

THE ART ISSUE Israel’s “Untitled (Flat)” (2015) at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, with Auguste Rodin’s “The Age of Bronze.”

Johnston: Part of the myth of how I think about your work is the idea that it’s made by a lot of different people—the whole Warner Brothers thing. It’s not like I can go to one place and see all of your production. With the kind of diversity of the output you’re engaged in, how do you think about people coming into your studio? Do you want all of your practices to be within the space?

Israel: I think it’s going to be a somewhat different kind of studio. I’m not going to cease the production of my work elsewhere; I’m really just hoping to have a centralized workplace. Initially it’ll be a place for planning, drawing, drafting, mocking up, researching, sampling, playing, thinking, meeting, chatting, and storing. And, of course, it will be a place for shooting video.

Lee: Looking from the outside, there appear to be some autobiographical aspects to your work: the self-portrait or the frame and the lens as a motif. As we’ve started thinking about designing your space, we’ve been looking at your work, looking for something architectural. The closest thing we could find are those paintings that resemble the frames or doors of Spanish Revival architecture. I’m curious, did you ever live in a Spanish Colonial house? Was that part of your upbringing?

Israel: No, I lived in a Tudor house growing up, and then we moved into another Tudor house when I started middle school.

I’ve never lived in a Spanish Colonial Revival house, but I’ve always loved them. My middle school campus was Spanish Colonial Revival.

I always had this fantasy that when I got a house it would either be modern or Spanish.

Alas, my house is midcentury modern.

Everyone who grows up in L.A. has to make a model of one of the California State Missions. I always loved making things, so as a fourth grader at Warner Avenue Elementary School in Westwood, it was a project I was really excited about. We also went on a field trip to the mission in San Diego [founded in 1769 by Junipero Serra]. I loved learning that this was the architectural vernacular of our region—that’s always stuck with me. I guess I’ve always just been aware of it, and have loved looking at it and enjoying it.

Johnston: Have you ever thought about engaging architecture directly?

Lee: What you talked about—this oscillation between foreground and background— is very interesting. When we’ve previously talked about this, you’ve mentioned the importance of people in L.A. like John Baldessari or Ed Ruscha. Are the Light and Space movement people also important to you, or are they on the periphery?

Israel: They’re all important to me. My various bodies of work are informed by different historical precedents. Certainly, my sunglasses brand came out of my thinking about light and space—sunlight, specifically. So did the “Lens” sculptures that I made. They reference Light and Space and Finish Fetish artists like Larry Bell, Craig Kaufman, John McCracken, and DeWain Valentine. A lot of the things that inspired these L.A. artists in their pursuits haven’t changed: the climate, the light, surf and car culture, the aerospace industry, and for the artists using text, the freeway signs and movie title sequences up on the big screen. All of that stuff still exists and is still so much a part of life here that it’s hard not to be inspired by it. The challenge is to find a way to add to the already long-running dialogue.

Johnston: That’s something that we have a sensibility about—and manifest very differently in our work as architects—but that we’re intuitively drawn to about your work. It’s our shared interest in this legacy of artists and art history in Los Angeles.

Certainly there’s [Frank] Gehry, but I think the very diverse body of works that inspires you is somehow evident. We’re drawn to this as part of our practice, too—always wanting to understand the work in terms of its lineage, but also projecting forward in really personal ways. Sometimes artists, or maybe more so architects, want to mask that and not make it evident.

Israel: If I wanted to mask it, I’d have to deny that these forces play a huge part of my thinking, and my experience of everyday life. That’s impossible to do because they’re everywhere.

There are basic things, these forces of inspiration, that we experience just living here. I’m always excited to learn about our region’s art history. In fact, it’s an interest I became more aware of when I left the city to go to college. I somehow ended up carrying this kind of L.A. pride with me. >

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PHOTO: COURTESY JEAN PIGOZZI.

Israel: I think there’s an aspect of this idea in the “Flats.” They’re meant to create their own context, as that’s the nature of a backdrop— they transport you to another place and can begin to suggest a space within a space. But there are also projects I’ve done, like my murals, where I really want to engage with specific locations. Right now I’m doing two murals in and about the Huntington [institution in Southern California] for an upcoming show. One of them is titled “In-N-Out,”

after the hamburger joint, but also because I’m reproducing, as a 360-degree scenic wall painting, a number of plants from the Huntington Botanical Garden inside the Huntington Mansion interior. The other mural I’m making there—which is going in the grand staircase— is also site-specific. It’s a direct response to the sweeping grandeur of the space and thewindows above the stairwell. The Huntington happens to be an incredible inspiring place.

Sometimes space is just a vessel in which to create or project fantasy.

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PHOTO: KEVIN TODORA/COURTESY NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER.

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Lee: There always seems to be this presence of history in your work, but you’re never really burdened by it. You’re just part of it and continue it.

Johnston: Let’s discuss some of the artists you like. We’ve talked about Baldessari and Ruscha. What about your interest in conceptual art? What artists do you look to?

Israel: It’s interesting that you bring up conceptual art. I don’t want to say grew up in it, but it framed my first serious professional exposure to the art world. My first summer back from Yale I was an intern for John Baldessari and for Ann Goldstein at MOCA. I worked part-time for both of them. Ann and I co-curated the major historic survey of conceptual art “Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975.” I was always aware of this historic period and deeply inspired by the determination of its key artists to really push the boundaries of what could be construed as an artwork. But there are other things about conceptual art I always felt less connected to.

Namely, I like objects, and I enjoy making sensual things. I love the work of Jeff Koons and Jason Rhoades. Personally, I’ve always been influenced by the magic of entertainment culture—so a great deal of my thinking is about how to channel this Hollywood “stardust” into material form.

Another point to bring up is that my eyewear brand, Freeway Eyewear, has been wrongly referred to as a kind of conceptual artwork. My sunglasses aren’t art, and that’s an important point of distinction. Freeway is not an effort to take an artwork and disperse it through mass production and distribution.

It’s just a company, and an exercise in branding. It’s my work, but not an artwork. For me, it’s a way of putting objects in the world in a less precious way—these objects, sunglasses, happen to evoke the same concerns as my art: Los Angeles culture, desire, entertainment, framing, and seeing the world through a lens.

Israel: Maybe “practice” isn’t the right word to use. Maybe the correct word is “brand.”

The idea of “branding” provides a pretty natural way for me to think about what I do.

I’ve always wanted my work to speak in the language of our time. Rather than resist the way our culture has evolved, I prefer to use it in order to communicate my ideas. That’s where this impulse stems from.

Johnston: I also feel like—and maybe this is just my reading of it—you’re not really talking

Israel: That’s probably true. Organizing my “brand” is certainly a way of creating an umbrella over all of these various activities that I participate in. Branding also provides a way of filtering things—are they on or off brand? But then there’s branding in the way that most people know it—logos, ads, products, and focus groups—and this is also key to my work. It’s not a new concept in the art world. To some extent it’s been there for centuries, from tapestries, to prints, to a cookbook, endorsement deals, T-shirts, a theme restaurant, and furniture. Artists like Boucher, Whistler, Dalí, Warhol, Haring, Hirst, and Donald Judd have done it.

Lee: Your output is diverse, too. There’s not a particular thing one can expect from you. It could be a talk show, it could be props, it could be paintings, it could be murals. I think that’s why conceptual art becomes not so much the binding factor.

Maybe it’s the brand that becomes the binding factor uniting the work together.

Israel: There are two forces that I credit with shaping my practice into a something more like a brand: 1) Branding provides a structure from which I can make work across many different mediums. Having worked on the other side of the art world, I witnessed certain things that scared me—artists feeling limited by the marketplace, and believing that they only had permission to do one thing over and over again. 2) This relates to what came up earlier, about wanting to speak in the language of our time—the Internet played a huge role in how I think and create. I grew up at a moment in which the Internet became prevalent and widespread. As a high school student, I could use the Internet to access all kinds of information, and to connect with people all over the world very easily and instantly. The Internet gave me the freedom—or the illusion that I had the freedom—to imagine making anything: sunglasses, sunscreen, backdrops, giant plastic lenses, etc. I just had to find the right website and send a good email. This really made my first point possible.

Johnston: You didn’t have to fly to Italy to meet the lens guy? [Laughs]

Israel: I never felt that I had to face the limitations within four walls of a studio, or the distance I could drive in my car. The whole world opened up through my computer, and it meant that making all kinds of things became a possibility. Other things became possible, too, because of similar technologies. The advancement of consumer-grade cameras made “Rough Winds” and “As

It Lays” possible. Both were shot on Handycams. I was able to use the Internet to distribute these videos to an unlimited online audience, and that’s a huge difference from what existed before.

A lot of this rhetoric, this discussion of technology and how it affects art, is something I thought about a lot while in graduate school.

I remember my USC professor Charlie White telling me to read an essay by David Robbins called “High Entertainment.” Reading it, I was so excited that someone had articulated many of the ideas I was thinking through—I was encouraged to continue pursuing them.

With such clear and precise thinking, Robbins gave a name to this potential art-entertainment hybrid that I was hoping to make and distribute via the Internet—and this was incredibly inspiring.

Johnston: You currently have a show at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.

Earlier we were talking about artists who have inspired you. Some of your works there are surrounding pieces by Giacometti, Rodin, and others. It’s seems very contextual. What was it like putting that exhibition together?

Israel: As part of the Nasher show, I’ve done a kind of intervention in the permanent collection gallery. I’ve installed a “Sky Backdrop” painting and a “Flat” in place of where there are usually gallery divider walls.

For me, it was an exciting opportunity to engage with these incredible works of modernism, and to imagine them as characters, or actors, performing in front of these dramatic set pieces. The “Backdrop” and the “Flat” are meant to somehow reframe the Giacomettis and the Rodin. Hopefully, these works can be seen, temporarily, in a new or different way.

Johnston: How was the conversation with the museum as you were proposing that?

Israel: Great! When we were installing the “Flat,” it was always understood that the white plaster Rodin would really pop in front of its light blue, pink, and lavender surface.

What we didn’t realize was that the back of the “Flat,” which is aluminum, would have such a strong presence in the gallery. So Jed Morse, the curator there, showed me this amazing Naum Gabo [“Constructed Head No. 2”], and we ended up placing it behind my piece. The metal of the Gabo worked incredibly well when foregrounded by the metal on the back of the “Flat.” This whole other dialogue emerged in the gallery, between the Rodin, the Gabo, and nearby works by Picasso and Duchamp-Villon. The tableau that resulted completely exceeded all expectation. It was one of those incredible things that we could never have planned for—it just happened in the moment.

(OPPOSITE) An installation view of Israel’s “Sightings” exhibition at the Nasher.

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PHOTO: KEVIN TODORA/COURTESY NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER.

Lee: You traverse a lot of traditional boundaries, even in your formative years when you apprenticed for an artist, but also through your work for Sotheby’s. You’re both in the marketplace and also in the production of things. It seems it’s become this practice in which you have your studiobased work, and then you have your sunglasses. These things exist in different realms for you.

about “branding” as most people know it.

You’re talking about your brand. To me, it seems like a smart way to talk about the diversity of how you produce, and the modes of production you have. There’s self-control.

It’s just a way of organizing, as opposed to being a media-controlling operation.

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COLLECTORS OF ALEX ISRAEL’S WORK WEIGH IN ON WHAT THEY THINK MAKES HIM ONE OF TODAY’S MOST STANDOUT YOUNG ARTISTS:

PHOTO: KEVIN TODORA/COURTESY NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER.

Steven Guttman, founder and chairman of Uovo and chairman of the Centre Pompidou Foundation: “We purchased a ‘Sky Backdrop’ in 2012 from Almine Rech Gallery in Paris with the intention of donating it to the Centre Pompidou Foundation for its permanent collection. The Pompidou already had two pieces by Alex in its collection, ‘Lens’ (2013) and ‘Self Portrait (Sunbrella)’ (2014), but Alex felt that this third piece would round out and complete a story about his work.

Alex’s art engages with pop culture and is specifically Californiacentered. His practice is centered on his expansive social network, and his work itself is very collaborative: While he conceptualizes the work himself, he often works with others to actually fabricate the pieces, and the result is incomparable. It’s been very rewarding seeing Alex’s work deservedly embraced by the art world. When we first purchased ‘Sky Backdrop,’ he was a relatively unknown artist.

With the Pompidou’s growing collection and recognition by other significant public institutions, Alex’s unique oeuvre has gained the appreciation it deserves.”

Francesco Stocchi, curator of modern and contemporary art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen: “Our collection has a ‘Yellow Lens’ and a ‘Flat.’ We have special holdings of two generations of Pop: the ’70s and the ’90s. We found it pertinent to pursue more [works] in that direction. There is no such a thing as neo-Pop. Pop is a style that has not evolved, though carries its original freshness.

I like Alex’s work because it’s smart, but does not aim to look like it.

Which is actually quite smart.”

Dasha Zhukova, founder of the Iris Foundation and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow: “Like Alex, I grew up in California, so I felt an affinity with his general outlook and how he portrayed that in relation to his work. Alex has managed to successfully create his own unique brand of Pop-conceptual art while completely stepping away from Warhol and Koons in his appropriation of iconic objects.”

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Jeffrey Deitch, curator and art dealer: “Alex’s work is totally contemporary. He extends the fascinating and confounding dialogue between fine art and popular culture that goes back to Edouard Manet and goes through Picasso, Duchamp, Picabia, Warhol, and Koons. I’m fortunate to have several works by Alex in my personal collection, including an astonishing mural that wraps around the entire top floor of my house.”

Peter Brant, founder and president of The Brant Foundation: “I own one of the ‘Self Portrait’ works. I think he’s really bright, and I really like the work. I find him to be one of the most interesting and promising young artists in California. I like that he connects the past 50 years of L.A. and modernist culture to create works that are contemporary and relevant to L.A. culture today.”

Joanne Heyler, director of the Broad: “We added Alex’s work to the collection earlier this year. We visited him on the Warner Brothers lot about a year ago, where he works with the scene painters there to create some of his works, effectively turning a very 20th-century setting—the traditional movie studio—into a production center for 21st-century canvases. We were impressed with how his work reflects Hollywood and the cult of celebrity, but without necessarily focusing on existing celebrities themselves. Alex’s work reflects our intensely self-interested society and the increasing blurriness between fame and the everyday.”

Rosa de la Cruz, founder of the de la Cruz Collection (Miami): “I own a ‘Sky Backdrop’ and a ‘Flats.’ Alex’s works attracted me the moment I saw them. The ‘Sky Backdrop’ is the Los Angeles sunset, and it’s very reminiscent of our own sunset here in Miami. The city is always present in his work. Spanish Revival houses and stucco coated popcorn walls appear in his stage backdrops. This is a great example of the passing of trends in the city and how this has affected the L.A. history. Alex’s work is the perfect backdrop for our museum.”

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Complex Arrangement

(OPPOSITE) Maja Hoffmann at her London apartment. (FOLLOWING SPREAD) Artist Doug Aitken’s “Altered Earth” (2012), commissioned and produced by the LUMA Foundation.

Maja Hoffmann shows herself to be a multifaceted patron with many orbits as she builds a massive home for the LUMA Foundation.

BY JULIA COOKE PORTRAIT BY PAUL PLEWS

Ask philanthropist and collector Maja similarly sprawling and ambitious.

Hoffmann what excites her the most about the As a third-generation art collector— art center her LUMA Foundation is building Hoffmann is the vice president of her famin the southern French city of Arles, and she ily’s collection, the Emanuel Hoffmann may say that she’s excited that the plans for the Foundation—she says she’s less interested complex include Annabelle Selldorf–designed in owning art than in working generatively, renovations of a cluster of old rail yard build- as a producer. She serves on the acquisitions ings. “They’re horizontal spaces, which are committee of the Tate and her family colamazing in size, really unique,” she says. lection. “My collectors’ pulse is completely But wait. She’s also thrilled to see the fin- fulfilled,” she says. “I’m interested in seeing ished tower by Frank Gehry, which is now things happen, and seeing things being born.” under construction. Though she cites its These things, of course, are connected to architectural references—the hills around collecting; Together with Beatrix Ruf and Arles, the Roman ruins scattered throughout Swiss collector Michael Ringier, she’s recently the city, and Vincent Van Gogh, who spent launched a new program called POOL, which many years in the region—the building, enables young curators to mount shows Hoffmann says, is entirely new for the city. drawing from artworks in private collections. “[It] comes like an apparition,” she says. “It Still, she does sleep with works in her bedwill be our brain and our hub.” rooms in London, Arles, Zurich, and New Which takes her to what happens inside the York. “I like smaller, more intimate pieces, like cultural center, and the programming she’s artist drawings or collages, that can follow me excitedly devising with a group that includes from house to house,” she says of works by curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Beatrix Ruf, artists such as Peter Doig, Jean Tinguely, and as well as artists Liam Gillick, Tom Eccles, Rosemarie Trockel. and Philippe Parreno. “We brainstorm a lot,” Part of Hoffmann’s goal for Arles is to she says, “and suddenly, when the projects generate multidisciplinary conversations accessible to a broader audience, drawing come, we really focus.”

Hoffmann speaks slowly and carefully, but on her varied interests and connections. She she does so with gusto. She pings from one envisions conversations and festivals that can thing that excites her to another, pulls people link art to the environment and human rights. into her orbit with reflexively collaborative “Art can have a more immediate language,” commentary, and spins from art to activ- she says, “which I hope has an efficient impact ism and back out again. Her philanthropic on younger generations.” activity ranges from Human Rights Watch As the complex nears completion, proto the Palais de Tokyo; her plans for LUMA gramming solidifies, but she explains it’s still Arles, which will, by the time of its comple- being defined. Until then, she is hardly sitting tion in 2018, include artists’ studios, exhibi- back. Says Hoffmann: “You don’t actually tion spaces, archives, and residencies, each need walls to do something.”

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PHOTO: HERVÉ HÔTE

PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY SELLDORF ARCHITECTS. BOTTOM, PAUL PLEWS. PREVIOUS SPREAD, COURTESY DOUG AITKEN AND LUMA FOUNDATION.

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PHOTO: HERVE HOTE.

PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY SELLDORF ARCHITECTS. BOTTOM, PAUL PLEWS. PREVIOUS SPREAD, COURTESY DOUG AITKEN AND LUMA FOUNDATION.

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Construction of the LUMA Foundation’s Frank Gehry–designed building in Arles, France. (OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) An interior of the Atelier Mécanique, designed by Annabelle Selldorf, to be completed next spring. A model of the new Gehry building.

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Deep Thoughts

(OPPOSITE) Nicolas Berggruen in London at Claridge’s hotel.

More than just collecting art, Nicolas Berggruen gives money and focus to supporting quietly impactful ideas.

INTERVIEW BY BETTINA KOREK PORTRAIT BY LEWIS KHAN

The financier, author, collector, and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen was recently on his way to Basel from Paris when he spoke with Surface. He discouraged us from asking about his art collection and preferred to talk about his work through the Berggruen Institute and its recently announced Philosophy and Culture Center.

Considering the billionaire’s pedigree— his father was a famous art dealer—it’s notable that today Berggruen invests in the cultivation of ideas, not necessarily art itself. It’s a risky enterprise in which success is immeasurable. Only time will tell if the project has an impact beyond its immediate sphere of philosophers, academics, and activists. Yet Berggruen’s approach reflects a welcome shift in priorities that seems to be spreading among the super rich: to consider how their passion for collecting, which often reflects an underlying intellectual curiosity, can transition into a patronage of ideas.

You recently announced an annual million dollar Berggruen Philosophy Prize, to go to a thinker whose ideas have influenced our world.

The idea is to reward philosophy and thought as a valuable occupation. The prize is an award for someone anywhere in the world who’s made a meaningful impact in terms of how we think. We want to give the same kind of recognition as other disciplines

with large rewards—for example, the Nobel Prize or the Pritzker Prize.

ways: It has modernized in some ways, but it’s becoming almost reactionary in others.

What exactly is the Berggruen Institute?

You have plans for a physical space in Los Angeles—the Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center—that you’ve called a secular monastery.

The Institute started five years ago. Behind any political traditions, you have cultures.

Certainly in the West, but also in the East, with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. To have an impact in terms of longterm political thinking, you really have to understand those cultures and their history of ideas, philosophy, and religion. I wanted to go back to the origin of different ideas and traditions that have shaped us. That’s a little bit of what we’re doing at the Institute.

More specifically, we’re engaging thinkers and the public.

How does The Huffington Post’s WorldPost relate to these initiatives?

The WorldPost, which was created two years ago, provides a platform for active debate from many different points of view around important issues globally. In theory, it functions as a symposium for important thinkers, and it’s distributed through The Huffington Post, which helps to spread these debates and ideas widely.

For example, we have a lot of coverage on Turkey right now. The country is an incredible place historically, but it has changed under the present regime in two

If you look at monasteries in the West and the East, even though they have very different religious traditions, they have similar functions: to provide people with a place to work, think, convene, and live.

We aim to have a permanent site for the Institute that will offer something in that direction.

Is your vision to create a structure through which these ideas can flow?

The idea of conversation, and changing the level of conversation, seems like a recurring theme.

The question is, how do you make these ideas relevant? When you take complicated ideas and try to translate them for a broader public—in a sense, allegorize them—they can seem almost to lose their value. In a way, I wish the opposite: that you take ideas, simplify them, communicate them.

People would be still interested and they would work. It’s a big question, and I’m not sure anybody has found a solution yet. >

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PHOTO: COURTESY LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART/NICOLAS BERGGRUEN CHARITABLE TRUST.

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Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II” (2011), part of Berggruen’s foundation’s collection and on a long-term loan to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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Are there any specific philanthropists and patrons who have influenced your current work?

If I had to name one that I think has influenced me a lot it would be George Soros. He did many courageous things with a foundation called Open Society when the Soviet Union collapsed. Working on the ground, he helped a lot of countries to develop thinking around new systems of government, including democracy, and it was very risky in the long-term sense.

Much of his work was highly intellectual, and at the end of the day, I think it did have an influence.

Why did you choose Los Angeles as a base for the Institute and the Center?

Los Angeles may seem like an unlikely place, but sometimes things just happen, and in this case, they’re somewhat personal.

Once I started spending more time in Los Angeles, I realized it’s almost the opposite of New York, where I lived a long time.

It’s almost like a non-city, not urban in a traditional sense like New York, Chicago, Paris, or London.

PHOTO: COURTESY LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART/NICOLAS BERGGRUEN CHARITABLE TRUST.

What do you find special about the city?

L.A. has a sense of possibility that exists in the arts, and potentially in other areas— you can see it even now in technology.

There’s a lot of energy. It’s not going to replace other cities, but it’s very open and things can happen there. It’s a city still in the making, almost like a city in the future.

It’s a place that affords a lot of physical and mental space. The fact that it’s Pacificfacing is appealing, as well. We hope the Institute will be a contribution to the city and a West Coast center for thinking and development, as opposed to older, traditional locations on the East Coast or in Europe.

Where else in the world do you think about when you envision what you’re going to do in Los Angeles?

There are certain physical spaces that have been incredibly inspiring, and then there are certain environments that are inspiring—for example, monasteries or even campuses. Most of the physical inspiration comes from places that relate to L.A. in terms of climate, where you have the possibility not only of working indoors but also outdoors. Alhambra in Spain has some of those characteristics, as do some Turkish and Iranian sites that are very beautiful physically. In terms of architecture, I’m inspired by architects like Oscar Niemeyer. He built beautiful things in Brazil and similar warmer places.

A lot of architects have done great work in northern climates, but haven’t yet taken advantage of somewhere like Los Angeles, 163

where you can design spaces that function indoors and also outdoors.

How did you come to be involved with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art? Your foundation has given the museum Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II” on a long-term loan.

LACMA is physically near the center of L.A., and because it’s an encyclopedic museum, LACMA could potentially become a cultural hub for the city. It’s being energized and transformed now by its director, Michael Govan.

You talked about how much opportunity there is in such a young city. Since you’ve studied government structures, do you have any thoughts on the state of patronage in L.A.?

The issue in L.A. is that when it has happened, donors tend to do their own thing as opposed to collaborating. You have the Hammer Museum, the Broad, the Getty, the Norton Simon—each museum stems from one person. Not that these institutions are not great, but it’s hard to get the community to work together.

Do you think that the introduction of metrics into art management is dangerous?

In the past, it used to be the other way around.

You would make a gesture somewhere, but you wouldn’t know how efficient or effective the gesture would be. Not just in the arts, but in philanthropy in general. So in the past it was not measured enough. Now I think there is a danger that everything gets measured, and big data is easier to measure. I think there needs to be a space where you do things that are potentially not measureable, or harder to measure, and maybe at first glance don’t seem to have the biggest impact.

You’ve said, “One potential advantage of private wealth is that one can take on things that are not immediately measurable.”

I’m willing to do things with the Institute that are long-term and quite risky. Some of it, we hope, will have an impact. How tangible is the impact? Who knows? But we’re sure that we can do it.

What gives you the most pleasure collecting-wise?

Everybody is different, but my way of thinking about that is this: If you’re buying a work of art, why not share it directly with the community by giving it or lending it to a cultural institution? That way you’ll share it with the most people. I’m not against the idea of collecting for oneself,

but if it’s a great work of art, maybe share it with more than just yourself and your family and friends.

Do you feel that the art world has a harder time incubating and spreading radical ideas now that art has been accepted as a commodity? Is the market taking away from art’s symbolic power?

No. I think one can complain that art has become so commercialized and a consumer item, but that’s the society we live in. You cannot single art out as something pure.

In today’s world, everything is consumed and communicated and shared all the time.

I don’t think it’s that easy to want to isolate anything, including art. In my mind, art should help you pause, think, and put things into perspective

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Out of Africa Even though he has never been there, Jean Pigozzi is one of the world’s preeminent collectors of art from the continent.

(OPPOSITE) Jean Pigozzi at his Paris apartment with Emile Guebehi and Nicolas Damas’s “Untitled (Bar Scene)” (1991). (FOLLOWING SPREAD) Calixte Dakpogan’s “Ambassadeur” (2010).

George Lilanga’s “Townworks” (2000).

BY NATASHA EDWARDS PORTRAIT BY ALAIN DELORME

“I’m a multi-disciplinary person,” says Jean Pigozzi, known also for being an entrepreneurial multimillionaire person.

We’re sitting on a huge, squashy green leather sofa on the second floor of an historic building in the St-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris, amid a scattering of artworks—a small painting, “Memorial for Zaire,” by Cheri Samba, as well as a cluster of colored drawings

by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, and figure sculptures by John Goba that combine painted wood and porcupine spines.

There’s also a big teddy bear. “It’s called Christian,” says Pigozzi, who named it after the man who gave it to him: his friend, the shoe designer Christian Louboutin. It’s also a reminder that in addition to being a major collector of African contemporary art, Pigozzi is also a socialite.

A book of his photographs is shortly to be published, focusing on the swimming pool at Villa Dorane. “It’s 60 years of this pool, which was built in 1953,” he says. “It’s like a book done in one room.”

So how did the scion of the Simca auto- further into the unknown. This growing portmaker fortune begin collecting African art? folio is exceedingly slanted toward young artHe started buying lesser works by known art- ists. “Nearly every artist is born since 1985,” ists while attending college in the U.S. It was he says. “And nearly 40 percent are women.” in 1989, after he visited an exhibit of works According to Pigozzi, the Japanese appeal

by African artists like Bodys Isek Kingelez is in how they belie oddness with perfection. and Chéri Samba at the Centre Georges “They’re perfectionists,” he says. “But behind Pompidou in Paris, that a real passion began it, there is some very weird stuff going on.” to form. “I was completely mesmerized,” he Museums and private collectors build colsays. “For me, it changed what was art.” lections differently, Pigozzi says. “Sometimes He began working with one of the exhib- I wake up in the middle of the night and think, it’s curators, André Magnin, to assemble the I must have that work. The Pompidou or Tate largest private collection of African art in the can’t make a decision alone; for me, the greatworld—though it’s not the size that matters, est collections are made by individual people.” he says, but the quality. He still believes in colIn a life spent hopping between Paris, lecting in numbers, however. “For the African London, New York, Geneva, and Panama, collection, 90 percent of the works we buy he says he always lives with bits of his coldirectly from the artists,” he says. And despite lection. He exhibits all the works he owns on his enthusiasm for African art, he has to this his website and lends pieces out to myriad day never visited the continent, nor does he exhibitions every year. Will he ever open his have plans to do so. own museum? Pigozzi neither confirms nor Pigozzi’s eye has also started to wander denies any plans. It’s very likely, though, that eastward, to Japan’s contemporary art scene, if it does happen, it won’t be in Africa. which perhaps speaks of his impulse to step SURFACE

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PHOTO: COURTESY JEAN PIGOZZI.

PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY JEAN PIGOZZI. BOTTOM, ALAIN DELORME.

(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Tomoko Nagai’s “Borne on the Gold Air” (2009).

On display in Pigozzi’s Paris apartment (from left to right): John Goba’s “Untitled” (1998), Agbagli Kossi’s “TSOFO” (1990/1991), and John Goba’s “Untitled” (c. 1990s). (OPPOSITE) Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou’s “Untitled (Vodou Series)” (2011).

PHOTO: COURTESY JEAN PIGOZZI.

PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY JEAN PIGOZZI. BOTTOM, ALAIN DELORME.

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Dream House

(OPPOSITE) Tony Salamé in front of Alice Channer’s “New Skin” (2013) at the Aïshti Foundation in Beirut .

Tony Salamé’s Aïshti Foundation in Lebanon opens a brawny building as daring as the institution’s art.

BY SHIRINE SAAD PHOTOS BY DALIA KHAMISSY

One gloomy fall afternoon in Beirut, the scent of garbage in the air, a garrison of trucks and cranes rove near the new Aïshti Foundation, designed by architect David Adjaye, on Lebanon’s seaside highway. Several hundred workers hurry to complete the monumental building, due to open the next day. Clouds of dust rise from the grand entrance, and in the midst of the cacophony, Jeffrey Deitch, the New York–based art dealer, stands on the central escalator dressed in a seersucker suit and his signature clear-framed glasses. As we pace the galleries of the mall, overflowing with the latest dresses and accessories from Moschino, Dolce & Gabbana, and Céline, we find a passage into the adjacent art foundation, and enter the stark white space.

A brown phallic sculpture by Giuseppe Penone is being unpacked from its plastic wrap under the watchful eye of Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum’s artistic director and curator of the foundation’s inaugural show.

“This is great! This is wonderful!” Deitch exclaims, as he embarks on a journey around the four floors of the foundation. “This is great!” he says again as we pass a Gerhard

Richter print, a word collage by Richard Prince, and works by Urs Fischer and Sterling Ruby.

While Salamé’s collection began 15 years ago with slit paintings by Lucio Fontana and Achromes by Piero Manzoni, it now encompasses over 2,000 works mixing the Italian conceptualists with pieces by rising talents such as Joe Bradley and Ziad Antar. The new foundation, which measures approximately 430,000 square feet and costs more than $100 million, will host rotating exhibitions of works from the collection arranged by guest curators; it’s the first space of its scale in the country and sui generis for its shopping-mall extension, which includes more than 80 stores, restaurants, bars, a spa, a pool, and a seaside promenade.

“I come from the world of fashion,” says Salamé, 48, as he dashes around the galleries followed by a posse of staff and photographers. “Building a fashion collection and building an art collection are very similar projects. They are complementary. One must have a coherent narrative.” The businessman, who began his career by selling imported clothes to

his friends while studying law, opened the first Aïshti store 25 years ago and built an empire by introducing luxury brands to a country emerging from the devastation of civil war.

Salamé has always collected objects obsessively—ancient stamps, Chinese porcelain, Italian paintings, and Middle Eastern carpets—but a meeting with Italian retailer Dino Facchini at age 22 prompted him to shift his approach to art. He bought his first few works on credit, something that kept him up at night.

Slowly, as his business grew, so did his collection. A meeting with Jeffrey Deitch nine years ago marked the beginning of a new phase of fervent purchasing, which helped Salamé become one of the most notable collectors in the world. Pieces from his collection are frequently loaned out to institutions including the Whitney, MoMA, and the New Museum.

Some have described Salamé’s impulsive and fast approach to collecting as bulimic.

During a three-day spree at Art Basel in Switzerland, he bought 22 pieces, including a Daniel Buren sculpture and a John Armleder pour painting. “I like it, I buy it, it’s done,” he SURFACE

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says. Throughout the year, Salamé makes the rounds to fairs and studios, and though he consults Deitch and Gioni, as well as gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin and auctioneer Simon de Pury, according to artist Daniel Buren, his choices are personal and reflect his own taste.

The genres in Salamé’s collection include conceptualism, pop abstraction, minimalism, and formalism. Many of the pieces are largescale paintings, prints, or sculptures, requiring vast spaces to be housed. Most had never been displayed before this show. As for video, Salamé says, it takes too long to watch, and he only has a couple in the collection. “I’m a busy man,” he says. “But I do love video. Maybe with age I’ll calm down!”

This seems very unlikely. Salamé is restless. He now has 830 employees throughout the Middle East, and flies regularly between New York, Miami, Milan, and Paris. In his world, everything must be executed fast, and perfectly. His razor-sharp eye for the next trends has helped him build an empire many times over. “In Italy,” he says, “everyone calls me the Swiss of the Middle East for my work ethic.”

In late October, 2,000 guests attended the opening gala. The fall rains had subsided, and a strong marine balm washed over the crowd.

David Adjaye stood surrounded by his friends, beaming. The architect, who lived in Beirut when his ambassador father was posted here at the dawn of the civil war, said he initially connected with Salamé over mutual interests. “His appreciation for art comes

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from his taste in fashion,” he said, shouting over the booming music. “This really is how collectors should collect art,” he added. “They should have a voracious appetite.”

Adjaye’s building echoes Salamé’s enthusiasm. The facade, an exoskeleton of lasercut aluminum in the same shade of red as Lebanon’s traditional brick roofs, wraps around the mall and foundation, embracing the surrounding sea and cityscape. Adjaye created it as a peaceful oasis away from the chaos of the city: “[It] will help add more complexity to this place. For me, when people simplify the message, you need to make it complicated again.”

“Dunno” (2012) and “Mashed” (2012) by Urs Fischer. (OPPOSITE) The central atrium at the Aïshti Foundation.

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“Monument Stalagmite/Black & Yellow” (2011) by Sterling Ruby.

(OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM) “Untitled” (2007) by Richard Prince.

Walead Beshty’s “Copper Surrogate” series (2011).

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Conversation Starter

(OPPOSITE) Gigi Kracht in front of Fernando Botero’s “Watermelons” (1997) at Zurich’s Baur au Lac hotel, which her husband owns.

A fateful interview with the artist Fernando Botero led Gigi Kracht to begin collecting world-class art.

BY HALLY WOLHANDLER PORTRAIT BY ANJA SCHORI

Gigi Kracht knows artists and seems to be on a first-name basis with many of them. Jeff (Koons), Fernando (Botero), and the late Louise (Bourgeois), to name (drop) a few.

Thirteen years ago, she wasn’t involved in the art world at all—though she was interested in the subject, and had been given a Bruegel painting and Miró lithographs by family. One day, over breakfast at home in Zurich, that all changed. She and her husband, Andrea, the sixth-generation owner of the city’s famed Baur au Lac hotel, were discussing what she should do with her time now that their youngest child had left home for boarding school. He suggested she write, adding that she might start by calling up the artist Fernando Botero, who was then staying at their hotel (and had been a frequent visitor for 30 years).

“I called him and said, ‘Fernando, my husband wants me to write, and I think you’re the most famous person I know who is at the hotel today, do you want to meet me for breakfast?’” Kracht recalls. The 10 a.m. meeting ended up lasting until 4 p.m. Kracht published their conversation as an article in Views, Baur au Lac’s in-house magazine.

Since then, she has interviewed more than 175 artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and John Chamberlain.

So started her life as an arts writer and patron.

“I became a serious collector that day,” she says of the meeting with Botero.

These days, she’s a fixture on the global art scene. Besides editorial duties at Views, she’s the curator of an annual exhibit called “Art in

the Park”; a voracious collector who travels The Klein show in particular represented the world finding new works; and a member a real coup: Kracht says both New York’s of the International Directors Council for Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA the Guggenheim. “Gigi’s parties and sculp- were interested in displaying the exhibition tural projects at the hotel are well-known,” of blue busts on columns, a staging the artist says Richard Armstrong, the director of the had envisioned but never carried out. How Guggenheim. “Within a few minutes of our did Kracht’s yard beat out two storied institufirst meeting a few summers ago, I was over- tions? “Because of my strong affiliation with whelmed by her infectious enthusiasm, and Rotraut,” she explains, referring to the artist’s she’s become a great ally of the Guggenheim widow, Rotraut Klein-Moquay, whose work as well as a personal friend.”

Kracht had previously bought and displayed.

Indeed, she makes friends as prolifically as Klein-Moquay was also drawn to the venue’s she buys artwork. “When I write about people, location in front of a hotel. “She said Yves had they become my friends,” she says. “Louise envisioned it in front of Caesar’s Palace in Las sent me drawings on wrinkled paper, which Vegas,” Kracht says. “Another hotel about 35 I’m very happy to say I have in my private years ago thought about doing it, but then it home. And I was invited to Chamberlain’s went bankrupt. So Rotraut decided to create memorial at the Guggenheim.” Her affiliation the exhibition with her own money and to with Louise Bourgeois sparked an interest in give it to me.” finding and promoting female artists, though Kracht does not only collect works but it’s not always easy (“It’s just that it’s difficult also commissions them, buying special pieces to find a woman artist that’s not replicating a from artists like Pat Steir (who she calls her man,” she says). “favorite living artist”) as well as Jani Leinonen Botero was also the catalyst for her side act and Botero. Her collection of 40 contempoas a curator, when he suggested Kracht use rary artworks also includes pieces by Robert the Baur au Lac’s outdoor space for an exhi- Klippel, Richard Serra, Chantal Joffe, and bition series. “He said, ‘Gigi, you’re the only Donald Baechler. She describes her drive to one with space right in the middle of town. buy as highly personal, based solely on an You should do something during Art Basel, indescribable instinct of excitement that is not and I’ll lend you my fat woman,’” Kracht about appreciation or the name of the artist. remembers. Thus far she’s done 13 itera- “Collecting is not about just buying a Jeff tions of “Art in the Park,” which premiers Koons sculpture,” she says. “People who buy each year on the Sunday before the fair. The those things are show-offs,” she says without series has hosted work by the likes of George irony. “I know Jeff, but it does not bring me Condo, Robert Indiana, Yves Klein, and most anything. That’s not art, that’s money, and I recently, Allen Jones. leave that to my husband.”

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(TOP TO BOTTOM) Kracht in front of Donald Baechler’s “Black Flowers” (2012).

John Armleder’s “Dryas Octopetala” (2008).

(OPPOSITE) Baechler’s “Black and White Rose” (2012).

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Eastern Promises

(OPPOSITE) Adrian Cheng at the K11 Art Foundation office in Hong Kong.

A visionary art patron’s foundation is single handedly bringing Chinese contemporary art to the West, and cultivating it at home.

BY NATE STOREY PORTRAIT BY EGILL BJARKI

Adrian Cheng thinks China’s on the verge of an artistic revolution led by a new generation of creatives, and he’s determined to be their springboard onto the global stage. Inside his office at the gleaming New World Tower, high above the Hong Kong cityscape in the Central district, the 35-year-old Chinese billionaire—he’s the scion to one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families and his grandfather, Cheng Yutung, is No. 71 on the Forbes billionaire list—lights up when discussing the upand-coming contemporary artists that are shaping his country’s cultural scene and his plan to introduce them to the world.

“No one has ever seen an emerging artist foundation with this big, kind of crazy and bold ambition, started by a young, babyfaced Chinese man,” Cheng says about his non-profit K11 Arts Foundation (KAF), an incubator conceived in 2010 that provides financial support, promotional power, and studio space to emerging talent at an artist village in Wuhan. “It’s a little surreal to a lot of people in the West, because they’ve always had a certain perception of the Chinese.”

That makes the Harvard-educated Cheng, whose youth is pronounced in his cherubic

face, puckish grin, and cool-kid glasses, somewhat of a gatecrasher in the highfalutin art world. The powerhouse institutions, however, have taken notice and are embracing his vision if not his renegade style. His attitude toward the arts would find compatriots in the disruption-minded tech firms of Silicon Valley. “The audience is getting younger, and the museums are trying to diversify,” Cheng says. “They don’t just want to talk about Van Gogh. You can’t do a retrospective every time—you need some new stuff.”

KAF is in the midst of a three-year partnership with Palais de Tokyo in Paris that puts on traveling co-produced exhibitions, like “Inside China: L’Intérieur du Géant,” which highlighted six young Chinese artists chosen by the museum’s curator, Jo-ey Tang, and Wang Chunchen of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum. (The show, which was up for a year, wrapped in November.)

Another collaboration, with Paris’s Centre Pompidou, was announced this year. It will focus on a three-year research project led by the museum’s newly appointed Chinese curator to identify pieces to add to its permanent collection.

In October, KAF teamed with London’s groundbreaking NTS Radio to create “Enter the Dragon,” an installation by Shanghai multimedia artist Zhang Ding at the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Art. Inspired by the classic Bruce Lee film of the same name, ICA’s theater was transformed into a massive mirrored sound sculpture and featured dueling D.J.s from the U.K.’s famed underground music scene. It was essentially, as Cheng puts it, “Chinese Studio 54.”

He says projects like these are an illuminating portrait of his country’s nextwave artists, who focus less on national politics and social topics than their ’90s predecessors, and are more inclined to explore their position in the global community through their work. “There’s no borders if you’re a great artist,” Cheng says.

“We started to have this vision of creating Chinese contemporary art domestically, but also connecting to the world and cross pollinating with international artists.”

At home, Cheng is aiming to make art more accessible by meeting people on their level, a strategy that has borne out in unconventional initiatives that appeal to the masses. For instance, he knew the SURFACE

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(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) Xu Zhen’s “Corporate (4 Knives Group)” (2014). Renaud Jerez’s “H” (2014).

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PPHOTO: COURTESY CHI K11 ART MUSEUM.

PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY XU ZHEN AND K11 ART FOUNDATION. BOTTOM, COURTESY RENAUD JEREZ AND CRÈVECOEUR (PARIS).

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An installation view of Zhang Ding’s “Enter the Dragon” installation this fall at London’s ICA, co-presented with Cheng’s K11 Art Foundation.

PHOTO: COURTESY K11 ART FOUNDATION.

PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY XU ZHEN AND K11 ART FOUNDATION. BOTTOM, COURTESY RENAUD JEREZ AND CRÈVECOEUR (PARIS).

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want to build a community—it doesn’t have to be all-Chinese—where people can think and be inspired with the institutions and museums and be together,” he says. “A new generation club with no members’ fee.”

As for his personal collection, Cheng isn’t really sure how many works he has, but estimates around a few hundred. Not surprisingly, the pieces are mostly by unheralded names. He isn’t all that eager to talk about what’s hanging on his walls at home, anyway. His enthusiasm lies in the foundation, which he sees as the window into China’s emerging artists. “We aren’t a dealer. We don’t have an agenda. We’re very neutral,” Cheng says. “I want them to become artists of the world, where people can pronounce their names— China isn’t just about a 5,000-year history.

The contemporary generation is giving people a new perspective on what it means to be Chinese.”

Filming of the 9-hour In Course of the Miraculous (2015), produced by K11 Art Foundation and directed by Chinese new media artist Cheng Ran. (OPPOSITE) Two installations of the “Media: Dalí, a Legacy of Surrealism Within Contemporary China” exhibition in Shanghai. Above, a replication of Salvadore Dali’s renowned “The Mae West Room.” Below, a replication of Dalí’s studio in his former residence.

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PHOTO: COURTESY CHI K11 ART MUSEUM.

Chinese have an affinity for shopping complexes, so he opened two art malls with robust permanent collections and rotating exhibitions. At the one in Shanghai, works

by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí are currently showing; in Hong Kong, the site is hosting the recently unveiled “Event Horizon,” Antony Gormley’s sculpture installation of 31 fiberglass busts of his body. Cheng claims it’s the most extensive public art program in the city’s history.

“Art and culture are a part of life, so it should be a part of Chinese life,” Cheng says. “I see them come to the museums, look at paintings for hours, get inspired, and feel cleansed. I’m just giving them a place to experience this process.”

Next year, the foundation will open Beijing K11, another high-end retail-art space hybrid. “We’re trying to democratize art in China and build a new ecosystem because it’s different than in the States, where the institutions and ecosystem are already built. Contemporary art only started here around 35 years ago,” Cheng says. “You’re starting to see more proper museums opening, the younger generation starting artist-in-residence programs, but audience grooming is still a problem because it’s not part of the education system.”

Cheng’s mission: Solder the fragmented artistic class and give them a platform.

Facilitate partnerships and raise awareness abroad. Educate the public at home. “We

PHOTOS: COURTESY K11 ART FOUNDATION, ERLENMEYER FOUNDATION AND GALERIE URS MEILE, BEIJING-LUCERNE.

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PHOTOS: COURTESY K11 ART FOUNDATION.

PHOTOS: COURTESY K11 ART FOUNDATION, ERLENMEYER FOUNDATION AND GALERIE URS MEILE, BEIJING-LUCERNE.

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Room for Debate

(OPPOSITE) Moises Cosio Espinosa with Pedro Reyes’s “Capula Klein’s Bottle” (2007) in Mexico City.

With his non-profit Fundación Alumnos47, Moises Cosio Espinosa puts conversations about art—not artworks—front and center.

BY SPENCER BAILEY PHOTOS BY YVONNE VENEGAS

About a decade ago, Moises Cosio Espinosa was frustrated that he just couldn’t seem to understand contemporary art. Attracted to “alternative practices in music and culture” from a young age, for whatever reason the Mexican-born entrepreneur just wasn’t able to wrap his head around the works of many living artists. “I just remember one time I saw this white canvas with white paint, and the question arose: Why is this art?” he says.

“I wondered why people were putting this in museums.”

Espinosa, 31, soon met the curator Patricia Martin, who had recently left her role as director and senior curator of Mexico’s Colección Jumex, and asked her to help him get a grasp on it. (Martin is now director of Fundación Casa Wabi, an interdisciplinary arts institution in Oaxaca, and a senior advisor of AXA Mexico’s contemporary art collection.) The first contemporary artwork to truly strike him was the video installation “When Faith Moves Mountains” (2002) by the Flemish artist Francis Alÿs. “In the Spanish language, we use the phrase ‘faith moves mountains’ a lot,” he says “[Alÿs] actually got people together with shovels to move a dune.” Discovering this piece was a breakthrough moment for Espinosa: It helped him to understand that art is more than just about technique.

This research-based approach to art has become the focus of the Fundación Alumnos47, a non-profit that Espinosa launched in 2012. Operating on a nontraditional model, the foundation is currently based in an old house in Mexico City’s San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood and is opening a cultural space designed by Didier Faustino there this month. The enterprise also includes a publications wing, which

just published Conversations in Mexico, an archive of 14 interviews conducted by curator and Serpentine Galleries co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist with “pioneers in Mexican art and culture.” Espinosa says he has no plans to open a gallery space anytime soon—or ever.

The reason Espinosa started the foundation can be summed up in one word: inclusion.

When he and Patricia toured galleries, they were given special treatment, complete with champagne and backroom receptions. “I realized then that the art world is really exclusive, not inclusive.” This didn’t sit well with him.

Alumnos47 is all about access. He even goes as far as to suggest that a place becomes exclusionary once art is hung on the walls, and as such, the foundation won’t be doing that. “It was really important for me in the foundation to not have art,” he says.

This isn’t to say, though, that Espinosa himself hasn’t been buying art. Over the past decade he has amassed a collection of 110 works by modern and contemporary artists including Jimmie Durham, Pablo Helguera, Piero Manzoni, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. When Espinosa can—in part because he doesn’t have a gallery—he partners with museums, galleries, and other institutions to exhibit the pieces he owns: Currently on view at the Redcat gallery in Los Angeles is the exhibition “Hotel Theory” (through Dec. 20), which includes parts of a piece he owns by Pedro Reyes. (The work, “Baby Marx,” was also shown at Minnesota’s Walker Art Center in 2011.) Espinosa is currently in talks with a museum—he won’t say which one—to give the institution his entire collection.

Though he’s certainly ambitious, Espinosa sees himself as an amateur collector, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything more. “For SURFACE

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Július Koller’s “Univerzázlny Futurologicky Otaznik (U.F.O.)” (1978).

(OPPOSITE) Two puppets depicting Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo from Pedro Reyes’s “Baby Marx” collection in the foreground and Francis Alÿs’s “Untitled” (2011-2012) in the background.

(FOLLOWING SPREAD) Sarah Lucas’s “Led Zeppellin’s for Poofs III” (2002).

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Untitled (Remember JK, Universal Futurological Question Mark U. F. O.)” (2013).

me, it’s not about having a specific piece,” he With Alumnos47, which Espinosa says is says. “It’s about talking about it. In that way, entirely self-funded through inheritance, the I’ve always felt like I’m a weird kind of collec- focus is about supporting artists, bold social tor. It’s more about understanding something ideas, and the art-making process. Collecting than owning it.” remains on the periphery of Espinosa’s agenda.

Art patronage and collecting wasn’t neces- “For me, art is less and less about the object sarily an expected course for Espinosa, who and more about the thought process,” he says. was born in Mexico City to a businessman “It’s really important to support and underfather who ran the Las Brisas chain of hotels stand art as a way of social criticism.” and a mother who today works with recoverWithin that criticism, Espinosa admits, ing addicts in jails and leads a treatment center. there’s plenty of conflict—largely because of (Espinosa’s father died when he was 12.) His the predominantly very wealthy few who buy closest connection to art was through his the work. As Espinosa sees it, the art world is grandfather, Manuel Espinosa Yglesias, who inherently rife with paradoxes, and through collected works by artists like Diego Rivera Alumnos47 he is in part seeking to acknowland others of that generation. A banker who edge, explore, and find potential solutions to was the director of the Mexican financial them. “The art world is a perfect contradicgroup Bancomer from 1959 until 1982—when tion to art,” he says. “You see all these artMexico nationalized its banks and the govern- ists protesting social things, and what they’re ment took all of them over—Manuel turned protesting against is exactly what the art world to philanthropy in his later years; he passed is—and what we collectors are. I’m trying to work through this.” away in 2000.

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Right at Home

(OPPOSITE) Maria Giulia Maramotti in her Manhattan apartment next to Natasha Law’s “Black” (2012), wearing Max Mara.

For Max Mara scion Maria Giulia Maramotti, art can get really, really personal.

BY COURTNEY KENEFICK PHOTOS BY CAIT OPPERMANN

Maria Giulia Maramotti is the type of person who nimbly walks the line between two contrasting worlds. As the U.S. retail director for fashion house Max Mara, she is businesssavvy, though with an emphatically creative vision. Italian born and bred, she also has an American sensibility and Manhattan-paced work ethic. Her evenings alternate between scene-y parties and cooking or listening to jazz music at home. She’s markedly well dressed in cocktail or casual attire, but often swaps her getups for something sportier to go running, sailing, and biking. She effortlessly draws smiles with her boisterous charm, yet appreciates introverted moments alone just as much.

Her predilection for art is another example of such paradoxes. Maramotti, who describes her taste as “dark and emotional,” lives among her personal collection inside a Chelsea apartment full of expressive contemporary décor, graphic wallpaper, and rock-’n’-roll touches.

She moved to New York from Paris four

years ago to take on her current roll at Max Mara, the Italian clothing company launched by her late grandfather, Achille, in the northern city of Reggio Emilia in 1951. Before helming American retail operations, the business school graduate cut her teeth in the company’s Verona, Italy, store as a salesperson (following a year in investment banking), progressing to store manager in Milan, then eventually managing the French market.

Technically, she’s an heiress, but the archetype is defied by her down-to-earth and warm disposition—further animated by her affable accent. “I’m not an ‘It’ girl,” she says. “I’m very reserved.” Perhaps Maramotti’s modesty comes from the way her tight-knit family continues to run Max Mara’s contrastingly huge business operation—a principle passed down from the founding patriarch. “The biggest gift that my grandfather gave me is this sense of family,” she says.

Out of the office, that bond is just as strong.

Which helps explain why Maramotti adopted a penchant for art, inherited from her grandfather, mother, and uncle. She grew up going to museums, having casual tête-à-têtes about various artists, and being surrounded by works collected by her loved ones. In 2007, two years after his death, Achille’s private reserve of contemporary art was moved into the bones of Max Mara’s original production headquarters. It marked the birth of Collezione Maramotti, a compendium of several hundred permanent pieces on view to the public, sans charge—a concept Achille conceived in the ’90s out of “an organic and genuine love for art.”

“It was bittersweet when it opened,” Maramotti says. “I grew up with a lot of those artworks in a very personal and private way, [but] seeing them [available to the] public is something to be proud of.” Her favorite piece, a painting by Anselm Kiefer, holds an especially sweet spot in her heart. “That painting was in my grandfather’s living room forever.

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Every Christmas evening, that was the place Christy Turlington, shot by Steven Meisel.

Near the kitchen, a pair of Polaroid images where we opened our presents.”

When Maramotti bought her first art- by artist Beatrice Pediconi hang adjacent to work, she consulted with her mother, who family photos affixed on her refrigerator. told her, “It’s your own collection, so I can’t “That’s me,” she says proudly, pointing to a tell you what I think, but listen to your gut.” picture of what appears to be three little boys, Her gut led her to a glossy monochromatic but is actually Maramotti with her brothers Natasha Law painting of an underwear-clad vacationing in Sardinia as children. “I was a woman. From there, the 31-year-old’s apart- tomboy.” She speaks equally as tenderly about ment grew into a compilation of her passions the Pediconis, a 30th birthday gift from her and personality. The 13 drawings, paintings, uncle. “She pours colors into a huge bathtub, sculptures, and photographs that make up and either films it or takes Polaroids to see her collection are installed side-by-side with how the water and colors react.”

The Phillips, Law, and Pediconi works are special pictures, handwritten notes, and momentous relics. In the entryway, two ges- indicative of Maramotti’s affinity for female tural black-and-white Jenna Snyder Phillips artists and emotional feminine aesthetics. Her paintings, also of women’s forms, lean against eye perpetually scans for such work, not just the wall, waiting to be hung. In that same hall- for her own walls. On a larger, more corporate way are a Rolling Stones poster (a counterpart scale, she seeks out talent for the Max Mara Art to two of her tattoos, one that says “Gimme Prize for Women. The bi-annual competition, Shelter,” and another that replicates one of Keith in collaboration with London’s Whitechapel Richards’s) and a Max Mara campaign starring Gallery and Collezione Maramotti, aims to 193

Maria Giulia Maramotti in her Manhattan apartment wearing Max Mara. Behind her are Adam Helms’s “Untitled (Meme/ Uncanny #1)” (2013), “Untitled (Meme/ Uncanny #4)” (2013), and “Untitled (Meme/Uncanny #2)” (2013).

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support and nurture female artists, the ultimate prize being a six-month Italian residency.

(In our June/July 2015 issue’s Art column, we covered this year’s winner, Corin Sworn.)

Maramotti is not involved in the judging—she leaves that to the “professionals,” rather acting as more of a “recruiter,” similar to how she discovers new artists for Collezione.

Still, her favorite art is personal. “I have a lot of really good friends who are artists,” she says. In fact, her favorite pieces—three charcoal prints on rice paper—are by boyfriend Adam Helms. A case of bias? Certainly not; she was a fan before ever meeting him. “When we met, I didn’t recognize the face, then he showed me his work—I was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re Adam Helms.’”

On the occasion that Maramotti is able to retreat from her busy life, her apartment is her sanctuary. She heads home, pours a glass of wine, cooks for herself, and takes a look around at the meaningful keepsakes, both big and small, manifested on her walls. “That’s my go-to moment.”

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“Black” (2012) by Natasha Law. (OPPOSITE) “Untitled” (2012) by Beatrice Pediconi.

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(THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM) “It’s Easy to Find Beauty on the Ganges” (2014)

by Mary Nelson Sinclair. “Black Roses” (2014) by Sasha Sykes. (OPPOSITE) “Nudes” (2012) by Jenna Snyder Phillips.

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Public Minded

(OPPOSITE) Jorge Pérez in the Yabu Pushelberg–designed foyer of the Marea complex in South Beach.

In addition to being a masterful developer of buildings, Jorge Pérez shows himself to be a champion of art and culture in his home city.

INTERVIEW BY SPENCER BAILEY PHOTOS BY OGATA

Over the past few decades Miami-based real estate developer and art collector Jorge Pérez has played his cards right.

Not surprisingly, cards—specifically dorm-room poker— was how Pérez got his start as both an entrepreneur and a collector. With his first payouts, he bought works by Marino Marini, Joan Miró, and Man Ray; the winnings also allowed him to start several profitable side businesses. His passion, or some may say obsession, for collecting art has continued apace ever since. Today his name is attached, somewhat controversially, to the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), formerly the Miami Art Museum, and his company, the Related Group, has amassed an impressive collection, which it loans out, stores in an off-site facility, and 199

blankets throughout its headquarters and various developments. All of the works in both Pérez’s personal and Related’s corporate collections will eventually go to the museum.

Though Pérez collects widely, the majority of the works are

by Latin American artists—a direct connection to his roots.

Born to Cuban parents in Argentina, he grew up there until he was 9; from there, the family migrated back to Cuba and, following the revolution, was exiled to Colombia, where Pérez lived until coming to the U.S. in 1968 to attend MiamiDade College. Later, at the University of Michigan, Pérez studied urban planning, and though he’s now well heeled and clearly a savvy businessman— his net worth is estimated at $3.6 billion—that wasn’t always

necessarily the case. His early career was as a communityminded Miami city planner, working mostly on low-income housing, a position that led him to consulting and eventually developing market-rate apartments. These days, Pérez collaborates with some of the world’s top architects, designers, and artists, including Enrique Norten, Yabu Pushelberg, and Piero Lissoni, to create mixeduse projects gorged with amenities and multimillion-dollar apartments.

Surface recently met with Pérez at his art-filled office in downtown Miami to discuss his early gambling days; the inherent tensions in collecting; and why Donald Trump (and so many others) need take a more considered approach to understanding immigration. >

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I read that your mother was an intellectual.

I think she would be, by far, my greatest influence when it came to a love of the arts and humanities. I don’t remember my mother without a book in her hand. She was always reading. And she always encouraged me to not only read but to read fairly difficult things at an early age. I remember reading Sartre and Camus, Searle and Heidegger—the fathers of existentialism—in high school, and discussing it with her. She always had small get-togethers at our house in Colombia with artists and writers. She’d take us to museums, theater, and movies. That started me loving the arts.

I remember looking at art books very early on, just the pictures, and then, when I went to college, I really missed that. In my dorm, whenever I would win a poker game—and I used to play a lot of poker—I would go out and buy a lithograph. I still have some of these earliest purchases in the kitchen or someplace.

So poker started your art collection.

Yeah, poker gave me the means, because my parents didn’t have any money. I had a full scholarship to go to university. Any extra purchases were provided by work or by playing poker. I also became a bit of an entrepreneur. I once bought the remaining stuffed animals of a company that had gone bankrupt, filled vans with them, and went out during Valentine’s Day and Christmas and so forth, selling them

at colleges in New York and Long Island. We’d sell these stuffed animals we’d bought for 50 cents for $5 or $6—they were still cheap. In poker, thankfully I was sort of successful.

Most importantly, I was able to afford to spend a year in Europe after university— this was Europe on $5 a day. I wasn’t going to hotels; I was staying in youth hostels and friends’ apartments in sleeping bags. These were experiences that one would never be able to duplicate again. I travel very differently today. Art became important, and when I went to Europe, art became even more important.

I remember, even though I had had a chance to go to great New York museums, in Europe every city had a museum. Every city was a museum. Cities and architecture [there] made me rethink about what I wanted to do.

You started your career helping to house the poor and elderly as a city planner in Miami.

What was happening with your art collection?

My collection was very, very personal and Latin-centric. I was very proud of being Latin, and when I made the decision of staying in the United States, I didn’t want to lose those roots. I became a collector of all the great Latin American masters: Diego Rivera, Wifredo Lam, Joaquín Torres García, Rufino Tamayo, Carlos Rojas. It was a chance for me to continue to read about Latin America and what these people had done and were doing. This provided me a link to my roots.

Arnaldo Roche’s “Who Wants to Be an Animal” (1991), part of Related’s collection.

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Being that I’m in Miami, I always thought that Miami was going to be the capital of the Americas—it’s strategically located with a large Spanish-speaking population—and I always thought that the collection would become a part of a museum. I wanted it to be enjoyed by others, just like I enjoyed it, and to form the basis of a great collection. My hope still is that Miami and the PAMM will have the best Latin American art collection in the world.

After the gift of all the classics I gave to the museum, we’re continuing to grow the collection. Most of everything I’m buying, if not to make our projects more beautiful, is going to my collection and the museum. Both my collection and the corporate collection will be going to the museum. In the long run, everything will be public.

What’s the difference between your personal collection and Related’s corporate collection?

The personal and corporate are very similar.

The corporate changes in that many times there are pieces I haven’t decided will go to projects or to the museum—or museums; I’ve given to other museums, too. A lot depends on the needs we have and the needs of the museum.

When I buy art, I put it in three categories: 1) Art that’s clearly going to the jobs. For those works, we sit every month with our corporate curator [Patricia García-Vélez Hanna] and developers, look at the walls of all the buildings 201

we’re planning, and say, “What do we want here?” Then we bring in the interior designers and tell them what we’re thinking, and they’ll give us their comments: “No, I would like Richard Sera instead,” for example. We buy everything from really expensive art to works that will go in secondary locations. I just finished buying a beautiful set of limited-edition lithographs by Richard Serra and another set

by Alex Katz. We’ll buy lithographs that are less expensive than the originals to put in secondary locations, but always with the thought that the building is going to have great art. 2) Art that’s in a grey area that I call the “corporate collection.” These are pieces that I would like go to the museum—my thought is that they will—and we keep them in storage for that purpose. But if the museum says they don’t want a piece, or if after a month or so I go, “I don’t think that’s the right piece,” we’ll send it to a project. 3) Art that come hell or high water I want for me, that I want to see in my office— until the time I give it to the museum. These are works that are totally personal in nature. I buy them, even though I always ask questions, because they’re exactly what I want. These are what I’m going to look at day in and day out.

They’re very personal decisions, as opposed to the others, which are for corporate projects. If I see a piece that’s strong either politically or sexually, it’s typically not something I’ll buy for a project, because the condo association will probably end up suing me, saying, “What the hell are you doing putting this here?” >

Eduardo Capilla’s “EC-MIA Pink” (2014), also in the Related collection.

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Are you now looking to collect more young and emerging artists?

Absolutely, and many times we’re going back to who used to be emerging artists 50 years ago and are almost being rediscovered now. There are many examples, in Latin American art and elsewhere, in which you have somebody like this. Take Teresa Burga, who’s 80 years old. She was a Pop artist 50 years ago. She tells me, “I couldn’t sell this stuff for 5 cents! I can’t understand how the same thing I’m doing now was just not selling.” Then all of a sudden, at age 70, she was sort of rediscovered, and now it’s in all the museums. Rediscovering many of these contemporary artists who in many ways were ahead of their time and really good at what they did has been great. Another I’ve been collecting is the great American artist and photographer Barbara Kasten.

I just saw her exhibition, “Barbara Kasten: Stages,” at the Graham Foundation in Chicago [through Jan. 9, 2015].

Pérez at his penthouse unit in the soonto-finish One Ocean development in Miami Beach. (FOLLOWING SPREAD) From left to right, Juan Genoves’s “Ideograma 139,” Zilia Sanchez’s “Sin Titulo” (1971), Rogelio Polesello’s “Circulos Centrales” (1968), Ella Krebs’s “Sin Titulo (Cinetico)” (1960), and Emilio Perez’s “Blow the Horn One More Time” (2008).

Yes, and before that it was [at the Institute of Contemporary Art] in Philadelphia. This woman was a pioneer in abstract photography. She creates these incredible scenes. She’s a doll. I started buying her stuff like crazy.

When I’d go to museums and mention Barbara Kasten, they’d say, “Who’s that?” Then all of a sudden—bam!—she was rediscovered.

This evolution [of collecting and looking

at art] has really opened a new way for me of looking at things. Through the eyes, the mind expands. Before, I’d go to a museum, look at things, and forget about them. I’d only look at impressionist art—Van Gogh and Monet, which were my favorites—and then with some of the other work, I’d go, “That’s weird.” Now I really try to understand the other work. Not that I don’t still love Van Gogh and Monet, but my tastes have changed. It’s like this with my 12-year-old son, Felipe: If you give him something that’s not a hamburger or a pizza, forget about it. But if you start forcing him to try other things, you see his tastes changing.

You recently started a program called Dialogues in Cuban Art. What was the impetus behind this, and how does it work?

Cuba’s opening up, and there’s a tremendous amount of great artists there. I thought that communication between the two countries was very important—and this is before Obama [called on Congress to lift the Cuba embargo].

Now I think it’s even more so. On the first Dialogues trip, we brought U.S. artists from Miami to Cuba for the Havana Biennale; the next one, we’re reversing, bringing Cuban artists to Miami, and they’ll be meeting with fellow artists here.

We’re doing the same thing with film.

For the Miami Film Festival, we brought these Cuban cinematographers for these

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scholarships, to spend time here, go to the film festival, and present there. This year, we’re doing Argentinian films—we’re bringing the filmmakers here. One of the films [Wild Tales, directed by Damián Szifron] has been nominated for the Oscars for Best Foreign Film; we just had a big function for it at the film festival.

These things are extremely important as cultural bridges between the U.S. and Latin America. I look forward to Miami becoming more and more the capital of the Americas, where there’s continuous exchange. Miami is my city. I’m allowing people in Miami to view and participate in all these new cultural activities. One of the greatest thrills for me in the PAMM is the children. All third graders are taken to the museum for free with their teachers. Studies have shown that art, particularly at that very sensitive age, makes a child’s life not only scholastically better but better in general.

We’re doing the same thing with the Mourning Family Foundation, which is taking kids from low-income neighborhoods to the museum after school. We want to bring the arts into that program and help them out.

Let’s talk about the connection between being a developer of buildings and a developer of culture. Where do you ultimately see the collision of the two?

I keep it together and I separate it. We think buildings are much better by incorporating art.

From a marketing point of view, art is a great tool. Business and art mix very well.

I try to do the other art things separate from the business side. For example, people at the office will say, “Let’s do this with the art museum.” But I’ll say no. I don’t want it to ever be said that I’m using the museum, the Mourning Family Foundation, or something like that to promote my own economic goals.

I don’t need it. I don’t want it. When I put my museum hat on and go to the board, Related as a company does not get involved at all.

But I’m sure it comes up fairly often. How do you deal with it?

I cut it. I say no. But if Related wants to do a great exhibition, absolutely—we have a fund in the company to do this. Two percent of our profits go to a Related foundation, to be used for philanthropy. We make the corporate decisions as to where that money goes. A lot goes to the arts, some to the homeless, some to cancer research. But that’s the philanthropic side of the company. We don’t want to use the museum to promote any one of our jobs, unless it’s something that would be spectacularly good for the museum. If someone came to us and said they would like to do something for the museum and were going to give X amount of money, then we’d go to the museum. But we’re always extremely clear about everything, because I don’t want that association: “Is there any way he’s using this to further his business goals?”

Not only is it wrong, I don’t need it.

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It’s interesting how personal the company is—and the art collection is—yet you’re able to somehow keep this dividing line.

It’s an evolution. The museum has huge needs. It needs a better collection. We’ll continue to contribute to that. Plus, remember, while it’s very important for a museum to have a great collection, it’s just as important—if not more—for a museum to have great exhibitions. When I go to Paris or New York, we don’t say, “Let’s go to MoMA.” The first thing we do is go to the concierge and ask what shows are going on, and ask the people we know what we should see.

Based on that, we typically go do our art tour of the city. Miami needs to have those exhibits so that whenever tourists come here, they say, “What’s at the PAMM?” It’s not only important that we give art to the museum but that there’s also sufficient funding in the museum budget to be able to create exhibits that are going to be successful. And successful has two meanings: 1) Is it art that’s critically acclaimed? 2) Is it a blockbuster? Is this something people will actually want to come see? I think it’s very important for museums to always keep those things in mind. You don’t want to do critically acclaimed exhibits that are so far out there that nobody wants to come see them. At the same time, you don’t want to do things that are so popular that they’re just not interesting or artistically good.

In addition to your work with the museum, you’ve installed a lot of public sculptures throughout the city. How do you hope your work as a patron can bring more art to the public?

We have a major Fernando Botero torso on South Miami Avenue; we’ve got two huge sculptures on Brickell Avenue in front of a building we own that we’re going to demolish.

We’re doing the Jaume Plensa sculpture, which after Chicago will be shown at the museum until the building’s done. We want as many people as possible to see the artworks.

Is most of your focus now on the museum?

My biggest focus is on Miami becoming a world-class city. Everything that leads to that is very important to me. We’re talking now about a museum park. There’s no great city that doesn’t have a central park, whether you go to Paris, London, New York, Chicago, or Sydney.

Miami doesn’t have that, and we definitely need it. Transportation, employment, and all the things that are going to contribute to making Miami a better place are very important to me.

I’m very involved with FIU, the University of Miami, and Miami-Dade College. The building for the architecture program at the University of Miami is the Jorge M. Pérez Architecture Center, and I’m on the university’s board. My concentration is on Miami. It has so many needs as a young city. It’s consuming. And we don’t have the Coca-Colas, the Googles, or

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the IBMs here—the corporations that can say, “Here’s $100 million. Go do it.”

We’re a city of a lot of smaller entrepreneurs.

We just have to make the continuous effort to catch up to those cities with hundreds of years on us and a lot of money—and a tradition of giving. We need A) to create the wealth here in Miami and B) to serve as an example for others whenever we give. This is why I joined the Giving Pledge. I was the first Hispanic to do so, and I still might be the only one. When you get to a point of having more money than you need, it’s very important to separate what you want to give to your family and what you want to give back to society. I think the Giving Pledge is good: You give half or more of your net worth to philanthropy, and you get to pick where you want it to go. While I give to other places outside of Miami—my wife, Darlene, and I just did a big cancer research grant for the Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard; I got sick one time and they were amazing—the majority are for making Miami great.

You were talking about a lot of social issues having to do with Miami. Do you look to art as a way of exploring, say, homelessness or rising sea levels?

Sometimes—I don’t know how art can deal with rising sea levels. But yes. We’re talking to Baptist Hospital, maybe the largest in the Southeast. It’s been shown that cancer patients exposed to art do better. When you can combine the arts with ways of making people better—which can be anything: at-risk youth

being exposed to it, creating programs for the elderly—it’s a good thing.

Have you ever been healed by art?

Well, art changes my mood. When I’m in a bad mood, I go to a museum and come out happy. The biggest example is I went through this fairly serious disease. It’s now 100 percent taken care of, but it was a humongous operation. I couldn’t move for six weeks. The first thing I did in a wheelchair—in the winter in Massachusetts, which was freezing—was to go to a museum. My wife took me. They had a driver, put me in a van, took me there, and rolled me out. It was amazing. I felt like shit— first in a hospital, then in a hotel room with all these tubes. But then I went out. Going to that museum took my mind away from things.

That’s the value of the arts. While being treated for cancer, it’s great to experience something like this. So yes, I think the arts have a very health-related component. I guess that’s my biggest experience with it: as something that was very meaningful when times were grim.

It must keep you grounded, too. I can only imagine all the shit you must deal with day to day, but you always have your art collection.

others art is just a little percentage of what it means to me. It’ll make their lives better.

Art at its best can reverberate and cross borders.

Right. One of the things we go through as politicians—with my hat on as the head of Miami’s Cultural Affairs Council—is the huge multiplier effect that the arts have on the economy.

From performing arts to museums, people go out and spend a lot of money. This is a huge economic indicator, which many times for politicians is particularly important. It allows them to say, “We’re creating jobs. We’re making the economy stronger through the arts.” Look at what Art Basel has done for Miami: It’s not just because it’s a fair that a bunch of people come to; it puts us on the map as a cultural center.

With more museums on the way—the [Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science] is now being finished—we’ll be even more on the map. People who come here will say, “Wow, Miami’s not just a place for sun and great discos at night.” They’re gonna see that during the day there are all these cultural things to do.

That’s what I’m trying to bring about with the arts and with everything else I do.

Yeah! To me, though, it’s sort of different.

I change out the artworks almost every day. If you come here a month from now, something in this office will be different. I hope that for

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Ray Smith’s “Diego” (1987). (OPPOSITE) From left, Lydia Azout’s “Language of Silence 2” (2011), Fabian Marcaccio’s “Emotional Abstract Coalition (Remix)” (1997-98), Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s “Aleaciones con memoria de formall” (2014), Baga people of Guinea’s “Baga Equestrian Drum,” José Bedia Valdés’s “Estupor del cubanito en territorio ajeno” (2000), and Alexandre Arrechea’s “No Limits” (2013).

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ABSTRACTIONS OF PAINTINGS BY HENRI PAUL BROYARD.

Works from a new book by Marvin and Ruth Sackner about the art of typewriting and typewritten art.

Text by Spencer Bailey

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PHOTO: COURTESY THE SACKNER ARCHIVE OF CONCRETE AND VISUAL POETRY.

This fall, just weeks before the release of the new book The Art of Typewriting (Thames & Hudson), the Miami-based art collector Ruth Sackner died in her sleep at age 79. In 1979, she and her husband, Marvin, founded the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, and throughout her life, they amassed more than 75,000 works of art— according to The Miami Herald, the largest collection on earth. (The book, which the Sackners compiled together, states that the archive is “probably the largest repository of concrete and visual poetry, as well as related visual/verbal material of its kind, in the world.”) In an age of computer-driven word processing—Microsoft Word, Google Docs—the works here make for an especially prescient presentation. As the book shows, artistic typewriting, whether “concrete poetry” or “visual poetry,” was a niche, but also democratic in its approach, and no easy feat to make. The low cost of materials—paper, typewriter, ink—allowed for a range of practitioners, with a few of them gaining notoriety, including Carl Andre (b. 1935), Henri Chopin (1922–2008), Rimma Gerlovina (b. 1951), and Yoko Ono (b. 1933). Much of the work has a loose, unfettered quality—like something pulled from a Kerouacian dream—but that doesn’t mean the works are easy or simple to produce. Time, energy, and struggle are evident in many of the pieces shown in The Art of Typewriting: The 78-year-old English artist Tom Phillips spent eight years (1966-73) producing the pages shown of “A Humument” (and he’s still at work on the project today); the colors and layers of Frank Singleton’s “Abstract 3” (1986) create a hypnotic image that clearly took focus, even if its simplicity looks almost effortless. Here and on the following pages, selections from the Sackner archive.

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Jake Berry’s “22 & 10 & Is & Laugh” (1987).

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PHOTO: COURTESY THE SACKNER ARCHIVE OF CONCRETE AND VISUAL POETRY.

(THIS PAGE) Henri Chopin’s “Place de la concorde sous la pluie du marché commun” (1989). (OPPOSITE) Ruth Wolf-Reinhardt’s “Series Towers” (c. 1980).

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(THIS PAGE) Anna Bella Geiger’s “page from O Novo Atlas parte 1” (1977). (OPPOSITE) Vittore Baroni’s “Memento Mori” (1988).

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(THIS PAGE) Tom Phillips’s “Pages of A Humument” (1966–73). (OPPOSITE) Frank Singleton’s “Abstract 3” (1986).

PHOTO: COURTESY THE SACKNER ARCHIVE OF CONCRETE AND VISUAL POETRY.

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(ABOVE) J.W. Curry’s “MAB[2]” (c. 1992). (OPPOSITE) Steve McCaffrey’s “Second Panel” (1970-75).

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Ethereal Beauty Surrealism

Alfredo Castañeda 1938-2010 • Mexican Acrylic and pencil/graphite on board Signed and dated “Castañeda 72” Board: 147/8”h x 143/4”w Frame: 221/4”h x 221/4”w

A marvelous example of the Surrealist movement.

This “portrait” entitled Chanelo demonstrates the influence of folk art and mysticism in Castañeda’s unique body of work. His Surrealist imagery intrigues viewers the world over, making Castañeda one of Mexico’s most valued and beloved artists. #30-0986

Since 1912, M.S. Rau Antiques has specialized in the world’s finest art, antiques and jewelry. Visit rauantiques.com

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Existing between dreams and reality, the Surrealists explored the unconscious mind through the creation of some of the most exquisite, expressive, and thought-provoking works of art ever composed.

Paul Delvaux 1897-1994 • Belgian Pen and Ink on Paper Signed and inscribed “P.Delvaux / Les Belles de Nuit” Paper: 181/2”h x 141/2”w Frame: 36”h x 315/8”w Belgian Surrealist Paul Delvaux presents an otherworldly cityscape in this work entitled Les Belles de Nuit (Beauties of the Night).

His dream-like compositions permeated with nudes are his most sought after, and can be found in important museums worldwide, including the Tate Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Guggenheim Museum. #30-3409

Antiques • Fine Art • Jewelry 630 Royal Street, New Orleans • 877-302-1639 • rauantiques.com

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Precision Masterpieces Patek Philippe

Electronic World Time Tower This T3 World Time Tower is a technological masterpiece specially crafted for Radio Bremen, the German national broadcasting company, and features 11 modules and 25 analog dials. Synonymous with cutting-edge innovation and superior quality, Patek Philippe’s incredible electronic clocks rarely appear on the market. Since each time system was crafted on a special commissioned basis for only their most important clients, no two clocks are alike.

Circa 1977. 233/4”w x 231/2”d x 71”h. #30-2906

Each piece acquired from M.S. Rau Antiques is backed by our unprecedented 125% Guarantee. Visit rauantiques.com

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Patek Philippe timepieces are widely regarded as the most exceptional on the market today, with each representing the values of lasting tradition, innovation, and superior quality.

Electronic Digital Display Clock (above) This exceptional digital display time system was commissioned for the luxury jewelry firm Abou Watfa of Damascus. The separate consoles were used at the Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin watch displays in their showroom. Connected to the “master” unit, shown on the bottom, the system is accurate to 1/10 of a second. Circa 1970. 163/4”w x 91/4”d x 213/8”h. #30-2894

Electronic T33 Time Tower

Antiques • Fine Art • Jewelry 630 Royal Street, New Orleans • 877-302-1639 • rauantiques.com

15MSRA151-04-129402-1

A rare precision timepiece, this T33 Time Tower was used by the German utilities company Energie Baden-Württemberg and was designed to display accurate time in 10 locations and make automatic time adjustments for Daylight Saving Time.

Circa 1985. 173/4”w x 107/8”d 213/8”h. #30-2882

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ABSTRACTIONS OF PAINTINGS BY HENRI PAUL BROYARD.

Culture Club A photo portfolio of recent events in the Surface universe, including the Whitney Art Party in New York.

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Culture Club Lucien Smith’s Macabre Suite Lucien Smith’s “Macabre Suite,” an art installationslash-celebration, drew guests to a South Bronx warehouse for a one-night-only party that featured exhibitions of Smith’s work, a special dance performance by Kobe Kanty, and musical performances

by Frankie Bones, Kool Herc, Travis Scott (shown here mid-performance), and more. Guests including Gigi Hadid, Naomi Campbell, Kendall Jenner, Carmelo Anthony, Adrien Brody, Baz Luhrmann, Swizz Beatz, and Hailey Baldwin partied until 2 a.m.

(Photo: Matteo Prandoni/bfa.com)

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CULTURE CLUB Americans for the Arts National Arts Awards Guests gathered on Oct. 10 for the 55th annual National Arts Awards, which recognize extraordinary achievement by artists and raise money to support art programs.

Attendees enjoyed cocktails while viewing the work of Kerry James Marshall, followed by dinner and a musical performance by alumni of the National Young Arts Foundation. Lady Gaga, Sophia Loren (pictured here, with Tony Bennett), Herbie Hancock, Maria Bell, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, and Alice Walton all took home awards. (Photo: Joe Schildhorn/bfa.com)

The Bruce High Quality Foundation Presents Arcadia On Nov. 5, the Bruce High Quality Foundation, a New York City-based art school and space, hosted Arcadia. Guests at the fundraiser sipped specialty cocktails while being treated to various exhibitions and performances, including one by Le1f (pictured). D.J. sets by Justin Strauss and House of Ladosha also entertained, as did a photo booth that allowed guests to capture the evening. Attendees included Dev Hynes, Alban de Pury, Alexander Acquavella, Alexander Dellal, Bob Colacello, Chloe Wise, Cleo Wade, and Clifford Ross. (Photo: Angela Pham/bfa.com)

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CULTURE CLUB Elephants are Forever Auction The Elephants are Forever exhibition and auction, curated

by Roya Sachs and hosted by Owen Wilson, featured work by 25 contemporary artists including Tom Sachs, Rob Pruitt, David Yarrow, Tracey Emin, and Walton Ford. Pieces were displayed in a jungle installation where guests like Princess Beatrice (pictured) experienced Google Maps Expeditions virtual reality experiences and projections of a family of elephants. Other attendees included Susan Sarandon, Fern Mallis, Waris Ahluwalia, Genevieve Jones, Jessica Joffe, Keren Craig, Michael Avedon, Douglas Friedman, and Minnie Mortimer. (Photo: Ryan Kobane/ bfa.com)

Pratt Institute’s 2015 Legends Gala On Oct. 29, Pratt Institute hosted the 2015 Legends Gala, a night dedicated to celebrating cultural figures and raising funds for scholarship programs. Timothy GreenfieldSanders (pictured), Daniel Boulud, Nina Campbell, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, and Todd Williams and Billie Tsien all took home Legends awards, designed by Pratt Student Kerchuan Soong, for work in their fields. Presenters and other guests that evening included Darren Aronofsky, Michael Boodro, Bibhu Mohapatra, Kim Hastreiter, and Christiane Seidel. (Photo: Patrick McMullan Company)

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The Lunchbox Fund 10th Anniversary Benefit Dinner On Oct. 26, guests gathered at the restaurant Gabriel Kreuther for the Lunchbox Fund’s 10th anniversary benefit dinner. The evening, which was hosted by Jordan Wolfson and Liv Tyler, began with a cocktail party to celebrate the nonprofit organization’s efforts to provide meals to children in South Africa. At dinner, guests enjoyed a four-course tasting menu prepared by chef Kreuther and a viewing of a limited-edition Wolfson print, which was also available for auction on Paddle8 along with works by Damian Loeb, Dustin Yellin, and others. Proceeds from the benefit went to the Lunchbox Fund. Other notable guests that night included Olivia Wilde (pictured, talking to Spike Jonze and Billy Crudup), Sting, Helena Christensen, Chuck Close, and Yellin. (Photo: Benjamin Lozovsky/bfa.com)

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CULTURE CLUB The Fashion Group International’s Night of Stars Guests gathered at Cipriani Wall Street for the 32nd annual Fashion Group International Night of Stars on Oct. 22, where honorees received awards for their work and impact in the fashion industry—including Alber Elbaz (pictured), who accepted his Superstar award from actress Meryl Streep. Other awardees included Justin Timberlake, Jonathan Anderson, Bruno Frisoni, Jason Wu, and Karyn Khoury; guests enjoyed musical performances by Brian Newman and Tori Kelly. Katie Holmes, Diane Kruger, Hamish Bowles, Rose Marie Bravo, Andrew Bolton, Tory Burch, Simon Doonan, and Garance Doré were also present. (Photo: Sam Deitch/bfa.com)

The New Museum’s Next Generation Dinner New Museum director Lisa Phillips and Fabiola BeracasaBeckman hosted the museum’s Next Generation Dinner with the help of 1stdibs. The annual event raises funds for the museum and also helps recognize new and emerging artists; this year Njideka Akunyili Crosby (pictured accepting her award from Sam Messer) and Josh Kline were honored for their work. Guests enjoyed cocktails, a Mediterranean dinner, music by Sam French, and beauty touch-ups provided by Lancôme. Jen Brill, Derek Blasberg, Lazaro Hernandez, Christina Ricci, Casey Fremont, Indré Rockefeller, Carlos Souza, Maria Baibakova, and Liya Kebede were among the night’s guests. (Photo: Billy Farrell/bfa.com) SURFACE

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CULTURE CLUB Hermès’s New Miami Store On Nov. 5th, Robert Chavez and Axel Dumas (pictured, top, left to right) of Hermès hosted a party to celebrate the opening of the brand’s new Miami outpost. After a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Design District store— complete with a parade of feather-adorned performers— the occasion was celebrated with a flamingo-themed party. The vibrant ambiance was inspired by a tropical Hermès scarf print, and included nods to the Magic City, Cuba, and Latin America. Guests including Crispy Soloperto, Iran Issa Khan, Kelly Framel, and Criselda Breene enjoyed Havana-style food carts serving empanadas and pressed sandwiches, a retro game area with ping pong tables and pinball machines, and multiple Latin dance performances (pictured, bottom). (Photo: worldredeye.com)

Cooper Hewitt 2015 National Design Awards A ceremony and dinner for the 2015 National Design Awards was held at Pier 60 in New York City in October.

The awards recognize design talents in various areas from architecture to fashion. Director Ang Lee (pictured) presented the prize for interaction design to John Underkoffler, and Meredith Vieira presented a posthumous lifetime achievement award for renowned architect Michael Graves. Other presenters and guests included Marisa Tomei, Caroline Baumann, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Narciso Rodriguez, Nicole Miller, Richard Marcus, and Kurt Andersen.

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CULTURE CLUB RxArt Benefit Party Honors Urs Fischer RxArt’s annual benefit party honored Urs Fischer on Nov. 3, and raised a million dollars for the nonprofit’s cause: transforming children’s hospitals and healthcare facilities with the help of contemporary artists. The evening featured a menu curated by chef Mina Stone and a live auction led

by Christie’s vice president Sara Friedlander. Urs Fischer (pictured with wife Tara Subkoff) took home the RxArt inspiration award. Attendees included Peter Brant, Jason Beckman, Abby Bangser, Jen Brill, Neil Blumenthal, Gavin Brown, and Hope Atherton. (Photographer: Billy Farrell/ bfa.com)

Farfetch and Victor Cruz Celebrate the 3x1 + Victor Cruz Collaboration To celebrate the launch of his denim collaboration with 3x1, Victor Cruz (pictured) hosted a dinner with farfetch.com and 3x1. D.J. Kiss provided the music while guests enjoyed a four-course meal and wine in the lush gardens of Bouley Botanical. Cruz’s five-piece denim capsule collection is available exclusively on Farfetch.com. Attendees at the party included Stephanie Horton, Scott Morrison, RJ King, Johannes Huebl, Chelsea Leyland, Natalie Joos, Vashtie Kola, Dorian Grinspan, David Miller, and Nigel Sylvester.

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Tiffany & Co. has teamed up with Dover Street Market on a capsule collection that reissues 18 of the former’s classic designs.

THE “OUT OF RETIREMENT” COLLECTION BY THE NUMBERS:

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Materials used in the collection: 18-karat gold, diamond, sterling silver, and tsavorite The earliest original design year in the collection (a money clip featuring the $ sign) The most recent original design year in the collection (the Desk Puzzle) Number of pieces in the collection City blocks between Tiffany & Co.’s New York flagship and Dover Street Market New York Other times Tiffany & Co. has partnered with a retailer on a capsule collection Stores where the collection will be available Decades spanned in the collection Types of gemstones found throughout the collection Number of days the collection will be sold at Dover Street Market

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Second Act