The Errant Æsthete

The eloquence in the language of architecture is measured by how a building is put together. The joining of materials in a manner that retains the integrity of each part, while assigning a function compatible and advantageous to its nature, has always been a measure of “seriousness” in architecture.

“God is in the details” is a phrase attributed to Mies Van Der Rohe and revered by architects as we endeavor again and again to do the right thing. Architecture is order, and this order carries throughout the building down to the smallest corner. There is no back side to architecture any more than there is a detail that is unimportant.

Detailing expresses the “how” of buildings and when done with great care and skill reinforces the “why.” It can express the honesty not only of the architecture but of all those involved in the making of it. It is a slow process whose results are seldom noticed. It has been said that good detailing should never show the agony it took to produce it, but should appear as if it had not been detailed at all, as if it went together the way it wanted to go together–or as Kahn has said, “the way it wants to be.”

My detailing is deliberately sparse and linear in order to enhance the spaces within and without. People look good in my buildings.

I try very hard in my work to listen to my client since it is the client’s program, budget and site which are the influences that will drive the design. I have found, however, that of these three the site is the dominant factor. The quality of the light upon that particular area of earth is always unique and determines the path the architecture will take. I endeavor to design buildings that belong, make the site look better and, hopefully, never shout. The order established by the program, the site and the budget produces architecture. Because of this, I have never designed two buildings alike.

 

The architectural philosophy of Hugh Newell Jacobsen. Beautifully detailed, elegant, refined, clean, crisp, exquisite, by arguably the best living architect on the planet. With a style that is as subtle as it is elegant, his homes seem to capture the beauty of both aesthetics into one sparse and linear yet whimsical style. Best illustrated by the house above that appears to be a series of staggered one-room schoolhouses from the front but is actually one dwelling.

Infused with a rare sense of clarity and elegance, they are serene and classically proportioned, but at the same time distinctly modern. Drawing inspiration from vernacular architecture, his designs often recall the barns, detached kitchens, and smokehouses of early American architecture.

 

Hugh Newell Jacobsen
Photos: Robert Lautman

 

 

Posted in Art & Architecture
Tags: Architecture, hughnewelljacobsen, Philosophy

“This fair is multiplicitous
in ways that few others are anymore…
with an ardent mix-it-up spirit
that was once called
eclectic
and is now called
postmodern.”

—Holland Cotter, The New York Times

56th Annual
Winter Antiques Show
January 22–31, 2010
Park Avenue Armory

Daily 12 p.m.-8 p.m.
Sundays & Thursday 12 p.m.-6 p.m.
Opening Night Party, January 21

Posted in Decor, Design, Exhibits, New & Notable
Tags: 2010, NewYork, winterantiqueshow

The work of photographer Michael Eastman rarely shows human subjects. Absent from the photos themselves, the person in Eastman’s work becomes the viewer whose imagination takes them through the empty door, up a spiral stair, or into a room where the story of a life can hang from a clothesline beneath a baroque chandelier.

His images from his Cuba series present a past, now frayed at the edges, but unlike America, not cast away or abandoned, but captured in the here and now, frozen in time. From the photographer’s perspective, the present now co-exists in the degraded splendor of an aristocratic, colonial past. Castro’s Havana has neither the interest or the resources to eradicate what the revolution rejected. Were it for us such places would be restored, gentrified perhaps. But then the very people whose lives hang from the clothesline beneath the baroque chandelier of Isabella’s Two Chairs would once again be invited to enter such spaces only by invitation.

John Keats once wrote “beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.” Which is why Eastman’s image of a fadingly corroded beauty infused with a narrative that speaks of romantic decay and genteel decline is This Day’s Notable Aesthetic. Beg to differ?

Michael Eastman: Isabella’s Two Chairs, 2000

Posted in Errant Aesthete, Photography
Tags: isabellastwochairs, michaeleastman, notableaesthetic, Photography

Lucian Freud. Photo: Cecil Beaton

The story, as reported, went something like this:

When Lucian Freud’s relationship
with his former nude model and muse Emily Bearn
was on the rocks,
he paid a late-night visit
to the £500,000 house in West London
that he was assumed
to have bought for her.

“Lucian came striding down the pavement
looking very angry,”
a neighbor recalled.
“Emily wouldn’t let him in
and he started kicking the door and shouting.
He was making a lot of noise.”

There is nothing so remarkable
about that story of parting lovers,
apart from one aspect:
Bearn was 29
and Freud was 80.

Hence my introduction to Lucian Freud, not as the celebrated painter the world over known as a reclusive creator of the world’s most expensive painting by a living artist, or the man frequently described as Britain’s greatest living painter, although not by those who were outraged at his notorious “five o’clock shadow” portrait of the Queen, but as this irascible octogenarian and late-night lothario making a nuisance of himself running through the streets of London.

Moreover, I had contributed in my own small way to enlarging his fame by posting an account of his exhibit “Stripped Bare” held at the Modern in 2007 and deemed as one of the praiseworthy exhibits of the season.

Lucian Freud. Photo: Clifford Cotton

What was it exactly that brought this complicated artist back into my psyche? While I certainly appreciated his mastery of the human form, I hadn’t made a point of delving into his life until the other night when I was reading this enchanting little book entitled “My Judy Garland Life“ written by an unknown writer and first time author, Susie Boyt. As I was reading her lilting prose describing her obsession with the fabled songstress, she casually mentioned her great grandfather, the psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, and, in turn, her father, the illustrious painter, Lucian.

What a remarkable, but somewhat troubling family, I thought as her accounts of her father deemed him absent, distant, rarely there in the telling of her warmly scripted tale of unrestrained devotion and childish ardor to one of the greatest entertainers of the twentieth century.

As I quickly learned it was no small wonder her famous father failed to make patriarchal appearances. You see, Mr. Freud is rumored to have 40 children (an exaggeration we are told) to a number of different, and only too willing, paramours, yet there is no dispute on his legendary appetite for much younger women and at a spry 88, one might suspect they are all younger

Lucien Freud, Reflection (self portrait), 1985

Yet, like most celebrated for their genius, the gossipy mystique can be tiresome. Oddly enough, something similar developed around Balthus, another reclusive painter of the old school who, like Freud, developed an aristocratic persona. He, too, had the best possible taste and a secretive erotic air. And yet in the case of these two painters, there is also something telling about the fascination with their lives, for the work of both appears steeped in hidden narratives.

Lucien Freud, Reflection (self portrait), 2002

“The achievement of the strenuously lionized British realist painter Lucian Freud,” writes Roberta Smith, “has not so much been to break new ground as to dig incessantly deeper into the old. By doing so he has intensified our understanding of figurative painting’s familiar landmarks to the point of discomfort.”

A brief tutorial

Freud’s early paintings like The Painter’s Room (1944) above are often associated with surrealism, depicting people, plants and animals in unusual juxtapositions. These works are usually painted with relatively thin paint, but from the 1950s he began to paint portraits, often nudes, to the almost complete exclusion of everything else, employing a thicker impasto. With this technique he would often clean his brush after each stroke.

It is well known that Freud has a conception of life that embraces the human and the animal as two aspects of the same thing. Some of his most memorable pictures are of people and animals – generally their owners – together. Girl with a White Dog, for example.

Girl with a white dog, 1951 – 1952, Tate Gallery. The subject is Freud’s first wife, Kitty (Kathleen) Garman, the daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman.

In the wonderful Double Portrait (1985-86) paws and hands, whippet legs and forearms, the dog’s and the woman’s noses are juxtaposed in an intimate, rhyming mesh. All of those paintings have a powerful sense of shared existence at least as close as his all-human couples.

Freud’s subjects are often the people in his life; friends, family, fellow painters, lovers, children. To quote the artist: “The subject matter is autobiographical, it’s all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really.”

Painted in 1992 and sold for $11.4 million by Christie’s New York in November 2007, presents Freud’s daughter Isobel Boyt in her husband’s arms, sprawled on a grim bed, appearing to be asleep.

Two of Lucian Freud’s daughters: London fashion designer Bella and Writer Esther.

‘Bruce Bernard’ is another painting sold by the Christie’s London in June 2007 for $15.5 million. Bernard was the picture editor of the Sunday Times magazine from 1972 to 1980 and later became the visual arts editor of the Saturday Independent Magazine.

Friends with Freud since 1942, Bernard declined to sit for his portrait for many years and only changed his mind upon hearing that Freud’s “working speed had appreciably increased.”

Leigh on a Green Sofa, 1993

“I remember
Francis Bacon would say
that he felt
he was giving art
what he thought
it previously lacked.

With me,
it’s what Yeats called
the fascination
with what’s difficult.
I’m only trying
to do
what I can’t do.”

Lucian Freud

Lying by the Rags 1989-1990

“Those who dislike his art

see his oeuvre

as the meat locker

of a misogynist.

They are wrong.”

Mark Stevens

 

“Best known for his fierce depiction of the flesh, he seems to strip his nudes physically and psychically, presenting them in awkward poses and an unforgiving light. Sometimes, they sprawl about with animals or are enormously fat. Those who dislike Freud’s art consider his oeuvre the meat locker of a misogynist. They are wrong. The nudes have an unpeeled power that’s like nothing else in art. But there is indeed something harsh about the contract he establishes in such pictures between artist and subject. Freud seems to have all the power—and asserts it. His compositions are elegant, his subjects ungainly. His brush dances, their bodies lie supine. His surface glows, their flesh decays. His eye is spirited, theirs appears defeated. He lords it over the nudes.”

Review, NY Times Magazine, 2004

 

In a future post, a few thoughts on muses, particularly those of Lucien Freud’s, and his most celebrated painting of one that sold for an astonishing $33.6 million in 2008, setting a world record for sale value of a painting by a living artist.

 

One of EA’s readers thoughtfully took the time to trace the poem ‘The Fascination of What’s Difficult’ by Yeats that Freud cited above. My thanks to if jane at thenearnessofdistance.blogspot.com.

The Fascination of What’s Difficult

The fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.</blockquote

 

 

Posted in Art & Architecture, Notable Aesthetes
Tags: artist, francis bacon, lucianfreud, myjudygarlandlife, profile

“Now that I know everything,
I love her more,
as my father did,
because she was tempted,
because she was weak.
She was a rebel…
rejecting the conventions
that marriage demands
exclusive love,
and that women
should love only men,
and men only women…

Yes,
she may have been mad,
as she later said,
but it was a magnificent folly.

She may have been cruel,
but it was cruelty
on a heroic scale.

How can I despise
the violence
of such a passion?

How could she regret
that the knowledge of it
should reach the ears
of a new generation,
one so infinitely
more compassionate
than her own?”

 

So wrote Nigel Nicolson of his mother, Vita Sackville-West, in reaction to her confession — an attempt to purge her mind and heart of a love for another woman — written in 1920, when she was 28 and in the eighth year of her marriage to Harold Nicolson.

 

Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson, 1974
Painting: Shoshana Kertesz

Posted in Arts & Letters, Excerpts
Tags: bloomsburygroup, nigelnicolson, portraitofamarriage, vitasackvillewest

The lovely, lively and eminently thoughtful Emily of Emily Evans Eerdmans recently announced her betrothal to the newly anointed Mr. EEE. Reports have them feverishly scanning the shops of Kauai for china patterns.

Won’t you please join me in extending them the fondest and warmest of wishes for their every happiness. The royal photograph can be viewed here.

 

A Gift Of Gladioli by William Russel Flint.

Posted in Errant Aesthete
Tags: Agiftofgladioli, EmilyEvansEerdmans, weddingwishes, WilliamRusselFlint

Behold the macaron!

Or is it macaroon?

Exacting aesthetes will point out that the English translation of the French macaron is a macaroon. Thus, one would say they just sampled a macaroon from Ladurée, for example. (Although, I’m told a trend is underway to resort back to the macaron pronunciation in order to distinguish this famed delicacy from the, mercifully, undignified common coconut variety.

Make no mistake, confusion abounds when it comes to macaroons or macarons. For example, in a fine French restaurant, one may discover miniature macaroons among the petit-fours. But is the choice a French macaroon, an Italian macaroon, or that tasty hybrid, the coconut macaroon? Before embarrassment sets in or a faux pas committed, a small primer to alert the discerning on the differences.

The well-known American macaroon is made with almonds (or almond paste), egg whites, sugar, and sometimes a flavoring, like coconut or chocolate.

Yet, it is the Parisian-style version of the macaron, or macaroon, that has captivated hearts and palates alike. The legendary Ladurée and Pierre Hermé macarons, for example, are uniquely flavored butter creams in gorgeous pastel colors sandwiched between two soft little cake-like cookies.

These precious little delicacies have become so well-known internationally over other varieties of macarons to be found in France, that when someone says macaron without precision, they are generally referring to the Ladurée version. It’s evident an entire subculture exists on the macaron/macaroon. (Dedicated gourmands might be interested to know that the Almond and Macaroon Museum in the town of Montmorillon in France is a well-traveled destination).

In the infinite wisdom of Larousse Gastronomique, macaroons originated in Venice during the Renaissance with the word macarons derived from the Italian “maccherone,” which means fine dough. The Venetian word was “macerone” and the English term, “macaroon,” comes from the French “macaron.” It is all so bewildering, no?

As with the Madeleine, there are competing stories about the cookie’s origin; some say the cake came from a cloister in Cormery, made to resemble a monk’s belly and the lush village of Montmorillon was said to shape their macarons like little crowns.

There seems little dispute, however, that what came to be known as the macaroon, once called Amaretti (“the little bitter ones”) by the Italians, was created by Italian monks and refined by French pâtissiers. An agreeable global endeavor one might say.

Historians contend the macaron, ultimately, made its way to France in 1533 by the pastry chefs of Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henri II.

Yet, while royalty was indulgently partaking of these sugary pleasures, it was once again the ardor of the servants of the Lord who intervened with heavenly purpose, reuniting two Benedictine nuns, Sister Marguerite and Sister Marie-Elisabeth, both seeking asylum in the town of Nancy during the French Revolution, who used the heavenly discoveries as payment for their housing. Baking and selling the marvelous macaroons, the churchgoing pair became known throughout the land as the “Macaroon Sisters.” So infamous were the godly treats, the street was later named after them, a shop was opened and today one can still buy macaroons at that preordained and, some would quibble, sacred spot.

It was the thoughtful musings of Pierre Desfontaines Ladurée, however, that truly revolutionized the famed macaron at the beginning of the 20th century, when he had the deliciously tempting idea to join two meringues together, filling them with ganache. The “originals” combined two plain almond meringues with a filling of [chocolate] ganache; but today, all manner of fillings (ganache, buttercream or jam) is elaborately “sandwiched” between meringues of seemingly limitless colors and flavors.

It is claimed and repeated that one of life’s greatest indulgences is devouring luxury macaroons from the rose-tinted, elegant 19th-century Parisian tearoom, Ladurée. You don’t even have to go to Paris since a branch in Harrods of London beckons and another in Geneva calls. It is rumored that Ladurée sells 35,660 macaroons a day with popular flavours including chocolate, rose petal, salted-butter caramel and orange blossom.

Last November, a new baker boy entered the patisserie when artist Will Cotton took to baking some of the sweet confections that populate his paintings. “So much of my work in the studio has been about the smells and scents of baking that I wanted to bring that experience into a gallery-like setting,” he said of his bakeshop-cum-quasi performance piece.

Thus, a recipe for Mr. Cotton’s lemon macaroons, which I am assured, are certifiably scrumptious. They are light, delicate and tasty and while they may not approximate the divine concoctions of the famed Ladurée, or according to one of my readers, the newest rage of patisseries in Paris, la patisserie des rêves, they will not reduce one to a puddle of humiliation.

Parisian-Style Lemon Macaroons

For the lemon-curd filling:
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup superfine sugar
3 large eggs, beaten Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 2 lemons

For the macaroons:
1 cup almond flour
1 1⁄4 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
Pinch of salt
3⁄4 cup superfine sugar
10 drops yellow food coloring

1. Prepare the lemon curd: Melt the butter in a double boiler over low heat. Gradually whisk in the remaining ingredients. Continue to whisk until curd is thick enough to hold the whisk’s marks, 6 to 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl, cover the surface with plastic wrap and cool in the refrigerator for about 1 hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 320 degrees. Place one cookie sheet on top of another and line the top sheet with parchment paper or Silpat. Sift together the almond flour and confectioners’ sugar into a large bowl. In a mixing bowl fitted with a whisk, whip 2 of the egg whites and salt to stiff peaks.

3. Combine the superfine sugar and 1/4 cup water in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir over medium heat and from time to time brush the edges with hot water using a pastry brush. When the syrup reaches 241 degrees or the “soft ball” stage on a candy thermometer, whisk the syrup into the stiff egg whites in a thin steady stream. Continue whisking until the meringue forms soft peaks.

4. Using a fork, work the remaining egg white into the almond flour-sugar mixture to make a smooth wet paste. Stir a quarter of the meringue into the almond paste to moisten, then gently fold in the remaining meringue and the food coloring. Using a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch round tip, pipe 1 1⁄4-inch rounds on the cookie sheet. Gently tap the pan on the work surface to settle the meringue peaks. Let stand until a skin forms, about 20 to 30 minutes.

5. Bake with the door slightly ajar for 12 minutes; rotate the pan then bake for another 12 minutes. When cool, sandwich two macaroons together with a dollop of lemon curd. Let stand in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours. Makes 35 to 40 macaroons.

More on the Macaroon

Posted in Epicurean Epiphanies
Tags: french, history, Laduree, macaron, macaroon, willcotton

As any visitor to Venice knows, it is a captivating realm of small cross bridges, mysterious lagoons and an intricate labyrinth of dark passageways and narrow alleys where the simplest footfall can echo off the aged stone walls, breaking the silence of the Venetian night. What better setting for a drama to unfold than in the conversion of a 16th century aristocratic home into a magical world of mirrors, glass sculptures, rare books and vintage objects housed in what can only be regarded as a homage to by-gone era.

Hidden behind a door marked only by a bull’s head is the Palazzini Grassi, the first Italian hotel designed by famed French creator Philippe Starck, an imaginative five-star accommodation with 16 bedrooms, 6 apartment suites …

… a cosy private members-only club and a stunning restaurant.

Designed to make guests feel ‘temporarily Venetian’ this former residence captures the sophistication, charm, magic and beauty of this most beloved of cities.

As Emanuele Garosci, creator of Palazzina Grassi, tells it: “There was a need in Venice for something new, to go against the traditional way of thinking about Venice – Starck was the answer. Palazzina Grassi is more like a private club, a combination of a hotel and very unique space where guests can live as a Venetian.”

Starck did not disappoint. Traditional Italian touches such as exposed bricks mix with dazzling contemporary design. Mahogany wood panelling on the walls, soft lighting and unique pieces of Venetian glass complete the magical environment. The result is a luxurious hotel on the Canal Grande that retains the aura and charm of an aristocratic Venetian home.

Bedrooms feature transparent glass wardrobes and 9 custom-made Murano glass works by the artist Aristide Najean.

The dining room contains two seven metre-long dinner tables, one made of marble and the other mirrored glass.

And the bedrooms, well, a bit voyeuristic one might conclude, with a touch of the famed Carnival (masks adorning the lampshades) and ample spans of mirrored glass suggesting some narcissistic naughty pleasures, but it is, after all, once-in-a-lifetime Venice.

In the apartment suites beds are situated in the centre of the room and are surrounded by glass wardrobes, soft rugs and coffee tables made of steel and moonstone onyx. Instead of the usual directory of guest services, visitors can take inspiration from a ‘list of vices’ advising them to eat well, drink, read and surrender to their passions. I would call that a decadent proposal of pure sybaritic proportion.

Overlooking Venice’s colourful rooftops,the guest rooms offer large backlit mirrors, warm lighting, floors in Venetian wood, bathrooms using natural stone and bespoke pieces of furniture including dressing tables.

Multicoloured hallways in glows of purple, bright red and acid almond green await, with huge rugs in vivid colours and exposed Venetian bricks salvaged from old farmsteads. And to round out the at-home Venetian experience, visitors can lose themselves in valuable books, antique pieces, mahogany and unique artworks.

Hotel Palazzina Grassi
San Marco 3247 – 30124 – Venezia

Posted in Selected Sojourns
Tags: hotel, PalazzinaGrassi, phillipestarck, venice

“Every man

I knew

went to bed

with Gilda…

and woke up

with me.”

~Rita Hayworth

 

Rita Hayworth and her 1941 Lincoln Continental.

 

 

Posted in Entertainment, Overheard, Photography, Uncategorized
Tags: gilda, lincolncontinental, Overheard, quote, ritahayworth

EA Flix

 

Theme: Cinema Paradiso

Composer: Ennio Morricone

 

Special thanks to reader Jim Mathews for his diligence in reminding me to take down the Christmas tidings on EA Flix and for this most superb recommendation “of a great orchestral treatment” from the acclaimed film Cinema Paradiso. A personal favorite of mine from one of the finest composers of our time. Did I mention that recommendations are always welcome.

 

 

Posted in Errant Aesthete, Music
Tags: cinemaparadiso, currentlyplaying, EAFlix, EnnioMorricone