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The
Art Set
Charlie Scheips
The East West North and the South of It
It’s
been a whirlwind of activity for the Art Set this past
month. No matter where
Aeolius spirited
us during November, by Thanksgiving all winds blew towards Florida
for the 3rd annual Art/Basel/ Miami Beach.
My month-long odyssey started November 6 when I had the good
fortune to catch Virgin Upper Class to London for the opening
of the Fine Art & Antiques Fair at London’s Olympia
convention hall.
The fair is put on by Clarion Events who also put on the Fine
Art, Design & Antiques fair at Olympia during the first week
in March and (more 20th century design) and the Summer Fair which
I am told is a very glitzy affair — right in the middle
of the London social season. This year the fair is from June
9-19.
As soon as I arrived that morning in London, I headed straight
to the legendary Chelsea Arts Club for lunch with my former colleagues
Brian Angel and Ian Grimshaw.
The Chelsea Arts Club was founded in 1891 at the suggestion of
James MacNeil Whistler. It is a club for artists and their circles,
counting over 1600 creative types as members. If only New York
had a similar club. But, that seems doubtful, as it is impossible
to have a smoke-free bohemia.
We met Dudley Winterbotham who for the past 25 years has been
the Secretary of the club and now new memberships are being restricted
to artists under 40 years old. I am told waiting list for
membership is currently over 500.
After Bloody Mary’s in the comfortable garden just behind
the club’s billiard room, we went into the packed dining
room where we were joined by international art tour guide
impresario
Arthur Duncan for a very English Sunday
lunch of roast leg of lamb. Duncan's next big trip is to
bring a couple dozen prominent
collectors to New York over President’s Weekend for Christo
and Jean-Claude’s Gates project in Central
Park.
Later that afternoon we caught up with photographer and painter
David Dawson whose show of paintings at
Marlborough was just about to open. David was the long-time
assistant to Lucien
Freud. Dawson's photos of artists were featured
in two shows this year
at London’s National Portrait Gallery and Aquavella here. |
At the
opening of the Fine Art & Antiques fair (from l. to r.):
Brenda Lukey, Brian Angel, and Ian Grimshaw; Charlie Scheips and
Julian Hartnoll. |
The
day after my arrival, I managed to take in several exhibitions
including two shows at the Royal
Academy — Masterpieces
from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen and a survey of the
British painter and printmaker William Nicolson (1872-1949). From
there I went to the National Gallery for the blockbuster Raphael:
From Urbino to Rome exhibition and then around the corner to the
National Portrait Gallery for CF Watts: Portraits exhibition of
this Victorian society painter.
The
opening of the Fine Art & Antiques fair was a mob scene.
I met a host of people during the opening including Sir
Peter Wakefield who heads the National Arts Collection Fund as well as spending
a good bit of time at Julian Hartnoll’s booth.
Everything in the fair is vetted by experts making it one of the
most desirable fairs of its kind in England. My favorite object
that on opening night was an exceptional mahogany, satinwood and
marquetry Broadwood & Son Grand Piano with inscriptions, that
Winter House Antiques sold for more than £200,000.
I lunched the next day at the Groucho Club with Alison
Jacques with whom I am producing Robert Mapplethorpe, curated
by David
Hockney, opening January 14 through March 13 at her
gallery at 4 Clifford Street. It’s a very fresh take on Mapplethorpe with many under known images by this now iconic photographic master.
The
Groucho club is yet another great London artistic social club filled
with contemporary art and always jammed with interesting people. |
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Broadwood & Son Grand Piano with
inscriptions that Winter House Antiques sold for more than £200,000 |
Returning
to the U.S., I headed to Chicago for the opening of the Jacqueline Kennedy:
The White House Years that is completing an international tour at the Field
Museum there. The day I arrived we drove up to Wisconsin to the teeny town
of Genesee Depot to take a tour of Alfred Lunt and Lynne
Fontanne’s
retreat Ten Chimneys, just outside of Milwaukee.
Newly restored,
the property opened on May 26, 2003 on what would have been the couple’s
81st wedding anniversary. It was saved from demolition in 1996 by the late
Joseph Garton who bought the estate which Alfred Lunt inherited
from his father in 1914, for one million dollars on the eve of it being destroyed
for real estate development. After Lunt’s marriage in 1922 to Fontanne
he began adding to the complex creating most of the estate’s current
form during the 1930s when they reigned as the first couple of the Broadway
stage. Noel Coward was a frequent guest as well as Helen
Hayes, Laurence Olivier, Alexander Woolcott, and Cecil Beaton to name but a few. Lunt died in 1977 and
Fontanne in 1983.
Tours are given from the spring through the fall each year. They have a terrific
website at: www.tenchimneys.org. |
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The
pool house at Ten Chimneys
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Alfred
Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Noël Coward on
the Grounds of Ten Chimneys, 1930.
(Warren O'Brien, O'Brien
Family Collection at WHS © Ten
Chimneys Foundation)
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The
next day. I lunched with Museum of Contemporary Art curator Lynne
Warren (at the city’s landmark Berghoff
Restaurant — eating the best Reuben sandwich I have ever
had) who is putting the finishing touches on the Encyclopedia
of Twentieth-Century
Photography that she edited which is due out sometime in 2005.
The Jacqueline Kennedy dinner at the Field was a major Chicago
event chaired by social leader Maureen Smith. The tour began at
the Metropolitan Museum in 2001 and was the second most attended
exhibition in the world that year topped only by Vermeer in Delft.
I saw Bob Colacello and Sugar Rautbord during the preview of the
exhibition before we were rushed to dinner. Caroline Kennedy
and Senator Edward Kennedy were the stars of the evening. |
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Left,
top and bottom: Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate
and Frank
Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion band shell at Chicago's
Millenium Park on Michigan Avenue. Above: Jacqueline
Kennedy: The White House Years.
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| Headed
back up to Milwaukee the next day for the Milwaukee Art Museum’s art auction and dinner in the museum’s
spectacular new Quadracci Pavilion designed by Spanish architect
Santiago Calatrava — his first building in the United States. The
incredible building features a 90-foot high glass-walled reception
hall enclosed by a Brise Soleil sunscreen that can be raised or
lowered creating a unique moving sculpture. The evening was sponsored
by the Museum’s Contemporary Art Society which uses the funds
to buy a new contemporary art work each year. |
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Milwaukee
Art Museum new Quadracci
Pavilion designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava
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I lived
in a suburb of Milwaukee during my childhood and one of my close
friends from that time, Joan Lubar, had invited a group of our
grade school friends and
spouses for a reunion of sorts.
We
checked into the famous Pfister Hotel down the street quickly getting
into
our evening clothes and then out to Joan’s house in Mequon for some champagne
before arriving at the museum for the auction and dinner. I am told the evening
raised over $200,000. The museum’s director David Gordon is formerly of
London’s Royal Academy.
By the time I arrived in Milwaukee in 1963 the Museum’s
Eero Saarinen building,
completed in 1957, instantly became one of the city’s architectural landmarks.
The Museum sits right on Lake Michigan at the entrance to Veterans Park which
leads up the coast to Lake Park designed by none other than Frederick
Law Olmstead.
Now that the Saarinen building is joined with the Calatrava wing — it is
truly a destination for any art and architectural enthusiast. I took my first
art lessons there and had my first glimpses of Pop art there while still a young
child. |
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Joan
Lubar,
John Crouch, David Lubar, and Ann
Blinkhorn Driscoll
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William
and Nicole Tewles
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Back
in New York, the following Tuesday I headed up to
MoMA with artist Michelle Zalopany for the museum’s
official artist opening. Maybe it’s part of the reality of
the times but the security for this party made security checkpoints
in airports
look friendlier. Alas, we couldn’t get in to see the museum
that night as my date (who doesn’t drive) did not think of
bringing a photo ID in her evening purse. No one in the check-in
process seemed to be part of the museum staff so we headed uptown
to Donohue’s for some dinner.
On Friday, I went to the best party in years — the
20th anniversary of Indochine restaurant where I’ve been
going since it first opened. and they pulled out all the stops,
even taking over the
entire restaurant next-door in an adjoining wing of the landmark
John Jacob Astor Colonnade Building on Lafayette Street.
Why
was it so fun? Because it didn’t feel like a press event but
instead a truly genuine celebration of the restaurant’s chic
unchanging space (the same wallpaper as the Beverly Hills Hotel’s
Polo Lounge), its longevity and the loyalty of its the patrons
who comprise that only in New York blend of the best
in fashion, art and entertainment.
The girls of Indochine were dressed as Las Vegas showgirls
while the boys were in macho leather pants with white 1984
emblazoned
tee shirts. People were literally dancing on the tables and
doing all kinds of things that seem to have disappeared in
our much more
suburban Bloombergian New York. Bravo Indochine! |
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L.
to r.: Crowd scene at Indochine; Ann Carol Medonia and
Christophe
von Hohenberg.
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| Up
to Harford for Thanksgiving where the city’s fantastic
Wadsworth Atheneum has re-installed its excellent contemporary
art collection in the formerly staid classical Morgan Wing that
Hartford-born J.P Morgan built in memory of his father.
Atheneum patron and artist Sol Lewitt has created a spectacular
new wall installation in the building’s grand staircase.
The exhibition features a plethora of new additions to the collection
including numerous photographs and artworks from trustees and
donors such as the well-known Hartford photography collectors
Nancy and
Robinson Grover.
If you have never been to the Atheneum it is worth a special
trip and if you have the time. You can make the visit an artistic
day
of it going to the nearby Hillstead Museum in Farmington (designed
by America’s first woman architect Theodate Pope
Riddle)
and taking a tour of Mark Twain’s house on Farmington Avenue.
I finally got down to Miami on the 30th for the opening
of Art/Basel/Miami Beach. After a quick drink at the opening party
at the Delano hotel
where I saw art advisors Nancy Whyte and Darlene
Lutz, C & M’s
Jennifer Vorbach, Miami Art Museum’s Guillermo
Alonso, among
the throng I taxied over to Joe’s Stone Crab — one
of South Beach’s top restaurants. In a private dining room,
Americans for the Arts’ Robert L. Lynch, and Nora
Halpern,
hosted a delicious dinner. Guest included Miami art supporters
Alejandro and Maria Aguirre,
LA and Aspen patrons Maria and Bill Bell, curator David
Breslin,
Chicago and Aspen collectors Stephan Edlis and Gail
Neeson, New
York dealer Marian Goodman with her director Jeannie
Freilich,
NetJets’ Glenn
Hinderstein, the Broad Foundation’s Joanne
Heyler, artist
Jenny Holzer, London and New York dealer Bernard
Jacobson, MCA
Chicago
curator Elizabeth Smith and movie producer Steve Tisch.
It
seemed like half the art world were having dinners of there
own at Joe’s including Barbara Gladstone’s dinner for Richard
Prince and Eli and and Edythe Broad whom we saw on our way out as
well as Sotheby’s Helyn Goldenberg.
The next morning headed over to Martin Marguiles Collection at
the Warehouse featuring a new 10,000 square-foot expansion. The
Marguiles
collection was one of three major private Miami collections that
are highlights each morning before the fair opened. The Rubell Family Collection housed in a renovated warehouse and Rosa
and Carlos de
la Cruz’s house in Key Biscayne being the other two destinations
during the week. I visited the Rubell’s packed reception
the next morning with LA’s Tim Blum and Jeff
Poe. I overheard
Mira Rubell saying she thought it was too crowded.
The place to eat I was told by Miamians is the elegant Casa Tua
just around the corner from the convention center. I was first
to arrive
for lunch there the next day and was impressed to see several
Irving Penn prints which I later learned were lent by my luncheon
companion
photo collector Gerd Elfering. After a delicious lunch we were
joined for coffee with German photography dealer Anke
Degenhard and Atlanta’s
Jane Jackson — curator of Elton
John’s photo collection.
Over at the Raleigh Hotel, there was a cocktail party hosted
by owner Andre Balacz to celebrate architect Richard
Meier’s 70th birthday.
There were scads of New York art world types pouring onto the terrace
including a big Whitney Museum contingent including Leonard
and Evelyn Lauder, Beth DeWoody with Howard
Blum, and Jan
Rothschild. I also
spotted Andrew Klink (in the news that week over his lawsuit with
photography dealer Jane Corkin) with Paul
Bierne, art advisor Linda
Silverman, London dealer Martine d’Anglejean-Chatillon and
English artist and filmmaker Alison Jackson, Rome’s Homera
Crespi, artist Joseph Lapiana, Doug Cramer,
Hugh Bush, Michelle Clark and Andrew Miller, and the stunning Isabella
Sherlock. Michelle and
Isabella were the transatlantic team of publishers that brought London’s
Art Review magazine to higher prominence before they recently
left to pursue other pastures.
During most of the afternoon and early evenings, one is either
at the fair or at one of the dozens of adjunct events that are
spread
all over Miami and some of which are worth the journey. Besides
the numerous gallery and museums show on view — there were
two additional fairs to take in — the New Art Dealers Alliance
(NADA) and scope Miami fairs. I didn’t manage to make it
to either of them but I heard they were a great success.
In the end, it seemed a little too much and not as exclusive
as the fair itself actually warrants. There are so many
events and parties
that one gets the feeling that you are surely missing something
despite having 18-hour days of looking at, talking about,
and buying and
selling art. I think it would be wise to tighten the parameter
of activities around the fair that director Sam
Keller so ably organizes.
I was so overwhelmed that I opted for smaller dinners
and venues. The following night I was invited to a multi-course
dinner at
Nobu in the Shore Club which included art lawyer Michael
Stout,
Mapplethorpe
Foundation’s Marisa Cardinale, artists Jack
Pierson, art promoter
Anne Livet, curator/dealer Clarissa
Dalrymple, LA dealer Shaun Regan,
Moscow dealer Stella Kay, Alison Jacques, and the New Museum’s
Lisa Phillips. We all changed places during the evening and managed
to have a civilized good time.
On Friday, Texas’ Arthouse threw a party for the Texas Prize
that celebrates promising Texas-based artists. Event planner Melissa
Feldman and PR guru John Melik created quite the Texas atmosphere
at the National Hotel where hosts John and Julie Thorton,
Don Mullins and Arthouse director Sue Graze treated us to delicious Texan cuisine
by chef Kevin Williamson and live music by Austin’s The
Weary Boys. We were joined briefly by Hugo Boss’s Philipp
Woolf before he left to go to the dinner hosted by dealer Thaddeus
Ropac.
Needless to say Art/Basel/Miami beach was an incredible success
organizationally and financially for all I spoke to. But the International
Art Newspaper that published a daily edition put it best with the headline
Not Another Party!
The last party I went to though was for MoMA’s Architecture
and Design chief Terry Riley's 50th
birthday in the yet to be completed house his firm is designing.
Hosted
by Patty Cisneros, John Bennett, and John
Keenan, the party was a mélange of the worlds
of architecture and the arts. Look for party pictures from that
memorable
party next
week.
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| CS headshot
by Christophe von Hohenberg |
The
Art Set, ©Charlie Scheips, 2004
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