Raindrops, grey skies, damp streets

Citicorp Center. 11:45 PM. Photo: JH.

May 4, 2009. A rainy weekend with some Saturday sunshine, but otherwise, raindrops, grey skies, damp streets and green festooning everywhere.

Coming home from lunch at Swifty’s on Friday, I snapped this picture of the house on East 73rd Street with its luxuriant vine of wisteria in bloom climbing to the rooftop. Many years ago (about forty) the house belonged to Jack Cohane, the writer, and his wife Heather.

Heather Cohane, who now lives in Monte Carlo, remembers the house and its wisteria with fondness, but especially because it was broken into three times by a man called Eddy.

The first time it happened, Jack Cohane was in the bathtub when Eddy raided his bedroom, and took cash from Jack’s pants. Jack asked him if he’d please give him back two dollars as he needed it for the taxi to the dinner party he was going to (this was back when you could have a two dollar cab fare and actually go somewhere). Eddy generously left the two bucks behind for his victim’s cab fare.

The house on 73rd Street with the wisteria pouring down, Friday at 2:30 pm.

That same night when Jack returned from his dinner party, he found that Eddie had returned too -- and left -- taking most of Jack’s clothes with him. A few days later Eddy called Jack to tell him that he had been in a fight on the West Side and that “They have mussed up our suit.” Apprehended, Eddy went off to Sing Sing.

A few years later, the Cohanes had sold the house to the Chilean Ambassador to the United Nations, and moved to Rome. Eddy, having been released from prison, returned to his old ways and his old stomping grounds one night for one final heist.

Last Thursday night several hundred attended the gala preview of the International Fine Art Fair benefiting the Frick Collection. Vice Chairman of the gala were Mrs. Henry Clay Frick II, Mr. Christian K. Keesee, and Lynne Wheat. The Young Collectors Chairs were Clare McKeon, Lisa D. Morse, Lynne M. Wheat, and Jennifer Wright.

Dina Van Taffel, Christopher Sise, Sumit Nihalani, Michael Horgan, Emily Glotzer, and Rebecca Blumenkopf

Phyllis Kossoff and Jan willem van Bergen Henebouwen

Daisy Hill Sanders and Frederick Hill

Joanne Foster and David Biscaye

Nancy Bowes and Richard Manoogian

Phillip Thomas, Georgina and Marcia Schaeffer, and Joyce Cowin

Guy Regal, Christina Juarez, and Tony Manning

Christopher Mason and Matthew Rice

Anna Haughton, Linda Roth, and Brian Haughton

Magda Gregorian

Thomas Peterssy and Lynne Wheat

Lisa Rosen and Marli Hinckley

Michel Witmer and Dawn Marie Grannum

Walter Robinson (Artnet Magazine), Bill Fine (Pres of Artnet), and John Griscoll (Babcock Galleries)

Annika Connor

Patricia Attoe and Alison Minton

Brian Haughton and Stephanie Putter

Heidi Rosenau

Mathew Rutenberg and Caroline Miner

Mark Schwarz, Donna Lindquist, and LeMerle Brinkley

Dawn Marie Grannun and Antonella Farro

Aberell Satloff

Allison Ecung and Brian Uribe

Mary and Michael Darling, Ms. Patrick, and Jeffrey Irvine

Nicholas Wapshott

Jeffery Scott, Mary Emerson, and Eldo Netto

This is the 16th annual edition of the The International Fine Art Fair, produced by Haughton International Fairs. With more than forty of the most prominent international fine art dealers showing, there was more than 700 years of fine art under one roof devoted solely to paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the early Renaissance right up to contemporary. The Fair runs through today and tomorrow (Tuesday, May 6th).

Among those attending opening night were Steve and Christine Schwarzman, Agnes Gund, The Honorable and Mrs. Felix G. Rohatyn, The Honorable Daniele Bodini, Mr. and Mrs. Jean-Marie Eveillard, Barbara Fleischman, Mr. and Mrs. George Wachter, Beatrice Stern, Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Mimi Stafford, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Ames, Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Scott Crain, Mary Sharp Cronson, Cynthia Boardman, Geoffrey Bradfield, Hester Diamond, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Gerschel, The Honorable Earle I Mack, Eldo Netto, Jr. David T. Owsley, Mrs. Leslie B. Perkin, Charles Ryskamp, Lydia Fenet, Elisabeth Saint-Amand, Kipton Cronkite, Paul Cruikshank, Fiona Benenson, Lucy Lang, Charlotte-Anne Nelson, Olivia de la Rama Pirovano, Philip Thomas, Lauren Elisabeth Rosbottom, Emily R. Washkowitz, Ariana Rockefeller.

Adam Williams Fine Art Ltd, USA.

Avery Galleries, USA.

Babcock Galleries, USA.

Daphne Alazraki Fine Art, USA.

Galerie Fabien Boulakia, France.

Galerie Fabien Boulakia, France.

Hill-Stone, USA.

MacConnal-Mason Gallery, UK.

MacConnal-Mason Gallery, UK.

McColl Fine Art, USA.

Rehs, New York, NY.

Vincent Vallarino Fine Art Ltd., USA.

Neal A Fiertag, France.

Neffe-Degandt Fine Art, UK.

Questroyal Fine Art, USA.

Rehs Galleries, New York, NY.

Richard Green.

Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, LLC.

Galerie Fabien Boulakia, France.

Schillay Fine Art, USA.

Schiller & Bobo European Paintings, USA.

Thomas Colville Fine Art, USA.

Voena, UK and Italy.

Waterhouse & Dodd, UK.

Meanwhile, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Haughtons returned to Dubai’s Madinat Jumeirah earlier this year with their second installment of Art Antiques Design Dubai.

“Design” was a new emphasis for 2009 that had some of New York’s top 20th-century gallerists contributing pieces to the fair’s new AAD rooms, curated by interior designer Stephen Miller Siegel. Christina Grajales, Bernd Goeckler, Espasso, and Brian Kish were among those who leant showstoppers.

The always-enthusiastic, Paul Donzella, of Donzella 20th Century Gallery, made the journey to Dubai and was on-hand to discuss the AAD pieces with Middle Eastern fair-goers. Much-lingered over were two bar cabinets: Donzella’s own 1936 Osvaldo Borsani fruitwood bar cabinet with etched rose-tinted glass panels; and Grajales’ striking 2008 tube cabinet bar by Christophe Come.

UAE Culture Minister with Gerard Widdershoven, Brian Haughton, and Benoist Drut at MG booth.

Also new to the fair this year, was 1stdibs.com. interior decorators who work out of this emirate were briefed by 1stdibs’ Stacy McLaughlin.

Once again, the fair was opened by its patron, His Excellency Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al Owais, the UAE Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, who shopped the stands in the opening hours. A Ladies’ Day, a local tradition, was a new event, sponsored by the Dubai Ladies Club. Top dealers of pictures, English furniture, silver, and French Art Deco, such as the Whitford Fine Art, Ronald Phillips, Koopman Rare Art, and Maison Gerard, that New Yorkers know from the Brian and Anna Haughtons’ other fairs at the Park Avenue Armory, returned this year, joined by new American dealers such as New York’s lighting maven, Marvin Alexander, and Beverly Hills jewelry designer, Liv Ballard. Dubai-based British textile artist, Patricia Millns, a favorite of Kuwaiti princesses, did a dramatic installation and was conducting studio tours for patrons; and more dealers in contemporary Islamic arts made a showing.

Overall, the market was a sign of the times–buyers were far more cautious and conservative than last year. It’s not easy to mount a fair anywhere in the world these days, especially in an emerging market, but forward-thinking dealers were game, hoping that new Middle Eastern contacts might mean a little global expansion.

– Sallie Brady for NYSD

Pierre-Michel Dumonteil

Gerard Widdersoven and Liv Ballard

Jane Kahan and Charles Mathes

Lewis Smith, Emma Jane Haughton, and Simon Phillips

Stacy McLaughlin and David Reitner of Marivn Alexander Inc.

Stacy McLaughlin, Gerard Widdershoven, Sunny Rahbar, and Benoist Drut

Lindsay Johnson from Cristina Grajalis and Gerard Widdershoven of Maison Gerard

Liv Ballard

Paul Donzella, Emma Jane Haoughton, and Giles Haughton

Paul Donzella

Phillipe Rocha in front of a Vasarely Tapestry

Patrick Gallagher and friend

Susan Moore and Jeremy Garfield-Davies, London Dealer specializing in 18th Century Antiques

Simon Phillips, Stacy McLaughlin and Lewis Smith

Maxime de la Falaise, the international fashion designer and one-time model died on Thursday at her home in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France at age 86. Americans may remember her when she designed ready-to-wear in this country under the name Maxime McKendry. Her daughter Lou Lou and her son Alexis de la Falaise are well known today for their careers in fashion (Lou Lou) and furniture (Alexis) design, respectively. Her brother Mark Birley, who died two years ago, was the creator of chic London clubs – Harry’s Bar, Mark’s, Annabel’s and George. Maxime had many friends all over the world including many from the days when she lived here in New York. She was one of those women for whom life, as Patrick Dennis’ Auntie Mame puit it, was a banquet. There were good times, rough times, high times and low, but Mme. de la Falaise carried it all with style.

The Telegraph of London ran this excellent obituary of her:

Her strikingly beautiful looks were captured by many of the world's leading fashion photographers – Cecil Beaton reportedly called her the only truly chic Englishwoman of her generation – and she modelled for Yves Saint Laurent and the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli before designing clothes for the French ready-to-wear designer Gérard Pipart.

When she moved to New York, Vogue magazine hired her as a food columnist and she appeared in the artist Andy Warhol's 1974 underground film Andy Warhol's Dracula. Maxime de la Falaise designed a menu for the "Andymat" – Warhol's own version of the automat – featuring onion tarts, shepherds' pie, fish cakes, Irish lamb stew and a "nursery cocktail" consisting of milk on the rocks.

Although her culinary preferences were apparently as uninhibited as her sense of style, they rarely matched the excesses of her mother, who would feed lobster thermidor to her roses. "She would make fish stew and sometimes would forget that she was making it for the garden," Maxime de la Falaise once explained. "So she would add a bit of cognac, some garlic and spices. The roses would almost cry out with pleasure."

Maxime de la Falaise was born Maxine Birley on June 25 1922, the daughter of the society portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley; her brother Mark would become the owner of the Annabel's and Tramp nightclubs. Her childhood was both odd and formal; her mother, Lady Rhoda (an eccentric Irish beauty whose diary for 1922 failed even to mention the baby's arrival), later instructed the child in the facts of life by pointing at her father's various body parts as he lay soaking in his bath.

She grew up at Charleston Manor, the family's 11th century house at West Dean, Sussex, said to have been built for the cupbearer of William the Conqueror.
During her parents' frequent visits to India, young Maxine would be packed off to Ireland and the country estate in County Wexford of her grandparents, whose company she preferred to that of her mother and father.

She recalled her schooling chiefly for the way in which her mother insisted on dressing her in a mixture of clothes made in India with 18th-century buttons and hand-me-downs from the Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli. "I could have charged other pupils to look at my clothes," she told the Telegraph magazine in 2000, "they were absolutely in awe of them."

When war came, Maxine Birley became a WAAF "because the Wrens office was closed" and, as she explained, "khaki doesn't suit me but I was safe with blue". When she got carried away during a riotous party and took off all her clothes, she was told she was not of officer class, "which was a great relief".

Because she could speak French, she was sent to work at the code breaking centre at Bletchley Park, an experience she later recalled with dismay. Her living quarters were dirty and cold, the constant tension damaged her health and she developed kleptomania, stealing anything that shone. "My friends realised that I'd gone a bit mad," she remembered, "and they would look in my bag and fish out anything that was theirs." Eventually she was invalided out.

Returning to London, Maxine Birley was told by her parents that they had no room for her and she was shipped off to America in the expectation that she would marry the scion of a rich East Coast family. In the event, she began an affair with a Russian photographer working for Vogue and, at a cocktail party in New York, met her first husband, Comte Alain de la Falaise, who was 20 years her senior. They married and set up home in Paris.

Although charming and cultivated, the Comte was not a success at business, and ordered Maxime (as she had become) out to work. She became a vendeuse mondaine at the House of Schiaparelli, "a sort of muse who was supposed to encourage sales to the rich English," as she put it. Although she had never considered a career in fashion, she found that she loved the job.

Her marriage did not survive a string of affairs. After a scandalous liaison with an Italian playboy, she lost custody of her two children for a time, romanced the film director Louis Malle, and moved to Provence to live with an American artist; at the same time she struck up a "strange, erotic" relationship with the surrealist painter Max Ernst.

Returning to New York in the late 1950s, Maxime de la Falaise broke up with the American artist and married John McKendry, curator of prints and photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the strength of her cooking skills, Vogue magazine hired her as a food writer; her book “Seven Centuries of English Cooking” (1973), which included recipes dating back to the Middle Ages, was followed by “Food In Vogue” (1980).

When her second husband died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1975, Maxime de la Falaise briefly dated John Paul Getty III, whose ear had been cut off by kidnappers in 1973.

She mixed with an affluent artistic set, including Andy Warhol and his followers (for whom she often cooked lavish meals), and lived in a loft apartment, teaching screen- printing and delivering her own handmade sandwiches to nightclubs. A job designing for Yves Saint Laurent finally brought her security and prestige.
She retired to Provence in the late 1980s to work on her memoirs.

Maxime de la Falaise, who died on April 30, is survived by her daughter, the model Loulou de la Falaise, and a son, Alexis, a furniture designer.

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