Looking
down at "diner dans les Allées at the 23rd Biennale
des Antiquaires au Grand Palais." Photo: JH.
Paris. News came across the Atlantic that dear Governor
Ann Richards died last night at her home in Austin, Texas. I had the privilege
of meeting and getting to know Governor Richards, or Ann as everyone called
her, three or four years ago through our mutual friend Liz Smith. Ann was then
living in New York part of the time in a rented apartment on Broadway and 66th
Street. She was working for a public relations firm as a rainmaker and catalyst.
She was a lively, goodlooking woman in person as she was in her photographs
with that beautiful head of white hair and sparkling eyes. She was very warm
and friendly with everyone she met -- a natural politician and diplomat. She
loved taking in theatre, be it Broadway or off-Broadway, not to mention the
movies and it was always fun to go with her because she loved talking about
it all during intermission and after the show.
In the meantime, it was
always a great pleasure to be in her presence and to witness the enormous
goodwill and affection that she generated wherever she
went. It just came out of people wherever she went. All kinds of people would
walk up to her on the street and say: “Oh Governor Richards, we LOVE
you, when are you going to run for President?” It was the same statement
followed by the same question wherever she went. Her answer was always the
same: “oh why would I ever want to do that?” As if to imply it
was just one big headache after another.
Personally I felt the same way all
her passing acquaintances felt, and wished she did run for President.She may
have acquired that point of view after leaving public office where her last
campaign experience running against George W. Bush in the
Texas gubernatorial race. It was devastating in the way Mr. Bush’s advisers,
namely Karl
Rove turned it into a major smear campaign against Ann. She told me
once that she never wanted to put her family and herself through that again.
Dirty
she
wasn’t and dirty she wouldn’t be. One night she and I went to see AR
Gurney’s “Mrs. Farnsworth” with Sigourney
Weaver and John
Lithgow, a thinly disguised story about the college age George W.
Bush that called into question the morality and character of the man. At one
point during
the show when it beame apparent who the subject of the play was, all eyes in
the small theater were on my friend Ann. Whether she was aware of it or not
(and there was little that she wasn’t aware of), she never let on, nor
did she discuss the character after the show. A sore loser, she was not. A
woman who picked herself up and got on with it, she was.
One night I picked her up in a taxi to take her to the theater. She had intended
to be waiting for us by her building entrance but when we arrived something
held her up and we had to wait a couple of minutes. The first thing she did
when she got into the cab was to apologize to the driver for holding him up. “That’s
all right Governor Richards,” the man (who turned out to be Dominican)
said, adding, “I’d wait for you anytime. I wish you’d run
for President.”
She heard that line so often that I couldn’t help wondering how she felt
about the irony that the man who defeated her in the gubernatorial race in
Texas was now the President. I asked her a couple of times but her answer always
deflected the question in some down-home way.
The last few years of her life were prosperous. She was very in demand as a
public speaker all over the country. Of course she was a pleasure to listen
to, and she commanded pretty good sums for her Texas-grown wisdom and charm.
She liked it too although the travel from one place to the next all by herself
could be grueling, not to mention lonely. However, she saw it as her last opportunity
to make some money for her sunset years, so she pushed on. Besides grueling,
it wasn’t always pleasant. There was one incident at an airport in Indiana
where a woman working for Homeland Security ran a metal detector over the governor’s
body. The alarm went off when the detector scanned between her legs. Ann was
surprised but realized it must have been the metal snaps of her lycra body
suit that she was wearing. She explained this to the inspector. Nevertheless,
the Homeland Security woman made the 70-year-old woman remove everything but
her undergarments to prove she wasn’t carrying anything lethal. It was
an incident that infuriated Ann although there was nothing that she could do
but follow orders. She realized it was just some stupid woman exercising a
little personal power, knowing full well whom she was “detecting.”
Yesterday
afternoon in Paris an American woman named Pamela
Darling who's
been living over here included us in a part of a small private
tour she conducts for visiting Americans (and others if they
can find her) to people and places related to the decorative
arts business. Yesterday it was a visit to Kraemer, the antiquaires
on rue Monceau who are said to have one of the greatest collections
of 18th century French furniture in the world.
The Kraemer family has been in the business for five generations. Olivier
Kraemer, the great-grandson of the firm’s founder, led the tour.
He explained how
when Louis XIV came of age he developed ways of demonstrating
his power. One of those pathways was with furniture design which, because of
the
Sun King, turned
artisanship into art. It was during that time that the cost of furniture rivaled
or even exceeded the cost of paintings.
Many of the pieces in the Kraemer collection are very rare
and of
museum quality, often ending up in many of the major museums in Europe and
the United States such as the Metropolitan, the Getty, the Cleveland Museum as
well as the great private collections.
Clockwise
from top left: 3 generations of Kraemers — Philippe,
Saundra, Olivier, and Laurent; La maison de Kraemer (2);
Looking down rue Monceau.
It
was fascinating listening to this man who grew up in the business
along with his siblings and their offspring (who make up the
fifth generation). Their devotion to and authority about their
inventory is almost religious in quality. On a mantlepiece
in the first room we visited were black and white photographs
of M. Kraemer’s grandfather and great-grandfather. He
told us how these men had created one of the great antiquaire
houses in the world which prospered for decades until the Second
World War when the Nazis invaded Paris.
Hermann Goering, Hitler’s number two man and head of the
Luftwaffe, was
a rapacious “collector” of art and antiques and his soldiers were
equally rapacious in carrying out his desires: they looted the Kraemer family’s
business of all of the inventory, shipping everything their boss wanted back
to Germany and selling the rest to French collaborators. Olivier
Kraemer reflected in telling the story that at least, unlike
so many others, his family survived the Nazi invasion. When the
war was over they began
again. It took them 20 years to get back on track. His grandfather began their
rebuilding by using the little funds available by buying Boulle which was completely
out of favor in the 1950s and therefore affordable. Thirty years later Boulle
was back in fashion with the great collectors and museums and the house of Kraemer
had some of the best in the world. We were shown pieces that had been commissioned
for Louis XV, for his mistress Madame de Pompadour, for Marie
Antoinette, for
the chateau at Versailles, for the sisters of Louis XV, with everything in
perfect condition. “You can sit on every seat,” he told us as
we toured the rooms, referring to the 200- and 300-year-old chairs and sofas.
The Kraemers will never tell you whom they buy from or whom they sell to
although their furniture, as I said, can be found in the finest collections
in the world.They
even often buy things that they’ve sold to a previous generation of
collectors. He showed us one piece which had come back to their collection
four times over
the past century.
The
private apartment of Olivier Kraemer.
The
private apartment of Laurent and Nicole Kraemer.
A
collection 18th century gambling purses each with
its personal embroidered coat of arms.
Last
night at the Grand Palais in Paris was the Soiree de Gala of
the 23rd Biennale des Antiquaires benefiting the Fondation Hopitaux
de Paris- Hopitaux de France, and a brilliant evening it was. There
were 111 dealers purveying 7,000 objects valued at more than $1.3
billion, from 18th centur furniture to Van Cleef & Arpel jewels. This was a preview of the Biennale which opens to the public tomorrow
and runs through the 24th of September.
The evening
began with a 7 o’clock viewing of the dealers’ installations
of art, objets and furniture followed by a cocktail hour of champagne and hors
d’oeuvres and then a seated dinner for several hundred. The Parisian women
set the style of dress mainly in long dresses. Among those seated at the main
(long) table with Mme. Chirac seated at the center were Karl
Lagerfeld, Henry and Marie-Josee Kravis, Veronica Hearst, Vicountess Jacqueline
de Ribes, Helene
and Michel David-Weill, Bernard Arnault, and John Galliano. John
Galliano wore the most outstanding outfit, a far cry (about two centuries) from
the conventional
black tie. I’d never seen Mr. Galliano in person before. There is more
than a bit of the devilish and the irony on his face. He is completely costumed
and even coiffed in a fashion that reminds one of the 18th and 19th centuries
of men’s dress as if modified for the Space Age. M. Lagerfeld was
wearing the standard black tie although, as you can see by the picture, does
not look like anyone else in black tie. There were a lot of New Yorkers among
the crowd
including Susan Gutfreund, Dan and Estrelita Brodsky, Hilary and Wilbur
Ross, Robert Couturier, Judy Taubman, Kasper, Scott Snyder, Tony Ingrao, Scott
Snyder,
Renee
and
Bob
Belfer and their daugher Elizabeth Belfer; Virginia Coleman,
Debbie and Leon Black, Geoffrey Bradfield, Charlotte Moss, Marjorie Reed Gordon,
Adriana Mnuchin, Anne Bass, Doug Cramer,
Lee Radziwill, Hugh Bush, Alexis Gregory. Also in the crowd, Princess
Laure de
Beauvau-Craon, Kirat Young with the Marquis de Dampiere (who
actually lives in
Boca Raton), Florence Grinda, Helene Ludinghausen.
Jean
Paul Beaujard with Estrelita and Dan Brodsky
Susan
Gutfreund with Jenie and Andrey Dellos
Renee,
Bob, and Elizabeth Belfer
Craig
Wright (center) and friends
Susan
Gutfreund and Natasha Fraser
Laure
de Beauvau Craon and friend
Marquis
de Dampiere and Kirat Young
Hilary
and Wilbur Ross
Nicole
Levi and Elvire Colonna d'Eistra
Kasper
and Rosalie Brinton
Harriet
Weintraub
Lyn
Nesbit
Scott
Snyder
Patrick
Gerschel and Veronica Hearst
Pilar
and Juan Pablo Molyneux
Viscountess
Jacqueline de Ribes (Thierry Breton in the background)
L.
to r.: Sabine de la Rochefoucauld and
Robert Couturier; Dinner at the Grand Palais.
Clockwise
from above: Looking up in the Grand Palais;
Staying cool; Farah Diva and Linda Wachner
(center & right) and
friend,
Jean
Bond Rafferty and Geoffrey Bradfield
Preparing
dinner
Above,
left:Dinner in the Grand Palais.Top, right:Brooke
Mason.Above, right: The dessert.
Marie-Josee
Kravis, Veronica Hearst, and Baroness Philippine de
Rothschild
Helene
Ludinghausen, Judy Taubman, and Florence Grinda
Karl
Lagerfeld, John Galliano, and Veronica Hearst
Madame
Theodor Angelopoulos and Judy Taubman
Ondine
de Rothschild
R.
Couri Hay and Janna Bullock
John
Galliano from the back
Apres
diner.
Lee
Radziwell and Doug Cramer
Marjorie
Reed Gordon and Adriana Mnuchin
Exiting
the Grand Palais (above);
Walking past a statue of Charles de Gaulle (above,
right); Looking out towards the Petit
Palais (right);Strolling
down the Champs back towards our hotel (below).
