Désirs et Volupté

Fall in Paris is usually the time for many exhibition openings... This week I had the Gala Dinner organized by Culturespaces at the Musée Jacquemart-André, which is quite near from home and it's one of my favourite locations. Challenging the early rains of these past days, I accepted the invitation to discover the English artists of the Victorian Era, who celebrated beauty above all things: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Frederic Leighton, Edward Burne-Jones, the fabulous Dante Gabriel Rossetti, among others.

Les Roses d'Heliogabale, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. An emblematic painting of the time.

Venus Verticordia, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I know the paintings might look a bit kitsch or baroque, so different to the works by the Impressionists who, in those years, ruled in France; but they are the result of their time and icons of British art. Although forgotten for many years, it is now that these artists are beginning to be valued by critics and artlovers.

The exhibition will be shown also in Rome, on February 2014, at the Chiostro de Bramante, and will then travel to Madrid, to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (June - October 2014).

It's worth visiting and use the oportunity to spend some time in this small museum, a true jewel of French architecture of the 19th Century...

Philippe Starck in Buenos Aires!

Although not for the first time, Philippe Starck is in Argentina...

I've just met him personally today, at the cocktail held to announce the launch of the new Yoo buildings at Nordelta, inspired and designed by Starck. Charming, funny and smart, dress in a fashion only permitted to artists and of course, with a lovely brunette by his side.

But who is Starck?

Philippe Starck was born in Paris on January 18th, 1949. He studied at Notre Dame de Santa-Cruz in Neuilly-sur-Seine and then at the Nissim de Camondo school in Paris. But he spent most of his childhood playing under his father's desk (an airplane designer), cutting, pasting and nailing stuff to bikes, motorcicles and other everyday objects. He liked doing and re-doing the world surrounding him.

Although he became Pierre Cardin's artistic director by the age of 20 and by the seventies he was already designing furniture and interior decoration, it was by the 1980s that he became internationally popular. In 1979 he founded his enterprise "Starck Products" and many Italian editors began to commission furniture pieces. The President of France asked him to redecorate some rooms at the Elysée Palace. He also decorated the traditional Café Costes, on Rue Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, and designed Paris' National Decorative Arts School and Bordeaux's Airport's Control Tower. Also in Paris, he decorated Jean-Paul Gaultier's boutique and two restaurants: Bon and Bon 2.

But, he also took his unique style outside of France, to the main cities of world. In New York he designed the Royalton and the Paramount, the first of his classics in hotel decor. Also the Hudson. In Hong Kong, he decorated the Peninsula Hotel, followed by the Delano Hotel en Miami, the Mondrian in Los Angeles, the Clift in San Francisco and the Faena in Buenos Aires. In London, apart from Gaultier's boutique, he also did the Sanderson hotel and the San Martin's Lane. He has many other works in the making in Australia, Turkey and Mexico. Museums around the world are happy to exhibit his art.

Brilliantly crazy and smart, he is a breathless artist, drawing out of necessity and pleasure, for himself and for others. For Philippe Starck, design is not only a tool for creating daily-life objects, it is above all an act of creation that mixes passions, desires, motivations, quests and our perception of our environment and world. In each of his designs he puts his heart, creating objects that are often good other than just pretty. 

Have you seen the juicer he did for Alessi?

In today's cocktail I heard him say that he loves Buenos Aires...