Museum | Russell Brightwell

ANGELO AND I

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The Laurens’ Fifth Avenue Apartment by Angelo Donghia, c. 1980

Angelo Donghia died in NYC April 12,1985. I was still at Parsons studying Graphic Design and not aware of his unprecedented success as an interior designer and business man. Or of the figure he cut though Manhattan society from Studio 54 to the Metropolitan Opera Club.
But decades after his death he seems to be “haunting” me in the best possible way. First came “Angelo Donghia: Design Superstar,” a retrospective at the New York School of Interior Design in the Fall of 2015. The venue limited the scope of the exhibition, but it gave me a glimpse of Donghia’s Fifth Avenue duplex for Ralph and Ricky Lauren. More Tribeca [before Tribeca was Tribeca] than Upper East Side, it was low-slung, white and spare – no molding, no art, just overstuffed white furniture and unadorned white walls as far as the eye could see.
Not long after, I was talking to a friend, Liz Youngling, who’s career has included stints in fashion and as an interior designer. Having attended meetings in that gorgeous apartment when she worked for Ralph Lauren, she could confirm it was even more spectacular in person. Recently via email, Liz also remembered, “Angelo used to come to our office quite a bit to see Ralph and he was the most elegant man! So well-dressed, handsome, and kind to all of us peons. I’ll never forget being around him the little bit that I was – not many men like that anymore.” Certainly something to aspire to.

Angelo Donghia and unamed friends in NYC

I read more and learned that the Donghia studio’s signature included silver-foil ceilings, lacquered walls, bleached floors and oversize upholstered furniture. His use of grey flannel, a reference to his family’s tailoring business, prompted the moniker, “the man in the gray flannel sofa.” And his business acumen led him to produce furniture, textiles and wallcoverings for the design trade, and he licensed his designs for sheets, towels, china, glassware and giftware produced for the general public, to great success unheard of for an interior designer of the day.

A vignette in the Donghia Dallas showroom featuring vintage books, ceramics and silver from my inventory.

Today, Donghia, Inc., operates twelve showrooms across the United States with collections including textiles, wallcoverings, case pieces, accessories and upholstery. The Dallas showroom is helmed by the dynamic Jessica Craig. I was introduced to Jessica by my dear friend, interior designer Alice Cottrell, with an eye toward making advertising industry connections. A second meeting clarified two things for both of us: my dream job wasn’t in advertising, but in selling beautiful objects, books and art; and Jessica and I could work together.

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with Jessica and the Donghia Dallas showroom, providing thoughtfully chosen books, ceramics and silver accessories. I hope to bring even a bit of Angelo Donghia’s wit and flair to the showroom’s already smart décor. And I hope he would approve.

Trust Is Key

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Copies of Pavilion goers’ keys, from a work of public trust and participation at the 28th São Paulo Biennial in 2008.

Paul Ramírez Jonas’s first survey exhibition in the Americas, “ATLAS, PLURAL, MONUMENTAL,” is on view at CAMH through August 6th. The exhibition includes 25 years of Ramírez Jonas’s exploration of access, ownership, the public, contracts, belonging and trust [among other themes] through his art.
A number of the artworks feature keys – his own and the public’s. One such work he created for the São Paulo Biennial in 2008. Ramírez Jonas arranged for members of the art viewing public to a receive a key to the front door of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion that allowed them unfettered access to this biennial venue, day and night. In exchange, each person signed a single large contract agreeing to a standard of behavior related to the venue AND they were required to leave a copy of one of their own keys. One had to surrender some measure of personal security and sign an oath and only then was one rewarded with access.
In FAKE ID, part of “Paul Ramírez Jonas: Half-Truths,” at The New Museum in NYC through September 17th, the artist and his teenage assistants will deconstruct photocopies of museum goers’ documents—school IDs, transportation passes, credit cards, and licenses—to create a new identification card. The unused material will be shredded onsite. The project is an exploration of identity and the entities that define it as well as of security and trust.
Though I thought “ATLAS, PLURAL, MONUMENTAL” terrific, and I wanted to include a post here, I kept putting off its writing. Partly because much of Ramírez Jonas’s work is fairly complicated to describe, with lots of moving parts. But I think also because of its effect on me. Even a step removed – looking at evidence and documentation of past happenings – I was intrigued, but uneasy. Perhaps I’m not as trusting as I might be.

Stern Expression

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Robert A. M. Stern’s “Century” Candlestick for Swid Powell, 1984

Robert A.M. Stern is perhaps the most prominent representative of New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture in this country. In much of his work – from pre-war on steroids buildings for potentates in Manhattan to shingled 10,000 square foot “cottages” in the Hamptons – his muscular approach to contemporary classicism is evident.
Swid Powell, founded in 1982 by Nan Swid and Addie Powell, produced innovative housewares designed by the foremost architects of the 1980s, including Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, and Robert A. M. Stern, among others. Executed in silver, ceramics and glass, these objects have in many cases, become design classics. None more so than Stern’s 1984 “Century” fluted column candlestick.
One may never have the opportunity to live in one of Stern’s iconic towers or homes, but one can live with this hefty silver-plated column, the perfect distillation of Stern’s approach to design on a decidedly more manageable scale.

Met Monster Mash

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A contemporary figure holds a 300 year old Egyptian hippopotamus head in Adrián Villar Rojas’ Met roof graden installation, “The Theater of Disappearance”

Adrián Villar Rojas’ “The Theater of Disappearance” is New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s summer rooftop installation. Sixteen sculptures are arranged throughout the outdoor space, on and around banquet tables and chairs strewn with plates and glasses, the aftermath of some monstrous party. Villar Rojas has chosen pieces of the Met’s mind-bogglingly extensive collection and combined them with likenesses of friends and family [and himself] to create the otherworldly guests. Through the use of laser scanning and photo measurement techniques combined with machine milling and 3D printing, an 18th Century Ganesha tops a girl in trainers who in turn straddles King Haremhab as a royal scribe from 1336 BC. A young man who you might see every day in your local coffee shop sits atop a banqueting table holding a 3000 year old Egyptian Hippo’s head and has upside down disembodied hands (complete with arms) for glasses. Each combined sculpture is finished in the same light or dark material [that reads as stone or bronze or marble] so that they each seem of a piece, in spite of their multiple sources. Villar Rojas’ has freed these works from the museum’s collection and recombined them in exuberant modern mashups, bringing them to life in a way The Met’s traditional methods of display never could.

Early Yesterday

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Jack Early’s Man Boobs, 2014

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to see and then learn more about artist Jack Early and his work, part of Bill Arning’s terrific “A Better Yesterday” at CAMH. Early grew up gay and creative in the south of the 1970s just as I did. The tightly cropped hypermasculine 1970s dude chest of “Man Boobs” (2014) – and the other 2 paintings in the show – all live on a background of toy soldier wallpaper – the kind typical in the boys’ bedrooms of my childhood. I felt the tension in the picture even before I heard Early say in his recorded “Jack Early’s Life Story in Just Under 20 Minutes” (2014), also in the show, “I was a gay eight-year-old in 1970. I would have chosen flowers or a circus theme, but it wasn’t lost on me that choosing soldiers would lend some air of masculinity.” He abandoned himself to pass in a world that told him it was dangerous to be him. I abandoned myself to stay safe. We all did.

Jack Early’s work is exactly what I was missing in The Speed Art Museum’s “Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art.” [see my earlier blog post, Due South.]

I could tell you more about Jack Early’s life and career, but he does it best in:
Jack Early’s Life Story in Just Under 20 Minutes!

Not Your Old Bamboo

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Sun, 1980 by Tanabe Shōchiku III. Bamboo, rattan & lacquer

The newish (2012) Asia Society Texas Center is housed in Yoshio Taniguchi’s elegantly rendered building in the Museum District. Best known for his expansion and renovation of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, for this his first free standing building in the U.S., Tanaguchi combined graceful design with stunningly beautiful stone, wood and glass. The building alone with it’s exquisite materials, amazing spaces and ethereal Watern Garden Terrace [complete with periodic spools of artificial fog] are well worth a visit, especially with some additional reading on the Center’s website about the building beforehand.

Another reason to stop by the Center is “Modern Twist: Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art,” an exhibit of the work of 16 contemporary Japanese bamboo artists on display through July 30th. These skillful, soulful artists use ancient basket-making techniques to create modern, often surprising and playful works. Using humble bamboo – a type of grass rather than wood – rattan and lacquer, they have created forms that look like otherworldly pillows, sails, sets of armor, insects and water droplets. Some even resemble the baskets and flower vases from which they evolved – with a “twist.” The dark green walls and dramatic lighting of the exhibit accentuate the range of colors found in the works – from tan and brown to red and nearly black – and add drama to the sometimes alien shapes. It’s a joy to see and understand that these artists have repurposed utilitarian “making” traditions and their everyday materials to create objects for artistic expression. May this even newer tradition thrive for generations to come.

Due South

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Jeffrey Gibson’s I Put a Spell On You, 2015

I visited friends in Lexington, Kentucky this past week. We took a drive to Louisville to see, among other things, the fairly newly completed addition to the Speed Art Museum and the main exhibit there, “Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art.” It is billed as “the first contemporary art exhibition to question and explore in-depth the complex and contested space of the American South.” The works addressed “southern themes” – race, poverty, disparity, violence, disaster and decay among others. But it felt like stuff was missing. Big Southern stuff. At least to this gay, creative, white, mid-life Southerner. Themes like anti-intellectualism. The fascism of sports in southern culture. Souless, generic development with specious claims to “local.” Limiting/damaging ideas of masculinity and femininity. Lack of encouragement or even tolerance for true excentricity/individuality. Social conservatism. And hypocrisy. I loved Catherine Opie’s pictures of lesbian couples, but they didn’t say a lot about the sometimes fraught, often dangerous LGBTQ Southern experience.
I’m not sure if the show was good or bad, or successful or not. I was just looking for some of me in the show and it just wasn’t really there. Maybe something to look at creating myself?

A New Mood at Rice

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Rice University’s new Moody Center for the Arts

I was thrilled to meet Rice University Moody Center for the Arts’ Executive Director, Alison Weaver, and tour the facility a little over a week ago. Alison explained that The Moody’s mission is to foster connections across disciplines and to connect art with science, performance, community and more. And to go “beyond the hedges” to connect Rice University itself with Houston through the arts. [Another example of a mash-up or collaborative approach – seems to be part of the zeitgist these days.] The striking building was designed by Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan and includes areas for “making,” exhibitions, learning and performance. With the work of Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Struth, teamLab and Mona Hatoum already having been featured, The Moody is well on its way to becoming one of Houston’s premiere arts institutions.

Picturing Penn

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Still Life With Watermelon, 1947

Irving Penn’s 70-year career is celebrated in “Irving Penn: Centennial” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. From modern old master still lifes of the 40s for Vogue to his painted lips for L’Oréal in 1986, from impossibly chic shots of wife Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn to inventive portraits of celebrities and tradesmen alike, this show demonstrates Penn’s life-long precison and care as an artist. Such a different time – I wonder who [if any?] of today’s working photographers will be celebrated as true artists on the centennial of their birth? TBD.

Art to Wear and Sell

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Order/Chaos: Garments from “18th Century Punk AW 16/17”

I was in NYC this past weekend. On the top of my must do list was the “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” exhibit at The Met. She and Issey Miyake and Yojhi Yamamoto (among others) changed how we looked at fashion AND how we dressed when they burst onto the scene in the 80s.
Kawakubo especially seemed more interested in ideas than wearable clothes, but nonetheless, she has made a long, lucrative career out of challenging norms in fashion. In fact, she has been quoted as insisting that she is primarily a businesswoman rather than an artist.
In many ways just as compelling as the garments were the wide range of “hair” pieces created by long time collaborator Julien d’Ys and Kawakubo’s exhibition design itself – in places hulking white washed Richard Serra sculpture like enclosures and in others glass vitrines hanging overhead and in still others, simple house shapes showcasing garments.
At 74, and despite this being a 35-year retrospective, she’s not done yet. I’m looking forward to her next collection already.