SPRING

ARTS
SPECIAL
25 FEBRUARY
2023

THE ART OF BELONGING

Creatives in their community

WITH

LIN-MANUEL MIR ANDA — THE ARTISTS OF MARIN COUNT Y

LUCIE RIE — MAT THEW MODINE — SALMAN TOOR
DON McCULLIN — FREDDIE POWELL — QUENTIN BL AKE
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 CONTENTS

25 FEBRUARY
56
2023

REGULARS THE FIX

15 EDITOR’S LETTER 21 BITE SIZED
Jo Ellison on the art Is an old sandwich shop
of belonging the future of London’s art
scene, asks Baya Simons
17 THE AESTHETE
Stranger Things star 22 BEYOND THE
Matthew Modine talks taste WHITE CUBE
Five imaginative alternative
60 FOOD art spaces. By Baya Simons
How cooking made
Betty and George 25 THE CALL OF COBALT
Woodman better artists. Why this elusive blue
By Ajesh Patalay continues to captivate.
By Rosanna Dodds
61 DRINK
Quentin Blake, Macbeth, 27 GOOD FORM
birds and whisky? Why not, 24 Isamu Noguchi-inspired
says Alice Lascelles pieces. By Aylin Bayhan

62 29 THE WHO’S WHO

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LAWRIE SHABIBI GALLERY. JÉRÔME GALLAND. MAAK CONTEMPORARY CERAMICS. KRISZTIÁN ÉDER. AYLAH PETERSON WEARS CDLM COTTON-CANVAS VELVET PAINTED

HOW TO SPEND
IT IN... SOMERSET OF ART ADVISERS
Don McCullin finds peace Victoria Woodcock
in rural south-west England evaluates the best
CORSET COAT, £1,772. MIU MIU COTTON DENIM SKIRT, £850. MARNI DENIM TROUSERS, £730. LOUIS VUITTON LEATHER BOOTS, £1,400. SHOT AT ELIJAH WHEAT SHOWROOM AND STUDIO OF LIZ NIELSEN

40

FEATURES
30 I LOVE LUCIE 48 WELCOME TO
The beautifully turned world MARIN COUNTY
of Lucie Rie. By Aimee Farrell Maria Shollenbarger visits
the artists redefining the
32 TOOR DE FORCE counter-cultural enclave
How Pakistan-born artist
Salman Toor became the name 56 THE SPIRIT OF
to know. By Louis Wise BOISGELOUP
Inside the Normandy château
36 HEIGHTS SOCIETY that fired Picasso’s imagination.
SPRING
ARTS
SPECIAL
Lin-Manuel Miranda takes By Gilles Khoury
Christina Ohly Evans on a stroll
25 FEBRUARY
2023

ON THE COVER:
Photography by around his neighbourhood 30
THE ART OF BELONGING STEFAN RUIZ
40
Creatives in their community

PAINT THE TOWN

25
LIN-MANUEL
MIRANDA at Spring’s most arresting styles.
the Sugar Hill Photography by Krisztián Éder.
Children’s Museum
Styling by Jasmine Hassett.
WITH

LIN-MANUEL MIR ANDA — THE ARTISTS OF MARIN COUNT Y

of Art & Storytelling

LUCIE RIE — MAT THEW MODINE — SALMAN TOOR
DON McCULLIN — FREDDIE POWELL — QUENTIN BL AKE

in New York Model, Aylah Peterson

All products in the magazine are available to buy from each brand’s website or store, unless otherwise stated FT.COM/HTSI 13
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A Racing Machine
On The Wrist
 EDITOR’S LETTER

Jo Ellison

Isabelle Kountoure

Tim Auld
EDITOR
( jo.ellison@ft.com)

DEPUTY EDITOR
Beatrice Hodgkin (beatrice.hodgkin@ft.com)

CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Rasha Kahil (rasha.kahil@ft.com)

STYLE DIRECTOR
(isabelle.kountoure@ft.com)

FEATURES

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
(tim.auld@ft.com)
ASSISTANT EDITORS
T his issue, “the art of belonging”,
takes a moment to look at how our
environment and the people who
surround us fuel our creative juice.
Lin-Manuel Miranda launched his
career from a porch near his family
house in Inwood and, even though he has since gone
international, he has retained an unshakeable loyalty to the
neighbourhood he still calls home. His commitment to
showcasing New York’s artistic community has been
instrumental in reshaping the city’s culture and helped usher
in sweeping changes along The Great White Way. This June,
Jackie Daly ( jackie.daly@ft.com) he will again lead the Uptown Arts Stroll, an initiative that
Louis Wise (louis.wise@ft.com)
opens northern Manhattan to a wider audience (as well as
COMMISSIONING EDITOR
Lauren Hadden (lauren.hadden@ft.com) nurturing that area’s artists). Christina Ohly Evans joins him
Right: Ali, 2022,
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling to by Salman Toor
Clara Baldock (clara.baldock@ft.com)
find out why he’s so fiercely connected to his roots (page 36). (page 32)
JUNIOR EDITORS
Rosanna Dodds (rosanna.dodds@ft.com) Not everyone finds stimulation on their childhood shuffle
Baya Simons (baya.simons@ft.com) (sorry, Croydon). Some people alight on their pathway via and mount exhibitions by contemporary names. They
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT completely different soil. Maria Shollenbarger goes to Marin opened their doors to Gilles Khoury, who finds the
Sara Semic (sara.semic@ft.com)
County in northern California to meet the artists who have home still infused with the residual magic of being touched
FASHION been drawn to this quiet enclave, transforming it into a by the master’s hand (page 56).
FASHION EDITOR
creative hub (page 48). The area has lured everyone from US-based Pakistani artist Salman Toor explores identity
Benjamin Canares (benjamin.canares@ft.com)
FASHION COORDINATOR
Jack Kerouac to Dave Eggers, and from Allen Ginsberg to and belonging in his artworks, retracing his childhood, the
Aylin Bayhan (aylin.bayhan@ft.com) The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. All speak of being beguiled experience of immigration, his queerness and much more.
ART
by the region’s misty vistas and the energy they draw from A lot of his work is distinctive for its focus on an almost
ART DIRECTOR the hills around Mount Tam. What can I tell you? It’s absinthe-coloured palette, a technique he likens to looking
Carlo Apostoli (carlo.apostoli@ft.com) California: but Rich Stapleton’s accompanying portfolio at life as through a wine bottle. In conversation with Louis
DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR
offers a tangible explanation for the county’s seductive pull. Wise, he talks about his inspirations, acceptance and the
Morwenna Parry (morwenna.parry@ft.com)
JUNIOR DESIGNER Pablo Picasso arrived at the Château de Boisgeloup in speed at which his popularity has grown (page 32). He’s
Sofea Aznidi (sofea.aznidi@ft.com) Normandy in 1930, having bought the property to share also very funny. I have a lot of time for anyone who swerves
PICTURES with his then-wife Olga and Paulo, his son. Far from Paris, pomposity in their subjects by adorning his leading characters
PICTURE EDITOR though not too far from his lover, the château’s stables were with an elongated, somewhat phallic-looking nose.
Katie Webb (katie.webb@ft.com) co-opted to become his studio, where he was to embark on Lastly, for this week’s Aesthete, I had the pleasure of
PICTURE RESEARCHER
the sculptures that represent some of his lesser-known meeting Matthew Modine at the Gielgud Theatre, Soho,
Paula Baker (paula.baker@ft.com)
work. Fifty years after his death, the property is now owned where he is playing Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
SUBEDITORS
by his grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and his wife Almine (page 17). Modine seems to be able to adapt to any
CHIEF SUBEDITOR
Kate Chapple (kate.chapple@ft.com)
Rech, where they run a foundation to build Picasso’s legacy environment, from the drive-through cinema he worked in
DEPUTY CHIEF SUBEDITOR as a child in Utah, to New York, where he arrived as a young
Alexander Tyndall (alexander.tyndall@ft.com) actor, and the rigours of a Kubrick set in east London where
SUBEDITOR
he was pretending to be fighting in Vietnam. He seems to
Helen Bain (helen.bain@ft.com)
JUNIOR SUBEDITOR
have met everyone and done it all and got the T-shirt
Chris Allnutt (chris.allnutt@ft.com) (especially the free ones). Perhaps the most successful
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
creatives are those who create a community in any
Vivienne Becker, Jessica Beresford, Bella Blissett, environment where they find themselves, and then quickly
Simon de Burton, Adeela Crown, Aleks Cvetkovic, and surreptitiously take their position centre stage.
Delphine Danhier, Aimee Farrell, Kate Finnigan, @jellison22
Maria Fitzpatrick, Nick Foulkes, Chloe Fox,
Alexander Fury, Julian Ganio, Francesca Gavin, For the best of HTSI straight into your inbox, sign up to our
Laila Gohar, Fiona Golfar, Ben Grimes, newsletter at ft.com/newsletters
Jasmine Hassett, Andreas Peter Krings,
Alice Lascelles, Rhodri Marsden, Jay Massacret,
Evens JP Mornay, Nicola Moulton, Rebecca Newman,
Michelle Ogundehin, Ajesh Patalay,
Charlene Prempeh, Tamara Rothstein,
Fergus Scholes, Victoria Woodcock
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Lucia van der Post (lucia.vanderpost@ft.com)
TRAVEL EDITOR
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK/FARZAD OWRANG

Maria Shollenbarger (maria.shollenbarger@ft.com)

US CORRESPONDENT
CONTRIBUTORS
PHOTOGRAPHS: ADAM NAGY. MARCO TORRI. MARILI ANDRE. SALMAN TOOR,

Christina Ohly Evans (christina.ohlyevans@ft.com)

PUBLISHING

GLOBAL DIRECTOR, LUXURY & WEEKEND ADVERTISING

Dorota Gwilliam (dorota.gwilliam@ft.com)
COMMERCIAL SALES & PRODUCT EXECUTIVE
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PRODUCTION
Denise Macklin
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
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MARK ANTHONY FOX MÁRTON NEMES AYLAH PETERSON
WWW.FT.COM/HTSI The British photographer spent nearly a “Feel it all at once” is how the Hungarian “Dyeing my hair blonde for the cover of
TWITTER.COM/HTSI
decade in Australia, where he developed multimedia artist describes his vivid, Self Service Magazine shot by David
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his “minimal, calming aesthetic”. For this abstract work. Now based in the US, he Sims” is one of Aylah’s most memorable
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issue he shot the work of ceramicist Lucie uses materials like mirrored Plexiglas and moments from the past three years of
EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES +44(0)20-7873 3203 Rie ahead of an exhibition at Kettle’s spray paint for his fluorescent creations. her modelling career. This week’s shoot
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FT.COM/HTSI 15
 THE AESTHETE

Matthew
Modine
The Stranger Things actor on
Marcus Aurelius, Mockingbird and
manifesting your creative destiny
INTERVIEW BY JO ELLISON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM JAMIESON

M
Y PERSONAL STYLE
SIGNIFIER is
’40s-style clothing
– the high-waisted
trousers, the sharper
cut. We’ve always
been a secondhand
family – I’m the youngest of seven kids.
My grandmother worked in New York City,
and we were in Utah and so she used to
send boxes of secondhand clothes from
places like Saks Fifth Avenue, or Brooks
Brothers, or some fancy men’s shop. So
when I moved to New York City to study
acting I went on shopping at the “dead
man’s store”. The ’40s style reflects the
same era of actors that I love too – Henry
Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper.
And that’s where I’ve stayed. Because
contemporary men’s fashion is probably
the most abhorrent thing I’ve ever seen.

A PLACE THAT MEANS A LOT TO ME is Italy.

For the richness of the culture, the beauty
of the language. If you grow up on the other
side of the Mississippi River you realise
that travel is essential. Harper Lee wrote
that we never truly understand another
person until we see things from their
point of view. Until we get inside their
skin and walk around in it. It’s essential
to travel, to experience people through
other cultures and language. Italy also
has the benefit of delicious food.
THE BEST SOUVENIR I’VE BROUGHT HOME is
wisdom. Life lessons. Is that really boring?
THE BEST BOOK I’VE READ IN THE PAST
is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It
PHOTOGRAPHS: SUNSET BOULEVARD/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
“WHAT I’VE LEARNT OVER TIME
IS THAT YOU DON’T OWN
THINGS, THINGS OWN YOU”
years old and growing up in Utah – my
father was a drive-in theatre manager.
It stars Dustin Hoffman and the amazing
Chief Dan George. But the reason the
movie was significant was because I was
going to school with Navajo. And it is
among the first films in which a filmmaker
had pivoted the camera from white settlers
being attacked by savage Indians to
indigenous people being attacked by savage
white people. People often ask me why I
IN MY DRESSING ROOM YOU WILL ALWAYS
FIND flowers. Something that produces
oxygen. Otherwise nothing. The less clutter,
the more easy it is to think. What I’ve learnt
over time is that things… you don’t own
things, things own you.
THE PERSON WHO CHANGED THE WAY I DID
THINGS is Caridad Rivera [his wife, since
1980]. One of the most difficult things to
say when you’re not a working actor is that

YEAR
sounds like a self-help book. It’s not. First
of all, he didn’t write the book to be shared
and published. It probably should be called
reflections, as it’s not like sitting with your
legs in the lotus position. His meditations
are him trying to come to peace with his
thoughts. I don’t meditate at all. I mean, I
do walking meditations – you know, I go
for a walk for two hours and try to
come to peace with my thoughts.
THE ARTWORK THAT CHANGED
EVERYTHING FOR ME is Little Big
Man, which I saw when I was 11
would turn down a movie like Top Gun?
Because it’s war pornography. You only
have to look up the road to the Ukraine to
understand there’s nothing sexy or
attractive about war. And there was
nothing beautiful about the Great Western
Migration when you look at it from the
perspective of a Native American.
MY STYLE ICON is my dear friend
Charles Finch [the businessman
and film producer] because he’s
the most mysterious man I’ve
ever known in my life.
you’re an actor. Because usually the first
question is, what are you working on? But
when I told Cari that I was an actor, she
really looked at me and she said, you’ll be
very successful. And within six weeks
I began working. Her belief in me was the Top: Matthew Modine
key to start my motor. It gave me the in his flat in Bloomsbury,
London. Above: James
confidence that someone believed that Stewart, whose ’40s
I could accomplish something. style Modine favours.
Right: ginger and lemon
– “I am a believer in
THE LAST MUSIC I DOWNLOADED OR herbal remedies”. Far
BOUGHT was Ruby Wylder Modine’s Infinity left: the Papa mug given
to Modine by a friend
Mixtape. Ruby Wylder Modine is my daughter. in the cast of To Kill
She’s like Amy Winehouse. She’s very good. a Mockingbird

FT.COM/HTSI 17
THE AESTHETE
Above: Modine with his wife Caridad
Rivera in 2012. Below: his acting
teacher Stella Adler (seated centre)
Above: his “To Kill a Mockingbird
gifts” – the pen is from Sonia
Friedman, the play’s producer, and
the knife from a “dear friend”.
Right: at home in London. Below:
Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man,
the work of art that changed
everything for Modine. Below right:
the magazine published by his
friend Charles Finch, who is
Modine’s style icon
18
Above: the Papa jumper given to Modine
by the Ron Dorff store in Covent Garden
for his appearance on The Jonathan Ross
Show
Show. Top right: Modine (right) with his
siblings at their father’s drive-in c1964
“THE FANS OF STRANGER
THINGS ARE LIKE
NO FANS I’VE EVER HAD.
THEY LOVE PAPA”
FT.COM/HTSI
I HAVE A COLLECTION OF photography.
Or I did. I have just sold a collection of
my photographs from Stanley Kubrick’s
Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick allowed me to
photograph the experience of making a
movie, which was kind of unheard of for
him, because he controlled everything. But
he allowed me to photograph his set. So
there’s three people that own my prints: a
museum in San Antonio, for the veterans
who served in the war, Christopher Nolan
and the Kubrick estate. It’s pretty cool.
FOOTBALL OR SOCCER? American football.
The New York Giants. When I was young it
was the Jets, because I loved Joe Namath.
He was super-cool, Broadway Joe. And then
when I moved to New York, you have to
choose Jets or Giants. And the Jets had had
such a poor streak, I jumped on the Giants.
I LOVE TO PLAY tennis. I used to play
basketball. And skateboard. Something your
readers should know: you
should never look at your phone
when you’re skateboarding.
IN MY FRIDGE YOU WILL
ALWAYS FIND some milk
alternative because they’re
the foundation for soups and
cooking. And Miyoko’s
[cashew milk] butter. They
don’t sell Miyoko’s in the UK.
But it’s really good. Better than
butter. I was a chef in my early
career, and I would use that
for everything. I would make
croissants with Miyoko’s.
I’VE RECENTLY REDISCOVERED
watercolours and oils. My
father taught me how to paint
watercolours and so I learnt
composition and light value –
the way that you do with
watercolours more than oils or
acrylics. It’s so difficult. I paint
portraits. Here’s a weird story:
when I first moved to New
York, I painted everyone I
wanted to work with. Like,
I saw a picture of Al Pacino in
a magazine and I thought,
that’s a great photograph, so
I painted it. I saw a picture of
Arthur Miller, I painted Arthur
Miller. I painted Wallace
Shawn. I gave him the portrait.
And then the next thing I’m
doing is a play that he replaced
the actor in. Diane Keaton – the same.
I would end up working with the people
I painted. The placebo effect works –
thinking makes it so.
WHEN I’M TR AVELLING FOR WORK, I ALWAYS
carry my bag, which was a gift I got for
presenting at the Baftas. It’s a very fancy bag.
MY SIGNATURE DISH is… I can make
anything. But I don’t cook animals. When
I was a boy, I worked at my dad’s drive-in. But
my parents bought a Mexican restaurant
where I learnt how to make proper Mexican
food. My wife is vegan so it’s a great
challenge for me to find ways to make
beautiful meals that wouldn’t make you feel
deprived if you liked eating animals. But I
learnt from the vegan Café Gratitude that
the oyster mushroom carne asada is better
than the one with meat.
THE LAST ITEM OF CLOTHING I ADDED TO
MY WARDROBE was a Hellfire Club hoodie
that they gave to me when I went to Stranger
Things: The Experience. The fans of that show
are like no fans I’ve ever had in my career.
They love Papa. It’s weird because he’s
complicated. Fame is so different now. Millie
Bobby Brown [who plays Eleven] is famous
in a way that never existed before. I don’t feel
it because I know that fame is a chimaera,
and I know that the career is a rollercoaster
and that the higher you go the harder you fall.
It’s going to happen. It’s how many times you
get up, right? strangerthings-experience.com
AN OBJECT, I WOULD NEVER PART WITH
is my Cartier Trinity ring. For me, it
signifies my wife, my son and my daughter,
all bound together.
IN ANOTHER LIFE, I WOULD
HAVE BEEN an oceanographer.
That’s what I studied in
college. I wanted to be like
Jacques Cousteau. And then I
came to class one day and my
oceanographer professor was
crying. And I said, what’s
wrong. And he said, forget
it, man. At any moment the MODINE’S
“MURSE OR
ocean is going to die. And that MAN-PURSE”
was in 1979. If he were alive
today, he would be suicidal seeing the
PHOTOGRAPHS: FILMPUBLICITYARCHIVE/UNITED ARCHIVES VIA GETTY IMAGES. MARIANNE BARCELLONA/GETTY IMAGES. SHUTTERSTOCK
extinction of species around the globe.
The solution is to get your hands in and
start cleaning up. We have to have hope.
When I was a kid, the future was utopian
and beautiful and flying cars. And if you to
speak to children today, they think that
we’re living the end of time. I’m doing
everything I can to give Greta Thunberg
hope. It demands all of our participation.
I DON’T HAVE a wellbeing guru or trainer
or osteopath. The only time I cut my hair
is when I have a job.
THE BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED was
from Stella Adler, my acting teacher. She
said, if you stand on a stage, if you come
into people’s homes on a television, you
have a responsibility to the audience that
the things that you do and say will have an
impact upon their lives. I take that very
seriously. If I’m going to speak to people,
I want to speak with love and compassion
and be in roles like Atticus Finch that have
the potential and possibility of helping to
see the humanity in other people.
WHEN I NEED TO FEEL INSPIRED I read. Then
you can pilfer other people’s thoughts.
To Kill a Mockingbird runs at the Gielgud
Theatre, London W1, until 20 May
LIGHTING FOR LIFE
 THE FIX

A RT

BITE SIZED
Located in an old sandwich shop,
Ginny on Frederick serves art for the
Ginny on
Frederick gallery next generation. By Baya Simons
in London
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM JAMIESON

FT.COM/HTSI 21
THE FIX
Left, from left: Lapses, 2022 by Gal Schindler; Tight
New Shiny Shoe, 2022, by Mary Stephenson; Self
Portrait in Bordeaux, 2022, by Evangeline Ling;
Merry-Go-Round, 2022, by Guendalina Cerruti; and
Friends Embracing, 2022, by Michelle Uckotter, in the
7ft by 12ft space. Bottom right: Freddie Powell

been to create a comparable space in central

London where, by virtue of the low rent, he
could take curatorial risks.
There are a growing number of exciting
young galleries in the city – Powell names
Sundy in Vauxhall, Rose Easton in Bethnal
Green and Dinner Party around the corner
– but the majority of them “are pretty
homogeneous”, he says. Ginny on Frederick
heralds a new era – both for the city’s gallery
scene, and for an area that has historically
been “somewhat nocturnal”, owing to
the presence of the meat market and the
nightclub Fabric. The Museum of London
will relocate here in 2026, and Soho

GALLERY PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM LEFT: VENTILOTION, 2019, BY MARTE EKNÆS AT A MAIOR, VISEU/COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND A MAIOR. HI BOO I LOVE YOU, 2016, BY SIMON WHYBRAY AT BOLD TENDENCIES/©BOLD TENDENTCIES/DENIZ GUZEL. MONA ARDELEANU’S
restaurant Rita’s also has a bodega around

T
the corner. “There’s a little bit of a
he sign still reads “Sunset renaissance going on,” says Powell.
Sandwich Bar II: Hot & Cold While some still journey to Ginny on

POLYMORPH EXHIBITION AT KÖNIG GALERIE, BERLIN/COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND KÖNIG GALERIE/ROMAN MÄRZ. ARTWORKS ON SHOW AT HIN BUS DEPOT. SUZANNA ZAK’S EXHIBITION COMING HOME TO THE ICE AGE AT BAD WATER GALLERY
Food to Take Away”, but a Frederick expecting to find a sandwich
cursory look through the shop, the reaction to the gallery’s presence
window of the tiny 7ft by 12ft in such an industrial quarter of the city has
shop, overlooking Smithfield Market in been warm, a “mix of intrigue, surprise and
London’s Farringdon, will disappoint be a gallerist”; last autumn, Frieze magazine believes his artists also share an “obsessive confusion”, says Powell. “Art spaces can
anyone seeking a baguette or a sticky bun. praised Ginny on Frederick for offering “a practice”. “You visit studios in New York and sometimes be intimidating,” he says, but
“My landlords wanted me to take down sense of promise” to the capital. Recently he the artists are there night and day,” he says. Ginny’s playful appearance overcomes that:
the sign,” says curator and founder co-curated a show for Sadie Coles’ project “When I get that energy from someone in “Once over the initial shock, most people
Freddie Powell, who opened Ginny on space The Shop. There is “a magic feeling” London, I can’t look away.” get on board, with even a few return visits.”
Frederick gallery in the white-tiled space when some spaces open, says Grace That Powell has ended up in this “tiled Most importantly, his mum is pleased.
in 2021. “I obviously half rented this Schofield, who co-founded Whitechapel’s toilet-wetroom-slaughterhouse” wasn’t “She likes it – I think! It’s honouring
place because I was obsessed with it!” Union Pacific gallery in 2014 to exhibit “necessarily unexpected”. A graduate of her in some way”.
With the overheads being so emerging international Rhode Island School of Design,
affordable (the single room “lacks some POWELL HAS artists. “It’s here for sure.” he chose a medieval-themed motel
utilities”, such as an office or a toilet), AN INTEREST Powell’s programme called the Knights Inn in
Powell was able to open the gallery as IN “SPACES thus far has been young and Massachusetts as the site for his
an experimental weekend project while THAT diverse, but certain threads first curatorial foray. In London, he
working for a blue-chip gallery. He named COSPLAY” run through it. “I am really produced a show with artwork at
it Ginny after his mother, who helped him interested in things every station along the train route
start his first-ever exhibition space in connected to queerness and sexuality and from Liverpool Street to Hertford
Hackney, and Frederick after his own power,” he says, pointing to Jack O’Brien’s East, where he was living at
name and the street it started out on. The sculptures made from contorted clothing, the time. He describes it as an
zany location and Powell’s sharp curation tubing and spiralling wire, and Eva Gold, interest in “spaces that cosplay”.
quickly garnered attention. When his who hung black rubber jackets and “Open He trained his artistic sensibilities
third exhibition – Tom Worsfold’s Good Fats, Late” and “24 Hour” club and motel signs on New York’s Lower East Side,
a series of acid-toned, surreal canvases from the tiles. Next month he is opening a where galleries such as Derosia,
exploring body image – delivered heartening show by Charlotte Edey, whose tapestries JTT and Chapter took up small
sales, Powell decided he “might as well just explore interior space and identity. He shop spaces. His goal had long

GALLERIES

Beyond the white cube

Inside the bus depots, brutalist churches and superstores being repurposed as cultural spaces. By Baya Simons

A MAIOR, VISEU, PORTUGAL
Meaning “the biggest” in
Portuguese, A Maior is a fully
operational superstore that
sells practically everything –
except food – while hosting a
programme of contemporary art,
exhibited alongside its wares.
amaiorviseu.tumblr.com
BOLD TENDENCIES, LONDON
In 2007, the art collective Bold
Tendencies took over the top floors
of Peckham’s multistorey car park
and turned them into a cultural
centre, featuring contemporary
dance, literature and more. There’s
also the much-loved rooftop Frank’s
Café. boldtendencies.com
KÖNIG GALERIE, BERLIN
Founded in 2002 and since 2015
housed in a ’60s brutalist former
church in Kreuzberg, this gallery
focuses on young artists who
take space-based approaches.
There are two exhibition rooms
available: the Chapel and the
Nave. koeniggalerie.com
HIN BUS DEPOT, GEORGE TOWN,
PENANG, MALAYSIA
This abandoned bus depot was
supposed to host a single show,
but the artists liked it so much they
made it a permanent address. It
now holds exhibitions, workshops,
music events, film screenings and
talks. hinbusdepot.com
BAD WATER, KNOXVILLE,
TENNESSEE
Formerly an empty wooden barn
on a suburban street, this artist-run
gallery space launched in 2018 to
host shows ranging from sculpture
to performance. The whitewashed
wooden walls and barn floor lend it
a faint eeriness. badwater.gallery

22 FT.COM/HTSI
Discover the Lettre de Lumière collection

sophiebillebrahe.com
Making hospitality our life

THE FORTE FAMILY

AT VERDURA RESORT,
SICILY

I
Above: Waves t is rare that something can feel both
of Emotion elusive and ubiquitous. Cobalt blue –
Under the
Moonlight, the colour of Renoir’s lakes, van Gogh’s
2021, by Sola nightfall and Georgia O’Keeffe’s New
Olulode.
Centre right:
Mexico skies – achieves this. Most
Stars, 1926-1927, recently, the colour peeped out naughtily
by Maxfield from the actor Emma D’Arcy’s leather
Parrish
gloves at the Golden Globes.
Scientists have had a hard job bottling
blue. Despite its resemblance to the sea
and sky, there are few examples of the hue
in nature. Even today, only a handful of
pigments are available, the latest being
2009’s discovery of YInMn. As a result,
the colour has always been highly coveted.
According to Pantone Color Institute’s
director, Leatrice Eiseman, cobalt is “one
of the blue tones that has a certain subtle
excitement. Not as serious as navy, nor as
high-powered as vivid electric, it [is] a
well-balanced blue that bridges the two.”
The pigment’s most famous association
is with the Virgin Mary, whose robes were
realised in “marian blue”, a variation of
© NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION & AMERICAN ILLUSTRATORS GALLERY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES/DACS, LONDON. PHILIP ARCHER/OPEN EYE
ultramarine, during the Middle Ages and
PHOTOGRAPHS: DAN LECCA. ISIDORE MONTAG/GORUNWAY. JON KOPALOFF/GETTY IMAGES. © LISA BRICE/SADIE COLES HQ, LONDON/MARK BLOWER.
Renaissance. “Culturally, [blue] came to
be associated with joy, peace, loyalty and
comfort,” says historian Regina Lee
Blaszczyk, author of The Color Revolution.
Later, when sumptuary laws were
introduced after the bubonic plague,
blue was excluded from all regulations.
“Historians don’t know why, but we
can speculate that blue was already
ubiquitous in clothing – it didn’t threaten
the status of the elites,” offers Blaszczyk.
The latest collections prove that cobalt
GALLERY, EDINBURGH. SOLA OLULODE/LAWRIE SHABIBI GALLERY. THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM
is as exciting as ever – be it a mud-stained
clog at Balenciaga or via Alexander
McQueen in a double-breasted suit. At
Off-White’s spring/summer presentation,
shades of cobalt featured across jackets,
dresses and hole-punctured bodysuits.
“This is a colour of significance for our
world and the community inhabiting it,”
read the show notes, which describe
the shade as “impossible blue”.
Designers David Koma and
Alberta Ferretti both see cobalt in
the ocean, resulting in handwoven
macramé dresses for Koma and
flowing jumpsuits for Ferretti.
“The shade serves as a mood- EMMA
D’ARCY
lifting element,” says Ferretti. AT THE
GOLDEN
“Blue [reminds] me of summers
JASON WU SS23
GLOBES
by the Adriatic Sea.” 2023
A similar hue stirs the
memory of artist Philip Archer,
whose recent exhibition at Open Eye
TREND
THE CALL
OF COBALT
Intense and impossible, this elusive blue
still captivates, says Rosanna Dodds
Gallery in Edinburgh dealt with loss, feeling
and spirit. “Searching for the colour blue is a
challenge, but [it’s] what I try to do,” he says,
citing Cézanne’s rich landscapes and the
cobalt wall in The Conversation by Matisse.
Many of the paintings
KLEIN SAID allude to Archer’s late wife, skin colour. “I was drawn to blue because
BLUE WAS Helen. In Terra Madre,
“BEYOND inspired by the couple’s
DIMENSIONS” love for the Langhe in Italy,
cobalt illustrates the
darkest shadows in a shop window. At
the centre is a far-off mountain, shaped
like Helen lying down.
It was also Italy that inspired Yves Klein,
the French artist famed for his International
Klein Blue, a mix of ultramarine, indigo and
cobalt. “Yves Klein is just the master of blue,”
says Akris creative director Albert Kriemler,
who has splashed the colour across lace
dresses, outerwear and suits. For Klein,
blue was an expression of his religious
upbringing, and he once said that it was
“beyond dimensions”. The colour
is aptly referenced in Derek Jarman’s
1993 film Blue
Blue, in which International
Klein Blue illustrates the late
director’s descent into blindness.
The early- to mid-20th century
was a popular time for cobalt. Klein
instructed naked women to cover
themselves in blue paint as part of a
performance; Matisse explored the female
form with blue cut-outs; and American
painter Maxfield Parrish positioned
neoclassical nymphs against inky-blue
THE FIX
AKRIS SS23
McQUEEN SS23
ALEXANDER
skies. These artists come to
KOMA SS23
mind when looking at Lisa
DAVID
Brice’s nudes, where cobalt
is used to reposition the
male gaze and remove
assumptions about race. “In
my work, this colour can
suggest skin covered in paint or tinted mud,
obscuring naturalistic skin tones and
interrupting a preconditioned reading of the
subject,” she told HTSI.
For emerging London-based artist Sola
Olulode, cobalt instead serves to intensify
of the way it complements black and brown
skin tones,” she says. “There is a lot of blue in
black artists’ work, particularly in figurative
painting. I’d like to be part of that lineage.”
Of her perfect hue, Olulode references
a quote from Barry Jenkins’s film Moonlight:
“In moonlight, black boys look blue.”
Sometimes blue can be disheartening.
My favourite expression is the cobalt- BALENCIAGA
SS23 CLOG
inflected royal blue of Everton Football
Club, which, at the time of writing, is in
the Premier League’s relegation zone. Still,
I wear my shirt – and phone case – with
pride. It may not be cause for celebration, but
it’s nonetheless a tantalising shade.
Above right:
Untitled, 2016,
by Lisa Brice.
Right: Terra
Madre,
2020-2022, by
Philip Archer
FT.COM/HTSI 25
 PHILLEMON HLUNGWANI
3–25 March 2023

Phillemon Hlungwani
JOHANNESBURG CAPE TOWN LONDON FRANSCHHOEK Murhi wa vutivi I | The Tree of Knowledge I (detail)
Charcoal and pastel on paper
everardlondon.com | info@everardlondon.com | +44 20 7590 9991 120 x 160.4 cm
 THE FIX
Sculptural STUDIO KIRKIT wood and
Design wool-blend Tor Bergere
by Isamu chair, $2,370, 1stdibs.com
Noguchi,
£325,
mbooks.
co.uk

CARTIER NOIRGAZE
rose-gold, onyx leather Maggie
and diamond bag, £450
Amulette de
Cartier necklace,
£3,350
JW ANDERSON
cotton-mix CHOPARD rose-gold, diamond
chain-link and onyx Happy Diamonds
trench, £1,100 Planet bangle, £3,270
TIFFANY & CO MONIES
leather Elsa wood
Peretti Bombe bracelet,
frame, £175 £656,
farfetch.
com

ALAÏA wood and

calf-leather Wooden The inspiration: Isamu Noguchi LOEWE leather
Heel Sculpture inside his sculpture Momo Taro trousers, £3,250,
mules, £870 at the Storm King Art Centre net-a-porter.com
25th-anniversary luncheon, 1985

ALESSI steel Trinity

fruit bowl, £210

COLVILLE wool
balloon-sleeved
top, €690

SHOP PING

GOOD BULGARI white-gold

FORM
Serpenti Viper ring,
£1,700

KIÓHNE
hand-
24 sculptural pieces inspired by embroidered

MARNI brass and enamel

Isamu Noguchi. By Aylin Bayhan bikini top,
€85
TASAKI gold
and Mabe pearl
Trapeze earrings, £320 ISAMU Liquid Sculpture
NOGUCHI earrings, £7,230
PHOTOGRAPH: THE ISAMU NOGUCHI FOUNDATION AND GARDEN MUSEUM/ARS, NEW YORK AND DACS, LONDON 2023

FOR HERMAN
MILLER birch
and steel
LOUIS VUITTON
Rudder dining
viscose-mix zipped
table, £67,767,
skirt, £2,500
1stdibs.com

PETAR PETROV silk-trimmed

velvet Toma top, €590 VAN CLEEF
& ARPELS
gold and
mother-
of-pearl
Cadenas
watch,
£24,800
BOODLES
gold and
diamond
GUCCI wool pleated VITRA Akari
Raindance
minidress, £3,450 9AD floor
hoop earrings, BRUNELLO CUCINELLI stone lamp, €690.20
£7,500 and wood container, €520

FT.COM/HTSI 27
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COLLECTING
THE WHO’S WHO
OF ART ADVISERS
Every major collector has one – but do they have the right one?
Victoria Woodcock evaluates the best…
I
used to feel that [art advisers] were
an unnecessary, and rather irritating,
encumbrance,” says Jacob Twyford,
senior director of Waddington Custot
in Mayfair. But in the 38 years he’s been
involved in the art world, the role – and
his perception – of advisers has changed.
“We used to refer to them as grubby little
10-per-cent-ers, which is certainly not the
way I think about them now. The best art
advisers have become extremely good,” he
a
continues. “They do a good job both for
Sch w
the client and for the gallery. It’s almost
like having an external sales force. They
la n
demand a good price. And they get it.”
Al
Above: Green As for the 10-per-cent side of things,
pumpkin with black an art adviser’s acquisition commission
dots sculpture by typically ranges from five to 10 per cent,
Yayoi Kusama.
Bottom: Troy, 1962, depending on the price of the artwork,
by Andy Warhol suggests one adviser. But “access to a
world-class art adviser” can come with
a retainer fee, “in the range of $40,000
to $500,000 annually”. So who are the
most in demand?
San dy
THE POWER PLAYER
H
ell
“Possibly the biggest art
er
adviser in the world,”
PHOTOGRAPHS: ALAMY (2). AMELIA ALLEN. BONNIE H MORRISON/PATTI WONG & ASSOCIATES. BONNIE H MORRISON. EMILIO MADRID. GETTY IMAGES, ANDY WARHOL, TROY,
according to one insider,
1962 © 2023 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC/LICENSED BY DACS, LONDON. GETTY IMAGES, © UNTITLED XXI, 1976, THE WILLEM DE KOONING
Sandy Heller is known to
have worked with Roman
Abramovich and Steven Cohen –
the controversial trader and New York
Mets owner whose mega-collection
FOUNDATION/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK AND DACS, LONDON 2023. GETTY IMAGES (3). JOSHUA GEYER. KATE MARTIN. SFA ADVISORY
“TO BE A reportedly spans Picasso’s Le Rêve
CLIENT WITH (purchased for $155mn in 2013) and a
US, YOU Damien Hirst shark. A website for his
NEED TO BE
advisory service? I don’t think so.
SPENDING
ABOUT $1MN THE BEHEMOTH
AND UP
“To be a client with us, you need to be
ON ART”
spending about $1mn and up on art,” says
Philip Hoffman, former deputy CEO of
Christie’s Europe, and founder of The Fine
Be
an Art Group. The team of about 100 (at
m
least 30 are Sotheby’s or Christie’s
Phi Hoff
alumni) advises more than 300
lip
families in 28 countries, including
many “high-profile ones in
Hollywood”. They recently acted for
the Alana Collection of Italian Old
Masters – amassed by Álvaro Saieh and Ana
Guzmán, and sold for $19.4mn at Christie’s.
Of his advisory MO, he says: “Ninety per
cent of the time we stop our clients buying
art.” fineartgroup.com. See also: Patti Wong,
THE FIX
who brings 30+ years of experience P
– and collector contacts – from
a tt
Sotheby’s to a new, Asia-
i Won g
focused agency in Hong Kong,
in partnership with The Fine
Art Group, pwa-asia.com
THE ÜBER-CURATOR
Allan Schwartzman, former curator at New
a n York’s New Museum, set up Art
zm
rt Agency Partners with Adam
Chinn and ex-Christie’s Amy Right: Untitled
XXI, 1976, by
Cappellazzo in 2014; it was Willem de
bought by Sotheby’s two Kooning
years later for a reported
$85mn. He’s been publicly spans young galleries and emerging artists
linked with building the major to blue-chip spaces and mega names. “A
collections of Texan philanthropist Howard good art adviser has to support artists and
Rachofsky and billionaire businesswoman institutions, not only take from them,”
Penny Pritzker. Now, he’s set up advisory she says. rochatartconsultancy.com
team Schwartzman& – and struck up an Jo s h
alliance with Hoffman’s Fine Art Group. THE ADVISER’S ADVISER B
ae
schwartzmanand.com. See also: ex-Art Golf-loving former gallerist
r
Agency Partners Ivy Shapiro, ivyshapiro. John Baer – son of
com, and Cappellazzo and Yuki Terase’s Art Pace-represented artist Jo
Intelligence Global, artintelligenceglobal.com – has published The Baer
Faxt newsletter since 1994,
THE NEW-GALLERY GUARD L a ur and brokered record-breaking
a
It says a lot that Gagosian, Basquiat sales in his role as a private adviser.
Pa
the über-est of über- Clients include John McEnroe. In 2021, he
ulson
galleries, has established launched a new, more accessible (at $3,000 a
a side hustle in art year, plus commission) “on demand” service,
advisory. Launched in working alongside a team of advisers around
2019, Gagosian Art the world. “Somewhat unexpectedly, not
Advisory is headed up by Laura only have collectors signed up, but also other
Paulson, a former global chairman of hiff advisers and galleries,” says
Christie’s, who was adviser for the collection Sc Baer. thebaerfaxt.com. See
a
Li s
of the late lawyer David Solinger; 23 of the also: Lisa Schiff, known
works – including a Giacometti for advising Leonardo “YOU DO HAVE TO
g e
an and a de Kooning (with DiCaprio, sfa-advisory. PICK UP ARTISTS
WHILE THEY ARE
r
r nie L a g
fees) – fetched $137.9mn com; Kim Heirston,
STILL AT COLLEGE”
at Sotheby’s last year. kimheirston.com
Bernie Lagrange, son of
Belgian economist and THE TRAILBLAZER
hedge fund manager Pierre, Veteran adviser Jane Suitor established
cites Emmanuel Roman, herself as an art consultant in London
CEO of global investment management firm in the 1990s. One client is basketball
PIMCO, as a client. The Agency’s direct player Kevin Love: “I absolutely adored
dial-in to Gagosian’s starry roster of artists is working with him. I think he had just
no doubt a major plus. gagosianartadvisory. about heard of Picasso, now he’s
com. See also: LGDR, the consortium of got a great collection: Tracey Emin,
four art dealers – Dominique Lévy, Brett George Condo, John Baldessari,
Gorvy, Amalia Dayan and Jeanne Greenberg Antony Gormley, Rashid Johnson.” Jan e
Rohatyn – includes advisory services in its Others might be surmised S
ui
remit (and the latter has previous with Jay-Z). from Instagram. A Victoria
to r
Beckham post of Yayoi
THE COOL CUSTOMER Si b y Kusama pumpkins at
lle
The Swiss-born, London- Victoria Miro gallery in 2016
Ro
based Sibylle Rochat cut thanked @janesuitor. She also
c h at
her teeth working for a likes to source works by young
prominent art dealer in artists. “Everything moves at such a fast
Switzerland, and now pace now; you do have to pick up artists
“I THINK HE HAD
attracts “young collectors, while they are still at college. I recently JUST ABOUT
often involved in the arts, actors and bought a painting by Alexis Soul-Gray, HEARD OF
musicians”. She has advised DJ David who is still at the Royal College.” PICASSO, NOW
Guetta and currently has a high-profile foundart.co.uk See also: Emily Tsingou, HE’S GOT A GREAT
British rapper on her books. Her expertise emilytsingoufineart.com COLLECTION”
FT.COM/HTSI 29
CRAFT

RIE WORKING
ON THE
WHEEL, c1952

I LOVE Lucie
On the eve of a new exhibition,
Aimee Farrell explores the beautifully
simple world of ceramicist Lucie Rie

O
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK ANTHONY FOX

ne of the most memorable ensembles

among the collection of British modern
art, natural finds and artefacts on display
at Kettle’s Yard – the former Cambridge
home and gallery of the late collector
Jim Ede and his wife Helen – is in the
far corner of the modern extension to
tthe
he original quartet of 19th-century cottages. Here, on
a slate-topped table, a glass goblet arrayed with twigs sits
alongside a marble-and-string “Fiddle Fish” forged by little-
known artist John Clegg, and a pair of glass fishing floats.
Notably, this eclectic assemblage of high and low art and
objects also casually includes an ethereal white bowl by
Lucie Rie, the artist born in Vienna in 1902 who has become
one of the most celebrated ceramicists of the past century.
Remarkable in its restraint, elegance and purity, Ede
christened the vessel The Wave for its undulating form.
By the time it arrived at Kettle’s Yard in the early ’70s
it had already been sold. But, the story goes, that didn’t stop
Top: Bowl with
turquoise volcanic an enamoured Ede from carefully carrying the bowl from
glaze, 1970s, the gallery’s exhibition space and into the house each
and Bowl, c1960,
with letters from
evening to place on his slate altar where, with it basked THE HOUSE to the power of placement; that Right: Bowl,, 1971.
Below: Bowl (brown
in light, he could gaze at it in a sort of aesthetic reverie communion between objects which
Rie to Jim Ede.
Above: Vase with before dutifully returning it the next day.
BECAME A sees one thing speak to, and amplify,
and white inlaid lines),
1974, by Lucie Rie, and
flared lip, c1978.
Below: Kettle’s Yard That container, which eventually found its way RADICAL another. Spirality, 1970-75, by
in Cambridge into Ede’s hands, is now one of a series of Rie’s works ARTWORK IN “It feels as though there are Kenji Umeda. On the
wall is Letter and
to be prominently positioned throughout the Kettle’s AND OF ITSELF invisible lay lines running between numbers,, c1933,
by Ben Nicholson
Yard house as part of the permanent collection. them,” says Kettle’s Yard’s director
Offering a rare chance to engage with her ceramics Andrew Nairne of the Rie pieces in the collection. So the
in a domestic setting, they highlight Ede’s sensitivity earthy matte finish of a manganese bowl highlights the bleak
beauty of a neighbouring black-and-white lake landscape by
LS Lowry; and the silhouette of a sgraffito-lined porcelain
bowl – whose technique was inspired by the bronze-age
vessels Rie encountered on a trip to Avebury in Wiltshire – is
accentuated by the pitted surface of a fossilised shell. We take
this kind of thoughtful, wide-ranging and naturalistic
curation for granted today, but when the Edes first opened
Kettle’s Yard in 1957, after restoring and renovating the
cottages with the help of architect Rowland de Winton
Aldridge, the idea of “a living place where works of art could
be enjoyed” by Cambridge University students and the wider
public broke new ground. Dispensing with the formality of
the traditional museum, the house became a radical
artwork in and of itself.
Half a century after The Wave arrived at Kettle’s Yard
gallery, a solo exhibition of Rie’s work opens there: Lucie Rie:
The Adventure of Pottery will showcase the dazzling breadth
of Rie’s practice. More than 100 works forged across

30 FT.COM/HTSI

A PIECE FROM
CRUET SET,
c1957
TURQUOISE
BOWL WITH
BRONZE RIM,
1980s
six decades range from a rare 1936 tea set to more than
170 ceramic wartime buttons loaned from a Japanese
collector, and the superlative, single-fired and raw-glazed
vessels she continued to make until her death in the
mid-’90s at the age of 93. “To make pottery is an adventure
to me,” she said. “Every new work is a new beginning.”
Today, Rie’s work is reaching record values at auction:
in March last year, a large terracotta-footed porcelain bowl
with a gold manganese glaze sold for £201,600 at Sotheby’s of Austria by the German Reich. When she eventually
in London, exceeding its estimate eightfold, while a similar
footed white vessel with an inlaid grid and sgraffito interior
achieved $340,200 in New York in 2021. Notable collectors
include Edmund de Waal, David Attenborough, Nigel Slater
and the fashion designer Jonathan Anderson, and galleries
including Primavera Gallery, Oxford Ceramics and Joanna
Bird deal in her work. “Although she has always been
appreciated and seen as important, there was a time when
Rie was viewed simply as a ceramicist. Only now is she
being appreciated more fully as an artist,” says Sofia
Sayn-Wittgenstein, senior design specialist at Phillips.
I
t is particularly fitting that Rie should be
Below: Rie in
her studio
returning to Kettle’s Yard, a place with which
at Albion Mews she shared a real synergy. After visiting in 1976,
in the 1990s. she wrote to Ede, “I shall never forget my visit”,
Bottom right:
Conical bowl,
calling it “a unique experience”. For Nairne, the
PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY KETTLE’S YARD, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE (3). ESTATE OF LUCIE RIE/
1971, sits on worlds of Ede and Rie are simpatico. Beyond a joint
the slate
taste for Windsor chairs, foraged rocks, flowers
TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD. ESTATE OF LUCIE RIE. COURTESY OF ERSKINE, HALL & COE. MAAK
altar beside
collages, 1964, and semi-precious stones (Rie, he says, would have
by Italo Valenti totally got the spiral of 76 stones arranged on Ede’s
CONTEMPORARY CERAMICS (2). MICHAEL HARVEY. STOKES PHOTO LTD
CRAFT
bedside table), lies a belief that art should be a “way of
life”. This concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work
of art”, sat at the core of the modernist movements that
formed the backdrop to Rie’s early creative life.
Rie’s home in Vienna, painstakingly designed in walnut
by Ernst Plischke in 1928, melded the same exalted sense
of calm and craftsmanship as Kettle’s Yard. In 1938, Rie
was forced to flee her homeland during the annexation
settled at Albion Mews, London – a one-bedroom flat
above a garage close to Hyde Park that became her
studio – she had the Plischke apartment shipped over and
reconstructed (it now sits in the permanent collection
at the Vienna Furniture Museum). This space became a
sanctuary, a place of respite from the warring world, where
Rie famously served coffee and cake to would-be collectors
surrounded by towering shelves of pots.
“Rie wanted to create a place of
“EVERY NEW safety,” says design historian Tanya
Harrod, a contributor to the exhibition’s
WORK IS accompanying book. “It was an
A NEW extraordinary environment – very
BEGINNING” pure, and inhabited by this beautiful,
immaculately dressed and seemingly
austere woman.” While other studio potters obsessed Top: upstairs at
over building kilns or making their own clay, Rie, Kettle’s Yard, which
nicknamed “the urban potter”, carved her own path, first opened in 1957.
Above: Jim Ede in the
tirelessly making novel work in an electric kiln. same room. Right:
Although Ede was forever drawn to Rie’s simplest, Straight sided bowl, 1970
most pared-back creations, what Eliza Spindel, a curator
of the new exhibition, hopes to spotlight is the revolutionary
nature of her work. “While the pieces that Ede collected
share the same sense of stillness and equilibrium you’d
use to describe Kettle’s Yard, the show also reveals
her wildly experimental side.” It includes the early ’60s
Jasperware prototypes she created for Wedgwood, which
turned out to be too tricky to mass-produce.
A diminutive figure who continues to loom large, her
appetite for innovation remained undeterred. “If you wander
around the ceramics collections at the Victoria & Albert
Museum in London, you’d struggle to find pots of the same
confidence, flair or imaginative form as those of Rie,” says
Nairne, who compares her blend of poise and panache to
Gustav Klimt. “Even in her late seventies, she was still in the
studio, splashing around the manganese.”
Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery is showing at Kettle’s Yard
from 4 March to 25 June. A selection will also be shown at the
Holburne Museum, Bath, from 14 July to 7 January 2024
FT.COM/HTSI 31
INTERVIEW
Toor
DE FORCE
The Pakistan-born artist has got personal
with his paintings. It’s made him the name to
know. Interview by Louis Wise
L
ast November, Four Friends by Salman Toor
reached a new record for the artist at auction,
selling for $1.5mn at Sotheby’s New York –
far above an upper estimate of $400,000.
The painting, which shows two men dancing
in a New York apartment while two others
sit looking on, sipping cocktails, has the
elegance of a Watteau painting updated to 21st-century
life. It’s one reason some have called the Pakistani-
“GREEN
American artist’s work “Queer Rococo”.
Four Friends was a highlight of Toor’s breakout 2020
exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum, How Will
I Know. He has since had institutional shows at the
Baltimore Museum of Art and now at M Woods in
Beijing, with the prices rising to match. Londoners
will have seen his work in last year’s group show My
Reflection of You at The Perimeter; next month they can see
another in Close at Grimm (4 March to 6 April). “There’s
something about the intimacy and sensitivity of Toor’s
paintings that touches me,” says The Perimeter’s owner
Alexander Petalas, who has several in his collection. It’s a
sentiment echoed by the model Edie Campbell, an early
collector of Toor’s work. “I find his work very moving…
there’s a real crackle of energy to it.”
Much of this has to do with Toor’s reorienting his work
toward the personal, celebrating the community he has
made his own. Born in Lahore 40 years ago, the young
Salman was a brilliant pupil and an excellent draughtsman,
but he was also a self-described “sissy”, to the dismay of his
conservative milieu. He went to Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware
to study for a BA in Fine Art in 2002, before heading to New
York, in 2006, to do a Masters, and for a while made a living
as a painter of more classical, technically proficient paintings HELP YOU BETTER FACE YOUR PAST?
until he decided to start making work that spoke directly
to and about him. It worked.
Today, Toor lives in New York. He became a naturalised
American citizen in 2019; the new status mostly means
32 FT.COM/HTSI
Left: Daddy and Boy, 2022.
Right: The Doodler, 2022
ease of travel, he says, “although maybe it’s starting a
family here” too. Currently spending time experimenting
in the studio, he has agreed to be interviewed for HTSI
on condition that the exchange is done as a Q&A. A droll,
laconic talker, he is as happy delving into the state of
contemporary Pakistani art as the horrors of Emily in
Paris. Also, his dismay at Europe’s lack of air-conditioning.
“We like to give emissions in the summer!” he jokes.
POIGNANT PORTR AITS OF YOUNG MEN RECUR
THROUGHOUT YOUR WORK. DID YOU, AS A YOUNGSTER,
IMAGINE THE LIFE AND CAREER YOU’D HAVE TODAY?
I didn’t anticipate this at all. I’m very lucky. When I
started working here in New York, I was able to pay for
an apartment through my earlier paintings. I showed in
Karachi, I showed in Dubai; and to be honest, I think that
it would have been OK to continue doing that. But this
was a total surprise. I could never have imagined that
I would have the studio that I have right now. I would
have died if you had shown me the materials and the
space, so it’s completely magical.
YOUR PAINTINGS OFTEN SHOW MOMENTS
OF FLEETING INTIMACY OR CONNECTION;
THERE’S OFTEN A SENSE OF A THRESHOLD
BEING CROSSED. WHY DO YOU KEEP RETURNING
TO THESE BRIEF ENCOUNTERS?
I grew up in a homophobic culture; I went to
an all-boys’ prep school, and I also grew up in
a pretty conservative, culturally Muslim family.
There was zero visibility of forms of affection
in public spaces. So yes, for me to do these
paintings is to be on the verge of a threshold.
But there’s another kind of threshold I’ve crossed
in the near-20 years I’ve spent in New York. In
2006, when I came here from Ohio, this was
a post-9/11 country, so there wasn’t any of the
Gen Z discussion about gender or misogyny,
things like that. The culture changed, and
I changed. I felt like I’d been doing paintings that were
very, ery academic, and I wasn’t really interested in
contemporary art. But I was skirting around the more
meaningful things in my life, which was the struggle to be
out, to make connections between the culture in which
I was born and the culture that I have adopted, and the
friendships that mean everything
to me. So I decided to do other
work in the studio. It was just
HAS THESE bursting out of me.
PHOTOGRAPHS: © SALMAN TOOR COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK/FARZAD OWRANG (2)
VILLAINOUS
ASSOCIATIONS WHAT WERE THE IMAGES THAT
INSPIRED YOU AS A CHILD?
I LIKE: SORT My high-school friend’s parents
OF TOXIC” collected art, and had libraries; my
parents are not really readers. So I
had access to the deliciousness of art monographs –
Caravaggio and stuff like that. But my grandmother had a
bunch of prints of paintings. She had a portrait of this
white woman in a grey dress and grey hair, standing against
a stone column; I found out later, when I went to college,
that it was The Honourable Mrs Graham by Thomas
Gainsborough. I just remember feeling something seeing
these artists from Europe: from another part of the world,
from a completely different time. There was a sense of this
very tragic heroism – of finding both the romantic and the
grisly. That was very valuable.
THE DOODLER SHOWS A CHILD HIDING IN A BEDROOM,
DR AWING AWAY; THE GAME HAS AN OMINOUS FATHER
FIGURE STANDING, TENSE, OVER A SMALL BOY CAUGHT
PLAYING WITH DOLLS. DOES MAKING THESE PICTURES
Yes, for sure. I feel like it gives me ownership. It’s a way
of communing with people that are otherwise very
difficult to commune with; a way of loving and liking
things that are difficult to like.
 INTERVIEW

FT.COM/HTSI 33
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A DELICATE, ELONGATED NOSE CHAR ACTERISES
“THE WORKS ARE
MANY OF YOUR FIGURES. WHY?
It’s about a sense of humour. A lot of the time,
I might be painting someone really vulnerable, and
I feel like if it was a pity party or too sanctimonious,
it would just kill the painting. I want it to have a
marionette feel: a little bit wooden, but at the same
time someone who can be hurt.
YOUR USE OF GREEN IN YOUR PAINTINGS IS
ALSO DISTINCTIVE?
The two things about green that really get me going are
that, first, it’s this very seductive way of looking at the
world – a “through a wine bottle” kind of thing. But
also, it’s got these cartoony, villainous associations
I really like. Sort of toxic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
or absinthe, or Slytherin, or poisonous gas.
AND NOW CREAMY, EERIE YELLOWS SEEM TO BE
COMING TO THE FORE…
It’s a van Gogh palette of sickening colours! Anything
that’s nauseating is good, because sometimes, if I feel
like my paintings are verging on the quaint, I want to
undo it. I’m like: “No! Vomit!”
AT LONDON’S THE PERIMETER LAST YEAR, VIEWERS WILL
HAVE SEEN YOUR IMMIGR ATION MEN; FIGURES STANDING
WITH THEIR PERSONAL AFFAIRS LAID OUT ON A TABLE IN
PHOTOGRAPHS: © SALMAN TOOR COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK/FARZAD OWRANG (2)
FRONT OF THEM. IT’S A COMPOSITION YOU RETURN TO
AGAIN AND AGAIN. ARE THEY POLITICAL?
I was interested in having both a sense of outer perception
and an inner self-portrait. It’s about another threshold: that
feeling that I still have – coming from one part of the world
into this, the English-speaking world, or Europe, or whatever
– that those two things are sometimes at war with each
other. I guess I want the viewer to become the immigration
officer and decide who should be let in – and why.
APPARENTLY, YOUR “INTIMATE PAINTINGS ARE A SALVE
FOR OUR ISOLATED TIMES”. WOULD YOU AGREE?
No! I would never think of my paintings as salves.
I mean, a painting could be a salve for me, maybe,
when it’s not driving me insane. But: no!
FIGUR ATIVE PAINTING IS BACK IN FASHION, BUT
FOR A WHILE IT WASN’T. DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU
WERE AGAINST THE CURRENT?
Completely. When I graduated from Ohio and moved
to New York, there were only a few artists doing it. But
I guess, with the culture changing, from 9/11 all the way
to BLM and Gen Z, personal stories have become so
much more important. Also, with the rise of social media,
everyone has to speak for themselves. Those stories,
frankly, have changed the conversation in a way that
I never thought it could be changed. That is incredible.
INTERVIEW
Left: a self- WHY THE SONG TITLES THOUGH?
portrait of
Lightness. The works do have to do with queerness
the artist in his
studio. Below and immigration and race, and I just didn’t want
right: Man to drown them with heaviness.
with Flag,
2022. Bottom:
The Loved ANOTHER FEATURE OF YOUR WORK IS YOUR LOVE
Ones, 2022 OF THINGS – STOCKED DRESSING TABLES, BUCKLED
SHOES, CANDLESTICKS AND SO ON. ARE YOU
FOND OF ARTY CLUTTER?
I am an aspirational minimalist, and I fail at it, but I keep
trying. I’m a hoarder, but I like to organise. I actually cleaned
last night, and I’m in a very organised apartment right now
– it’s just giving me shivers of pleasure to walk around it.
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF A PAINTING HAS WORKED?
Ah – that’s simple. I have to refrain from taking a
picture of it when a session is over – which takes six to
seven hours, at least, because it takes me three hours
to just control myself. After that, if I’m into it, I’m like:
“I’m just gonna live here, I’m gonna die here in front
of it, this is my life! I have nothing else to do.” But
I don’t photograph it. When I come in the next day,
I sit in front of it, I open my eyes – and I know.
Salman Toor: New Paintings and Drawings is at
M Woods, Beijing, until 9 March
DO YOU THINK THIS CHANGE IS
HERE FOR GOOD?
TO DO WITH Oh, no, no, no, no…! It’s gonna go
QUEERNESS away. But I’m really enjoying it
AND RACE, BUT right now – thanks!
I DIDN’T WANT IS YOUR LATEST MUSEUM SHOW,
TO DROWN AT M WOODS, A CULMINATION?
THEM WITH It’s a continuation. I have been
HEAVINESS” thinking of doing things like
video, so we might see something
like that. And I am finishing
a graphic novel that I started with a friend seven years
ago. I like the medium of painting, but the stories in the
painting are equally important to me.
THE TITLE OF YOUR HIT SHOW AT THE WHITNEY STOLE
FROM A WHITNEY HOUSTON SONG. SHOULD ALL
EXHIBITION TITLES BE TAKEN FROM WHITNEY SONGS?
No! I had a show in New York called Time after Time,
and then I used a Sade title for my show at the Baltimore
Museum: No Ordinary Love. I’ve done Sade, I’ve done
Whitney… Maybe I should do Mariah? Actually, for the
Chinese show they wanted me to do another song title, and I
said: I’m done. So it’s just called New Paintings and Drawings.
FT.COM/HTSI 35
Lin-Manuel Miranda at the
Sugar Hill Children’s Museum
in Upper Manhattan with
Rachel Owens’ The
Hypogean Tip exhibition

36 FT.COM/HTSI
HEIGHTS
SOCIETY
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel
Miranda’s love of northern
Manhattan goes far beyond the stage
and screen. Christina Ohly Evans
joins him for a stroll
Photography by Stefan Ruiz

B
efore I was singing Hamilton
on Broadway, I was singing
‘Wait For It’ on the porch of
the Morris-Jumel Mansion
in Washington Heights,” says
Lin‑Manuel Miranda. “That was
one of the great eureka moments
with that show – I didn’t even
have to go downtown to
perform! [Vice president] Aaron
Burr lived right here! It was a
revelation. There were many
kids who first saw Hamilton here, outside – for free
– because that’s where I sang it.”
That genre-shattering musical, which explored
American presidential history through rap songs,
and its predecessor, In the Heights, went on to win
Miranda a Pulitzer prize, Grammy and Tony awards,
Kennedy Center Honors and a MacArthur “Genius grant”.
But it all began in Inwood, at the northern tip of
Manhattan, in a Puerto-Rican family home near where he
continues to live and work.
The concept of accessible art for all is why Miranda
is here today at the David Adjaye-designed Sugar Hill
Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling. He’s sharing
his excitement for this year’s Uptown Arts Stroll, the

FT.COM/HTSI 37
組紐

23 February – 11 June 2023

Book online at japanhouselondon.uk

#kumihimo

High Street Kensington

@JapanHouseLDN
 festival that began life as a one-day event in 2003 and
has grown into a month-long cultural celebration across
northern Manhattan’s West Harlem, Washington Heights
and Inwood neighbourhoods.
Throughout June, the blocks between West 135th
and West 220th streets come alive with local dancers,
visual artists, musicians and other creatives who open
their studios, screen films and perform concerts for
all ages. “As uptown artists, we often have to schlep
downtown to display our art,” says Miranda. “I travel
150 blocks south of where I live to see the musicals
I work on. So together with NoMAA [the Northern
Manhattan Arts Alliance], my family and I have worked
to find ways for local artists to display their work locally.
The Stroll has grown exponentially over the past two
decades to showcase the enormous talent uptown.”
“SONDHEIM WAS THE REAL
ENCOURAGER-IN-CHIEF. IT’S UP
TO OUR GENERATION NOW”
Raised by parents who were as passionate about
politics as theatre, Miranda was inspired early by
plays such as Jonathan Larson’s rock musical Rent as well
as by ’90s hip-hop and rap – styles he ultimately fused
with more traditional songwriting. Critical acclaim came
in 2008 with the Broadway premiere of In the Heights –
a joyful homage to his Latino community – and
then Hamilton, a radical tone shift on the often-staid
Great White Way. Songs for Moana and Encanto
transcended the Disney universe (and overwhelmed a
global audience of children via social media), while
roles in front of the camera, including in Mary Poppins
Returns, have garnered him Golden Globe nominations.
Next up are lyrics for John Kander and Fred Ebb’s New
S
York, New York and contributions to the soundtrack for
Rob Marshall’s reimagining of The Little Mermaid.
uccess has long been paired with
a commitment to support the
community – not only those of
Northern Manhattan and Puerto
Rico (particularly in the wake of
Hurricane Maria’s 2017 devastation
of the island) but also the arts
community more broadly. “I’m always
trying to make myself available to
people,” says Miranda. “And that’s
doubled since [the composer and
lyricist] Stephen Sondheim’s passing because he was
the real encourager-in-chief. It’s up to our generation
now. He always made space for me whenever I asked
– anything from ‘What do I do while I’m living in London
for eight months?’ to ‘How do I close the loop on this
song?’. I’m trying to do that for other artists now.”
Festival organiser NoMAA was founded on the belief
that an investment in the arts is a way to help the less
advantaged – “and the economic disadvantage is glaring
PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE NORTHERN MANHATTAN ARTS ALLIANCE.
here”, says Ellen Baxter, founder and executive director of
non-profit developer Broadway Housing Communities, of
the area where almost 40 per cent of residents are low-
income and 25 per cent fall below the poverty line. During
the Stroll they are given opportunities and access to the
SARA KRULWICH/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE
cultural riches of their community. “Children and families
engage with exhibitions, hands-on materials – easels, paint
– and work with our artists-in-residence,” Baxter explains
of the programming. “They are
drawn in by the Stroll and
build language and conceptual
thinking from there. When art
and culture are integrated [with
the community],” she says,
“creative intelligence is sparked.”
For the local community to
see the diversity of talent in
Miranda (right)
wrote In the
Heights (below)
when he was still
at college. Below
right: a playbill for
Hamilton. Bottom:
Brazilian Latin jazz
played at the Word
Up Community
Bookshop for
the 2021 Uptown
Arts Stroll
he continues, “will be held at the United
Palace theatre, smack-dab in the middle of
the Stroll on 11 June.” It’s not before
time, he believes, that “a global audience
will become aware of the iconic theatre and
what a jewel it is in our city”.
The event is a continuation of the Miranda
their own neighbourhood is also a catalyst family’s restoration and programming
to their own creativity, believes Miranda. commitment to the theatre. “Before I had
“I stumbled on success early with In Hamilton money, I went halfsies with the
the Heights,” he says of his earliest community to buy a new HD projector for the
production, which he wrote and first theatre,” says Miranda. “Now I can make the
staged while he was in college. “I had to go film series free [to watch] for the community.”
far and wide to cast it on campus, and the result was In 2021, he made sure the world premiere of In the Heights
that everyone had a friend in the show, which brought took place here. “[The film] opened the Tribeca Film
in an enormous audience. That principle of diversity Festival which is, famously, situated in Tribeca,” chuckles
winning, of diversity being your friend, and that the Miranda of the unexpected red-carpet location. “Having
more audiences your show speaks to, the more people that huge Warner Bros musical debut on West 175th Street
show up – that’s the same for the Stroll. There’s so felt like a win. We brought the neighbourhood to itself
much diversity of programming that the world comes and also introduced this place to a whole new audience.
out to see these artists and learn.” And it’s one that continues to use the theatre as a result.”
An echo can be felt in “A New Deal for Broadway”, “The Miranda family has always been deeply
the pledge taken in August 2021 by more than 50 committed to the cultural institutions of northern
producers, choreographers, executives and union leaders Manhattan and to supporting the immediate, largely
committing to inclusive casting, renaming theatres after immigrant community,” says Baxter. “They help to drive
black artists, and more BIPOC representation in creative interest – especially in young people – to become the next
teams. It followed a report by the Asian American leaders, poets, engineers, and to see past poverty.” NoMAA
Performers Action Coalition on the 2018/19 season executive director, Niria E Leyva-Gutiérrez, agrees: “The
that revealed, among other statistics, that 80.5 per cent of Mirandas are integral to the Stroll and they’ve never
all writers and 81.3 per cent of directors were white. veered from their support for the arts in this community.
Miranda’s mission to They’re our real partners, out at all the events.”
widen the focus from Miranda demurs: “This is how I can contribute: by
Broadway to the theatres and shining a light on the great art and artists uptown.” Of
creative spaces in the heart this year’s Stroll, he simply says, “I get to go to a great
of northern Manhattan’s neighbourhood event within walking
immigrant communities has distance of my home and I get to bring HOW TO GIVE IT
been especially rewarding. my kids – and so does the rest of the nomaanyc.
org/artstroll;
“The sweet spot of my neighbourhood.” History has its eyes nomaanyc.org/
donate
interests – the Tony Awards,” on here, for sure.
FT.COM/HTSI 39
 ALAÏA silk top, POA. GIORGIO
ARMANI silk-mix trousers,
£590. SCHIAPARELLI suede
and gilded brass shoes, POA.
Artwork: Mesh Installation,
2022, by Márton Nemes

Opposite page: MARNI wool

jumper, £855. BALENCIAGA
fleece sweatpants, £1,490.
CHANEL leather and crystal
strass slingback shoes, £2,525

40 FT.COM/HTSI
Paint the town

The vibrant works of Márton Nemes shape this season’s most arresting styles

Photography by Krisztián Éder Styling by Jasmine Hassett Model Aylah Peterson

FT.COM/HTSI 41
 ALEXANDER McQUEEN viscose
Ottoman-knit and raffia-fringed
dress, POA. Vintage shoes,
handpainted by John Hurley

42 FT.COM/HTSI
PROENZA SCHOULER wool
embellished coat, £7,721.
TIFFANY & CO gold and jade
Elsa Peretti Bean necklace,
£22,711. Tights and vintage
shoes, handpainted by John
Hurley. Artworks:
Meta Paintings 09, 2022, and
(behind) Mesh Installation,
2022, both by Márton Nemes

FT.COM/HTSI 43
LOEWE cotton velvet
peplum bustier dress,
POA. VICTORIA
BECKHAM silk fringe
bag, POA. PROENZA
SCHOULER leather
platform slides, £1,207.
FALKE cotton socks, £14.
Artwork (right, on wall):
The Amplifier, 2022, by
Márton Nemes

44 FT.COM/HTSI
 PRADA flower-embroidered
jersey top, £1,650, and wool top
(worn underneath), £890

FT.COM/HTSI 45
 HERMÈS silk twill dress, £5,500. Artwork: Moon Highway, 2022, by Liz Nielsen

46 FT.COM/HTSI
LOUIS VUITTON satin animal-print
asymmetric coat, £6,500, and
flared trousers, £4,200. COMME SI
Egyptian-cotton socks, £28. Vintage
shoes, handpainted by John Hurley.
Artwork: Mesh Installation, 2022, by
Márton Nemes

Model, Aylah Peterson at Premier.

Casting, Ben Grimes at Drive
Represents. Hair, Tamas Tuzes at
L’Atelier. Make-up, Ren Nobuko
Huelster at Bridge. Photographer’s
assistants, John Temones and Tony
Jarum. Stylist’s assistant, Paget
Millard. Hair assistant, D’Angelo
Alston. Production, May Lin Le Goff
for Aries Rising Projects. Artworks
featured are part of Amplifier, by
Márton Nemes, at Elijah Wheat
Showroom and Studio of Liz
Nielsen, New York, until 19 March.
Special thanks to Vivid Kid

FT.COM/HTSI 47
 WELCOME TO MARIN

Work by painter Daisy

Sheff at her Inverness
studio. Right: Point
Reyes National
Seashore. Above far
right: Anthony Meier at
his gallery in Mill Valley

48 FT.COM/HTSI
N COUNTY

Once the locus of midcentury

radicalism, this quiet California
enclave has a brand-new buzz.
Maria Shollenbarger reports

Photography by Rich Stapleton

O
n 31 January, an
exhibition called In the
Shadow of Mt Tam
opened at Anthony
Meier gallery in Mill
Valley, just across the
Golden Gate Bridge
from San Francisco. It
showcases a group of
international artists
who all, for one reason
or another, chose to live in Marin County between the
’40s and the ’70s. Some are dead, some living; all are
eminent art-world names. Gordon Onslow Ford, the
English surrealist; the Beirut-born painter Etel Adnan;
Bruce Nauman; Jay DeFeo, who achieved renown in the
seminal 1959 MoMA show Sixteen Americans. Meier’s
show considers their work and that of 11 others in a
specific context – a kinetic period in 20th-century
American culture, against a unique natural landscape
that embedded itself in their way of creating.
The show takes its name from nearby Mount
Tamalpais, called Mount Tam by locals. Hiking paths
weave across its flanks, leading over to the wind-bullied
sands of Stinson Beach or down through the cool primeval
silence of Muir Woods. Coyotes, mountain lions and the

FT.COM/HTSI 49

endangered California condor are encountered in its
remoter reaches. Its 2,600ft peak is too far south to be the
actual geographical centre of the county, which stretches
up to Sonoma. But no one seems to contest Mount Tam’s
status as Marin’s spiritual centre. To the indigenous Coast
Miwok people, from whose language the name támal pájis
derives, it was sacred. Intense. Energetic. Magnetic.
Magic. They’re the kind of words locals readily throw out
when they describe it, which probably says as much about
the locals as it does the land.
The show is Meier’s first in his new gallery space, him
recently having relocated to Marin from San Francisco’s
Pacific Heights after nearly three decades. The president
of the Art Dealers Association of America and a regular
on the international fair circuit, Meier saw an opportunity
to decamp to Mill Valley’s old Studebaker showroom
when it came up for lease. While it offers more than twice
the square footage of his former space, the move “was a
quality-of-life issue, pure and simple”, he tells me over
coffee at The Depot Café & Bookstore on Throckmorton
Avenue, the city’s high street. “It’s really beautiful here;
life is really good. The show, and a lot of the talent in it,
A
is testimony to how a landscape can really take on a
life in someone’s consciousness.”
rtists of all stripes are still
trading urban life for
Marin’s wide vistas and
locals-only beaches. The
county’s progressive
liberalism has always
played a role in its allure, as
has the legacy of the 20th-
century counterculture that
proliferated across the Bay
Area. When not ensconced
at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and other Beat luminaries would
roam or write on Mount Tam’s slopes. The Grateful Dead’s
Bob Weir still lives (and sometimes gigs) in Marin. Poet
communities have thrived in the coastal towns of western
Marin since the ’60s; countless acclaimed novelists, from
Anne Lamott to Dave Eggers, have called it home.
“The Bay Area does have this incredible legacy of
being a wild place of expression, of cultural rebellion,”
says artist Zio Ziegler, when we meet at his studio high up
a residential Mill Valley road. Ziegler, 35, was raised in
the city by journalist parents who later founded Banana
Republic. While he avoids the gentrification conversation,
he admits “having friends with good jobs, who can’t live
here”. He spent a year in New York and travelled to Europe
50 FT.COM/HTSI
“CONNECTION WITH
THE LAND LOOSENS
ALL THE BOLTS
THAT SOCIETY AND
FORMAL TRAINING
TIGHTENED”
for work after design school; his art, influenced by mural
traditions, notably the urban-folkloric ones of San
Francisco, garnered him a following among collectors
and institutions. Last year, Paris-based dealer Almine
Rech began representing him worldwide.
He left LA in 2019 to move home to this slightly
ramshackle bungalow, not far from a trailhead that
leads up onto Mount Tam. Barely a day goes by that he
doesn’t go for a long mountain-bike ride on it. “Removing
context altogether is an interesting thought experiment
from an art-making point of view,” Ziegler says. Alone on
the mountain, “the connection with the land, that
grounding, loosens all of the bolts that society and cities
and formal training tightened. I see more clearly all the
vicissitudes of [those things] against what I guess I’d call
the low frequency of this place.
“Here, I’m more readily aware of and focused on a tree
that has fallen on the mountain than I am on what the new
trend in painting is on the Lower East Side [of Manhattan].”
Nature as psychic alembic: you hear variations on this
theme from a lot of people in Marin, whether artist,
curator, mechanic or bartender. Nature is the Marin
plumb line. If you Waze your route carefully, a half-hour’s
drive from San Francisco’s Union Square can get you
onto near‑empty two-lane roads that lead into miles of
low, open, rolling hills and shadowy forest. Along the
coast, cypresses bend backward and wild grass lies
flat, supplicants to the offshore wind that presides here
at the westernmost edge of the North American
continent. The light is extraordinarily changeable: one
day hard as diamonds, exquisitely pure; the next thick
with fog you could almost grab handfuls of. Sometimes
both, in the space of two hours.
In Point Reyes Station you’ll find the Cowgirl
Creamery, the West Coast’s favourite cult cheesemonger,
and Point Reyes Books, which the San Francisco
Chronicle called “the platonic ideal of a modern indie
bookstore”. Mariah Nielson, the daughter of the late artist
JB Blunk (whose work is in Meier’s exhibition), was
born and raised in the town of Inverness, about five
miles away. After more than 20 years in San Francisco
and London, she moved back to Inverness in 2022 to
focus on her father’s estate. In June 2021, she had opened
a gallery, Blunk Space, in an old warehouse complex in
the centre of Point Reyes Station. One of its most recent
shows was of auction-calibre works by her father and
Gordon Onslow Ford – friends who’d been introduced to
each other by Japanese-American sculptor Isamu
Noguchi, which is pretty much peak Marin.
Gallerist Mariah Nielson at
Lagunitas Creek. Left:
Untitled, 1999, by Etel
Adnan. Top left: artist
Zio Ziegler on Mount
Tamalpais’ Bolinas Ridge
FT.COM/HTSI 51
How to spend it in
Marin County
MARIA SHOLLENBARGER ON WHERE
TO EAT, DRINK AND EXPLORE
WALK, HIKE, BIKE
VISITMARIN.ORG and ALLTR AILS.COM
have comprehensive guides to hiking, biking,
horses, kayaking and beaches. A full list of
Marin’s state parks, and what to do in them,
can be found at parks.marincounty.org.
HOTELS
CAVALLO POINT This Fort Baker hotel has
a waterside location in the Golden Gate
National Recreation Area and prime views.
Angle for one of the rooms in the former
officers’ quarters, with the good period
details. From $550, cavallopoint.com
OLEMA HOUSE Between Bolinas and Point
Reyes Station on Highway 1, in the town
of the same name, this is an ideal base for
exploring western Marin. The rooms in the
main hotel are a warm, contemporary
style; or you can live the cabin life in its
Casa Olema or Creekside Cottages.
olemahouse.com, from $228
CULTURE
HEADLANDS CENTER FOR THE ARTS This
non-profit studio and exhibition space in the
hills due west of the Golden Gate was
founded in 1984 by a group of San Francisco
artists in old barracks that were part of Fort
Barry, a decommissioned military base that is
now inside a national park. Today it’s a
thriving part of the Bay Area arts community,
visited by curators from across the country
and an apotheosis of Marin culture. The
fellows whose residencies it underwrites
regularly exhibit; ask to get a look at its
rather amazing canteen — the old military
mess hall, spectacularly restored in 1989 by
the visual artist Ann Hamilton.
MARINMOCA The county’s regional
contemporary art gallery and studio space,
has an ambitious new directorship: witness
the dynamic show opening next month of
works by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon,
whose graphics were part of the renovation
of Sonoma’s storied Sea Ranch Lodge
52 FT.COM/HTSI
The MARIN COUNTY CIVIC CENTER is a
Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, completed
in 1962. It’s right off the 101 freeway, and well
signed, so worth a drive-by wherever you’re
headed. 3501 Civic Center Drive
BOLINAS MUSEUM , 48 Wharf Road;
bolinasmuseum.org
EATING AND DRINKING
MAMAHUHU, MILL VALLEY San Francisco
chef Brandon Jew’s Mamahuhu has been
replicated in Mill Valley, in a space kitted out
in diner-esque wood laminate and bright
lights. Delicious, and great value for money;
the spice-averse should proceed with
caution. 173 Throckmorton Ave;
eatmamahuhu.com
BOVINE BAKERY, POINT REYES STATION
The western Marin destination for both
French patisserie and cinnamon sticky buns
the size of dinner plates. 11315 Shoreline
Highway; bovinebakeryptreyes.com
ELEVEN WHARF, BOLINAS A sweet women-
owned natural wine bar and shop in a little
house on Bolinas’s main drag, with some
delicious small plates. They do pizza too.
11 Wharf Road; 11wharfroad.com
SMILEY’S, BOLINAS Following a restoration
in 2020, one of the West Coast’s oldest
publican spots is serving up a bit less
locals-only froideur. Go for tacos that
acquit themselves admirably and one of the
super-obscure NorCal IPAs. 41 Wharf Road;
smileyssaloon.com
SOL FOOD It doesn’t look like much, but this
south-Marin stalwart is considered the best
Puerto Rican food in the Bay Area. The OG
is in San Rafael, but there’s an outpost in
Mill Valley as well. 903 Lincoln Avenue, San
Rafael; 401 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley;
solfoodrestaurant.com
PIZZERIA PICCO, LARKSPUR A county-wide
favourite in the centre of long-since-
gentrified Larkspur, its biscuit-crisp crusts
and very California toppings (shishito
peppers, hen of the woods mushrooms, kale,
naturally) are worth the drive from anywhere
in Marin. 316 Magnolia Ave; pizzeriapicco.com
HOG ISLAND OYSTER CO, MARSHALL All the
way up Highway 1 in Marshall, on Tomales
Bay, is this 40-year-old purveyor, where you
call ahead to sit outside at wood tables and
feast on bivalves hauled straight from the
bay you’re looking at, shucked and served
icy cold with lemon or barbecued in a
smoky sauce. 20215 Shoreline Highway;
hogislandoysters.com
“EVERYTHING IS ALIVE, IN A VERY
MAGICAL WAY. EVERYTHING IS
WATCHING YOU”

“When I meet people who grew up here, I think, ‘You

have no idea how lucky you are,’” says Barry McGee. He’s
in Bolinas, which is a 20-minute drive south of Point Reyes
on Highway 1. In his late teens and early 20s, McGee made
an international name for himself as a graffiti artist (when
I lived in San Francisco’s Mission District in the early ’90s
he was a revered figure known by his tag, Twist). Within 10
years of starting out he was among the artists associated
with the Mission School urban-realist movement, and
creating wall-sized installations. Today he’s represented
by Cheim & Read in New York; of all the artists living and
working here, he’s arguably the most famous.
Bolinas, population 1,400, has always been a self-
regulating community. Though it gets its fair share of
tourists, not all the locals are welcoming, and far less
so to the cashed-up city denizens who’ve inflated the
housing market enormously in the past decade. The road
sign indicating the turn-off from Highway 1 regularly
gets stolen, and if you venture into the bar at Smiley’s
(established 1851), the old-time saloon on Wharf Road,
the intensity of the collective appraisal can be, to borrow
from the local parlance, a little gnarly. “It’s like a secret
Top left: Bolinas society, almost. People dodge a lot of questions,”
Ridge. Far left:
Mari Robles outside McGee half-jokes (though later he writes in an email: “It
Headlands Center for was so lovely chatting with you about this place I’m never
the Arts in Sausalito.
Left: Daisy Sheff (left)
supposed to talk about!”). The town is equal parts
and Karen Barbour quaint and shambolic, with unchecked gardens and
with dog Blinky in wood houses bleached silver by salt and sun. It’s
their Inverness studio.
Above: Barry McGee surrounded by water on three sides, some of which is the
on Agate Beach huge, wildlife-rich Bolinas Lagoon.

FT.COM/HTSI 53
 Advertisement Feature

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 “THE FOG IS A BEING;
THE WIND IS A
PERSONALITY”

McGee grew up across the bridge in south San

Francisco, and only really discovered Marin in adulthood.
He surfed the coast a few times, “and I just couldn’t
fathom how something like this could exist so close to the
city – and it wasn’t corrupted; it was still pristine”.
We talk about nature: the wind (“scary”), the ocean
(“not something I’m into conquering”), and the awe he
still feels about “how close to it all” his life in Marin is.
“For an artist, that idea and that space have enormous
value. I work outside all day here. I feel free enough that I
can draw, you know, plants. Anything can inspire me.” I
tell him I’ve just spent a morning with Daisy Sheff at her
parents’ house over in Inverness. Sheff, 26, is also a
painter; she and McGee are friendly, and occasionally
surf together. Over coffee she’d described to me how, the
day before, a raft of sea lions had got unusually close to
the line-up, and one had repeatedly attempted to hop
onto her board. (When I asked her offhand which
beach she and McGee surf, she had looked momentarily
stricken, then laughed nervously. “Oh, I can’t really…
Barry would kill me if that made it into print!”
In spring 2021, Sheff had her first solo show at New
York’s White Columns gallery; she’s now represented by
Clearing, in Los Angeles, and the gallery took her work to
Art Basel Miami in December. (“Daisy’s got some nice
buzz and traction right now,” Tony Meier had said when
we met.) But she elected to move home to Marin a few
years ago from LA, and shares a wonky barn-studio up at
the top of the family property with her mother, Karen
Barbour – also an artist, who was born and raised in
Marin. “Every time you come back – we call going to

F
San Francisco ‘going over the hill’ – you are just struck
by how beautiful it is,” she says.

olkloric notions make sense up here.

“I feel like everything is alive, in a
very magical way. Everything is
watching you,” says Clare Rojas, another
Mission School artist who made her
name in San Francisco and who has
lived part-time in western Marin for 18
years. “The fog is a being; the wind is
a personality, a force of nature. The
PHOTOGRAPHS: ANTHONY MEIER GALLERY. PHILIP MAISEL. COURTESY CLARE ROJAS AND JESSICA SILVERMAN, SAN FRANCISCO

trees are personalities, too. You get to

have relationships with crows.” Rojas –
whose haunting work, often imbued with
mythological themes, is found in the permanent collections
of New York’s MoMA and the Hammer Museum in Los
Angeles – is clearly comfortable with California woo-woo,
though she hails originally from Ohio. “It’s beautiful there
too, but a different beauty. Marin is beauty that feels like it’s
on steroids. I am mixing colours in my head all the time
here,” she says. “The hills at certain times of day just stop
me, and all I can think is, ‘How would I capture that? What
is that colour?’ It can be an exhausting place, in an
exhilarating way,” she concludes. “If that makes sense.”
It does, once you’ve spent time here. But Marin,
inevitably, is moving with the times. Mankas, a wildly
wacky old lodge whose restaurant was long a cult
destination, is shortly to re-open after an acquisition and
major renovation by San Francisco designer Ken Fulk – a
man whose style can be fairly characterised, without
detracting from it at all, as the anti-Marin. Buzzy San
Francisco chefs such as Brandon Jew are migrating up
and over the bridge to open new venues, bringing
their well‑heeled clientele with them. Even Bolinas is
raising its game, with a dynamic art advisor, Louisa Gloger,
recently installed as executive director at its tiny
museum and committed to bringing city-calibre
programming to its saltbox dimensions.
The changes illustrate a newer reality in Marin: the
enormous wealth generated by Big Tech, which has
Black-tailed deer in
Point Reyes National
Seashore. Below right:
Tired of thinking, 2021,
by Clare Rojas
bestowed another identity on the county – that of being
consistently among the 10 richest in the entire United
States. While its southern towns have always been
comfortable left-leaning enclaves, in 2022 the average
house price soared to $2.1mn. Mill Valley today feels a lot
like the lush San Francisco suburb it has to a degree become
(albeit one with equal-opportunity cannabinoid sales).
But the landscape won’t change. Nor, once embedded,
is it likely to leave you. Years after Etel Adnan returned to
Paris to live, and up until her death at 91, she continued to
paint from memory the view of Mount Tam from her
Sausalito studio. “Once I was asked in front of a television
camera: ‘Who is the most important person you ever
met?’” she wrote in 1986. “I remember answering: ‘A
mountain.’ I thus discovered that Tamalpais was at the
very center of my being.” McGee’s take is more prosaic: “I
feel a little bit cheated that I didn’t get to know about how
cool this place is a lot sooner.”
In the Shadow of Mt Tam is showing at Anthony Meier
gallery, 21 Throckmorton Avenue, Mill Valley, until 17 March

FT.COM/HTSI 55
 Left: Untitled, 2006, by Aaron Curry
stands outside the château. Below:
Pablo Picasso with dog Bob, 1931-32

The spirit
of Boisgeloup Fifty years after Picasso’s death, Gilles Khoury visits the Normandy château and
Photography by Jérôme Galland

family home that fired the master’s fecund imagination

I
n 2016, the Musée Picasso-Paris hosted the
exhibition Picasso. Sculptures. A recurrent
detail appeared throughout the exhibition – a
château called Boisgeloup, which appeared on
labels under several plasters of Marie-Thérèse
Walter, Picasso’s mistress, notably the Tête de
some of which were brought to Paris to protect them at
the dawn of the second world war) during his many
journeys between Paris and Normandy.
“My grandfather was looking for a place to develop
and delve deeper into his experiments with sculptures,”
says Ruiz-Picasso as we drive through the oak gates to

PHOTOGRAPH: © ARCHIVES OLGA RUIZ-PICASSO, FUNDACIÓN ALMINE Y BERNARD RUIZ-PICASSO, MADRID

Above: a Garouste & Bonetti
mirror in the Château de
Boisgeloup. Far right: Bernard
Ruiz-Picasso and Almine Rech
in the sitting room
femme (1931-32) and Buste de femme (1931).
I was intrigued. It was at this 18th-century
château in Normandy that Picasso threw
himself into sculpture, a form of expression for
the artist that – surprisingly – remains one of the least
celebrated parts of his legacy.
In the 50th year since the death of the Spanish artist,
I’m visiting Château de Boisgeloup. I take the train from
Saint-Lazare in Paris to the town of Gisors, about 45
miles north-west of the capital, where I find Bernard
Ruiz-Picasso – grandson of Pablo Picasso and Olga
Khokhlova, and son of Paulo – waiting for me, all geared
up with his felt hat, muddy leather boots and a khaki
windbreaker that keeps out the freezing cold.
Behind him is the shiny black Hispano-Suiza H6B that
Picasso acquired in 1930 and which his grandson now uses
to dart around. Picasso always refused to drive himself, for
fear of “ruining” his hands, as he told artist Georges
Braque, as recounted by art historian John Richardson in
Un Soir à Boisgeloup (2013). So while the car interiors –
lacquered venous wood, cream wool seats that feel as
though you’re lounging in a salon, and giant metal steering
wheel – have been refurbished, my passenger seat is still
the spot where Picasso sat (or, indeed, his sculptures –
Château de Boisgeloup. “He had already been to
Fontainebleau, south-east of Paris, in 1921, but he had
more knowledge of the Normandy region, which had
more culture back then, with its many poets and artists
– such as Claude Monet, who lived at Giverny. It was
not too far from Paris and, with its openings onto the
countryside, and its former stables, which offered the
possibility of a studio on the ground floor, seemed
perfect.” Picasso bought the property in June 1930 and
arrived soon after with Olga and a nine-year-old Paulo.
The three-storey château, with its terracotta tiled
roof and blond stones, is surrounded by a sumptuous 30-
acre park all bathed in Normandy’s crisp light. Facing it is
a 14th-century chapel, a mix of gothic accents and 19th-
century stained glass. And next to that, an enfilade of
stables, among which sits Picasso’s former sculpture
atelier: the old wooden ladder he used to reach the top of
his monumental sculptures is still visible inside.
“The house was built out of the stones of a castle that
burned down in the 18th century,” says Ruiz-Picasso’s
wife, the gallerist Almine Rech. “It was not equipped with
electricity or heating, but Picasso was so eager to invest
in the place that he moved in. Olga sought help from her
friend Coco Chanel for the furniture and interiors,” she

56 FT.COM/HTSI
FT.COM/HTSI 57
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 continues, showing me some furnishings – wicker chairs
and some Louis XVI pieces – that are still here. From
1930 to 1935, Boisgeloup was a primary place of creativity.
“When he was not in his studio, Picasso would host art
dealers from Paris, and friends such as the artists Georges
Braque, Élie Lascaux and Giacometti. And when Olga was in
Paris, his mistress Marie-Thérèse would visit Boisgeloup.”
“I saw him with the eyes of a child. He always had
famous people visiting, talking about serious matters,”
recalls Bernard, who has particular memories of mopping
his grandfather’s brow with a cold cloth during warm
summers. When Picasso passed away in 1973, Bernard’s
father, Paulo, inherited the estate. But just two years later,
Paulo died, leaving Bernard, then only 14, at the helm.
It took some time for Bernard to understand its
significance, even though it was where he had spent happy
holidays with his family. “It was only many years
after his death that I realised that I was born amid a kind
of mythology,” he says. “Only then did I want to understand
what Picasso represented, and what he represented
within a complex history.” In 2002, he and his wife
founded the Fundación
Almine y Bernard Ruiz-
Picasso (FABA) as they
continued the restoration
of the château.
On the ground floor is
a wooden-beamed kitchen
traversed by light (from
which now comes the
smell of cheese, leeks with
vinaigrette, and omelettes
that are being prepared for
us); the dining room, with
its clementine walls and
chairs upholstered in blue
and orange, mimicking the hues of the lozenge shapes in
the carpet; and the grand yet sparse living room, where
Picasso’s 1921 painting Trois femmes à la Fontaine used to
hang. These rooms were all lightly refurbished in the
early 2000s with the help of designers Élisabeth Garouste
and Mattia Bonetti. Upstairs are the bedrooms, off
corridors with red tomettes floors. Alongside a monumental
tapestry by Picasso, based on his 1938 Femmes à leur
toilette, artworks by Julian Schnabel, Franz West, Jacques
Villeglé, George Condo and Miquel Barceló adorn the house
that Ruiz-Picasso and Rech use as their getaway from Paris
– somewhere they escape to with their two children and
D
Almine’s two children from a previous marriage.
PHOTOGRAPHS: ARCHIVES OLGA RUIZ-PICASSO. FUNDACIÓN ALMINE Y BERNARD RUIZ-PICASSO, MADRID. FABA PHOTO/MARC DOMAGE
uring the restorations, “so many
painting tools and musical
instruments belonging to Picasso
were found in the attic,” Ruiz-
Picasso tells me. The house still
acts as a treasure box holding
the artist’s secrets from this
period. In Olga’s bedroom on
the ground floor, and, above it,
Picasso’s painting studio, you
can sense their former owners; the floors of the latter are
still constellated with the artist’s paint. It was here that
Picasso drew his erotic and whimsical oil on canvas Le
Rêve in 1932; here too he drew the view of the chapel and
the dovecote wrapped under a rainbow. Today, as we peer
through the window, the scene remains the same.
In 2012, there was a shift of gear for the foundation. “As
we were spending more and more time in this house, Almine
thought this place – at the least the studio – deserved to
be opened to the public,” recounts Ruiz-Picasso. Though
“initially resistant”, he was persuaded, and in October,
FABA organised the first contemporary art exhibition at
Boisgeloup, Un Soir à Boisgeloup, showing sculptures by
Franz West, Cy Twombly and David Smith – set up in
conversation with Picasso’s Head of a Warrior (1933). Since
then there have been exhibitions almost every year.
FABA works along four pillars. “We study and
preserve Picasso’s work; we organise exhibitions, and we
support contemporary artists – because Picasso himself
Right: Torso I, 1983, by Per
Kirkeby stands in front of
A line drawn from the first
star at dusk to the last
star at dawn, 1995, by
Laurence Weiner.
Below: the sculpture atelier
at Boisgeloup in 1931.
Below centre: Boisgeloup
sous la pluie, et arc-en-ciel,
1932, by Pablo Picasso.
Bottom right: Les femmes
à leur toilette, 1970, by
Pablo Picasso, hanging
in the château
THE HOUSE STILL ACTS AS
A TREASURE BOX HOLDING THE
ARTIST’S SECRETS
in the Musée Picasso-Paris, to a symposium on “Picasso in
the 21st century” at Unesco’s Paris HQ in December. Each
exhibition will tackle a different facet of the Spanish
master. His relationship to prehistory is explored in an
exhibition recently unveiled at the Musée de l’Homme.
And while the Musée Picasso in Antibes will dedicate a
show to the last years of his life – Picasso 1969-1972. La fin
du début (opening 8 April) – Young Picasso in Paris will be
hosted by the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New
York, opening 12 May. Some of these events will question
always backed other artists,” says Ruiz-Picasso. As well nuances of Pablo Picasso’s work, such as a collaborative
as shows at Boisgeloup, FABA also organises exhibitions exhibition with the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby
elsewhere: one show pairing Picasso’s work with that of that is opening at the Brooklyn Museum on 2 June.
Richard Prince was hosted at the Museo Picasso Málaga. Pablo Picasso has never felt so immortal, so eternal,
The grounds of Boisgeloup are also filled with as he does in this anniversary year. “Our mission is
permanent installations of contemporary art pieces. In the certainly to safeguard my grandfather’s legacy,” concludes
cour is a bronze sculpture by Per Kirkeby, while atop a small Ruiz‑Picasso, in unspoken agreement with his wife. “But
hill in the park, Triangular Solid inside Triangular Solid also to pursue his adventure and place him at the
(2002) by Dan Graham reflects the château back at itself. A heart of the 21st century.”
1995 installation by American artist Lawrence Weiner on
the façade of the stable reads, in thick blue paint: “A line
drawn from the first star at dusk to the last star at dawn.”
The sentence seems to have been crafted for this place that
weaves the past with the present, and where the legacy of
Picasso is so carefully watched over that one imagines the
artist’s spirit still present throughout its many rooms.
“We started FABA because we realised, over time, that
we had many show ideas, and were lending art to
exhibitions and museums as personal loans, sometimes
almost 500 a year. Structuring all of those activities under
the umbrella of a foundation, a non-commercial entity,
made perfect sense – now all the loans from the Picasso
collection go through FABA,” says Rech. This year, the role
of FABA has become even more fundamental. No fewer
than 50 shows and events will commemorate Picasso’s art,
from a Paul Smith-curated exhibition of the artist’s objets
FT.COM/HTSI 59
FOOD & DRINK
W
Couscous
pancakes
• Place 1⁄4 cup of couscous
in pan with 1⁄2 cup boiling
water. Cover and let sit for
about 10 minutes.
• Beat two eggs well. Add
one cup of yoghurt and
continue beating. Add
two heaping tablespoons
of ricotta, beat. Add one
teaspoon baking soda,
one teaspoon baking
powder and a pinch of
salt. Then add couscous,
one tablespoon of
cornmeal (if you have it),
and a heaping 1⁄4 cup of
flour. Beat just until
mixed. (Optional: stir in
blueberries, raspberries,
etc.) Cook on griddle.
• You can substitute
leftover rice for couscous.
• If you beat the egg
whites separately and
fold them in at the
end, the pancakes are
light and fluffy.
ARAGOSTA
SOUP TUREEN,
1980, BY BETTY
WOODMAN
60 FT.COM/HTSI
Left:
Dialogue of
the Dresses
(Antella Still
Life), 2000,
by George
Woodman.
Right: The
Kitchen
Table, 2014,
by Betty
Woodman.
Below left:
Betty’s
pancakes,
Antella, Italy,
c2010
EATING
Platter artists
Cooking made Betty Woodman
(and her husband) better
creatives, as a new exhibition
attests. By Ajesh Patalay
hen artist Betty Woodman died in Betty set up a studio in the farmhouse and began Cucumber soup
2018 aged 87, a booklet was handed experimenting with earthenware (a more sculptural
(from Julia Child via Barbara
out at her memorial containing some medium than her usual stoneware). She and George also Karoff & Min’s Kitchen)
of her most treasured recipes. It was created work for a domestic setting, including splashback
an apt tribute to an artist who started tiles for the kitchen. Over the years, Betty’s ceramics Serves 6–8
2 large cucumbers,
off making dinner sets and decorative became increasingly sculptural – her Aragosta Soup Tureen coarsely chopped
pottery, became known for pushing the boundaries of (1980) is considered a transitional work that could still 2 small onions,
ceramics and was also an accomplished cook. Together technically be used. But in daily life at Antella, her creations coarselychopped
1 quart – or more – chicken
with her artist husband George, who died in 2017, she was continued to serve a purpose. Flowers were arranged in broth Pinch of dill weed
remembered in the foreword as a naturally gracious host her vases and food eaten off her plates.
for whom “preparing meals for family and friends and Meals were, in fact, essential to their daily working • Cook for 20 minutes or until
sharing them on a beautifully adorned table remained ritual. Days at Antella began with breakfast in the nook cucumbers are soft. Put
through food mill and cool.
a lifelong creative act and fundamental pleasure”. – a small circular space on the side of the
• Stir in 1 cup of sour cream.
One of the recipes included was for the couscous ART AND LIFE building that used to be a brick oven. Its • Serve hot or cold –
pancakes Betty made for brunch at her apartment in MERGED AT dome had been removed and a round especially good cold.
New York when the curator of the Metropolitan THEIR TUSCAN table installed with pillows. Having
Museum came to offer her a retrospective in 2006, FARMHOUSE breakfast there was, recalls curator
making her the first living female artist to receive that Katarina Jerinic of the Woodman Family
honour. There were also recipes for chermoula for fish, Foundation, “a well-orchestrated performance”. There was
poisson à la marocaine, Turkish eggplant “ratatouille” and macedonia di frutta (Italian fruit salad) with ricotta or
cucumber soup, a favourite of her son Charles, now an yoghurt (made by George), plus bread (sometimes also
electronic artist. He remembers eating it with walnuts made by George) and jams (made by Betty using fruit from
(“cool and inviting on a hot summer’s day”) at their the farm). A toaster was brought out on an extension lead.
farmhouse in Antella near Florence, where the Woodmans And Betty whipped up cappuccinos at the table. Guests
escaped for months at a time from their homes in Boulder, looked out on views of the Duomo in Florence.
Colorado, and, later, New York. Their daughter Francesca, a After breakfast, Betty and George retreated to their
photographer whose posthumous fame has near eclipsed studios but they always broke for lunch, tea (usually cake
that of her parents (she died by suicide in 1981 aged 22), or ice cream from the local gelateria) and dinner, which
would also join them and later visited on her own; a took place on the terrace around 9pm, “which was not very
number of her haunting photographs were taken at Antella. American”, notes Jerinic. Stopping what they were doing and
Described by George as an “artist residency for two”,
the small stone farmhouse in the Tuscan hills was a place Above right: Betty
where art and life (and food especially) merged. The same Woodman’s Sèvres
porcelain cups and
could be said of Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and saucers and a
Duncan Grant at Charleston in Sussex, where the dining ceramic tile by
George Woodman
table and conversations around it were as important to the on the breakfast
ethos as any work produced in the studio. It is fitting, then, table at Antella, 2016.
that Charleston will play host next month to the first UK Right: the Woodmans
and guests in the
exhibition dedicated to Betty and George and the impact breakfast nook at
that life at Antella had on their work. Antella, c1970
Long before they bought the farmhouse in Antella in
1968, Italy had a profound effect. On visits from the ’50s
onwards, Betty took inspiration from Etruscan pots and
George, whose early output consisted mainly of paintings,
drew on Italian landscapes and mosaics. In Antella,

PIAZZA SAN FRANCESCO
DI PAOLA, 1965, BY
GEORGE WOODMAN
sitting down to a meal was important not
just for the food or conversation, but also for
the aesthetic experience. Under Betty’s
direction, the tables became colourful still
lifes. “I took for granted that all the platters
should be arranged like works of art and
the tablecloths curated,” says Charles.
OF COURSE, THERE WAS also amazing
produce to eat, including fruit and
vegetables from the garden. These included
lemons, apricots, pears, figs and various
types of tomatoes. “I remember one August
visit, there was a huge bounty of tomatoes,
five or six varieties,” Jerinic says. “Betty
sliced them up, put them on different
platters and we had to decide which were
the best.” These tomatoes were dressed in
fruity, peppery olive oil made using olives
PHOTOGRAPHS: © BRIGID M C CAFFREY. COURTESY WOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION AND CHARLESTON. WOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION ARCHIVE. © WOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION/DACS,
from their own grove. Most years, Betty
and George returned to the US before the
harvest. “So a few weeks after their return,”
LONDON PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF WOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION AND CHARLESTON. © WOODMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION/DACS, LONDON. JOHN SHORT. QUENTIN BLAKE
Jerinic recalls, “a big shipment would arrive
filled with apricot jam, olive oil and dried
mint, because they also grew mint, which
made the most incredible tea.”
While Betty took the lead in the
kitchen, George was no slouch. At one
point the Woodmans installed a grill on
the terrace – not a charcoal grill but one
fired by propane, which “was considered
very wild and experimental in Italy”,
Charles recalls. George would grill meat,
shrimp and chicken.
Perhaps the most obvious influence of
meals at Antella on Betty’s work can be
found in The Kitchen Table (2014), an
installation that mimics the arrangement of
dishes on a table. It was part of a group of
works that marked her continued interest
in the domestic. “The domestic object is
something I have always been in love with,”
she said in 2017, “but while the older works
were actual teapots, boilers, or casseroles,
my new works are paintings
that incorporate teapots or casseroles as
illusions of a subject matter.”
Betty always fought against the
hierarchies that separated craft from art and
never disavowed the kitchen table as a nexus
of creativity. “I was not a militant feminist,”
she remarked, “but the issues raised by my
work were. For me, it was not just about
making the work – it was about using it. It
was as much about putting the food on the
table in those dishes as it was about making
the dishes.” Being a good cook, she also
noted, made her a better artist.
Betty Woodman and George Woodman
is at Charleston, East Sussex, 25 March to
10 September, charleston.org.uk
@ajesh34
DRINKING
TheScotch play
A novel whisky collaboration finds
Quentin Blake doing Shakespeare – with
birds. By Alice Lascelles
S
ir Quentin Blake turned 90 in December,
but the renowned illustrator continues to
work at a prodigious rate. This month, he is
making his first foray into Scotch, with a
series of labels specially drawn for “Macbeth”,
a collection of 42 whiskies inspired by
Shakespeare’s tragedy. Each of the whiskies has been
chosen as a liquid “likeness” to a character in the play; each “The idea appealed to me immediately,” says Blake,
bottle in the series is also illustrated with a nib-and-ink
portrait of that character by Blake.
The setting for them may be unfamiliar, but the
characters leap off the page with a messy energy, emotion
and humour that’s impossible to mistake. The crow-like
armour bearer Seyton (played by a coastal 12yo Ardmore,
with a flinty, floral edge) wrestles with a comical haul
of weaponry, while a corpulent First Murderer (played “I’VE ALWAYS
by a splendidly feral 18yo island single malt) looms
with a dagger behind his back; the First Witch
(an infernally peaty 19yo Islay malt) flings her arms
in the air in an evil rapture; while King Duncan
(a distinguished 56yo, single-cask Glen Grant) looks
on, as statuesque as a heron, in indigo robes.
Sourced by Elixir Distillers, and accompanied by
lyrical notes by writer Dave Broom, the collection features
whiskies of all kinds of styles and ages. There are blends,
malts and grain whiskies, up-and-coming producers and
silent ghost distilleries (they’re the Ghosts, of course),
drawn from all over Scotland.
Prices start at around £100 for one of the minor
characters and rise to £10,000 plus for one of the leads:
Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, King Duncan, Banquo and
Macduff (of which there are only 100 of each). The collection the characters,” adds Burgess, “and
will be released in three “acts”, culminating in Macbeth
and a secret 42nd bottling, over the next three years.
The Macbeth collection is the brainchild of Lexi
Burgess, founder of the Livingstone project space and
Burgess Studio, a design agency specialising in design
for rare whiskies for brands such as The Macallan,
William Grant & Sons and Bowmore.
“Over the years, I’ve grown increasingly absorbed
by the histories of distilleries and the people around
FOOD & DRINK
them,” explains Burgess. “Stories of
allegiances and collective endeavour,
but also ruthless ambition and intense
rivalries. I thought, ‘This is just like
Macbeth.’ And that was it. The
whole structure appeared in that one
moment; the most famous Scottish play,
full of fantastic characters from across Scotland, bright to
dark, light to heavy, from every class and realm, at different
ages, all waiting to be cast as Scotch whiskies.”
Burgess had designed a number of exhibitions and
books for Quentin Blake in the past – so he approached
him to draw the characters. And, aware of the artist’s
love of ornithology, he suggested he do them as birds.
an “avid” birdwatcher since childhood. “I woke very
early one morning – I do draw in bed a
lot – and by 10am I was able to phone
Lexi to say that I had done some pencil
drawings. These were later redrawn with
a scratchy Indian ink standing at my desk.”
Blake’s “constant”
interest in Shakespeare
THOUGHT OF meant he already knew
ILLUSTR ATION the play “pretty well” –
AS A KIND and the theatrical
OF ACTNG” nature of the project
resonated with him:
“I’ve always thought of illustration as
a kind of acting. I don’t observe the
gestures so much as feel them.”
The Macbeth collection is unique in
the world of whisky, says Broom, “because
it runs counter to the way things like this
would normally be done. It wasn’t a case
of ‘We have this whisky, where it’s going
to go?’ It’s driven by the text.”
“And the best thing is, people know
have opinions about them. This project
changes the way you think about the
drams. Rather than being, ‘Is this a good
example of a such and such bourbon Top: eight of the
illustrations for the
cask?’, it’s ‘Is this Banquo?’, which is a Macbeth, Act One
more entertaining conversation.” And collection. Above,
I’m inclined to agree. from top: Blake’s
illustrations for Seyton,
From 25 February at whiskyexchange.com the armour bearer, the
@alicelascelles Porter and the doctors
FT.COM/HTSI 61
 HOW TO SPEND IT IN...

Left: Frome Hardware shop. Above:

Dolebury Warren, Mendip Hills.
Right: a South African Viognier
from The Newt hotel’s shop

AT THE
I’m drawn to the Dew Pond, which looks like someone
CHAPEL’S put a silver plate on the landscape.
GRILLED
MACKEREL
When I sold up in London, Somerset was not a
WITH fashionable place. Bruton’s first flowering began in 2008,
ROMESCO
SAUCE
when At the Chapel opened inside a gorgeous 17th-century
building. The restaurant – where they cook amazing
pizzas and sell the best ciabatta and sourdough –
brought a liveliness to the area.
For 25 years, I would pass the derelict Durslade
Farm, thinking that I’d love to live there. When Hauser &
Wirth opened in 2014, I wondered why on earth they
bought somewhere in the middle of nowhere – but, boy,
have they made it work. It’s incredible. I had an exhibition
there three years ago and the recent Henry Moore
show attracted more than 70,000 visitors.
A friend owns Number One Bruton, a sweet hotel that

SOMERSET
used to be an ironmonger’s. Its restaurant, Osip, is one of
those places where the chef gives you little bits and pieces.
I buy South African Viognier white wine from The Newt

I
hotel’s shop and we have dinner in its oak-
first came to Somerset in 1940 when
Famed for his images of war, WHERE TO STAY panelled restaurant, The Botanical Rooms –
I was sent here as an evacuee during photographer Don McCullin finds Durslade Farmhouse it serves the best oysters.
dursladefarmhouse.co.uk
the second world war. I was five peace in rural south-west England The Newt in Somerset
For cooking at home, Bill the Butcher in
when I arrived at Frome station, thenewtinsomerset.com Bruton sells the best herbal sausages and on
wearing a gas mask, hand in hand INTERVIEW BY SHELLEY RUBENSTEIN Number One Bruton Fridays, the Brixham fish van comes from
numberonebruton.com
with my three-year-old sister. We PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS HOARE Devon. I like their hake and my wife,
were selected for the same beautiful village, Catherine, cooks mussels with white wine
Norton St Philip, but we were separated. RESTAURANTS for dinner. And we go to Westcombe Dairy’s
At the Chapel cheese shop for its excellent cheddar and
My sister went to the big house while I
atthechapel.co.uk
went to a farm labourer’s home. We had come from a family The Botanical Rooms delicious Alpine-style cheese.
living in poverty amid the violence of Finsbury Park. thenewtinsomerset.com I poke around for interesting finds in
Osip osiprestaurant.com
I’ve always held onto those childhood memories of Frome on Cheap Street and Catherine Hill,
streams snaking through hazel trees and cows standing which is cobbled and winds uphill. My
in the grass looking lost. Somerset was yeoman farmer’s SHOPS 20-year-old son Max likes the clothes at
country, with hedged fields that looked like quilted Bill the Butcher facebook. Nomad, and I bought my first ever second-
com/billthebutcherbruton/
blankets and hedgerows covered in buttercups. Brixham Seafish hand piece of clothing – a tweed jacket –
In 1980, my editor at The Sunday Times told me about brixhamseafish.com from The Dandy Lion, because they don’t
The Dandy Lion
a house for sale in Batcombe. I raced down to view it, but make them like that any more.
instagram.com/
it was unsuitable owing to a thatched roof. In the same dandy_lion_frome When I started doing still life, I would
village, I saw three dilapidated cottages knocked into one. Dovecote Gallery gather flowers and mushrooms on lumps
dovecotegallery.com
The property had an apple orchard and views of an ancient Frome Hardware
of stone from Frome Reclamation. And
hillfort. Once I heard the sound of the rushing stream, that fromehardware.com for framing, I go to Dovecote Gallery in
Top left: Don McCullin by Dew Pond. Above: the Frome Model Centre
did it for me. It’s like the Garden of Eden and I wake up photographer says his “soul is totally connected” to Shepton Montague. Frome Hardware makes
fromemodelcentre.com
every day to the most glorious vision. I like the empty the local landscape. Below: McCullin at Osip restaurant Frome Reclamation a ball of string look like an object of desire,
wilderness of the landscape, which I only fromerec.co.uk and we used to buy Airfix kits for the kids
Nomad
photograph in the winter when you get these from Frome Model Centre.
nomadsupplystore.com
amazingly dark Wagnerian skies. I don’t like Westcombe Dairy Moving to Somerset was a brilliant idea
early-morning light as it comes up too quickly, so westcombedairy.com because I found a place where I feel mentally
I work towards the evening. I often stand there safe, happy and secure. I yearn to get back
for hours without the GALLERIES there every time I go away.
reward of a photograph, Hauser & Wirth Somerset Don McCullin has created a Somerset trip
THE DEW POND but I come away thinking hauserwirth.com with The Luminaire travel company. Over
PHOTOGRAPH: ED SCHOFIELD

LOOKS LIKE I’ve had a marvellous time, three days, guests spend time with McCullin
SOMEONE PUT grateful not to be working exploring his work, with private access to Hauser & Wirth
A SILVER PLATE in an office. I’ve made
10,000 prints here and
gallery, photography masterclasses with professional tutors,
accommodation at Durslade Farmhouse (two nights)
ON THE my soul is now totally and select dining experiences. From £12,850pp,
LANDSCAPE connected to Somerset. theluminaire.com/somerset

62 FT.COM/HTSI