Celebrity Life
La Prairie Commissions Artist Douglas Mandry to Create a Boundary-Crossing Series of Works
The Swiss beauty house continues its support of art and culture with an exclusive and spellbinding art commission.
As part of its ongoing commitment to supporting the field of art and culture, La Prairie has commissioned Swiss artist Douglas Mandry to create a series of images that capture the fragile beauty of his country’s natural landscapes.
The artist, who uses photography as a mechanism to question the reality of memory, technology and nature, takes photographs as his base material, reworking and manipulating them as well as combining them with new and non-traditional elements to create objects that exist as a new typology, and toe the line between flat and three-dimensional.
[caption id="attachment_212586" align="aligncenter" width="768"]
La Prairie has commissioned Swiss artist Douglas Mandry to create a series of images that capture the fragile beauty of his country’s natural landscapes.[/caption]
For this project, Mandry first travelled through the country to capture still images of the wild, untamed lands. "After hours of walking, sometimes I just happen to be at a place which strikes me. Capturing this nature is for me a testimony of its sublime essence. Afterwards, I try to re-appropriate this untouched and unspoiled environment and make it my own. So, the whole process is about merging my experience of nature with my cultural background," he explains.
From these images, he distilled certain shapes and abstractions that he wishes to retain in the original, and then began to subvert and transform the surrounding elements – painting, airbrushing and otherwise interfering in a way that connotes the passage of time. When the series of images is displayed, it is in a non-linear narrative, taking viewers on a fantastical, surreal journey that is a blend of dreams and reality.
[gallery ids="212588,212589,212591,212593,212585,212587,212590,212592"]
This tribute to Swiss lands resonates well with La Prairie’s own quest to subvert time, and its tireless ideal of capturing a beauty that is timeless. This pursuit has been elevated to an art form, and in recognising this, La Prairie has sought to support artistic goals of many different forms, whether it is patronage of a global fair that can bring art to the masses, or supporting research into conservation of precious canvasses, so that historical works can be better preserved for the future generations. Three works created as a part of collaboration were also auctioned online at Artnet Auctions, with proceeds donated to ETH Foundation which contributes to research on glaciology and environmental conservation.
[gallery ids="212601,212595,212596,212597,212598,212599,212600"]
"Contemporary art is the prism through which we express our heritage and values and allows us to enrich our own story. As part of our ongoing relationship with art, we engage in creative dialogues with artists who bring their own perspective and artistic vocabulary to our brand. Indeed, artists are our storytellers,” says Greg Prodromides, Chief Marketing Officer of La Prairie Group.
“With this new initiative, we are extremely proud to be able - for the first time - to fuse our artistic engagement with our purpose as a Swiss luxury brand, committed to preserving the nature of our House’s origins.”
The post La Prairie Commissions Artist Douglas Mandry to Create a Boundary-Crossing Series of Works appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
La Prairie Commissions Artist Douglas Mandry to Create a Boundary-Crossing Series of Works
The Swiss beauty house continues its support of art and culture with an exclusive and spellbinding art commission.
As part of its ongoing commitment to supporting the field of art and culture, La Prairie has commissioned Swiss artist Douglas Mandry to create a series of images that capture the fragile beauty of his country’s natural landscapes.
The artist, who uses photography as a mechanism to question the reality of memory, technology and nature, takes photographs as his base material, reworking and manipulating them as well as combining them with new and non-traditional elements to create objects that exist as a new typology, and toe the line between flat and three-dimensional.
[caption id="attachment_212586" align="aligncenter" width="768"] La Prairie has commissioned Swiss artist Douglas Mandry to create a series of images that capture the fragile beauty of his country’s natural landscapes.[/caption]
For this project, Mandry first travelled through the country to capture still images of the wild, untamed lands. "After hours of walking, sometimes I just happen to be at a place which strikes me. Capturing this nature is for me a testimony of its sublime essence. Afterwards, I try to re-appropriate this untouched and unspoiled environment and make it my own. So, the whole process is about merging my experience of nature with my cultural background," he explains.
From these images, he distilled certain shapes and abstractions that he wishes to retain in the original, and then began to subvert and transform the surrounding elements – painting, airbrushing and otherwise interfering in a way that connotes the passage of time. When the series of images is displayed, it is in a non-linear narrative, taking viewers on a fantastical, surreal journey that is a blend of dreams and reality.
[gallery ids="212588,212589,212591,212593,212585,212587,212590,212592"]
This tribute to Swiss lands resonates well with La Prairie’s own quest to subvert time, and its tireless ideal of capturing a beauty that is timeless. This pursuit has been elevated to an art form, and in recognising this, La Prairie has sought to support artistic goals of many different forms, whether it is patronage of a global fair that can bring art to the masses, or supporting research into conservation of precious canvasses, so that historical works can be better preserved for the future generations. Three works created as a part of collaboration were also auctioned online at Artnet Auctions, with proceeds donated to ETH Foundation which contributes to research on glaciology and environmental conservation.
[gallery ids="212601,212595,212596,212597,212598,212599,212600"]
"Contemporary art is the prism through which we express our heritage and values and allows us to enrich our own story. As part of our ongoing relationship with art, we engage in creative dialogues with artists who bring their own perspective and artistic vocabulary to our brand. Indeed, artists are our storytellers,” says Greg Prodromides, Chief Marketing Officer of La Prairie Group.
“With this new initiative, we are extremely proud to be able - for the first time - to fuse our artistic engagement with our purpose as a Swiss luxury brand, committed to preserving the nature of our House’s origins.”
The post La Prairie Commissions Artist Douglas Mandry to Create a Boundary-Crossing Series of Works appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
You Can Now Own Part of an Eiffel Tower Staircase
Have you ever dreamed of possessing part of the ultra-famous monument that symbolises Paris throughout the world? A segment of an original staircase from the Eiffel Tower will go under the hammer at an Artcurial auction on December 1, as part of its Parisian Art Deco and Design sale.
This 2.6-metre segment comes from the historic spiral staircase built by Gustave Eiffel and his collaborators for the Universal Exhibition of 1889. A few years later, an elevator replaced the original staircase between the second and third floor of the iconic monument, which is why the staircase was dismantled. It was separated into 24 segments, two of which measure nine metres.
One of these long segments remains on the Tower's first floor, while three others were redistributed to Paris's Musée d'Orsay and Cité des sciences de la Villette and the Musée de l'Histoire du fer (Iron history museum) in Nancy (in the east of France).
The 20 elements left were auctioned off in December 1983, scattering this heritage between cultural institutions and private collections worldwide. Every now and then some resurface on the auction market.
The segment of the staircase being auctioned off in December by Artcurial comes from a private Canadian collection. It is estimated to fetch between 30,000 and 40,000 euros — a rather modest sum compared to segments previously auctioned off.
In 2016, a piece of the same staircase sold for 523,800 euros, far above its original estimate. In 2013, another 3.5-metre high segment went for 220,000 euros during a previous Artcurial sale.
Find out more about the auction here.
(Main and featured image: Anthony Delanoix/ Unsplash)
The post You Can Now Own Part of an Eiffel Tower Staircase appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
You Can Now Own Part of an Eiffel Tower Staircase
Have you ever dreamed of possessing part of the ultra-famous monument that symbolises Paris throughout the world? A segment of an original staircase from the Eiffel Tower will go under the hammer at an Artcurial auction on December 1, as part of its Parisian Art Deco and Design sale.
This 2.6-metre segment comes from the historic spiral staircase built by Gustave Eiffel and his collaborators for the Universal Exhibition of 1889. A few years later, an elevator replaced the original staircase between the second and third floor of the iconic monument, which is why the staircase was dismantled. It was separated into 24 segments, two of which measure nine metres.
One of these long segments remains on the Tower's first floor, while three others were redistributed to Paris's Musée d'Orsay and Cité des sciences de la Villette and the Musée de l'Histoire du fer (Iron history museum) in Nancy (in the east of France).
The 20 elements left were auctioned off in December 1983, scattering this heritage between cultural institutions and private collections worldwide. Every now and then some resurface on the auction market.
The segment of the staircase being auctioned off in December by Artcurial comes from a private Canadian collection. It is estimated to fetch between 30,000 and 40,000 euros — a rather modest sum compared to segments previously auctioned off.
In 2016, a piece of the same staircase sold for 523,800 euros, far above its original estimate. In 2013, another 3.5-metre high segment went for 220,000 euros during a previous Artcurial sale.
Find out more about the auction here.
(Main and featured image: Anthony Delanoix/ Unsplash)
The post You Can Now Own Part of an Eiffel Tower Staircase appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Going Undercover? KGB Spy Devices Star in an Upcoming Auction
Here's your chance to live out all your James Bond and super spy fantasies.
A gun designed to look like a tube of lipstick, a purse with a hidden camera, and a hotel room listening device are among items used by the KGB Soviet intelligence during the Cold War going up for auction for the first time.
American auction house Julien's will sell the roughly 400 lots online and then in-person from mid-January to February 13, 2021. The items were recently on display at the KGB Espionage Museum in Manhattan, New York — a private museum opened in January 2019 by Lithuanian historian Julius Urbaitis that has closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"We are not aware of any similar auction for this genre. There is going to be a massive follow up on this because people are so fascinated by all this," said Julien's CFO Martin Nolan.
[caption id="attachment_212361" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
A sample of some of the items on display at The KGB Spy Museum in New York in 2019. (Image: Timothy A Clary/ AFP)[/caption]
Estimates for the items range from a few hundred dollars to US$12,000 (HK$93,030), which is the top estimate for a rare Soviet version of the Enigma code cipher machine known as the Fialka. A stone bust of Vladimir Lenin is expected to reach between US$5,000 and US$7,000 (HK$38,800 and HK$54,300), while a steel door from a former KGB prison hospital is estimated at $500 to $700 (HK$3,900 and HK$5,400).
"This is not massively expensive stuff, this is fun stuff that...can trigger a fascinating conversation at a dinner party," said Nolan.
Julien's is also putting under the hammer other memorabilia from the Cold War, including a high school report card for Che Guevara, a signed 1958 letter from Fidel Castro discussing plans to take Havana, and items related to the US-Soviet space race. More details here.
(Main image: Timothy A Clary/ AFP; Featured image: Julien's Auctions)
The post Going Undercover? KGB Spy Devices Star in an Upcoming Auction appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
These are the Best Art Podcasts to Listen to Right Now
Becoming one of the art world's cognoscenti is no easy task, especially when museums and art galleries across the world are closing under new coronavirus lockdown measures.
But you can still broaden your knowledge and appreciation of art through a growing number of podcasts. Here is a selection of four arty programs worth subscribing to, with one hoping to return "art history to the masses," while another dissects the oddities of the art world.
[caption id="attachment_212279" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
If you won't be able to visit a museum or gallery anytime soon, consider tuning in to our picks of the best art podcasts. (Image: Juja Han)[/caption]
The Modern Art Notes Podcast
This podcast series cannot be listened to with half an ear, it requires all your attention. But these hour-long conversations, hosted by award-winning art critic and historian Tyler Green, are definitely worth the effort. Each week, Green invites multiple artists, curators, authors and conservators to discuss their work, whether it is a new exhibition or the latest biography of Andy Warhol. A recent episode featured an interview with Naima J. Keith on the postponement of the fifth edition of Prospect triennial due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Art History Babes
If you believe art history is just something you learn at college, this podcast will prove you wrong. The four hostesses of "The Art History Babes" talk about visual culture with a conversational and sometimes meandering approach, like you would do with your artsy friends around a glass of wine. A recent episode is dedicated to post-mortem photographs, a mourning tradition popular during the Victorian era that Corrie, Jennifer, Natalie and Ginny describe as "infamously creepy." As the podcast has built up a substantial following since its first episode in 2016, the four friends have published their own book, The Honest Art Dictionary, for all the art history babes out there.
The Lonely Palette
Imagine you are absentmindedly staring at an artwork in a museum, when an art-historian-turned-radio-producer asks you to describe it in your own words for her podcast. If you were staring at Jan van Eyck's "Arnolfini Portrait," you might be tempted to say that the man on the left looks "a bit like Willy Wonka's shady brother," or even Vladimir Putin. These off-the-cuff descriptions open each episode of "The Lonely Palette," in which host Tamar Avishai fills in listeners about the history and making of an artwork. The result is refreshing, surprising and, still, deeply informative.
ArtCurious Podcast
In this podcast series, curator Jennifer Dasal discusses unexpected, slightly odd and yet fascinating anecdotes about art. While pieces by Claude Monet fetch six-figure prices at auction, did you know that the French Impressionist and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? Or how about the fact that American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell believes that British painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper? The result is extremely erudite but always accessible, whether you are an art connoisseur or a neophyte.
(Main and featured image: ArtCurious Podcast)
The post These are the Best Art Podcasts to Listen to Right Now appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.
Elegance is a strong mystery
Elegance is a strong mystery: how our chandeliers reflect light and movement⇒ Luxxu accepts and respects all types of art that provide new sensations and discoveries. With our interpretation of a concept gallery, we try to merge all the inspiring arts, music, dance, and design. In this article, we bring the combination of contemporary dance with our usual design with the transmission of elegance throughout the process.
Continue reading Elegance is a strong mystery at Luxxu Blog.
Winston Churchill’s whisky painting goes on sale
Winston Churchill’s painted still life of his favourite whiskey is up for auction.
The post Winston Churchill’s whisky painting goes on sale appeared first on The Peak Magazine.
Winston Churchill’s whisky painting goes on sale
Winston Churchill’s painted still life of his favourite whiskey is up for auction.
For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.
Winston Churchill’s whisky painting goes on sale
Winston Churchill’s painted still life of his favourite whiskey is up for auction.
For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.
Anthropologist and Photographer Margot Errante on Finding Stillness in Art
Anthropologist and photographer Margot Errante talks to us about finding stillness in art, two wild decades in China, and her return to Italy.
Under the dramatic light, you make out bodily shapes, buildings, spaces and the blurring of lines between them.
A visual conjuring of emptiness and occupation – all in black and white. Lake Como-born photographer Margot Errante takes a well- trained anthropological eye to her work – this year it’s been the creation of meditative diptychs titled The Corporeal City, shot during a pandemic lockdown around her hometown.
“While it’s not a project about the pandemic,” Errante says, there’s a sense of emptiness that’s reflective of the times. But as someone who worked as an early-rising travel photographer and lived through SARS in China, “neither empty cities nor this kind of situation was completely new for me”.
It was a good time, though, “to observe the city and to reflect on the environment we’ve built for ourselves to live in… analogous of exterior and inner space”. There’s exploration between the body and space, each a container for our inner and outer worlds that are nevertheless “intimately interconnected”. Shadows and high contrast lend dramatic expression to each picture. The curve of spine and shoulders appears next to deserted streets, winding roads and sweeping archways.
[caption id="attachment_212150" align="aligncenter" width="683"]
Metamorphosis, Transitions series.[/caption]
If Errante’s own explanations recall Eastern philosophy, this is no accident. She first practised Taoist meditation at Baiyun Temple in Beijing more than a decade ago. Upon her return to Italy, after 20 years in China and Hong Kong, the broad Taoist ethos of losing yourself and banishing your ego has been an important personal journey for the artist.
“As a photographer, your work is your story. My photography is my biography,” says Errante from her home, overlooking the famous north Italian lake. The Como mountains are misty during the winter, just like when I last visited her and snow had started to fall.
There’s no mistaking the romance of the region, which today features heavily in her work. For example, the Transitions series documents the summer of 2017 in Como and charts her feelings of return – partly driven by motherhood – after 20 years in Asia.
Errante expresses an inner world in colours, movement and light. A red dress, full of Asian symbolism, is brought into frames of travel and fragmentation in Myselves (2017) and Metamorphosis (2017). Then there’s symmetry, symbolism and subject.
“When I did Transitions, I realised there’s a you that transcends even your own narrative; no matter the time, space, country or movement … and it’s what makes you alive,” says the artist.
[caption id="attachment_212151" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
Myselves, Transitions series.[/caption]
“After 20 years, of course it was a very complicated moment, I had very contrasting feelings about everything. For me, China was my home. At the same time, I wanted to do this transition but I was leaving my life, my career. I was born in Italy but never even worked here… but through the series I realised that we become so attached to everything external, we attribute too much responsibility of these external things to our own happiness.”
Perhaps this finds new meaning for many more than just the artist today. As the established world system is upended, frequent flyers are grounded, material things seem to matter less, art seems to matter more and social fragility is all too apparent.
For Errante, whose family name actually means “the wanderer” in Italian, it’s also finding stillness after so many years on the move. After graduating from the local liceo scientifico (scientific high school), the teenage Errante lived in Germany and Paris before training as an interpreter in Trieste, Italy, where she took up Chinese studies. A year later, at 19, she left alone for China. The multilingual photographer (she also speaks English, French, Chinese and Portuguese) would go on to obtain a degree in anthropology and oriental linguistics, and is currently studying Buddhism at the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Italy. Biography, as you’ll see, is key to understanding her work.
Even the aestheticism of shadows and drama “was not an intentional choice but very spontaneous”, she explains. “I like dense colours and, unlike many people, I’m not afraid of darkness. I quite like darkness and I think it’s because I spent a lot of time in the Chinese countryside in the late ’90s, when there was no light in the evenings, but we still used to go out and it was OK.”
[caption id="attachment_212152" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
Wa Dance.[/caption]
The technique helps add depth to her images of nature and forests, while architectural works (often of vintage or ancient buildings) seem eerie and Edward Hopper-esque. The way it forces the viewers’ concentration can feel intense.
“In the darkness, you need concentrate more if you want to see. In the dark, there’s no immediate visual response or immediate visual satisfaction,” Errante reasons. “I wanted to have people get close to the photo, to search for details and spend time with the image – it was a way for me to say, ‘Look a bit more, concentrate a bit more, hang in there, you may find out there’s something there.’”
Moving on to her portraiture, today’s work is far more curated and singular than earlier work of Beijing city streets or villagers in southwestern Yunnan province, near Myanmar. Witnessing two decades (1997-2017) of China’s rise to an industrial and economic superpower has had enormous impact on her outlook.
One of Errante’s strongest human portraits – Wa Dance (2004), featuring bodies jumping in unison, faces upturned to the sky – came from eight months of living, observing and conducting ethnographic research about an indigenous Wa ethnic minority village more than 15 years ago. A dance of welcome for a foreign face – who had arrived dramatically by motorbike through the jungle in the rain – turns into a work of rhythmic vibrancy.
[caption id="attachment_212153" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
Beijing Utopia.[/caption]
“They were all sweaty and full of energy,” she says. “These bodies were really tense, strong, with a lot of muscle – they looked like panthers; I felt hypnotised.”
Her work as a freelance photojournalist took Errante through Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and North Korea. Themes of architecture and personal psychology (especially in post-Maoist developing China) emerged. She inhabited the underground art scene of the Chinese capital until, in 2009, her apartment was ransacked and her entire photographic archive of more than 10,000 negatives – the work of 15 years – was stolen. Heartbroken, Errante left the Chinese capital and never returned, choosing to settle in Hong Kong’s dense urban jungle.
This chapter would lead Errante to the transition to art portraiture and art photography, and exhibiting in several galleries, festivals and fairs such as Art Basel. Last year, her series Human Nature was awarded first prize at Paris Fotofever. The narrative is still biographical, Errante tells me, even though life no longer involves motorbike rides through the jungle or wild nights in the Beijing art scene. She’s rediscovering aspects of her own history and Italian heritage, too. Porta Torre (2019) is a vision of ancient architecture and nature in Como, Lombardy, for example.
[caption id="attachment_212154" align="alignnone" width="1024"]
Mindscapes, Porta Torre series.[/caption]
And even if we are seeing the world through such personal, intimate experiences, there’s something to which we can all relate. Such is Human Heart (2017), a photograph of an old suitcase in her favourite woods in Como – it’s a reference to her grandfather Salvatore Errante, who emigrated from Sicily to Lake Como.
“The suitcase belonged to him. One day he told my grandmother that he was going out for cigarettes – but he jumped on the train and just left. Only when he found a job in Como did he call her to come to meet him,” Errante explains. Those wandering genes are seemingly well expressed throughout their lineage. Since then, that suitcase has become kind of a mystical object in her family. “It represents the struggle not just of my grandfather,” she says, “but of every human being who moves to look for a better future, of improvement, for something better.”
(All images: Margot Errante)
The post Anthropologist and Photographer Margot Errante on Finding Stillness in Art appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.