Design March - April, 2017
A REFUGE IN THE PAST
HEALING THROUGH FILM ART AS PROTEST A MUSEUM FOR THE MASSES
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Design March - April 2017
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Features 46 Playing With Power Experimental tailoring — checkered patterns, padded shoulders, sleeveless suits — is commanding work. Photographs by Robi Rodriguez
Styled by Elodie David-Touboul
60 Here In japan’s leafy hamlet of Karuizawa, otherworldly architecture is the expression of the uninhibited self. By Hanya Yanaghira Photographs by Mikael Olsson
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MIKAEL OLSSON
ON THE COVER TNA architects intended the reedlike supports of the Square House to evoke blades of bamboo grass shooting up from the ground. Enveloped in a glass skin, the house is without walls and has few interior divisions of space. Photograph by Mikael Olsson
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Gucci_TQatar March Gucci_TQatar March
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Lookout 12
Sign of the Times
As the future continues to look more and more uncertain, an unapologetic embrace of the past. 14
This and That
Clothes from a club kid; Mary Weatherford's moment; A new L.A. design destination; and more
Quality
24 Profile in Style Checking in with the hotelier Sean MacPherson 25 Watch Report Colorful timepieces. 28 The Thing A sculptural, silver-plated cabinet. Runway Report
Combinations of slightly awkward shades, worn in loose layers, paint an unexpectedly artful picture.
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Arena
38 Art Matters Five artists on the power of political creation.
Clockwise from top right: Bernard-Henri Lévy at home in Paris; Sa Foradada restaurant in Majorca is only reachable by boat; an Early Work sofa, Germans Ermics ombré coffee table and a pair of Edizione Limitata circular wall mirrors.
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A Writer's Room
Bernard-Henri Lévy 68 The Illustrated Interview Anderson Cooper. Page 24
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: PICTURE COURTESY BENOIT PEVERELLI; SEAN M AC PHERSON; NOT SO GENERAL
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Lookout Qatar 16 This and That Leaving a legacy on the street; Art 29 promises a new platform to experience regional art; strong women are always in fashion with Moda Operandi’s new campaign; a superyacht with sky lounge by Gulf Craft.
18 The Exhibition Luxury and art collide in a spectacular fashion at the Doha Watches and Jewellery Exhibition.
By Debrina Aliyah
Quality Qatar 29 Another Thing A city skyline is transformed into functional design, while also being a breathtaking work of art. 30 On Art Museums have always been objects of reverence and pride. What if one were built within one of the world’s largest slums? Would it still be categorized as a museum?
Arena Qatar 42 On Heritage Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, in collaboration with Qatar University, is working on a sequel to its book of Qatari folktales, in an effort to carry these stories into the digital age. By Nayla Al Naimi PICTURE COURTESY: DESIGN MUSEUM DHARAVI
22 Market Report Embellished and even ostentatious, the new esthetics for watches belie precise movements and clockwork.
Features Qatar 54 Celluloid Therapy In Doha for Qumra 2017, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh sits down for a candid and insightful chat about how cinema saved his life and led him to something bigger than himself. By Ayswarya Murthy
By Sindhu Nair
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Cricket bats take on new forms at Design Museum Dharavi.
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Copy That BY SADIE STEIN
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NOSTALGIA is old news when it comes to culture: We are forever recycling the past. What does change from era to era is our attitude toward looking back, and when times get tough, the reminiscing tends to get rosier. In the turbulent ’70s, the ’50s were preserved in kitsch amber through shows like ‘‘Happy Days.’’ In the last decade, in the midst of a global financial meltdown, we retreated into the ’60s of ‘‘Mad Men,’’ craving the stylish haze of Camel smoke and cocktails. Last year, amid the most contentious election of
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Sign of the Times
ence of the designer Martin Margiela. With their recent shows, Vetements — current darlings of the avant-garde — essentially recreated Margiela’s designs of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Last year, the Berlin-based gallery Sprüth Magers opened a space in Los Angeles. One of its first shows was a sometimes-literal nod to the dealer Monika Sprüth’s short-lived ’80s magazine Eau de Cologne, which featured the work of five female artists: Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel. The new gallery largely restaged what was in the magazine. Farther up the coast, in San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art’s In Situ restaurant has started offering what they call ‘‘a bracing new concept in fine dining’’: a menu of existing dishes from 80 different international chefs — a culinary greatest hits. The line between past and present, creation and curation, has never been thinner — no small thing in a world as cynical as ours can be. Some of it, surely, is a matter of chronology and marketing: Increasingly, the target demo is too young to remember things the first time around. For millennials, a Keith Haring reference or a Modern English track evokes not the homesickness of nostalgia but the joy of discovery, context be damned. As the fashion designer Jonathan Anderson (who has explicitly mined ’90s Vogue Italia for inspiration) once put it: ‘‘The idea that if you took a date in time and sliced it through and looked at what everyone was doing at that time — would it mean anything? And would it matter if it didn’t?’’ As the deep vaults of history are made accessible to everyone via technology, the past has become an alternative present. Swipe through Instagram and you can find cults of people devoted to dressing like flappers or cooking like Victorians or decorating their homes as if they were goat herders in 17th-century Lithuania — minus, of course, the anachronistic demands of age or class or race. (It’s a sort of uto- pia where no one dies of smallpox.) We can dress in one decade, eat in another and enjoy the music of a third, without abandoning the comforts of now. (A more sinister version of all this can be found on HBO’s ‘‘Westworld.’’) There is a theory called ‘‘block universe,’’ which suggests the present does not relentlessly flow like a river into the future. Rather, time is frozen, with an equally real past, present and future. Such a theory offers another intriguing rationale for our current strain of nostalgia: that perhaps the past’s mistakes are still happening and can be corrected (or, as the film ‘‘Arrival’’ suggests, those of the future can be avoided). One of Sprüth’s original goals for Eau de Cologne remained the primary aim of the recent L.A. show: redressing the inadequate representation of women in the art world. William Faulkner, a writer who is revisited endlessly, offered a prescient declaration when he wrote in 1951, ‘‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’’
Nost algia is no unap ologe w so ticall rever e n tial th y bord at it er It see s on repl icatio ms n. busin we’re no w in ess n the ot of p a but o f faith stiche re-cr ful eatio n — show less d , if yo rag u w il l, tha tribu n te ba nd.
our lifetime, the grainy stock footage and ’80s soundtrack of ‘‘Stranger Things’’ provided a near-safety blanket. Reverential nostalgia has been bubbling to the surface for the past year or so, to the point where the recollection is so unapologetically affectionate that it borders on replication. It seems we’re now in the business not of pastiche but of faithful re-creation — less drag show, if you will, than tribute band. The scattered bits of macramé in highend shelter magazines and top restaurants, the Misfits and Leonard Cohen covers on Spotify, the shoulder pads and bodysuits on the fall runways — that, maybe, is par for the postmodern course. But in low moments one begins to wonder if the popularity of adult coloring books speaks to a larger creative crisis — or at least, a crisis of progression. The chief designer of Vetements, Demna Gvasalia (also creative director of Balenciaga), has made no bones about the direct influ-
March-April 2017
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Lookout
This and That A Cultural Compendium
ONE TO WATCH
Charles Jeffrey When he wasn’t bartending his way through Central Saint Martins, Charles Jeffrey was hosting Loverboy, a monthly club night at London’s VFDalston. He now spends most of his time being a proper men’s wear designer, though ‘‘proper’’ hardly describes his anarchic aesthetic. ‘‘A lot of our pieces are sort of troubled, or twisted and pulled and cut up,’’ says Jeffrey, a former Dior intern whose latest collection of genderqueer scoop-collared jackets, creeper shoes and extravagantly buttoned trousers was partly inspired by Jean Paul Gaultier’s couture. For the runway show, he used a headpiece from a chain-mail hauberk found on the street. For the fledgling designer, the clothes are about ascendance but, burgeoning mainstream success aside, it’s hard to imagine Jeffrey ever losing his underground cool. — HATTIE CRISELL
Mary Weatherford is known for her Weatherford’s ‘‘We,’’ 2017, on moody abstractions of landscapes both view at David natural and contrived, but her latest Kordansky March 10. series — filling both galleries of David Kordansky in Los Angeles and comprising her largest show to date, at least until an upcoming retrospective at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston — looks inward. ‘‘It gets to the question of whether your soul is important enough to paint about,’’ says Weatherford, who worked as a bookkeeper for Mike Kelley before getting her first real taste of success in 2012, when she started affixing neon rods directly to the canvas. Her new work continues in this vein, with pale shades of paint layered over metallics and muddy grays. Three double-square panoramas measure nearly 10 by 20 feet. Others are immersive in the scale of their brush strokes. ‘‘I like the feeling of being smaller than a painting,’’ Weatherford says. ‘‘And I like the feeling of being inside a wave in the ocean.’’ — KATE GUADAGNINO
The designer, at top left, and several runway looks from his fall 2017 show. The Instax photos show Jeffrey (left) and his friend Jenkin van Zyl on club nights circa 2013.
FEELING FOR
Mariner totes, bucket bags of the sea.
From left: Emporio Armani, QR4,350, armani.com. Loewe, similar styles available at loewe.com. Diesel, QR1,420, diesel.com. Louis Vuitton, price on request, louisvuitton.com.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: INSTAX FROM THE LOVERBOY CLUB NIGHT 2013/14; MARY WEATHERFORD ‘WE, 2017,’ FLASHE AND NEON ON LINEN, PHOTOGRAPHY: FREDRIK NILSEN/COURTESY OF DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY, LOS ANGELES, CA; INSTAX FROM THE LOVERBOY CLUB NIGHT 2013/14; CHRIS YATES PHOTOGRAPHY (3)
Bright Spot
MINI MARKET
Blocky bags in shades of white.
WHEN IN JODHPUR
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: JOSHUA SCOTT (6); COURTESY OF NOT SO GENERAL; COURTESY OF TALBOT & YOON; COURTESY OF NOT SO GENERAL. ILLUSTRATION BY KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS
Just as Well The revival of Jodhpur, also known as the Blue City for its cerulean-painted houses, began seven years ago with the opening of the Raas hotel, which was conceived by Dhananajaya and Nikhilendra Singh. Now, the brothers are turning their attention to the nearby Toor ji ka Jhalra stepwell — an ancient type of well that often takes the shape of an inverted pyramid — whose two-year restoration may prove to be the city’s tipping point. For decades, the well sat filled with stagnant water, until the Singhs, with help from Jodhpur’s maharajah, purified the pool and sandblasted the steps. The day’s light hits them in a way that makes the place an architectural destination in its own right, but, as of this winter, there are also a dozen or so worthy shops and cafes around the well’s perimeter, from the sustainable design emporium Good Earth to an outpost of the Jaipur-based Gem Palace. — GISELA WILLIAMS
Objects from Not So General, from left: an Early Work sofa, Germans Ermics ombré coffee table and a pair of Edizione Limitata circular wall mirrors; a Talbot & Yoon trivet; a Coil + Drift chair and porcelain tableware by Mud Australia on Vitsoe shelving.
Clockwise from top left: Mansur Gavriel, QR3,595, mansurgavriel.com; Michael Kors Collection, QR5,660, michaelkors.com; Valextra, QR8,580, valextra.com; Céline, QR15,330; Tod’s, QR 7,282, tods.com; Nancy Gonzalez, QR12,230, neimanmarcus.com.
Hollywood Redesign In Los Angeles, where decorating has slowly begun to move beyond midcentury modern, former film executive Paul Davidge still wasn’t finding a place for cutting-edge design. So he created one himself. The recently opened Not So General (NSG) in West Hollywood, a former general store now textured with touches of neon, marble and mirrored acrylic, champions new designers such as the furniture-making duo Vonnegut/Kraft and the Amsterdam-based glass studio Germans Ermics. Davidge, who started his career interning at Christie’s (where his father was C.E.O.), handpicks every item. He’s careful not to display them in overly staged vignettes, so as to emphasize the stand-alone strength of an ash-blond Coil + Drift chair with arms curved like a ballerina’s, or a brass Edizione Limitata stool cast in a mold created from an ice cube. notsogeneral.la — MOLLY CREEDEN
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This and That
W’s New Art Space To coincide with the annual New York Times’s Art for Tomorrow conference, W Doha Hotel & Residences announced the opening of Art 29, an exclusive space on its 29th floor that will serve as a platform to showcase works of upand-coming local, regional and international artists.
Legacy Street
The first exhibition at Art 29 featured the photography of students at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQ) from March 19 to 26. Titled “Shifting Spaces & Forgotten Walls”, the exhibition showcased photographs and videos that portray the myriad small businesses of Al Shagab Street in Qatar’s atmospheric Old Al Rayyan area. The initiative, which was spearheaded by a group of graphic design students and faculty from VCUQ, was conceived in an attempt to engage with the wider community and build bridges between two diverse worlds. Following this, Emergeast will be taking over Art 29 from April 19. The first online art gallery that brings together emerging Middle Eastern artists and young collectors under one umbrella, Emergeast promises a unique gallery experience that connects its guests to the heart of the Middle Eastern art scene. — AYSWARYA MURTHY
Perhaps once they served the purpose of helping one get to their location. But street names no longer hold a functional purpose in Qatar — rather they are now a way for families to cement their legacy.
SKY HIGH W's 29 floor will showcasing signature pieces from emerging regional artists.
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ALL PHOTOS BY ROB ALTAMIRANO
Qatar’s Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning has placed zones and street numbers in every area and street in the country and it is on these that most navigators rely. “This strategy will hopefully make directions much easier to understand and quicker,” says Ali Mohamed Al Naimi, who runs the Planning and Quality Department at MMUP. Al Naimi is part of a committee run by the ministry that reviews and reorganizes existing street and area names as well as names new ones. In a country deeply motivated to preserve its culture, street names continue to hold sentimental value. In fact, it is very much associated with the idea of grouping tribal families together by assigning each of their neighborhoods a name. Qatari elders believe one way of leaving a permanent piece of their cultural and religious values around is through these everlasting street names and areas. The government agrees, which is why streets are to be named after tribal family names, including significant individuals, and areas are reserved for names of either religious connotations, like ‘Uthman ibn Affan’ after one of the prophet’s companions or historic events like ‘Al Wajbah’. Al Wajbah was named after the battle between Sheikh Jassim, the founder of Qatar, and the Ottoman Empire in 1893. Some say Qatar won because the Ottomans didn’t show up. Maybe they had trouble finding the place. — NAYLA AL NAIMI
Majestic Voyages The Qatar debut of Gulf Craft’s Majesty 100 highlights the increasing interest of affluent millennials in recreational cruising. Majesty 100, Gulf Craft’s first raised wheelhouse superyacht with sky lounge, was among the 16 yachts and boats ranging from 31 feet to 125 feet in length, which were previewed at The Pearl-Qatar. Majesty 100 is the first in Gulf Craft’s superyacht collection to have a partially enclosed fly-bridge which allows guests sitting within to enjoy breathtaking views of the vast seascape. The glass panels can be slid down and folding doors fully opened to enable immediate and seamless access to the outdoors. With designs by Craft’s own in-house design studio, the superyacht features sweeping floor-to-ceiling windows that allow natural light to flow abundantly through the main deck. Meanwhile, two hydraulic extendable balconies fixed on both ends of the back-seating area offer passengers an al fresco experience while still having quick and immediate access to the craft’s main indoor living and entertainment areas.The three-day preview event came at a time when Qatar is witnessing rapid developments in the leisure marine sector, like the recently announced plan by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to add 1,000 berths for private boats and ships across four harbors in Al Ruwais, Al Khor, Al Zakhira, and Al Wakrah. — AYSWARYA MURTHY
LUXURY AT SEA Gulf Crafts Majesty 100 docks in Doha for the first time ever, its highlight being the exclusive sky lounge.
The Eternal Feminine
Moda Operandi brings together jewelry from brands like Annie Costello Brown, Perez Bitan, Vendorafa, Jamie Wolf, Nam Cho and more to reminisce about the style of iconic women from history, from Joan of Arc and Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette and Diana Ross.
FROM TOP: PHOTOS COURTESY GULF CRAFT (3); MODA OPERANDI (3)
— AYSWARYA MURTHY
March-April 2017
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The Exhibition
A Wave of Modernity Valérie Messika’s world has been immersed in diamonds since she was little. She inherited her passion for diamonds from her father, André Messika and from a young age she learnt how to see the light, brilliance and fire of these precious gems.
Never Before Seen in Qatar At the Central Exhibition in the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition (DJWE), international brands and luxury houses in Qatar displayed heritage pieces from private and museum collections that had never before been seen in public. The fifteen exclusive pieces at the Central Exhibition included some that belonged to royals like a unique 18k yellow gold pocket watch detailed with a 30-minute counter and perpetual calendar presented to His Majesty King Fuad of Egypt by the Swiss colony in Egypt in 1929, and a striking gold and diamond necklace and earring set from Van Cleef & Arpels, which was part of the former collection of Her Imperial Highness Princess Soraya of Iran. Situated at the entrance of the exhibition, this collection was the first that visitors noticed and featured some unforgettable pieces like a dazzling Piaget watch, featuring 217 beautiful baguette-cut diamonds; the exclusive "Constellation du Lion" necklace laden with white gold, yellow diamonds, diamonds and rutilated quartz which represents a stunning tribute to the lion and a sign of Gabrielle Chanel; and archive pieces from Boucheron dating from 1902-1954, shown for the first time outside of Paris. These pieces included exquisite gold and diamond brooches, a powder case with a mirror inside, a square yellow gold lady's wristwatch, a purse made of twelve articulated panels and a lipstick holder in pierced pink gold. — AYSWARYA MURTHY
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One of Valérie Messika earliest designs, Move (a simple bangle with three diamonds sliding on rails within an oval window set in the bracelet), was inspired by her childhood memories of playing with diamonds, reflecting the joy that continues to run through the brand’s collections today. Mixing diamonds of different shapes, multiplying them and playing on the contrast between micro pavé and large stones, Valérie continues to capture light in jewelry and has crafted a collection that explores the celestial world. The Calypso collection consists of four parts and is united by a single mood. Inspired by Greek Mythology, Calypso was a sea nymph who fell in love with Odysseus and held him captive for seven years. Reflecting the attractive forces generated by love, Valérie has created a collection of modernity and asymmetry. The collection includes “A symbol of desire; a wave of emotion” necklace with 264 pear-cut diamonds. “A Contemporary Siren” earrings are crafted with 52 diamonds. Exhibiting the Calypso as well as their iconic “Move Collection” at DJWE, Valérie has adapted the brand’s signature skinny technique of diamond setting where, when viewing the top stones, a thin strip of gold is visible between the gemstones. — AARTHI MOHAN
A WAVE OF EMOTION Top: Valérie Messika; left: Calypso necklace from Diamants Celestes Collection
PHOTO CREDIT: FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: DJWE; ROB ALTAMIRANO; MESSIKA
HERITAGE COLLECTION A powder case and a lipstick holder in pierced pink gold Boucheron dating from 1954; Bottom: "Constellation du Lion" from Chanel.
The Flower of Eternity The renowned 127-year-old diamond house, Mouawad revealed for the first time in the Middle East its latest masterpiece — the Mouawad Flower of Eternity Jewelry Coffer.
Textural Elegance
Immersed in rich history and drawing on the Italian tradition of fine workmanship, the jewelry of Buccellati is primarily known for its unique and highly recognizable use of gold finishes, delicate design and excellent craftsmanship.
Certified as the world’s most valuable jewelry box by the Guinness World Records, the coffer stole the limelight at this year’s DJWE. Inspired by Mouawad’s signature Flower of Eternity motif, which consists of three heart-shaped petals symbolizing the past, present and future in an emblem of eternal love, the jewelry coffer was crafted using 18-karat gold and 925 silver, and features a profusion of 542.39 carats of white and yellow diamonds, 293.24 carats of white and pink sapphires, 20.06 carats of rubies, and 1,799.75 carats of lapis lazuli. Valued at $3.5 million, the coffer is a resounding testament to the profound creativity of the Mouawad craftsmen. “Through creativity, patience, and verve, the artisans at Mouawad have crafted an impressive jewelry coffer, embodying Mouawad’s Flower of Eternity motif in an unparalleled work of art. This is our ninth year at the DJWE, and once again we have chosen the Middle East to debut our awardwinning jewelry creation,” said Pascal Mouawad, Co-Guardian of the Mouawad Retail Division. The house also showcased their latest pieces of high jewelry, namely the Blue Serena diamond and sapphire suite, The Eye of Muzo diamond and emerald suite, and the Triple Diamond Ripple diamond suite. Also on display was Mouawad’s dazzling Diamond Classics collection, crafted from 18-karat gold and set with diamonds and colored gemstones.
PHOTO CREDIT: ROB ALTAMIRANO(2); RIGHT: MOUAWAD
— AARTHI MOHAN
Founded by goldsmith Mario Buccellati in 1919, the brand’s first foray into the jewelry trade was in the mid-eighteenth century. The most distinctive feature of Buccellati’s pieces is their rich textural quality. When the process is finished, the surface resembles a fine fabric such as linen, tulle or lace. Piercing techniques recreate the look of honeycomb, lace, or webbing. The use of mixed metals (silver and gold, platinum and gold) is also typical. If gemstones are used, they are often unusual: large cabochons, carved emeralds and rubies, and rose-cut diamonds. The “Macri Giglio” collection is a brand new declination of the Macri line, which is entirely based on the repetition of a stylized lily. The lily is one of the most ancient flowers used for decorative
purposes and it appears in the tradition of many civilizations. The “rigato” engraving covers the smallest details of these jewels and is offered in its radial version on the oval and round elements composing pendants and earrings. The openwork technique gives shape to the lilies and exalts their lightness and pure lines. Shiny beads are handcrafted to dot the engraved surface and decorate it. Contrasting gold colors emphasize the design and its extreme elegance and soberness. The gold engraving techniques aren’t new – they’ve been used since the Renaissance, and some date back as far as Roman times – but Buccellati is unique in that the techniques have been honed and adapted to become part of the brand’s DNA over a period of nearly 100 years. — AARTHI MOHAN
The Glamour of Creativity Prologue’s daringly creative masterpieces are bespoke, rare and a favorite of corporations and collectors alike. The unique sculptures bring together several materials which are fused and then decorated with hand-made engravings and ornamentation. Automation, light and sound are usually used to add life to them. Pedru De Arnanda, chairman of the company, said, “Our work always embodies our philosophy: the bigger the challenge, the more beautiful the piece.” At DJWE, Prologue featured a 225-kilogram metallic sculpture on wheels called “One Thousand And One Nights” that took three years and several subcontractors to produce. Pedro says the reception of Qataris towards these artistic pieces has steadily increased. “People come and look at our pieces from all directions, and express their admiration about the details. The interest is especially keen on works that depict their heritage: falcons, Arabian horses, oryx and camels.” He is also encouraged by the appreciation and interest from the younger generation. — IZDIHAR ALI
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The Exhibition
Bold and Beautiful
Refined, elegant and sophisticated, David Webb is known for his bold and unusual creations. Best remembered for his animal and natureinspired designs, his repertoire of design influences spanned from Etruscan culture to 18th century jewels. In particular, his Art Deco pieces combining diamonds, enamel and South Sea pearls remain completely modern. Webb’s designs mirrored the times. His work was feminine, floral, and with fauna motifs and he had a direct relationship with his clientele. As time moved on, by the ‘50s and ‘60s, a lot of energy and change took place, spurring a cultural revolution. His designs began to mature and grow bolder and muscular. Animals started out petite and grew, and by the ‘70s it was very architectural and dynamic. This year, David Webb’s iconic pieces were showcased at DJWE included the necklace featuring South Sea cultured pearls, brilliant-cut diamonds, black onyx links, platinum and 18k gold, the double-headed Parrot bracelet in platinum, 18k yellow gold, diamond, turquoise and sapphires, and the David Webb Paisley bracelet featuring cabochon rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, brilliant-cut diamonds, green and light blue enamel, 18K gold and platinum. — AARTHI MOHAN
Contemporary Watchmaking Audemars Piguet revolutionized the luxury watch market in the seventies with the Royal Oak, a flagship steel piece designed by Gérald Genta that pushed watch design to a new level. Forward-thinking design and technology paired with second-to-none engineering have elevated Audemars Piguet to the frontline of modern watchmaking. With its steel case, octagonal bezel, “tapisserie” dial and integrated bracelet, the Royal Oak creates a perfect harmony where ultra-modern technical precision meets cutting edge micro-mechanics. Rooted in its history of creating its own gem-setting techniques within the horological craft, the diamonds chosen for the watches are fully integrated into the bracelet, dial and bezel, creating design continuity throughout the entire piece. In 2017, Audemars Piguet presents a new women’s Royal Oak with a uniquely gem-set look defined by a swirling diamond relief pattern that glides beyond the dial and bezel to the bracelet. The bezel, dial or crown is set with precious gems for a glamorous effect. It is available in either 18-carat pink gold or 18-carat white gold and demonstrates the typical Audemars Piguet blend of craftsmanship, originality and elegance. — AARTHI MOHAN
Marco Valente’s name is a synonymous with Italian jewelry. He is an icon in the international world of jewelry, well known for his creativity and dexterity among top world jewelers.
A FORMIDABLE COMBINATION Marco Valente produces modern and elegant designs that combine desire, genius and technology
Marco Valente started his professional life in 1982, and over the past 35 years he has partnered with some of the world leading jewelry brands, producing modern and elegant designs that combine desire, genius and technology. Being wellknown internationally as a pioneer in luxury jewelry design, he doesn’t insist on perfection that requires care for details. He is infatuated with colors that brighten life, and says, “I quench my thirst for creativity with joy and quest for colors which awake in me the passion for nature and art. I am trying to pass to other people my internal strengths, personality, positivity, values and energy though creativity. As a businessman and a designer my philosophy is not profit-centric. Rather it is based on conscientious work to develop taste, technicalities to give prominence to the core value and role that a piece of jewelry can play in life.” — IZDIHAR ALI
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PHOTO CREDIT: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DAVID WEBB; AUDEMARS PIGUET; ROB ALTAMIRANO
The Toast of Italy
An Infatuation With Precious Stones In 1988, Gerhard Schreiner’s love for precious stones led him to the land of emeralds, Colombia. It was here where his story began.
TASTEFUL FARE Gerhard Schreiner comes carrying with him all new things that are antiquated with the scent of old times.
Schreiner’s jewelry reminds one of the innovative ornamentation of old fables when each stone had a secret, and each pearl was a teardrop from a fairy, and of fairy tales about the jewelry of nobility and royalty in the secretive underground world of the past. Schreiner is very well acquainted with the Qatari taste. Therefore he continues to have a conspicuous presence in DJWE since its inception. He comes carrying with him all new things that are antiquated with the scent of old times. He says, “I have never seen such tasteful clients in my life as I did here.” — IZDIHAR ALI
From Milan, With Love
PHOTO CREDIT: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ROB ALTAMIRANO (4); AYSWARYA MURTHY; DJWE
Pomellato’s designs are described as being Milano (from Milan), with inspirations derived from the city’s fashion, beauty and elegance.
A Stitch in Time
An exciting activity at the DJWE this year was the watchmaking workshops from world-renowned specialists ObjectifHorlogerie, where visitors would get schooled on complexities of watchmaking. Established in Paris, ObjectifHorlogerie’s ‘First Time’ watchmaking classes allow enthusiasts to experience the indescribable emotion of mastering time. These classes were brought to Doha under the tuition of co-founders Jean Yves Goldman and Samir Khemici. At the quiet corner workspace, a small number of participants were able to observe and participate in the watchmaker’s rituals, gaining an insight into the precision and complexity of watchmaking. The introductory workshops revealed the secret hidden inside a timepiece — the parts that ensure a smooth mechanical movement and the timehonored handcrafting that is inherent to each piece. These informative workshops proved to be extremely popular, with almost a hundred participants receiving their complimentary accredited diploma by the end. — AYSWARYA MURTHY
Sabina Belli, CEO of Pomellato says, “We are proud to be in this exhibition and have access to the Qatari ladies, the women who are most fashionable and most appreciative of jewelry in the world. We have the most luxurious collections here, including the necklace with simple but magnificent stones, and Tango collection inspired from the Spanish dance, alongside with the paphe cut dotted with diamonds, all available in a complete set with earrings, rings and bracelets.” She described the exhibition as the most elegant in the region, or possibly the world – as brands exhibit their finest pieces in order to satisfy the sophisticated taste that women in the region enjoy. “We often see them in London, Paris, Rome, etc. They see brands in various settings, thus they appreciate what is offered to them in their local market.” — KARIM IMAM
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Lookout Qatar
On Watches
Fancy Clockwork Embellished and even ostentatious, the new esthetics for watches belie precise movements and clockwork. BY DEBRINA ALIYAH
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FACING PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTOS COURTESY OF BLANCPAIN, HERMÈS, IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN, FENDI; CURRENT PAGE: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHANEL, SALVATORE FERRAGAMO, CHOPARD, VERSACE
Facing page, clockwise from top left: Mother-of-pearl and diamond watch, Blancpain, QR54,213; Slim Quantième Perpétuel, Hermès, price on request; Portofino watch, IWC Schaffhausen, QR117,087; Selleria watch, Fendi, QR4,653. Current page: Mademoiselle Privé, Chanel, price on request; Gilio watch, Salvatore Ferragamo, QR3,400; Garden of Kalahari watch, Chopard, price on request; Palazzo Empire, Versace, QR4,800.
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My son Maxwell has a real point of view. I love seeing the world through his eyes. Both of my sons are excellent travelers. I like exposing them to everything. It’s certainly where the magic lies.
Me skateboarding in an empty swimming pool in the ’70s. I grew up with the kids in Z-Boys. At my core, I’ll always be a skater from Malibu.
Profile in Style
Sean MacPherson ‘‘I’VE ALWAYS RELATED TO Zelig — I’ve been lucky enough to intersect with a few things that became relevant by being in the right place at the right time,’’ says the hotelier Sean MacPherson. Such a laid-back SoCal attitude isn’t what one might expect from someone who has quietly changed the landscape of downtown Manhattan and Los Angeles with his empire of restaurants and hotels. From instant icons like the Waverly Inn to small-scale hotels like the Bowery and the Ludlow — he is now overseeing the renovation of the famed Chelsea Hotel — MacPherson’s transporting spaces are rooted in venerable history, quirky bohemianism and Old World charm. The only child of a champion surfer turned peripatetic hippie, he grew up chasing ‘‘pockets of weird outsider counterculture’’ in Guadalajara, Sun Valley and New Zealand, which — along with the irreverence of Marcel Duchamp, the dapper style of Gianni Agnelli and the artful chaos of Picasso’s interiors — left formative fingerprints on his world. ‘‘I’ve never been very interested in a singular object or style of design,’’ he adds. ‘‘Rather, I focus on creating feeling and emotion, because a great hotel is all about the personality and the narrative that’s behind it.’’
The modern hotel, if you ask me, was invented by César Ritz in Paris. I love the Ritz Paris’s sense of spectacle and place.
— LINDSAY TALBOT
The brass hand sconces at the Marlton are sort of a Cocteau moment, inspired by the scene in ‘‘La Belle et la Bête’’ where candlesticks are held up by surreal human arms. Sa Foradada restaurant in Majorca is only reachable by boat. There’s nothing more pure than swimming off a sailboat, hiking up a hill and being served paella scooped out of a pan.
My mom was a surfing champion, and still surfs at age 78. This was taken before the advent of the wet suit — she used to ride waves in cashmere sweaters from the Salvation Army.
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF SEAN M AC PHERSON; POSTER COURTESY OF THOMAS W. BENTON GONZO GALLERY; COURTESY OF 'GUEST OF A GUEST' (2); MARTYN THOMPSON/TRUNK ARCHIVES; COURTESY SHUTTERSTOCK; COURTESY OF SEAN M AC PHERSON (2)
When I was 10, I moved to Aspen. It was a heady mix of hippies, cowboys and outlaws back then: Hunter S. Thompson had run for sheriff on his ‘‘freak power’’ platform, and John Denver was still around.
Sub Section
Section
Watch Report
Fast Times
New colorful dials are so outlandishly sexy that they make for some unconventional airbrushing. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANTHONY COTSIFAS STYLED BY LAUREN POGGI Baume & Mercier Clifton GMT, QR13,435, baumeet-mercier.com.
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Sub Section
Piaget Altiplano 60th Anniversary, QR91,745, piaget.com.
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RETOUCHER: ANONYMOUS RETOUCH. AIRBRUSH ARTIST: JUSTIN GRASSI AT CREATIVE IMPULSE ART. CARS: 1964 CHEVROLET IMPALA COURTESY OF RICH SUDLER, 1970 DODGE CHALLENGER, 1970 FORD MUSTANG, 1967 CHEVROLET CAMARO, ALL COURTESY OF DAVID BOTIER AT DAVID’S CLASSIC CARS. ALL CARS SOURCED FROM MICHAEL RUNNALLS OF WEBE AUTOS. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: KARL LEITZ, CALEB ANDRIELLA AND JESS KIRKHAM
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Panerai Radiomir 3 Days Acciaio, QR35,680, panerai.com.
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Quality
The Italian architect Vincenzo De Cotiis, known for blending the raw and the refined, has no interest in leveraging fame for a mass-produced furniture line. Instead, in between commissions, he retreats to his Milan atelier to add to Progetto Domestico, his limited-edition collection of sculptural pieces. This six-foot-high cabinet is fashioned from hand-soldered planes of silver-plated brass remarkably made to resemble a mirror. It hangs like a massive armored shell, opening to reveal four rows of crystalline glass shelves. Price on request, carpentersworkshopgallery.com. — NANCY HASS
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY COTSIFAS STYLED BY JILL NICHOLLS
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RETOUCHER: ANONYMOUS RETOUCH. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: KARL LEITZ AND WEI CHIA HUANG. SET ASSISTANT: TODD KNOPKE
The Thing
Quality Qatar
Another Thing The "Wave City" coffee table by Cyprus-based designer Stelios Mousarris bends a landscape of buildings in half, using the overlapping surface as the tabletop. The piece depicts a city skyline transformed into functional design, while also being a breathtaking work of art. Inspired by a film, this table is a balanced mixture of wood and steel — the intricate details of which were created using 3D printing technology. Wave City portrays a unique perspective of a metropolitan landscape seen from all angles, as the cityscape is flipped upside-down and takes on a life of its own. The precision of each building is both powerful and captivating, and juxtaposes the sleek, smooth shape of the table.
PHOTO COURTESY: STELLA MOUSARRIS
— AARTHI MOHAN
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Quality Qatar
On Art HIGHER ASPIRATIONS Dharavi has created a history of sorts, by hosting a museum within its confines.
The Unlikely Museum Museums have always been objects of reverence and pride. What if one were built within one of the world’s largest slum? Would it still be categorized as a museum?
MUCH HAS BEEN SAID about one of the largest slums in Asia — Dharavi. And yet, it is difficult to resist the need to portray the curious landscape in our own words. Dharavi is the underbelly of cosmopolitan Mumbai, a place where humanity thrives in non-existent spaces, where hygiene and sanitation are given the least of regard, yet it is a place where community and commerce flourish. Dharavi has been the setting for movies, both Indian and international, and the sheer size of the population (over 1 million thickly packed within its confines), makes a stimulating sight that has piqued the curiosity of the masses. It is the setting that often defines India, the land of poverty, where stories of happiness and even prosperous living are found within seemingly stigmatized surroundings. Dharavi, a lively blend of flimsy shacks, one-room brick tenements with tin roofs and multi-storied buildings, as well as schools, temples and mosques, also entertains scores of small businesses, ranging from auto repair shops to textile units and even leather manufacturing hubs. It is a
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familiar setting that is much publicized yet continues to be the dark secret of the city, branded as a “slum” even with all the shackles it has shattered through its smart commercial potential. Dharavi has also created a history of sorts, by hosting a museum within its confines. For the creators, Jorge Mañes Rubio and Amanda Pinatih, the inspirational idea of Design Museum Dharavi came after a visit about five years ago; it seemed like the right place to reimagine a museum, “precisely because such an idea doesn’t really fit within its context”, according to Pinatih, a young art historian and curator based in Amsterdam. Creating the museum in Dharavi was a provocation in itself. “Over the past few years we came up with the idea to create a museum that would feature all the creativity, potential and resilience that also defines Dharavi and its inhabitants,” she says. The two founders, who were in Doha for the Art for Tomorrow 2017 conference in March, were inspired by the location,“because it was much more than the post-apocalyptical location that we find in the media or on the internet or in any other slum
CURRENT AND FACING PAGES: PICTURE COURTESY DESIGN MUSEUM DHARAVI (3)
BY SINDHU NAIR
HYPERLOCAL ART These spaces howcase skills that go beyond cheap or repetitive manual labor, an idea that unfortunately tends to be associated with local manufacturers.
narratives.” Rubio explains, “Museum is a big word, a very western idea, and we chose it intentionally. We could start from scratch because the concept of a museum doesn’t exist here yet, not because it is not necessary. The project’s experimental spirit precisely lies within the barriers it aimed to break.” The Design Museum Dharavi engages with local artists in new collaborations, exploring their creativity and designing new objects for public exhibitions. The showcased objects reflect new creative directions for these localmakers, portraying their identity and that of their communities in surprising and original ways. These exhibitions provide the visitors with a completely different perspective, showcasing skills that go beyond cheap or repetitive manual labor, an idea that unfortunately tends to be associated with local manufacturers. “Design Museum Dharavi supports these makers and their practice, creating the space and time necessary to experiment with new designs that go beyond their usual commissions. Every exhibition has a different theme depending on the collaborators, location, season, or subject chosen as inspiration,” says Pinatih. “The museum opened with an exhibition inspired by local themes and everyday symbols such as chai (tea), water containers and brooms. The second exhibition featured a street cricket tournament, a sport that every Indian is passionate about, where richly hand-embroidered uniforms and stunning hand-carved wooden bats were not only displayed but also put into action.” Pinatih and Rubio were touched by the creativity and the passion with which the museum was embraced in the Dharavi community. Pinatih remembers how a small boy from the community explained the museum to his friends, “a magic show without the magic”, that reflected on how the museum touched
The Design Museum Dharavi engages with local makers in new collaborations, exploring their creativity and designing new objects for public exhibitions.
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Quality Qatar
On Art
THE MUSEUM AND THE DISPOSSESSED Amanda Pinatih and Jorge Mañes Rubio at the New York Times' Art for Tomorrow conference in Doha; Below: Everyday objects with a uniquely Dharavi twist.
the lives of those whose wares were on exhibit, for reasons other than the resilience and poverty that Dharavi is mostly associated with. While the project seems to have shone the light of creativity on the least expected place in India, what more has it achieved? Has the concept of museums been questioned, have museums become more socially relevant because of this project? Pinatih believes they have tried to change perceptions — of the place that the museum was brought to and the concept of the role of museums. “The Design Museum Dharavi has been created as an experimental project to explore the impact that design may have on the perception and future development of areas such as Dharavi. It started as a two-month project, although it continued for over a year,” says Pinatih. “We are excited to see how institutes, museums and similar cultural institutes will adopt a more socially relevant role in the future, where design methodologies are being applied in unexpected scenarios. On a meta level, our idea is to create a model that in the future can be implemented in other similar settlements around the world.” By 2030 some two billion people, or nearly a quarter of humanity, will be living in informal dwellings, believes Rubio. With an evergrowing world population, homegrown neighborhoods will play a major role in the expanding megacities of tomorrow. “This first experience will serve us to measure the actual impact that our proposal had in Dharavi, and will start the conversation on how design can help to change our response to these locations, encouraging the right development of these areas,” he explains. The creators are not only motivated by the role they play in elevating the artistic value of the location but they are also convinced that supporting a future generation of creative talent in homegrown neighborhoods will not only allow a greater cultural exchange and appreciation, but it could also increase the integration of these neighborhoods in the economies and societies of future cities. “We firmly believe that design practitioners, academics, and institutions should engage in this challenge,” says Pinatih.
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PICTURE COURTESY: TOP: NEW YORK TIMES; OTHERS: DESIGN MUSEUM DHARAVI
‘We are excited to see how institutes, museums and similar cultural institutes will adopt a more socially relevant role in the future, where design methodologies are being applied in unexpected scenarios.’
Quality
Sub Section
Runway Report
Adult Coloring Combinations of slightly awkward shades, worn in loose layers, paint an unexpectedly artful picture. PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURENCE ELLIS STYLED BY ALEX HARRINGTON
Céline dress, QR8,560. Paco Rabanne shoes, QR2,730, and tights, price on request, pacorabanne.com. Vintage necklace, courtesy of Melet Mercantile (worn throughout), meletmercantile.com.
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Sub Section
Proenza Schouler top, QR6,375, similar styles at proenzaschouler. com. Versace dress (worn underneath), price on request, us.versace.com. Akris dress (worn underneath), QR14,530, bergdorfgoodman.com.
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Eileen Fisher dress, QR650, eileenfisher .com. Balenciaga top (worn Eileen Fisher dress, underneath), QR650, eileenfisher.com. QR2,750. Sies Balenciaga top (worn Marjan skirt, QR2,750. underneath), QR3,240, Sies Marjan skirt, barneys.com. QR3,240, barneys.com.
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MODEL: EMM ARRUDA AT WOMEN MANAGEMENT. HAIR BY SHINGO SHIBATA AT THE WALL GROUP USING AMIKA. MAKEUP BY SUSIE SOBOL AT JULIAN WATSON AGENCY USING YVES SAINT LAURENT BEAUTY. MANICURE BY RICA ROMAIN AT LMC WORLDWIDE USING CHANEL LE VERNIS. SET DESIGN BY MILA TAYLOR-YOUNG AT D+V MANAGEMENT. CASTING BY ARIANNA PRADARELLI. TAILORING BY LUCY FALK FOR CHRISTY RILLING STUDIO. PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: LAURA LARRAGA ANSTIS. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: FLETCHER LAWRENCE ANSTIS AND ANDREW WHITE. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: LUCA GALASSO AND CARLOS ACEVEDO. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: AYAKA NIHEI
Quality Sub Section Runway Report
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Pleats Please Issey Miyake dress, QR2,060, tribecaisseymiyake.com. J. W. Anderson skirt, QR2,970, jeffreynewyork.com. Balenciaga shoes, QR2,315, similar styles at balenciaga.com. DKNY tights, QR60, similar styles at nordstrom.com. Belt, stylist’s own.
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Art Matters
It’s Complicated
Five boundary-pushing artists talk about protesting current events through their work. The intention is to galvanize and educate, but reactions to the art can be as thorny as the issues the work addresses. BY M. H. MILLER
The Chicago-based artist Pope.L began making his series of paintings called ‘‘Skin Set’’ two decades ago. In the beginning, they examined the absurdity of racial stereotypes through the use of crude, occasionally inscrutable slogans like ‘‘Black People Are Cropped’’ or ‘‘White People Are Angles on Fire.’’ This painting, ‘‘Sunny Day White Power,’’ an entry in that series, was started during the administration of George H. W. Bush, and returned to shortly before the time Trump announced his candidacy. ‘‘I was excited about Obama, but at the same time I was wondering how the machine of conventional politics would nullify his impact. You could say I was suspicious. I’m the kind of person who sees clouds on the horizon. Or smoke. There’s always this sense that there’s more to do. And we became complacent. Otherwise I don’t think what happened on Nov. 8 would have happened. It’s almost as if we thought black people — or President Obama — could solve everything. It’s about some fantasy we had — this Caramel Camelot. And so now we are where we are. ‘‘When George W. Bush was re-elected, that really threw people. It galvanized them. In some ways we’re in the same place with Trump. His election might not be the worst thing in the world in that it will cause people to stop being so lazy, myself included. It’s a choice to be energized, because the other choice is a depressing, pointless way of looking at it. I choose to think we can actually do something with this material called failure.’’
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POPE.L, ‘‘SUNNY DAY WHITE POWER,’’ 2016, ACRYLIC, CELLOPHANE TAPE, CHARCOAL, COLLAGE, GEL MEDIUM, INK. LATEX MASK, OIL PAINT, OIL STICK, PAINTER’S TAPE, PUSH PINS AND ROPE ON NEWSPAPER ON SHOWER CURTAIN IN ARTIST’S FRAME, 90 3/4”X74”X24”, ©POPE.L, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MITCHELL-INNES & NASH, NY
POPE.L
BETTY TOMPKINS
FROM LEFT: BETTY TOMPKINS, ‘‘HECK….,’’ 2016, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 12”X6”, COURTESY OF BETTY TOMPKINS AND PPOW, NYC; FOR FREEDOMS, PHOTOGRAPH BY WYATT GALLERY, COURTESY OF FOR FREEDOMS
In 2002, Betty Tompkins sent a message to her mailing list asking for words and phrases that described women. She received more than 3,500 responses in 10 languages, equally split between men and women. The answers became the series ‘‘WOMEN Words, Phrases and Stories,” which will eventually include 1,000 individual word paintings. ‘‘Heck, People Just Don’t Like Women’’ is a recent addition.
‘Ambiguity is really dangerous. Artists do this all the time, right? But many people feel uncomfortable if they aren’t told how to feel about something.’ — ERIC GOTTESMAN OF FOR FREEDOMS
‘‘In 2002, three of the most common replies were ‘mother,’ ‘bitch’ and ‘slut.’ In 2013, I sent out the message again, and this time I said the answers would be anonymous. I was curious if that made a difference. It did. People didn’t just send me a list of words, they told whole stories, which were fascinating and sort of awful to read. And those three words that were repeated in 2002 were repeated again. I thought that was amazing. Basically, this is the way the world thinks about women. The difference now is that we’ve become more sensitive to the words and how they play out in real life. We’ve never seen such an example of plain-old misogyny — as well as embedded misogyny from women — as we did in 2016. You can’t escape the political implication of this piece.’’
FOR FREEDOMS For Freedoms, a New York-based super PAC founded by the artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, commissioned artists to create political ads in the run-up to the 2016 election. ‘‘Make America Great Again’’ was installed a few weeks before Election Day in Pearl, Miss. Willis Thomas: ‘‘The billboard in Pearl featured a famous image by James ‘Spider’ Martin of unarmed protesters — including John Lewis, now a United States congressman — facing off against the Alabama state troopers on March 7, 1965, a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The activists in the civil rights era stood up against injustice, even when that meant standing up against the government; they made America great. The intention was to empathize with those men and women, but many people were confused about the sign and who put it there. At first, they thought we might be a right-wing group. A local liberal activist called after the election and said, ‘You might think that you’re doing something that’s good and interesting, but for people on the ground here, you’re putting lives at risk. With the uptick in hate crimes since the election, you might be inciting and empowering white supremacists, saying it’s O.K. to go beat up on black people.’ That threw me off — that people thought we were empathizing with the state troopers!’’ Gottesman: ‘‘An iconic civil rights image went from the protesters being seen as heroic wards of American values to now people associating with the police. Ambiguity is really dangerous, because it promotes the idea of having a conversation where you don’t know all the answers. Artists do this all the time, right? But many people feel uncomfortable if they aren’t told how to feel about something, or if they don’t know what the message is.’’
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Arena
Art Matters
POSTCOMMODITY
Martínez: ‘‘Most politicians making decisions about the border have never been there — they don’t know what it looks like or what they’re creating. They don’t know who the people are. We felt like there was an indigenous perspective missing from the immigration debate, and a lot of the reason for this is that many of those immigrants are indigenous people of color. We see ourselves in them, in other words. Our work is not about nations in the sense of what federal governments are up to. It’s more about local community and indigenous selfdetermination. If the human spirit is there, and there are needs and desires in a community, if it can organize, it always has the opportunity to transcend federal policies. There’s always a way.’’
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA Some of the most famous works of the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija eschew traditional art objects in favor of social interventions, including cooking large meals in galleries and at events like Frieze Art Fair. This painting, ‘‘untitled (the tyranny of common sense has reached its final stage, new york times, november 9, 2016),’’ was made directly following the election, and debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach last December. ‘‘I’ve been using newspapers for a long time now, and I draw from long lists of quotes floating in my head. It is an ongoing project at this point. In newspapers, I see the contradictions of reality and fiction play out. ‘The tyranny of common sense has reached its final stage’ is a quote from Aldo van Eyck, perhaps taken out of context, but in the wake of the recent election, the quote resonates.’’
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‘Trump being elected might not be the worst thing in that it will stop us from being so lazy, myself included. It’s a choice to be energized, because the other choice is depressing.’ — POPE.L
FROM TOP: POSTCOMMODITY, ‘‘REPELLENT FENCE/VALLA REPELENTE,’’ 2015, LAND ART INSTALLATION AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT (EARTH, CINDER BLOCK, PARA-CORD, PVC SPHERES, HELIUM). AERIAL VIEW, US/ MEXICO BORDER, DOUGLAS, ARIZONA / AGUA PRIETA, SONORA. IMAGE: COURTESY OF BOCKLEY GALLERY. PHOTO: MICHAEL LUNDGREN; RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA, ‘‘UNTITLED 2016 (THE TYRANNY OF COMMON SENSE HAS REACHED ITS FINAL STAGE, NEW YORK TIMES, NOVEMBER 9, 2016),’’ 2016, ACRYLIC AND NEWSPAPER ON LINEN, 89 1/4” X 73 1/4”, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GAVIN BROWN’S ENTERPRISE, COPYRIGHT THE ARTIST
The Arizona- and New Mexico-based collective Postcommodity consists of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. The group spent three years working with the local governments in Douglas, Ariz., and Agua Prieta, Mexico, to create an installation, ‘‘Repellent Fence/ Valla Repelente,’’ completed in 2015, of socalled scare-eye balloons — emblazoned with indigenous iconography — that crossed the U.S./Mexico border. A video that expands upon the project will be in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
Arena A Writer’s Room
Bernard-Henri Lévy PORTRAIT BY BENOÎT PEVERELLI
I TRAVEL A LOT, so by definition I write in many places: cabs, cafes, nearly everywhere. But when I’m in Paris, I work from home. Most of my recent books have been written here, including a large part of the latest one. I continue to write by hand, as I did 20 years ago. For me, there’s a physical dimension of writing that’s too important; I couldn’t write directly on the computer. When I’m working on a book, I write at all times of day, hardly stopping, with just a few hours to sleep. Occasionally, I’ll need to stretch my legs and will tape pieces of paper on the bookshelves and on the window, moving between them and writing a word or phrase on each that I’ll later collect into sentences. Here, I really am cut off from the rest of the world — there’s no phone, no internet, a landline that very few know the number for. It’s a good place to put my body and soul completely into the writing. The process is like heat — I bet my body temperature increases. What you see here is only a small part of my library. I have books scattered around my apartment that I’ve arranged in alphabetical order not only by
author but by subject, too, the reasoning being that you sometimes have an author who only wrote one book on a specialized subject and whose name you’ll never remember. No one else would ever find a book here, but for me it’s easy to decipher. Behind my desk is a sort of second library, about 20 square meters, devoted to the volumes I need for whatever I’m working on at the moment. It’s like a big safe for my WRITING ON THE WALL The most precious items. intellectual Other than my books, I’m not really attached to objects, French at home in Paris, except maybe one: a medal that I was given by the president where he of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic, in 1993, when I authored much of ‘‘The Genius was in Sarajevo shooting a documentary on the Bosnian war. of Judaism’’ It’s the only medal I’ve ever accepted from a state govern- (Random House), his new book ment, including my own, probably because it’s given to so about what it means to be few people. And because I thought I really deserved it. a Jew today.
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Arena Qatar
On Heritage
Tales from the Arabian Gulf Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, in collaboration with Qatar University, is working on a sequel to its book of Qatari folktales in an effort to carry these stories into the digital age. BY NAYLA AL NAIMI
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY IN QATAR (VCUQ) hopes to preserve the traditional Qatari culture through their project titled “Orality to Image: Traditional Qatari Narratives and Visual Media”. In collaboration with Qatar University, it published a book in 2013, titled, “The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf”, filled with Arabian folktales accompanied with illustrations. The project was awarded a grant from the Qatar Foundation Undergraduate Research Experience Program. A project like no other, this is now set to be revisited. VCUQ’s Director of Liberal Arts and Sciences and one of the editors of the book, Patty Paine says, “We just started working on a second volume of illustrated folktales. We learned a great deal from the first book that we’re eager to apply to the sequel, and we have many wonderful stories that we’re eager to work with.”
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T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine
THE LEGEND OF MAI AND GHAILLAN Ghaillan is a pearl merchant in Al Khor whose idyllic world is shaken with the arrival Mai, a beautiful woman who turns out to be even better at finding pearls. Ilustrated by Fatima Al Remaihi
For this edition, Dr Sara Al Mohannadi, an English Literature professor at Qatar University, collected and translated over 30 stories from her students. “I got my students to note down all the traditional stories they knew and I picked the ones relevant to what Paine wanted for the book, ones that were part of Qatari lives growing up. It was a long, challenging process, but worth it, knowing it’s for a new generation of Qatari children,” Al Mohannadi says. The production of such graphic novels is pivotal for a country like Qatar that is not only undergoing a rapid social, cultural and economic change but is also attempting to reach out to the world. “We also hoped that these books would find a wider audience so that readers all over the world would learn about the rich culture of this region. With the rapid development and change, we think it’s very important to celebrate and preserve Qatari culture, and we hope we’ve contributed in a meaningful way,” Paine says. Other than encouraging the community to read and appreciate the visual arts, the interdisciplinary nature of this project has set a good example for the community at large. “The opportunity to collaborate with a university that has such a different background and exploit the diverse creativity, mindsets and educational tools between our students and VCU-Q’s, is one of the reasons that got me on board,” says Al Mohannadi. Then there was the more unusual collaboration with Qatari grandmothers who enthusiatically took part in this project. “The students collected stories from their grandmothers, which were recorded digitally, transcribed, and
Other than encouraging the community to read and appreciate the visual arts, the interdisciplinary nature of this project has set a good example for the community at large.
THE GOLDEN COW Hamad, the son of a Sheikh, buys a golden cow from the market, unaware that the little girl living inside of it would change his life forever. Illustrated by Wafaa Al Saffar
March-April 2017
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Arena Qatar
On Heritage
THE THIEVES AND THE TREE TRUNK Abdulrahman protects his house from being robbed when he tricks two theives by disguising a tree trunk in traditional Qatari clothes to appear like a man standing in the yard. Illustrated by Joanne Bermejo
These folktales entertained the Qatari community but they also served as a medium to pass down morals and values. then translated into English. The ladies seemed to delight in the opportunity to tell these stories, and it was quite special for the students to share this experience with their grandmothers,” Paine says. With the country’s profound transformation into modernity, this book is a throwback into how most Qataris lived in the recent past. Stories like “The Donkey Lady” were told to children for reasons that go beyond bedtime entertainment. The Donkey Lady, a scary old lady who steals children, instilled fear in them to keep them from roaming the streets alone. These folktales entertained the Qatari community but they also served as a medium to pass down morals and values. The multi-national project team recognized the themes of these stories as similar to those from their own cultures, making them ponder on the question of origins. Although the folktales may not have directly originated from Qatar, they remain an integral part of its past and contemporary culture. Taking the next step, Paine and her team is planning on digitalizing the sequel to the book. “We’re excited about venturing into other types of media like apps, interactive e-texts, and animation,” she says. Al Mohannadi says that digitalizing such stories will help them adhere to memory. “Text is important but once the reader has an image implemented in their mind, they’ll never forget the story,” she says. Paine says their ultimate goal in continuing this project is “to attract young readers through their interest in comics and anime, while also demonstrating that traditional stories are valuable and relevant”. With the book being recognized as one of top souvenirs to take back from Qatar and being used in several local schools and universities, it’s sure to create awareness of Qatari culture among the reading public.
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T Qatar: The New York Times Style Magazine
April 9, 2017
FROM LEFT: CPD PRODUCTIONS; ROBI RODRIGUEZ
PAst Is pReseNt Playing With Power 46 Celluloid Therapy 54 Here 60
March-April 2017
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Mulberry jacket, QR4,220, mulberry.com. Vintage Vivienne Westwood corset, courtesy of passageparis.com. Salvatore Ferragamo skirt, QR8,555. Maison Auclert necklace (worn throughout), QR22,572, and ring (worn throughout), QR18,931, maisonauclert.com. Bosca Accessories briefcase, QR2,495, bosca.com. Wolford tights, QR178, wolford. com. Vintage shoes, price on request, riceandbeansvintage.com. Opposite: Dior coat, QR19,295. Vintage bustier, courtesy of Olivier Chatenet Paris. Wolford tights, QR178. 46
Experimental tailoring — checkered patterns, padded shoulders, sleeveless suits — is commanding work.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBI RODRIGUEZ STYLED BY ELODIE DAVID-TOUBOUL
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Balenciaga jacket, QR7,810, and skirt, QR3,440. Cadolle corset, QR1,640, cadolle .com. Wolford tights, QR180. Opposite: Louis Vuitton jacket, about QR10,195, bustier, about QR3,640, skirt, about QR7,035, and iPhone case, about QR4,200, louisvuitton.com. Falke tights, QR138, bloomingdales.com. Vintage shoes, price on request, riceandbeansvintage.com. 48
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Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier jacket sleeves, courtesy of passageparis.com. Giorgio Armani jacket, QR9,920, and pants, QR3,800, armani.com. Cadolle x Fleur du Mal corset, QR3,480, fleurdumal.com. Opposite: Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci jacket, QR12,580; similar styles at neimanmarcus.com. Ralph Lauren Collection shirt, QR2,366, ralphlauren.com. Alice Cadolle corset, QR8,000, cadolle.com. 50
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PRODUCTION BY MICHAEL LACOMBLEZ AT LOUIS2 PARIS. LOCATIONS: FONDATION SUISSE AND MAISON DU BRÉSIL, ©FLC/ADAGP/ARS, 2016. CASTING BY ARIANNA PRADARELLI. CASTING CONSULTANT: WALTER PEARCE FOR MIDLAND AGENCY. SET DESIGN BY CAROLE GREGORIS AT QUADRIGA. MANICURE BY MAGALI BUISSON AT MAJEURE PROD. PHOTO ASSISTANTS: WILL CORRY AND JULIETTE ABITBOL. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: JULIEN SCHMITT AND ANOUCK MUTSAERTS. HAIR ASSISTANT: TARIK BENNAFLA. MAKEUP ASSISTANT: CYRIL LAINE. SET DESIGNER'S ASSISTANT: MANUEL RUEFF
Max Mara jumpsuit, QR4,185, and jacket (worn underneath), QR4,915. Causse Gantier gloves, QR1,575, causse-gantier.fr. Opposite: Valentino cape, QR10,850, valentino .com. Balenciaga men’s shirt, QR1,220, and pants, QR1,910. Vintage Vivienne Westwood corset. Models: Sarah Dahl/Scoop Models and Max. Hair by Chi Wong at Management + Artists using Kérastase Aura Botanica. Makeup by Adrien Pinault at Management + Artists using MAC Cosmetics.
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CELLULOID
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ALL PHOTOS COURTESY: RITHY PANH, BOPHANA INSTITUTE, CPD PRODUCTIONS AND DOHA FILM INSTITUTE
THERAPY In Doha for Qumra 2017, Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh sits down for a candid and insightful chat about how cinema saved his life and led him to something bigger than himself. BY AYSWARYA MURTHY
HUMANITY HAS A MORBID FASCINATION WITH GENOCIDE. For no reason other than that they always tend to represent an intense juxtaposition of the very worst and the very best of our species. Through all the unimaginable horrors we are capable of inflicting on each other, that last inch of dignity, resistance and love for life is nearly impossible to strip away. Bodies may be broken but the spirit endures. Theodor Adorno famously said, “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz” — something Rithy Panh quotes in many of his interviews. It’s almost as if he has taken it upon himself to prove Adorno wrong; to show that dark times like these is when we crave art and beauty more than ever. His films, he says, are a way to show people that they can’t destroy him. “I am here, and I am capable of imagination, of poetry,” he says. Rithy was eleven when Khmer Rouge drove his family out of Phnom Penh in 1975. By the time he turned fourteen, he was living in a refugee camp in Thailand, his parents, siblings and relatives all having perished in the murderous campaign that decimated a quarter of Cambodia’s population. His subsequent flight to France, the accidental brush with filmmaking and all his movies since then have been an extension of his attempts to understand what happened to
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him and his countrymen. Making films was primarily his therapy. Everything else was incidental. What was meant to be his personal process of healing had begun to charter a different destiny for him, elevating him to the stature of a ‘griot’ in a reborn and renewed Cambodia — a storyteller, a keeper of the collective consciousnesses of the nation, plotting the course of where they have been, where they are and where they are going. Rithy doesn’t think of his move to France as an escape necessarily. “I needed that distance from my own history and country to maybe start the process of mourning.” A process that has spanned 17 years and 19 documentary and narrative films. “I respect people who want to forget,” he says. “I certainly tried to. But I couldn’t, so I decided to talk about it; tell stories.” Filmmaking was not his first passion or even second. Growing up in Cambodia, he lived near a studio but in his consciousness films were mostly Bollywood-inspired romances and filmmaking was frivolous. He’d rather have been a teacher like his father, or an astronaut like Neil Armstrong who had just landed on the moon. But he slowly embraced cinema when he realized he could appropriate its specific language to tell his stories. During his time at IDHEC (the famed French film school now known as La Fémis), he was still uncertain if he was on the right path. His fellow students had already been immersed in the craft for many years, they conversed knowledgeably about Éric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard and the New Wave, and he knew nothing, he says, except for the fact that he wanted to express his feelings through film. “But IDHEC students got a pass that let us watch any film for free. I liked that very much,” Rithy laughs. And one day he stumbled into a small cinema and discovered Andrei Rublev. “When the film was over, I told myself I have to find something else to do. Tarkovsky
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already did everything there was to do, there was no use of making any more movies. We can all just watch Andrei Rublev one thousand times.” He was also concerned with the financial aspects of filmmaking. It was an expensive affair; you could produce one film or you could feed hundreds of children back home in Cambodia. It was not an easy choice. After he had wrapped the filming of his debut feature, “Site 2”, a documentary about a Cambodian refugee family on the border of Thailand, he found himself in Western Africa, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Souleymane Cissé and Ousmane Sembène, spending a night in jail for filming the “wrong” things. This is where Rithy truly committed to the medium. It was a fight; for freedom, for expressing your point of view, for preserving memory. And it was the good fight. After all, there were 1.8 million different stories waiting to be told. And they would not be about conflict, he decided, but poetry, relationships, beauty, love, resistance, dignity. While not strictly chronological, Rithy’s films span an overarching narrative of the before, during and after. His first narrative film, “Rice People” went right back to the origins, and was a way for him to pay tribute to his grandparents, poor farmers who had to make tough choices. Though adapted from a Malay novel, the story fit neatly into life in rural Cambodia. It is a story of solidarity and resistance, of sustained and crushing poverty, of the kind of discontent that would serve as a precursor of the Khmer Rouge. The film’s universe is full of soul and feels lived in; the main house was built months in advance and the actors, both the children and the adults, spent several days and nights in it before shooting, while Rithy wrote and rewrote the script. It was during this period that Rithy’s sensibilities began to take shape and he developed the idea of making film
with people, not about them. It would come to form the core tenet of all his work. After this he went back to documentary work. It was engaging and challenging. “There is more freedom in shooting a fiction film,” he says. But there are so many moral and etiquette issues around making a documentary. There are so many lines that one shouldn’t cross and this must be learnt the hard way. You want to dive deep into other people’s lives but you don’t want to be a voyeur. And it takes time. Nothing happens on a schedule. You have to be adaptable and be willing to go back again and again. “It’s like taking a long walk,” Rithy says. “You might find nothing or you might find something surprising.” The two documentaries he made that looked at the events through the eyes of the perpetrators (“Even perpetrators have something to say”), took him down strange and dangerous roads into his own psyche. In “S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine”, filmed at the notorious high school turned security prison that came to symbolize the brutality of Khmer Rouge, Rithy brought together gray-haired prisoners and their then-barely-teenaged jailers. It was difficult for him; they seemed just like him, they wanted to be his friend but they were separated by the different choices each of them made. “It’s important to not only to talk about this mass crime but also to show the intentions behind it,” he says. In an impactful scene, a former jailer ‘re-enacts’ what life was like on a routine day at S-21. There are other memories beyond the visual — like memories of a pain from a long-healed wound, Rithy says. The man seemingly reverts back to something of his former self; talking in bursts of short phrases, using gestures to complete sentences. And soon the camera becomes him. As he ventures into the cells to beat someone or bring
‘When the film was over, I told myself I have to find something else to do. Tarkovsky already did everything there was to do, there was no use of making any more movies. We can all just watch Andrei Rublev one thousand times.’
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them water, the camera stops behind the bars, as if careful not to step on the invisible prisoners lying on the ground. It was not planned. Rithy wasn’t even conscious of doing it. In his mind’s eye, he saw ghosts of the prisoners scattered on the floor. And subtly, without knowledge or consent, the flimsy frontier between the audience and the perpetrator is entirely abolished. It is no wonder that Godard said the camera movement is not a technical issue but a moral one. In “Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell”, Rithy sat down face to face with Kang Kek Iew, also known as Comrade Duch, the former head of Khmer Rogue’s internal security branch, who is in many ways the architect of the atrocities that went down in sites like S-21. Rithy spent two years interviewing Duch, an experience that affected him deeply. “You can’t come out of something like that feeling good. I needed a lot of time after to rebuild myself,” he says. But it was a risk he was willing to take to understand, to seek out the truth, irrespective of whether he would find it or not. At many times, Rithy felt drained and close to defeat. This wasn’t an illiterate farmer manipulated by ideology; he was an intellectual man who spoke three languages, who was passionate about literature and mathematics and like French poetry. At that time, Duch was awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity and in Rithy he found an intelligent sparring partner with whom he could “practise”. He would sit there, lie to the camera and deny culpability, leaving Rithy so physically ill sometimes that he’d have to stop their session midway. “Why did I go to meet him again the day after? Because of the strong belief that one day I would have concrete proof to confront him. With a great crimi-
nal like Duch, you can’t rely on philosophies — you have to be judicial.” Rithy would comb through surviving archives, hoping for some shred of evidence. “To beat a guy like Duch, you have to read a lot, understand the channel of command,” he says. He eventually discovered a letter written by an inmate who begged to be allowed to recant his forced confession — the letter’s provenance indirectly but undeniably implicated Duch. There is a tense segment in the film where Duch is confronted with this piece of paper, and his veneer crumbles. “He stopped meeting with me after he understood that things had gone too far.” Rithy’s most famous work is, of course, the Academy award-nominated and multi-award winning “The Missing Picture”, made with footage shot during the regime and interspersed with a semi-autobiographical story told through crude, stationary clay figures. This film exemplifies the filmmaker’s unique style of working, where he starts out with a blank slate, not knowing where the story will lead him. “If you know everything before you shoot, there is no need to make the film. This is tough for a producer to digest,” he laughs. “I am lucky because the people I work with understand my methods. I can’t explain why I must do certain things in a particular way. But take “The Missing Picture”, if I had stuck to my original format, I wouldn’t have found this film.” In his quest to understand the esthetics of totalitarian propaganda, Rithy had been salvaging and studying footage and photograph shot during the Khmer Rouge years. “While it was shot for the purposes of propaganda and to keep Pol Pot abreast with what was hap-
At that time, Duch was awaiting trial for his crimes against humanity and in Rithy he found an intelligent sparring partner with whom he could “practise”.
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‘No one likes to say that they weren’t able to protect their family. You don’t feel like a hero because you survived; you feel like garbage, like they forgot to kill you.’
pening in the country, the cinematographers would sometimes shoot more than what they intended.” While the healthy people had been placed in the front of the frame, when analyzed closely, you could see the sickly, dying ones in the background. You see Pol Pot refusing to shake hands with high-ranking officials who would later be purged. Rithy knew he wanted to use these images in some way in his next film. In the midst of this, he decided to go see what had become of his childhood home. When he discovered that the house he grew up in was now a brothel and gambling den, he requested an assistant to make him a model of the house with clay from the river bank. “When I saw it I felt like some part of my childhood was coming back. We’d do this when we were kids, build clay figures, dry them in the sun,
and imagine stories around them. And eventually they would go back to dust; only the memories remain,” he says. There was aching beauty in the innocence and purity of these figures, and Rithy knew he had to make a completely different film. With much of the film closely resembling events from his own life, the film was a dangerous psychological experiment. “I often felt like I was in direct dialogue with the souls behind the figurines. I was having conversations with the dead.” Rithy says his contemporaries in Cambodia don’t particularly like the film. It’s normal to come out of a tragedy like that and just want to forget the past and focus on rebuilding your life, he says. But these things have a way of coming back to haunt you. “Imagine ten years have passed, you have children and a beautiful life. And one day your child asks you where the granddad is or why the uncle is dead. It’s complicated things for parents to explain. No one likes to say that they weren’t able to protect their family. You don’t feel like a hero because you survived; you feel like garbage, like they forgot to kill you. Watching a film like this can be a healing experience, an easy way to start talking about these things,” he says. Rithy's work in Cambodia is far from over. Through the founding of Bophana Institute, he is working on two issues close to his heart — preserving the audiovisual history of the country and training the next generation of filmmakers. Very early on he understood the need to have a trained local crew, rather than foreign technicians. “If you want to make a good image, you need to understand the sound. It was very difficult to work with a cameraman who didn’t understand Khmer. So after “Site 2” I spent two years training my own people and continue that work now through Bophana. After all it is their own story, they ought to participate.” Bophana is Rithy’s attempt to help young Cambodians restructure their identity. “If we are not capable of expressing or preserving our own memory, we will disappear, especially in this digital age. It is more dangerous than we think. Many languages and histories have disappeared in this flux of images and sound.” It is not easy to rescue traces of the country’s past in a society recovering from brutal genocide and besieged with poverty and corruption but Rithy is determined. “Cambodian Forgotten Songs” is a noteworthy example of the kind of work Bophana does. Having been gifted a book written by a French enthnomusician published in 1921, Rithy discovered many traditional Cambodian songs that had been entirely forgotten and lost. He envisaged reviving these songs, numbering close to a 100, by recording them with traditional singers and musicians. “Now people are singing these songs again,” he says. Through trying to heal himself from his past trauma, Rithy has now embraced a lofty goal. “My focus now is to address the problem of how we can document our story, our identity, way of living and thinking. Each culture has a specific, precious way of understanding life and the universe. We shouldn’t forget them ever.”
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BASIC GEOMETRY The 730-square-foot Polygon House, completed in 2003 by Makoto Yamaguchi for two musicians, is almost completely bare of furniture, comprised of mainly steel, glass, concrete and white walls. In such houses, says Yamaguchi, ‘‘the interior and the exterior lie side by side, gently joining together.”
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IN JAPAN’S LEAFY HAMLET OF KARUIZAWA, OTHERWORLDLY ARCHITECTURE IS THE EXPRESSION OF THE UNINHIBITED SELF.
BY HANYA YANAGIHARA PHOTOGRAPHS BY MIKAEL OLSSON 61
JAPAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN DEEPLY ENCOURAGING OF THE STRANGE, THE WEIRD AND THE EXPERIMENTAL, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO DESIGN. 62
THE MOUNTAIN TOWN of Karuizawa is about an hour’s
train ride northwest of Tokyo, a journey that zooms past the small, heartbreaking scenes of beauty that any traveler here knows, an endlessly repeating pattern of fragile persimmon trees, their unlovely black branches sagging with dusty orange fruit; splintered wooden torii gates, their vermilion paint bleached to a fleshy pink; tin-roofed factories and squat apartment buildings, their patios hung with laundry. One expects Karuizawa to look and feel the same as all the other villages on the route, but despite its totems of contemporary Japan — the tidy, utilitarian concrete train station; the ubiquitous bright-lit convenience stores selling ice cream and compression socks — it feels not of Japan, but of elsewhere: a pretty, bourgeois commuter’s hamlet in central Europe or New England, the kind of place where a character in a John Cheever story might disembark on a Friday evening, his gray suit jacket folded over his arm.
LAND ART Below: the architect Ryue Nishizawa was commissioned to build a museum that would house works by Hiroshi Senju — an artist whose monumental waterfall paintings adorn many Japanese public buildings. Opposite: TNA architects intended the reedlike supports of the Square House to evoke blades of bamboo grass shooting up from the ground. Enveloped in a glass skin, the house is without walls and has few interior divisions of space.
This sense of geographical displacement is partly due to the relative un-Japaneseness of Karuizawa’s landscape — deciduous where much of the surrounding countryside is piney, and punctuated by hills instead of fields (there’s even a 10-trail ski slope directly behind the station). But it also has something to do with how the town has chosen to define itself: A self-consciously Alpine aesthetic dominates here, complete with snug, peak-roofed cottages, their white stucco facades adorned with wooden latticework. It is a Japanese dream of a particular kind of Western idyll, an idealized village convincingly radiating its own, sincere brand of gemutlichkeit. It has also been, for many decades, an escape for the rich and the royal, who come here in the summer to get away from the Tokyo swelter and in the winter to ski and to soak in the town’s many natural, mineral-rich hot springs. In 1957, the then-crown prince Akihito met the then-commoner Michiko while playing tennis here (she
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won); the imperial family still visits most summers. In the 1970s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono — who was, like Empress Michiko, the daughter of an old, wealthy Japanese family — spent months here as well. (More recently, it’s been rumored that Bill Gates is building a massive estate in town.) The real curiosity of Karuizawa, though, is not its landscape nor its residents, but rather, its collection of spectacular avant-garde houses, most of them designed by prominent Japanese architects. There is Makoto Yamaguchi’s Polygon House, a quasi-Brutalist geode of distressed steel and glass that perches on a hill in a forest like an abandoned space pod; the concrete, glass and larch wood Omizubata N House by Iida Archiship Studio, whose dramatically steepled roof recalls an ancient Norse ship; TNA’s Passage House, where a horizontally oriented front entryway functions as a trap door, giving visitors the sensation that the forest floor beneath — over which the ring-shaped house hovers — is the ground floor of the structure, and the house
LIKE A PRAYER The exaggerated gable of the Omizubata N House by Iida Archiship studio creates a spectacular terrace. Inside, the windows follow the roof line, giving the sleeping loft views of the forest. Opposite: Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, the San Diego-based organic Modernist architect, built the Hoshino Wedding Chapel in the late 1980s. There is not a single right angle in its cascading concrete arches and soaring interior of inlaid stone.
itself its attic. Perhaps most splendid of all is TNA’s Ring House, a miniature tower deep in the forest constructed of alternating layers of wood and glass: In the evening, when the sky is dark blue and the house is lit from within, it appears as stacked slices of pure light, its bands of wood receding into the ink of the night. LOOKING AT THESE structures — there are around a dozen of them in a town with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants — one might wonder what, exactly, made Karuizawa such fecund ground for experimental architecture: After all, it’s not as if Larchmont or Kennebunk or Aquinnah (perhaps the town’s closest psychographic equivalents) are known for their forward-thinking buildings. And yet to do so would be to forget how deeply encouraging Japan has always been of the strange, the weird and the experimental, especially when it comes to design. Not strange or weird in the lazy, clichéd way we in the West think of Japanese obsessions — the teenagers in their in
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A SLICE OF LIFE Below: shaped like a wedge, the steel-plated wood Stage House by TNA opens up to a tall wall of glass with living areas on elevated platforms looking outside. Opposite: the minimalist entrance, carved into the acute back angle of the structure, gives no hint of the panorama within.
long as you abide by the culture’s manners and etiquette, you can look however you wish. The society is greater than the self, but the self — its externals, at least — is yours to do with what you choose. The same might be true for houses as well. Karuizawa is a wealthy town, but wealth here expresses itself not in sameness, but in difference, as if in recognition that one of the joys of having money is being able to use it to make something beautiful and unusual. And yet it’s also worth noting that though these Modernist houses are distinctive — the oldest of them dates to the early 1960s, when the country was on the cusp of beginning one of the most impressive infrastructural and economic postwar comebacks in history — they are also rigorously humble. And in this way, they are not Modernist at all. These are houses that are made not to disrupt or overwhelm their sur-
PRODUCER: HK PRODUCTIONS
ventive, laborious streetwear; the cafes where waiters are dressed as robots or monsters or giant puff pastries — but strange in their acceptance of the uncanny, their fearlessness of novelty, their delight in anything that challenges them to see the world anew, their lack of cynicism, their desire to be dazzled. Japan, perhaps more than any other country, is a culture of deliberate appearances, a place where seeing is not just part of the experience of life, but life itself. Food is meant to please not just the palate, but the eyes as well; a cone of incense should be smelled, of course, but it should first be seen. Or to put it another way: There is a difference between self-expression and the expression of self. The latter, the right to say and act and behave as we want, is what we value in America. But Japan embraces the former, and that embrace is accompanied by a permission for a specific kind of deviance: For as
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EVEN FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S STRUCTURES NEVER RECEDED AS ELEGANTLY AS THESE DO.
roundings, but to — sometimes literally — reflect them. (Even Frank Lloyd Wright’s structures never receded as elegantly as these do.) They are in union with the forests, with the hillsides, with the trees, and although their materials may be of this century, their intentions are as old as Shintoism, Japan’s native religion and governing ideology: that every stone, every tree, every flower, is possessed with kami, a divinity. The society is greater than the self, and here, the society is comprised not of people, but of trees and rock. What at first appears to be rebellion is actually homage. It is a town full of reminders of what architecture can do: Instead of removing us from the land, it gives us a window to see the earth below — and returns us to it.
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The Illustrated Interview
Please draw what you look like. I’m very pale.
Do you have any pets? My dog, Lilly.
What is your favorite childhood memory? Going out for pizza with my dad.
What did you eat for breakfast today? Oatmeal with blueberries.
What scares you? The twins from ‘‘The Shining.’’
What was your favorite toy growing up? Kuddles, my stuffed elephant.
Which cartoon character do you most relate to? Piglet.
What is your secret vice? Binge-watching dramas.
What would you like your final meal to be? A Big Mac, fries and a Coke.
The silver-haired host of ‘‘Anderson Cooper 360°’’ on CNN, whose book ‘‘The Rainbow Comes and Goes’’ recently came out in paperback, sketched his answers with a pen in his New York office.
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EDITOR: GABÉ DOPPELT
Anderson Cooper
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