Tag Archives: Reviews
Interior Design Books: “Splendor Of Marble – Marvelous Spaces” By Karen Pearse (Rizolli)
The first book to examine the many ways this beautiful stone can be incorporated into a home environment, describing the unique nature of marble and the leading role it plays in the best of interior design today.
For spectacular drama, fabulous luxury, or simply the warm glow of organic textures, colors, and patterns, marble is like no other natural material. Marble has been favored by architects and designers for millennia, and as this book attests, the love affair with marble continues today. Featured are rooms showcasing marble by many of the world’s most prominent decorators, including Kelly Wearstler, Vincente Wolf, Juan Pablo Molyneux, Bjarke Ingels, Ryan Korban, Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Robert Kime, the Haas Brothers, and Joseph Dirand, among many others.
This is the first book that explores the many ways marble can bring color, pattern, and warmth to the home, as well as the vast array of beautiful types of marble that are available. It is a hugely popular material for home kitchens and bathrooms in particular, but it also is incorporated in outdoor patio spaces, hallways, and stairwells, even living rooms. All are featured here in gorgeous images, providing new inspiration for design lovers.
About The Author
Karen Pearse is a marble expert and founder of Karen Pearse Direct, the foremost international purveyor of stone and marble for private and commercial spaces. Massimo Ferragamo is chairman of Ferragamo USA.
Top New Art Books: “Alice Trumbull Mason – Pioneer of American Abstraction”
The first comprehensive publication exploring the life and art of pioneering American abstract artist Alice Trumbull Mason is perfect for audiences eager to discover unsung yet brilliantly talented women artists.
A groundbreaking artist, Alice Trumbull Mason (1904-1971) was one of the earliest painters of the twentieth century to embrace abstract painting in America. Mason’s early paintings have been compared to those of Gorky, Kandinsky, and Miró, and in 1936 she became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and one of its leaders in the promotion of abstract work by artists such as Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt, Piet Mondrian, and many others. Mason was a true artist’s artist whose efforts helped lead to the great movements of later twentieth-century art, such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Post-Modernism, and Conceptual Art.
Alice Trumbull Mason features essays that illuminate and contextualize the artist’s multifaceted work and personal life through her paintings, prints, poetry, and letters. The book reveals the full life story of a seminal abstractionist, making a sound argument for adding her to the annals of great twentieth-century artists.
Top Design Books: “Studio Gang Architecture” (2020)
The most in-depth exploration of one of the most important, innovative, and creative architecture practices working today.
For the last twenty years Studio Gang, led by Jeanne Gang, has created bold, visionary architecture that engages the urgent social and environmental challenges of our time. This first comprehensive monograph brings together 25 signature projects-from the award-winning Aqua Tower and Writers Theatre to highly-anticipated upcoming buildings for the American Museum of Natural History and O’Hare International Airport-to reveal the resonant concepts and design approach that connect them. With a rich variety of visual materials and short essays by Jeanne Gang, the book elegantly captures the creative sensibility and trajectory of an architecture driven by pressing twenty-first-century questions.
Studio Gang is an international architecture and urban design practice founded and led by Jeanne Gang. A recipient of the National Design Award in Architecture and numerous other honors, the Studio works as a collective to create projects that foster interaction and connection. Their research-based, interdisciplinary approach has produced award-winning buildings across scales and typologies as well as publications and exhibitions that push design’s ability to effect positive change.
Top Literary Catalogs: “Johns Hopkins University Press – Winter 2020”
New Books: “The Louvre – The Many Lives Of The World’s Most Famous Museum” (James Gardner)
The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world’s greatest art museum.
Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of that place and of the buildings themselves―a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in the first full-length history of the Louvre in English.
More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown; a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I in 1546.
It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since―through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present―the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, whose often-complicated and mysterious origins form a spectacular narrative that rivals the building’s grand stature.
James Gardner
James Gardner is an American art critic and literary critic based in New York and Buenos Aires. He is the author of six books, including Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, and the British Spectator. He was the art critic at the New York Post and wrote architecture criticism for the New York Observer, before serving as the architecture critic at the New York Sun. He is now a contributing editor at The Magazine Antiques.
Health Infographic: “What Are Air-Purifying Respirators?” (CDC)
Art: American Surrealist Painter Kay Sage – “Eerily Lit Landscapes” (1898-1963)
From Christie’s article (April 16, 2020):
Sage is renowned for her empty, enigmatic, eerily lit landscapes. Human figures are markedly absent — their presence felt only by the monolithic, architectural structures and unidentifiable, draped objects they seem to have left behind. In this respect, 1945’s Other Answers is a quintessential Sage painting.
In 1939, with clouds of war hovering over Europe, Kay Sage returned to the United States after more than two decades away. Her lover and fellow Surrealist, Yves Tanguy, soon followed her across the Atlantic, despite the fact that both of them were married to other people. In Sage’s case to an Italian prince — her official title was La principessa di San Faustino.
In the summer of 1940, Sage had her first solo show, at the influential Pierre Matisse Gallery in Manhattan. Then, in early 1943, she was part of the landmark Exhibition by 31 Women, curated and staged by Peggy Guggenheim in her Art of This Century Gallery.
Classic Autos: The “1966 Amphicar Amphibious Car”
The Amphicar Model 770 is an amphibious automobile, launched at the 1961 New York Auto Show, manufactured in West Germany and marketed from 1961 to 1968. Production stopped in 1965.
Designed by Hans Trippel, the amphibious vehicle was manufactured by the Quandt Group at Lübeck and at Berlin-Borsigwalde, with a total of 3,878 manufactured in a single generation.
A descendant of the Volkswagen Schwimmwagen,[4] the Amphicar offered only modest performance compared to most contemporary boats or cars, featured navigation lights and flag as mandated by the US Coast Guard — and after operation in water, required greasing at 13 points, one of which required removal of the rear seat.
Top Prefab Housing: “Le Petit Maison” By French Firm 2m26 – “Wood Design Fit To The Landscape”
From reception pavilion to proper house, 2m26’s houses are unique pieces. They are produced made to measure, on demand. They absolutely fit to the landscape. The houses are made of pine planks, rough cuted. The structure is protected with linseed oil to resist to weather conditions and walnut stain can be added to obtain a dark color.
The building process / prefab gives the opportunity to prepare all the pieces at the Atelier. Moreover, it reduces on site time of construction, damages on plants and minimizes noise pollution. On site construction can be scheduled from a week to a month.
Techniques used are mostly cutting, drilling, screwing, so that the assembly work can be done together with the customer, reducing costs for him.
About 2m26: Born in 2015, 2m26 summarizes ten years of researches and experiments about inhabiting.
Proceeding between design and architecture, 2m26 offers tools for living / handmade, thrifty and luxury / unique pieces designed and produced on demand / raw materials, natural processings and mastered development / simple, handsome and functional.
The crew :
mélanie heresbach / artist / architect.
sébastien renauld / artist / architect.
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