Copy-Paste Taste
the alarming trend for ubiquity
“Designers and people in general are too attracted by ‘new’, but nothing ages more quickly than ‘newness’. All my objects reflect [a] marriage between past and present.” — Marcel Wanders
I’m sure we’re all sitting on the edge of our seats in anticipation of the upcoming Academy Awards, another ceremony whereby a coterie of highly paid Hollywood actors are fawned over and heaped in adulation. Yet again, there have been multiple articles lambasting those nominated, including fashion journalist and “tastemaker” Ben Cobb (b. 1979), who lamented “no matter how bleak your Jan was, you’re not Greta Gerwig smarting after the worst Oscar’s snub in memory (for the record, I absolutely hated Barbie but WTF, Hollywood?)” and similarly Hamish MacBain wrote: “Do you think the aged, whisky-at-the-end-of-a-hard-day’s-sexually-harassing-secrataries seniles who (still) largely make up the voting panel enjoyed Barbie’s entry-level feministing? I doubt most of them even watched it …Which brings me to Saltburn, a film that I personally thought was very, very terrible, but which … [became] part of the zeitgeist that [Quentin] Tarantino was talking about … that surely is what movie-making is ultimately for: to ignite conversation and incite debate … This is what Hollywood should be striving for … And please: don’t give me any of that crap about ‘technical excellence’”. The Tarantino reference is perhaps not best placed, as the somewhat controversial director was, in fact, talking about streaming services, and specifically, Ryan Reynolds’ (b. 1976) Netflix movies, when he said: “I haven’t ever talked to [his] agent, but his agent is like, ‘Well, it cost $50 million’, well, good for him that he’s making so much money. But those movies don’t exist in the zeitgeist. It’s almost like they don’t even exist.” The term “zeitgeist”, of course, translates literally as “spirit of the times”, and in essence, locates a phenomenon in a specific period of history. In an art historical sense, it can be distinguished from “style”, which according to Henri Focillon (1881-1943), is a descriptor used for specified properties of objects, entirely independent of a point in time — and as such, a zeitgeist can, in effect, have an afterlife as a style. One might ask, therefore, when looking to identify the zeitgeist, what separates it merely from a fashion or paradigm? In short, it should span multiple areas, or fields, of social life and social groups, to some extent, even, extending across geographical contexts. As a style, Art Deco, for example, is a movement in the decorative arts and architecture, representing modernism turned into fashion, elements of which can still be seen in contemporary design. To look at Art Deco as zeitgeist, would be to consider how it linked elements of everyday life with aspects of art in different disciplines during the first half of the twentieth century. Ergo, it would be somewhat dispiriting if films described as “very, very terrible”, truly captured the contemporary zeitgeist, and should be celebrated simply for their banal, populist appeal.
The sitting room of the Templeton Crocker penthouse, designed by Jean-Michel Frank, with walls and ceiling clad in parchment, a piano hidden behind a low folding screen, and a quartz block lamp
One of the now iconic bathrooms at Morgan’s, New York, designed by “la reine du damier”, the world’s first boutique hotel, designed by French decorator Andrée Putman
We recently spoke to Italian architect Achille Salvagni (b. 1970) who said, apropos society today, “The level of worldwide consumerism that’s been normalized in our culture has dramatically impacted the design industry on many levels … It’s an industry that prioritises profit over originality, quality, durability and creative ingenuity”. It was around the late nineteenth century that interior design emerged as a profession, and some credit Elsie de Wolfe (1865-1950), a self-pronounced “rebel in an ugly world”, as the fountainhead from which the concept sprang, as well as the woman who popularised the idea of a more functional approach to living. Her big break came in 1905 when a group of New York socialites, including Madeleine Astor (1893-1940), Anne Harriman Vanderbilt (1861-1940) and Anne Morgan (1873-1952) founded the women’s-only Colony Club on Madison Avenue, and tasked her with decorating its lavish interiors, including a swimming pool, roof garden and Turkish bath. Breaking entirely with the stiff and staid atmosphere historically seen in gentleman’s clubs, she opted instead for pale walls and an abundance of chintz, which was, at the time, used exclusively in country house decor. “I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the hearth and flowers wherever they ‘belong’, mirrors and sunshine in all rooms,” de Wolfe explained of her mantra, which was lightyears away from the sombre Victorian aesthetic de rigueur in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, Chilean patron of modernism Eugenia Huici de Errázuriz (1860-1951), a somewhat more avant-garde contemporary of de Wolfe, would have an extraordinary influence on the trajectory of European art moderne, and, for all intents and purposes, planted the seed of what we’ve come to accept as the de facto template for twenty-first-century living, as still practised by myriad AD100 designers. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), who met de Errázuriz in Venice in 1880, was so impressed by her innate je ne sais quoi that he immediately wrote to a friend, pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982): “I have never known anyone with the unfailing uncanny taste of this woman. Whether in art, music, literature or interior decoration, she sees, hears, feels, smells the real value, the real beauty.” Indeed in a similar vein to infamous heiress, muse and patroness of the arts Luisa Casati, Marquise Stampa di Soncino (1881-1957), who turned her back on conventional society to realise her ambition of becoming “a living work of art”, Errázuriz created a carefully curated private world that could be considered a gesamtkunstwerk; for example, she paid such particular attention to detail, that during the First World War, she commissioned Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) to create cardboard cut-outs of cubist design for the glass pane blackouts at her house. She would later take a fledgling designer by the name of Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) under her wing, acting as a mentor, and showing him how Louis XVI furniture could be reinterpreted in a way that was relevant to a more relaxed, and less ostentatious way of living.
“Les Palmiers” smoking room, from the residence of Mademoiselle Colette Aboucaya, Paris (1930-1936), image c/o Phillips
A table setting at the Hollywood home of Elsie de Wolfe, a self-pronounced “rebel in an ugly world”, where ivy leaves serve as place cards, with names written in white ink
This inter-war period saw the birth of what we’ve come to understand as contemporary interior decor, whereby ensembliers such as Frank, Eyre de Lanux (1894-1996), Marc Du Plantier (1901-1975) and Jacques Adnet (1900-1984) et al created spaces where each and every detail was painstakingly considered, and everything from furniture to lightswitches, artworks, fixtures and fittings were site-specific, bespoke designs. Frank was somewhat unusual in that he worked with an extraordinary stable of artists, including Diego Giacometti (1902-1985), Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Christian Bérard (1902-1949) and Emilio Terry (1890-1969), from whom he commissioned an array of truly remarkable objets d’art, including table lamps, carpets, planters and screens, that served to break down the distinction between fine and decorative arts. Their raison d’etre, was to develop an immediately identifiable and unique aesthetic, rooted in their outlook and approach to design, that in turn, separated them from the pack. When looking today at twentieth-century interiors there’s no confusing Jean Royère’s (1902-1981) whimsical creations, inspired by the animal and vegetal realms, with du Plantier’s pared-back neoclassical aesthetic, or, for that matter, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann’s (1879-1933) Macassar clad, masculine interiors for proverbial Masters of the Universe. Whilst the work of de Lanux is sometimes wrongly dismissed as merely derivative of Frank, the overall effect is altogether softer, whereby, for example, rough woven curtains were countered by soft woollen fringes, stone floors tempered with rugs and, although she sought the purity of white, its Trappist undertones were carefully balanced by terracotta red, grey and tobacco brown. Even if one looks to Frances Elkins (1888-1953), who frequently used Frank’s works, there’s no mistaking her interiors, with their adroit mixture of antiques and haute moderne, for those of her contemporaries, such as Dorothy Draper (1889-1969) and T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (1903-1976).
The home of Helen Simpson, Paris, with interiors by Eyre de Lanux, when in the sitting room, a painting by Miró above the fireplace, cube shaped armchairs and a lamp by Jean-Michel Frank
Today there seems to be an increasing reliance on simply reproducing trends seen ad infinitum, not only as a means of securing glossy editorials, but so as to appease a clientele who are, increasingly, influenced by what they see in such magazines. Very few people are willing to take risks apropos fashion, favouring either clothes seen on the backs of celebrities, or the safety net of a luxury brand name such as Chanel, Hermès or Dior, and fewer still are willing to gamble on their interior, which is, by and large, far less transient in terms of longevity. It’s often the case that even those who favour relatively outré fashion have surprisingly conservative homes, for example, Daphne Guinness (b. 1967), muse, heiress and one-time mistress of BHL (b. 1948), furnished her Fifth Avenue apartment in a style that might best be described as Syrie Maugham light. When one speaks of those who have a “finger on the Zeitgeist”, it brings to mind figures such as Halston (1932-1990), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Andrée Putman (1925-2013) and restaurateur Michal Chow (1939), each of whom defined an era with their own unique personal sense of style. The key though is that “zeitgeist”, in the sense of such figures, was not in any way married to “ubiquity”, in respect of appealing to the largest common denominator. Take Putman for example, or la reine du damier as she came to be known, rather than bowing to trends, she had an outlook of “radical simplicity” that made her seem perpetually modern; or as pithily put by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, she was, essentially, “Above taste”, operating entirely outwith such staid bourgeois concepts. Indeed her body of work, including the now iconic Morgans in New York (1984), with which she invented the very concept of a “boutique hotel”, and the Guerlain flagship store in Paris (2005), defined modern elegance much of the late twentieth century. “Style and money have nothing to do with each other,” Putman once mused on the concept of luxury. “Good design is pure and simple, and I am interested in that family of things that will never date.” This is precisely why Ian Schrager (b. 1946) and Steve Rubell (1943-1989), having emerged from a thirteen-month jail term for tax evasion, approached Putman for their entrée into the hospitality sector; they weren’t interested in regurgitating tried and tested trends, instead, as with their first venture, Studio 54, they wanted to make them.
The problem today, across all genres of art and design, is the widely held belief that something should be celebrated and awarded, regardless of merit and whether or not it is in fact, “very, very, terrible”, simply because it gets people talking, which, more often than not, is as a result of top-notch PR and marketing. However, it’s surely a very damning indictment of our generation if there’s no one original, with genuine talent, whose work crosses over into the “mainstream”, as regards widespread popularity and commercial success, and is, ergo, inherently award-worthy, whilst also, not to put too fine a point on it, good. There are admittedly those who consider such a statement a contradiction in terms, i.e. only counterculture can truly produce exceptional works; and, there are, of course, numerous examples of artists, such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and El Greco (1541-1613), whose talent was entirely overlooked during their lifetimes. However, one can distinguish “art” from “architecture and design”, as the latter is, in essence, a commercial enterprise (though some might argue artists such as Jeff Koons (b. 1955) and Brian Donnelly (b. 1974), go some way to blurring the already permeable boundary between both genres), and must, when all is said and done, attract an audience with sufficiently deep pockets to fund projects such as Jean Dunand’s (1877-1942) “Les Palmiers” (1930-1936) … [continued]
An Upper East Side townhouse, designed by Achille Salvagni, pictured, the second-floor landing, with fluted walls and a table from a 1950s Milanese tailor’s workshop, photograph by Stephen Kent Johnson
… a lacquered smoking room commissioned by Mademoiselle Colette Aboucaya, or the Byzantine-style bathroom designed in 1928 by Armand-Albert Rateau (1882-1938) for aperitif heir Paul Dubonnet (currently available in its entirety, including a monumental Hauteville marble bathtub, patinated bronze doors and mosaic floors, at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval). These two extraordinary interiors, by leading figures of the age, were created within two years of one another, but stylistically, they couldn’t be further apart. Dunand’s exotic mise en scène, described contemporaneously by the Journal des Arts Décoratifs as “a funeral smoking room, a retreat dreamed by hypochondriac smokers”, was in respect of its decoration — an abstracted palm grove of silver and black lacquer — entirely avant-garde; whereas Rateau was inspired by the sixth-century Romanesque Basilica of San Vitale and Palatine Chapel of Aachen, with its sixteen-sided ambulatory and cloister vaulted dome. As Salvagni points out, “In the past, the designer was an independent actor who set out to create his or her legacy”, and as such, they had no interest in replicating one another’s work, as a means to illicit attention and snare clients; rather they had the confidence to champion their own unique aesthetic, which in turn, was celebrated by the industry at large for its audacity and originality. One might pose the rhetorical question: how many contemporary interiors will be preserved for future generations and sold on as art objects? Whilst Dunand’s coquille d’œuf and laque arrachée panels, and Rateau’s spectacular neo-classical bronze bathroom fittings are akin to haute couture, in terms of their prohibitive expense, outside the realm of such money-no-object commissions (which are, essentially, nothing more than a pipe dream for the majority of those working in the design world) there are still myriad examples of figures whose work not only contributed significantly to the evolution of the canon but spurred trends that stretched far beyond a cabal of wealthy collectors, and had a measurable impact on the world around them; those such as Le Corbusier (1887-1965), Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999), Royère, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), Putman and, vis-à-vis of contemporary design, Philippe Starck (b. 1949), David Chipperfield (b. 1953) and Pierre Yovanovitch (b. 1965).
Perhaps the problem today is that with the popularity of social media, where, on coffee breaks, in transit etc, people sit scrolling through Instagram, looking at image after image of carefully curated interiors, they start to second guess their own taste, comparing themselves to others, those wealthier, cooler, or with a knack for styling that belies an often more mundane reality. That being so, rather than trusting in the inherent talents and tastes of a professional, they would rather have something safe, that they’ve seen already, whether that be a micro-cement bathroom, curvaceous, bouclé upholstered sofa or a chevron parquet floor. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for talented designers who lack sufficient “public presence” to start up on their own, thereby snaring editorials, as for mainstream media, it’s far easier to regurgitate the prevailing “zeitgeist-light”, which can at present, perhaps, be defined by a widespread desire for ubiquity, prefaced by an innate fear of being thought of as “unfashionable” on social media. After all, there’s no immediately identifiable contemporary architectural style, as there was with Baroque, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco etc. If anything, it can be defined by “eclecticism”, or rather, a rehash of what’s gone on before, which, despite its avant-garde underpinnings, has come to feel entirely safe and expected.