Reality and Make Believe
Art and Life
“Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe … I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity … I want to grow and develop and play serious dramatic parts. My dramatic coach tells everybody that I have a great soul, but so far nobody’s interested in it.” - Marilyn Monroe
Media-mogul and Pop parvenu Kim Kardashian (b. 1980) recently made headlines for wearing Marilyn Monroe’s (1926-1962) flesh-toned “Happy Birthday, Mr President” dress to this year’s Gilded Glamour and White Tie themed Met Gala. “The idea really came to me after the gala in September last year,” explains Kardashian. “I thought to myself, what would I have done for the American theme if it had not been the Balenciaga look? What’s the most American thing you can think of? And that’s Marilyn Monroe.” The details of her transformation, the necessity to lose 16-pounds in three weeks so as to fit into a fragile, un-alterable dress, and the 14-hour bleaching process, a means of approximating Monroe’s signature platinum blonde tresses, suggest Kardashian didn’t just want to pay homage to Monroe but to embody her. Indeed the actress was something of a living work of art, as forever immortalised in a series of colour-saturated silkscreens by Pop progenitor Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and far more complex than most people might assume. Amy Greene (b. 1929), wife of Marilyn’s personal photographer Milton H. Greene (1922-1985), recalled walking around New York with her, dressed down, with nobody bothering them: “So, as we were walking down Broadway, she turns to me and says, ‘Do you want to see me become her?’ I didn’t know what she meant but I just said ‘Yes’ — and then I saw it. I don’t know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle, but she turned something on within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing, and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare. They were recognizing that this was Marilyn Monroe as if she pulled off a mask or something, even though a second ago nobody noticed her. I had never seen anything like it before.” It is a story that since has become inextricably bound up in the myth of “Marilyn Monroe”, and the idea that the screen sex symbol that became an icon, and source material for generations of writers and artists, was just an act, and behind it, an exceptionally bright and determined young woman; a devoted (if not troubled) actress who took her craft seriously, and a far cry from the sort of ditzy characters she portrayed in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kardashian’s decision to wear the dress, and the suggestion that by doing so she was trying to “become” Monroe, drew considerable backlash; with some suggesting that it was part and parcel of a past pattern of behaviour whereby the reality TV star has shamelessly appropriated culture and style as part of her personal and professional branding. Of course, whereas Kardashian has made her career portraying an approximation of reality, Monroe did the exact opposite in trying to hide it, with a public image so carefully constructed that even to this day she remains something of an enigma. What Kardashian offers is a behind-the-curtains insight into the labour of image creation, which for Monroe, a product of the hegemonic Hollywood casting-couch culture, would have been an absolute impossibility; as to let the public see her “real” self would invariably have destroyed her allure, and most probably, her career.
Marilyn Monroe, singing happy birthday to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, in the dress worn by Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala, image c/o Kennedy Archives
The home of Yves Saint Laurent at 55 Rue de Babylone, Paris, with its extraordinary collection of art and objets d’art, image c/o Musée Yves Saint Lauren
Not only does the silver screen influence fashion, but also interiors and architecture. In and of itself the term “décor” has been defined as relating both to a style of decoration and theatrical scenery, thereby suggesting the two disciplines share a degree of commonality. By and large, cinematic interiors are concerned with creating an atmosphere or mise-en-scène (another word straddling both worlds, referring not only to the literal arrangement of actors or scenery on a stage, but also to an environment or milieu), so as to aid storytelling by giving context to the action; reflecting key characters, personality traits, and even impacting, psychologically speaking, how we the audience perceive their background, lifestyle, education and even sexuality (the latter of which can be considerably more nuanced than the Miami Art Deco interiors of Armand Goldman (played by Robin Williams (1951-2014)), and his partner Albert (played by Nathan Lane (b. 1956), in Mike Nichols The Birdcage (1996), as seen in the stylishly staged film adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s (1904-1986) A Single Man (1964), which marked fashion designer Tom Ford’s (b. 1961) directorial debut). “We can define the role of the production designer as being the architect of the illusions depicted on the screen”, explains film director Peter Ettedgui in his preface to Production Design and Art Direction (2001). Such pictorial storytelling has obvious parallels with the work of interior decorators and designers, who are concerned not only with the pervading look and feel of an interior, but in ensuring that it is an accurate reflection first, and superficially speaking, of their clients’ decorative aesthetic tastes, and secondly, on a far deeper level, their innermost ambitions and aspirations (indeed managing such expectations can often be of a minefield and involve a degree of diplomacy and tact similar to that of a hostage negotiator). In terms of set design, mise-en-scène, the art of framing, choreographing and displaying, is in large part dependent on an audience’s perception of any given scene and is typically composed of three main elements; the “physicality” of an interior setting, its backdrop or “scenery” (i.e. its walls, floors and ceiling), all of which are enhanced and elevated by well-chosen props, such as furniture, fixtures and objets d’art, which add to the overall ambience, making an interior more believable. For example, Welsh director Peter Greenaway’s (b. 1942) meticulously curated tableau for The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989) utilises a monumental group portrait painting by Dutch artist Frans Hals (1582-1666) A Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Civic Guard Company; its seventeenth-century characters acting as if silent witnesses to the amoral activities taking place in the fictional French restaurant of Los Hollandais. Similarly, the setting of the Korova Milk Bar in Stanley Kubrick’s (1928-1999) now-infamous A Clockwork Orange (1971), created by production designer John Barry (1935-1979), is equally memorable in its use of props. Famously “inspired” by the fetishistic imagery of artist Allen Jones (b. 1937), nude models of women masqueraded as furniture in the creation of a scene that was psychologically unsettling (having spoken to Kubrick over the phone, who asked Jones to work on the film, the artist did some preliminary drawings for furniture, but Kubrik refused to pay him, as Jones later would later recount: “Kubrick’s words were: ‘I’m a famous director and you’ll get a lot of work off the back of this.’ I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. In probably my finest moment, I replied to him: ‘Yes, but I’m not a set designer. If you get me a show at the Louvre then I’ll do it.’ In the end, I realised it wasn’t going anywhere so I said, ‘Listen, you like the idea, feel free’.”)
Villa Necchi Campiglio, designed by Piero Portaluppi which played a starring role in Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s critically-acclaimed Visconti-esque drama I Am Love, image FAI Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano
Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” (detail) in seventeenth century chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome
Early on in his career, as well as designing furniture, modernist French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886-1945) moonlighted as a set designer for the fledgling movie industry. He was one of the first to explore the impact of production design and his words still have resonance today: “A film set, in order to be a good set, must act. Whether realistic or expressionist, modern or ancient, it must play its part” (an adage equally applicable to the fields of interior design and architecture). Going back even further to the mid-seventeenth century chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, and Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s (1598-1680) Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (also known as Saint Teresa in Ecstasy or the Transverberation of Saint Teresa) we see a sculptural group in white Carrara marble perfectly capturing the artist’s ability to create what has been described as “frozen theatre”. Considered by many to be the apogee of Bernini’s oeuvre, and for that matter, the ne plus ultra of the High Roman Baroque, the sculpture depicts Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish Carmelite nun and saint, who, whilst communing with God, was known to lapse into states of religious ecstasy. Teresa’s head is cocked back, her eyes closed, while an angel holding a spear stands over her; to the left and right, Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579-1653) (who commissioned the work) and others are portrayed almost as if spectators with box seats at the opera. Bernini designed the entire chapel, creating, in effect, a stage set (like Mallet-Stevens, Bernini had himself worked as a set designer), and as such, the Ecstasy of St. Theresa has been described as a gesamtkunstwerk (or total work of art), melding together techniques from multiple artistic genres, including architecture, sculpture, painting, and theatre. It is, in essence, a pure distillation of the principles of the Baroque, with its emphasis on emotion, drama, excess and theatricality, and a prime example of the sort of high-production-value commissions being undertaken by artists at the time.
One might also look to the eighteenth-century edifice of Sir John Vanbrugh’s Blenheim Palace (1707-1722), which represents the culmination of a more austere and short-lived English Baroque (after the Great Fire of London in 1666 renowned architects such as Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) and Vanbrough found themselves with a blank canvas, and abandoning the ideas of Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), took the opportunity to develop a new style). Built in commemoration of the Duke of Marlborough’s (1650-1722) victory over the French in 1704, the overall arrangement of the front facade with its curved wings, statues, heavy cornice and giant Corinthian portico can be seen as a temple of war, with its flaking courts acting like battalions and the columns representing legions (indeed it bears a striking similarity to the temple of Mars Ultor as illustrated by Palladio). Before he was an architect, first and foremost, Vanbrugh was a dramatist, and his architectural work bears the indelible imprint of a long-time acquaintance with the stage; the dramatic recessions and projections at Blenheim were conceived in such a way as to overawe visitors, to the extent that from the perspective of the Great Court, the palace appears looming, almost menacing in character, with its mass of piers and pinnacles like weapons, taking aim at approaching visitors. The elaborate roofline, with its plethora of statues, urns and vases also serves a secondary purpose of giving Blenheim the “castle air” Vanbrugh so much admired, and when seen from afar, the palace takes on the romantic silhouette of a fortified stronghold. A recurrent theme in his work, Vanbrugh’s “pseudomedievalism” came largely from the Italian stage, and as with Mallet-stevens and Bernini, his work was strikingly cinematic in the sense of its transporting visitors beyond the everyday world into a realm of fantasy; not dissimilar to the way in which “girl-next-door” Norma Jeane Mortenson created larger than life “blonde bombshell” Marilyn Monroe.
Hotel Martel, Paris, designed by French modernist architect Robert Mallet-Stevens who moonlighted as a set designer for the fledgling movie industry, image c/o Galerie 54
French couturier Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) was famed for the treasure trove interior of his duplex apartment at 55 Rule de Babylone, Paris, which to this day remains a constant source of inspiration to decorators, aesthetes and collectors alike. “Yves Kept the same obsessions throughout his life,” says decorator Jacques Grange (b. 1944), with whom Saint Laurent worked on several homes. “There was Art Deco and the taste for simple and neat architecture. The taste for the exotic, and for [Italian director Luchino] Visconti.” As a gay, Marxist count, Visconti (1906-1976) was a man of many contrasts and contradictions, and so too was his cinema; a languorous ode to such themes as idealised beauty, expectant mortality and the ruinous nature of power, all set against luxuriant backdrops of aristocratic hues. Indeed it was no accident that Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s (1930-2017) apartment contained myriad references to such an aesthetic, with a suggestion of noble roots to which neither could actually lay claim (this might even in part explain Saint Laurent’s obsession with aristocratic party boy Jacques de Bascher (1973-1951)). Artfully curated tablescapes of bronzes and objets d’art stemmed from the grand tradition of the European moneyed class, starting with Lorenzo de’Medici (1449-1442), all the way down to such nouveau riche families as the Reinachs, Cahen d’Anvers, Camondos and Rothschilds. Of course, such enthusiasm for contrasting styles can also be seen in the eighteenth-century tradition of English aristocrats who travelled across Europe as part of the so-called “Grand Tour”, bringing back with them from across the Italian peninsula the sort of classical antiquities that would mark them out to their peers as erudite and cultured. On one occasion Saint Laurent went so far as to send a photograph of devoted collectionneuse Marie-Laure de Noailles (1902-1970), reclining, resplendent in a black moire silk evening gown, next to a table chocked full of treasures (including an armillary sphere, and an assortment of Hapsburg animals and gold boxes) to storied Parisian antique dealers Nicolas and Alexis Kugel, with the request they reconstitute the arrangement in its entirely (which they did in three days with Saint Laurent taking all but one item).
“Like F. Scott Fitzgerald, I love a dying frenzy,” wrote Saint Laurent in an essay accompanying a retrospective of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983. “I love Visconti. Decadance attracts me … In my own life, I’ve seen the afterglow of the sumptuous Paris of before the war. The balls of the fifties … and then I knew the youthfulness of the sixties: Talitha and Paul Getty lying on a starlit terrace in Marakesh, beautiful and damned … And my heart has always been divided between the vestals of constancy and the avatars of change.” Somewhat paradoxically, whilst Visconti’s films are indulgent in their immersive recreation of old-world splendour, at the same time they de-constructed them, analysing them through a twentieth-century optic that challenged long-standing hierarchical structures. There are obvious parallels with Saint Laurent who, whilst fascinated by the past, was also influenced by the avant-garde style of artist Niki de Saint-Phalle (1930-2002), who would often wear men’s suits with heels, and in turn, would help to revolutionise women’s fashion, with his graphic Mondrian dresses, Pop Art collection and 1966 Le Smoking, the first tuxedo suit for women (despite the so-called “second-wave feminism” of the era, few respectable restaurants actually allowed women to wear trousers inside; and in 1968 when no-nonsense socialite and couture collector Nan Kempner (1930-2005) was turned away by the maître d’ at Le Côte Basque in New York for wearing her YSL tuxedo suit, she simply dropped her trousers and walked into the restaurant wearing the jacket as a thigh-skimming mini dress). Some have suggested Saint Laurent was a prisoner of his class, his impulses and even his own achievement, and that his obsessive collecting spoke of a complete inability to let go. Whether or not that is the case, one thing is clear — that Rue de Babylone, as well as the designer’s other homes, including Villa Mabrouka, Avenue de Breteuil and Châtaeu Gabriel (designed to reflect the aristocratic world of Marcel Proust’s (1871-1922) In Search of Lost Time) and its accompanying Russian-style Dasha, can each be seen as a theatrical backdrop to a world Saint Laurent created as a means of escaping the mundanity of the real life.
As well as numerous decorators and collectors who have been inspired by the worlds of film and theatre, there are those that blur the boundaries even further; such as Italian director, producer and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino (b. 1971) who, following such visually arresting films as A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017) and Suspiria (2018) has set up an interior design studio. Federico Marchetti (b. 1969), the entrepreneur behind the Yoox Net-a-Porter online retail empire, was visiting Guadagnino on the set of Call Me by Your Name in 2016, and proposed they collaborate on turning a former silk mill on Lake Como into an opulent weekend retreat (nice work if you can get it); and despite being in preproduction for his next project, the director immediately agreed. Guadagnino’s densely atmospheric film sets are memorable for the way in which they evoke the antiquatedly discreet charms of the Italian bourgeoisie — such as the stunning Piero Portaluppi (1888-1967) designed Villa Necchi Campiglio, which played a starring role in the director’s critically-acclaimed Visconti-esque drama I Am Love (2009); in which an ailing Milanese paterfamilias passes on the family business to his son and grandson, to the discomfort of his wife (played by Tilda Swinton (b. 1960)).
The home of Federico Marchetti, a former silk mill on Lake Como, designed by Luca Guadagnino, marking the directors transition from film to interior design, image c/o Studio Luca Guadagnino
“It shows the obsession with perfection and details that the Milanese bourgeoisie have,” he explains. “Their real success is making others believe that money doesn’t exist — and luxury, as most people perceive it, doesn’t really exist in this house. It’s very severe, and feels almost unmovable, like a piece of rock.” A key similarity between great designers and directors is their ability to truly understand and intuit a character, or client, and to create a world specific to them; that’s not only believable, but tells an audience, or guest, who they are, and what they’re about, be it art, gardening or cooking. Outside the realm of celebrity, or rather, those with a public persona, whose interiors might likely be splashed across the pages of glossy magazines, this is often far more personal than fashion, as its an inner sanctum, into which only close friends and family are ever invited. There are of course those society hosts, who use their homes for entertaining, and as such, they often consider their interiors a means of projecting a public image onto the world (as for that matter did the Duke of Marlborough on a very grand scale with Blenheim Palace); but even then, there are those private rooms, reflective of their owner’s personality, as can be seen in the Petit Trianon at Versailles, where Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) went to escape the rigours of court etiquette. “Nostalgia plays a fundamental role for all of us,” Guadagnino opines. “To be alive means paying the emotional price of always yearning for a return to something lost.” For his films, the director refuses to use anything “out of the box”, eschewing prop rental warehouses, and instead choosing to custom-fabricate sets. The director-cum-designer approaches interiors in the same way, employing “the most extreme artisanship”, as he calls it, so as to create the same sort of minutely detailed, retro-inspired settings one sees in his films.
There are, needless to say, considerable differences when it comes to designing for the screen, and for real-world clients; as in cinema, despite the overall feeling interiors might convey, or rather their impact on an audience, the spaces are essentially flat and narrative, a character; whereas in the real world, they are three-dimensional, experienced at once from multiple perspectives, and are, fundamentally, at the service of their owners. For the faint of heart, or those without recourse to such funds so as to enable a complete home makeover, one can indulge in the multitude of hotels and bars the capital has to offer, which, in recent years, also explains the ever-increasing popularity of private members clubs; most famously, perhaps, the Martin Brudnizki (b. 1966) designed Annabel’s, where crocodile shaped basins in green onyx and floor-to-ceiling glass chandeliers (originally created for the Russian tsar in 1915) rub shoulders with original artworks by the likes of Picasso (1881-1973) and Modigliani (1884-1920). A more restrained, understated opulence can be found at the recently opened Cheval Blanc, Paris, designed by Peter Marino, and located in the historic Samaritaine department-store complex, where marble floors and straw marquetry walls act as an elegant backdrop to a panoply of priceless vintage furnishings, including pieces by Maria Pergay (b. 1930), Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) and Jean Lurçat (1892-1966); as well as leather-clad lifts with light installations by Thierry Dreyfus (b. 1960) and last, but by no means least, an extraordinary serpentine bronze-and-brass staircase by French sculptors François-Xavier (1927-2008) and Claude Lalanne (1925-2019). Putting matters of practicality aside, of late, the world has seemed such a constant and unrelenting s**t show that sometimes a little make-believe and fantasy are exactly what the doctor ordered, and so perhaps it’s time we all indulge, whether that be in our own homes or in the environs of a hotel or restaurant, and for that matter, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt, if we all took ourselves a little less seriously.