The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, Uganda

Expeditions to the remote and barely explored corners of the planet are not for everybody, but with the help of luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, destinations previously considered inaccessible to the tourist are now, at a price, within reach. From the altitude of Everest’s Base Camp to the depths of the Danakil Depression, their Inspiring Expeditions will bring out your inner adventurer. James Parry meets A&K founder Geoffrey Kent to find out where on earth they are going next

Abercrombie & Kent’s founder and CEO Geoffrey Kent knows a thing or two about adventure travel. Born while his parents were on safari in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), he grew up “running wild on the family farm” in Kenya and remembers once asking his father, Colonel John Kent of the King’s African Rifles, where they were next going on holiday. “Somewhere we can’t drink the water,” came the laconic reply. No surprises then, that at the age of 16, Kent set off solo from Kenya on an overland trip to South Africa. “Travel is in my genes,” he admits, “and I can’t imagine not wanting to get out there and explore new places.”

Through Abercrombie & Kent (A&K), Kent has pioneered luxury adventure travel and has been instrumental in developing the much newer concept of ‘thrillionaire travel’, tailored for adventurous ultra-high net-worth individuals. Using private charter jets and other exclusive modes of transport from helicopters and snow mobiles to hot-air balloons and luxury yachts, A&K’s Inspiring Expeditions offer the super- rich unprecedented access to destinations that most people have never even heard of. Kent leads each expedition himself. “By utilising our ground-breaking network and contacts within the highest echelons of government – from tourism ministers and presidents to prime ministers and kings – we are able to make these adventures a reality,” he explains.

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The Inspiring Expeditions are bespoke, one-off trips of a lifetime. They take place worldwide and, while ranging widely in terms of what they offer, are united by core common elements – a sense of exclusivity and privileged access, plus the highest standards of everything. Even in the remotest locations, no effort is spared to cater for the whims of the most particular of guests, with everything from a Michelin-starred chef to a deluxe espresso machine flown in if required. The objective is to provide all the ingredients for a luxuriously thrilling experience.

But Kent sees such expeditions as providing more than a simple adrenalin rush in comfort. “Visiting remote destinations on itineraries designed for the individuals involved can help prompt an inner exploration of the traveller’s true self,” he explains. And those travellers are clearly relishing the experiences on offer. “We are still basking in the afterglow of another splendid adventure,” enthused one recently returned client. “We so enjoyed the varieties of destinations, food and culture, and as always, the team was sensational – competent, knowledgeable, patient and loads of fun.”

Exploring an ice tunnel in the Antarctic

Geoffrey Kent of Abercrombie & Kent at the South Pole

Meanwhile, the expeditions can pay dividends for local people, too. Back in the mid- 1980s, shortly after the creation of Abercrombie & Kent Philanthropy (AKP), set up to help positively impact the communities where A&K guests travel, Kent met with General Museveni of Uganda, who later became president of the country. Their conversation focused on how best to protect the country’s endangered mountain gorillas and benefit the local Batwa people with whom the great apes shared their forest home. As a direct result, A&K established the first luxury camp in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

More than 30 years later, the camp is still there and AKP has also established a community hospital, a 112-bed facility providing care for 40,000 patients annually, a nursing school to train health-care providers, and a bicycle enterprise to help empower local women. “I’m exceedingly proud of what we have achieved there,” says Kent.

The view from the Abuna Yemata Guh church in northern Ethiopia

All the itineraries feature destinations chosen for being on the “road less travelled”, and which explore facets of a country or culture that may not be apparent or accessible. An upcoming expedition to Ethiopia will see A&K guests led well away from the usual tourist trail to unique places like the Omo Valley, celebrated among anthropologists as the home of a fascinating spectrum of tribal communities, some of which have little exposure to outsiders, or to the rock- hewn cliff-top churches such as Abuna Yemata Guh near Hawzen in the north of the country.

Read more: In conversation with the founder of Rallye des Princesses Richard Mille, the women’s only classic car race

Also in the north of the country is the salt- encrusted Danakil Depression, at 125 metres below sea level one of the lowest – and hottest – points on the planet. The intrepid explorer Wilfred Thesiger passed this way in 1930 and today’s travellers can contemplate a scene barely changed from his day. The Danakil is also known as the ‘Cradle of Mankind’, where the remains of 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, the oldest known hominid fossil, were discovered in 1974. Her skeleton is now in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, and the thrillionaires will be given exclusive access to see it.

Base Camp on Mount Everest

Insights into the local culture are an important component of the expeditions and never more so than in a country like Bhutan, the ‘Land of the Thunder Dragon’ and visited on a previous expedition by Kent and his guests. The Himalayan kingdom was virtually closed to outsiders until relatively recently, and maintains a proud Buddhist culture as well as the many architectural masterpieces. Ancient and ornate dzongs, or fortress-monasteries, festooned with prayer flags and often perched in precipitous locations, dot the landscape.

Bhutan is unique in having a Gross National Happiness index, set up by the country’s king in 1972 as being more important than the conventional Gross National Product. A&K clients were able to attend a private meeting with government delegates to learn about how the psychological and spiritual well-being of the Bhutanese people has remained their nation’s guiding principle and how they set a benchmark that other countries might do well to follow.

The Taktsang Pulphug Monastery in Bhutan

Neighbouring Nepal receives many more overseas visitors than Bhutan, but very few of them are able to experience one of the exclusive highlights afforded to the guests on that particular thrillionaire expedition: a visit to the renowned and iconic Mount Everest Base Camp. A helicopter whisked the lucky few from the capital Kathmandu over some of the main peaks and glaciers of the Himalaya range for a bird’s-eye view of the world’s greatest mountain range before descending to the very spot where mountaineering history has been made.

Read more: Maryam Eisler’s Icelandic photography series

Another previous expedition saw thrillionaires diving from sumptuous super-yachts into the pristine waters of Palau in Micronesia. Often dubbed the ‘underwater Serengeti’, the seas around this archipelago of forested volcanic islands support a unique ecosystem defined by several hundred different types of coral and with more than 1,500 species of fish to swim with and marvel at.

But for those seeking some serious party time, then the smart advice is to join Kent on his Rio de Janeiro carnival expedition early next year. “Nothing beats Rio for sheer energy and that inimitable samba vibe,” he says. A&K guests will enjoy VIP access to the world’s most famous carnival, including a ringside seat at the main parade and the opportunity to don a suitably extravagant costume and join the throngs of other dancers and revellers at the Copacabana Palace ball. There will also be private dinners with Rio’s glitterati and the chance to relax on a luxury private yacht after all that partying.

The island of Peleliu in Palau, Micronesia

Every itinerary is meticulously researched and trialled by A&K in advance. As part of an expedition to Antarctica earlier this year (and which will take place again in 2020), clients were invited to submit suggestions for the naming of a previously unclimbed peak in the Drygalski Mountains that they would be tackling during the expedition. Careful scrutiny of maps and aerial photos led to the identification of several unnamed peaks potentially suitable for an ascent by non-professional climbers, but these needed to be checked out. Travelling solo, on foot and with all his gear on his back, a member of the A&K team spent several days camping in the foothills before determining which was the most suitable peak, as well as identifying a nearby glacier where the guests’ plane could land. It was exhaustive and essential planning that paid off handsomely when the eight clients, under the guidance of master mountaineer Marko Prezelj, safely scaled the peak that they had earned the right to call Mount Inspiring.

Meanwhile, there’s even the option of going on a round-the-world wildlife safari by private jet, lasting 25 days and spanning three continents, in a quest to spot giant pandas, tigers, mountain gorillas and lions. The price might not suit everyone, but that’s not the point. These are special tours for special individuals.

So, where next for A&K’s Inspiring Expeditions? Perhaps a mission to the Moon, or even Mars? No, at least not yet. Kent has discounted space travel as too unsafe right now, but he has other destinations up his sleeve. “I can’t deny that the world is well-travelled and that it takes innovative thinking to find new destinations,” he admits, “but there are still unexplored spots.” Among these he has his seasoned eye firmly on Gabon, a country in equatorial Africa that has placed an impressive 11% of its land area under national park protection. There are elephants, buffalo and lowland gorillas to go in search of in the virgin rainforest, as well as dramatic waterfalls and stunning beaches. “I remember seeing a group of elephants swimming off the beach with their trunks raised out of the water like snorkels,” laughs Kent. With sights like that to behold, is anyone up for a trip to Gabon?

Find out more: abercrombiekent.co.uk

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue. 

‘that pause of space’ (2019), Edmund de Waal, on view in the North Hall, © Edmund de Waal. Courtesy the artist and The Frick Collection; photo: Christopher Burke

Edmund de Waal is known as a contemporary ceramist, who pushes the preconceived ideas of his discipline, by questioning an object’s narrative, their place in collections and how they are displayed. His installations are interventions, which resonate with their historic locations, creating an intriguing dialogue between art and space. By contrasting old masters and his new forms, de Waal offers a comment on time, memory and the journey of objects, reminding the viewer that context is integral to the meaning of art.

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‘that pause of space’ (2019), Edmund de Waal, on view in the North Hall, © Edmund de Waal. Courtesy the artist and The Frick Collection; photo: Christopher Burke

In de Waal’s first solo US exhibition Elective Affinities at the Frick Collection in New York, his ceramic sculptures have been placed amongst the museum’s permanent collection; rooms which comprise of Henry Clay Frick’s Old Master paintings and objets d’art, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velásquez and Goya. de Waal’s artwork ‘that pause of space’, is situated between Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s ‘Comtesse d’Haussonville’ (1845) and an eighteenth-century French side table of blue marble and gilt-bronze, commissioned by the Duchess of Mazarin.

Read more: Life on the thrillionaire trail by Geoffrey Kent

‘that pause of space‘ is a gold-framed, floating vitrine containing both glazed and unglazed porcelain beakers. de Waal’s framing and fragments of gilt porcelain on the beakers ties the work to the surroundings through a common materiality. There is a unification of the works in terms of formal qualities, but equally as a collection as the works are all displayed within a gilt-frame. However, the contemporary aesthetic and context of de Waal’s pieces allows us to also view the works as distinct objects, each with individual stories. The beakers’ white, minimal and slender forms present their modern creation in comparison to the light and dark of Ingres’s chiaroscuro portrait painting.

‘on an archaic torso of Apollo’ (2019), Edmund de Waal, on view in the Fragonard Room, © Edmund de Waal. Courtesy the artist and The Frick Collection; photo: Christopher Burke

The exhibition features nine of de Waal’s artworks in total, each provoking a dialogue between modern and old, object and context, as well as offering fresh perspectives on the space itself.

Rosie Ellison-Balaam

‘Elective Affinities’ runs until 17 November 2019 at The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, New York. For more information visit: frick.org

A Porsche passes through Aix-en- Provence in the Rallye des Princesses

Ferraris! France! Finish lines! Equal parts grit and glamour, the Rallye des Princesses is a female-only classic car race with challenging conditions by day and champagne soirées come nightfall. Ahead of this year’s event, Laura Archer speaks to the founder Viviane Zaniroli

Kate Moss zooming along the Cotswolds country lanes in her vintage Porsche 911S, Jodie Kidd finishing the Mille Miglia in a Jaguar XK120, Kendall Jenner cruising around Hollywood in a 1965 Mustang… When it comes to classic cars, who says boys have all the fun? Women are getting in on the action more than ever – the percentage of women buying classic cars is rising year on year – but this isn’t just about something that looks good on the driveway: this is about the art of driving, the love of the open road, the thrill of the race. And for these women, there’s no greater expression of this art than the Rallye des Princesses Richard Mille, which this year celebrates its 20th edition.

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Spanning 1,000 miles from Paris to the south of France, and spread over five days, the female-only Rallye des Princesses Richard Mille has become synonymous with excellence in the sport. “It is a mix of precision, prestige and conviviality,” says Viviane Zaniroli, who founded the Rallye in 1999. Don’t let the name fool you; this is no jolly jaunt through pretty scenery. The Rallye is a challenging and often technical race, and counts the likes of Caroline Bugatti and the daughters of six-times Le Mans champion Jacky Ickx, Vanina and Larissa, among its alumni. “The challenge is to drive a classic car, which does not have all the comforts like power steering that we are used to these days, on small, sinuous roads, without getting lost,” Zaniroli explains. Competitors are tasked with following complex navigation instructions, only provided shortly before setting off in the morning, in order to complete a set daily distance, all the while maintaining strict average speed times – simply flooring it isn’t an option. “And even though it takes place in June, the weather can be bad,” Zaniroli adds. Indeed – last year’s race was beset with storms, leading to anecdotes of coaxing Ferraris through floods, nudging Bentleys around hairpin bends in torrential rain, and steering Lamborghinis past landslides.

The start of the Rallye in the Place de Vendôme in Paris

Competitors celebrate a stage during the race

If this all sounds rather like too much grit and nowhere near enough glam, fear not. After a long and bone-aching day behind the wheel, the participants relax in four- and five-star hotels, regaling each other with stories from the road at cocktail parties and gala dinners. This is one car race where evening gowns are an essential piece of kit. And of course, when the weather is rather more clement, it’s hard to beat the thrill of putting the top down, changing up through the gears and feeling the car respond as you hug the roads winding through the beautiful heartland of France.

Given this, it’s little wonder that the number of participants has tripled since the Rallye’s inception, with 90 teams taking part last year, more than half of which were first-time entrants. “I wanted to show that women liked to be behind the wheel of beautiful cars and experience a competition full of challenges,” says Zaniroli of the inspiration behind the event. “Women perfectly understood the concept, loved it and spread the word.” She says that competitors come from all walks of life; most are normal women “with kids and a busy job. They want to let go of the routine for a unique week. They want to experience a one-of-a-kind adventure – it’s thanks to their passion and enthusiasm that the rally became so famous and praised.”

Read more: Island life at the luxury resort of Baha Mar

It wasn’t always this way, however. Since the second world war, the number of women involved in motorsports has declined and in recent years it has become almost exclusively male, with a somewhat gentleman’s club vibe – think, for example, of Formula 1 with its podium girls. “At the beginning, the Rallye had to prove its worth and differentiate itself to exist in a very masculine automotive environment,” says Zaniroli. “That is why, in order to immediately assert its [authority] and find its place, we wanted it to be sporty, demanding and festive at the same time.”

The Place de Vendôme in Paris where the Rallye begins

The route below Courchevel

No easy task, but it’s one that Zaniroli and her team have pulled off, an achievement cemented by the endorsement of big-name brands such as Richard Mille, which in 2019 marks its fifth consecutive year as a partner. “Its departure from Place Vendôme in Paris, the finish at the Place des Lices in Saint-Tropez and the presence of dedicated partners like Richard Mille have built its prestige and made it a ‘haute couture’ rally,” says Zaniroli. But her motivation for running the event is not about international acclaim but something rather more personal. “When a woman subscribes to the Rallye des Princesses, their worry is often whether they will be able to do well and represent their team and the classic car they drive – a woman often questions her abilities,” Zaniroli reflects. “I promise them that they will make it, that they will surpass themselves, and on top of that they will make meaningful relationships. On the final line, their joy and pride are always the best reward, for them as well as for me.”

Given such support and camaraderie, it’s no wonder that competitors in the Rallye des Princesses feel like royalty. And although the event is in its 20th year, it shows no signs of hitting the brakes. After 2018’s Biarritz finish, this year it returns to Saint-Tropez, following the historical route that links Paris to the Cote d’Azur. There’s a new challenge for competitors – the Saint-Tropez Grand Prix, a new stage that takes drivers to the Var region inland, punctuated by three regularity zones. “Today, the rally has reached its cruising speed,” says Zaniroli. “We are contemplating varying the route every other year in order to visit other French regions, and we would also like to develop it internationally.” If that happens – and given Zaniroli’s drive and passion, there’s no reason to think otherwise – the Rallye des Princesses’ future success is assured. Ladies, start your engines.

Rallye des Princesses 2019 runs from 1 to 6 June. For more information visit: zaniroli.com/en/rallye-des-princesses/

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

Sommelier Marc Almert (right) perfume training

Marc Almert was recently named Best Sommelier in the World at the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI) championships in Antwerp. Originally from Cologne, the 27-year-old is currently the Head Sommelier at luxury hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich. Here, he gives us an insight into the work and passions of a top sommelier 

Marc Almert

1. Where did your passion for wine come from?

What initially got me interested into wines was a question. I started training as a hotel specialist in my home city of Cologne and I wasn’t drinking any alcohol at the time, because I did not like it. During my training, I noticed I liked some wines and some spirits, however only on certain occasions or paired with certain foods. This intrigued me, and I wanted to understand why certain wines and beverages differ so greatly. And by asking questions and diving deeper into the topic the passion was aroused.

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2. What is more important for a great sommelier: knowledge of wine, or the ability to deal with customers?

A mix of several features makes a good sommelier. Of course, a profound knowledge of wine and other beverages is crucial. However, having an encyclopaedic knowledge and not being able to apply can be done by books to. A sommelier is a host, entertainer, coach and of course also a waiter – he or she needs to adapt to different kind of guests and their needs and tastes within mere seconds and then ensure they have a great experience throughout the entire evening.

Marc Almert was also the winner of the prestigious Gaggenau Sommelier Awards in 2016

3. What is the most pleasurable part of your job? And the most frustrating?

As a sommelier you should be intimately familiar with most wine growing regions, with their geographic features, their cities, their people, their food, language and of course their wines. This is a most pleasurable and informative way to learn. Taking these new learning points back to your team and then sharing them in trainings with the Baur au Lac staff but even more so with curious guests in the restaurant is one of the most satisfying parts of my job; enhancing the guest experience at the Pavillon [restaurant] by being the vintners’ ambassador.

Wine is a natural product. Many wines are also sealed with a natural product: cork. It is often disappointing when a lot of work has gone into a great bottle of wine on behalf of the vintner, it has been stored in perfect conditions over years or even decades, the guests and myself are excited to open and try it – and then it’s tainted by its cork. That can be quite frustrating, hence I am very happy for the cork industry to keep minimising this problem with new technologies and developments.

4. Are the world’s great wines worth the price?

What do you expect from a bottle of wine you buy or open? Essentially to me it is this question that defines its worth. If it is from a legendary winemaker, a highly rated vintage and a coveted provenance, which has made it quite rare, it can well be worth its price. The price of such bottles does not necessarily reflect the mere production costs, but much more the special moments they create when sharing such a bottle amongst fellow wine lovers, the memories they bring back to trips, countries or even challenging years of history. And of course, then pairing it with intriguing food, such as from our two star chef Laurent Eperon.

Read more: Savills’ selection of luxury chalets in St. Mortiz

5. How has your job changed with the rise of wine bloggers and comparison sites?

The wine world has become a lot more transparent. This has especially led to trends evolving much faster, and quickly becoming more global than it used to be. Due to many crowd sourced comparison sites the industry has also become a little more democratic in its ratings. Furthermore, we see more and more guests coming to the restaurant that are very well informed about the wine world in general and current trends and upcoming winemakers and regions in particular.

6. You are allowed to drink only one wine (or champagne) for the rest of your life. What is it?

For a sommelier it is almost impossible to choose one single wine. If I had to though, it would probably be a well matured Riesling Kabinett from the Mosel. These wines have a great structure and depth to them, vibrant acidity, low alcohol and just the right amount of sweetness – an eternal pleasure.

For more information visit: aupavillon.ch/en/marcalmert.html

An image from Maryam Eisler’s new series ‘O is for Origin’

When Maryam Eisler, LUX Contributing Editor and author of The Sublime Feminine, visited Iceland the results were spectacular

At first glance, Iceland looks like what the Earth must have been at its very beginning, with the bleakness and sombre colours of the volcanic rock that seems to have pushed its way up to the surface only yesterday. This extraordinary terrain makes Iceland a genuine land of fire and ice, with active volcanoes and glaciers living side by side under the phosphorescent lights of the aurora borealis. The landscape creates a powerful visual poetry like no other place I’ve visited. It is no wonder that this land is rich in folklore, in which mythical creatures roam the land and sea. I even met one in my sleep, the hafmeyjan, or mermaid, who enraptures sailors with her siren songs and disappears into the waters’ depths with the men in her arms.

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Icelandic culture is dominated by women, as the progressive nature of its society and politics today shows. And if there was ever a way to highlight the central role of woman in creation, it is in the shifting shapes of this landscape, where female curves match perfectly the green, moss-covered outcrops that stretch far towards the distant murky horizon.

Read more: Photographer Maryam Eisler on East London and the power of art

In such a place, where people and landscape join in a jagged, unreal harmony, the photographer simply has to respond to the variety and scale of what nature presents them. If nothing else, our duty becomes the preservation of this quixotic land for the generations yet to behold its wonders.

View Maryam Eisler’s full portfolio of work: maryameisler.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

St Moritz at night

St Moritz, in Switzerland’s Engadin, is an Alpine paradise in winter, with some of Europe’s best hotels for your skiing vacation. But it could be yours all year round with exclusive chalets for sale. Emma Love reports on the latest Savills offerings and the virtues of Alpine living

It’s hard to imagine that the celebrated ski resort St Moritz was once better known as a summer destination. That was until Johannes Badrutt, the founder of the legendary Kulm hotel, won a bet. The story goes that in the autumn of 1864, he was enthusing about St Moritz as a winter destination to four sceptical English holiday guests. Badrutt suggested that they return in December and if they didn’t enjoy their stay, he would not charge them. The four ended up staying until Easter, marking the beginning of winter tourism in the Engadin valley.

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Luxury chalet Chesa Lumpaz

Of course, these days St Moritz is globally renowned as the glamorous go-to, year-round Alpine resort where everyone from Claudia Schiffer and Robert de Niro to the Swedish royal family has been spotted. It has hosted the Winter Olympics twice, popularised sports such as ice cricket and snow polo and is home to the Cresta Run, a world-championship bobsled run made of natural ice – not to mention it being home to Michelin-star restaurants, Bond Street-style designer fashion boutiques, and  glitzy bars, clubs and hotels. “Historically and geographically, St Moritz has long attracted a crowd with a heavy Italian influence, but in the past couple of decades there has been a steady flow of international billionaires buying chalets here. They are attracted to the sophistication of the resort,” says Jeremy Rollason, head of Savills Ski, who specialises in the sale of chalets and developments in super-prime Alpine locations.

One of the four master bedrooms, all fitted out in contemporary style but with traditional materials

While many of the top one per cent choose to base themselves in traditional ski-in, ski-out Suvretta (where a car is needed to get into town), the latest Savills property on the market offers something rather different – the rare chance to own (and rent) a seven-bedroom lakeside house right in the heart of St Moritz, next door to the Badrutt’s Palace hotel and just ten minutes’ drive from Samedan, the private-jet airport. “Chalet Chesa Lumpaz is one of those rare propositions; it’s contemporary rather than futuristic, quiet yet close to the main shopping precinct and has extraordinary views,” Rollason says of the property, which is for sale POA. “The designer Nico Rensch has expertly combined modern design with St Moritz flair.”

Read more: Why Blue Palace in Crete is a springtime paradise

Spread over five floors, the 890m2 house has a private wellness area (which includes a gym, hot tub, steam room, sauna and massage room), a ski room (with boot, helmet and clothes heaters) and an open-plan living area designed for socialising. “The house was built to entertain, with the living room at the top because you want to have the view when you’re awake not when you’re asleep,” explains Oli Stastny, whose company PPM Exclusive Services manages fully serviced private villas in St Moritz. “The aim with the design was to fuse local materials such as stone and wood in a modern way while keeping a cosy, Alpine feel. For instance, the bedrooms have wood-clad walls.”

There is not one master bedroom but four, all at the front to take advantage of the views of the lake. They are fitted with sliding walls so the configuration can change depending on the guests staying. Yet Stastny echoes Rollason in stating that it is the uniqueness of the property and its location that makes it truly special. “This is one of the only single standing houses in the centre of town, the rest are apartments. It’s also connected by an escalator that goes down to the lake and up to the shops and Badrutt’s Palace.”

The living room (above) and view from the living room on the top floor of the Chesa Lumpaz chalet

This feature could be especially handy for anyone attending the annual New Year’s Eve dinner at the hotel, which is one of the hottest events of the winter social calendar. Other unmissable dates for the diary include the long- established St Moritz Gourmet Festival every January, which is known for attracting star chefs from around the world (this year the line- up included Guillaume Galliot from Caprice at the Four Seasons Hong Kong and Nicolai Nørregaard from Kadeau in Copenhagen). And, in the summer, a jazz festival held in the Dracula Club (Norah Jones, Nigel Kennedy and Curtis Stigers were highlights in 2018); the annual gathering of vintage cars, the British Classic Car Meet; the Engadin Festival featuring ten high-calibre classical concerts and the Tavolata weekend, a celebration of food and music.

All of which proves that while winter sports might be one of the biggest draws to St Moritz – the resort is at 1,850 metres which means an excellent snow record and world-class skiing – there is plenty to entertain visitors in the summer months too. “These summer festivals are a great way of getting property owners back into the resorts as an alternative to the French Riviera which, especially last year, was extremely hot,” says Rollason. “In the summer you can windsurf on the lake and cycle the mountain trails. St Moritz is a genuine dual- season resort.” Exactly as Johannes Badrutt suggested all those years ago.

Find out more: chesalumpaz.com and savills.com/countries/savills-ski

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

The Rosewood Baha Mar’s pool

There has never been a better time to luxuriate in the Bahamas, as Jenny Southan finds out at the new exclusive luxury resort of Baha Mar in Nassau on New Providence Island

In an ever-more tumultuous world, the idea of escaping to an island holds much appeal. New Providence is one of 700 islands in the Bahamas, and a dream for castaways who want more than one or two luxuries to be marooned with. Positioned on the pale sugar sands of Cable Beach, multibillion-dollar resort Baha Mar is setting new standards for expat living with a collection of private residences that are up for sale.

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How often have you said to yourself, “I wish I could just live here”, as a holiday comes to an end? Now, as well as hotel rooms for short-term sunseeking, the SLS Baha Mar and the Rosewood Baha Mar are offering a variety of homes, available from US$726,500 to $25 million. So, if it really was the trip of a lifetime, you can invest in living it all over again, whenever you want.

Rosewood Baha Mar and its grounds

With the first release in January 2019, the residences are hot new entrants to the market, and lovers of the Bahamian laid-back lifestyle, of pristine beaches, swimming pigs and rum cake, are snapping up purchase agreements already. The Rosewood has 87 one- to three-bedroom residences priced from $995,000, plus four three- to six-bedroom beachfront villas from $6.4 million to $25 million, each with its own private swimming pool. Meanwhile, the SLS, which is operated by US lifestyle hospitality company sbe and is now 50% owned by Accorhotels, has 107 one- to three-bedroom residences costing $726,500 to $4.2 million. House hunting has never looked so good.

What’s the difference between the two brands? While many of the perks are the same, Genevieve Conroy, vice-president of residential sales and marketing for Baha Mar, says: “The SLS is more contemporary. Residences have sleek white furnishings, and a modernist, minimalist flair coming through. They’re sexy and cool. The Rosewood is more elegantly traditional in style. Clients walk in and they definitely gravitate to one or the other.”

Not only can owners generate additional income from renting out their property, but they will qualify to apply for residency in this independent realm of the British Commonwealth. What is more, buyers may be exempt from income tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax. From being able to bank in one of the world’s largest and most trusted financial centres, to reliable medical care, to international schools, supermarkets and buying a car, it is easy for people to transplant their lives here, whether they are relocating full- or part-time.

Read more: Inside one of the world’s most exclusive business networks

To have a home on Baha Mar is to live on one of the most covetable of Caribbean bases. Conroy says: “You have these two globally recognised brands in one of the best resorts in the world – that is formidable. Owners get butler and concierge services, complimentary valet, and we are one of the few resorts that doesn’t charge them a daily resort fee.” On top of this, people looking to decorate their new homes can make use of the resort’s superior arts programme. A dedicated local curator will help them choose (or even commission) Bahamian work to display. Owners also receive 15% preferential pricing in many of the resort’s restaurants, shops and spas.

Baha Mar has almost 50 restaurants and bars, with cuisines ranging from Mexican to Chinese. There are nine tennis courts (including grass), as well as a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course (with 24 free rounds of golf annually for homeowners ), VIP entrance to Baha Mar’s Bond nightclub and Platinum status at the largest casino in the Caribbean (007 fans will feel like they have a starring role in Casino Royale, which was filmed on the island). Residents are also gifted VIP access to NEXUS Club by the eponymous luxury hospitality company founded by singer-songwriter-actor Justin Timberlake, the Tavistock Group’s Joe Lewis, and golfers Tiger Woods and Ernie Els.

Being part of a branded community guarantees certain standards, as well as international neighbours from a variety of backgrounds. The offshore lifestyle, of course, is key. Baha Mar has its own private island, Long Cay, which can be hired exclusively for parties and which has its own rum tasting room. It also has VIP use of the superyachts (213-ft/65m) Eternity I and II for private charter. Quirky touches at Baha Mar include Airstream food trucks and a daiquiri shack on the beach. Although residents can use two on-site spas (one of which is a flagship ESPA), treatments can be arranged at home. Gourmet meals can be cooked by in-house chefs.

A residence at SLS Baha Mar

How can buyers choose between the SLS and the Rosewood? Luigi Romaniello, managing director at the Rosewood Baha Mar, says: “The residences at Rosewood Baha Mar offer owners the opportunity to bask in the comforts of a home while indulging in the benefits of a five-star, world-class, luxury resort. Owners also become part of the elite Rosewood Residences global network. Worldwide privileges include preferred rates, special food, beverage and spa benefits, and VIP courtesies and treatment across Rosewood Hotels and Resorts.”

Meanwhile, Richard Alexander, general manager of the SLS Baha Mar, says: “Ownership at SLS Baha Mar provides a Bahamian retreat for contemporary global citizens and the opportunity to connect with a discerning community. Blending sleek design, an impressive array of culinary offerings and elegant nightlife, SLS Baha Mar residences are a rare and unique proposition surrounded by sparkling turquoise waters. More than a home – they are ushering in a new era of glamour in the Caribbean.” Where do we sign?

Baha Mar living – the facts

Number of residences Rosewood: 91; SLS: 107
Price range Rosewood: $995,000–$25m; SLS: $726,500–$4.2m
Types of property Rosewood: one- to three-bed apartments with balconies; three- to six-bed beachfront villas with terraces, hot tubs, outdoor showers and workout areas; SLS: one- to three- bed residences with terraces and sea views
Tax advantages no income tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, wealth tax or inheritance tax for most nationalities
Services and amenities NEXUS Club Baha Mar membership, 24 annual free rounds at the Jack Nicklaus Signature Royal Blue club, Platinum-tier status at Baha Mar Casino Club Blu, VIP access to Bond nightclub, VIP reservations at Baha Mar restaurants, concierge and complimentary valet
Nearest airports Lynden Pindling, 9.5km away; private jet terminals
Non-stop flights British Airways from London; American Airlines from Miami and Charlotte; Delta Air Lines, JetBlue and United from New York; Delta from Atlanta; JetBlue and Delta from Boston; United from Chicago; Air Canada and Westjet from Toronto; Bahamasair from Houston and Miami and Ft Lauderdale

Find out more: residences.bahamar.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

Ricardo Guadalupe (left) with Richard Orlinski and one of his ‘Wild Kong’ sculptures

Luxury Swiss watchmaker Hublot is letting artists design their timepieces, and their customers and collectors love them. Rachael Taylor examines a new trend in horological branding

Hublot chief executive Ricardo Guadalupe was on a skiing holiday in the exclusive Courchevel resort in the French Alps when he spotted unusual sculptures rearing out of the powdery white slopes. The giant faceted animals, including a howling wolf, a chest-beating gorilla and a bright red Tyrannosaurus rex, were the work of contemporary French artist Richard Orlinski, and this chance encounter with a mountain-top menagerie would go on to inspire a surprise hit for Hublot.

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“Maybe Hublot was surprised, but I wasn’t,” laughs Orlinski, commenting on the success of the first watch he designed for the brand. “I don’t know if I have talent, but with my eyes I can see what people see. I’m a mainstream guy. When I like something, a lot of people like it.”

Indeed, Guadalupe has described the demand for Orlinski’s Hublot watches as “unbelievable”, and impossible to fulfil. The collaboration first started in 2017 with the Classic Fusion Aerofusion Chronograph Orlinski, a polished titanium skeletonised model with a sharply faceted case and bezel that mirrors Orlinski’s iconic sculptures. The Swiss watchmaker, passing creative control to an artist for the first time, created a modest run of 200 watches, unsure of how they would be received. The collection quickly sold out, attracting existing Hublot collectors, as well as aesthetes, art buffs and quite a few of Orlinski’s famous friends who were new to the brand.

Hublot’s Classic Fusion Tourbillon Orlinski Black Magic

Since then, Orlinski and Hublot have partnered to create a further 10 editions of the watch. These include a vivid-red ceramic version that launched last year; the colour, which is technically very difficult to achieve and is exclusive to Hublot, matched a shade applied to many of Orlinski’s sculptures. For luxury collectors, there is the Aerofusion Chronograph Orlinski King Gold Jewellery, a 18ct solid-gold version set with more than 300 diamonds. And at the top of the range is the Tourbillon Power Reserve 5 Days Orlinski Sapphire, limited to just 30 watches, with a case made entirely from polished sapphire crystal.

Read more: Trevor Hernandez’s surreal urban photography

The faceted cases and bezels of Orlinski’s watches dazzle with light and shadow, adding a sculptural edge to the design. Keeping the watch functional, legible and wearable was important to Orlinski, who is himself a watch collector. “I know a lot about watches,” he says, but admits that until this collaboration his hoard did not include a Hublot as it was focused on vintage timepieces. “I wanted to make a mix between a watch and a sculpture – something you can wear every day, not something very strange.”

Hublot was not the first watch brand to come knocking at Orlinski’s door. Others had tried, but they offered the chance to customise rather than create. For Orlinski, this was not enough. “I always declined because they wouldn’t let me do anything,” he says. “Hublot treat me as a watch designer.”

Richard Orlinski

By giving Orlinski autonomy over the watches that bear his name, the mainstream magic that the bestselling French artist claims to wield has rubbed off on Hublot, making it a commercial success, while also giving it a dose of art kudos. The collaboration has also had benefits for Orlinski’s art, as the global exposure he has enjoyed while touring the world for Hublot events has widened his fan base.

Such synergy between the contemporary art and luxury worlds has led to many such hook ups, as brands use artists to inject fresh vigour into heritage labels. Last year, Chaumet celebrated modern African art by enlisting Kenyan graphic designer Evans Mbugua to create a collection of high-jewellery brooches, while Dior invited 11 artists, including Isabelle Cornaro, Li Shurui and Poppy Apfelbaum, to reimagine its Dior Lady Art handbag.

The Classic Fusion Aerofusion Chronograph Orlinski Red Ceramic

“Nowadays, art gives a credibility to brands,” says Orlinski. “A lot of them understand that they have to tell stories; selling things is not enough now. We live in the World 2.0, and things are changing so fast. If you want to stay in the game, you have to be open minded. People want something different.” It’s also, he says, about using popular art to engage with a wider audience: “Even if you are a luxury brand, you have to talk to everyone. If you only talk to the rich people, you’re dead. The brands that don’t change are going to die.”

Read more: Art collector Kelly Ying on the contemporary artists to watch

As art and watch collectors line up to own a wearable piece of Orlinski, Hublot plans to keep this particular point of difference very much alive and ticking. While the core design of the watch will stay true to its faceted form, Orlinski believes there are myriad possibilities for the future, such as fresh colourways, new materials and increasingly complex horological complications. And at Baselworld watch show in March 2019, the first line of Orlinski Hublot watches for women will be unveiled, opening up a whole new market. “This model will evolve a lot,” says Orlinski. “I have so many ideas, we can go on collaborating for 20 years. It’s just a matter of talent, energy and brainstorming.”

Orlinski with actor Jacqueline Bracamontes at the launch of the Mexico variant of his Hublot watch

The case for collaboration

Hublot, like most watch brands, is best known for its sporting collaborations – its long-running partnership with Ferrari continues to be the vanguard of such alliances. Deals like this, and its sponsorship of the Fifa World Cup in Russia last year, are, according to chief executive Ricardo Guadalupe, the “premier league” of collaborations, to use a suitably sporting analogy. Uniting the worlds of timing and art is a less obvious strategy, but brings other benefits that Guadalupe is keen to cultivate.

“We’re always looking for new inspirations, and we have found that we should not stay in our industry, but go outside,” he says. “When you come with something unique and different, I think consumers are really waiting for that.”

Read more: Why you need to see Sarah Morris’ latest exhibition at White Cube, London

As well as working with Richard Orlinski on his hugely popular line of faceted watches (“The demand is still unbelievable. We can’t keep up with it”). Hublot has also engaged Los Angeles-based street artist Tristan Eaton and London tattoo studio Sang Bleu to reinterpret its Aerofusion and Big Bang models.

“[Working with artists] positions us as a trendsetter in creating new designs for watches and this is really important,” says Guadalupe. “We are at the beginning of the process with Richard Orlinski, with the tattoos, so this is something really new that is appearing in our world. Probably it will bring new consumers into our brand, but it also allows our actual consumers that love Hublot to buy a new watch. You must bring always something different and innovative. [Through art] we are creating a new way of making watches.”

Find out more: hublot.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

The vineyards of Masseto slope down towards the sea from the mountains of Tuscany’s Maremma region

Masseto, Italy’s most celebrated wine, is made from spectacular vineyards by the Tuscan coast, backed by ancient forests, looking out over the Mediterranean. This spring, it received a stunning new winery, whose wonders are all contained underneath the blue clay soil, as Darius Sanai, one of the wine’s most obsessive aficionados, discovers

Photography by Marius W Hansen

As you approach the Masseto winery, the overwhelming feeling is one of luminescence. There is a glow from above, and behind, as if the narrow road you’re driving along is the entrance to some new, celestial world.

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There are three shades to the luminescence. The piercing blue of the sky (the sky always seems to be blue around here in the Maremma, the coastal strip of Tuscany halfway between Pisa and Rome); the deep primordial green ahead, which emanates not from the vineyards that surround you but from a thick forest on the mountains in front, forest that looks as wild as it must have been in prehistoric times, with little or no sign of human intervention; and then there is a silver, which seems to come from a different direction altogether, subtle but enveloping. As the road heads up the slope through the vineyards and towards the new winery, you feel that you’re about to be welcomed through into another world.

The entrance to the new winemaking buildings at Masseto winery

All this makes the entrance itself to the new winery, which opened this spring, even more remarkable. Rather than a great ziggurat to commemorate the otherworldly location of the home of one of the world’s greatest wines, you are greeted by a building that seems to sink far into the mountainside.

And this, perhaps, is the point. It is only when you enter between the stone sentinels at the entrance to the new winery, and disappear into the blue clay soil, that the adventure really begins.

Masseto is perhaps the only Italian wine that has passed into the pantheon of high-luxury brands. It is a wine venerated by connoisseurs, while its serving is also seen as a mark of the ultimate respect by those with just a passing interest in wine, along with names like Pétrus, Lafite, Latour and Domaine de la Romanée- Conti – all the others are French. All the more remarkable, since Masseto has only been a wine since 1987. And since its birth, until the opening of the new winery in 2019, it has always been seen as the ‘big sister’ wine of Ornellaia, made on the same premises.

Read more: Karl-Friedrich Scheufele on Chopard’s partnership with Mille Miglia

This spring, Masseto finally received its own home, distinct from its sister wine, a few hundred metres away on another part of the same slope. The new winery is one of the most striking creations of anything in the increasingly rarefied world of fine wine.

Amid the vineyards, there is a beautiful classical building, terraced, with views across the vineyards and to the Mediterranean Sea, just a couple of miles away. It is the sea that gives Masseto’s vineyards their luminescence, and the wines themselves a kind of olfactory luminescence, lifting up and away, balancing the richness and power and complexity with a kind of angelic delicacy only the very greatest wines in the world can achieve.

The glass-cube tasting room, and some of the merlot grapes harvested from the vineyard

But enter inside, and underground, and you are in a different universe. The landing area drops away to a vast, concrete-lined chamber, more redolent of a modern Abu Simbel in ancient Egypt than of a place where wine is made. Rows of wooden barriques line the room; everything is perfect, geometrically, but also puzzling, as if you have entered a kind of contemporary MC Escher drawing. A concrete wall swings open to reveal a room lined with what seem at first to be beautiful black tiles, but turns out to be the ends of Masseto bottles, stored geometrically in racks, black against the grey of the stone. Most remarkable of all is a glass tasting room, a cube in the middle of the winery, where you can taste wines looked on by the wines themselves, buried in the deep underbelly of Tuscany.

The architecture is the creation of Milan-based firm ZitoMori Studio. Masseto CEO Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja comments: “Years of planning and effort have been dedicated to building the right home for Masseto. One that consolidates three decades of experience, where every aspect has been designed to meet the winemaking team’s highly detailed requirements.”

The orderliness of the vineyards outside are matched by the clean and uncluttered design of the new winery buildings

Giovanni Geddes de Filicaja, CEO of Masseto

Commercial director Alex Belson comments about the architecture: “The architectural brief specified the winery must be a masterpiece in its own right. Quite simply, we needed to give Masseto the home it deserves and its own architectural identity. The brief also stipulated the winery must have minimal visual impact, and that the existing Masseto House (a classified building on the hill above the vineyard) be restored with integrity and to meet Italian architectural heritage requirements.”

To do this, says Japanese-born architect Hikaru Mori, “We created a series of spaces, not by construction but by extraction from the hill’s monolithic mass. The diverse internal volumes, heights and levels are reminiscent of a gold mine as it follows seams of precious metal to the core.”

Axel Heinz, Masseto’s Estate Director

But the architecture would mean nothing without the wine, and Masseto is a wine that is even more special than its setting. Axel Heinz, the estate’s director, has been in charge of the winemaking since 2005 and he says, “The core of Masseto, its warp thread, is a Mahler symphony played by a full orchestra. The weft is a small chamber music ensemble. It’s that orchestral power that needs very careful handling. It has to be balanced by the softer elements, which add complexity. People sometimes describe Masseto as single vineyard wine, but it’s not. There’s an incredible range of plot expressions and different proportions of clay, gravel and earth. It’s more like an intricate patchwork, with the blue clay at its core.”

Heinz also pays tribute to the importance of the sea, both in the light it donates to the vineyards, and the cooling breezes that temper the summer heat and give the wine its freshness, however ripe the vintage. But like the greatest wines, and the greatest poetry, and the greatest vistas, you cannot analyse the beauty of Masseto. It comes from the soil, the grapes, the winemaking, the weather, the microbiome of the earth, the human appreciation of the aesthetic, both in taste and in vision.

For me, Masseto shares with a handful of wines the distinction of being rich, powerful and deep, and also feather light, almost transparent. A big, rich red wine that lifts you up, with a thousand nuances. Different vintages have different characteristics, but there is a commonality in this lightness of being that differentiates it from any other wine I have had from Italy, and which it shares with a clutch of peers at the tip of the world wine tree. Grape variety is irrelevant here. One or two of the great Napa Cabernet Sauvignons have it, as do a handful of top Bordeaux names, and the greatest (and eye-wateringly expensive) wines from the likes of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leroy, Mugnier and Armand Rousseau from Burgundy. In the context of many of these peers, Masseto, whose price has rocketed over the past few years, seems positively decent value.

And none of them have a view of the Mediterranean across the coast of the Maremma. It’s going to be fun tasting future vintages in that glass tasting room.

Find out more: masseto.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

Le Jardin de Russie restaurant at the Hotel de Russie, and the National Museum of 21st-Century Arts (MAXXI)

Rome has a lot to offer the modern traveller beyond classical ruins, and at the heart of this burgeoning contemporary scene is the new Hotel de la Ville. Emma Love sings the city’s praises

When Hotel de la Ville, high above the Spanish Steps in Rome, opens on 23 May 2019, it will be the latest in a wave of cool, contemporary destinations to appear in the capital. Joining Hotel de Russie as part of Rocco Forte Hotels, Hotel de la Ville celebrates the tradition of the European Grand Tour in a thoroughly modern way. Located in an 18th-century palazzo, its decor ranges from Renaissance-inspired busts in the Da Sistina bistro to the decorative patterns of blue-and-white ceramics reinterpreted as a wallpaper print. The spa, courtyard restaurant (with its new take on classic Roman dishes) and the 7th-floor bar with 360-degree views are all set to appeal to a new generation of travellers.

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It’s not only the design of Hotel de la Ville which is inspired by the European Grand Tour: both properties are in the heart of the Eternal City (Hotel de Russie is between Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo), so visitors are ideally placed to discover off-the-beaten-track gems. For instance, alongside Rome’s ancient wonders there are now a number of art galleries that offer alternative attractions. The National Gallery of Modern Art specialises in 19th and 20th-century works by Italian and international artists; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO), located in a former warehouse, showcases works created since 1960; and the Zaha Hadid-designed National Museum of 21st-Century Arts (MAXXI) is dedicated to contemporary art and architecture. And there is the Palazzo Rhinoceros, which opened in 2018 as part of Fendi’s non-profit art foundation with its exhibitions, rooftop bar and restaurant.

A grand junior suite at the Hotel de la Ville (above) and the Spanish Steps

Hotel de Russie, named after the Russian Romantic painters who were guests when visiting the city, also blends classical architecture with modern interiors. It has a noteworthy spa, the Stravinskij bar and Le Jardin de Russie restaurant, where in summer tables spill out into the Secret Garden. Near Hotel de la Ville, architecture fans will discover the bizarre 16th- century Palazzo Zuccari, the façade of which features mascherone or grotesque, mask-like mouths around the front door and windows, and the church of Sant’Isidoro where the side chapel houses two 17th-century marble nude female figures designed by Bernini. Covered up by Irish priests in the 19th century, they were unveiled again only in 2002.

Read more: Why Blue Palace resort in Crete is the perfect Springtime destination

For more contemporary design, there is the Jubilee Church, built in 2003 in the Tor Tre Treste suburb by American architect Richard Meier, and the amphitheatre-like Parco Della Musica by Renzo Piano, where everything from contemporary dance to jazz and film festivals take place. Both hotels can arrange tailor-made experiences for guests, whether they want a behind-the-scenes look at the 19th-century Teatro dell’Opera di Roma or a tour of Monti, the once down-at-heel district now popular for vintage fashion and antiques. All of which demonstrates that this forward-looking city is so much more than its past.

SIX UNMISSABLE ROME EXPERIENCES

1. Behind-the-scenes designer shopping
From a private atelier visit to learning about the craftsmanship that goes into bespoke garments, Hotel de Russie’s ‘Avenue of Style’ experience offers unparalleled access to eleven Italian fashion brands.

2. Private tour of the opera house
Sneak a backstage look at Rome’s most famous classical music venue, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, which is resplendent in its 19th-century glory.

3. Cycle the city
Go cycling or jogging with Hotel de Russie’s personal trainer and triathlon world champion Danilo Palmucci, taking in the Villa Borghese gardens and architectural landmarks.

4. Discover a hip art gallery
Former London art dealer Lorcan O’Neill’s eponymous gallery is in a renovated stable in the centre of Rome where his roster of artists includes everyone from Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin to Richard Long and Francesco Clemente.

5. See optical illusions at the Trinità dei Monti convent
Go straight to the cloister on the upper floor to see the two large and very rare anamorphic wall paintings.

6. An immersive perfumery experience
Hotel de la Ville’s ‘olfactive itinerary’ is a closed-doors visit to a high-end perfumery, set inside a historic building with original frescos.

For more information visit: roccofortehotels.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar at work in his studio

Franco-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, despite a childhood spent escaping war, then living in post- revolutionary Iran and enduring the subsequent prejudice, produces the most brilliantly coloured and life-affirming paintings. James Parry speaks with him ahead of his new exhibition in Düsseldorf

It’s an idyllic scene. Azure skies and an enticing ultramarine sea reaching out to the horizon and dotted with yachts, the perfect backdrop for a picture-postcard harbour town with cobbled streets lined with stylish shops and restaurants. Bougainvillea froths over historic façades and cicadas chirp in the beautifully manicured gardens of opulent villas. Welcome to the south of France, and to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar has made his home here, following in the footsteps of artists such as Cézanne, Matisse, Chagall, Renoir and Picasso, all drawn to the French Riviera by the dramatic light, colours and stunning scenery.

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As bucolic as this may sound, in Behnam- Bakhtiar’s case, the Côte d’Azur provides welcome and creative sanctuary from a life that has not been without its challenges. Born in France in 1984 to Iranian parents who left their homeland after the Islamic Revolution, he would only visit Iran for a few weeks each summer to see family. But even such relatively brief trips could be fraught. For much of the 1980s Iran was engaged in a bitter war with Iraq, and Tehran was periodically targeted by Iraqi missiles. “It was terrifying,” remembers Behnam-Bakhtiar. “We could hear the rockets roaring overhead, and then the explosions.” On one occasion, he and his mother had to make a desperate dash to the city of Bandar Abbas to catch the last flight out of the country to safety in Europe.

‘Lovers’ (2018) by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar

Further turmoil and trauma were to follow when, at the age of nine, Behnam-Bakhtiar moved to Iran permanently with his mother,to a world far removed from the childhood comforts of suburban Paris. He was a foreigner in a land deeply suspicious of the West. “At school they used to call me ‘the outsider’ and it wasn’t long before the verbal insults turned into actual physical violence,” he recalls.

The bullying came not only from his fellow pupils but also from the teachers, and continued outside of school, with intimidation and harassment from the police an almost daily occurrence. Behnam-Bakhtiar was singled out for being different, and because of his family’s history and role in the government prior to the Islamic revolution. Only by standing his ground and fighting his corner (literally, helped by taekwondo classes), did the unwelcome newcomer manage to get through each day. “At times it was pure darkness and not easy to focus on the potential light at the end of the tunnel,” he admits.

Read more: Karl-Friedrich Scheufele on Chopard’s partnership with Mille Miglia

But light there was, and Behnam-Bakhtiar will be focusing on the empowering aspects of such life experiences in his forthcoming exhibition ‘Extremis’, which opens at Setareh Gallery in Düsseldorf on 24 October. An evolution of his ‘Oneness Wholeness’ body of work, which wowed crowds last year at the Saatchi Gallery in London and at Jean Cocteau’s dramatically decorated Villa Santo Sospir on Cap Ferrat, the show will consist mostly of new works. “My new paintings reflect on what I learned from my difficult times in Iran and from life in general,” explains the artist. “By putting it out on the canvas, I’m saying that even in the toughest of situations, it’s always possible to learn and move forward towards becoming a more complete human being.”

Detail of Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar’s painting ‘Eternal Wholeness’

Behnam-Bakhtiar’s work, which is both beautiful and technically proficient, has been achieved against an unusual and sometimes difficult background. His parents were both artists, but post-revolution Iran presented its challenges for opportunities to express or develop any artistic potential. What saved him was his camera. “Photography was my creative safety valve,” he explains. “I was always out and about, taking pictures of whatever caught my eye. That in itself was problematic during those years in Iran, but I learnt how to be discreet.”

Soon he had amassed a vast bank of images, part of an archive of source material that he now uses in his work. “I’ve been collecting ideas for years,” he admits, “especially patterns and designs that appeal to me.” These inspire him in the choosing of his own motifs, mostly Persian-oriented, which he uses in his collage- style paintings. To refer to them as ‘mixed media on canvas’ comes nowhere close to doing them justice, as they are complex and painstakingly crafted works of immense skill, using the artist’s trademark layered technique (see end of article). Behnam-Bakhtiar specialises in large works, expansive and yet also highly detailed, studded with jewel-like effects that resonate with the richness of a Persian heritage that he regards as central to what he does and who he is.

Detail of ‘Lovers’ (2018)

This approach – and the battle between light and dark in human life – will be brought into sharp relief in the new show. The exhibition centrepiece will be an epic work, Tornado of Life (2017), a vivid and exuberant painting around which many other works will be gathered. More guarded and sombre in hue, with just flickers of brighter colours emerging, these paintings serve to emphasise the triumph of light – and indeed of personal enlightenment – that Behnam- Bakhtiar seeks to achieve. Even in the darkest days in Iran, he explains, he drew positives from the friendships that he eventually made there.

Read more: Masseto unveils a new underground wine cellar

“Sassan stands out as a globally educated artist of Iranian background who is bringing works of great relevance to the canon of world art history,” says Samandar Setareh, owner of Setareh Gallery. “By using historic references, as well as a deeply personal and sensitive vision of the human condition, he is formulating a language that is understood beyond any frontier of cultural limitation.” ‘Extremis’ reflects the global appeal of this ethos and art, as well as Behnam-Bakhtiar’s commitment to identifying and developing positive outcomes from seemingly bleak situations. The myriad layers of his textured paintings reflect the very complexity and passage of life itself, a synthesis of practical skill and ingenuity that results in a very special type of art.

The artist in his studio

Layers of technique

Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar’s stunning artworks are created by a particular technique that has become his trademark. In much the same way as his life experience is layered and complex, his artworks are similarly intricate. Working in mixed media and oil on canvas, he builds up his paintings through the application of different layers of paint. These can include fragments of handcrafted designs that he attaches to the canvas, collage-style. He overpaints each layer, in some cases working to a grid-like pattern to create a mosaic effect. Finally, he uses a plasterer’s edging trowel to remove sections of the top layers of paint and reveal the colours underneath, resulting in the kaleidoscopic effect for which his works are renowned.

Find out more: sassanbehnambakhtiar.com or setareh-gallery.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

Summer in Andermatt with bike trails, the historic village streets, the Radisson Blu hotel and the new golf course

Andermatt is rapidly becoming one of Switzerland’s best year-round Alpine destinations. Already famed for its winter sports, the resort is now offering activities, accommodation and dining for summer, too, thanks to a major new development. Rob Freeman discovers the joys of the village’s new season

As the winter snows melt on the slopes above Andermatt, the year-round allure of this Swiss village becomes apparent. Thanks to the charm and the beauty of its summer meadows carpeted with white, blue, yellow and pink Alpine flowers, the resort has become a multi- faceted, all-season destination.

As glorious as it is in winter – Andermatt is now a world-class winter-sports centre and part of central Switzerland’s largest linked ski area – the resort, thanks to some remarkable developments that are taking place there, is equally stunning in the summer. In many ways, the contrast between the verdant valleys and the glistening white peaks above in summer makes this landscape even more striking.

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Andermatt’s parish records go back 800 years, with many of its houses being centuries old, so it’s small wonder that there is a palpable sense of history and tradition in its streets. With such a background, it’s intriguing to see the village enter a new phase, underlined by the recent opening of the elegant shopping and dining square, the Piazza Gottardo, which is part of a visionary development by Egyptian investor Samih Sawiris that will see the village double in size. There’s a distinct yet subtle style to this new car-free area, known as Andermatt Reuss, of which the Piazza is the centrepiece. The trick is having every building individually designed by one of more than 30 Swiss and international architects to create an eclectic rather than uniform appearance.

Each new building, as architect Christoph Langenberg, the project manager of the developer Andermatt Swiss Alps, explains, pays homage in one respect or another to the traditional styles of the local architecture. The Edelweiss apartment building, for example, has distinctive shutters with chevron patterns in contrast to the broad arches that protect balconies against the sometimes severe weather. But its most extraordinary feature is its exterior colour, which starts from a dark base and gradually lightens as it rises until seeming to fade into the sky. Diamond shapes are scored into the façade, with wavy lines accentuating the lightness. In another building, House Wolf, the design incorporates the careful gauging of the sculptural effect of the roof overhang.

“The buildings are clustered together more closely than is usual in new projects like this,” Langenberg adds. This is deliberate, to reflect the traditional way in which these villages evolved. The buildings have always been close together for warmth and security. We wanted the new developments to be an extension to the old village, rather than something separate.” One to five-bedroom apartments are available, and the whole project, which will include 30 individual chalets, has no purchase restrictions for foreigners.

The square, complete with fountain, is fringed by shops, restaurants and bars. Restaurant Biselli already epitomises Piazza Gottardo’s village spirit and, from 8am to 11pm, is a focal point for holidaymakers and residents. Occupying the ground floor of the six-storey House Alpenrose apartment building, the restaurant is also a bakery, providing rolls and croissants every morning, and a chocolate shop where the chocolatier can often be seen creating little masterpieces. It also has a small section selling holiday necessities such as milk, butter and jam, even toothpaste. The softly lit restaurant, which is romantic and stylish, has a menu embracing dishes such as goose liver mousse with cognac and truffles, and sea bass baked in puff pastry, as well as local specialities such as tarte flambée of onions, bacon, sour cream and mountain cheese, and dumplings with roasted pork belly.

Read more: Maryam Eisler in conversation with Kenny Scharf

The Mammut sports shop opposite is a high-end ski-rental shop in winter and a bike, hiking and climbing emporium in summer. A Victorinox store has a large selection of Swiss Army and kitchen knives, designer luggage and watches. A pharmacy and small supermarket will soon join the line-up.

Radisson Blu Hotel Reussen

The impressive Radisson Blu Hotel Reussen opened recently, and its Spun restaurant, highlighting Swiss and Italian cuisine, also fronts onto the Piazza. The hotel also has a fitness zone including two saunas, steam bath and 13 treatment rooms and extensive gym, as well as a 25-metre public indoor pool with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the mountains of the Urseren Valley. A new concert hall with state-of-the-art acoustics and seating 700, designed by British studio Seilern Architects, is attached to the hotel. Further accommodation for the village will include a hotel aimed at families, featuring a water-slide through reception!

Summer offerings include walks from gentle strolls to challenging hikes, and climbing for novices as well as experts. Also popular are e-bikes with auxiliary motors to tackle distances and gradients that would otherwise be out of the question. The Four Headwaters Trail links the nearby sources of four rivers, the Rhine, Reuss, Ticino and Rhone. The 85-km family-friendly route can be split into day trips or a five-day tour staying at huts. And days out on the Matterhorn Gotthard Glacier Express are spectacular. There’s no more marvellous way to enjoy these glorious mountains.

Andermatt’s 18-hole golf course

The new 18-hole, par-72 championship Andermatt Swiss Alps golf course

Designed to complement its spectacular natural setting, Andermatt’s 18-hole golf course is immediately adjacent to the village. Although it only opened as recently as 2016, it has already achieved the highest possible accolades, including being named Switzerland’s Best Golf Course in the World Golf Awards every year since. Designed by renowned German golf-course architect Kurt Rossknecht, it has the feel of a Scottish links course and meets international tournament standards. Importantly for holidaymakers, it is open to the public on a pay-and-play basis.

Find out more: andermatt-swissalps.ch

This article originally appeared in the Summer 19 Issue.

Egyptian entrepreneur Samih Sawiris

Mass automation will mean the majority of human beings will have little prospect of being in employment. It is essential both to provide for them with financial support, and to create a sense of purpose

The transition to the era where the vast majority of people will not be able to be employed will require governments to start seriously thinking about de-demonising not working. Right now, the world is full of Calvinists who believe that God made us here to work, and even if others are not as extreme, there is this subtle belief that if you don’t work you’re no good. And this will have to change as we move into an era where machines will do a lot of the work that people are doing now and where it becomes impossible to create enough jobs. So, de facto, come 2050 a lot of people will be born and live and die without ever really working because the world doesn’t need them as a workforce.

If governments don’t soon start to prepare people for this event, we will have a lot of angry and unhappy people who just don’t understand why some are working and they’re not.

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The second thing that has to happen is to create an association between all these machines and the ex-employees that were replaced by them, and the best scenario would be to start contriving a sense of ownership. Let’s let’s say you used to assemble cars in a factory and now it’s all computerised with robots. Under this system, you would actually own the robot, so your robot is working instead of you, doing the job that you used to do manually. You go in at the end of the month, tap it, pat it and then collect your salary. And basically governments are giving you your tax money back, the factories are not paying salaries any longer but they are paying higher taxes, and that gives the ex-employee more or less the same income, because the productivity has become better. You keep this improvement in productivity for yourself as the factory owner, you pass some of it to the employee, and the government starts giving the people some of the taxes directly, not as unemployment payments but rather as employment, or, specifically, loans to buy their robot. A factory may have a thousand robots, so a thousand employees are given a loan to buy them and they lease them to the manufacturer. The worker feels he owns the robot and the robot’s working instead of him.

Once you have addressed the bulk of the employment problem, you think about other elements. A former Uber driver would become an owner of an Uber car, and he would lease it, and he gets the delta between what the driverless car brings in versus what he would have brought, because a driverless car can drive 24 hours a day, which he cannot. So effectively there are 16 hours more work done that wouldn’t have otherwise been done.

So, with cars, trucks, assembly line workers and other manual jobs, there is a long list of functions that could be addressed in this way. New ideas will ultimately come up to address other sectors, such as accountants, for example, who will be replaced by machines.

I am not saying you’re going to totally eradicate the problem overnight, but governments have to start thinking about this. We have to start preparing children when they go to school that they shouldn’t think they are going to become a surgeon – because even operations today can be done by machines. For example, there is an experiment in which a perfect copy of a liver, including a tumour, is produced. The replica is operated on by a machine until it’s done right, and then back in the operating theatre the robot does the whole job so there is no risk of tearing an artery or other mistakes. Doctors will still have to exist for the training, and they will become much more efficient because they will be present for the first part of the process and in the second part the robot and the computer will do it alone.

Read more: Masseto unveils a new underground wine cellar

It is also empowering. If people who were formerly employees believe they own the tools, whether in a factory or in a hospital, they are being paid for the tools they own, and instead of having employees in the billions and owners in the thousands or hundreds of thousands, it becomes the other way round. There will be billions of entrepreneur/owners: the guy who owns the robot, the doctor who owns the tools. And they will get paid for the use of their tools.

At the end of the day we are only replacing people with machines because machines are going to do a better and cheaper job. So there is a delta, a benefit that’s going to be created – don’t try and keep it in your pocket, give it to the people so that they feel some kind of empowerment. They may not get paid more than they are now, maybe they even get paid less. But such is life: you stay at home, you are paid 70% of your salary from when you worked like an idiot nine hours a day. You are still better off and you have time for your family.

There will be a lot of new industries created. The entertainment industry will triple or quadruple in size to take care of all this new leisure time, and this industry will require manual labour. So the excess surplus time that people will have will by itself reignite job creation for those who just need to work.

At the end of the day we know now that jobs will disappear and the current solution of unemployment money paid to people is socially unacceptable. Society should start thinking seriously about this issue. We need to demand from governments that they be proactive in preparing citizens worldwide for this impending era.

Samih Sawiris is an Egyptian entrepreneur who built the desert city of El Gouna and is the developer of Andermatt Swiss Alps in Switzerland and Luštica Bay in Montenegro

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

The Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire

The Michelin-starred Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons restaurant, run by chef Raymond Blanc, is at the forefront of the culinary arts with its cookery school and Gaggenau kitchen, as Mark C O’Flaherty discovers

Few things attach a date to drama on film like a scene set in a character’s kitchen. It might be a can of the 1970s diet cola TaB on the counter, or a style of cereal box with typography that hasn’t been seen for decades. It’s also the hardware – is it a faux country kitchen in the suburbs, or is it someone pulling out a ready meal from a panel of flashing lights in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Our kitchens tell the story of our lives, and the way we live today. No space in the home has changed more in the past 20 years.

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“More than ever before, we see the dinner table as the most important medium of communication,” says Raymond Blanc, the French chef behind the two Michelin star Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire, incorporating a restaurant which has, for the past 35 years, been one of the top special-occasion destinations in the UK. “The media has helped change our connection with food and our health and the environment. It was all separate before. Now we know it is linked, and a home-cooked meal made from scratch is so much more important – a way to bond with your clan, your family, your loved one. We are more emotional about food today. And what we are eating is changing, too. We eat seasonally because it tastes better, and we are eating less meat, because we know about climate change.”

The Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons hotel and restaurant (above) was opened in 1984 by Raymond Blanc who also established the forward-thinking cookery school

Blanc’s comment about food being more emotional can’t be overstated. While our interest in fashion has cooled somewhat, with a glut of identikit global brands and crass merchandising, food has become something of an obsession. It fuels social media, with information about chefs and niche new restaurant openings shared like precious insider intel. We have taken that obsession home with us, buying up cookbooks by some of the world’s most avant-garde chefs, full of the most ambitious techniques. We have upgraded our kitchens to match those ambitions. “What we have done now is to domesticate the professional kitchen tool,” says Sven Baacke, head of design at Gaggenau, the German manufacturer of some of the most advanced and design-conscious kitchen hardware in the world. “It is something I call ‘traditional avant-garde’.” Sitting in his studio in Munich, with a panoramic view out to the snow-capped mountains of Bavaria, Baacke talks through some of the objects on his desk – pieces that inspire him to create the modern kitchen: “Designers are collectors,” he says, “so here in our studio I have a lot of different things to take ideas from.” One of the most unusual objects is a mouse trap. “I collect them,” he explains. “I am inspired by how many ways there are to catch a mouse, and the ingenuity in each different design of trap. I also collect pocket torches, because I am fascinated by all the different solutions people have come up with to carry a light around with them, and to fashion that particular tool.”

Read more: Masseto unveils a new underground wine cellar

A lot of what Baacke has developed in Munich has ended up in Blanc’s hands in Oxfordshire, and Blanc – as a chef who cooks the way we now also want to cook at home – can predict where the domestic kitchen is going, and how it will look. He is the kind of chef who Baacke is designing for, and the influence trickles down to the home. “If you looked at a domestic kitchen in the 1970s,” says Blanc, “you’d find a microwave and a nasty little cooker with a twin gas range, and a tin opener close by. That was it. It was sad, it was grey, it was barren. And if you were wealthy, you would have an AGA, which warms the house but is impossible to cook with. Today, our kitchens are beautiful and polished, in stainless steel and Corian. They look exciting.”

The Raymond Blanc cookery school

Blanc’s dream kitchens – which include what he has at home, in his cookery school in Oxfordshire and, of course, at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in the same building – are defined by hardware that offers performance along with technology. “I want the same thing at home as I do at work,” he explains, “durability and precision and immediate power. And modern cuisine needs an environment conducive to cooking, with all the gadgets possible. I want multi-functions, I want to steam, use dry heat, wet heat, and a mix. I want to cook sous-vide.”

If home kitchens have been transformed by our appetite for dining out and by chefs’ ravenous hunger for adventure, then the arrival of the vacuum drawer in the home – which can be used for marinating, storage and of course sous-vide cooking – is a quintessentially 21st- century moment. Just as we saw the pressure cooker and the deep-fat fryer dominate the landscape in the 1970s, today’s more food- literate consumer wants protein that has been cooked to retain moisture, and to have all its flavour quite literally sealed in. Essentially it is futurist poaching, cooking with vacuum-packed ingredients, but the results, even with a simple carrot, have been revelatory in the restaurant. Now we want that at home. “Cooking this way is extraordinary – you seal the ingredients without any air, so there is no cross contamination as you’d get when you marinate in the fridge. You have such succulence, and you lose no flavour at all in the cooking.” It is part of the legacy of molecular gastronomy, which Blanc sees as a low point for restaurant culture, but which he also believes has left us with a radical and exploratory approach to cooking which is a positive thing. “It’s like nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s,” he explains, “which was great, but which was ruined by the media and the way they portrayed it. We still learned a lot from it.”

Read more: Massimo Bottura on his Michelin-starred restaurant and Food for Soul project

Induction cooking has been another revolution in the domestic and professional kitchen – something which Blanc has only recently shifted to at his restaurant. “When we had the open gas ranges, it was torture to stand in front of them because of the heat. Now with induction cooking, there’s none of that waste of heat, or all those flames literally roasting you while you work.” Unlike previous electric hobs, induction gives the immediate power and precision that a chef needs, so it’s a viable alternative, and overall improvement, on gas.

Students making pasta

Another change in how we use our kitchens is coming from social trends. The meat-and- two-veg way of cooking looks set to disappear from our lives in the near future. Veganism has long ceased being a fad. “When I opened my restaurant 35 years ago, I had a five- and seven- course vegetarian menu,” says Blanc. “No one wanted it. That’s totally different today. And the situation is irreversible. It takes 16,000 litres of water to provide 1kg of beef. Eating meat contributes so much to greenhouse gases. I have no problem in cooking vegetarian food – when I was growing up, we only had meat maybe four times a week – including steak frites on Saturday and rabbit on Sunday – and everything else was vegetarian. My mother made wonderful, delicious food from vegetables.”

How will this movement manifest itself in the kitchen of the future? Sven Baacke at Gaggenau believes that it will be about our ability to access and keep, as much as prepare, food. “When you buy more fresh fruit and veg, you want to store it in a better way,” he says. “Will we be having things delivered weekly? Will meat become something just for special occasions? I think it could be that being able to eat a really fresh apple will become as special as taking a bottle of fine wine out of the chiller. Digitalisation will see supply become something that happens at a very high level – a very luxurious level. The supply chain will become much better than it is today.”

And what of the technology that isn’t available yet? What will the kitchen of the 2030s have? Trends will continue to come from the way chefs are cooking professionally, for sure. “Methods such as teriyaki, and cooking with steam, those are now high-end domestic but come from restaurant culture,” says Baacke. “I think the social aspect of cooking will develop. I think appliances will become less visible, and we will want to cook together but remotely. We will be able to be in the kitchen together, even if you are in LA and I am in New York.”

As for the actual preparation of food, Blanc has one wish, something that chefs who wear glasses when they work will empathise with the world over: “I would love to be able to open an oven door after roasting something, and not be blasted with the heat from inside. And you know what? Kitchen technology is moving so fast, it’s probably just around the corner.”

Raymond Blanc Cookery School at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons

In an age when we are valuing experiences over objects, a cookery class voucher is a welcome gift. Raymond Blanc’s cookery school in Oxfordshire is just across the hall from his bustling kitchen that serves Le Manoir’s restaurant, but the ambience is markedly different. Here is the kitchen of your dreams, fully equipped with state-of-the-art Gaggenau hardware in fine wood cabinets. The school channels Blanc’s culinary DNA through its director, Mark Peregrine, who is Blanc’s right hand at Le Manoir, with bakery courses taught by Benoit Blin. “We have been so ahead of the curve with the school,” says Blanc. “We were the first to offer courses for children, and we have always taught vegetarian cooking.” A full day’s cookery class here has become a popular bolt-on to an anniversary stay with dinner at the hotel, offering a fully immersive foodie experience along with an afternoon spent among the artfully plotted crops in the garden (which now offers its own school too). “This is such a great time for British cooking,” says Blanc. “It has developed such a new and unique style, and doesn’t come with the same baggage as Italian and French cuisine. When we first opened, it wasn’t really anywhere, but now look at what Benoit is doing at the school. This country is number five in the world for patisserie.”

Find out more: belmond.com or gaggenau.com/gb

This article originally appeared in the Summer 19 Issue.

Swedish model and CEO of wellness brand Bodyism, Nathalie Schyllert. Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

LUX contributing editor and model at Models 1, Charlie Newman continues her online exclusive series, interviewing her peers about their creative pursuits, passions and politics

Charlie Newman

THIS MONTH: Swedish model Nathalie Schyllert has been modelling for twenty years. She joined international wellness brand Bodyism over a decade ago and is now the brand’s CEO. Here she talks to Charlie about training to be a ballerina, myths of the wellness industry and being a successful woman in business.

Charlie Newman: You’ve established yourself successfully within both the fashion and wellness industries. Were you passionate about clothes and food growing up?
Nathalie Schyllert: I grew up in Sweden as an only child with a single mum. Even if we didn’t have a lot of money the most important thing for my mum was to provide us with really good, healthy food. I think in Sweden it’s very easy to have a healthy diet as our traditional dishes always have fish and vegetables in them. I did a lot of exercise from a young age as I was a ballerina in the Swedish Royal Ballet, so it was very important for me to have balanced meals else I would have really physically struggled, especially when you are growing. To do 4 hours of punishing rehearsals a day as well as school you really need nutritious food to sustain you. I was very fortunate to be practising ballet in Sweden because compared to other traditional ballet schools across the world, Swedish schools have a much more positive approach to food, encouraging us to eat fat in our diets. It was a very good life lesson to be instilled in me from such a young age. My mum always wanted the best for me so we moved around so I could go to a better school, a much easier task in Sweden than here in London! Private schools in Sweden are extremely rare, so as long as you live in a good area you are guaranteed a good school too.

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Fashion only really came into my life when I was 15. In the summer holidays I went to either London or Milan for a month or two. At the beginning my mother would come with me or my Swedish booker to help me get settled. I’ve been with Models 1 in London since I was 17, so it’s 20 years now that I’ve been with the same agency! Modelling was such a good opportunity and career path obviously because I started travelling more. I think my discipline from ballet taught me to see modelling as a career, not just as a good time which so many girls fall into the trap of doing. From the start I tried to be very professional.

At around 15 I had an injury in my foot which I could have probably got surgery on but I think at
that age I’d sort of had enough. To be a prima ballerina and really go for it, you have to have the
exact body and I didn’t have the right arch. I realised that I wasn’t made for it. Looking back now, I can see it was the perfect timing because at that age if I continued with the dancing I wouldn’t have had as much time to study. So instead at 15 I focused more on studying science and maths and got a really good education from it which I still appreciate and utilise to this day. It was meant to be.

Charlie Newman: When were you first scouted?
Nathalie Schyllert: I was first scouted in Gothenburg when I was 14. My mum was very strict at the beginning with my agency, making sure they never said anything about body image. If you go with a really good agency they will look after you and guide you to have a healthy, balanced body – a good agency would never tell you to crash diet. When I was a child I didn’t think of modelling at all, but even as a child I always loved performing so modelling didn’t feel too out of my comfort zone when I got round to actually doing it.

Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

Charlie Newman: What’s been a career highlight for you so far?
Nathalie Schyllert: I did the first Stella McCartney Adidas campaign which was a really big deal at the time because no other designers had collaborated with sports designers like that. It felt so special because Stella was there and her sister Mary shot it. From that job I got so many more activewear jobs and it opened the industry’s eyes to see that you can do really cool campaigns with activewear. It seems so obvious now but sportswear was viewed very differently back then.

Charlie Newman:  What’s the best and worst part about modelling for you?
Nathalie Schyllert: The best part is definitely the travelling because unlike other people who just go to holiday destinations, you actually get to live there and meet the locals, really get a feel for the place. It’s extremely rare to live in various cities in one year, if you’re lucky enough to travel with work, in most careers you’d stay in one city for a year, whereas I got to move around all the time!

But simultaneously the travel is also the hardest part about modelling. I appreciate now having my family and friends around me all the time and to actually have a base. It first dawned on me to maybe step away from modelling was when I was in Miami for two months having just broken up with my boyfriend and losing my mum. I felt so lonely and knew then that I needed a more stable job. I called my booker at Models 1 and asked for advice and they suggested personal training as they knew how I was always training not just myself but some of my friends. I came back to London and had a meeting with James Duigan at Bodyism 12 years ago, which back then was based in a tiny mews studio in South Kensington. I’d read a few online articles about him because he was Elle Macpherson’s trainer at the time, so I was really excited to get on board! I started the next day as an intern and doing my courses at the same time. I was busy form day one, pretty much working for free for the first 4 years, doing everything from membership to PR and so much more. After three months I’d already built up enough interest and had my own clients. You really have to put your all into it when it’s a start up. It was the perfect timing for everything.

Read more: Curator Zoe Whitley on the art of collaboration

Charlie Newman:  What drew you to Bodyism?
Nathalie Schyllert: It was a very unique thing at the time. We talked, and still do, about nutrition and sleep, not just training. We look at the whole 360 approach to lifestyle which was something I had always believed in and lived by. That was why it worked so well for me personally because I didn’t have to change who I was at all, my diet and training routine stayed the same, it was a natural fit for me. I was also the first woman on board so I got to have a voice on what women want out of the wellness industry too.

Charlie Newman:  What’s the biggest difference between working for someone and yourself?
Nathalie Schyllert: The only difference is that I’m now doing more PR and interviews, becoming the face of the brand, but apart form that my role hasn’t changed much. It’s funny to compare what James used to get asked and now what I do. Sometimes I get asked, being a female CEO, what my beauty regime is and being a working mum. As long as it benefits the brand, that’s all that matters to me.

Charlie Newman:  How has the wellness industry changed since you first started working in it?
Nathalie Schyllert: The whole wellness industry has changed drastically. Even supplements from when we first started – we created the first vegan supplement without bad sweeteners, and now everyones doing it! With activewear too, we were the first to make printed, colourful activewear, and now everyone else is doing that too! So in that way the industry has changed a lot.

There are so many different studios now for different types of exercise but what is still so genuine and unique about Bodyism is that we have everything. You can come to one place and do all the treatments, boxing, yoga, PT, breakfast, lunch, eat our supplements and wear our clothes. People always ask us who our competitor is but we genuinely don’t have one, we’re doing our own thing, people can see that we’re not copying anyone. Of course we have to look at new fitness and nutrition trends, like oat milk for example, but at the core of it we stick to what we believe in and what works. If we were entirely devoted to following the trends our food menu and exercise schedule would change every day! And then in a few months time we’d find out it’s not good for you at all!

At Bodyism, we do what works for ourselves and our members. Our clients are the best people to get feedback from because they are always here with their trainers, we’re not a massive company where you have to speak to so many people at different levels to get your voice heard. Our relationship with our members is so important because we learn so much about our products and their results.

Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

Charlie Newman: If you could bust one wellness myth, what would it be?
Nathalie Schyllert: I think everyone has now finally realised that the zero carb diet doesn’t work, because then you couldn’t even eat a carrot because it has carbs in it! For me, it’s so important to have a colourful plate and if it has carbs in their that’s fine. Low fat diets too are terrible because the fat just gets replaced with loads of sugar. These were trends from the 80s and 90s and people have more of an education now on what a healthy diet and lifestyle actually is.

Charlie Newman: Did you ever come across any negativity as a female trainer in quite a masculine world when you first started?
Nathalie Schyllert: At the beginning I mainly trained men but I found it to be an advantage because they’d want to maybe show off more and train harder! Our clients aren’t here to bulk up, so it doesn’t matter who is training who because it’s a very similar workout whether you’re a man or a woman.

Charlie Newman: What advice would you give to any aspiring business women?
Nathalie Schyllert: Apart from working hard, also always continue to learn. I never assume that just because I’m at this position I know everything. I’m learning every single day, not only from people within the company but from mentors outside. Having people you can discuss finance matters and new business ideas with is so important, it gives you perspective and keeps you humble.

Charlie Newman: What exciting projects have you got coming up?
Nathalie Schyllert: We’ve collaborated with Heidi Klein for their first activewear range which is really exciting. We now also offer a lot more perks for our members, for example priority reservations at Zuma, room upgrades in hotels etc. The platinum members especially get amazing perks, free holidays in Turkey for example. So a lot more trips and events are coming up. We have just started doing catering too with brands. We’re very lucky that we don’t have to push ourselves to create corporate wellness contracts, rather it travels by word of mouth from our clients to other brands. It’s been an organic journey.

Charlie Newman: Lastly, who is your role model of the month?
Nathalie Schyllert: It has got to be my mother. She worked so hard as a single mum, sometimes with two jobs, and that has always been an inspiration for me from day one.

Follow Nathalie Scyhllert on Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

Philip and Charlotte Colbert in their fried-egg suits designed by Philip

In a warehouse in east London, Philip and Charlotte Colbert are creating a world of Pop art and sculpture that is putting them on the global map. Darius Sanai speaks to the dynamic enfants terribles of the London art scene while Maryam Eisler photographs them

At the back of a warehouse in east London, Philip Colbert sticks his head out of a doorway. “Come in,” he says, smiling, while simultaneously holding a conversation with his phone on one ear. “No, it needs to be there tonight. Right,” he says, into the phone. His tone is soft, firm, a gentle Scottish accent is present but inconspicuous, almost shy.

Inside, workers are cutting and daubing in an area full of canvasses and paint, and behind a rail of pop-coloured clothes, four more people are on their phones, sitting at desks. Through a space in the wall is another artist’s studio, this one tidier, less colourful, more precise, hung with sculptures of curved forms and creatures.

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Welcome to the world of Philip and Charlotte (through in the other studio) Colbert, the enfants terribles of the London art scene. Philip has been called all sorts of things, including a worthy successor to Andy Warhol; in his zany coloured suits he is a mainstay of the party (and social media) scene and with his classical education (philosophy, St Andrew’s University) combined with his cheeky-to-outrageous art he is one of the capital’s most desirable dinner party guests.

Colbert has created everything from lobsters sold in his (now closed) Paris namesake store to partnerships with Peanuts and Rolex; he has bucket loads of celebrity followers (Cara, Sienna, Gaga) and he’s big in China.

Charlotte with some of her flocked ceramics

But as his latest works show, he is also a proper artist. His ‘Hunt’ paintings, shown recently by the Saatchi Galleries in both London and LA, around each city’s Frieze art fair, are a kind of Raft of the Medusa for contemporary society, riffing on themes around social media’s banal power, swatches from his favoured artists [Dalí, Lichtenstein, Hockney], and providing a poignant commentary on the chaos of contemporary society. They are also vibrant, colourful (as pop art should be) and, frankly, rather beautiful. He thinks of himself as a “neo-pop surrealist”, though a case could be made for him being more pop-impressionist: out of the microcosms of his creations there emerges a whole image of something quite different.

Read more: 6 artists creating new experiential spaces

His wife Charlotte, meanwhile, has created her own artistic world, one which shocks and smiles at the same time. Youthful, photogenic, and with enough wit not to take themselves entirely seriously, the Colberts may just be among the most interesting artists to emerge from Britain in the last decade. And you feel their whole future may just be ahead of them.

Philip Colbert

LUX: How would you describe yourself ?
Philip Colbert: I’m someone who’s trying to create a world. I started out creating a sort of art brand, with artworks and furniture and was, in a way, trying to expand what the idea of art was beyond painting. But recently I’ve come back to painting in a big way and I think fundamentally my journey is about just trying to make my own sort of artistic world. The lobster alter-ego is really an articulation of my artistic persona.

LUX: Why a lobster?
Philip Colbert: I’ve always been into symbols. The lobster was a symbol of surrealism for a lot of surrealist poets and Dalí as well. I like the idea of bringing it to life and taking it on a journey.

Philip Colbert with his iconic lobster alter-ego

LUX: What is art about, for you?
Philip Colbert: The simple essence of art is human freedom, and pushing the creativity that we have. And if you push freedom forward and create more, you push reality and create more freedom for art. There’s something I like about taking the idea of art and trying to inject it with new energy and a new sense of possibility.

LUX: Should artworks be beautiful?
Philip Colbert: It’s an important part of communicating, to understand visual language. A cornerstone of my art is to try and be very positive and use primary colours and really radiate a sort of energy from my works. Even though they may still have a sort of darker undertone, I still like to give them the essence of a sunflower.

‘Untitled II’ (2018) from Philip Colbert’s ‘Hunt Paintings’ series

LUX: Can you talk about ‘The Hunt’ series and how your work has developed?
Philip Colbert: ‘The Hunt’ paintings are important for me. I have been engaging with the idea of contemporary culture and the mass saturation of images and the internet. At the same time I’m still having a conversation with painting. The Old Masters are such a powerful part of art history and I like the idea of making my contemporary Pop culture paintings to be informed by and in conversation with them.

Read more: 6 questions with art collector Kelly Ying

LUX: Symbols from painters – how do you choose them?
Philip Colbert: Well, I was really drawn to elevated images, such as in history painting, with heroic battle depictions by artists such as Rubens. I wanted to underpin the violence of contemporary culture and use the analogy of a more traditional battle scene, to structure it like an Instagram feed. We consume so much today, and we see so much, we’re aware of so many amazingly escapist ideas juxtaposed with a lot of darker elements, like global warming or political instability. A lot of artists have been exploring abstraction or exploring obsession, but I wanted to capture more of this play of light and dark. I thought that the analogy of the battle scene was a good way to explore these tensions.

Philip at work on ‘Screw Hunt II’ (2018)

LUX: Have you felt pushed back by contemporary art establishments?
Philip Colbert: I think of myself as an outsider in a way, because I studied philosophy and really just developed my own practice. I’m not looking for validation from anyone. I feel that in the art world, people are sometimes groomed to want to please, but I’m much more interested in just connecting to people on a real and direct level.

LUX: Are you here to sell art or create art?
Philip Colbert: One hundred per cent to create art. The sales side of it is obviously an essential part of being able to grow because it allows one to do more, but I’m not deliberately engineering my works to be purely reflective of the market, which is not necessarily a bad thing either – Warhol was very good at mirroring what he felt the system wanted. My paintings are complex and intense and highly saturated, so are not the easiest to sell via Instagram, for example.

LUX: Talk about your use of social media.
Philip Colbert: If I think of my paintings as a reflection of my interaction with contemporary culture, social media are a significant element within that. There are some different strands of my work. I’m really developing a lot of these big history paintings, but also I’ve developed ‘Lobster Land’, a virtual reality world, which is the digital world where my lobster character lives. And in Lobster Land there’s a Lobster Bank, Lobster Coin, there’s a museum. I’m building my own reality there, which is one way of engaging with contemporary technology.

‘Hunt Triptych’ (2018) from the ‘Hunt Paintings’ series

LUX: How did you get started in China?
Philip Colbert: It happened very organically. When I had my first exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, curators from China came along and they featured some of my paintings in a group show in China. That was maybe June last year. It was amazing – I saw a crazy energy in China when I was there. So many people came to the show. It has simply evolved from there.

LUX: What are your influences?
Philip Colbert: There’s very much a ‘celebration of appropriation’ in these paintings. I was putting myself at the centre of the piece –you get the idea, it’s like my character is the narrator of the painting but then there’s art history effectively having a sort of ‘battle dialogue’ with this voice. This sort of dialogue is present in an artist’s mind when they’re creating an artwork. There’s the idea of place and time in the relationships to other philosophies and ideas within art, so by putting them into a battle sequence, it represents my own philosophy battling with other ideas and also being able to present a much bigger holistic idea, to create an orchestrated, ‘multi-philosophied’ painting. I’ve referenced loads of things deliberately. Léger was, for me, a very important proto-Pop thinker/painter, and his work was influential on people like Lichtenstein, who often even referred to Léger in the bottom corners of his paintings. My paintings are an evolution of Pop art – I have those references while I’m still playing with abstraction and different varieties of painting styles within a single painting.

LUX: This sounds more like it’s from inside someone’s mind rather than culture?
Philip Colbert: Yeah, I think of the paintings as like mind-maps in a way. I was really interested in ideas of art, so that’s why I like to use preconceived ideas because for me they are language. I could create my own characters but I wanted to use branded ideas that people could understand. So, when people look at the paintings, they will immediately understand ‘That’s Van Gogh’, or ‘that’s a Gucci handbag’. It’s using things that are already loaded with meaning.

Philip and Charlotte Colbert

LUX: Is it strange not coming from a family of artists?
Philip Colbert: No, I don’t think so. Some people’s parents are artists and they follow suit and are inspired by a world they’ve already been presented with. For me, I was always just connected with art and so it was always the language I was immediately connected with. As you know, I went into making clothing first, but I wasn’t making clothing to be a fashion designer, I was making clothing and thinking about artwork. I was more interested in this idea of ‘wearable art’ and trying to use the idea of a brand as a vehicle for art.

Read more: Maryam Eisler in conversation with Kenny Scharf

LUX: What plans do you have for the future?
Philip Colbert: Well, I have an exhibition in Shanghai at the end of June, then I have two shows in Hong Kong, a show in a museum in South Korea, and then another in Moscow in September in a multi-media art museum.

LUX: Do you and Charlotte collaborate?
Philip Colbert: Well, we’re married, so we inevitably interact and have an influence on each other’s work. We have quite a different aesthetic and even though we’re both interested in a lot of the same things, our end picture is very different, which is nice. But I think we both understand each other’s DNA, so we can help each other.

Charlotte Colbert with ‘Self Portrait in Lucian Freud’s studio’ (2018) from her ‘Screen Portrait’ series

Charlotte Colbert

LUX: Tell us about your photography.
Charlotte Colbert: I have done a couple of series. I started in 2013 with ‘A Day at Home’. It correlated the madness of the writer and the madness of the housewife in this domestic space that was both a prison and open to the landscapes of the imagination. It sort of chronicled the porousness of the world around the woman in a decrepit house in East London. We kept shooting as the place was being demolished, so we were getting layers of that story-telling within the building itself. Then I worked on ‘Ordinary Madness’ [2016], which was about our relationship to the digital age. The idea was that we expected aliens to come from outer space and somehow conquer us. But, little by little, we are becoming the cyborg, and technology is being absorbed into our bodies and changing the fabric of our being until we’ve become a new sort of human.

LUX: The video sculptures, ‘Screen Portraits’, are they bronzes?
Charlotte Colbert: No, they’re made of Corten steel. The first one was done for the Korea Institute. I came across this beautiful but heart-breaking story of a South Korean woman, Lee Soon-Kyu, who was 79 when I met her. She was pregnant when the Korean War started in 1950, but was separated from her husband who ended up in the north. She was able to meet him many years later, and went to North Korea with her son, who was then 65, to see him for the last time. It seemed fitting to do her portrait at this moment in her life, after she’d been in this Cold War kind of narrative for decades. She had to stay very still with just one light on her face. The filming of the sculpture was an extraordinary moment.

LUX: The one with a nuclear explosion, tell us about that.
Charlotte Colbert: That’s a piece called Disassociation. It’s a self-portrait. The eyes and the face are very much at peace and the head contains the nuclear explosion. I made it when I was seven months pregnant, at a time when you feel disconnected from the world around you. But I feel that in some ways it’s like an extreme version of everyone’s relationship to the world.

LUX: Neighbouring studios with Philip – how does that work?
Charlotte Colbert: Funnily enough, we’ve done loads of stuff together and I think in some way, we do look at each other’s works and comment on them, but our worlds definitely haven’t fused. I feel like both of us have pushed the identities really as defined against each other.

LUX: The studio, it seems very serene.
Charlotte Colbert: It’s amazing but there’s a lot of interesting characters around, and the building’s quite fun and it’s got all these layers of history. I think at one point it was a kennels, so there were dogs, now there’s more little mice. It’s a really amazing location – we’re so lucky.

Find out more: philipcolbert.com and charlottecolbert.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

‘Seriera’ 2019 by MTArt represented artist David Aiu Servan-Schreiber

Marine Tanguy is the founder of arts talent agency MTArt, which represents the likes of Sarah Maple, Alexandra Lethbridge and Adelaide Damoah.  We put her in the hot seat for our 6 Questions slot.

Marine Tanguy

1. Have you always been passionate about art?

Yes – I have always loved making my world more visually inspiring and artists are the perfect people to do this with. I am still a five years old at heart and equally, my five years old inside me is very happy with I get up to everyday. That’s the secret isn’t? Listening to your inner child. My 5 years old self wanted art everywhere around her.

2. Why did you decide to set up MTArt?

An advocate for artists since a young age, I managed my first gallery at age 21, opened my first art gallery in Los Angeles at age 23 and finally created my current business in 2015, MTArt Agency, breaking from the gallery model to promote better the artists I believed in across the globe. MTArt is the first artist agency promoting influential visual artists and specialising in talent management: building, growing and accelerating careers. The artists of my generation don’t just wish to hang their works on walls, they want digital rights for their images, be in the press all the time and the top partnerships. This is much more the job of a talent manager than a gallery, who is first and foremost, a retail shop.

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3. Do the artists you represent come to you or do you find them?

As we open up doors and give financial support to artists, we receive over 200 applications a month!

MTArt represented artist Adelaide Damoah

4. Which contemporary artists should we be keeping our eye on right now?

Definitely the artist Adelaide Damoah! She was recently spotted on the recent campaign for the Nomade Perfume of Chloé, has started working with the top museums in the world like Tate and collectors adore her! Her art encourages all women to be stronger, bolder and more ambitious. After that, I would say Saype, Leo Caillard, David Aiu Servan-Schreiber, Phoebe Boswell, Nate Lewis…

Read more: Trevor Hernandez’s surreal urban photography

5. What frustrates you the most about the art world?

The art world could be a much bigger industry if it decided to be more progressivist, it’s a waste of opportunities and I hate wasting opportunities!

6. Which artists would you invite to your dream dinner party?

So many! Can it be a very big party? Louise Bourgeois, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Géricault, Ana Mendieta, Adelaide Damoah, Saype, Paul Verlaine, Ayn Rand, Leo Caillard, David Aiu Servan-Schreiber, Chopin, Akala, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé etc…

Find out more about MTArt: mtart.agency

Exterior render of the new One Monte-Carlo residences in Monaco

The new One Monte-Carlo development could just be the swankiest place in the world for you to hang out with your money, your trophy spouse, and your Ferrari

Wander to your living room window, glass of Cristal in hand, open the balcony door and step out into a view of the Casino de Monte-Carlo, and beyond it, the Mediterranean. Feel the need for an emergency handbag? No problem, a flagship Louis Vuitton is just downstairs.

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Welcome to One Monte-Carlo. To call the development, created by Richard Rogers, the celebrated British architect, and Bruno Moinard, ‘interior architect’ to the stars, lavish would be a dramatic understatement. Built next to the Hôtel de Paris on Casino Square, and opened amid much champagne this spring, One M-C bring new heights of extravagance to a principality not exactly unknown for its swanky places for you and your money to live.

Render of One M-C residences and public space

Designed by Richard Rogers, One Monte Carlo houses 37 luxury apartments and dozens of retail stores

Moinard, responsible for the contemporary yet warm interiors of luxury temples such as the Plaza Athénée and Château Latour, tells LUX that, “in line with the vision of Monaco’s future, we used materials that give life and humanity to this exceptional project”. Combined with Rogers’ curvaceous forms, this gives One M-C a sense of the mountains overlooking the city. Some of the principality’s bland 1960s apartment blocks must now be feeling ashamed of themselves.

The catch? You can never own in One M-C: the apartments are available for long-term rental only, and most have already been snapped up. Worth selling your LaFerrari for a year’s rental? We would.

Find out more: montecarlosbm.com/en/hotel-monaco/residences

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

LCB’s anniversary show of ‘Ballet Shoes’ will take place this summer at the Peacock Theatre, London.

This year, London Children’s Ballet is celebrating their 25th anniversary with a summer production of Ballet Shoes. LUX gets a sneak peak inside the rehearsal room

Photography by Tina Frances Photography

The ballet world is notoriously cut-throat. To make it to the top you’ve got to start young and have the “correct” physical proportions, which traditionally means trim shoulders, long legs and the “right” feet. Lucille Briance’s ballet-mad daughter was turned away because of her feet and knees. Her response was to set up London Children’s Ballet, a charitable ballet school which does not discriminate on grounds of height, shape or income; the children are judged solely on their ability. Despite the charity’s name, children (aged between nine and sixteen) from anywhere in the country may audition to join the troop.

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This year the charity is celebrating their 25th anniversary with an adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s novel Ballet Shoes featuring original choreography by Ruth Brill.

LCB’s production of ‘Ballet Shoes’ will to be performed at The Peacock Theatre from 4 to 7 July 2019. For more information visit: londonchildrensballet.com.

Designed by ZitoMori Studio, Masseto’s new cellar lies deep beneath the Tuscan soil

Italy’s most celebrated wine producer, Masseto, recently opened a stunning new underground wine cellar. Irene Belluci discovers

Masseto’s new wine cellar has been designed to blend, or rather sink seamlessly into the curves of the Tuscan landscape. Designed by Milan-based architecture practise ZitoMori Studio, the space expands deep underground in a vast concrete chamber that feels like a sacred tomb.

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‘To represent the effort made to produce the wine made here, we created a series of spaces – not by construction, but by extraction from the hill’s monolithic mass,’ explains Hikaru Mori. ‘The different internal volumes, heights and levels are reminiscent of a gold mine as it follows seams of precious metal to the core.’ Inside, the clean lines of glass and steel balance with rows of oak barrels and textured surfaces, whilst cut-outs in the walls, frame the vineyard’s famed blue clay soil.

Find out more: masseto.com

Blue Palace sprawls up a rugged hillside with spectacular views over the ocean

Why should I go now?

Most people go to the Greek islands in summer, but springtime is a far more pleasant time to visit. It’s breezy and warm, rather than insufferably hot (right now, for example, temperatures are in the low to mid twenties) and much less crowded. Plus, Crete is at its most beautiful and fragrant with the wild flowers in full bloom.

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What’s the lowdown?

Blue Palace sits tucked away in the Gulf of Elounda, roughly an hour’s drive from Heraklion Airport. It’s a big resort, with hundreds of rooms sprawling up the side of rugged slope, but since its built entirely from local stone, it blends beautifully into the landscape and has the appearance of a pretty hillside village. Guests are driven up a private road to the impressive open-air lobby, with huge arches framing the ocean and a long pool that comes halfway inside. This is just one of the many pools at the hotel, many of the rooms have their own infinity pools and there are several down on the beach. As you wander through the grounds you have the impression of being surrounded by soothing blue – the pools, sky and ocean.

Blue Palace’s grand lobby area and one of the resort’s many swimming pools. Photography by James Houston

In the distance, lies the historic Spinalonga Island, an ex-leper colony and UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s close enough to swim to (or so we’re told), but we take a speed boat accompanied by a wonderfully passionate guide, who tells us that she escorted Lady Gaga on the same trip not so long ago. Other activities include water-sports and various cultural trips. The wine tasting on-board a traditional wooden caïque was one of our highlights, where we got to sample local wines and cheese whilst floating on the azure waters of a secluded cove. On the private beach, suite guests are granted access to the VIP area where they given baskets containing fluffy towels, magazines and refreshing wipes. There’s also a spa with a hammam, sauna, indoor swimming pool and treatment rooms.

Read more: 6 artists creating experiential art

True to Greek culture, the resort is hugely passionate about food with five excellent restaurants to choose from. Anthós is the most romantic (reserve a table on the terrace to dine alfresco and for the best views), but Blue Door is the most fun. Housed inside an old fisherman’s cottage right on the edge of the sea, its in the style of a traditional Greek taverna and serves delicious, authentic Greek cuisine. On the feast nights, there’s live music and dancing. The food comes in vast quantities with an array of delicious dips, breads, fresh fish and “antikristo” lamb, which is slowly cooked for five hours above a bonfire. Be warned: entrance to the restaurant is granted after a large shot of ouzo and guests tend to be coerced into dancing later in the night. This is all part of the wonderful Greek hospitality that makes the resort’s staff some of the warmest, most genuine that we’ve encountered.

The resort’s private pebble beach with views of Spinalonga island (to the left) in the distance. Photography by James Houston

Getting horizontal

Our suite, named Santorini after the blue and white isle, followed the same theme of nautical colours with elegant, contemporary furnishings, a separate living room, bedroom and a secluded courtyard with a private pool. It was the perfect balance of luxurious and homely.

Flipside

The only thing that felt inconsistent with the resort’s relaxed vibe was the VIP area at breakfast, where suite guests are led to tables on a roped-off platform. It felt a little too exhibitionist for our tastes, and if necessary, it could have been arranged more subtly as it was on the beach.

Millie Walton

Rates: From 235 EUR for a Superior Bungalow Sea View room incl. taxes & breakfast (approx. £200 / $250)

Book your stay: bluepalace.gr

The Mille Miglia endurance race winds its way through Italy’s most beautiful landscapes

The Mille Miglia is one of the world’s most prestigious motor-racing events. Founded in 1927 as a speed race, today it sees classic-car lovers from all over the world congregate in the northern Italian town of Brescia for a regularity race to Rome and back, taking them through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. As it celebrates over a century of racing, the Mille Miglia is going from strength to strength – most recently by welcoming a new major sponsor in the form of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management. Ahead of this year’s edition, Anna Wallace-Thompson speaks to Chopard co-president and regular participant Karl-Friedrich Scheufele about Chopard’s three decade-long partnership with the event

It’s a balmy spring day in May, the kind where it’s warm in the sun and cool in the shade. We’re in the north of Italy, and hundreds of thousands of people are milling around in narrow, medieval streets, congregating around classic cars in bright racing colours of red, yellow, blue, silver and dark green. Cars are parked side by side in piazzas, or nose to tail in between buildings, wherever there is space. Suddenly, amongst the all-pervasive rattling and purring of some 400 engines, a sonic boom marks the whirring, whining rush of fighter jets soaring overhead, trailing streams of red, white and green smoke. It’s a heady mix.

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This is the starting day of the Mille Miglia, the world’s most celebrated classic car regularity race. Every year, it starts in Brescia and attracts car lovers and celebrities alike. Participants have included Rowan Atkinson, Jay Leno, Jeremy Irons, the ‘Flying Finn’ and F1 legend Mika Häkkinen, and, back in its earlier days, legends such as Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss. Originally an open-road endurance race looping from Brescia to Rome and back again, it was established by two young counts (as all such events deserve to be), Aymo Maggi and Franco Mazzotti. Together with sports manager Renzo Castagneto and the motoring journalist Giovanni Canestrini, they envisaged the Mille Miglia as Brescia’s answer to the Italian Grand Prix (purloined after just one year from Brescia in 1922 and moved to Monza, which remains its home today).

Karl-Friedrich Scheufele and Jacky Ickx waiting for the departure of the 1989 Mille Miglia

The original Mille Miglia (literally ‘a thousand miles’) was founded in 1927 and named after the Roman mile (not the American imperial system, as Mussolini suspected, or, at least, so the story goes) and ran in fits and starts until 1957. It was paused after a fatal crash in 1937, and again during the second world war, before a second fatal crash in 1957 saw it permanently closed. This was not, however, before Moss made racing history in 1955 when he not only left Fangio in second place to win the Mille Miglia, but beat the Italian by a staggering 30 minutes, becoming the first British driver in the event’s history to win. The secret to his still unbroken record of 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds (that translates to an average of 98.53 mph) lay in the detailed track notes he and co-driver Denis Jenkinson devised – common practice today, but not so much in the mid 50s.

Read more: Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar discusses Iranian art at artmonte-carlo

Fast forward two decades, and the race was revived in its current form in 1977 as a regularity race around an annually changing route through some of Italy’s most beautiful landscapes. Racers no longer hurtle through the Italian countryside at breakneck speed. The challenge now is no longer on who can reach the finishing line first, but in the maintenance, precision and control of handling vintage cars that took part in the original races.

Mille Miglia 2017 © Alexandra Pauli for Chopard

Another challenge is being allowed to take part. The Mille Miglia is one of the world’s most exclusive races and entry is either by invitation, or through a stringent application process where entry per car (yes, per car) is €7,000 (plus VAT) and dependent on a complex array of certification and documentation.

Participants should also have very good insurance. As any classic car collector will know, the combined total worth of the cars here soars into the hundreds of millions. While some are valued in the (relatively modest) hundreds of thousands, the upper end can be eye-watering. To give an idea, the 2016 Artcurial hammer price for the 1957 Ferrari 315 S that came second place in that year’s Mille Miglia was a cool US$35.7 million. Fangio’s 1956 Ferrari 290 MM, meanwhile, is valued at US$28 million. But this is the price one pays for being a part of history.

Chopard Mille Miglia 2018 Race Edition in Black

“We are dealing with the culture of the automobile, of course, but also the culture of an incredible country,” notes Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, co-president of Chopard, which is celebrating 30 years of partnership with Mille Miglia (manifested through sponsorship as well as an annual special edition watch). “I think the most beautiful landscape is in Tuscany,” he continues. “There are hills you have to go up and down, which is a challenge, and the views are breathtaking. There are times I have to remind myself that I must concentrate on the driving. It is such a privilege to drive through places like Siena, to find yourself crossing the Piazza del Campo – well, it’s like entering a live museum. The Mille Miglia takes you to historic places one might never otherwise visit.”

This is no exaggeration, for the Mille Miglia is indeed like a living, breathing open-air museum. The oldest cars taking part are more than 90 years old – this year’s race included an OM 665 S Superba 2000, a Bugatti T 35 Grand Prix and a Bentley 3 Litre, all from 1925, as well as a quirky torpedo-shaped Amilcar CGSS Siluro Corsa from 1926 (complete with leather strap to hold the bonnet shut).

Read more: Knight Frank’s Chairman Alistair Elliott on research and tech

That leather strap is indicative of the attention to detail the Mille Miglia fosters. The joy participants take is evident not just in the pristine condition of the cars themselves (often referred to as “better than new”), but in the smallest of details – from old-fashioned racing goggles and leather caps down to vintage suitcases placed in luggage racks. However, to label the Mille Miglia quaint would be misleading – these are serious car and racing aficionados and the appreciation for what goes on under the hood is just as important as the beautiful paint jobs that keep the cars gleaming.

Scheufele himself has taken part in the race 28 times in the 30 years that Chopard has been official partner and timekeeper. “What really caught my attention was the immense enthusiasm that the spectators and general public had for this event, and for the participants,” he says. “Back then, of course, the whole event was much smaller – but you could already sense that it was on the way to becoming something much larger and more international.” With this in mind, Scheufele set about convincing his father, Chopard owner Karl Scheufele, of the merits of sponsoring the event. His efforts were successful, and in 1988, Chopard came on board as historical partner and official timekeeper. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mille Miglia 2017 © Alexandra Pauli for Chopard

To watch the race get underway in Brescia’s Viale Venezia is to experience intense exhilaration. The anticipation in the air is palpable; it creates a rush of adrenalin that is contagious. One could argue any racing event would have a similar effect, but with the Mille Miglia, it is the added sense that one is taking part, somehow, in history, as past and present collide. The parade of cars is a colourful spectacle, of Ford Thunderbirds and other models long since relegated to the annals of history – cars by makers such as Austin-Healey, OM, Lancia, BNC, Riley, Siata and Sunbeam roll on by, alongside grand tourers by the likes of Maserati, Fiat, Renault, Saab, BMW, Alfa Romeo, and Jaguar. There’s even a Triumph TR3.

Scheufele himself has been driving a 1957 silver Porsche 550 Spyder A/1500 RS in recent years, with his regular navigator, none other than ‘Monsieur Le Mans’, the racing great, Belgian Jacky Ickx (this year followed closely in the lineup by German sports car racer Timo Bernhard and Hollywood actor-turned-artist Adrien Brody in a 1955 Porsche 356 1500). “That Porsche Spyder is not just an icon, I love to drive it,” says Scheufele. “It’s light, and nimble, it’s just a delight to drive.”

Karl-Friedrich Scheufele and Jacky Ickx preparing their Mille Miglia race in 1989

And delight is precisely the concept of this race. It has made the Mille Miglia such an enduring and significant event on the international racing calendar. As any classic car aficionado will tell you, the joy is in the handling of a purely mechanical engine, an analogue driving experience with electronics, no power steering, no ABS brakes (in fact, barely any brakes at all in the modern sense of the word), no traction control to help you out if you get a corner wrong, and in the pure physicality of driving in an age of ever-increasing automation. It is also quite something to see these cars out and ‘alive’, and not as static museum exhibits. “The experience here is a tangible one,” says Scheufele. “You can open the hood of these cars and understand what’s going on. In a modern car, often you simply have no idea, everything is managed by electronic equipment. I think the classic car is one of the last areas in which you can actually experience an element of freedom in taking it out on the road.” Imagine the sight of a gorgeous two-tone 1931 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 GS Aprile, a bright green supercharged MG C-Type from 1932 or a 1954 lemon-yellow Lincoln Capri (although the most popular car by far is the mid-1950s Mercedes-Benz 300 SL ‘Gullwing’ Coupé, of Stirling Moss fame).

Read more: A journey to the Kimberley with Geoffrey Kent

Nobody seems to consider that the Mille Miglia could result in damage to some very expensive vintage machinery. “Back when the first enthusiasts came to the Mille Miglia, I don’t think they were really considering their cars as investments,” says Scheufele. “Even today, I personally consider my cars to be firstly objects for my passion, and then on a secondary level I think, OK, they have increased in value, but I would never buy a car for that reason alone, just as I would never buy a painting for that reason – but some people do!”

Looking to the future, however, Scheufele is keen to maintain quality over ambitious expansion plans. “Now, I think the challenge for the Mille Miglia is to maintain this standard, and in one sense, not to grow any further,” muses Scheufele. “There are many logistical challenges to getting this caravan around Italy while offering every participant a reasonable level of quality, and I think that can only be achieved by tightly reviewing the number of participants that take part.”

So, let’s go back to that balmy spring day. As the sun sets and the last of the cars have set off, the heavens open and rain pelts down on the Lombardy landscape. Those of us warm and safe indoors spare a thought for the many open-top cars and the drivers who are currently getting soaked – although for them, it’s all part of the authenticity of the experience. But when the next morning dawns warm and dry, and the sun shines over Italy and the wind is in your hair and your engine is purring, could there be anything more glorious?

The 2019 Mille Miglia runs from 15 – 18 May. For more information visit: 1000miglia.it

LA photographer Trevor Hernandez, known as @gangculture on Instagram, took all of the images included in this article. He was commissioned in 2018 by Frieze LA to photograph the Paramount Pictures Studios and surrounding Los Angeles landscape

In early 2019, Frieze invited surrealist photographer Trevor Hernandez to point his Instagram-focused lens, @gangculture, at its Los Angeles fair. He is one of a new generation of artists who, using social media, are building on and subverting the traditional tenets of surrealism. Katrina Kufer investigates

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“When I think of surrealist photography I usually think of the term with a capital ‘S’ that refers to a specific movement in the early 20th century, which is nearly 100 years ago!” remarks Rebecca Morse, curator in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The visual characteristics of surrealist photography were defined by pivotal figures such as Man Ray, Dora Maar, Hans Bellmer and René Magritte in the 1920s and 30s who, reacting against the medium’s widespread intent to document reality, focused on image manipulation to create chance and dream-like compositions. While today’s version of surrealism is still marked by a sense of displacement, it is subtler and less engineered by the artists, who instead choose subjects that still respond to how reality – now largely presented via social media – is represented. Surrealism’s stylistic diversity can be fantastical or literal, clear or abstract, staged or organic and may prove difficult to code visually, but that hasn’t stopped photography being lauded as “the great unknown, undervalued aspect of surrealist practice” by art critic Rosalind Krauss. Surrealism’s oscillating, paradoxical nature, in tackling how evolving technologies and modes of seeing impact experienced realities, is what renders the movement, which underwent a revamp in the 1970s and 80s, so fresh and relevant.

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Krauss’s seminal 1985 essay ‘Photography in the Service of Surrealism’ argues against the belief, based on surrealism’s foundation of reorganizing perceptions of reality, that surrealism and photography could not coexist. However, as Krauss writes, “Surrealist photography exploits the very special connection to reality with which all photography is endowed. Photography is an imprint or transfer of the real.” It is with this relationship between photography and reality in mind that today’s artists have translated surrealism and taken it into the digital realm.

Instagram: @gangculture

Instagram: @gangculture

Photography subverts reality through the idea of the uncanny – that is, transforming the recognizable into something unfamiliar through unexpected contexts, strange juxtapositions and spatial collapse. The view through the lenses of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand is a less analog and more nuanced one, closer to an askew déjà vu rather than German photographer Herbert List’s fotografia metafisica style from the early 1930s, which envisioned dream-like states. Where surrealist photographers in the early 20th century were manipulating the image through solarization, montage, multiple exposure and distortion, artists now prefer to seek out moments that disrupt space naturally: “Think of Friedlander’s photographs of his shadowy head on the back of a woman’s fur jacket, or Winogrand’s hilarious image of a woman who looks strangely like the rhinoceros she is standing next to at the zoo,” says Morse. “Many individuals who work in this way are street photographers who use small hand-held cameras.” LA-based Mike Slack, Barak Zemer or Trevor Hernandez exemplify current photographers who are bringing this approach into the 21st century. In fact, Hernandez, who often uses his iPhone to capture LA’s urban landscape with a conceptual, sculptural edge under Instagram handle @gangculture, collaborated with Frieze LA in 2019 for a commissioned series. “Surrealist photography tends to create a specific narrative through heavily orchestrated scenes employing tricks and manipulation. This is quite different from my process,” he explains. “The objects need to exist in a state of discovery for me to consider capturing an image.”

Read more: In conversation with artist ruby onyinyechi amanze

But even before the internet, artists were turning away from technical processes and towards cities to provide the necessary theatricality. Practitioners such as John Gutmann, Anthony Hernandez (whose work will be seen in the main exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale) and Helen Levitt embraced street photography, and, as Morse explains, their tactics resonate through today’s generation, with Trevor Hernandez making the point that the development of technology has further benefited photography by democratizing the camera via the smartphone.

By showcasing their observations digitally rather than through exhibits or print, today’s artists deviate from surrealism’s formal tenets, but add layers of curiosity provoked by the internet’s intervention in the act and idea of seeing. It also sees a generation returning to a different surrealist cornerstone: the elimination of logical thought or process in favor of instinct. This revitalized movement has taken hold particularly in LA, and while the city hasn’t bred as many street photographers as New York for example, its unique energy allows for “strange juxtapositions that only occur in LA,” remarks Morse. Trevor Hernandez capitalizes on precisely this: the inherent artistic potential of the city’s banal and desolate charm. “LA has a diverse group of artists scattered throughout the city. The isolation and independence created by decentralized living could be expressed in some of the images from my campaign,” he says. “I’m interested in surveying or decoding the landscape for a certain essence and the specific ingredients to that equation are constantly evolving.”

Instagram: @gangculture

The directness of snapshot to social media sidesteps artistic machinations to present
ultra-reality. However, the result is then skewed by, for example, Instagram’s reputation for showcasing manufactured realities. Cindy Sherman’s practice exemplifies this: she has adopted the social media platforms to investigate self-portraiture through the uncanny. Trevor Hernandez’s images, meanwhile, document unmodified moments, but the very act of selecting a scene and framing the image reconfigures the viewer’s perspective. Sitting where the real and unreal meet, the result is a deep dive into hyper-surrealism.

Contemporary surrealist photographers, by engaging with this dynamic, maximize the medium’s privileged capacity to explore the uncanny and transform reality not just through how the image is made, but how it’s shared. Surrealism’s revamp and shift towards urban landscape photography has injected new energy into image-making, and for those artists who deal with the digital world as well, such as Trevor Hernandez, audiences have immediate access to the surreal in real time.

Follow Trevor Hernandez on Instagram: @gangculture

This article originally appeared in the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management x LUX special supplement inside the Summer 19 Issue.

‘Space Odyssey’ (2019) by Etienne Rey

Space in the hands of today’s artists means not just making sculpture but also whole physical or digital environments that the spectator experiences. Clint McLean selects six explorers of these new worlds

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JULIE MEHRETU

Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu’s abstract paintings compress space and time to reveal imaginary places birthed from unrecognizable but real locations. The artist layers her distinctive markings with architectural drawings, maps, drafts and plans to create the “in-between psychological spaces,” as she refers to them. The paintings are a storm of simultaneous perspectives rendered in pencil, ink and paint and are at times monumental in size.

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‘Hineni (E. 3:4)’ (2018) by Julie Mehretu

KLAUS PINTER

The largest installations of Austrian artist Klaus Pinter don’t just occupy space, they dominate it. The buoyant airships and ornaments are often translucent and, though enormous, have a lightness and playfulness to them. The two giant balls that constitute Rebonds, which was installed at the Paris Panthéon in 2010, turned the space into a Cubist dream by creating a warped and translucent simulacrum of the architecture it inhabited.

‘Rebonds’ (2010) by Klaus Pinter

ETIENNE REY

The installations by French artist Etienne Rey confuse our sense of space through light, movement and reflection. Works like the semi- reflective, semi-translucent wall Flou No. 1 (2017), and the light sculpture Space Odyssey (2013) created with Wilfried Wendling, are like portals to another dimension. Except that we never arrive at another place. Rather, the artworks distort and erase our environment, making depth and distance disappear and leaving us forever in an in-between place.

‘WDCH Dreams’ (2018) by Refik Anadol

Read more: Curator Zoe Whitley on the art of collaboration

REFIK ANADOL

Turkish artist Refik Anadol makes the digital space physical through immersive projections of light and sound that draw on data collection and artificial intelligence, among other things. In Archive Dreaming (2017), Anadol surrounds us with data from a digital archive that in turns leaves us hurtling through a vortex of information, floating in space, and inspecting a library of images. The installation is as futuristic as it is nostalgic.

‘Untitled (Pulp)’ (1999) by Rachel Whiteread

RACHEL WHITEREAD

British-born Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures make negative space positive by casting the spaces in, under and around things in rubber, resin, plaster or cement. The Turner Prize-winning artist has cast domestic items such as the space under chairs (echoing Bruce Nauman’s chair-space casts from the 1960s), as well as architectural spaces such as a room (Ghost, 1990) or an entire house (House, 1993). Her work shuffles between playful and haunting while evoking themes of absence and memory.

‘Me Somewhere Else’ (2018) by Chiharu Shiota

CHIHARU SHIOTA

The ‘thread drawings’ of Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota fill spaces in dense webs of yarn as they traverse universal themes of life, death, love, relationships and memory. They adorn and claim structures, and tornadoes of her signature red, black or white threads absorb objects such as boats, books, dresses and keys. Her installations turn spaces into dramatic environments as both backdrops and vehicles for sentimental narratives.

This article was originally publishing in the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management x LUX supplement inside the Summer 19 Issue.

ruby onyinyechi amanze’s ‘Without a Care in the Galaxy, we Danced on Galaxies (or Red Sand with that Different Kind of Sky) with Ghosts of your Fatherland Keeping Watch’ (2015). Deutsche Bank Collection

Nigerian-born, US-based ruby onyinyechi amanze, the official artist of 2019’s Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge at Frieze New York, is exploring new realms of drawing, as she explains to Clint McLean

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The artist ruby onyinyechi amanze

Picture a landscape without earth, sky or horizon and then dance a motley crew of aliens across the naked expanse. Arrange things such as birds, motorcycles and fragments of architecture around the figures as though musical notes on a staff. If this can be done with a light enough touch, the resulting image may be something like the drawings of ruby onyinyechi amanze.

The 36-year-old Nigerian-born artist, whose output is primarily drawings and works on paper, has become best known for a body of work she refers to as ‘aliens, hybrids and ghosts’. These sometimes large-scale pencil drawings, enhanced with ink, acrylic and photo transfers, depict strange hybrid creatures, often part-human and part-creature, in unexplained narratives.

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Before moving to the US in the mid- 1990s, amanze (who prefers to have her name all in lowercase) spent her childhood in the UK, but she prefers to avoid geographical and national identifiers. “None of them feel quite right,” she tells me from her home in Philadelphia. “Too vague? Too simple? Missing the nuance?” This post- national thinking is central to the direction her work took in 2012 while she was living in Nigeria, thanks in part to a Fulbright Scholarship. That was when amanze developed the cast of characters that helped her explore how she felt alien in a place that was both familiar and foreign. “I was going between those two extremes and wanted to look at that through the lens of these other beings and not as a self-portrait,” she explains. Her first character, Ada, was an electric-yellow doppelganger; she was followed by Audre, a leopard-headed figure presenting as male. Others – Pigeon, Twin and Merman – appeared over the following months.

These characters have continued from that 2012–13 body of work into the dream worlds of amanze’s recent drawings, which she says are now more about space. On smooth, heavy cotton paper, the characters are enveloped by white expanses, yet this absence has a presence. Her alien characters help sculpt and define that space, but are now subordinate to it.

‘The Gap [and the beams of sun, special ordered on our behalf]’ (2017). Image courtesy of the artist and the Goodman Gallery

LUX: Do you still feel alien in these places?
ruby onyinyechi amanze: Yes, definitely, and that’s why I connect more with other people who move between worlds in a way that feels similar to me. I identify with those people and that energy and view those in- between worlds as their own country and space. So yes, I do feel like an alien in many places I find myself. I meet other aliens who identify in similar ways and there’s a shared connection there for people who have this sort of relationship to place.

Read more: Curator Zoe Whitley on the art of collaboration

LUX: Your work seems to have four ‘characters’: the aliens, space, paper and drawing.
ruby onyinyechi amanze: I think that’s accurate. If I was to put them into hierarchical order, then the figures would be the least important. They were once, but now they’re not and may drop out of future drawings altogether. There are some current smaller drawings that do not have these figures and in fact the chapter of drawings before this body of work were all abstract.

‘Don’t Stay’ (2018). Image courtesy of the artist and the Goodman Gallery

LUX: Will you be exploring this new approach to drawing in your work at Frieze?
ruby onyinyechi amanze: When I started this particular body of work, the development of the hybrid nature of some of the beings that inhabit the space was certainly much more central to what I was thinking about. But I think at this point my interest is much more in the space itself and in playing – that’s very important to me. There’s something magical in the drawing process and in the larger context of how one can move through space. Also, on the paper plane, to be able to move and push and pull and create entrances and windows and alleyways and all of these things that suggest the space, is the meat of the work and less an issue about a mix of cultures – although that stays as a founding root of it. I had a show in 2018 with Goodman Gallery in Cape Town entitled ‘there are even moonbeams we can unfold’. There were some new pieces that were shown there for the first time and a few pieces that came off the wall or interacted with the architecture. I’m interested now in works that are sculptural in some way, so that is a part of the work at the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge. I want the works in one way or another to have weight to them.

Read more: Sarah Morris’ architectural explorations at the White Cube, London

LUX: What was the catalyst for moving into sculptural paper?
ruby onyinyechi amanze: It’s the point in the work and my studio practice that feels like the most ‘alive’ part of the process right now – discovering ways that paper can hold physical weight and have a presence in the space it’s in and can physically engage with the viewer and/or with the architecture. That comes from what happens inside the drawings: moving through spaces and spaces colliding and planes and all of those things, and to allow the drawn world to become three-dimensional. The two-dimensional space of the paper has never emotionally or spiritually felt flat to me. I enter it in some weird way and am approaching it from that perspective.

‘I was never really there’ (2018). Image courtesy of the artist and the Goodman Gallery

‘Canopies, Lungs and Effervescence’ (2018). Image courtesy of the artist and the Goodman Gallery

LUX: Tell us about your love of paper?
ruby onyinyechi amanze: I find it to be very beautiful as a material. It’s so rich in its history and in its simplicity. To think about the process and history of paper as a whole, the history of this specific piece of paper – and I can now embed additional narratives and marks in it. Yet it came to me with so much embedded subtly into the fibers already. I appreciate subtlety and think it’s poetic. There’s a lot of raw potential in what you can do to further manipulate this material. It can take many forms and all of those things excite me.

LUX: You lie on top of your drawings when you are creating them and leave marks on them. Do these add to the artwork?
ruby onyinyechi amanze: Yes, always. Paper is already imperfect when it comes to me. It’s already scarred in some way. So additional scars are part of its story and part of its history. Paper is like skin. It holds the memory of these things whether they are visible or not.

A selection of new works by ruby onyinyechi amanze will be on display in the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge at Frieze New York on May 1–5, 2019, presented in collaboration with Deutsche Bank’s Art, Culture & Sports division.

This article first appeared in the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management x LUX supplement inside the Summer 19 Issue

‘Untitled’ (2012) by Cathy Wilkes at MoMA PS1, New York, 2017

Zoe Whitley

Traditionally, art exhibitions have been directed by curators, but now there is a move to hand the reins over to the artist. As the eighth edition of Frieze New York gets underway, Zoe Whitley, curator of the British Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, discusses how allowing artists the freedom to realize their vision can lead to a deeper, shared experience of the work

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Artists encourage us to see things around us anew, pushing us to reframe and re-examine contexts that are already well established. As a curator, working with and learning directly from artists has given me the greatest insights, which is why I think it is crucial to listen to artists when it comes to putting together a show.

‘Artist-led’ has become something of a buzzword lately, but it is easier said than put into practice. It is certainly not easy to put one’s ego aside and listen – really listen – to what an artist needs. Rather than asking an artist, “I have this idea, can you illustrate it?”, a curator should instead establish trust and, perhaps counterintuitively, ‘do’ less by allowing the work to unfold and by supporting the artist as they need it, particularly where new commissions are concerned. Of course, as in all projects, there are production and press deadlines to juggle and other logistical realities, but one has to also be sensitive to the fact that artists can’t necessarily (and shouldn’t have to) work to a Gantt chart. Ultimately, deadlines are imposed and as a curator one needs to focus on creating (within a framework) as much space as possible around the artist so they are able to think, respond and reflect. Only then can one come in and ask questions.

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This is particularly relevant in a context like the Venice Biennale, in which you are essentially inviting an artist to realize one of their most ambitious visions. In fact, this year’s Biennale marks a shift in how we have tackled the curation of the British Pavilion. For the first time, an open call by the British Council, which has been responsible for the British presentation at the Biennale since 1937, invited mid-career external curators to apply for the position, creating an opportunity for an international arts professional working in the UK. That, too, is a more collaborative, outward-looking approach. I am honored to have been selected and am the first African American to hold such a position attached to a national pavilion. (Given that firsts are built on other firsts, I credit Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Grace Stanislaus, who, in 1990, curated five artists from Africa at the Venice Biennale, under the auspices of the Studio Museum in Harlem.)

A collaborative approach is important in showing that there is not only one way to work or live or even to be. Collaboration can yield brilliant ideas and greater diversity of thought and creativity, no matter what the end format of those ideas is. This year’s British Pavilion and the Biennale are a reminder that things don’t have to be done the way they have always been done, and there is a sense of hitting ‘refresh’ every two years that feels very affirming to me right now.

The artist representing Britain, Turner Prize-nominated Cathy Wilkes, is testament to this. Working with her has been fascinating and an exercise in humility. Cathy and I have had a fruitful rapport, thinking through the subtleties in her work. From the get-go it has been important to me to take her lead, and I have said to her, “Even if the show is a huge success, if you are unhappy with it, then I will feel like we failed.”

I always say that Cathy’s work is art that whispers rather than shouts. She won the inaugural Maria Lassnig Prize for mid-career artists in 2017, and the resulting show, at MoMA PS1 in New York City, was not only incredibly beautiful but also very subtle. It featured minimal curatorial interventions. There were no texts obfuscating the works, instructing how the viewer must respond to them. It allowed for a particularly contemplative experience but also, honestly, a slightly disconcerting one without those usual didactic prompts. I’ll say it: contemporary art can sometimes be tricky to engage with if you don’t have any prior knowledge of the art or the artist. But not everything has to be easy or prescriptive. Cathy’s work comes from her singular vision, yet she doesn’t want to impose one preconceived experience upon the viewer, hence the constant attempts at paring back and stripping away (texts, titles, even light fittings) to make as much room for the viewer as possible. I find that hugely refreshing and honest. It’s also incredibly freeing, because we can all find our own way and together pose a series of questions, or come to her work with our own personal experiences.

Read more: Art collector Kelly Ying on supporting young artists

It is also significant that the UK artists at this year’s Bienniale (Charlotte Prodger for Scotland and Sean Edwards for Wales), like Cathy, have all contributed to dynamic and vibrant artistic communities outside of London, in Glasgow and Cardiff. It suggests we can move beyond what we think of as the default capital centers of cultural production and, perhaps, question the very notion of national representation as suggesting only one allegiance. Cathy herself was born in Northern Ireland and lives and works in Scotland. National boundaries don’t need to be fixed or prescribed. This matters to me now more than ever, and is something that the British Council has embraced.

Where is all this heading? Are the arts, like so many other sectors, moving more towards a mindful experience? I’m not one for trend-casting but I’d say there’s space for everything. What I really appreciate is that, in Venice at least, we have been given the chance to create a space for quiet and for seeing with an innocent eye and we can all discover something new in a shared space. We can all be non-initiates – together.

The 58th Venice Biennale runs from May 11 to November 24, 2019. For more information visit: labiennale.org/art

This article first appeared in the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management x LUX supplement inside the Summer 19 Issue.