Andermatt in summer

As well as making it a world-class ski resort, the development of the Swiss village of Andermatt has from the very start aimed to attract people who want to live there full-time. Karen Chung meets three residents who, in their different ways, call it home

Andermatt was born from the conviction that if you build it, they will come. With the ultra-ambitious yet sustainable mega-development of what was previously a sleepy, tucked away Alpine village, the town now offers an unparalleled lifestyle mix in a traditional setting.

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The development has since grown into so much more than simply a luxury holiday destination, with a high-low mix from its flagship hotel The Chedi Andermatt and world-beating concert hall, Michelin-starred restaurants and serviced apartments, through to cosy pizzerias, its relaxed attitude and a wish list of outdoor activities and cultural events accessible all year round.

But what is it actually like to live there? Seven years after The Chedi Andermatt hotel put it firmly on the map, three residents reveal why Andermatt has it all.

JOHAN GRANVIK
The serial entrepreneur

Johan Granvik grew up near Andermatt and travelled the world before ending up back in his hometown. The businessman behind Andermatt’s boutique Schwarzer Bären hotel and its delightfully cosy-modern Italian restaurant admits his career trajectory has taken him by surprise. “Usually, people tend to go to the big city and never come back,” he says. “I left for the US at the age of 16 and never imagined I would come back. But I said to myself, if a project like this is happening in my own hometown, I want to be part of it.”

The Chedi Andermatt courtyard

He joined the launch team for The Chedi Andermatt hotel in 2013, stayed a year and a half, then with a friend he set up his own bar and nightclub. “There’s a lot of opportunity here. We added a restaurant on the slopes and another nightclub, then two summer businesses a few years later.” He notes that the development has brought in more people, but also left enough space for start-ups to do their own thing. “Although Andermatt is growing at an exponential pace, for me the character of the town is pretty much the same. Some thought it would become like St Moritz, but I don’t think it will. I talk to a lot of people in our restaurants who love it here because it’s so down-to-earth, and that’s quite unique. For us the focus is on improving the business,” he says. “We’re in this for the long haul.”

Read more: Umberta Beretta on fund-raising for the arts

Looking down on the Piazza Gottardo. Image by Valentin Luthiger

KAREN O’MAHONY
The working-from-home holidaymaker

“In normal times, I travel a lot in the US, UK and Europe reviewing potential investment opportunities, followed by months of intensive due diligence and analysis. When I need peace and quiet to think, I find the fresh air and light of Andermatt, and the lack of distraction, makes me really productive,” says Karen O’Mahony, a private equity investor who realised the full potential of her holiday home after London’s first lockdown. Sure enough, she swiftly joined the ranks of professionals who, forced to hit reset on their professional lives during the pandemic, swiftly saw potential upsides in the new normal. With the seismic shifts in working pattern and ties to major cities loosened, she can fit in two hours of cross-country skiing first thing in the morning, and be back at her desk before the London business day begins.

The Andermatt Swiss Alps Golf Course. Image by Valentin Luthiger

“At any time of the year, Andermatt is steeped in nature with views of the mountains on all sides. From skiing, walking, golf and eating out, there’s something to do all year around, and this makes it much more of a home than a holiday property,” she says.

FRÄNGGI GEHRIG
The local

Folk musician and accordion player Fränggi Gehrig juggles a schedule of rehearsals and concerts during peak season with working on his own music and enjoying the mountains during quieter spells. As he appears on the screen from his home studio in Andermatt, the windows behind him reveal a tantalising view of snowcapped mountains in a stroke of unintentional Zoom one-upmanship. “I was lucky to be born here and to live in the mountains, the beautiful weather, the sun,” he says. “And we’re right in central Switzerland, so most places where I work are at most just a two-hour drive away.”

With a laugh, he recalls how he did his military service in the area where the resort now stands. “It’s hard to say how the town would have developed without this investment,” he says. “Now I might play between 80 and 120 concerts a year. In summer I might play four or five concerts a week. I also play a lot more now in Andermatt than I did a few years ago.

The auditorium of the Andermatt Concert Hall. Image by Anthony Brown

And, of course, for me as a musician, the most beautiful thing is the new concert hall” – which opened with an epic inaugural concert by the Berlin Philharmonic in summer 2019 that put Andermatt firmly on the cultural map. “The fact that a venue like this, with such an incredible acoustic, is right here in my hometown is amazing – and the other half of the concert-hall complex is a conference centre, so I also play private gigs for companies at dinners. It’s a good place to network, and as it grows, I think there will be even more opportunities for me as a musician. I could never imagine living anywhere else.”

Find out more: andermatt-swissalps.ch

This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue.

Spearheaded by collector and patron Kamiar Maleki, Present the Future is a hybrid artist residency, that brings together British musician Tinie Tempah and French-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar in the creation of audio-visual NTF artworks. As the project kicks off in the South of France, LUX discovers more

There are few places that would make a more idyllic setting for an artist residency than the French Riviera and this is exactly where French-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar and British musician Tinie Tempah have set up base – at the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, to be precise – for seven intense days of creative collaboration from 7 to 13 June.

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While it might all sound a little grand, the luscious landscapes and vibrant colours of the Côte d’Azur have been attracting artists and writers for centuries. On his arrival in 1917, Matisse was so taken with the sun-drenched vistas that he decided to settle in the south of France for the rest of his life. Years later, Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar found himself similarly drawn to the timeless Mediterranean landscape and now lives and works in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Collaborating with hip-hop pioneer Tinie Tempah, however, is something new and altogether unexpected for the painter.

“Having been in a creative dialogue with Tinie for the past year, we wanted to work on a project together, and during a conversation with curator and fair director Kamiar Maleki, and after meeting Dumi Oburota [Tinie’s manager] we came up with the idea of establishing an artist residency that was not just focused on the traditional art form but also interlinked the contemporary, music and digital worlds together into a hybrid collaboration never seen before,” he says.

Pink Future, Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar (top), and the painting’s digital transformation into an NFT artwork

“We are both music and art lovers and share in common that nomadic lifestyle,” adds the musician. “After picking up some of Sassan’s work last year, we discussed working on something game changing together, and here we are.”

Read more: Speaking with America’s new art icon Rashid Johnson

The audio-visual NTFs works created during the residency will build on Behnam-Bakhtiar’s signature painting style of peinture raclée and his recurring floral symbols, and will be presented alongside a live music and spoken word performance by Tinie Tempah, and a panel discussion moderated by art auctioneer Simon de Pury. Future residencies are also planned, but the locations are yet to be revealed.

“Our goal is to present to the world’s first hybrid digital / physical NFT production and minting experience, combining the work of two immensely important artistic visionaries in a setting that promises to instil a sense of awe and wonder, inspiring in the process new levels of conviviality and creativity,” says the project’s curator Kamiar Maleki.

The works created during the project will be auctioned via the Nifty Gateway platform starting on 21 July 2021.

For more information, visit: presentthefuture.art

Brunello Cucinelli in his study

Brunello Cucinelli has built a multibillion-euro clothing empire out of nothing and revived an impoverished community in central Italy. The king of cashmere speaks with Darius Sanai about responsibility, humanitarian capitalism and learning from the Persian empire

Brunello Cucinelli cuts a suave figure with a sweep of silver-dark hair, sitting on a chair behind a large table. The initial view on the Zoom call is wide angle, taken from a camera across the room, a huge space with cathedral-like ceilings. This is his famous office, in the restored medieval village of Solomeo that is now home to his company.

Behind him as far as the eye can see are bookshelves. Not the pretentiously prearranged shelves of politicians preened to show where their interests lie, or the by-the-yard, untouched bookshelves of an oligarch. These are shelves from which the books have plainly been taken in and out, referred to constantly. Some books are standing up, others are at a diagonal, others on their side in piles next to gaps.

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There seems to be a lot of history, philosophy, art and photography from what I can make out when the camera zooms in a bit closer to him. To his left, slightly incongruously, is a bowl of what look like basketballs.

Cucinelli is no ordinary Italian fashion magnate. He may be the founder of a family company with 7,000 employees and a turnover of €200m, but during the course of our 90-minute conversation and interview he barely once touched on the subject of the garment industry, merchandising or marketing.

The son of an impoverished factory worker, Cucinelli started his company in 1978, and is now synonymous with highly contemporary cashmere.

The Scuola dei Mestieri (top) and the valley below Solomeo (above)

He is also something else: an old-fashioned benevolent capitalist (he calls it “humanitarian capitalism”), driven by civic duty as much as profit, in the mould of the Cadburys and Heskeths of Victorian Britain who built housing, hospitals and churches for their workers.

He has used millions of his own funds to build his company’s headquarters and factory in what was the declining hamlet of Solomeo, south of Florence. He has built schools and a theatre, restored the 12th-century church, and revived the local wine and food artisans.

Read more: Artists in residence at Castel Caramel in the south of France

In our opening chat, he was more interested in engaging with me about my namesake Persian king and his relative, Cyrus the Great. This was no PR-manufactured pillow talk either – Cucinelli is an avid self-taught polymath in philosophy and history and his citations, darting between philosophers of different eras and cultures, were more than a match for this Oxford University-trained philosopher.

But in the era where the private sector’s role in and responsibility for people and the planet have never been more important, it was this fundamental aspect of his business, humanitarian capitalism, that we engaged on.

The spring 2021 menswear campaign was shot in the Sibillini Mountains in central Italy

LUX: Why did you choose cashmere for your business?
Brunello Cucinelli: I decided overnight to do cashmere. I didn’t know anything about this kind of material, but I knew one thing for sure – I wanted a product that you would never throw away but hand down to the next generation. I loved this idea of being able to act
as a guardian and of something you can reuse and hand down. It is a very contemporary idea, but I was there years ago. I wanted to work with cashmere, because it never gets thrown away. And I wanted to make a profit, but a fair one with a fair relationship to giving back. I wanted it to be made with ethics, dignity and respect for the moral code. And I didn’t want to bring harm to anything that was around me.

LUX: You began following these principles years ago and they are now common in corporate culture. What has changed?
Brunello Cucinelli: I have always wanted my employees to earn a bit more than the average, and for them to work in beautiful surroundings. I also decided they should work only for eight hours a day, the German way if you wish. I didn’t want them to be working online after work or at the weekends but to be extremely focused during the day. I wanted to achieve this balance so that you can have enough time for your mind, and then time to work, and I wanted to promote the idea of living in harmony with everything around you, with other people, with the land, with the water, with the air.

Read more: Speaking with America’s new art icon Rashid Johnson

LUX: How can a business find time to be both profitable and responsible, because many businesses would focus just on profit?
Brunello Cucinelli: To be credible, you must be truthful both when things are going well and not going well. Everybody knows about the profit that your company makes, and everybody must be put in a position to earn a fair amount. This is a responsibility towards other people, towards wildlife, towards the land. Here, we grow our grain, our olives, our wine; it all goes into the company canteen, but we don’t call this ‘organic produce’, we just say this is produce grown with respect to nature.

LUX: How does this philosophy add to the future of the company?
Brunello Cucinelli: I believe that young people will increasingly want to know where and how a product has been made, what harm if any has been caused during the production process. If they find out that a preposterous profit has been made out of something, they will decide not to buy a specific product. Profit must be balanced and fair, where every link in the chain each makes their own profit, from the shepherd with the goats to the investors and the bankers, to the workers, everybody. When I went public, I said to the potential investors that if you want a company that is making a fair profit and also helping the local community, then you can invest in my company. But if you are looking for a company that delivers fast growth, then this one is not for you.

The monument ‘Tribute to Human Dignity’

LUX: Does your philosophy only apply to your company or could others learn from you?
Brunello Cucinelli: There are 7,000 people in the company, with 2,000 direct employees and 5,000 subcontractors or indirect people who work with us and we make a normal profit. Even in 2020, we only had a 10 per cent dip in our revenues and you still saw my workers going out of their way to design the best collections ever because probably it is precisely in a time of sorrows and pain that you release your creativity. It is definitely possible to make a profit and at the same time respect human dignity. Even in my own life, for example, I’ve always told the banks managing my assets that they need to invest them in companies that respect the human being.

Read more: The rise of millennial art collectors

LUX: What is the future of physical stores compared to online retail?
Brunello Cucinelli: E-commerce is extremely important for the brand image, but physical stores are just as important, if not more so. I want to go in a physical store, I want to be met by a caring salesperson who may ask after me and my family, and I want to see and touch things with my own eyes and hands. And especially after this pandemic, we are craving physicality. Jeff Bezos, who was here visiting, said that with Amazon he is not able to create emotions; he is basically just providing a service and when you receive your parcel at home, you own it, whereas when you go into a store you have this human exchange with the salesperson. They are both important worlds.

LUX: Would you have sold your company to the likes of François Pinault or Bernard Arnault if they had offered to buy it?
Brunello Cucinelli: We are majority shareholders of the company and I like very much the idea of this being a company with the family involved because this has always been my dream. Being public in the Italian way is different to the American idea – for us having a company is like nurturing your own child. I feel protected by the fact that we are a public company because this way you need to be able to listen to those who might give you advice, investors, analysts.

The spring 2021 womenswear campaign

LUX: With cashmere, what is more important, the design or the quality?
Brunello Cucinelli: Both. I have always wanted to procure the best quality material. Although I didn’t know anything at all about cashmere at the very beginning, I just went out there and said I want the best quality available. I’ve always tried to pursue quality and craftsmanship, first and foremost. It is something I never sacrifice and when you wear a garment that we have made I want you to know of all the people who have worked for it. But it must also be a very modern product because quality is not enough by itself. For example, when I was younger, I was looking at the UK because of the way they knitted their cashmere sweaters, but I wanted fresher colours, more pop colours. Taste is important as well as quality, otherwise you would not have a contemporary product.

LUX: What was your biggest challenge in all the time you have run your company?
Brunello Cucinelli: I would say March 2020, because overnight we had to make huge decisions such as not to lay off anybody, and to maintain everyone’s salaries. Nor did we ask for any discounts from our suppliers or landlords because this is not the way we behave, and especially in a pandemic. We also made sure that all the excess goods that were left in the store because of the closures were donated. My structure nowadays is even stronger than what it was a year ago because we were able to do everything sooner than expected. I have written to my employees, thanking them for what they have contributed to the company in this tough time, and tomorrow I’m meeting them in a video call just to thank them. It has been a very poignant time, one that has been hard both on our body and on our soul but at the same time, from the spiritual point of view, I would also call it one of the best times.

LUX: Our magazine works with a lot of artists. Do you work with many artists or support the arts around the world?
Brunello Cucinelli: I have always been surrounded by young, creative people and I have always liked them. The first thing I look for in a human being is their soul, as they must be kindred souls. I have always believed in a universal humanism regardless of race and religion. I’m a bit like Cyrus the Great, so to speak, and I am also convinced that if you show a human being esteem, regard and dignity, they will pay you back with great creativity.

Find out more: brunellocucinelli.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue.

Installation by teamLab, Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live Together – Transcending Boundaries, A Whole Year per Hour (2017). Courtesy of Superblue

Blue-blooded art dealer Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst has always been known for her creativity.
She has now teamed up with Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher to create an innovative, social media-friendly art experience that she plans to roll out around the world. Millie Walton discovers more

Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst

British aristocrat and art dealer to the private jet set Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst has had numerous highs in a career which has encompassed creating sculpture parks at her family’s castle and driving the London operations of Pace, the global super-gallery.

But, she says, in the last couple of years, something began to bother her and Marc Glimcher, the CEO of Pace and her longtime business partner. They had long been known for curating and organising exhibitions with a focus on public art and experiential installations. But, she says, “[while] these artists were doing really amazing things, there was no way to financially compensate them unless a museum bought the work”. And so she and Glimcher began to develop the business model for Superblue, a new private art exhibition concept based on ticketed revenue that supports both the company and the artists by paying them a cut of sales.

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It is a suitably cutting-edge concept for Dent-Brocklehurst, who is known for her own creative ideas. On her father’s side, the Superblue co-founder hails from a blue-blooded English family who still own their ancestral home, Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds, which was home to one of the wives of Henry VIII. Her American mother is the daughter of a Kentucky doctor. Over the years, Dent-Brocklehurst, who is married to celebrated sculptor Richard Hudson (they live in a converted industrial unit in London that also serves as an exhibition space and studio) has developed a reputation for bringing forward-thinking art concepts from around the world to the London scene.

Proliferating Immense Life – A Whole Year per Year (2020) by teamLab. Courtesy of Superblue

The Superblue project kicks off in Miami this spring. Its purpose-built ‘experiential art centre’ provides a blank canvas for both the creation and experience of art. “Typically art that goes into a museum is either donated or purchased by wealthy patrons, so there is a sort of gate-keeper to the kind of art that gets exhibited, but what we’re doing is inviting the public to be the selector of the art. If they like it, it exists; if they don’t, it doesn’t,” says Dent-Brocklehurst. Is she worried about the uncertainty of the present moment? “It was already a very Covid-friendly concept. It’s a huge space and there’s a limit to the amount of people who can be there at any one time to prevent the overcrowding of the experiences.”

Superblue’s focus on experiential artworks, which use vibrant colours, light-filled rooms, reflective surfaces and elements of augmented or virtual reality, inevitably resonates with a fast-paced, image-focused culture. Its inaugural Miami exhibition ‘Every Wall is a Door’, for example, features work by pioneering light and space artist James Turrell, Japanese collective teamLab, and celebrated stage designer and artist Es Devlin. The concept also seems designed to maximise social media impact. Does that cheapen the experience of the art? “I’m sure people will Instagram the artworks as they are very visually exciting,” says Dent-Brocklehurst, “but I think what we’re trying to achieve with this group of works is something which is much deeper and more fundamental.”

Es Devlin. Photograph by Jasper Clarke

This is perhaps most evident in Es Devlin’s installation Forest of Us which leads visitors on a journey through the human respiratory process, emphasising our reliance on trees for breathable air and the issues of climate change resulting from deforestation. The piece begins with a film on a perforated screen surface which allows viewers to pass through into a mirrored maze incorporating different performance elements along the way.

Read more: Umberta Beretta on fund-raising for the arts

A tree planting project is also being developed to support reforestation in the Amazon. “Landscape painting has always helped us tune our eyes into nature by framing it, telling us where to look. These works behave in a similar way. They focus our attention on particular phenomena, guiding us to perceive these phenomena where we find them at work in the world,” says Devlin.

It’s not just Devlin, however, whose practice engages with wider social issues. According to Dent-Brocklehurst, it is something that connects many experiential artists. “They have a very embracing kind of attitude towards their audience and the way that people can engage and interact with their work,” she says. “There’s a sense that they can lead a change through the experience of the work.”

Forest of Us (2021) by Es Devlin. Courtesy of Superblue

Superblue isn’t quite the first of its kind – teamLab already runs its own immersive enterprise, teamLab Borderless, located on Tokyo’s waterfront, which drew 2.3 million people in its first year of opening. But what’s unique is the exhibiting of multiple large scale installations simultaneously. Added to that, the artists are more or less given freedom to make what they want. “Our concept was not to curate [Every Wall is a Door] but to give a spectrum of the most important and relevant moments of experiential art,” explains Dent-Brocklehurst.

However, the hope is that the exhibitions will draw new audiences who encounter the art through curiosity. “I think we long to be surrounded,” says Devlin. “We are so used to the act of translating 2D into 3D, to conjuring worlds from a phone-sized rectangle, we forget that it’s a continual act of imaginative labour. It’s a relief to be physically surrounded in three dimensions.”

While Superblue’s next destinations are yet to be revealed, their plan is to expand across the US and internationally, building a network of venues across which the artworks can travel. “It’s about the art coming to the people rather than the other way around,” says Dent-Brocklehurst.

Found out more: superblue.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue.

The Badrutt’s Palace hotel’s grand frontage and its iconic tower.

High in St Moritz, the grandest hotel in the Alps has just been revitalised. There’s nowhere better to take the summer air with your entourage than Badrutt’s

What could be better than the Helen Badrutt Suite at Badrutt’s Palace? Yes, we know there are some pretty swanky hotel suites out there. The Abu Dhabi suite at the St Regis in the namesake emirate has its own spiral staircase and cinema. The Presidential Suite at the Mandarin Oriental in Pudong, Shanghai, has floor-to-ceiling windows over the city and its own wine cellar and roof garden. Stay at Seven South at the Ritz Carlton in Grand Cayman and as well as 11 bedrooms, you get a free painting to take home.

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But still. Enter the Helen Badrutt and you don’t feel like you have arrived, or paid what it takes, so much as having been granted entry to a very exclusive club, in one of the world’s most desirable pinpoint locations. Badrutt’s Palace is the acme of palace hotels in St Moritz, the world’s most exclusive mountain resort. It’s the fact that it has been so for more than a century, despite its location 1,800m up in the Swiss Alps, that provides a clue to the exclusivity: this is where blue bloods, royals, pretenders and their circle have played for more than 100 years.

The drawing room of the Helen Badrutt Suite

When the Shah of Iran decided to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire with the grandest dinner in the history of the world in Persepolis in 1971 (an act of indulgence that ultimately contributed to his downfall in the Islamic Revolution), he flew in the staff from Badrutt’s Palace. And staying in the Helen Badrutt, you are the crème de la crème of the hotel’s guests (or perhaps the Shahanshah).

Read more: Speaking with America’s new art icon Rashid Johnson

It might be the living room, with its grand décor, bottomless drinks cabinet refilled with spirits in decanters (no tacky miniatures here), Persian carpets and chandelier; or the balcony terrace looking out over Lake St Moritz and the mountain beyond, big enough to host a party for 20 people (we did); or the silent-quiet bedroom or marble bathroom; or that it can interconnect privately to form an entire wing of ten bedrooms.

The Badrutt’s Palace pool overlooking Lake St Moritz

Maybe it’s the butler service, which, unlike some more thrusting hotels, is almost entirely seen and not heard, Jeeves-style (we don’t know about you, but we don’t need butlers knocking on our door and asking what to do; they should know already, as they do at Badrutt’s).

In any case, staying in the Helen Badrutt bestows upon the visitor a sense of history, transforming the humble paying guest into a multi-suffixed European aristocrat with seats in each major city of the Holy Roman Empire and a foundation in a castled town in Westphalia from where a tweed-suited team of faithful retainers disburse philanthropic goodness to worthy institutions around the world. Or so it feels, anyway.

Read more: Sophie Neuendorf on Georgia O’Keeffe’s enduring influence

And even if that nuance escapes you, there is the rest of this glorious destination to enjoy. The Palace driver (there is a Rolls-Royce, of course) will whisk you to the foot of the Languard chairlift in nearby Pontresina, for example, from where you waft upwards through a magical larch forest where unknown creatures seemingly create tiny gardens in tree stumps; and from the top of which there is a view to the end of the Roseg valley where mountains live in permanent winter.

A newly refreshed St Moritz Suite

Or if you prefer to stay in St Moritz, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chopard, et al, are metres, or in some cases centimetres, from the Palace. And if you prefer to stay in the
hotel itself, there’s the swimming pool with its celebrated rock garden to dive from (a kind of mini Alpine Acapulco) and spa, tennis courts, adventure playground and kids’ club.

And the best thing? Well, even old money needs refreshing sometime, and during lockdown the Palace has had more than 40 of its rooms and suites redecorated – the official word is “refreshed” – by New York design studio Champalimaud, which has brought fresh blues and whites and a kind of Alpine light to the rooms. Which means that even if you’re not old-guard enough, there’s a place for you.

Book your stay: badruttspalace.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 Issue.

Markus Neff in the kitchen at Gütsch. Image by Valentin Luthiger

At the top of the 2,300 metre-high Gütsch-Express mountain station in the Swiss ski resort of Andermatt resides Markus Neff’s Michelin-starred restaurant Gütsch. Ahead of the resort’s reopening for the summer season, we speak to the chef about the challenges of running a high altitude restaurant and his childhood memories of family cooking

1. Tell us more about your dining concept “From Valley Low to Mountain High” – what does that mean exactly?

It means using everything that the mountains and the valley have to offer, preferably regional and Swiss products, but also everything else if the quality is right. Cuisine for everyone.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

2. Who or what has influenced your tastes in food and cooking?

My mother’s cuisine, childhood memories (back then without fast food), my father’s Sunday roasts, and a lot of curiosity.

3. What’s your typical process for developing a new dish?

It starts by having an idea, then bringing it to the plate. It often comes from the gut, but can also be triggered by regular customers who want something new or new products.

Gütsch boasts spectacular views over the Alps

4. How do you think your cooking style has evolved over the years?

I’m always looking for something new, and try to be open to everything, but at the same time, I preserve the signature of my kitchen and avoid jumping on every trend.

Read more: Meet the new generation of artisanal producers

5. What are some of the challenges of running a fine dining restaurant at high altitude?

The transport of goods, the height at which we work, weather conditions and sometimes, time pressure (but that last one has nothing to do with altitude).

6. Can you give us any clues of what to expect from the new season menu at Gütsch?

The menu will only be done at the beginning of the season, but you can certainly except fresh products, homemade pasta, dishes adapted to the summer. Let us surprise you!

Gütsch reopens for the season on 3 July 2021. For the latest updates and more information visit: guetsch.com

Simon Hodges photographed by Matt Porteous

This month, LUX columnist and life coach Simon Hodges reflects on the difficulties of the past year, and the lessons we’ve learnt

As we all start to emerge, perhaps feeling somewhat dazed and disorientated, from this long period of isolation, I find myself contemplating a few questions:

• Will we ever experience life again as it was before?
• What lessons have I learned from this challenging period?
• What lessons do we collectively need to learn from this last year?

Sitting in my log cabin office on a very windy and still fairly cold day (summer still feels a way off!), one thing is abundantly clear to me: never underestimate how quickly things can change!

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But despite the late summer and the chaos of this last year, the first thing that comes to my mind is the word ‘hope’; there is nothing to say that our lives and this world cannot change markedly for the better in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Of course, I could just have easily chosen other words like ‘despair’ or ‘frustration’ but I find myself unable to do so. And one of the main reasons why I say this is that I think we all know with absolute certainty that it does not serve us to stay in such a dark place any longer.

Lessons Learnt – for me personally

My first lesson learnt is to choose to focus more of my energy on the light while recognising that the darkness is always there and that there are times when we all experience this darkness at the same time. And behind this are some real home truths for me:

• Acceptance and surrender – for me, being happy is as much about being ok and accepting of the darkness in the world and in ourselves, as it is about consciously choosing to experience more light and joy. A huge part of what makes our human experience meaningful is our experience of both ends of the emotional spectrum.
• Growth is never easy – we learn so much more about ourselves and are given the opportunity to learn and grow in times of hardship, struggle and adversity. Learning to see these times as a gift and not an obstacle is a game-changer in life. I guess this is something I have always intuitively known to be true, but it has really hit home recently.
• This too shall pass – no matter how bad life seems, and God, do we know it can feel grim, it is incredibly comforting to remind ourselves that this moment will pass and the light will return.

Lessons Learnt – for us collectively

The older I get, the more I feel that the universe and nature has a way of bringing us back into alignment with a higher purpose. That doesn’t mean to say that I believe that there is a permanence to our presence on this planet. Indeed, I have no doubt that we, as humans, have the capacity to self-sabotage and destroy more than any other creature or force out there today.

Read more: Meet the new generation of artisanal producers

How this all pans out is largely going to depend on how well we as individuals and a collective, listen to the lessons the universe is sending us right now and choose to act as a result.

• Choose love not fear – we need to move away from the outdated programme we have all been running (and taught from a young age) which tells us that we must compete over scarce resources and act in our self-interests if we are to survive. We need to learn that being loving is actually the hardest thing you will ever do – it takes real courage and strength to lead with love and it is oh so easy to lead with fear.
• Less is more – we live in a world obsessed with the accumulation of stuff. In turn, this leads us into a spiral of there never being enough, our cups forever half-full. These needs are fuelled and encouraged from all angles in the modern world. Learning to truly understand what enough looks like and then applying this in our daily lives is going to be crucial to our future happiness and sustainability.
• Serve others – this world would be an exponentially better place if we stopped making it all about ourselves, what we need and why others are to blame for our circumstances. This state of mind leaves us stuck, filled with judgment and leaning on our fear fuelled egos. Doing something for someone else, no matter how small will leave you happier and more fulfilled. It is that simple.

Next time

This has been an incredibly challenging year for us all, in so many different ways and on so many different levels, so forgive me for this column being a little more sombre! I am a huge believer that we only learn from our mistakes and we also only change our behaviour when we hit a leverage point (usually when life is painful) and I think it is fair to say that many of us are there right now. So, what are you prepared to do to commit to change?

Find out more about Simon Hodges’ work: simonhodges.com; @simonhodgescoaching

Lucy and Anthony Carroll’s farm in Northumberland

Artisanal growers may be small scale but their care for the land and their produce is making a big impact on how we eat and drink. Torri Mundell meets two nominees for the luxury home appliance manufacturer’s Respected by Gaggenau initiative which celebrates this new generation of producers

Lucy & Anthony Carroll

At Tiptoe Farm in Northumberland, Anthony Carroll is telling LUX about the “awkward” pink fir apple potato. “They grow vertically and have stems that can reach two metres tall. They’re so knobbly, they can’t be dug up with a modern potato harvester,” he says. They are, in short, more demanding than your average supermarket potato. “But,” he points out, “they have so much more to give.”

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Carroll and his wife Lucy used to farm more conventional potato varieties until in 2000 Carroll had, in his words, a “light-bulb moment”. A supermarket retailer had approached him to produce a potato variety that would “look great in a plastic bag”, but that tasted, by the retailer’s own admission, “filthy”. Carroll not only refused the offer, but he also resolved to start growing some of the more flavourful potatoes that, after the two world wars, had been abandoned for inexpensive, high-yield varieties.

Today, the farm’s portfolio of heritage potatoes, including the Victorian-era spuds they brought back from near extinction, occupies most of the 28.5-hectare farm. Lucy Carroll describes how these varieties have restored some nuance to the potato’s range of flavours: “Some are very full-bodied, some are very light and fluffy, some retain that green, new potato flavour through the whole year.” The farm supplies Michelin-starred restaurants which often list the variety of the potato on their menu. “Just seeing the name Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy can bring a bit of history alive on your plate,” she says.

A range of heritage potatoes produced by Lucy and Anthony Carroll

Working outdoors with lower-yield, less disease-resistant species in a landscape often battered by unpredictable weather is challenging, but the farm has maintained its LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) Marque certification for integrating environmentally sound practices such as monitoring water consumption and planting bird and insect-friendly crops, grasses and flowers.

At the end of 2020, the farm was put onto the Respected by Gaggenau shortlist, an initiative developed by the German luxury home appliance manufacturer to promote small producers or craftspeople in the culinary world who “harbour a passion for exceptional craftsmanship or the preservation of rare and unique species”. Not only does the initiative celebrate traditional skills and techniques, but it also addresses our current preoccupation with provenance and supporting small businesses. The UK’s Crafts Council reported that in 2019, 73 per cent of UK adults purchased something handmade.

The longlist of 60 Respected nominees was assembled by a panel of 25 high-profile curators, including chefs, viniculture experts, design editors and food critics. The 2021 accolade will bring global recognition and support to the finalists, who have all weathered a difficult year.

The Albury Vineyard in Surrey at harvest time. Photograph by Jonathan Blackham

Also on the shortlist is Nick Wenman, who founded in the Surrey Hills in 2009. Having a vineyard on the southern slopes of the North Downs “wasn’t the huge gamble that you’d expect,” he says, pointing out that the cool English climate lends itself to creating grapes with high acidity and low sugar content, a prerequisite for good quality sparkling wine.

Read more: Speaking with America’s new art icon Rashid Johnson

His work is not just about international awards and appearances on royal barges or on the wine list at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons – though Albury Vineyard has clocked up all three. Wenman and his team, including his Italian manager and his daughter Lucy, are often up at 5am to tend to the vines. Almost every April, a spring frost requires them to work through the night, lighting thousands of wax ‘bougies’ to warm up the vineyard by a couple of degrees.

The Albury Estate blanc de blancs is made from chardonnay and seyval blanc grapes. Photograph by Simon Weller

The team not only contends with the variable UK weather but with the “extra layer of planning and stress” that comes with operating an organic and biodynamic vineyard, a tightrope act that wine expert and Respected by Gaggenau curator Sarah Abbott MW describes as “heroic”. “You can’t use any systemic chemicals to knock out the diseases that vines suffer in wet and damp conditions,” she says. Nor can you deploy non-organic ‘sugar movers’, sprays which would hasten the ripening of the fruit when faced with a run of bad weather.

Wenman estimates that organic vintners have to devote 40 per cent more time to their harvest, but he is motivated by a “passion for the environment and a belief that [organic and biodynamic principles] create better quality wine”. While the vineyard’s biodynamic status brings constraints, he notes that it inspires innovation, too. One of his favourite wines, the Albury Estate Biodynamic Wild Ferment 2015, is the first of its kind, “produced using only a chardonnay and a wild ferment grown from the yeasts that occur naturally in the vineyard”. His appreciation for small-scale artisanship among his fellow English winemakers echoes the spirit of the Respected by Gaggenau campaign. “In the UK, there are no bulk wine producers churning out the same old stuff,” he says. “And because they’re smaller, they might give the vines an extra bit of care, so you end up with a better product at the end of the day.”

Albury’s owner Nick Wenman burying manure-filled cow horns in the vineyard in winter for fertilising the soil in the spring

Underlying our appreciation of craft and artisanship is a desire to connect with its creator. Three curators for the Respected by Gaggenau accolade tell us why authenticity in food, wine and design matters

Chef and culinary curator
SANTIAGO LASTRA

There is always a story behind every dish and as the chef, you are responsible for telling that story. Before I opened my restaurant, I spent a year travelling around the UK to find the producers I wanted to work with, getting to know the farmers, the fishermen, even the potters who make the plates. I can see the connection they have to the land, the struggle with the weather, and the care that goes into their ingredients. They are part of a fascinating ecosystem of people that believe in a sustainable future, and I have learned that quality is not about rarity or luxury – it means only that something has been made with respect.

Editor-in-Chief, LUX Magazine and collectibles consultant
DARIUS SANAI

This campaign is centred on a theme that is in the air at the moment: identifying authentic creators and originators, goods and services. This is important in the broader luxury and collectibles industry in which we operate, where you have on the one hand dominance by a number of big commercial players who are brilliant at marketing and branding, and on the other you have the emergence of a new class of producer that has made its name by creating, rather than marketing. The challenge for the curators of the initiative – as well as for informed consumers and retailers – is to get beyond the PR to find genuinely great producers creating or curating really original products of high quality but that were made in a very personal way.

Chef and culinary curator
CYRUS TODIWALA OBE

At my restaurants, we have always concentrated intently on how we source and use ingredients in our day-to-day cooking, and we championed artisanal producers long before they became fashionable, so working on this initiative with Gaggenau feels like a perfect fit. The appreciation of artisans, producers, the environment – and everything we do to make our lives meaningful – slides tidily into this simple word: respect. The best producers begin with a belief in themselves and what they have set out to do. Their produce is unique – there are no boring similarities from one to another. And easy money isn’t on their radar; they are driven by the joy they find in delivering ethically produced, beautiful quality food.

Find out more: gaggenau.com/gb

This article was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue.

Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico with one of her landscape paintings

As a new solo show of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work opens in Madrid, artnet’s Vice President and LUX columnist Sophie Neuendorf reflects on how the American painter’s visionary work and mainstream success paved the way for many of today’s women artists

Sophie Neuendorf

American artist Georgia O’Keeffe burst onto the New York gallery scene in 1917 at the age of twenty. At the time, the American art world was under the influence of French Cubism, but O’Keeffe’s abstract charcoal drawings presented a version of modernism that was so radically individual, she quickly became a favourite among collectors – a nearly unthinkable achievement for a young women from the midwest.

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The artist began making her famous large-scale flower paintings in the 1920s. A new show at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid includes O’Keeffe’s spectacular Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), which sold for over $44 million at auction in 2014, more than tripling the previous auction record for a female artist. Since then, the market for her work has been steadily growing, with her top 10 most expensive works finding buyers over the past 10 years (source: artnet price database).

Georgia O’Keeffe, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932)

A recurring subject for O’Keeffe, the flower was a tool through which she could explore varying languages of abstraction and representation, responding to nature as opposed to her inner self. Inside Red Canna (1919), for example, is considered her earliest depiction of a magnified flower in oil. Sensual, sexual, powerful and delicate, the painting beckoned Freudian interpretations throughout her life and to the present day. However, her famous flowers are just one part of her vast canon of work, and in fact, O’Keeffe spent much of her life bristling at the Freudian reading of her delicate folds of flora.

Read more: Artists in residence at Castel Caramel in the south of France

She grew up on the Wisconsin prairie and was forever after enchanted by wide open spaces with limitless horizons. Later, she found a similar sense of ease in the Badlands of New Mexico, where she lived after her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, passed away. Astonishingly, she didn’t make her first trip to Europe until 1953, when she was 66 years old, but her work was widely shown in major museums across the US. In 1940 she was given a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1946, she became the first female artist to be afforded a retrospective at MoMA. In 1970, her work was celebrated in another retrospective, this time at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which travelled to the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Art.

O’Keeffe’s home in New Mexico

Then, as now, women artists face far greater challenges than their male counterparts. To put it into perspective, German artist Gerhard Richter is the highest grossing living male artist, with a total sales value of $2,488,640,798. In contrast, the highest grossing living female artist, Japan’s Yayoi Kusama, has a total sales value of $709,679,123 (source: artnet price database). Kusama is closely followed by visionary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Bridget Riley, Marlene Dumas, and Julie Mehretu. However, artnet’s recent data shows that women artists have been outperforming the S&P 500, indicating strong demand and growth.

Infographic courtesy of artnet

A strong woman and a visionary painter, O’Keeffe remains an inspiration for many female artists around the globe. She was a feminist who largely contributed not only to the rise of modernism, but also helped to solidify the place of female artists within the historical art canon.

“Georgia O’Keeffe” runs until at 8 August 2021 at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. For more information, visit: museothyssen.org/en/exhibitions/georgia-okeeffe