Steam cooking can preserve the nutritional value and flavour of delicate vegetables such as mushrooms

The ancient art of steam cooking has gained new impetus with the revolution in healthy and mindful cuisine. Lisa Jayne Harris looks at the artful kitchen innovations from design-led German luxury appliance maker, and chefs’ favourite, Gaggenau

Alice B. Toklas, the celebrated 20th-century literary salon hostess, had one golden rule for cooking: “one must respect the quality and flavour of the ingredients”. Steaming is the most direct way to achieve her objective; it is an efficient way to cook that leaves the food tasting exclusively of itself. Just consider the simple excellence of steamed asparagus with French butter, one of Toklas’s stand-by dishes for entertaining.

Phil Fanning, the executive chef and owner of restaurant Paris House in Woburn and Gaggenau culinary partner, agrees: “You’ve got nowhere to hide with steam: It’s all about the quality of ingredients.” This is essential when you are working with delicate seasonal vegetables like asparagus, new potatoes or peas, but it is just as significant with good quality meat, baked goods or pastry.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

However, healthier eating is another powerful motivator behind the steamed food trend. Boiling vegetables reduces much of their nutritional qualities, such as vitamins C and B1, and other mineral salts readily dissolve in water. Lightly steaming does not disturb the food’s cellular structure or its aromatic compositions the way boiling does, so you preserve more vitamins as well as the colour and texture for a more health-conscious cuisine. “Gentle steam cooking can actually improve the nutrient status of food like asparagus, spinach and tomatoes,” advises registered nutritional therapist, Catherine Arnold, “It makes their nutrients more bio-available to the body.”

Gaggenau’s 400 and 200 series combi-steam ovens are ideal for the precise cooking of seafood

Gaggenau has pioneered steam cooking in the home for the past 20 years and continues to do so, including combination steam ovens: “Whether you’re cooking in pure steam, or in combination with traditional heat, you’re getting the health benefits of steam cooking, as it maintains food’s nutrients, colour and shape,” says Gaggenau’s category manager, Simon Plumbridge. Steam can improve other healthy eating habits such as juicing, too: “Our juice extraction setting gently steams hard-skinned citrus fruit such as oranges, so you get a much higher juice yield without impacting nutrients.”

Steam cooking is also gaining traction with chefs and home cooks because of the innovations in steam-cooking technology. For all its benefits – puffed soufflés, sumptuous bread, those crisp layers in a croissant – mastering the technique used to require an intimidating level of precision. Today, keen cooks are investing in internal temperature probes, gadgets and state-of-the-art appliances to emulate high-end restaurants at home. “The UK’s food scene has massively improved in the past 30 to 40 years, and this growth in skill and quality is reflected in passionate home chefs’ kitchens too,” Fanning reflects. Our private kitchens are becoming more technologically advanced, and ovens that enable amateurs to cook like professionals are both a luxury and an enabler of creativity.

Embracing both the old and the new makes us all better cooks. “Lots of traditional techniques benefit from having precise control over the humidity,” says Fanning. “Take bread for example. For the perfect crusty baguette, you need about 30 per cent humidity for the first five minutes and then very little for the remaining bake. In a traditional convection oven that requires guesswork, but it’s easily and consistently achieved in a combi-steam oven.” Brands like Gaggenau are making this trend for precision steam cooking more accessible. Their combi-steam ovens can be controlled to within one degree, which continually revises the estimated cooking time based on temperature-probe readings from three different sensors. There is no more guessing: “Steam in its basic principle is an ancient way of cooking,” says Plumbridge. “But controlling the level of steam in combination with a fan is only achieved by modern technology – and that’s what brings professional results into the domestic home.”

Read more: Fashion designer Erdem Moralıoğlu’s guide to east London

Steam is also about convenience; rather than waiting for an oven to preheat, a good steam oven heats to temperature immediately. When you combine that with smart, Wi-Fi-enabled technology that lets you control the oven remotely from your office, or even set the bread to prove whilst you’re watching TV, you have all the benefits of ancient cooking just a voice command away. “Connectivity in the home has a lot of momentum at the moment,” Plumbridge observes, “But we’re more interested in future-proofing, so our ovens have the capacity to integrate with apps on any system such as Alexa or Cornflake smart homes.”

As much as new food trends are about keeping pace with technology, steam cooking also allows you to take your time. Next generation combi-steam ovens can sous-vide for up to almost 24 hours on a mains-connected water system or 11 hours with a tank, and cooking meat low and slow with a good level of humidity means it won’t be subjected to heat expansion and contraction, allowing for a more tender and juicy dish. Chefs also use steam to impart more subtle flavours into a dish, laying herbs under a piece of salmon to infuse the fish or steaming couscous in a traditional couscoussier, in which spices, onions and meat cook in the lower compartment and impart their flavour to the grains above.

“Remember that with a combi oven, steam doesn’t have to be 100ºC,” Fanning advises. “You want to cook vegetables as quickly as possible at that temperature, but steaming a piece of turbot at 60ºC or even lower will give you a much more delicate result. Oxtail or lamb shanks can be very gently cooked sous-vide in a combi-steam oven for hours with virtually no chance of overcooking, and duck legs, pork belly, haricot beans or lentils – if vacuum packed with a fat or oil – can be very gently and accurately made as a confit.”

Icelanders have steamed their bread buried next to hot springs for generations and Chinese steaming baskets have been piled with fluffy rice buns and hot dumplings for thousands of years. Steam cooking might be an ancient art, but revolutionary technology, a modern regard for putting ingredients first and a drive to lighten up our diets means that the technique is equally relevant today. True innovation combines the heritage of centuries of steam cooking with precision and performance that inspires. “That’s why Gaggenau ovens are all hand finished,” Plumbridge says. “Only when you piece a product together by hand, the good old-fashioned way, are you actually putting soul into a product. And that’s what really means something to people.”

Gaggenau’s factory on the French-German border

Precision Engineering

Darius Sanai takes a rare tour of the Gaggenau factory, pictured above, on the French-German border, and is struck by the melding of industry and creativity

The huge sheet of matte-silver metal looks, somehow, tempting and edible as it sits on the machine bed, like a giant slice of space-age food about to be sliced and diced. Lasers home in on a pattern of points on the sheet, and an instant later, it has a precise latticework of holes and is being washed clean. A few metres away, an operator is in charge of a machine that bends metal. It bends it a tiny bit, almost invisibly, but the bend makes all the difference, our guide explains, as it allows the finished product a smooth, textured finish with no sharp edges.

There is a lot of this in the Gaggenau factory; a lot of working with metal, bending and shaping it, machining it, turning it from sheets, delivered through an entry doorway in one building, into the slick kitchen appliances so beloved by professional chefs.

Yet metalwork was not what I expected when walking into the factory of a manufacturer of the world’s leading kitchens. It’s hard to know exactly what to expect; my experience of factories is confined to manufacturers of cars and watches. Both of these are very obviously made of metal in a way high-end ovens, cloaked in a kitchen design and so proud of their electronics and technology, are not. Yet there is far more metalworking going on at Gaggenau than in, for example, the Mercedes-Benz factory at Sindelfingen an hour’s drive to the east, or the IWC watch manufacture at Schaffhausen an hour’s drive to the south.

Read more: Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar & the artistic revival of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat

Perhaps this ought not to be surprising. We are after all in a real factory, rather than a mere assembly plant where components made elsewhere are put together. Gaggenau may now be synonymous with expensive homes, but, as a timeline in the visitor experience centre where we had arrived earlier demonstrated, it has a history in metal. It was founded in 1683 as Eisenwerke Gaggenau, an ironworks which made everything from agricultural machinery to road signs, by Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden. Gaggenau itself is a town in the Black Forest of Germany, which, catalysed by von Baden, became a significant industrial centre and still houses one of the biggest Mercedes-Benz factories.

Gaggenau also made stoves, and eventually specialised in the high-end, highly designed, highly technical kitchen appliances it creates today, eventually moving to its current site from its original home. From the sloping road leading to the current factory in Lipsheim, you can see the curved outline of the Black Forest clearly. “I live there, it takes 30 minutes to cycle in every day,” one of our hosts tells me cheerily. The fact that he lives in Germany and we are just across the border in France’s Alsace is irrelevant: this is the new Europe, and there is, in effect, no border.

It’s a scenic setting for a factory, and also an interesting one: just down the road is Bugatti’s factory (really, a very chic assembly plant), so you could in theory pick up your Chiron and then watch your new steam oven being made. (Actually, the factory tours are not yet open to the public, which makes it even more special.)

The factory is a series of buildings each of which is filled with numerous sections and stations doing different creative activities. Gaggenau’s production process is still very manual; there are 350 workers, many of them trained in astonishingly particular skills pertaining to components or electronics of particular products. There is an air of extreme concentration among the small pods of workers, but unlike in watch manufactures, you don’t get the sense that you are the nth tour to visit that day. Workers are not slickly trained to respond to your questions; some of them are so lost in concentration in operating a particular piece of hot, huge or smelly machinery that they seem surprised to see you there.

What does remind me of a watch factory, or perhaps a pharmaceutical firm, is a ‘clean room’, which we observe from the outside. The room, which sits in a corner of the factory, and the people inside, assembling delicate electrical components of Gaggenau ovens, look like characters in a sci-fi movie of their own.

There is, in another section of the factory, a testing station, where every creation is subject to testing on its accuracy, function, and so on. I lingered a minute or two here, eager to see a malfunctioning multi-thousand-euro oven chucked on a scrapheap (or actually, returned to production to be corrected), but it didn’t happen.

The tour ended and we walked back to the Experience Centre, with its view of the Vosges and walls of the latest steam ovens, slick and architectural, beauty made out of, if not exactly chaos in the factory but certainly industrial creativity. More interesting than any watch manufacture I have been to.

Find out more: gaggenau.com/gb

This article was originally published in the Summer 2020 Issue, out now.

Erdem Moralioglu by Tom Mannion

Erdem Moralıoğlu’s flagship store is in Mayfair, but the heart of this designer to the stars is in hip east London, where he lives and has his studio. He gives LUX a pre-lockdown tour of his home patch

My favourite view…

The view from the restaurant at the top of the National Portrait Gallery

The most romantic spot for dinner…

St John on Commercial Street

The best spot to read a book…

The London Library

The best place to take a selfie…

No selfies!

Where you’ll hear the coolest music…

The Glory in Dalston

The only coffee I’ll queue for…

Violet on Wilton Way (they also do the best cinnamon bun in the world)

The perfect spot not in a travel guide…

The stacks at The London Library – I could spend hours getting lost in all the books

A tourist destination that’s worth the hype…

The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern

The best spot for some people-watching…

Broadway Market on a Saturday

The taste that reminds me of my childhood…

Mangal 2 on Stoke Newington Road, which is my favourite Turkish restaurant in London

My favourite museum/gallery…

The Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum or anything at Maureen Paley

The shop I never want to leave…

My shop in Mayfair. I spend a lot of time there and many of my clients say it feels like home

The best place to soak up some nature…

In the pool at London Fields Lido in winter

The perfect weekend brunch…

Allpress Espresso on Dalston Lane

I’m prepared to make a detour for…

The National Portrait Gallery

I’m at home in….

Hackney

View the designer’s collections: erdem.com

This story was originally published in the Summer 2020 Issue, out now.

Jean-François Dieterich (left) with Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar at the Villa Cuccia-Noya.

The south of France, home to Matisse, Cézanne and Van Gogh, has one of the greatest artistic legacies in the world. Now the mayor of one of its most exclusive communities wants to create a cultural heritage for the next generation, as Lanie Goodman discovers

“I am made of all that I have seen,” French artist Henri Matisse once famously stated. The grand master of colour certainly got an eyeful during his lifetime of world travels. But when Matisse first arrived on the Côte d’Azur in 1917, he was so taken with the sunlit vistas of luxuriant gardens, graceful palms and the shimmering blue sea that he decided to settle in the south of France for the rest of his life. The artist’s love of plants extended to a philosophical perspective on all living things. “We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe,” Matisse muses in his writings.

For over a century, European crowned heads, artists and writers have flocked to the south of France to create their own private Eden, and predictably, the 2.48 sq km commune of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat – a lush secluded peninsula of seaside splendour midway between Nice and Monaco – has a rich history of outstanding artistic effervescence.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

These days, the town’s mayor, Jean-François Dieterich, is aiming to revive the cultural excitement with a contemporary art exhibition – with about 15 works in total – of French-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar to inaugurate the beautifully restored Villa Namouna, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat’s brand new cultural space. This initiative is part of an ongoing programme to revive the once celebrated artistic enclave in the commune by showcasing living artists of international renown. “I find that the approach of Behnam-Bakhtiar – who has found serenity, joie de vivre and sources of inspiration through the outstanding natural landscapes of this peninsula – has a certain continuity with the artists of the 50s,” Dieterich says. “But he also has his own contemporary abstract technique and a rich palette of colours.”

My Tree of Life (2019–20) by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar.

For the 36-year-old artist, Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar, who now lives and works in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the timeless Mediterranean landscape has had a profound effect on his point of view and his palette, much like Matisse. “My art has definitely changed since I moved here in 2010,” he says. “Although the technique I used, peinture raclée, was similar to now, a lot of the works were dark.”

Above all, explains Behnam-Bakhtiar, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat has been a grounding force. “This place gave me a new life and something that helped me to become a more complete, balanced human being. It has helped me cope with everything that has happened to me. I shifted my whole focus on things that are truly valuable, such as the dormant energy that exists inside us and our connection to nature.”

Read more: Discovering Deutsche Bank’s legendary art collection

We are at Behnam-Bakhtiar’s studio, situated on an upper floor of a white villa on the Cap. The room is ablaze with colour, a mesmerising assembly of large abstract canvases, stacked one behind the other and propped against the wall; in the centre of the room is the artist’s working space, a table littered with tubes of paint and a scraper. From the window, you gaze out at a palm tree, a verdant garden and patches of sea.

The show, entitled ‘Rebirth’, will debut with a one-day private viewing of 35 new paintings held at Villa Cuccia-Noya, a sumptuous waterfront estate owned by distinguished businessman, philanthropist and art collector Basil Sellers. “What an enormous energy rises from his works,” Sellers enthuses, referring to Behnam-Bakhtiar’s latest canvases. “I was astounded.”

Blue Soul Groove (2019) by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar

Energy is indeed the very term Behnam-Bakhtiar uses to describe the palpable vibrancy of landscapes that he tries to capture in his paintings. Under the umbrella of the rebirth theme, the artist will also unveil two public installations – one on the Cap and the other in the village. It will be a first for the community in terms of public artwork – one of the works will be a lightweight but huge wrought-iron sculpture in which three suspended figures of a man, woman and child look as if they have sprung from the earth. As Behnam-Bakhtiar explains, the idea of the work is to convey “harmonious living with nature”, something which he feels should be transmitted to future generations.

The Paris-born artist, whose previous exhibitions include ‘Oneness Wholeness’ at London’s Saatchi Gallery in 2018 and at a Christie’s Middle Eastern, Modern and Contemporary Art exhibition in London in 2019, spent his formative years in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. Articulate, calm and soft-spoken, Behnam-Bakhtiar briefly alludes to his imprisonment and torture but would rather speak about transformation. “My last exhibition, at the Setareh Gallery in Düsseldorf, Germany, was called ‘Extremis’ and it focused on all the hardcore experiences that happened in my past. For Saint-Jean, I wanted to do something that is the other side of the coin, to represent positivity and light.”

As you stand in front of his recent series of paintings, ‘Trees of Paradise’, the blended bright colours slowly conjure discernible shapes that “are part of the Cap Ferrat scenery”, Behnam-Bakhtiar says, urging me to touch the canvas. Despite the complex texture that meets the eye, the surface is surprisingly smooth. For inspiration, he adds, he often walks through a wooded section of the Cap, not far from the curvaceous Villa Brasilia, designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer.

Dieterich and Behnam-Bakhtiar at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat’s town hall

“One painting may take me anywhere from five months to a year to finish,” he says, flashing a smile. “It takes a lot of time and patience.” Essentially, he explains, his process consists of painting, scraping, drying – hundreds of times – until he’s happy with the work. “When you know it’s right, you leave it. It just suddenly clicks for me.”

Whether mere coincidence or simply the glamorous allure of this privileged finger of land, a remarkable convergence of writers, artists, filmmakers and actors lived, worked and entertained on Cap Ferrat during the late 1940s and 1950s and the ‘dolce vita’ of the 1960s. Winston Churchill painted on the jetty undisturbed; Picasso sunbathed at the pool of Le Club Dauphin at the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat. British writer W Somerset Maugham, in search of the simple life purchased a Moorish-style villa, La Mauresque, planted superb gardens and hosted everyone from artist Marc Chagall (who had a neighbouring home on the Cap Ferrat) to Noel Coward, George Cukor and Harpo Marx. Another illustrious resident was British actor David Niven, who lived in the villa La Fleur du Cap on the coastal Promenade Maurice Rouvier and often lent his home to his friend, Charlie Chaplin.

Read more: In the studio with radical artist Mickalene Thomas

“There were numerous films shot in Saint-Jean,” says mayor Dieterich. “There were also legendary actors and directors who spent time here, such as Gene Kelly, Gregory Peck, Rex Harrison, and Otto Preminger.” However, Cap Ferrat’s glorious artistic heyday revolved around the presence of two major figures: the Greek-born editor and publisher Efstratios Eleftheriades – known as Tériade – and poet, playwright, filmmaker and artist, Jean Cocteau.

In the postwar years, when the Côte d’Azur was a sun-drenched haven for artists, Matisse was a regular visitor to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat where his friend and collaborator Tériade lived in the turquoise-shuttered Villa Natacha, overlooking the harbour. The influential editor of Verve, who had commissioned every major artist of his time to design covers for his magazine, brought together the likes of Bonnard, Balthus, Miró and Derain. As a mark of friendship, the frail 83-year-old Matisse designed a stained-glass window – a Chinese fish surrounded by begonias – for Tériade’s dining room and also painted the villa’s walls with black enamel plane trees.

During that same period, Cocteau lived in a white-washed seaside house, the Villa Santo Sospir, owned by patroness of the arts, Francine Weisweiller, who had fallen in love with the rugged beauty of the then deserted Cap Ferrat in 1948 and turned it into her dream home. Weisweiller met Cocteau in 1950 when she financed Les Enfants Terribles, the film he had written, and invited him to the villa for a few days. He ended up staying 11 years and decided to ‘tattoo’ the white walls with whimsical mythological frescos. The privately owned villa is currently under restoration to preserve Cocteau’s Greek gods and local fisherman, plus the bohemian jumble of Madeleine Castaing-designed exotic wood furniture and curtains as well as vintage bric-a-brac.

The Villa Cuccia-Noya

Behnam-Bakhtiar, who was contacted by the owners of Santo Sospir just prior to the villa’s temporary closure in 2017, was enchanted. “They wanted me to do a show. The energy there was unreal and I went there every day, for about four weeks, trying to take it all in.” His exhibition, ‘Oneness, Wholeness with Jean Cocteau’, consisted of 36 sculptures scattered about the villa and garden, as well as an audio installation with a dialogue between Cocteau and himself.

Does Behnam-Bakhtiar feel in sync with the spirit of his artistic predecessors? The artist pauses, gazing at one of his ongoing ‘Trees of Paradise’ canvases. “You know, I was looking online and stumbled across a video of Cocteau sitting at the same table of Santo Sospir. He’s addressing the people of the year 2000 and saying the same things I’ve been talking about now – about how we are losing our humanity and behaving like robots. It’s a real honour to continue in his footsteps and work with the mayor to help revive what used to be here.”

Nostalgia aside, call it a reawakening of a state of mind when it comes to beauty. Or, as Matisse aptly summed it up: “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” And Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar would be inclined to agree.

Benham-Bakhtiar’s exhibition ‘Rebirth’ will open with a private view at Villa Cuccia-Noya on 10 September 2020; the show will run at Villa Namouna from 11 September – 11 October 2020.

For more information visit: sassanbehnambakhtiar.com

This story was originally published in the Summer 2020 Issue, out now.

Mickalene Thomas with her work Clarivel #6 (2019). Photograph by Maryam Eisler

New York-based Mickalene Thomas is an important and innovative voice in the art world. Her dazzling portraits of African American women use collage, enamel and her signature rhinestones to explore femininity and ideas of beauty. Maryam Eisler visits her in her Manhattan studio to photograph her and talk beauty, sexual politics, identity and racial stereotyping

LUX: Your work is almost exclusively about women – real women, everyday women, in different sizes, with different stories, textures, colours. Tell us a bit about this.
Mickalene Thomas: I love everything about women and more – confident women, smart women, the I-don’t-give-a-sh*t women, with all shades of blackness. When I think of all the women in my life, I think of those who have mentored me, about those I’ve read about in books and their stories. I think about all the women who have trail-blazed and sojourned that I aspire to be, about all the women who I haven’t met yet and who protect me. When I think of blackness, I think of my grandmothers. I remember seeing one of them at 95 years old in her apartment sitting in her favourite chair, and the wrinkling, deep indigo colour of her skin, that blackness, the ageless glow in her eyes, and thinking about all of the history that she’s endured and the things unspoken, all those secrets. I think of her vulnerability, her beauty, her fragility, her strength.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

LUX: There are many stereotypes of black women set by white patriarchal societies. Is there an expectation for you to fit within a white canon of beauty? Not that you have ever conformed to that way of thinking, of course!
Mickalene Thomas: Yeah, especially when you think of the ideology of a beauty that was put forth, setting a paradigm and an agency for everyone to follow. I’ve always tried to figure out how that happened and how it remained at the centre of our world. Because there were so many other powerful empires that had their own notions of beauty and aesthetics.

The artist with her partner Racquel Chevremont, in front of October 1975 (2019). Photograph by Maryam Eisler 

LUX: How did you extricate yourself from this way of thinking about beauty?
Mickalene Thomas: As a woman of colour, I was fortunate to be raised by a very strong group of women. I never grew up wanting to be anything other than what I am, or wanting to question my own blackness. I never thought, “Am I light enough for you?” I’ve always had natural hair or locks. I’ve never straightened my hair. That’s never been an issue. So that white notion of beauty has never been imposed on me.

Installation view of ‘Mickalene Thomas: A Moment’s Pleasure’ at The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2019. © Mickalene Thomas. Photo Mitro Hood, BMA/The Baltimore Museum of Art.

LUX: Was this down to the influence of your mother and your grandmother?
Mickalene Thomas: Yes, they let me know that I was beautiful enough for myself and no one else, and that I’m of a new generation and can be a leader and that my blackness and difference is important. I questioned their ideas of beauty because they were vastly different from mine – but I also think that growing up with Black Power in the 70s made me think differently. Looking around the room and seeing women with hair in Afros was very empowering. It’s about freedom, really.

Read more: How Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah is establishing itself as a cultural hub

LUX: Yes. And owning it, right?
Mickalene Thomas: Yes, absolutely. However, you start questioning these ideas of beauty placed on you by the media because it’s the only representation that you see. You know that within your own community some things are considered beautiful, but then the media tells you otherwise.

Untitled (Maya #4) (2019) by Mickalene Thomas. © Mickalene Thomas.

LUX: Does that make you wonder if you’re creating your own bubble?
Mickalene Thomas: Yes. And you’re constantly up against creating your own agency. Where do you fit in exactly? How do you navigate this world and this image consciousness as it is? Forget double consciousness!

LUX: With the histories and background stories involved, it’s probably more like a tenfold consciousness?
Mickalene Thomas: Yes! I think that if we embrace the diaspora and look at ourselves as the melting pot that we are as a people, then we can start tolerating our differences and embrace the various forms of beauty that each of us harbour.

Read more: Why we love Hublot’s limited edition spring timepieces

LUX: Do you think we tend to forget about our humanity as the common ground?
Mickalene Thomas: Yes, that would be a much healthier way of looking at the world – to try and understand the way we are because we had to migrate and move around for a variety of reasons, such as adverse conditions, weather, food, nature and much more!

LUX: What does it mean to question such stories of migration within your own community on a daily basis, in this day and age and in the USA of all places, the country of migration par excellence?
Mickalene Thomas: The entire country is based on migration. And for me, to even have to think about it gives me an ulcer. To think that America is leading this atrocity of deportation, when it is built on people immigrating here for many different freedoms.

Studio shot of two works from Thomas’s 2019 series based on images from the Jet Magazine pin-up calendars from the 1970s. Image by Maryam Eisler

LUX: Where is this re-examination of colour, race, faith, culture coming from?
Mickalene Thomas: I think there are many people in the world who operate specifically out of hatred and fear. I was raised a Buddhist and I think that was one of the fortunate gifts my mother gave my brother and me, this sense of spirituality and the sense of philosophy of life. It’s not necessarily a religious practice, but more a philosophy of understanding, through knowing your causes and effects. The people who commit atrocities, such as mass shootings and bombings, are feeling displaced and threatened in society, and the causes are deeply rooted in their ancestors’ past. We want to live right now and right here, but there’s a lot we don’t look at in our pasts. I really believe that, as an artist, you have to look at history to move forward. We’re just moving forward without resolving our past histories. Times are tough. Our economy is about to take a huge shift, and I think it won’t just affect the poor or the middle classes – it’s going to affect many people in ways that they haven’t really seen before.

LUX: And there’s a lot of anger out there.
Mickalene Thomas: Yes. And people want something that they feel is owed to them, or that they are entitled to. And they think that immigrants and people of colour have been given some special privilege, not realising that most of us, if not all, have worked very hard to get to `where we are.

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Mickalene Thomas: Better Nights’, at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, 2019. Photo Jessica Klingelfuss, courtesy of Mickalene Thomas and Jessica Klingelfuss

LUX: Can we talk about ownership of one’s sexuality?
Mickalene Thomas: You’ve got to own it! You only have one life. Period. And it took me a long time to recognise my own power and strength.

LUX: And while it’s okay to flaunt it, it seems that women and men are judged differently when they do…
Mickalene Thomas: Men have much more access to self-expression as well as the freedom to navigate the world and go about doing whatever they want to do. I remember arguing with my brother and having to figure out how to deal with those complications and being very argumentative with my family about it: “So why is he able to do certain things and I can’t but that I do better?”

August 1977 (2019) by Mickalene Thomas. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020, photo Elisabeth Bernstein

LUX: Your work can be flamboyant, exuberant and cacophonous, with much layering and fragmentation. Is this a case of eye candy on the outside, but with deeper issues beneath?
Mickalene Thomas: These ways of telling stories, of thinking about how the women I depict collected their own histories, making sacrifices and compromises with little means and making the best of it. They went from one place to the other, transcending time and space.

Read more: Gaggenau presents new combi-steam ovens

LUX: So, it’s about stitching together a patchwork of life events?
Mickalene Thomas: A lot of the layering of material and patterning is about their own journeys, their own perseverance, their own struggles. The residue, the unearthing of time and space, is about their scars, and mostly it’s about the artifice of what you may think you see and the reality of it being another truth.

Installation view of ‘Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me’ at The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2018. Photo Luke Stettner, courtesy of Mickalene Thomas and The Wexner Center for the Arts.

LUX: The visual effect is powerful, and the nostalgia palpable.
Mickalene Thomas: There’s the power of the visuals, yes, and how we begin to believe our own truths or memories, whether or not there’s myth, and how they then become our reality. And so, as artists we create time capsules for histories. I find this very interesting, how people believe their own lies, their own truths, or their own memories or fantasies or dreams. These become reality to the point one might think: “Well, did that really happen?” When my mother passed in 2012, I came across photos that were almost a validation of my memory of childhood experiences. The photos encapsulated many moments for me – “Okay, now I have some evidence of what happened in my life. Now I have images from which to work. So now I have material to use for creative ideas and put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

LUX: So, above all, is your art a journey of research and self-discovery?
Mickalene Thomas: I think, as an artist, if you’re not doing self-discovery, then you’re really no longer making the art. It’s always a journey.

For more information visit: mickalenethomas.com

This article will also be published in the Summer 2020 Issue, hitting newsstands May 2020.

Crown (2006) by Wangechi Mutu. Courtesy of Deutsche Bank Collection

One of the key elements of this year’s edition of Frieze New York was to have been an exhibition drawn from the legendary art collection of Deutsche Bank, to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The fair may have been postponed, but the significance of the collection, its works and ethos, is undimmed, says Wallace Ludel

At Deutsche Bank’s headquarters in New York, several hundred exceptional works of art are hung throughout the building’s 47 floors. The Wall Street tower was built in the 1980s and certain floors still retain that era’s American wooden-clad banking aesthetic; long oak and cherry desks and accents provide a warmer, more characterful context for the high-calibre artworks than a typical white-cube gallery setting. The click of dress shoes and hum of conference calls in the background create an atmosphere quite unlike the usual art exhibition experience.

The artworks displayed here represent only a fraction of one of the largest corporate art collections in the world, comprising over 55,000 important pieces.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

Deutsche Bank employees are proud of the art that surrounds them, says Friedhelm Hütte, the bank’s global Head of Art. “They feel it helps the company and it does so not only in a general way but also when meeting with clients and prospective clients, because more and more people are interested in art, in going to exhibitions, or wanting to collect.”

Düsseldorf (2018) #1 (2018) by Maria Hassabi. Courtesy of Deutsche Bank Collection

In 2020, Deutsche Bank is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its art collection, as well as the company’s 150th anniversary. Part of the celebration was intended to involve a major exhibition at Frieze New York. The show, titled ‘Portrait of a Collection’, brought together works from more than 40 artists from the bank’s holdings, including works by Wangechi Mutu, Amy Sillman, Glenn Ligon, Camille Henrot, Lucy Dodd, Hank Willis Thomas and many more. And although the fair was cancelled, the importance of the artworks and the philosophy of the collection remains as relevant as ever.

“Deutsche Bank has both the foresight to champion artists such as these in the early stages of their careers, and the power to contextualize them alongside an established canon within their collection,” Loring Randolph, Director of Frieze New York, tells LUX. She adds that Frieze and the bank are “aligned in their commitment to innovative curatorial programming and public art initiatives, including our mutual support and enthusiasm for artists.”

Sugar Ray from the series ‘The Enclave’ (2012) by Richard Mosse. Courtesy of Deutsche Bank Collection. © Richard Mosse, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, photo Argenis Apolinario.

While Deutsche Bank’s enormous collection spans many decades and various movements of contemporary art, it does have a few points of focus – one being that the vast majority are works on paper. In this respect, Hütte and his team bucked the trend. “The bank decided to focus on an area in contemporary art that’s not so often covered by museums or private collectors,” Hütte says. “We wanted to build a collection that had a smaller focus placed on it. We now have one of the most important collections of post-1945 works made on paper in the world, even when compared with museums of the same era. This has allowed us to function as a kind of archive for artists and museums.”

Read more: Artist Peter Schuyff on the spirituality of painting nothing

Preparatory drawings for larger projects, including studies for public projects by Christo and mural-sized paintings by James Rosenquist, constitute this informal archive. Hütte says he is fascinated by the way these works illuminate the artists’ creative processes. The insights they provide are worth pursuing. “If you are not an expert in art, you can see these works and understand more about how an artist is developing his or her ideas. You see the moment of invention and of introducing something new. This is very much linked to business, and the ways we come up with new ideas.”

“We are always looking to discover new artists,” says Hütte, adding that this “doesn’t mean that the artist has to be young; it could be that an artist is older but hasn’t found the success that we feel he or she should have.” Supporting emerging artists is also a financially advantageous approach; the company does not have to lavish the same kind of sums on their artworks that collectors often pay for well-established artists. Hütte says that the bank, which has high-profile art hanging in offices all over the world, relies on the experience of their own team of curators and – in some cases – regional art experts to look out for creative talent. Additionally, the bank employs staff to oversee the collection, arrange exhibitions, facilitate loans and more.

Four Little Girls (blue and white) (2018) by Hank Willis Thomas. © Hank Willis Thomas, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

While the biggest concentrations of works from the collection hang in the private offices of Frankfurt, London and New York, the bank opened its new museum-quality exhibition space and cultural programme, Berlin’s Palais Populaire, to the public in 2018. However, you may not have to travel to Berlin to explore the art from the company’s private collection. “We loan artworks to museums on a regular basis – normally every week,” explains Hütte. “We feel we have to support the museums and the artists, so there’s no ulterior reason. We give works for temporary exhibitions as well as for more or less permanent loans; for example, we recently loaned 600 works to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.”

The Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year

One of Deutsche Bank’s initiatives to support young artists is their ongoing Artist of the Year programme. Previous winners include Wangechi Mutu in 2010, Yto Barrada in 2011 and Roman Ondak in 2012. All have since gone on to have exceptional careers. “It’s not simply a prize of a sum of money; it’s really to support the artist so they can reach a new level,” explains Hütte. The artist is selected with the recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council, whose council members have included the curators Udo Kittelmann, Victoria Noorthoorn, Hou Hanru and the late Okwui Enwezor. The winning artist is given a solo exhibition – the 2018 winner, Lebanese artist Caline Aoun, held her show at the Palais Populaire – with a published catalogue of their work. “Most often, it’s the first large catalogue for this artist, and it’s normally their first museum exhibition. We also buy works from the artist for our collection,” says Hütte.

Discover the collection: art.db.com

This article will also be published in the Summer 2020 Issue, out later this month.

Installation view of ‘Works on Paper’ by Peter Schuyff at Carl Kostyál Gallery, London

Peter Schuyff was a central figure in New York’s East Village scene in the 1980s, where he worked for a period at Studio 54, sitting for Andy Warhol and living in the historic Chelsea Hotel. Over the years, his artistic language has evolved from loose figuration to abstraction. Following the opening and subsequent suspension of two consecutive exhibitions at White Cube, Masons’ Yard and Carl Kostyál, London, Nick Hackworth speaks to the artist about lockdown, nothingness and Sylvester Stallone

LUX: So, how’s the apocalypse going for you?
Peter Schuyff: Well, I’ve run out of pencil lead unfortunately. I’ve started work on this very obsessive project and I was using a rather specialised pencil and half-way through I ran out of lead and I can’t think of a single place where I might get more…. I’ve been working on these samplers. It’s what I often do when I get frustrated, or right after a big show. I sit down and make these very obsessive renderings that are like a smorgasbord or a sampler of all my oeuvres.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

LUX: Like the one you had in your show at Carl Kostyál Gallery a few years back?
Peter Schuyff: Yes, that one was called Plato Combinato. That’s a really good example. At the moment, I’m making a portrait of the show that I have at the White Cube.

Plato Combinato (2010), Peter Schuyff

LUX: Why do you think you tend to do these sampler works after completing shows? Are you visually cataloguing or processing the shows?
Peter Schuyff: Yeah, I’m visually cataloguing the show I guess, just so I can see it clearly. I’ve always had a fascination with pictures of pictures, whether it’s in 17th Dutch paintings where you often see paintings hanging in the background or in those preposterous 18th century paintings of salons. I’ve often commissioned friend to make drawings or paintings of my drawings and paintings. They help me see my own work a little bit clearer.

LUX: I managed to catch your show just before it got locked-down along with the rest of the world. It’s stunning, so congratulations, but commiserations on the timing. How are you feeling about it all?
Peter Schuyff: It hurts, of course. I’ve been looking forward to this for a couple of years now and I guess I was expecting the show to be a liminal moment for me, y’know? With a before and after. Somehow, that before and after thing has been taken away a bit. But if it would have been a show of new paintings, I think I would have been really destroyed.

Read more: Art photographer Senta Simond on the female image

LUX: Because of all the labour you would have invested in the work?
Peter Schuyff: No, no, it’s not the invested labour, it’s about momentum. When I show new paintings, they’re paintings I want to show now, not later. Do you know what I mean? Whereas these painting were shown last year (in a touring show at Le Consortium, Dijon and Fri Art, Fribourg) and many people know them already, so it doesn’t feel quite as much of a loss.

LUX: What’s it like walking into a show of your works from three to almost four decades ago? Do you still feel connected to the paintings?
Peter Schuyff: I’m really impressed by them! I’m impressed that I was young and handsome [laughs] and so I could afford not to give a shit, which is a great recipe for making paintings! Today, I’m old and cynical so I have another way of not giving a shit, which enables me to make really clean and clear paintings and I love that. There was a lot of time in between where I couldn’t do that. When I see these works I always surprised at how big they are and how much balls I had. My God! Especially the paintings at White Cube, the audacity I had.

Installation view from ‘Works on Paper’ by Peter Schuyff at Carl Kostyál Gallery, London

LUX: We’ve talked over the years and you’ve always said your paintings are ‘about nothing’. Is that how you thought about the paintings when you were making them back in the 80s?
Peter Schuyff: Yeah, I did. A teacher of mine in Vancouver, Michael Morris, used to talk about the problem of nothing. I guess it was almost a spiritual principle of work not needing to be about something. When I got to New York, that came more naturally, but I always talked about my work in this way and it’s always been an issue. When I showed in Germany in the mid-80s, I remember a lot of the German artists being mystified by how little was there was going in the work.

LUX: In your other show at Carl Kostyál, you’re showing several of your 80s watercolour works, which I love. I’ve been trying to get my head around how you achieve the precise gradations of colour and shade in them?
Peter Schuyff: So, I’ll answer it this way. That great big painting downstairs at White Cube, the one with the prism of colours, it’s a ten-foot-square canvas, and it’s broken up into one-inch units, and I made that with a four-inch brush with a round bristle. So knowing that, you should be able to figure out how I made them… It’s the same with those watercolours. Those watercolours were broken up into little squares that are about a half a centimetre squared or something? There’s no way I’m going to pay attention to each of those little squares.

Both Untitled (1990), watercolour on paper, Peter Schuyff at Carl Kostyál Gallery, London

LUX: Well, it’s a very effective trick then, because the apparent precision is amazing in those works.
Peter Schuyff: And just like a good magic show, it’s all about engineering.

Read more: Boundary-breaking artist Barbara Kasten on light & perception

Peter Schuyff with Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen

LUX: In the book accompanying ‘Works on Paper’, there’s picture of you with Brigitte Nielsen and Sylvester Stallone. I gather Stallone is a bit of a collector?
Peter Schuyff: Oh yeah, a very sensitive collector. One time that I remember particularly was when Sylvester came to my house. I had all these Louis M Eilshemius paintings on the wall and Sylvester walks in and – I can’t do a Stallone impression, I wish I could –  says, ‘Oh my God, you have all these Louis M Eilshemius paintings!’ He knew exactly who Louis M Eilshemius was despite him being a totally obscure American cultural presence in the 1910s and 1920s. I was so impressed. Sylvester was so well read about American art from the early 20th century, The Ashcan School period and so on. He was so smart. Another time we met in Los Angeles and he gave me a tour of the post-production set of Rocky and I met Apollo Creed, which is the guy he fights at the end of the film.

LUX: Sounds like an interesting time.
Peter Schuyff: Well, it was different. When I first showed up in New York there was this idea of the underground. It was about glamour that was absolutely free. All you had to be was some kind of fabulous. It didn’t matter what kind.

Peter Schuyff’s exhibitions ‘Works on Paper’ at Carl Kostyál Gallery, London and ‘In Focus’ at White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London both opened in March 2020 and are currently suspended due to Covid-19. For further updates visit: kostyal.com; whitecube.com

Nick Hackworth is the Director of Modern Forms, a contemporary art collection and platform founded by British financier, Hussam Otaibi. For more information visit: modernforms.org

Copyright & courtesy of Senta Simond

Art photographer Senta Simond sets out to explore the female image through what she calls her own definition of a woman. She talks us through images from her latest series, shown in New York this year

“I discovered that being a woman photographing women allowed me to capture these intimate images, and that was an advantage that I wanted to explore. In a way, we constructed the images together.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

“I wanted to show women’s bodies from my own perspective, so that’s why they are not overly sexualised. It was more about trying to find an interesting image, even a little uncomfortable maybe. Also to catch the subject in an in-between moment. I want my images to talk, not only about the form of the subject but something deeper and more complex.

Copyright & courtesy of Senta Simond

“I try to present a multidimensional personality. My images are filled with an admiration for the subjects rather than evoking desire. I believe this is a healthy relationship to women’s bodies.”

View the artist’s full portfolio: sentasimond.com

This article will also be published in the Summer 2020 Issue, hitting newsstands in May 2020.

Portia Antonia Alexis is a leading consumer business analyst, neuroeconomist and mathematician

Portia Antonia Alexis is a neuroeconomist and consumer goods analyst specialising in the luxury and beauty sector. Following the publication of a recent research paper entitled ‘The Global Elite,’ the McKinsey alumnus speaks to LUX about how populism is just another form of protection for ingrained elites, why more women will become entrepreneurs, and how self-made billionaires are not always what they seem

LUX: Recent elections in the US, UK and elsewhere have returned a populist message. Yet US President Donald Trump and UK PM Boris Johnson are part of the elite themselves, and their elections are benefitting the elite more than anyone else. How can this be?
Portia Antonia Alexis: Right-wing populism emerges when the political and economic status quo fails the majority of people. Populist politicians build their base by constructing an in-group – in this case, hardworking white Britons – and pitching themselves as the champions of this “oppressed” group. They then blame the out-group – Muslims, migrants and scroungers – for the hardships everyone else is suffering.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

In doing so, they channel widespread anger away from the powerful – the economic and political elites – and towards the powerless.  They may claim to be tearing up the status quo, but their fundamental objective is to protect capitalist institutions when they are at their most fragile.

This strategy extends into the realm of policy. Johnson’s electoral agenda – from clamping down on crime to ending freedom of movement within the EU – will polarise politics around an opposition between white, working-class Britons versus migrants and welfare scroungers. He will declare himself tough on crime and migration while casting his opponents as out-of-touch elites who don’t understand the concerns of ordinary people.

Right-wing populism must be seen for what I think it is: a symptom of a crumbling capitalist order that no longer promises a better future for most people.

LUX: An increasing number of super-wealthy are self-made. Is this good?
Portia Antonia Alexis: This question reminds me of the controversial Forbes cover story naming Kylie Jenner a “self-made” billionaire.

Critics cited that it was irresponsible for that magazine not to address how Jenner’s family fame helped her amass her fortune. And it’s true, in a way. Calling Jenner self-made connotes a sense of empowerment and a narrative that she lifted herself by her bootstraps. In contrast, her successful company is not so much the result of being self-made but rather an extension of the already successful empire that’s driven by her sisters.

Most bottomless pockets, not just Jenner, consider themselves entirely “self-made.” Rich people are very conflicted about their entitlement. To cope with this conflict, many simply pretend to be self-made. President Trump is a glaring example. Even though he grew up wealthy, he introduces himself as an entrepreneur.

The best evidence of this bias to claim “self-made” status? The annual September release of the Forbes magazine list of America’s 400 richest.

The necessary conclusion from these findings: Forbes is spinning “a misleading tale of what it takes to become wealthy in America.” Most of the Forbes 400 have benefited from a level of privilege unknown to the vast majority of Americans.

Read more: Inside artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar’s Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat studio

LUX: When will women start to have a significant presence in the ranks of the super-wealthy?
Portia Antonia Alexis: While women still represent a relatively small part of the billionaire community, they are a continuously growing segment. Perhaps more interesting is that the percentage increase in self-made women was more significant than the rise in the number of billionaires overall, which could signal a change in who will create and control wealth moving forward.

Much of the increase in super-rich women is due to entrepreneurship. These women, like all self-made successes, exhibit several core characteristics. For example, they typically have high levels of self-efficacy, are adept at strategic networking, and are accomplished negotiators.

Women that have created their wealth are different from those that marry or inherit their wealth in several essential ways. They are more willing to take calculated business risks, and they are often motivated to take steps to enlarge and enhance their fortunes through new business ventures, sophisticated tax and investment strategies, and the creation of family offices.

There is unconscious bias in the system, though. I believe many men would like to see more women at the top. I don’t think they’re all actively trying to keep women out, but some discrimination still exists.

I am confident that we will achieve gender parity in top income generation over the next generation. The girl who can dominate a field of robots is a woman who can dominate a field of men.

LUX: As millennials mature, will the nature of consumption change?
Portia Antonia Alexis: Millennials are less wealthy than people were in the past, which makes them very price-sensitive for brands and products that are not differentiated from competitors. But while they have less money, they are very value-focused and are willing – thanks to their parents’ finances – to pay for quality or status.

And they are very tech-savvy, having grown up on the internet and with smartphones. They are well-informed and quick to adopt new technologies. Finally, they are into health and wellness, taking a more active role in physical fitness than keeping to an ideal weight or getting enough sleep.

LUX: Are millennials and Gen Z investing more into the ESG and impact investing sectors, or is it lip service?

Portia Antonia Alexis: When investing, millennials are committed to environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. They want to be responsible investors.

In the early days, this mainly amounted to the exclusion of investments exposed to industries such as tobacco, alcohol or armaments. Still, it is now turning to broader ESG and sustainability policies. For example, we are increasingly asked about board diversity: millennials want to know how many women are on boards or in senior management.

Millennials are not the end of the generational transformation of consumption patterns. Some 77 million members of Generation Z, also known as centennials, have been born since 1997 – making them as large a cohort as the millennials. They are the most diverse generation, with almost half of them belonging to a minority group.

The potential for higher returns from companies that position themselves to benefit from the changing consumption patterns of millennials and centennials should make them especially attractive for investors.

Read more: How Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah is establishing itself as a cultural hub

LUX: Can you invest ethically and get the same return as investing without regard for ethics?
Portia Antonia Alexis: A common assumption is that sustainable investment is about conscience rather than profit. Almost three out of 10 people avoid ethical funds because they believe the returns will not be as high as more conventional alternatives.

Very often, people assume you have to give up decent returns to do good with your money. But this isn’t philanthropy, and it’s about people, planet and profit. The research bears that out, showing that sustainable funds are often generating better returns than more traditional funds. Some still regard ethical investing as a fringe activity for do-gooders, but evidence shows how wrong this assumption is.

This year, the National Trust announced it was divesting its investment portfolio from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, equity research house Redburn recently removed buy ratings from the biggest oil companies, saying that demand for oil is set to decline as the focus moves to renewables.  Not only is it savvy to maintain a varied portfolio, but sustainable investing is also becoming increasingly mainstream, opening up more impact investing opportunities to all levels of the investment community.

Research shows this type of investment can provide equal, if not better, returns than more conventional funds. And also, the variety of companies financed by impact investment funds – those that score highly on ESG factors – perform better. These businesses typically have lower costs of capital and higher returns.

LUX: Is ethical investing being led by the West, and does the rest of the world need to catch up?
Portia Antonia Alexis: In most Western countries, between 40 to 80 per cent of investors want to invest “ethically”. They desire to make money and create a better society. However, the funds screening investments for ethical conduct usually make up less than 3 per cent of total mutual fund, unit trust, or ETF assets in those countries. These ‘ethically screened′ funds frequently focus on investments related to the environment and sustainability, social responsibility, or are faith-based, and so on.

Investing ethically, for some investors, is essential as they believe it also impacts their personal or spiritual development. They think they ultimately share in the responsibility for the activities of the company, companies or funds that they invest in.

In many Muslim countries, ethical investors invest in Islamic financial products such as Sukuk—Islamic bonds. These assets sometimes represent a significant proportion of total financial system assets in these countries, in contrast to the socially responsible investment (SRI) priorities of many Western investors such as mitigating climate change or regulating genetically modified foods. SRI in developing countries may need to address health care provision, poverty alleviation or food security. The SRI schedule tends to be shaped by a market dogma that can elevate or marginalise issues according to their perceived “financial materiality” to investors preoccupied with finding a business case for acting ethically.

Read more: Boundary-breaking artist Barbara Kasten on light & perception

LUX: How are the children of the super-elite dealing with the wealth created by their parents?
Portia Antonia Alexis: I often describe elite kids as having “well-fed child syndrome.” The idea is simple enough: they’re not made aware of their limits, only of their capacities. They get a sense of the world not as rules and regulations, but instead as an open terrain to be negotiated. Whereas the experience for a lot of disadvantaged kids is that of “you can’t” — of the limits placed upon you, the rules you have to follow, and the punishments likely to be laid down on you, the experience at St. Paul’s is that “you can.” This is an empowering way to treat children. This ethic — this sense of potential and an open world before you — helps with success.

A lot of very wealthy people are not accountable to their community, they’re not responsible to the people they love, they show their power and control through the transaction, and they are unhappy, from what I can tell. The people I know who are very wealthy and are happy are all contributing something to society.

LUX: Are experiences replacing luxury goods as the purchasing focus of the wealthy?
Portia Antonia Alexis: At the end of November of last year, the Savigny Luxury Index, compiled on the stock values of 18 leading luxury companies, reported a drop in average stock prices to reach a lower level than at the beginning of the year.

In the past, luxury was associated with champagne, caviar and designer clothes. Nowadays, with increased affluence, luxury is no longer the preserve of the elite. More and more consumers have traded up as old values of tradition and nobility have become less critical. People are enjoying much more material comfort in comparison with previous generations, and this has resulted in a trend of a cultural shift for cultural fulfilment and aspiration through experience. Therefore, it could be argued that luxury is increasingly about experience and authenticity rather than monetary value.

The focus on aspiration and experience means there is an increasing emphasis on personal transformation through, for example, well-being and travel. Therefore, luxury is becoming more challenging to define because the language has changed. Luxury today is not necessarily expensive. It can be accessible to a mass market, not traditional; it can also be personal, authentic and experiential. However, the old-world luxury of consumption and elitism still prevails.

LUX: Does elite mean wealthy, or does it mean privileged in other ways? Can you be one of the elites without being wealthy?
Portia Antonia Alexis: Elite suggests by definition that it goes for both wealthy and privileged. An elite is a relatively small group of people with the highest status in a society, or in some domain of activity, who have more privileges or power than other people due to their condition. Elitism is believing in or promoting this sort of arrangement, whether that be in the academic world, politics, art, sports, or anywhere else. Almost all the national income gains over the last 40 years have gone to the wealthiest 5 per cent of Americans.

If you think that only the top 5 per cent of American earners have become more productive or been the sole producers of value, you don’t understand how an economy works. Elites have used their power to extract a greater and greater share of the national wealth. And that must be addressed.

I don’t know if you can be one of the elites and not wealthy. But I do know ones who can be against the elite and still be wealthy and privileged.

Read more: Examining the work of visual artist & philosopher Wolfgang Tillmans

LUX: So far, populism in the West has returned right-wing, free-market, nationalist political leaders in the UK, US, Poland, and elsewhere (see Q1). Will high tax/socialist politicians succeed?
Portia Antonia Alexis: The resurgence of populism has abruptly reshaped global politics over the past few years, but what it means for economic growth and financial assets has yet to become apparent.

Although markets are quick to respond to individual events—such as a populist party’s rise to power or the introduction of a tax cut or spending increase—they have not yet grasped how populism could affect the global economy over the long term.

This poses a challenge for investors, as they need to understand the economics of populism to position their portfolios over the years ahead effectively.

The early stages of the policy profile outlined above can be glimpsed in President Trump’s deficit financed tax cuts and the ruling Italian populist coalition’s battles with the European Union (EU) to push through an expansionary budget.

The fiscal accounts of Hungary and Poland have structurally deteriorated after the election of rightwing populist governments, and the market’s price in an economic deterioration in Mexico under the newly elected left-wing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

It is worrying that most of the populist governments that undertake these fiscal expansions lack the fiscal space to do so.

LUX: What is the most exciting trend you have observed among the elites?
Portia Antonia Alexis: The rise of populism has become a global obsession in the last year. Whether it’s Donald Trump or the Brexit movement, the rise of populism has helped crystallise the fact that there are two kinds of elites: those who like to bash populists for being foolish, and those who wish to bash other elites for failing to give populists enough of what they want.

What’s interesting is that the anti-elite elites don’t seem to have policy preferences that differ that considerably from other elites. Everybody thinks the status quo needs changing in one way or another. And I don’t think points based on skilled immigration systems and relocation vouchers aren’t what most anti-immigration protesters have in mind.

Nor do I think a vigorous points-based immigration system, relocation vouchers, or any policy ideas of anti-elites would have done much to stop the current global wave of populism that we’re seeing. Had anti-elite elites been handed the wheel 15 years ago, I think we’d pretty much be right where we are right now.

LUX: You initially trained to become an equestrian show jumper, today you are an economist, mathematician and business analyst. What changed?
Portia Antonia Alexis: I spent an extensive amount of time training to become an international equestrian. Ultimately, I found I loved mathematics more. When I was volunteering as a youth counsellor with the London Metropolitan Police, offering counselling and therapeutic care to youths who had been victims of crime, I witnessed a range of diverse socioeconomic issues. These issues concerned me, and I found it interesting to analyse the problems from an academic, investigative and human lens. I wanted to find a way to research the determinants relating to wealth, income, poverty using a range of the method. And to predict the probability of wealth distribution income inequality and social mobility in detail. The rise of the global elite and the rise of income inequality and the decline of the social movement.

The most important thing I learned as a mathematician is that I can’t explain it all on my models, I must get out and meet the world. I enjoyed the process, and it motivated me: the people and their stories. Economics studies the behaviour of people. There are a lot of variables that can’t be explained in the models. Even if they could, those models would be useless. When I started working as a researcher, I didn’t spend my time thinking about what Keynes or Hayek said, nor did I try to show how the mathematical models work. I just went to the data, applied some statistical analysis and applied them on the real world.

This is the kind of work that counts, the type of knowledge that is useful, because it’s not doomed to stay on a shelf for centuries, and it has a connection with the people out there.

I still love horses and ride and show jump for leisure these days. I take part in equine therapy once a week, which involves activities with horses and other equines to promote human physical and mental health. I also occasionally write research papers on trends within the horse racing industry and the global equine industry.

Follow Portia on Instagram: @portiaeconomics

is new high-end delivery service provided by private-jet catering company On Air Dining

With restaurants still closed across the UK, One Fine Dine offers an easy and creative alternative to enjoying a fine dining experience at home

One Fine Dine is a new high-end food delivery service provided by On Air Dining, but don’t let the name put you off. Headed up by Daniel Hulme (who has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants across London and catered for superyachts), On Air Dining provides luxury dining experiences for private jets. This latest initiative aims to bring the same level of quality and finesse into UK residents’ homes.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

The menus span breakfast, lunch, dinner and canapés along with options for wine pairings and dietary requirements. Different from a traditional recipe delivery box, the separate elements of each dish are cooked and prepared by expert chefs, and then boxed up and delivered with instructions for heating up (if required) and plating. It’s not exactly ‘cooking’, but it still provides some level of creative satisfaction as you carefully arrange edible flowers, delicate dollops of purée and zig-zags of balsamic glaze to create the perfect-looking dish. It doesn’t really feel like cheating as the dishes are complex and would be difficult to make unless you’re highly-skilled in the kitchen.

Read more: Four of our favourite historic country hotels to visit post-lockdown

Our favourite picks from include the vegetarian scotch egg served with truffle, seaweed wrapped cured salmon with pickled radish, North Atlantic blackened miso cod with a rich and earthy shiitake broth, and for dessert, granny smith apple pie with crème anglaise followed by the chef’s handmade petit fours.

For more information visit: onefinedine.com

Details of paintings by Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar

French-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar gives LUX readers a rare glimpse inside his Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat studio, normally open only to collectors and close friends, and shares insights into the artistic process

Every artist’s studio is unique, but French-Iranian artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar’s studio is, to coin a phrase, more unique than most. It is in a “secret” building on the spine of the chi-chi Cote d’Azur peninsula of Cap Ferrat, just outside the village of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. His neighbours are not other artists and craftspeople, but the discreet owners of fabulous villas in what is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. From the balcony of the second floor windows of the studio, you can see yachts moored at St Jean, and, in the distance, the rocky backdrop of Monte-Carlo.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

The studio building is, however, much as you might expect an artist’s studio to be: the communal garden (the studio shares the block with residents) is characterfully overgrown, and the studio itself comprises a small and basic kitchen which is not used for anything other than mixing paints, a tiny bathroom, and two large, bright and light rooms filled with canvasses, paint, studies, sketches and everything in between. There is barely anywhere to sit, and while the balcony looks out over the garden and rows of villas to the sea and mountains beyond, it doesn’t look like it is used for anything except musing.

The setting may seem unusual now, but in fact the artist follows in the footsteps of artists such as  Cézanne, Matisse, Chagall, Renoir and Picasso, in his choice of the French Riviera as his creative backdrop. The floor-to-ceiling windows provide the artist an opportunity to connect with nature, a theme which increasingly permeates his work. The mountains and climate of the south of France provide a geographic link with Iran, Behnam-Bakhtiar’s ancestral homeland where he spent his formative years and young adulthood, and the culture and language a direct link back into Paris, the city of his birth, 1000km and a world away to the north.

Below, and for one of the first times ever, the artist shares intimate images from inside his studio alongside accompanying commentary about life as an artist under lockdown.

“Since mid 2019, I have had a calling to focus on our connection to nature and have been painting that mainly. I had this urge to paint art that transfers an experience that is both good for us and our planet. The lockdown just reinforced it even more. The routine has not changed but the focus on my work has deepened.”

“The view from my studio is a constant reminder that we are part of something much greater and connected to all living beings, and understanding this fact is vital to one’s evolution of the Self. The beauty of nature in its purest form pushes us to see beyond what most of us call the norm – to understand the value and importance of what is provided for us by nature and its energy, which is flowing through us and all around. My location is important because of its energy and what is provides for me on a daily basis – I didn’t get the vibes I get here when I used to work in my studio in London and it showed in my work. All of this is interconnected and will affect the artist path and work throughout the years.”

Read more: Boundary-breaking artist Barbara Kasten on light & perception

“I definitely require a certain atmosphere to be able to create. Not that the ambiance needs to be positive and happy for me to create – I’ve done some of my strongest canvases under pressure and negative circumstances. It’s hard to explain, but I place myself in a particular mode when I work. It is all about what needs to pour out of you with the subjects in mind. I’ve had horrible days with so much thought in my mind and once I bring out all of it on a canvas (normally resembles a fight between myself, the canvas, my tools and the paint), I leave the studio with a sense of ease and peace.

I don’t like to have people around when I work. As I create some sort of an energy bubble where I place myself in during the creative process, I can’t have any interference. I do have very few select people (collector friends) who can see my creative process.”

“The studio is divided into five main spaces. There are two painting spaces in two different sections, one for where 90% of the creative process happens and the other for the detailing work. There’s also a storage room where finished works are stored (I can’t show you that as don’t like to show sold works), an equipment and paint room, and a mounting room for when my framing partner passes by to pick up canvases to take back to his atelier and to mount smaller works on the chassis.”

“There are some of my collectors who have become friends throughout the years who pass by regularly to see new works and have a chat, which is always fun. Our topics usually revolve around the work, their messages, the process and visionary discussions about life and our humanities. They usually find one or two works they fall in love which I end up putting in the ‘sold room’ until they are picked up. There are maybe three of my collector friends whom I like to listen to as they have a unique eye and understanding of the arts.”

Read more: Examining the work of visual artist and philosopher Wolfgang Tillmans

“This study, entitled Rebirth Under the Gingko Tree, has been a work in progress for about a year, which a larger piece will be based on.”

“Both of these canvases have been prepared for my upcoming show Rebirth. Both works were done simultaneously showing each a tree amongst nature. This shot was after each canvas was stretched on a chassis.”

“Space is primordial for me – I have recently taken over the above floor of my current studio to extend my working space.”

“This work is entitled Eternal Garden. It’s hard to describe how I know when a painting is finished – it is like an internal click and then you know it’s perfect.”

Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar’s upcoming exhibition ‘Rebirth’ is due to open at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat Cultural Space (Villa Namouna) on 11 September until 11 October 2020.

He is represented by Setareh Gallery, Dusseldorf: setareh-gallery.com