Ben Thomas is Chair of  the Museums & Exhibitions Group of the Association of Art Historians, and co-curator with Catherine Whistler of Raphael: The Drawings at the Ashmolean Museum (1 June – 3 September 2017). This outstanding exhibition is described by the museum’s Director Dr Xa Sturgis as a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity – that of experiencing the visual and emotive power of Raphael’s hand, and of understanding Raphael’s genius.

The heads and hands of two apostles, c. 1519–20
Black chalk with over-pounced underdrawing with some white heightening, 49.9 x 36.4 cm
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Why did you decide to make a show of Raphael drawings at the Ashmolean?

Because the Ashmolean has the largest collection of Raphael drawings.

How did that happen?

Drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo were being sold by a dealer and Oxford University bought them as the result of a public subscription. That was in 1845.

What is the exhibition Raphael: The Drawings about?

It is a chance to look in depth at Raphael as a draftsman. We wanted to show how his drawings are eloquent in two senses: first in terms of the Renaissance culture that he was part of, and in another sense as intimate and immediate documents of his thought process.

The Virgin with the Pomegranate, c. 1504
Black chalk with compass indentation for the halo, 41.2 x 29.4 cm
© Albertina Museum, Vienna

What do his drawings convey?

Drawings allow you to see an artist thinking, almost as if you are alongside the artist. We felt that focussing on the drawings would allow a contemporary audience to appreciate Raphael for the exciting and creative artist that he was.

Are his drawings very different from those of his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti?

Yes, he learned from them both, and we see him responding to their art in his drawings, assimilating and changing it, and making his own art.

Study for an angel, c. 1515–16
Red chalk over some blind stylus, 19.7 x 16.7 cm
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Is he more modern than they are?

I think that, if you look at the range of drawings in the exhibition and the stylistic development, his style changes rapidly over only twenty years. It goes from a relatively static formula based on Pietro Perugino to one of the most expressive styles in the history of art.

What is this style?

It is his own style, which we can see in the second and final rooms. His own style which is both a synthesis but also something highly original, and drawing was the means by which he arrived at this originality.

What is so original in Raphael’s style?

Moving eloquent figures orchestrated in complex compositions. That is how he tells stories effectively, so that emotion is communicated through the representation of movement.

Head of an apostle, c. 1519–20
Black chalk over pouncing, some indentations (probably later) along the contours of the pupils, nose, neck
and hair; the drawing slightly extended onto the early support by a collector, with some minimal reworking in
this area, 24 x 18.2 cm
© Albertina Museum, Vienna

Are these drawings the basis for his paintings and frescoes?

Yes, they are preparatory for the Vatican frescoes and his famous last painting, The Transfiguration, which is in the Vatican Museum. But we also wanted to show how Raphael discovered forms and drew for pleasure, not necessarily with a project or painting in mind.

How many drawings are on show in the exhibition?

120 drawings, which is about 30 per cent of his existing drawings.

Over what time period were they made?

From about 1500 to 1520, when he died at the age of only 37.

Putto holding the Medici Ring, c. 1513–14
Black chalk with white heightening, later framing lines in black chalk, 33.8 x 19.3 cm
© Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Did he draw all his life?

His father was an artist and so Raphael learned to draw from his father, and at the end of his life drawing was how he coordinated several major projects.

Did he write about drawing?

It is curious. Yes, he writes about drawing in a letter about his project to map the remains of ancient Rome. The style of drawing he describes is very technical, like a surveyor’s or an architect’s drawing. Sadly we don’t have anything written by him about the type of drawings in this exhibition, but they speak for themselves.

Where do the drawings in the exhibition that are not in the Ashmolean’s collection come from?

The Albertina Museum in Vienna, the Louvre in Paris, the Royal Collection at Windsor, the British Museum in London, the Uffizi in Florence, as well as from other lenders in Frankfurt, Budapest and private collections.

Study for the Three Graces, c. 1517–18
Red chalk over some blind stylus, 20.3 x 25.8 cm
© The Royal Collection Trust, HM Queen Elizabeth II

Is Raphael as great in his drawings as he is in his painting and frescoes?

I would say he is greater in his drawings.

Why?

Because you can see him inventing his new concepts and also doing outstanding technical feats which cannot be translated into paintings. Some of the drapery studies for example are much more complex in the drawings than in the paintings.

Studies for the Madonna of Francis I, c. 1518
Red chalk over blind stylus, 33.6 x 21.4 cm
© Gallerie degli Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Florence

Who were his pupils?

The most famous is Giulio Romano. There are some doubts about attribution and some scholars would say that drawings we have included, especially the later ones, are by Giulio. But we believe that all the drawings in the exhibition are by Raphael. The exhibition is about Raphael’s creativity. We tried not to focus on attribution. It is an ongoing discussion among Raphael scholars, but probably will never be completely resolved.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

Oxford, June 2017.

Ashmolean Museum, Raphael: The Drawings Exhibition

Caroline Moorehead is a human rights journalist and the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo,  Martha Gellhorn and Lucie de la Tour du Pin. She wrote two bestselling books on the French Resistance, and has now turned her attention to the antifascist movement in Italy through the story of one courageous family.

Why did you decide to write A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini, a newly published biography of the Rosselli brothers and their family?

I had just finished two books about the resistance against the Germans and the Vichy government in France – A Train in Winter and A Village of Secrets – and I was interested in the idea of looking at how the opposition to Mussolini had taken shape in Italy. The way I write my books, which I think of as a mixture of biography and history, is to find a small subject – a family, a village, a group of friends – and tell history through them.

Who were the Rossellis?

The Rossellis were a Livorno family of merchants and bankers, with strong connections to England. All were fervent believers in the Risorgimento, the political and social movement that consolidated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century. In the 1890s Joe Rosselli married Amelia Pincherle and had three sons, Aldo, Carlo and Nello. Both sides of the family were Jewish, but would always say that they felt Italian first and Jewish second.  They had money from shares in a mercury mine on Monte Amiata in southern Tuscany, which made it possible for them to fund their antifascist activities.

Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, pictured in the English village of Quainton, Buckinghamshire

Amelia Pincherle Rosselli is a central figure in the story and had a great influence on the education of her three sons, Aldo, Carlo and Nello. Who was she?

It was partly discovering Amelia’s memoirs, published in Italy in 2002 – Memorie – that decided me to write this book. She was an extraordinary woman: fearless, elegant, deeply moral, determined to bring up her sons as responsible and good citizens. She was also a very successful playwright. She was tough on her sons but loved them intensely; she was also a wonderful letter writer, and taught them to be so too.

Giuseppe Mazzini, political activist for the unification of Italy and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement

How did the Rossellis act on their strong belief in Giuseppe Mazzini’s political manifesto for a united, free and independent Italy?

As interpreted by Amelia, and instilled from a very young age into her sons, it was about duty and morality and responsibility and courage, the importance of working for your country and your beliefs, and never giving up.

After Aldo was killed in the First World War, Carlo and Nello became very involved with the antifascist movement. Were they linked to the Communist Party?

No, they were socialists, and saw themselves as the left wing alternative to the communists, something that Carlo worked on during his prison sentence on the island of Lipari and later in exile in France, producing a manifesto, Socialismo Liberale, which later fed into the Partito D’Azione (Action Party) and the Giustizia e Libertà movement.

Gaetano Salvemini, historian, political journalist and leading antifascist intellectual. He became Mussolini’s single greatest intellectual foe and his cultural and political influence extended not only throughout Italy, but also into much of Europe and the USA

Was it because of the murder of the Socialist parliamentarian Giacomo Matteotti by Mussolini’s Blackshirts that the Rossellis became so involved and founded the Giustizia e Libertà movement?

The Rosselli brothers were opposed to Mussolini and fascism as very young men, from before the time of the March on Rome by which Mussolini came to power in 1922.  In Florence, they came under the sway of the remarkable historian Gaetano Salvemini, who gathered round him a group of young men to oppose the fascists.  Matteotti’s murder was a seminal moment for all of them – after this, they realised that there was no going back. They set up a cultural centre, in which they debated their criticism to Mussolini and they started a clandestine paper, Non Mollare! They pasted antifascist posters on the walls of the city and organised demonstrations. Florence was then in the grip of the squadristi, who went on ‘punitive expeditions’ against the antifascists, beating them up and forcing them to drink castor oil. Some were arrested, others, like Salvemini, were driven into exile.

Benito Mussolini and Fascist Blackshirts during the March on Rome, October 1922

Why was Carlo sent to ‘confino’ and held as a prisoner on the island of Lipari, from where he escaped and then went to stay in Paris with his English wife?

The escape from Italy to France of Filippo Turati, the leader of the socialists who was menaced by Mussolini, was organised by Carlo. On his return to Italy, Carlo was arrested and held until his trial in Savona. He used the occasion to make a famous speech against fascism. He was then sent to Lipari, to the penal colony set up under Mussolini to hold opponents to fascism.  During the Mussolini years, 10,000 Italians were sent to ‘confino’. In theory, it was impossible to escape from these islands which lay far off the coast of Sicily. In an extraordinary feat of resourcefulness and daring, Carlo and two friends managed to get out. Mussolini was outraged and arrested Carlo’s wife Marion and Nello, who then himself spent some time on Ustica, another one of these islands.

Mona and Nello Rosselli in Venice

What was the climate in Paris for Italian political refugees from the fascist regime?

Paris’s large community of Italian exiles were very poor and very political; they formed themselves into factions and, having little else to do, spent their days talking and writing and having meetings.

In Paris was Carlo close to the Front Populaire of Léon Blum?

At first politically close to Léon Blum, Carlo later criticized him for remaining neutral over the Spanish Civil War.  The French were welcoming to their Italian exiles, but wary that they might cause too much trouble in the febrile world of European politics.

The Rosselli family’s house near Florence

Why did Nello remain in Florence when Carlo was in Paris?

Both brothers believed that there were two ways to oppose the fascists: at home and abroad.  Carlo had no choice but to remain in France after his escape. Nello stayed on in Italy, doing covert acts of antifascism, opposing intellectually everything that Mussolini stood for. It was courage of a different sort.

The Rosselli family intermarried with the Nathan family that supported Giuseppe Mazzini, the champion of the Risorgimento, in his exile in London. Were Carlo and Nello Anglophiles?

Yes, because of their origins, Amelia, Carlo and Nello all loved England, and Carlo drew heavily on Guild socialism for his political theories. They spoke English and paid visits to London whenever they could. On one occasion, Carlo spent several weeks at the Fabian Summer School with Salvemini, the antifascist historian, and Carlo Levi, the author of Christ Stopped at Eboli. The three men alternated attending lectures by the socialist propagandist George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs, the leading theoreticians of Fabianism, with cream teas and Morris dancing.

Young fascist children await the visit of the Duce on a large “M”, that refers to the name Mussolini, in Aosta, Italy. This huge M was a common sign of the passage of Mussolini. Sometimes entire hills and mountains were covered with M

Why did Mussolini fear the Rosselli brothers and have many spies observing Carlo’s movements in Paris?

Carlo in particular, and especially after his much publicized escape from Lipari, was widely known and regarded as a possible future leader. He devoted his time in Paris to writing and speaking against Mussolini and the fascists, and what he said and wrote was reported everywhere.  By the mid-1930s, Mussolini’s chief of police, Bocchini, had a vast apparatus of spies and informers throughout the world. Paris, the centre of the Italian antifascists in exile, was riddled with them.  At one time or another, some 50 men and women were spying on Carlo and sending back information about him to Rome.

Why did Carlo go to fight the war in Spain, from which he came back wounded?

By the mid-1930s, Carlo was growing increasingly depressed about the prospects of an uprising against Mussolini in Italy.  The Spanish Civil War seemed to him proof that a dictatorship could be overthrown from within, and he raised a group of antifascists to serve with him in Spain against Franco. Though he eventually tired of the squabbles among the anarchists, he made a widely heard speech on Radio Barcelona, declaring that Italy’s overthrow would come next.

Nello and Carlo Rosselli

To recover from his wounds Carlo went to stay with his brother Nello in Normandy, where they were both assassinated by the French fascists, the Cagoulards. What was the reaction in Italy?

Among the fascists and within Mussolini’s circle, the first reaction to their murder was to put out stories that discredited Carlo – that in fact he was murdered by his own people because he was trying to make peace with the fascists.  In the antifascist world there was an outpouring of grief and anger.  In June 1937, 200,000 people followed Carlo and Nello’s coffins through the streets of Paris.

Were Carlo and Nello leading political figures in Italy?

Whether they would have made future leaders in Italy is impossible to say.  Nello was a distinguished and original historian and would certainly have risen through the academic world.  Carlo may have been too much of an idealist and too uncompromising to have survived long in politics.  What they did do, however, was to shape a political programme of the left.  And Carlo was a great inspirer of people, ever enthusiastic and full of energy.  Both brothers were greatly loved.

The Rosselli family in America

The novelist Alberto Moravia was first cousin with the Rosselli brothers, as his father Carlo Pincherle Moravia was Amelia’s brother. Alberto Moravia was sick with tuberculosis of the bones and became a protégé of his aunt Amelia, who sent him to be cured in a sanatorium in the Dolomites at Cortina d’Ampezzo. What was Alberto’s relationship with his cousins?

Moravia was a few years younger than Carlo and Nello Rosselli and they did not meet often as boys; Amelia on the other hand was devoted to Alberto and sent him books and subscriptions to papers when he was ill.

Inspired by the murder of the Rossellis, Moravia wrote the novel Il Conformista, and Bernardo Bertolucci made his film from it in 1970. How are the brothers portrayed?

In his 1951 novel Il Conformista Moravia presents a very unflattering portrait of Carlo – it seems likely that Alberto was jealous of his two cousins. In Moravia’s story, it is Marion, Carlo’s wife, who is with him at the time of the murder, and not Nello.  It was perhaps a measure of Alberto’s jealousy that he chose to portray Carlo as pompous, self-important and ridiculously innocent and Marion as sexually voracious.

Il Conformista (1970) – Bernardo Bertolucci

Your book is a very well documented account of the Rossellis and their time. What conclusion do you come to about their real influence as figures of the resistance and the post-War Italian Republic?

Some idea of the veneration that they inspired is clear from the fact that in April 1951 the bodies of Carlo and Nello were exhumed from the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and returned to a state funeral in Florence. And, when Amelia brought their widows and children back from the US immediately after the war – where they had taken refuge, they were met by the Royal train in Naples. During the war, partisan groups of Giustizia e Libertà took the name Rosselli for their brigades. Certainly, some of Carlo’s theories made their way into the immediate post-war government of Ferruccio Parri, who had shared Carlo’s exile on Lipari.

Galeazzo Ciano, Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy from 1936 until 1943 and Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law

Why did Mussolini decide to order the murder of the Rossellis? Was it because they were Jewish? Was it because they were wealthy?

The orders to assassinate Carlo were widely assumed to come, if not directly from Mussolini, at least from his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano. Nello was murdered with Carlo because he was conveniently visiting his brother in France at the time. I don’t think that either their Jewishness or their money had anything to do with it: they had become dangerous symbols of antifascism, rallying figures leading the opposition to Mussolini, and spies had been warning repeatedly that Carlo’s stature and influence was growing all the time.  Earlier prominent antifascists – Gobetti, Matteotti and Amendola – had been killed by the fascists.  Carlo, and to a lesser extent Nello, were by then among the handful of best known and most outspoken remaining antifascist leaders.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

London, June 2017

Robin Lane Fox is an English classicist, ancient historian and gardening writer known for his works on Alexander the Great. At the University of Oxford he serves as Garden Master and as Extraordinary Lecturer in Ancient History for both New and Exeter Colleges. He has also taught Greek and Latin literature, and early Islamic history.

You are a Professor at Oxford University, well known for writing on Alexander the Great and the classical world. How come you are also famous for your gardening column in the Financial Times?

My gardening articles go back to 1970, before I was appointed by any University. I have written for the Financial Times every week for 47 years and am the longest running gardening columnist in the world. I love five things: the Greek world, Virgil and Horace, gardening, fox hunting and women.

In that order?

On my deathbed I will think of Homer, then gardens, the great women I know, and lastly my best days fox hunting. And then I’ll die. They have banned fox hunting in England. I admire Italy where wonderfully they bless the hounds in church at the beginning of the wild boar season in Tuscany and Umbria.

Wisteria in the Hanbury botanic garden at La Mortola

Why did you recently write an article in the Financial Times on the Hanbury botanic garden at La Mortola, which is in Italy near Ventimiglia?

It is a garden with a major history, and a well-crafted approach can be made to the EU for a really serious grant to bring the garden back to what we know was there. It has an amazing story of tremendous friends of Italy – the Hanbury family – of China, of visiting English women, and then the rescue by Genoa University when it had fallen into unfortunate condition.

What has changed in British gardening since you started your column in 1970?

Many things. One big change is that some of the most brilliant amateur gardeners in Britain were women, but now women have careers and work full time. Secondly, the price of houses is very high, so nobody can afford to buy a house and plant a garden very early in life. Third, a technical thing: plants sold in black plastic containers now means you can buy them all year round.

An example of an English country garden

Is having a garden less work nowadays?

In the 1950s and 60s everything had to be labour saving, with gardeners disappearing and the cost of labour very high. People planted massive great drifts of ground cover and had ghostly pale gardens. This changed in the 1980s when people started spending much more on their gardens. Garden design became a career that women could take up, and everything went into reverse. People were encouraged to think that they wanted very highly coloured extravagant gardens, a fashion which is only now ending.

What drives garden fashion?

TV makeover programmes came in with great power, and started a complete delusion. A group of keen young workers would transform the garden in a week and fill it with plants, often in the wrong way and at the wrong time. The impression was that you could make a garden like putting down a carpet, but gardening is a process that goes on all your life. People were disappointed by what they copied off the television, what I call “exterior decoration.

The garden at Helmingham Hall © Catherine Horwood

Are cooking and gardening both very much “à La Page”?

Garden watching, voyeurism, has become far more widespread than when I began. Cooking is very quick, you can learn and get the results, but with gardening you have to be patient, getting wet, and cold and dirty. People like looking at beautiful gardens and visiting them, but they don’t always like doing it.

Are there many beautiful gardens of English country houses?

When I started writing there were 350 private gardens open to the public. There are now 3,800. Garden history was not a force at all when I began in the early 1960s. Now the very difficult questions of the restoration of old gardens and garden archaeology have emerged.

Alpine section of the botanical garden in Munich

Where did you train to garden?

I trained in 1965 in the outstanding Botanical Garden in Munich. The world famous alpine gardens had a staff of 78 and the head of the garden was Wilhelm Schacht. He had been the personal gardener to King Boris of Bulgaria before the war. Schacht was one of the greatest men I have ever known.

What causes the differences in gardens across Europe?

The climate, the taste, and the fashion. Germans who live close to the Bavarian Alps are very ‘green’, so they are inclined to have marsh and steppe land in their gardens. Around Naples they are brilliant growers of highly cultivated small plots of land and are very good at pruning vines, citrus fruits and olives. Among Italian botanic gardens Palermo is great, Florence is a difficult site, Padua is famous historically. In Spain the climate is very difficult, but in Galicia there are good gardens. In France there are botanic gardens like Lyons, Dijon or Bordeaux

Summer garden at Le Jardin Plume in Normandy

What do you think about French gardens?

The French are very stylish and recently are said to have become more interested in actual gardening; the potager and vegetable gardening has become strong. In Paris, Bagatelle is a superb garden, very well run, and the park André Citroën is very good. The small garden in Normandy called the Jardin Plume is a carefully thought combination of planting and planning.

What about Asia and Japan, and the USA?

Japan is often brilliant. Kyoto is very heavily visited by endless groups of school children in the way gardens never are in Britain. They have a symbolism that we don’t fully understand. The US climate is difficult, but US gardening has grown out of the earlier imitation of the English. They have stopped to think about their own flora, and, on the West Coast, the Far East Asian tradition.

Alain Elkann in the gates leading to the mound in New College, Oxford garden where Robin Lane Fox is the Garden Master.

Gardening is part of being human and yet gardens were also an ornament for kings?

There is the garden as a display, showing off, an area where you and your courtiers can process, or there is a small enclosed garden echoing something in your mind.

Is gardening artificial?

Of course, and you do it for pleasure and fascination. My aim at home is that my garden should always look as if I had died 6 weeks ago. If I lived on better soil in a better climate I would have a superb garden. I have two acres, planned in sequences, always something looking good. I like sitting in my garden at night as the light is fading, quietly contemplating: ‘I am superior to Adam, as I have had to plant the whole thing!’

Arnebia

What do you like in a garden?

I like anything that grows. I started when I was ten, I have done it for 60 years and I still do it every day. I am extremely happy when I go out in the morning and see my arnebia, a little plant with yellow flowers that has 5 black dots on it when it opens, but as the flower ages the black dots disappear. The story of this flower is that Satan met Mohammed, marked the flower with his fingertips and said, “You see Mohammed, I can change the world.” Mohammed waved his cloak and the marks of Satan faded.

Do you find great depth in a garden?

When I look at the apricot scented climbing rose ‘Lady Hillingdon’, which my father also grew, I find I think of what she said: “Every time Lord Hillingdon comes to me in bed, I shut my eyes and think of England.” The flowers on Lady Hillingdon’s rose hang their heads very modestly. When I look I see many layers of things …..

In England is there always disorder in the garden?

Aesthetically English people still like informality within a formal design, and have the climate and the nurseries to support this.

Robin Lane Fox in the New College garden, Oxford University

Did you ever make a garden for anyone else?

No. I admire people who grow things. If the person who owns the garden really does the work, it has a different quality that other gardens will never have, even if it’s a complete muddle. I pull out the weeds. I take the cuttings, choose the plants, and raise the seeds.

Are young people interested in gardening?

They are yes, and in food. Much of the most brilliant vegetable growing in England has been done in buckets and dustbins. But I have taught here at Oxford University for 44 years and have never had a pupil, of all the clever highly selected pupils that are here, who knows what flower the primrose is.

Vegetable gardening

Should gardening be taught in school?

Of course it should. It’s a perfectly reasonable subject and much better than macro-economics.

What is the most popular flower in Britain?

I think the rose; and also internationally.

If you were asked to choose one flower what would you choose?

Probably a gentian, if it was the true form, and would grow with me, and was slug resistant, and would persist.

Royal College of Physicians medicinal garden

Are plants useful in medicine?

The medicinal garden of the Royal College of Physicians has the best exposition of this, by Dr Henry Oakeley. Some natural compounds are immensely useful, but they all have to be processed by expert chemical companies. There is enormous improvement once we break down the natural compounds and pharmacological companies make them in the right quantities. The heart medicine digitalis which originates from the foxglove is one example.

Do your love of gardens and your love of the classical world go together?

Here, at Magdalen, there was an enormous wisteria in full flower and I sat reading Cicero under the wisteria and at the same time heard all the cars going by on the road outside and I thought: ‘I can’t join the world, I love people but I have a contemplative side.’ But you can’t just sit cultivating your garden. You can’t just withdraw and disengage from public political life.

The modest Lady Hillingdon rose. © RHS

What do you think of Brexit?

I was appalled by Brexit. It’s the biggest disaster that the English have inflicted upon ourselves. We’ve never been invaded so we made up for it by shooting ourselves in the foot.

Do you travel a lot?

I travel for myself and write about it in the Financial Times. Last July I went to Kyrgyzstan on horseback. Wherever I go the first thing I say is, “What garden can I see?”

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

Oxford 2017

“With Donald Trump we are playing with fire.”

Roger Cohen is a journalist and author who joined The New York Times in 1990. He worked as a foreign correspondent in fifteen different countries before becoming acting foreign editor on September 11, 2001, and foreign editor six months later. Since 2004, he has written a column for The International New York Times, formerly known as The International Herald Tribune. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times. His columns appear every Wednesday and Saturday.

What are the main things that concern you today?

The principal issue is that the Trump presidency seems to be dismantling the State Department. The staff of the State Department are completely demoralised and there is a lot of dysfunction. At the same time there is a vast increase in military spending and in my experience it’s very important to have both tools, diplomacy and a strong military. When the only thing you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Right now the United States is dismantling its diplomatic arm and vastly strengthening its military arm and this is very worrying. The presidential Oath of Allegiance is to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. The American idea is that allegiance is pledged by the President to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, under the law.

What do you observe about Trump?

Trump is impulsive, he is extremely needy, he’s irascible, he’s bullying, he has a very short attention span. But at the same time when he became President of the United States he had this extraordinary intuition about the anger there was in the country.

What results from his presidency?

The United States becomes an unreliable power, and an unreliable partner to the point where both the Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland and Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany said recently that Europeans and Canada have to forge their own destiny and take fate into their own hands, because they can no longer rely on the United States. When the United States is unreliable everything is more volatile.

Do you think that Trump will be impeached?

Impeachment is political, more than it is judicial. It is a question of whether the Congress determines that there have been “high crimes and misdemeanors” by the President and right now we have a Republican controlled Congress until the mid-term. I imagine the President will wake up every morning worrying about the enquiry by the Special Counsel who is examining possible collusion between the Trump entourage (and conceivably the president himself) and Russia. We have indications, but nothing is proven. If there is some kind of smoking gun then it can change, but the Republicans want to try and ride this out for as long as they can, get tax cuts, maybe a new health bill. They want to use the President as long as they can. I would say that the chances of impeachment are fairly low, but it’s not impossible. I would put it at around 10%. Before the appointment of special counsel I would have put it even lower, but if the political alignment of the country changes and more facts emerge then the possibility grows.

Do you think he is going to make disasters in the world?

I don’t know. The situation with Iran is very volatile. We have had the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, saying that the United States is pursuing regime change in Iran. That is a very clear break with Obama’s policy, and even President Bush was not explicit in that way. It is very provocative to say that Iran is an instigator of terrorism. General James Mattis the Defence Secretary, who generally is a voice of sanity, is very hawkish and is very hard on Iran.  And in North Korea they say they have a new missile….

Are the checks and balances of the Constitution working?

I am concerned that Donald Trump has attacked the free press and attacked the independence of the judiciary – the ‘so-called judges’. If something bad happens he could ask for emergency powers of some kind, and the powers of the President are already very great. The checks and balances put in place by the founding fathers have worked until now. A strong press is capable of holding authority to account. There are 600,000 new subscribers to the New York Times in the last six months and that’s very important for the future of the country. More vigilance is required right now than almost at any other time since the creation of the Republic.

Who is this Donald Trump who was elected President of the United States of America?

In the last six months when I travel people all over the world say to me, “Who is this guy?” In my view Donald Trump is a lucky man. He won the election with a few thousand votes, he has escaped the law at various times, and under Donald Trump for six months we have not had a proper global crisis and the stock market is up. Depends how long he can ride the luck.

Why does he want to dismantle everything?

They want to cut down the size of government. The State Department was Hillary Clinton’s department and some of her appointments are still there. There is an ideology on reducing taxation and regulation. It is a very right wing project. The dismantling is to do with that ideology.

Is it all only words, or did he actually achieve anything?

He did withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Does he know what he wants? I am not sure he does. This abandonment of the American idea of human dignity, of the rule of law, of democracy and so forth worries me – the foreign service is a good force in the world and has certain values. The US stands for certain things. Every single day there is this kind of sullying and undermining of the Oval Office and what it represents, and that’s not good. Then there is this almost daily assault on the truth, what is a fact and what is a lie. Donald Trump wants 2+2 to equal 5, for people to be disoriented. Any dictator wants disoriented people. He thinks that the press is an enemy, and he’s an enemy of the press.

Does he want to be a dictator?

He is very comfortable with autocrats. He likes to rule in a very autocratic way and he always did it during his life. He likes it better to be in Saudi Arabia or being around General Sisi in Egypt than in Europe.

What about his relationship with China and with Russia?

Russia is curious because the relationship is simply frozen, it’s paralysed. He never wants to judge Russia because of the allegations and suspicions that the Russians have some material that compromises Trump or his entourage. There can be no criticism so it’s frozen – and that’s not good for global security.

On China he started out with the phone call to Taiwan and now he’s sold a billion dollars of weapons to Taiwan and the Chinese are very angry. Relationships with China are on a roller coaster and there’s no coherence in China policy. They want to contain China, but they don’t really know how to do it. China has been very assertive in the South China Sea – and what was the first thing Donald Trump did? He ripped up the wide ranging Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was much more than a trade deal and was also a strategic deal. His first act was a huge gift to the Chinese and worries the countries that were hedging their bets against China, which was not in the TPP.

Why does Trump want to worry his friends, including the European leaders?

For the last two years we have seen disruption at any cost, the system is broken. We have seen growing inequality, growing anxiety, so just blow it up and who cares. He understood that before anyone else and he wants to shake things up. There were things going wrong in our democracies but to embrace unreliability is pretty dangerous.

Turning to Europe, is the Macron election and Brexit going to change the map?

I am a passionate European. I think that peace in Europe is genius, although of course the EU has faults. After the British decision to leave the EU, Marine Le Pen committed suicide live on TV on the issue of Europe. The French want to remain European and she lost connection with the people. Now there is Macron, and probably Merkel will continue to be elected, and this is a bit of a revival of the European spirit.

How would you characterise Brexit?

The most strange and most conspicuous act of self-harm committed by any country, especially a developed and civilised country, in a very long time.

What is going to happen in the UK? Is Corbyn going to win the next election?

I would be very surprised if Theresa May survived even one more year. The whole situation in Britain is unpredictable and fragile. The people in favour of Brexit argue amongst themselves. Leaving the EU will be very costly and not bring any obvious rewards. The polls suggest that in a new referendum Remain would win. The vote was based on lies, but the vote happened and they will try to negotiate. It is foolish to try to predict what’s going to happen, but I will say that it’s going to be very difficult.

Will there be peace between Israel and Palestine?

I don’t take seriously what the Trump administration is doing, and I don’t believe there will be any change in the Israel Palestinian impasse in the foreseeable future. The Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians may share a hatred of Iran with Israel, and that’s the basis of a rapprochement between them, but that’s just not enough. Netanyahu has to make some concessions to the Palestinians but he will not make them.

And how will Syria conclude?

On Syria I am sorry to be a pessimist, but I believe nothing will happen until Russia and the US, and maybe Iran, are prepared to work together towards stabilisation. And nothing happens in my view until Bashar al-Assad leaves. On Syria, Barak Obama made some very serious mistakes and bears some real responsibility for the current debacle.

Ultimately would you say we are in a mess?

Right now things are holding together somehow. As compared to the 20^th century the main difference is openness. Things happened in closed situations then, and today we have this openness and this hyper connectivity, and there are lots of things happening at non-governmental level. But how do you explain the size of youth unemployment in Spain and Greece in a period of relative stability? The post war institutions that Donald Trump attacks are hanging in there, and I hope we don’t find ourselves in much worse shape. I do think that with Donald Trump we are playing with fire.

And does he know it?

I don’t think he knows to what extent.

What will you be writing about in the future?

The situation in the State Department concerns me a lot, and I will write about that. There is the row that has broken out between the women of the American Jewish community and Netanyahu about men and women praying together and having access to the Western wall. Netanyahu has done what he always does, which is break an agreement.

Does journalism still have life to it?

There hasn’t been a moment like this in American journalism since Watergate. The New York Times has 600,000 new subscribers as I said before, and the Washington Post has revived in the very big Trump story. I think it is an important moment for strong voices.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

July, 2017

Dominican friar Timothy Radcliffe is a member of the community at Blackfriars, Oxford, and was Master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. He is the author of a number of very popular books drawn from his experiences.

There is too much religious fanaticism in the world today. Why?

There is too much fundamentalism, and there are many forms of fundamentalism. The original form was scientific fundamentalism in the middle of the 19^th century. The reaction to that in the American South was Christian fundamentalism. Now we have an enormous problem with religious fundamentalism; Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic – all forms. It’s a characteristic of modernity to tend to fundamentalism, to simple answers and slogans.

But how come there have been so many religious wars over the centuries?

Humanity has had a history of war, and if you have a war you will use everything you can to win it. You use nationalism, you use religion. I’m not sure that it would be true to see religion as the root of war. It’s more the case that human beings have had a culture of violence for several thousand years and have used religion in the promotion of it to justify it.

Hasn’t violence been used to convert people to religion?

Religion was so much part of everybody’s culture that it was more a question of imposing a culture of which religion was part. But you also see rebellion against that. I love Bartolomé de las Casas, who had this great rebellion against slavery when the Spanish conquistadors conquered Hispaniola, saying, “No conquest of these people is justified, in the name of religion or anything.” I agree with you that there’s been a great deal of violence in the name of religion, but there’s also always been religious people resisting violence. My friend Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote a wonderful book recently called Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence. Jonathan shows how in the Old Testament, the Torah, you get a lot of violence, but you also get shifting beyond violence, you also see currents seeking to transcend it. So I think it’s a complex picture.

Why do you think people need religion in their life rather than just spirituality?

Human beings seek some ultimate meaning to their life. We want to know, while we are here, what we are here for.  And that is a meaning that you cannot just pursue alone, you have to pursue it with others. Religion is trying to see how together, in community, we can seek the meaning of our lives. If you’re a Christian, in Jesus we are summoned into community to share a meal with him. You see in Judaism a fundamental role of community, from the Passover to the gathering of the community to pray. In Islam you see the absolutely fundamental concept of the ummah, the community worldwide. We humans are not just individuals, we are communal people who find our meaning in relationships with people; therefore we need to gather in mosques and churches and synagogues, together.

What is religion about?

Is there any ultimate meaning to our lives? We know that the universe came into existence 13.5 billion years ago. We know that we will die. We know that the earth will one day be swallowed up. I knew a man called John Rae. John was headmaster at Westminster School and every day he presided at Vespers in Westminster Abbey and all his life he wondered, ‘Do I believe or not?’ It was the big question. So he asked six Christians, since he was of Christian background, and six atheists, to meet him, to talk for a couple of hours each. We became friends, and he said in the end the question was, when he loved his wife and he loved his children, is there some ultimate meaning? Or is it just a passing emotion? Is it just a feeling of no ultimate importance before we die, or, when we love people, do we find some ultimate significance? In my faith, it’s in the love I have for people and the love that people have for me that I see some sign of the ultimate meaning of what it is to exist. And all my faith is that journey towards that ultimate meaning.

People who are deep believers cross life in a completely different way. Can you learn to have faith?

Yes and no. Everybody has faith in something. People have faith in the importance of love. People have faith in the importance of seeking to reason and to understand. We all have faith in all sorts of things. People have faith in democracy. The division isn’t between people of faith and those who don’t have faith, because we all believe in something. The question is to discover what ultimately is implied by the things we believe in. You have an atheist, like this friend of mine John Rae, and he says, “O, I don’t believe.” And then you discover that he does believe; he believes in the love of his wife, he believes in the love for his children. When I talk about religion I am saying, “Maybe in what you already believe are seeds of something very important.”  Some people believe in God, some people don’t believe in God, but we all have faith in something. If I want to talk to somebody about religion I’ll begin by asking them what they believe in, what moves them, and then slowly you can find a common language.

In general people are living in permanent doubt, and doubt and questioning is a sign of intelligence. Is intelligence to do with faith?  

It is a Catholic tradition that faith and reason are very closely linked.  In the middle of the 19th century we had a great meeting in Rome where it was declared officially that part of the belief of Catholicism is that we believe in reason. Our faith may go beyond reason, but we believe it is never against reason. That’s why Christianity founded Oxford and Cambridge and Paris and Bologna and Madrid universities. Our faith should be as intelligent as we are in other areas. If you have a Nobel Prize winner then he or she should have an intelligent faith. If you have somebody who’s simple and not intellectual, they can have a simple faith. Faith is about trying to understand the ultimate meaning of why we are here, using all our intelligence. They say Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican of my Order, is the greatest philosopher of the West. Philosophy means literally the love of wisdom and any good healthy religion is wise. I value intelligence a great deal, and artistic intelligence too.

Following the religion of love

Do you think that all religions are a means to get to the same place?

Yes, I would be happy to say that, but the place is beyond all our knowledge. Thomas Aquinas said, “We are joined in this world to God as to the Unknown.” Religious fundamentalism happens when religious believers lose all humility, saying, “I’ve got it. I’ve got the truth.” We are all on the way to the one truth.  Ultimately we will find utter happiness and freedom, and it begins now. People talk about this life and the afterlife. I think it’s an unhelpful way of talking. There is eternal life, and eternal life begins now. If we love somebody then eternal life has begun. When we die we enter the full mystery of the love that we already have. It’s not like taking a train from Oxford to London, to die and go somewhere else. Already now, this is what John says in the New Testament, already now, if we love, then eternal life has begun, maybe in a little way.

Pope Francis autographs a book before celebrating Mass at the Swedbank Stadium in Malmo, Sweden. Pope Francis said that the church is not a prop for one’s ego, a soapbox for ideas or a suit of armor protecting a sad life. (CNS photo/Paul Haring).

Is Catholicism a healthy religion today?

I’m a great fan of Pope Francis, who is doing wonderful things. Francis is really pushing the church forward in a much more relaxed, less centralized way. Some people are resisting, particularly some old Cardinals, but I think Francis is leading it in the right way towards freedom and spontaneity. And he’s reaching out to all sorts of communities.

Is Christian faith in search of an inner peace?

That is absolutely crucial. We all go through complex lives, we all live through crises and conflicts and disappointment. The crucial thing is whether you have the inner tranquility. Jesus said, “My peace I give you, not as the world gives, but my peace I give you.” At the heart of our lives has to be that sort of inner peace.

Can you acquire this inner peace with exercises?

You need posture, breathing, and you need silence. I think silence is so important. In Israel we founded a community, a place of peace, which is midway between a Jewish Kibbutz, a Muslim village and a Christian village. We built it in about 1968 when I was a young student and at the center is what they call the house of silence. So all three religions would gather together to be silent. That was the communion. It was intended to be a Jewish Christian Muslim community. With our way of life we have to have at least half an hour a day of silence. It’s the first thing you do in the morning.

How does religion help you to cross human life?

I’m not religious because it helps me. I’m religious because I believe it’s true, because I think it’s a beautiful truth which is the deepest meaning of being alive. I think all religion is an invitation to live. Moses said, “I put before you life and death. Choose life.” If it’s healthy all religion is about choosing to be alive, fully deeply alive.

Why did you decide to become a friar?

When I was at school I was one of the bad boys. I was always smoking in the bushes or trying to find my way to the nearest pub and I was not interested in religion at all. When I left school I made friends with people who weren’t religious, and they said to me: “It’s not true.” For me it all began with that question: Is it true? I had a very naive young idea of truth, but that was what excited me. Is it true? So I read philosophy, and I began to read a bit of theology, and I became a Dominican because the motto is Veritas – Truth. I hope a humble truth, but Truth. I joined the Order, first of all because of intellectual curiosity. I want to think, I want to study. No area of conversation is forbidden. I really finally made the commitment because it seemed to me my brothers were gloriously happy and they were living. And I said, “Yes, this is a life.”

You took three vows, of poverty, chastity and obedience. What is the purpose of chastity?  

The vow of chastity only has any sense if it liberates you to love many people. If it stops you loving it is destructive. I always tell the brethren when they’re young and they join and they say, “Ooh, how are we going to be able to cope?” I say, “If it stops you loving, leave the Order, don’t stay, because you have got to have a heart. It’s only your vocation if it helps you to be loving and available, free.”

And with the vow of poverty did you give up all your belongings?

Yes, but you share your belongings, everything belongs to the community. The only exception in our case is books, because we study a lot and everybody has their books, but nobody really has a private car or any private furniture. Poverty is about simplicity, not about being poor, about having a simple life so that you’re not imprisoned by possessions.

The third vow you took is obedience. Who do you have to obey?

The community. Most decisions are taken by all the brothers, so it’s not a blind obedience. The whole process begins with discussion. If the community of Dominicans of Britain say to me, “We want you to go to Cornwall,” I will say, “Why? Let’s discuss it. Is it a good idea?” Obedience comes from the Latin word ob-audiens which means to listen deeply. Judaism has a profound sense of obedience as listening.

How do you bring faith?

The first thing to do is to engage with the creative people. We best spread the faith by being in conversation with the gifted people; the musicians, the poets, the artists, the filmmakers. If we engage with them we will share what we believe and they will share what they believe. I think there’s a deep link between creativity and religious thought. A wonderful Dominican called Marie-Alain Couturier founded a magazine called Le Sacré in the beginning of the 20^th Century. When he wanted to build a church he got Le Corbusier to design Notre Dame du Haut. Le Corbusier was not a Catholic, but Couturier said, “It doesn’t matter. He is the best architect.” And he got Georges Braque and all sorts of people to participate.

Is this the way religion will come back to Europe?

I think there are two big ways. One is what is through that sort of artistic creative engagement. The other is through contact with the poorest. We should be the people who remember the poorest and work with them with commitment to hospitals, medical care and development. Half the hospitals in Africa are run by the church.

What is your view of modernity?

I think that modernity is mixed. It has many blessings. I would not be alive if it was not for modern science, so I give thanks for modern science and modern medicine, and I love astrophysics, but at the same time in many ways modernity is a bit narrow, it’s a bit blinkered.

Don’t you think the modern world deserves a modern religion?

I think we have to get beyond thinking of holiness as being primarily about obeying rules. Holiness is about living and the virtues, becoming virtuous and strong. I don’t think there will be a new religion, because the old religions become new.

Do you believe there will be changes inside the old religions?

Let’s pray for friendship between the religions, not sibling rivalry. Pope Francis has a lovely quotation from Saint Irenaeus of the 2^nd century who says, “Christ comes to us in newness.” If you look at the different religions they’re always evolving, they’re always adapting, and they’re always becoming new. Sometimes in a negative way. Islamic fundamentalism is a very negative form of newness, but there’s always evolution, always change.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

Oxford, 2017

The Dominican Friars – England & Scotland

The British politician and author Stanley Johnson is an expert on environmental and population issues.  As a United Kingdom (UK) Member of the European Parliament (MEP) he was also a dedicated believer in the United Europe concept and he campaigned for the UK to Remain a member of the European Union (EU). His six children include the former Mayor of London, leading Brexit campaigner and current Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, and Jo Johnson, the Minister of State for Universities and Science.

Stanley, in your just published political novel Kompromat you very amusingly satirise how the leaders of the world conspired to bring about Brexit.  Is writing fiction the best way to express your political point of view?

I haven’t used my novels as a way of making a political point.  My main objective in writing novels is to produce something readable and entertaining, and I am hoping that Kompromat will be precisely that.  Those who read my novels may find in them political messages with which they can agree or disagree.  In Kompromat I suggest that Russian involvement in the electoral process featured not only in the US Presidential election – as various Congressional Committees are now investigating – but also in the UK’s European Referendum.  If that idea was seriously investigated in the UK, as opposed to being the subject of my kind of topical satirical fiction, and if it was established that the Russians did indeed interfere, including by colluding with highly-placed UK officials, then there would be direct political consequences for the current Brexit negotiations.  There might even be calls for the Referendum to be rerun, with who knows what result!

In Kompromat today’s politicians play with the most serious world issues, reminding one of Charlie Chaplin’s Hitler in his movie The Great Dictator. Why do you make fun of today’s politics? 

My overwhelming objective in writing Kompromat is to entertain.  I want people to enjoy this book.  It may be satirical as well, but it is not intended to be destructively cynical.  It exposes some abuses of the political system in a light-hearted way, but I certainly am not arguing that we should dispense with political processes which have served us well.

How much are you a writer, how much a conservationist, and how much a politician?

My career followed all three paths simultaneously, sometimes the paths overlap.  When I was in the European Parliament I saw politics as a tool to pursue, among other things, my environmental interests.  In the period when I was a Member of the European Parliament, from 1979 to 1984, the Parliament sometimes pressed the Commission to come forward with nature protection legislation which it might not otherwise have proposed.  Kompromat is my tenth novel, but I have also written 15 non-fiction works.  Two of these are memoirs, the other 13 books all deal with environmental topics, including population.  The issue of population growth, and what to do about it, has been central to my non-fiction writing.  What a tragedy it is that population and family planning is no longer at the top of the political agenda.

As the father of six children, is a sense of humour the strongest bond in your family and the key to your own success?

Well, the sense of humour is certainly a strong bond!  I think we all love each other too in our various ways. I don’t regard myself as a success except I have tried to make the most of the opportunities which have come my way.  Looking back, it certainly helps to be able to see the brighter side of things.  On the other hand, if you are addicted to jokes, as I am, people can sometimes forget that you can be serious too.  I am responsible for such learned works as “The Environmental Policy of the European Communities” and “World Population and the United Nations”.

You have very different political views from your son Boris, who was a leader of the Vote Leave campaign that led to Brexit and is now the UK Secretary of State for Foreign affairs. Do you quarrel with him?

No, we absolutely don’t quarrel.  I totally respect Boris’s position on Brexit.  He took the view that in the long run Britain will be better off outside the EU and there is absolutely no way at this point in time of proving he is wrong,  Anyway, more than 18 million people agreed with him!  We are where we are.  Chou En-lai was asked, sometime in the 1970s, what he thought about the French Revolution, and he replied: “It is too early to tell!” Fifty years from now, we may look back at the period 1973-2017 as Britain’s European Union (EU) period, and be able to see it in the context of this country’s 1000 year history.  That said, the process of disengagement is certainly fraught and we all hope we can get it over with as soon as possible.

What influence do you have on Boris and on your other son Jo, the UK Minister for Universities and Science?

This is a question for Boris and Jo to answer, not me.  I doubt whether I have had much influence on any of my six children.  The most useful thing I did was to send them off at an early age to some of England’s finest schools (Eton the four boys, and St Paul’s the two girls) followed by England’s finest Universities, Oxford, Cambridge and University College, London.

Do you consider the Johnsons a bit of a political dynasty, like the Kennedys or the Ghandis?

I hope not!  As I remember it, most of the Kennedys and the Gandhis came to unfortunate ends!

Are you still personally involved in politics?

Not in the sense of being an elected Member of Parliament or even a non-elected member of the House of Lords. In the run-up to the Referendum I founded and co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe (E4E), arguing that the UK’s environment would be better protected if we stayed in the EU, and I still have a great deal to do with environmental and animal welfare non-governmental organisations (NGOs).  If you want to get something done, the political process is the best route in our kind of democracy.  If you can’t own the political process by being Prime Minister or a Cabinet Member, then the next best is to work through media and other outlets to achieve the political atmosphere that allows the goals you aim at to be attained.

What role should politics play in this world?

As Churchill put it, “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

In your youth you travelled the world with your motorcycle and sidecar. If you repeated this trip today would you find a very different world?

It would not be easy nowadays to travel on a motorcycle through Asia as I did in 1961, but I suspect that in some parts of the world, e.g.  Eastern Turkey, life would be much as it was over fifty years ago.  What worries me is the sheer impact of population growth and economic development on the environment.

Are the leaders of the world rightly perceived as cartoon characters?

Today’s cartoonists are totally brilliant.  Of course today’s political leaders are cartooned, but that doesn’t make them cartoon characters.  Most of them try hard. Unfortunately they are often faced with impossible situations.  Take the migration crisis in Italy today.  From Italy’s point of view the situation is clearly intolerable.  It cannot be sustained without help from other EU countries and that help is not forthcoming.  In the not too distant future, Europe will have to close its borders and bring the ‘rescue’ operations to an end.

What do you think should be the most important quality for a leader today? 

Vision.  The ability to synthesize.  A sense of history.  An understanding of the fundamental realities of what sustainable development means, even if that implies radical changes in the way we live.

Do you think that people feel removed from the politicians of today because they are less meaningful and responsible than those of previous generations?

No, I think there are a lot of serious thoughtful people in politics.  Some of them have written good books and added to the sum of knowledge.  We are lucky in our leaders.

What kind of a future do you imagine for the United Kingdom?

It is too early to say whether Brexit will work.  Before Brexit, you could argue that Britain was well placed with (a) the US-UK relationship (b) the Commonwealth and (c) Europe.  We will still have (a) and (b).  The US-UK relationship will still be central. It remains to be seen how we will organize the relationship with Europe.

The former Prime Minister David Cameron never thought he would lose the Brexit referendum. Do you think Boris never thought he could win, and was amazed and surprised by the result?

I watched Boris and Michael Gove on TV when the results were announced.  They definitely  seemed surprised!  As for David Cameron, I don’t want to give the plot of Kompromat away, but maybe he wasn’t as surprised as he seemed to be!

You have had a lifelong concern for animal species, including gorillas, elephants and tigers. Do you think that they are in as much danger as we humans?

There is absolutely no danger of the human race becoming extinct in the foreseeable future. If the human race eventually disappeared, from the point of view of the rest of creation it would probably be a desirable outcome, given the mess we make of things. Human beings are but one of millions of species.  Our little systems have their day. They have their day and cease to be. Of course, we must do our best while we are here and not try to screw things up too much.

You treat very serious matters with hilarity, but is there both laughter and disappointment in you?

Lots of laughter.  No disappointment.  It would be quite obscene if I claimed to be disappointed.  Given the fact that real anguish or hardship has so far passed me by, I would be ashamed if I didn’t get up in the morning with a smile on my face.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

London, July 2017

Kompromat

Stanley Johnson, author of Kompromat, on BBC World News

Images of Stanley Johnson and guests at the Kompromat book launch in London by Mark Rusher.

President of Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia (The Rowing and Sailing Club Italia) in Naples’ Santa Lucia neighbourhood.

You participated in the 1972 Olympics in Munich as a member of the Italian sailing team. You had a nine-metre boat called “Soling” with a three-person crew.

Yes, and in 1976 we participated in the Olympics on Lake Ontario with the “Tempest,” a two-person boat that was about seven metres long. Unfortunately we lost both times. The year before we’d won the World Championships, and all of the regattas we competed in. We were undoubtedly the strongest team. My teammate was Giuseppe Milone, who is also from Naples.

A 17-year-old Roberto Mottola carrying the flag of the Italian team at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Kiel (Munich, 1972), where he represented his country for sailing.

Did you stop competing then?

We continued with our activities and we took up with another type of boat, the “Flying Dutchman” and then the “Star”, which at the time was considered the Olympic class par excellence. We did a few regattas with a boat called “Umberta” and suddenly we found ourselves second in the 1987 World Championships in Capri where 120 boats were participating.

Why did you stop?

Sailing started to change because the professionals came on the scene. Our rivals were no longer adversaries who were also our friends. They were professional adversaries, and this changed the relationships we had. Neither Giuseppe nor I wanted to be professionals. For us sailing was a game that we were passionate about, and that’s why we did it.

Roberto Mottola and Giuseppe Milone came in second place at the International Star World Championships held in Capri, Italy, 1986.

When did this passion of yours begin?

When I was thirteen. My uncle took me out on a sailboat after he’d spent a summer in Formia repairing the boat at my grandparents’ house. When we become passionate about things we are able to do them well, and they stay with us for life.

You’ve never left sailing?

No, I’ve never left it. It is the common thread of my life. I became part of the Consiglio Federale della Vela (FIV) because they saw I was skilled.

Optimist regatta for children, Naples, 2015

You’ve been the president of the Rowing and Sailing Club Italia of Naples, one of the most prestigious clubs in Italy, for about ten years now. Why did you take on this role?

I am president because they wanted to have someone competent in the sport as the head of the sailing and rowing club, and they elected me. It was a source of pride to accept because I have strong ties to the club, and because of what it has represented to me from the time when I was young.

The club’s main salon, 2017

What does it represent to you?

It is a sporting club, and therefore there are examples of people older than us who started before us and taught us the technical and behavioural aspects, especially discipline, and they taught us the rules of the sport. Essentially a respect for values that, unfortunately, no longer exist today. When special interests come into play, any and all morals go out the window.

Roberto Mottola on the “Kipawa,” which won at the Vele d’Epoca (Classic Yachts Challenge) in 2011 in Naples

What does your role at the club entail?

I coordinate the activities to do with being initiated into sailing and rowing, getting the kids started with their growth in the sport. Our club has boats and equipment, and there are instructors and assistants. Our members finance all of this, even though not all of them are sportsmen or sportswomen.

Does the club take part in and win regattas?

Children age seven and up can take part in and win regattas. Francesco de Angelis, who was the skipper of “Il Moro di Venezia” and then “Luna Rossa”, grew up in the club and still has his membership card. He went on to become a professional.

How many members are there?

About 950, and then there are about 100 youngsters who do sailing and rowing.

Optimist regatta for children, Naples, 2015

Have the rules changed a lot over the years in terms of sailing and boats?

The approach to the sport has changed. In many cases, today, it’s a professional activity as I said before. The Olympics have now become extremely acrobatic, and the boats are such that someone my age can no longer participate in regattas. Today’s boats are exclusively for youngsters and they are boats that put on a big show. The Kite is like a parachute. The deep-sea boats are completely different. Today’s boats go really fast, they fly over the water, and if the sea is exceptionally rough they can withstand incredible pressure. It feels like being in a blender. For example, Soldini and those like him who do these ocean crossings or go round the world, head towards low pressure using the instruments they have available to seek out more wind. We however used to try to avoid low pressure. These sudden changes happened with new technologies, composite materials like carbon, titanium. Today’s boat masts are all made in carbon.

A club regatta in the 1940s.

Which shipyards make the most beautiful boats?

In my opinion the man who brought new inspiration to the world of modern sailing is Luca Bassani, with his Wally Yachts. It is as if he turned what was in everyone’s imagination into reality. These are boats that are really technical, elegant, super sophisticated, and yet really robust. Willy Persico’s Southern Wind boats from South Africa are another type that are truly exceptional; and then there are the famous Swan boats that now belong to Leonardo Ferragamo. He bought the entire prestigious archive of Camper and Nicholson, who were the most famous boat designers for years.

Could we say that today sailing has become a sport that is even more popular and has more of a following?

Yes. It is much more popular and accessible to all. For example, our boats at the club are for all the kids, with the best ones assigned to those who are the most deserving.

Roberto Mottola and Giuseppe Milone winners at the Tempest World Championship, Lake Ontario, United States, 1975.

In your opinion, what characteristics are necessary to become a good sailor?

One of them is to have the famous “sea legs,” in the sense of being able to adapt to the movement of the boat along with the movement of the sea. You need to know the sea well. You need to know how to handle and feel the waves. Admiral Agostino Straulino, who was born in Dalmatia, was a legend in Italian sailing in the 1950s and 1960s. He would go out at night to get used to being more in tune with the wind and the sea. You need to be able to get in sync with them when making tactical choices in a regatta. It is a very sophisticated process that you learn, day after day, regatta after regatta, crossing after crossing. It is all tied to a mechanism, so one must really concentrate and be ready to make the right choice at the right time.

Do you sometimes get scared while sailing?

At times, yes. Sometimes you may be afraid. You need to respect the sea. You need to know that you can’t go beyond certain limits, and you need to know your own.

Are there a lot of sailing accidents?

Not many if we think about how many regatta competitors there are around the world. Safety has made giant leaps forward.

The club’s “Sally”, Naples, 1950

In a world that is motorised, computerised, and technological, is there still room for a romantic view of sailing?

Yes, because even though the world is going 200 kilometres per hour, one can still get the same pleasure from sailing. Some sailing aficionados, a husband and wife, for example, go out in a small boat with sandwiches and beer for the sheer pleasure of sailing, and this will never change.

Is it difficult to learn to sail?

No. Italy is full of sailing schools. All of the clubs affiliated with the Sailing Federation have the duty to promote the popularisation of sailing among children and adults. For example, they will let you get on a boat where they will teach you the basic principles. The most famous school in Italy is Caprera, while the most famous one in France is Les Glénans.

The Rowing and Sailing Club Italia, 1950

At the beginning, you talked about discipline. Is this what sailing teaches us?

What I meant was that those of us who sail, like all athletes for that matter, have the duty to pass certain values down to future generations. The value of respect and rules, of respect for others, of painstaking discipline in the handling of the boat, the sail and all of the elements. You need to take care of a boat with a great deal of attention, and even children must do this as well.

Do you still go out sailing?

Yes, I’ve done some regattas in the last few years, like the Swan Cup last year in Porto Cervo with my friend and club member Riccardo Pavoncelli. I really enjoy taking the helm because a boat crew needs coordination between the people and the boat as well as among all the people. I like to be at the helm because it’s a place where I feel comfortable. Though I was born in Naples, when it comes to the sea, I love being on the sea but not in the water. Like all true sailors.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

The designer Luisa Beccaria’s aesthetic and style has taken shape through beautiful dresses, often shown among art galleries and enchanted gardens. Her haute couture collections with lustrous fabrics and exceptional quality demonstrate her inspired creativity on the catwalks in Paris and Rome, and all around the world her clothes seduce highly influential women. Luisa works alongside her daughter, Lucilla Bonaccorsi, and together they create a continuous dialogue in which Mediterranean impressions from their beloved Sicily meet the heart rending concreteness of Milan.

Family portrait at Feudo del Castelluccio, Luisa Beccaria with her husband, Lucio Bonaccorsi di Reburdone with their children: Lucilla, Lucrezia, Luna, Ludovico and Luchino. (ph. Bringheli)

Luisa, you are from a very important historical Milanese family. You married a Sicilian prince, Lucio Bonaccorsi di Reburdone, have been married for 30 years and have 5 children. How do you find space for your fashion work?

I started designing when I was very very young. I was into aesthetics in general. Nature was one of my passions and I spent a lot of time in my childhood in a family country house in the north of Italy where my father had a farm. At the same time I always had a deep love for the south of Italy. When I was seven years old we made a tour of Italy and Sicily by car and during the trip I wrote a diary about the contrasts in nature and in the surroundings. I had this love for the south, including going to the south of Spain, to Capri and to Greece. As a young person I studied literature and thought I would become a scholar or university professor, but I was very attracted by designing clothes and when I was around 20 years old I showed them in Piero Fornasetti’s art gallery. When I asked him why he wanted to show my dresses, he said this girl has a lot of energy and a special taste. That’s why he wanted to make an exhibition of my dresses, and I must say it was really fun. Everything was sold in a few days and since then I did many exhibitions in other galleries or odd places, like for instance the Palazzo Sacchetti in Rome.

Luisa and Lucio Bonaccorsi, the ball in Castelluccio celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary

You restored the 17^th century castle in Castelluccio in Sicily near Noto (Syracuse) that belonged to your husband’s family. Is this now your home?

It is very much home, even if I don’t live here all the time it occupies a certain room in my spirit. The fact that it exists and has been restored to a new life makes this place alive, more than anything else as an attitude, a dimension.

Feudo del Castelluccio, view from the upstairs terrace

How did you learn to restore the very beautiful environment of Castellucio?

I have always followed my own vision but different people of great style have been important for me. One person who was really important to me was Teddy Middleton Drake. We had a strong friendship and he helped me very much at the beginning of the restoration. Sadly he died, it was a real loss for me.

Luisa Beccaria modelling her first creations, 1982

How did you start your haute couture venture?

I opened my first showroom in Milan in via Fiori Chiari. I had married Lucio and was pregnant with my first child when I opened my first small shop in the Brera neighbourhood. At that time fashion was very different.

The woods charmer, Luisa Beccaria 2017/18 collection

What is your style of fashion?

My fashion is very feminine, new romantic, fresh and sophisticated. Even if people at that time were dressed in simple black minimalist clothes my style had fans. I had my first child, Lucilla, and mainly the American market was very interested in my work. We received a certain success, but I didn’t develop it, I didn’t want to push for too much growth in the beginning. I was prudent and afraid of getting into trouble. I wanted some nice clothing to dress my children well and when my second daughter, Lucrezia, was born I opened a second store of children’s clothing. When Ludovico, my third child, arrived – we called our son Ludovico because every one of us has names like mine and my husband’s that start with L U, because my name is Luisa and my husband’s is Lucio – when Ludovico  arrived I received an invitation from Paris for haute couture. At that point I opened an atelier and I had been showing haute couture in Paris for three or four years regularly when Luna, my fourth child, arrived.  I couldn’t present my collection because she was born on the day of the haute couture show in Paris.  I had to justify my absence by writing a letter and I was allowed to jump a season. In the meanwhile I had other offers of positions with famous labels.

Luisa during her Couture Show in Paris, 1994

Were you offered the job of artistic director of Chloé?

Yes, and other things, and I realised that some things were moving around. My husband and I felt that we were ready to have distribution to other stores and to start to become more accessible to a larger public. I wanted keep the quality of haute couture but also make the clothes more accessible, to have a complete creative circle.

Luisa Beccaria and Lucio Bonaccorsi di Reburdone during their wedding day

Did your husband help you in your work?

In the beginning he helped me to translate my creativity into something more profitable, but coming from his background as a gentleman farmer this business was too much of a change for his system of thinking. He encouraged me to develop from haute couture into something more accessible, prêt-à–couture or demi-couture, making a special order for a customer from a department store. At that point we started selling into the Middle East market, to Russia and to America, and we had royal families among our clients and we started dressing a lot of movie stars.

Angelina Jolie wearing Luisa Beccaria in American Vanity Fair

Which movie stars for instance?

From Nicole Kidman to Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Eva Green, many, and we also had several covers of magazines, for instance with Kate Winslet. They wanted to be unique by wearing our products, which had not been seen so much.

Angelina Jolie wearing Luisa Beccaria in American Vanity Fair

Did you also dress Camilla Parker Bowles?

I can’t say that because I have never actually met her, but she did wear something of mine and also Queen Rania of Jordan did.

Luisa and her three daughters, Lucilla, Luna and Lucrezia, wearing Autumn Winter collection 2017 (ph. G. Gastel)

Can we say that each new child brought something?

Yes. When my fifth child Luchino arrived I thought that the older children could help to take care of the younger ones, and so, after being reticent to travel for many years because of the children, I started travelling a lot more, to London, to the United States and the Middle East, and this helped our work very much.

Luisa and Lucilla, mother and daughter fashion duo. (ph. G. Gastel)

Does your daughter Lucilla work with you now?

Yes, she started by sitting next to me when she was a child and became more involved and looked at the way I was working. Somehow she used to be my muse, but now she truly works with me. Until now we are a family owned business, but we are considering having a partner. Our work is not just producing temporarily fashionable collections.  What we are recognised for is that we invented a certain incredibly recognisable style. Many other brands who did not do sophisticated clothing like ours are doing things today that are very similar to ours, whereas for many years we were quite different. Luckily all women can understand us now.

Kate Winslet wearing Luisa Beccaria on the cover of American Glamour

Is your clothing very expensive?

We kept it very high end, because we were not able to produce a lot and a certain level of price protected the business. Now we are considering a younger line with easier prices on pieces that have the most success. The world has changed a lot since we began, everything is quick on the internet. Our pieces are much easier to find and we are also online, because there are some very hot and cool websites like Moda Operandi which was started by Lauren Santo Domingo. You can make special orders online, where you access the entire collection and you can order from any place in the world. The same happens with Matches Fashion, for years the most exclusive boutique in London, and then they became a cult boutique website online. Each designer has their key looks of the season online. It is a very new way to sell, a new way of passing a message, because selling expensive pieces is not like selling sneakers. In order not to be only virtual we also have a large store in Brera area of Milan, with many different collections so you can touch and feel the real product. Our showroom is next door to the store and communicates with it. It used to be a garage where mechanics repaired cars and motorcycles, one of the very few industrial buildings in the centre of Milan. We also sell through stores worldwide and do previews of our collections around the world and by doing these shows we have met many famous women who became our clients.

Helena Bonham Carter wearing Luisa Beccaria

Has Melania Trump been one of your clients?

And J.Lo, and also Madonna is one of our clients. These women are beautiful but each is very different, one from the other. I believe that producing fashion is a way of creating and communicating a way of life.

Luisa Beccaria’s Spring Summer 2016 Fashion Show

Which is your way of life?

It changes a little according to the changes of society, but there is always the same very strong poetical look.

Is it quite rare in the world of fashion to preserve family values, marriage and romantic style?

Right now the big corporations of luxury goods are in everybody’s mind and “lux” has only been available through big names and big corporations. But this has killed it, with the same products all over the world, so there is a new desire, even in countries like China, for something more niche. Lux is becoming more difficult to reach, which means that it is a good moment for us to take advantage with a wider range of products. My children are coming out with another theme of this lifestyle and besides Lucilla, who works with me as I said, two other children started a business with little food trucks where they sold very special Sicilian food products around Italy. They opened the LùBar in Milan, which is a bistro in the Villa Reale, the modern art museum in Via Palestro.

Details of Luisa Beccaria table in Castelluccio

If I understand well, aesthetics guide your life, but do you feel part of the Milan fashion system?

Yes, after always being outside and doing the shows in Paris, little by little it became inevitable.

Do you think Milan is still a very important place for fashion?

Yes. Milan is stronger for product manufacturing, Paris is more about niche products, ideas and lux. Milan did very well in the world of creativity and it has recreated itself in a very interesting way. I have travelled all over the world, but I can say that the quality of the work in Milan, the level of professionality, is extremely high, and it is very good to collaborate with people there.

A nymph affair, Spring Summer 2017 fashion show

Is Paris still the centre of fashion?

Paris is always Paris, even if terrorism has terribly damaged travel to the city, and also because many wealthy people had to leave France for tax reasons, but people in the business from all over the world go to Paris Fashion Week.

How did you become Luisa Beccaria?

When I was a teenager I went to London a lot. London was really swinging then and there was a lot to see in the street that gave you energy. Now London has become much more financially oriented and demanding.

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

Sicily, August 2017

We have scrambled eggs with the conductor Gianandrea Noseda in the Lincoln Center restaurant.  Noseda is a tall man with an athletic look and he has very polite manners.

Live from the Met.

“I am in New York to conduct the new production of Prince Igor by Borodin and I am here for another production of Andrea Chénier in March.”

How long ago you did you start working with the Met?

I started in 2002 with another epic Russian opera, War and Peace by Prokofiev. Since then I have been coming regularly. I have conducted five Verdi productions. This year will be my longest visit to America, over three months. I will go to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and I am doing a seven concert tour taking in Naples, Florida; Houston, Texas and Washington DC with the Israel Philharmonic.

Your career started in Spain and then in England after your studies at the Conservatorio di Milano?

Yes, but I never lost my connection with my country through my connection with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi  and The Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai – that was until 2007, when I accepted to become Musical Director of the Teatro Regio in Turin.

Which means what?

To have responsibility for an important opera house.  My wish was to increase the international visibility of the Teatro Regio, starting by recording DVDs and CDs, and also by developing international activity with tours that have taken us as far afield as Japan, Germany, Austria and Spain.

How is the Teatro Regio orchestra today?

They have developed enormously and today they can compete on a world musical market because we can deliver very high quality.  But we have to let people know this!

What about Italian orchestras in general?

In the last fifteen years their level has increased in a very significant way.

Is the Met orchestra superior?

I cannot say that.  But it is certain that for fifty years they have given the highest quality, and even more. From Mahler and Toscanini up to James Levine have conducted it.

What is the job of a conductor?

To motivate, to involve people, so that they embrace the vision that the conductor has of a specific piece of music.

What is your favourite piece of music?

The piece I am conducting.  Because I have to concentrate my love, my passion, my energy.

What about Italian opera?

Of course Italian operas have a privileged place in my heart.  If I have to pick only one composer I will pick Verdi. The operas I would take with me to a desert island would be Macbeth, Don Carlos and Otello.

What is the most important opera you have conducted?

We have to understand which one of the operas has changed the history of opera. For sure Don Giovanni (Mozart), Don Carlos (Verdi), Tristan and Isolde (Wagner). These operas have changed the future development of the operas that came after.

Do you know who your public is?

Opera belongs to everyone.  In the audience you can find people belonging to very different social classes and ages. Opera reflects all the possible emotions that a human being can experience. All palates are catered to in each opera. Opera is like a mirror where everyone can see himself or herself to be challenged by one of the characters. You may find your self on stage.  Opera should not be considered a museum piece.  Opera is alive.

What kind of a relationship does the conductor have with the singers?

When you take up the project of an opera as a conductor you try to detect who are the best singers for each character of that specific opera and you try to get them.  What I personally try to do is to imagine a particular voice for the character and preferably I try to invite that singer, even if they have never interpreted that character before.

Today are there still any stars on the level of Callas, Pavarotti or Domingo?

There are very good singers today. In terms of the star system it is very difficult to compete with the ones you mentioned. To call them stars is difficult, but time will judge. There are several good singers coming from Russia and the Eastern European countries. There is a very good school in North America and also good singers are coming from Latin America and Spanish countries.  In Italy we have very good talents but we do not market them well.  All types of voices: soprano, mezzo soprano, tenor, baritone, bass, are equally important in every opera.  In the imagination of the public at large tenors and sopranos were always the stars.

Do you sometimes fight with the singers?

No, I don’t fight, but if I don’t understand the particular interpretation of something I ask, “Why?”  If they have a good reason I respect their ideas.

Which is the best orchestra today?

To name the Number One is difficult, a bit unfair and almost impossible.  But, according to a questionnaire of Gramophone Magazine, in the top positions we have: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony and Budapest Festival Orchestra.

What is your ambition Maestro?

My ambition is to conduct the best orchestras in the best theatres of the world, for the only reason that I want to be inspired and to learn what to do in order to raise the level of the musical institution that I am in charge of and to put it on the same high level. I want to bring my experience back to my country.

But your country does not invest much in culture and theatre?

We should increase the sponsorship of companies and single people, making them feel enthusiastic about opera.  Italy is still regarded as a cradle of the arts and we should take advantage of that and take our work all over the world.

Is Torino a good city for music?

Yes, it is. There is a seriousness and a sense of responsibility and I really appreciate the city.  What I think is still missing is the courage and the enthusiasm to present itself in a wider environment: the world. More courage to open doors.

Are there many good conductors today?

Yes, many, and coming from different countries.  There is a new mid-generation of conductors.

What kind of a job is it?

Very rewarding in terms of emotional and artistic satisfaction when everything goes well.

What are the qualities that a conductor should have?

Very deep musical knowledge, a bit of psychological attitude, and first of all, endless energy to convey all the forces involved in a performance.  To get the great goal that is serving the music and the composer.

What kind of a life is yours?

A normal life.  But I need discipline and a particular ability to never give up, and also a childish attitude to be surprised.  There is a lot of work, and most of the work is sitting alone with the score, spending time. One has to get a relationship.  It should become part of your life.  But the most demanding element is to listen with your inner ear what you read in the score, without recording. Then you have to convey this idea of sound to the orchestra and, when it is opera, also with the singers. The rehearsal process is compact and short compared with the time the conductor spends learning the score.

Where do you do your homework?

Where there is a table, a small desk, an eraser and a pencil.

New York
February 18^th 2014

Fashion designer Bella Freud was born in London and studied in Rome. She is renowned for her signature jumpers Je t’aime Jane, Ginsberg is God and 1970. Fans of Bella Freud include Alexa Chung, Laura Bailey, Kate Moss and Alison Mosshart.

You just came back to London after being in LA. Do you consider California the centre of creativity today?

No, but something is happening there. Lots of people are moving to LA. I have only being going in the last 6 years, but it’s very soothing and quite stimulating, and I enjoy the languid feeling. They have great vintage shops, the museums have all sorts of good things, it is fun.  I like going somewhere relaxing with a chance of finding something extra special for an idea.

You have dedicated your professional life to fashion, working with Vivienne Westwood and then creating your own label in a world of conglomerates. How would you describe your work?

I think that because I am still not owned by a big conglomerate it’s quite easy to have the benefits of feeling I am a separate entity. I don’t have the infrastructure of those big companies. For the last 15 years I have worked in an unconventional way, making small collections, but in a way, just by calling it “a collection”, you can make it something. In 2003 I had no backers and no investors, I just carried on making knitwear, doing some journalism, and making two short films. About five years ago, when I had investment from bankers, things changed.

How did this investment come about?

The real reason was that Laura Bailey suggested I needed this person to back me, and when I met Peter Dubens he just liked my work and the way I did it. We got on very well and he proposed to be my business partner.  It has been a real success working with him. To have a business partner who gives you support but recognises it is not their business is the right balance. When he invested my business grew 1200 percent in the first season! Doing things my own way seemed to be paying off.

Interior of Bella Freud’s store at 49 Chiltern Street, Marylebone, London

Would you like to become part of a large group?

It’s hard to imagine, but who knows. My concern would be to keep individuality. I would like to be able to keep it under my control.

Do you consider that nowadays there is a particular British fashion style?

British style is to do with not being overly concerned about what people think are good or bad results, a kind of lack of concern of if you are correct or not. Your ideas shrink down if you are too preoccupied with being smart or acceptable. British people have a weird lack of respect for convention, which I believe is quite creative.

Is London a good city for fashion?

Yes, it’s very tense, which is good for working. There’s a lot going on and it’s exciting. There are such interesting people everywhere. It is a great place to live.

Who are the designers who have influenced you the most?

The first person was Coco Chanel. When I was 19 I read a book about her and was fascinated with the way she changed everything. And then, through Loulou de la Falaise, I became very interested in Yves St Laurent. And then I worked for Vivienne Westwood as her assistant.

What did you learn?

Especially from Chanel, I was learning how to use everything in your life as part of your work. For instance, I liked the way she appropriated the Duke of Westminster’s clothes into her designs. She never ever thought you can’t do that, or people won’t like that. She tried everything, especially the use of jersey and other fabrics for high fashion, and Vivienne did that in a different way as well. They had no constraints, and Yves St Laurent also did things that people had never done before. I am not trying to be new, but I feel I must push myself forward as far as I can go, all the time.

You were recently touched by the untimely death of your friend Anita Pallenberg, whose husband Keith Richards wrote his biography with your husband James Fox. How did Anita strike you?

I was terribly touched and moved by her death. She was the first person I hero worshipped.  I saw her on the cover of a newspaper when I was 12. I thought she shone out and was so beautiful, I was fascinated.  When I saw the film “Performance” I was obsessed with her. We became friends when I lived in Rome in the early 80s. We worked together and she was very, very good about fashion; artistic and creative, with a very rigorous point of view. Nothing weak got past her, ever. If something was not a strong idea she was dismissive and contemptuous. She was never taken in by gloss, and had a brilliant eye. She would see something that no one else was seeing. She was great.

LONDON, ENGLAND – DECEMBER 09: Bella Freud (L) and Kate Moss attend the Bella Freud store launch in Marylebone on December 9, 2015 in London, England.
Pic Credit: Dave Benett

You are also friends with Kate Moss, like Anita was. Do they have something in common?

Kate is incredible. They both have a complete star quality, and an irreverence, incredible energy and curiosity as well. I met Kate because she agreed around 1996/7 to be in one of my shows, and we became friends. She is extraordinarily fascinating and very funny, so full of life, and interested in everything rather than just being an object of interest.

What is your idea of chic, of elegance today?

I never have a formula. It is always to do with the person and their lack of rules about how things can be worn. People wearing strange things almost by mistake can be very elegant. For instance, the other day I saw a strange looking person asking for money in the street and he looked amazing. He certainly had not tried to be chic, but he was incredibly stylish. My friend Amanda Harlech looks very beautiful, adorable, chic. The kind of thing that makes you melt when you look at her.

You come from a very creative family, you are the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud the inventor of psychoanalysis, the daughter of Lucian Freud the great artist, the sister of the novelist Esther Freud who wrote “Hideous Kinky” about your gypsy trip to Morocco when you were very young, and you married the writer and journalist James Fox.  Has this influenced your own work?

I suppose with my father I was influenced by his way of working, by his dedication to his work, especially if I was sitting for him. If it didn’t go well, he went on and on until it was right. I found it a very useful example of not giving up. I remember him persevering and trying and trying again. For me, the right thing never comes from inspiration; it comes from the habit of working. I sit down with no ideas and do all the things I know and eventually something works. I try to catch it and ride on the back of it, and after a while it becomes possible to harness it quite quickly. Action is crucial, doing something to coax out the right thing. One other thing to do with my great grandfather is that I am producing a new perfume called “Psychoanalysis” which is just about to come out. I am really enjoying being influenced by him after my father was avoiding absolutely any reflected glory of his grandfather.

Has it been difficult to be “Bella Freud”, carrying a name like yours?

Not at all, much easier than being the daughter of a pop star, especially growing up when on many occasions I noticed that people did not know who Sigmund Freud was. My father was resolutely interested in his own work and not talking about the family. I always thought you can’t travel on someone else’s coat tails. Now I suddenly became very interested in Sigmund Freud and his work, and I am getting a lot of pleasure out of it and feel lucky to have him as a relative.

Lucian Freud standing on his head in his studio with his daughter the fashion designer Bella Freud pictured in 1983

Your father was a controversial person and a very famous artist. What kind of a father was he for you? Did he teach you something special?

I found him a great father, incredibly loyal, very funny, and exciting to be around. He was not conventional. I never had an argument with him because I did not grow up with him and so I did not have that familiarity. His love and belief in me made me very strong. He was very interested in me, he cared. He was wonderful. Every time I spent time with him it was fascinating. From him I learned to be discriminating in its best sense, fastidious and rigorous and being definite in what I believed in.

Do you consider yourself an artist?

I hate that word. I don’t think about it, I just want to do the best work I can. That is what I care about.

Today fashion and contemporary art are all mixed up together. With contemporary art and fashion so very close, what do you think about Jeff Koons, for example, designing ladies handbags?

I suppose that fashion is quite arty. It seems quite OK that they merge together sometimes, but it depends how well it is done. If it is done well it is modern and totally beautiful. If not, it is cynical and clumsy. That particular combination seems a bit cynical.

Bella, aged 2

You also had a very special mother Bernardine Coverley, who brought you and Esther up in a sort of gypsy childhood. How was your childhood with your mother? What remains in your memory?

My mother was very single minded. She was incredibly courageous and took a lot of risks to shake off the way she was bought up, which she really hated. She was fantastic. She was great. Maybe she had some of my father’s qualities and never made any compromises, but unlike him she had nothing, she was very poor. The main thing is, even if she had no money and no support financially, she was very proud, and the way that translated was very different from how my father lived.  For my mother it was much tougher to pursue her ideals, a woman unmarried with small children, but she never ever compromised. Certainly, as I got older I admired that more and more. She had no money as I said, but she sold a painting of my father’s that he gave her and bought a tiny cottage and in the end she was independent and free.

What kind of mother are you to your son Jimmy?

I am very attentive and very aware of what was missing in my upbringing. I take a lot of care to make it possible for him to explore his interests, rather than leaving them to chance. I am very close to him, and get on very well with him.

Bella, Esther and their mother

Are you very close to your family?

Yes, especially Esther, who is more than a sister, she’s a soul sister as well.

Do you do things together?

We occasionally go to plays together, but mostly we love to talk about everything. I trust her more than anyone else, and we both accept each other’s advice and feedback. We like to walk on Hampstead Heath with our dogs. She is honest and sensitive, and I hope I am the same with her.

You are of Jewish origin from your father and on some occasions took a very strong position against Israeli politics. What is your position today?

The same one, more than ever. I am against the occupation for anybody. That hasn’t changed until the situation changes. There is nothing more awful than being occupied, so I could never stop objecting to it.

Have you been to Israel?

Yes, I have been there quite a few times, and I was deeply disturbed.

What kind of a woman do you feel you are today?

I feel good. I am happy with myself, much more so than when I was younger. I am good at acting on my ideas and excited by life more than I ever was before. I hope I am a force for good.

Your father was not like this, was he?

My father was a very, very good friend to a lot of people but he didn’t talk about it. He had a reputation for having lots of women, but in fact he liked to be very private.

Was he a force for good?

Yes, he was so dedicated as an artist. It’s a good way to live life, a constructive way of being. I think it is good to be able to stand up for things in a way that people can follow without damaging everything around them.

Is success very important to you?

In my fashion business, yes. The fashion business does not function well without success. It is important for me to work and be productive, as much as possible.

What kind of perfume will “Psychoanalysis” be?

A smell of cigars and leather, cedar wood, and an undertone of romance. I wanted it to have the romantic obsession that goes along with psychoanalysis, as well as the traditional deep smell of a study. I wanted it to have the sexuality and sexiness and warmth of a really great intellect.

Are you going to use it?

Yes, I hope so. Sometimes anyway.

Is your husband going to use it?

He does not really use scent, but this is a perfume for men and women.

ENJOY THIS INTERVIEW? SHARE IT WITH A FRIEND.

Bella Freud.com

SaveSave

Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni is the author of Sam Spiegel, Tino Zervudachi, Loulou de la Falaise, Monsieur Dior, BiYan and Vogue on Yves Saint Laurent. Fraser-Cavassoni was the European Editor for Harper’s Bazaar from 1999-2004 after serving as a staff member and journalist at Women’s Wear Daily and W magazine. She lives in Paris with her two daughters.

How would you describe your new book, After Andy: Adventures in Warhol Land, published in New York by Blue Rider Press?

After Andy is a memoir of my early life using Andy Warhol as a thread. He was there at key moments starting from the age of sixteen. The book ends in 1994 and, in writing style, is very inspired by Andy’s work. By that, I mean, After Andy is as light or as layered as the reader decides.

After Andy: Adventures in Warhol Land by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. Jacket cover – publisher: Blue Rider Press, 2017

Why do you start with the memorial that took place on April 1 1987 in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York?

I started with a memorial because a strong, relevant scene is a great way to introduce the main characters. In this case, it was Fred Hughes (Warhol’s business manager,) Vincent Fremont (who ran Warhol’s studio) as well as famous artists and fashion designers. Andy was Mr New York, and his memorial was my personal introduction to New York. I’d been to Manhattan before, but I’d never seen all these people together, “people” who I would eventually get to know and present in After Andy.

In fact, you had been hired by Warhol’s studio only four days before he died?

I was hired for Andy’s MTV programme Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes. It was very exciting. That was on Thursday. Sadly, I am one of the few people to see him just before he checked into hospital on Friday; and then he died on Sunday. He checked into the hospital under the pseudonym of Bob Roberts.

The book turns to your own family and childhood. Do you have an extraordinary family?

Yes, it is a memoir as I said. I don’t know if my family is extraordinary but everyone feels very authentic. My siblings and I were lucky to have parents who were doing something with their lives. Our mother is Antonia Fraser, the best selling writer, and our father Hugh Fraser was a conservative politician. Although my mother was very famous, my father made much more of an impact on me. Writing is a solitary profession whereas a politician’s life is much more inclusive. I can still remember canvassing for him during the British elections. It was fun and sharpened my social skills.

You were very influenced by your parent’s strong work ethic?

True, I did not go to university, but I have always had to earn my keep and I love that. A decadent life has never appealed. And that’s what I really liked about Warhol. He had a strong work ethic and often said, “I’ve got to keep the lights on.” Warhol was financially responsible. It’s good to be an artist but you have to pay the bills too. Throughout After Andy, I have purposely focused on people who have kept relevant via their strong work ethic whether they’re Harold Pinter or Mick Jagger or Karl Lagerfeld or Christian Louboutin.

Yet like Proust and Warhol you are fascinated by famous people?

I am more interested in talented people. When they’re very lucky they can become famous and make a financial career from it. But the business of fame is quite destructive. Extreme intelligence is required.

Champagne party held in honour of Andy Warhol at Regine’s Nightclub, Kensington. February 7th 1980. Andy Warhol and Natasha Fraser, taken by Alan Davidson.

In the book you give a lot of space to Fred Hughes, Andy Warhol’s business manager, who was not so publicly well known. Why did you make him one of the protagonists of the book?

Fred Hughes was Andy’s eminence grise in many ways. We mustn’t forget that after Andy’s assassination attempt in 1968, the American art establishment turned its back on the Pop artist and said his talent had dried up. Fred understood the situation and thanks to his taste, intelligence and contacts, he made Warhol into an international figure.  It was also Fred’s idea to create a partnership with the powerful Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger who setup the society portraits – nicknamed Les Must de Warhol. Besides that, Fred also organized many amazing shows with prominent European gallery owners. In general, Europe appreciated Warhol more. For instance, Warhol’s first retrospective was in Sweden, it wasn’t in America.

When Warhol died wasn’t he in decline, people dismissed him?

People were confused and probably felt that the Warhol performance had overshadowed his talent. To quote Thaddaeus Ropac, the gallery owner, “it was only later, when the performance was finished, that we could look at his work.”

But he was a great artist and a society person at the same time.

Warhol managed to do art and society and make money with both. It was all work even if he was at Studio 54 rubbing shoulders with Bianca Jagger. The problem was that Andy was firing on too many cylinders for that period. Yet he was ahead of his time, a genius and a sort of prophet. Sir Norman Rosenthal said he was incapable of being dishonest. The work of an honest artist is always going to last. Personally, I think the Fright Wig self-portraits, commissioned by Anthony d’Offay in 1986, remain extraordinary.

He was very religious wasn’t he?

Andy had great faith that increased after his assassination attempt. He’d go to church on a daily basis. He was also quite Arthurian. All the people around him resembled knights from a fairly camp round table. I found it interesting that they were mostly Catholics, albeit lapsed.

From left, Pierre Passebon, Christian Louboutin and Natasha Fraser. Wig moment in Galerie du Passage, Paris, France 1992

After an experience as a columnist for Interview magazine you started doing jewellery, and with the encouragement of Anna Wintour of Vogue you moved to Paris?

When Anna heard that I was moving to Paris, she offered to contact all the French fashion houses. It was tremendously helpful. Funny but I fell in love with Paris when I was 13. Everything struck me as civilized from the smell of the baking baguettes to the sprinkling of sugar in my citron pressé.

And there you worked for Karl Lagerfeld, another great man?

Yes, fantastic. He also made a film with Andy Warhol, ‘L’Amour’ in 1973, and that is why my book is called ‘Adventures in Warhol Land’ because there’s a link between Warhol and every character.

So you went into the fashion world?

Karl and the Chanel studio are running their own orbit in fashion. Everything is so personally and seamlessly run. But yes that’s how I got into fashion.

You were friendly with the Saint Laurent people weren’t you?

No, I wasn’t. When I was at Chanel, there was the Karl gang and there was the Saint Laurent gang. They were real gangs even if I was too naïve to then realise it. I didn’t meet the Saint Laurent gang properly until I was employed by Fairchild Publications in 1991 and worked at W and Women’s Wear Daily.

How was Mr Fairchild?

Like Karl, Mr Fairchild and always Mr Fairchild, never John!, was another mentor. He ran a media boot camp and allowed me to become a proper journalist. Strange but I first saw him at the Warhol Studio when he was interested in buying Warhol’s Interview magazine.

From left, Dominique Rizzo (red bikini), Christabel McEwen, Natasha Fraser and Mick Jagger – St Tropez, France. Taken by Willy Rizzo.

You also reveal in your book some of your Warhol linked love affairs, and in particular the one with Mick Jagger?

Well, Andy’s portraits of Mick Jagger are fantastic. Our casual and always delightful relationship began in September 1980 and continued for about 5 years. I was at a lunch for Warhol given by Marguerite Littman, a socialite, when Harry Bailey, who was an art dealer, said “you should meet Mick.” He was also the first to mention the portfolio of Jagger portraits, done by Andy in 1975

You also wrote a biography of a very different character, the producer Sam Spiegel. How come?

Sam was another mentor. He gave me my first job and also introduced me to Mick Jagger. Sam invited me on his boat, and, through Ahmet Ertegun, Mick was there, with Jerry Hall and his daughter Jade. Six weeks later, I began to see Mick.

How was such a thing possible when he was with Jerry Hall?

Jerry Hall was a hugely successful fashion model who was travelling all over the world. And he was Mick Jagger, left alone in London. He was irresistible as well as being incredibly intelligent and funny. That said, I always knew the limits of the relationship. He was a burning light who belonged to Jerry. Put it this way, he was Jerry’s hero but not mine.

Who was your hero?

It began with my father and then continued with my husband Jean-Pierre Cavassoni.

With Diane von Furstenberg in 1997, photo taken by Pamela Hanson

The world of legends, famous beautiful people in London, Los Angeles, New York and Paris that you describe so well in your book is gone forever.

The world of legends and Beautiful People still exists but it’s become very private and exclusive. What’s different today is the incredible importance of money and that has changed everything. For instance, now to have connections or be a player in London you have to spend masses of money. During my childhood, charm, humour and intelligence were enough. And the elegant rich tended to hide their wealth. There was an innocence.

Did the internet somehow kill talent? 

No, there is still so much talent. But there was once a great romanticism around famous people. Or rather you only knew the good stuff. Now with the internet we are bombarded with the bad stuff, based on the idea that stars are like you and me. They are not! And these tarnishing facts do not make us alike. They are horrible. I don’t want to know. Their talent or wealth or beauty is enough. Why should we all be the same?

Warhol loved fame and money? 

Yes, Andy used fame, he milked fame, he realised it was a business. He was wonderfully lucid. But he also kept his own work in the closet – he was a smart guy who was self-effacing. He realised he was creatively brilliant but that other artists existed like Jasper Johns and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He did not have an inflated ego and that explains his posthumous longevity.

What about Lagerfeld?

Like Andy, Karl is a brilliant talent who shares the same-grounded attitude and remains in the present. Try talking to Karl about a former fashion collection and he’ll be appalled. His sights are firmly fixed on the future. It explains how he has lasted so long. It remains impressive.

Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, photo taken by Stefano Massimo, 1980

Is your book nostalgic?

No, but it evokes another time. I don’t say then was better. I just reveal what I personally witnessed.

Does it read like a novel?

I wanted After Andy to be informative but fun and easy to read. People say that when they start reading it they can’t put it down. Music to my ears!

Going back to Fred Hughes, why is he so important in your book?

I guess because Fred was so touching and so tragic. He got all that he wanted and then it all went wrong and he died in reduced circumstances. Fred was like a character out of Scott Fitzgerald but not the hero.

Sofia Coppola with After Andy. Photo taken at Valentino show, July 2017.

Are you pleased with your book?

I’m pleased when people enjoy After Andy. That means a lot. My book catches another side to Andy, the human side that cared about people as well as his years in Europe and the English Muffins – those well-born English women who worked for him. I was the fifth English Muffin. Warhol had a rolling camera and, in a way, I had a rolling camera too. I now realise how full my life was, and how I was always motivated by curiosity. Curiosity is a great ‘moteur’. If I hadn’t been curious, I would have stayed in England. Imagine, no adventures!

But Paris is your place?

Yes since September 1989. What I love about the Parisians is their deep respect for intelligence. Their big insult is to be described as ‘un con.’ Adore this. I also admire their heightened sense of quality, their need to express and the real appreciation of the creative and their distrust of money. En masse, they continue to intrigue. Finally, they have always made me feel welcomed. And to quote the American artist Jim Hodges, “go where the heat is.”

With Mick Jagger, May 2017, photo by Edward Lloyd

Like an English muffin?

Yes, an English muffin in Paris! I learnt a lot from Parisians, but have remained very English, and I get the best of both worlds.

What about America?

This time in New York, I suddenly realised how both my mother and stepfather Harold Pinter became famous via the United States and what a strong link they shared. For an European to make it in America, it’s equivalent to being alone in a field and suddenly a shining knight on a horse in platinum armour arriving and sweeping you up.  It’s extraordinary to make it in America because they love success and they embrace you with that famous American enthusiasm. There is no downside; whereas in Europe we mistrust success.

ENJOY THIS INTERVIEW? SHARE IT WITH A FRIEND.

August 2017

Portrait of Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni by Laura Friezer.

The producer Jean Doumanian is the founder of Jean Doumanian Productions, an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated, and Tony Award winning, film, television and theatrical production company.

You recently produced the film “Una”. The premiere will be in London in September, in New York the first week of October. It is an adaptation of the Olivier Award winning play called “Blackbird”. The main actors are Rooney Mara, Ben Mendelsohn and the young actress Ruby Stokes. You started in television with Saturday Night Live and then produced films and plays?

Yes, it is all part of my creative process. I’m a producer at heart, and I like to find a story and then decide which medium it best fits. I have enjoyed expanding into, and working in, all areas of entertainment.

You produced “The Book of Mormon”, why is it still successful?

It is a perfectly executed musical. It has lasted so long thanks to its unique sensibility, it is at the same time a kind of homage to musical comedy while being totally original. Like the more recent smash hit “Hamilton”, it has an originality which comes from breaking the rules, in Hamilton’s case with Rap and a contemporary sound used to illuminate an amazing chapter in American history, while also completely honoring the form.

What is the difference between cinema and theater?

I love them both, but there is an immediate and visceral experience that one gets when seeing a play that can’t be replicated in film, just as there are epic and beautiful stories that can be told on the screen but not on the stage. I think a great story is a great story, and it can transcend its medium. And even though cinema is becoming more and more about the larger blockbuster films, there are beautiful independent films that I encourage everyone to go out and see. And here is where I will shamelessly plug my upcoming film Una, there’s nothing wrong with “Wonder Woman” and “Iron Man” but people must pay attention to the wonderful and interesting independent films that are being made.

Did you recently produce a TV series?

I produced an eight episode comedy series called “Shrink” that people thought was hilarious and which I am incredibly proud of. It is airing on NBC’s digital platform Seeso and has been very well received.

Was doing it something different from films and theater?

There was nothing that I had not experienced before, I had done TV series in the past, but this was special as it was half scripted and half improv. I went to Chicago to shoot it, because the makeup of improv is in Chicago thanks to places like Second City. The show stars the incredibly talented Tim Baltz, keep an eye on him, he is going to be a star.

Has your job changed a lot since you started?

The process has not changed. You have to find the product and develop it; you have to sell it; you have to cast, etc…. But because of the expansion of television that happened within the last five years the medium has shifted. As outlets like Netflix and Amazon have expanded and become prominent players the landscape has definitely changed. Audiences can subscribe to all these different services. You can have Apple TV, you can have Google TV, you can access content a million different ways. And inevitably that has affected the way content is developed and sold.

Are things going better for you since the arrival of Netflix and Amazon?

Well, I don’t know yet, because I haven’t sold anything to Amazon or Netflix yet; but they have a lot of money!

Is the story still what is behind every production?

The story is the entire thing.

Why do people like fiction so much?

It’s an escape. People don’t have to think about what they did today at the office, or the political realities surrounding them. They can just sit back and escape to a different world. It’s all happening to somebody else. The thing people love most is fantasy, not the genre, but the ability to remove themselves from their own lives for an hour or two.

How is your life as a producer?

It’s never easy, but it is always exciting. You’re always trying to discover or develop. You find something, you try to find a writer to write it. Everything is a gamble, isn’t it?

Yes, but particularly in your business. You never really know if something will be successful or not.

No, but you believe in it and you strive to do it. And the journey and the execution is the fun part.

Are you working on any theater at the moment?

I am working with UK producers on enhancing a US production of Hangmen by Martin McDonagh which won the Olivier in London. I loved it when I saw it there. Robert Fox produced it, so I called him and said “If you bring it to New York I’d love to be a producer with you.” And he agreed. We have such confidence in the play that we decided to do it at a nonprofit, and just enhance it. In other words, raise enough money for them to be able to afford to put it on. Hopefully it’s so good that we’ll be able to transfer it to Broadway without a star.

Generally speaking do people go to the theater to see a star?

Nowadays in theater production it is difficult and very rare to find financial success unless you have a movie star. You need a star to get the audience. It was not like that before.

Why do you live and work in New York and not in Hollywood?

I have made a career out of living in New York, and have never felt that it in any way hampered my success. Theater is also so important to me and theater is here. I have my own little niche here and I love it.

Is Hollywood still very much alive?

Oh yes. The industry is strong, especially with this amazing age of television. There are of course still some really good films being made, but independent film is getting harder and harder to finance.

Did you enjoy working with Woody Allen?

I always find Woody funny in our personal relationship. I had fun because it was my introduction to movie making, and what it entails and how much it costs.

You made money?

No. Neither the films nor I made money.

But at the end of the day are you proud to have produced that kind of movie?

You always want to be associated with good work, and if you have any involvement it is very uplifting.

What is your experience of working with actors?

I’ve loved working with actors, so many of them are wonderful, and with success they become even more wonderful. I have great regard for the profession, it is indisputably an art form to admire. Actors can make us feel and think and transport us.

You co-produced “August: Osage County” with George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s company Smokehouse. Are you a friend of George Clooney?

George and Grant are wonderful and I so enjoyed working with them. We are not extremely close, but we had a great time working together and I would jump at the opportunity to do it again.

What is the most difficult thing about your job?

The most difficult thing is to find the right project. Once you have that finding the money and right team are challenging. But discovery is the most rewarding thing ever.

And how do you proceed?

You find a property, and then you have to option the property. And then you try and find the team that will make it most successful.

Is the person who writes the story the most potent person at the beginning?

Yes, because without the story what do you have? That story has to be something that appeals to you as a producer, and then you have to convince others that this is a very good property that they should be involved in, from actors to financiers. I have people that have invested with me before and trust me. They have to believe in the property enough to join me.

What do you like most about your job?

I like the journey of discovery, and the thrill of selling. If I believe in something I can do anything.

When a new film comes out or a new play goes on are you scared it could be a flop?

I never think of a flop. I always focus on what I can do to make it succeed. Sure, I’m sometimes scared that the audience won’t get it, but if I love it and I think it’s good, then I’m happy.

What makes a production work? 

Besides the amazing team that is needed to get it on its feet, PR is very important. It can make or break a show. Sometimes it’s a sleeper, takes a little time for it to catch on. Sometimes, believe it or not, it could be word of mouth.

Was “The Book of Mormon” an immediate success?

I went to the workshop and I thought this is the funniest, the best musical I’ve seen in years. It was really a little risqué, but it was so funny and I wanted to be involved in it, immediately.

And then it became successful, just like this?

I wouldn’t say that. An enormous amount of work went into that show over many years from a supremely talented team and from lead producer Scott Rudin, and I don’t want to ever ignore that. But once it arrived on Broadway it was a huge hit immediately.

And how do you feel when something is successful?

Great. I feel great for myself, the entire team and for my investors. One of my investors that invested with me in “The Book of Mormon” made millions from a $250,000 investment.

Do you need much more money to produce a film today?

Of course, but there are new possibilities in filmmaking. Young people are producing films on their iPhone for $2,000, and some of them are pretty good; they are even putting them in festivals. New technology is so available that anybody who had the dream of making a film could invite their friends and do it. It’s an exciting moment.

But they would be outside of the circuit of your work?

They are not within my realm right now, but if a neophyte came up with an idea to do a film that he loved and he said to me, “All I need is two thousand dollars!” and I loved it, I would raise the money.

In fact you would still do the same job?

I love it. That’s what it is. If you’re going to have a career in something that’s satisfying you really have to believe in your own self.

ENJOY THIS INTERVIEW? SHARE IT WITH A FRIEND.

New York, August 2017.

You are the curator of the show “Picasso. Between Cubism and Classicism: 1915-1925” that will open in Rome on September 20th at the Scuderie del Quirinale and at Palazzo Barberini. What is so special about this exhibition?

Just to give you some background, there is a reason for this show, which is very simple. It is the 100th anniversary of Picasso’s trip to Rome and to Naples between February and April 1917, which he made at the instigation of Jean Cocteau and Sergei Diaghilev. Picasso, who was a Spanish citizen caught in Paris in the middle of the war, did not have military duties; and therefore he was free to travel to Rome and escape the dark, bleak atmosphere of Paris during the war.

Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome

How old was he?

He was thirty-five at the time of his trip to Italy. He had unexpectedly lost a woman he loved by the name of Eva Gouel, and Cocteau “seduced” Picasso and convinced him to work for the Ballets Russes under the leadership of Diaghilev, the great Russian impresario who in 1913 changed the artistic scene in Europe with his lavish and groundbreaking productions such as the ‘Rite of Spring’ with the music of Igor Stravinsky. This was an opportunity for Picasso, but also for Diaghilev who needed to find new blood and new ideas, and was keen to connect with the avant garde which was embodied by Picasso. At this time the Russian ballet had their headquarters at the Hotel de Russie in Rome.

What happened?

A great change in the fortunes of Picasso and in the fortunes of the Ballets Russes. In Rome Picasso connected with an international group of luminaries; great artists such as Cocteau of course, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Leonide Massine the very important dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Russes, Leon Bakst, and the Italian futurists like Balla, Prampolini and Fortunato Depero. They all worked together on the sets and decors and the production of ‘Parade’ with music by Erik Satie, who remained in Paris and did not come to Rome.

Pablo Picasso Sipario per il balletto “Parade”, 1917 Tempera su tela,1050 x 1640 cm Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Parigi © Succession Picasso, by SIAE 2017

The Picasso curtain of ‘Parade’ will be exhibited at Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Why are you showing it there?

Because it is enormous! It is 17 metres across, and it cannot fit anywhere else. Palazzo Barberini has a magnificent state room called the Sala Pietro da Cortona, which is within walking distance of the Scuderie del Quirinale where the main show takes place. I thought it would be nice to have the confrontation between the loosely painted, very theatrical curtain by Picasso and the very tight ceiling by the 17th century Roman painter Pietro da Cortona.

Palazzo Barberini has a magnificent state room called the Sala Pietro da Cortona

What does this exhibition demonstrate in particular?

 It marks a crucial period of transition in Picasso’s career, thanks to Diaghilev. He moves away from Cubism towards Classicism. It is not only a period of great stylistic change, but it is a period of experimentation that is often misunderstood.

Why?

Picasso has often been considered as retreating from Cubism, from the avant garde, in favor of classical values, and though there is some truth to that, things are a lot more complex. In the exhibition I hope to demonstrate that Picasso plays around with different notions of style, mixing together different artistic languages, and by doing so surprising the expectations of those who saw him as the hero of the French avant garde.

Pablo Picasso Arlequin (Léonide Massine) [Arlecchino (Léonide Massine)], 1917 Olio su tela,117 x 89,5 cm Barcellona, Museu Picasso, Given by the Barcelona City Council, 1963 Photo: Archivi Alinari, Firenze © Succession Picasso, by SIAE 2017

Yes, tremendously. Working for the stage gave him the opportunity to develop some of his Cubist ideas, such as the notion of construction and assemblage. Picasso was able to use the textures and surfaces of his Cubist compositions in order to redefine space, including the space of a theatrical production. Cubism became open – not just a style, but an invaluable tool for articulating and bringing together various elements within a single scheme, such as a painting or a stage setting.

In Rome, didn’t Picasso also fell in love with a Russian dancer, Olga Khokhlova, and make many portraits of her?

Yes, in general terms Picasso loved the milieu of the Ballets Russes, and he also portrayed other dancers of the company such as Lydia Lopokova, who married the economist John Maynard Keynes a few years later. Picasso courted Olga in Rome, and they were married in Paris a year later. He was influenced by the trajectory of the lines of the dance, the movement of the ballet dancers in space, and perhaps the fluid lines of some of his drawings in the early 1920s reflect this proximity and his love for the world of the ballet.

Ritratto di Olga in poltrona, olio su tela, Pablo Picasso (detto), Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973), Musée national Picasso, ParigiPicasso, Pablo (1881-1973); Ruiz Blasco Pablo 1917 Francia – Parigi, Musée Picasso

What are the major masterpieces that will be in the show?

Luckily there will be many important and beautiful works in the show, including a large ensemble from the Musée Picasso in Paris. The show opens with ‘Homme accoudé sur une table’ from 1915 belonging to the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin. The three paintings that he did while in Rome will all be there, including ‘Harlequin and Woman with a Pearl Necklace’ which belongs to the Pompidou in Paris. Masterpieces from the early nineteen twenties, like ‘Harlequin with a Mirror’ from the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid, or the monumental ‘Draped woman’ from the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, and ‘La flûte de Pan’ from the Picasso Museum; and, as the last work in the exhibition, ‘The Three Dancers’ (1925) from the Tate Gallery, a painting in which Picasso symbolically bids his farewell to the world of dance. We are also exhibiting lots of designs by Picasso and a previously unknown, fascinating correspondence between Picasso and his friends from 1917, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The catalogue of the show will be published by Skira.

Did you decide to curate this exhibition because of your family links to Picasso?

No. In 2006 I curated a large exhibition called ‘Picasso and the Theatre’ at the Schirn Kunsthalle museum in Frankfurt, and I was struck by two things. First how original and inventive Picasso’s works between 1917 and 1925 were, and second that Picasso was undoubtedly an important stage designer who not only executed commissions on behalf of Diaghilev and others, but also changed the story line, the sets, and the conception of the stage. All elements of stage design bear his imprint, one of refined elegance and simplicity within the modernist canon.

Pablo Picasso, Harlequin with a Mirror. Arlequin au miroir [Arlecchino con specchio], 1923. Olio su tela,100 x 81 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza © Succession Picasso, by SIAE 2017

It comes from my father, Heinz Berggruen, who was not only a collector of Picasso works but also worked closely with him in the 1950s and 60s as a book publisher. Picasso and my father created a number of illustrated books together. There was an incomparable richness in the Picasso paintings and sculptures that were at our Paris home. My brother Nicolas and I were very lucky to grow up surrounded by such great works, which reflected our father’s purity of vision. Many Cubist works, and also the ‘Harlequin with a Mirror’ that now belongs to the Thyssen museum in Madrid and which will be in the show.

Did you meet Picasso?

No, never. I was nine years old when he died. However, I believe that my older brother Nicolas and I are mentioned in the correspondence between Picasso and our father.

Pablo Picasso Seated Woman in a Chemise. Femme assise en chemise [Donna seduta in camicia], 1923 Olio su tela, 92,1 x 73 cm Tate, Bequeathed by C. Frank Stoop 1933 © Succession Picasso, by SIAE 2017

Yes. I am very pleased. I was very warmly welcomed by the Romans. This is actually my third exhibition in Rome, and I think that the Scuderie del Quirinale is a very good, if at times difficult, space for exhibitions. I was lucky enough to work with a very good team, and a fantastic architect from New York, Annabelle Selldorf.

Who has financed this exhibition?

It is financed by a government agency called Ales, headed by Mario De Simoni, in cooperation with MondoMostre, a well-respected private company organizing art exhibitions all over Italy.

Are you working on something new?

Yes, some smaller exhibitions, and mostly on an illustrated book which will be a history of art collectors, in which I investigate the psychological aspects of collecting.

Since 2015 the Berggruen museum in Berlin where you are one of the board members has doubled its size. What are the main exhibits in the museum?

The core of our late father’s collection: Giacometti, Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Braque, and others; and loans by the family, including two monumental sculptures by the great contemporary German artist Thomas Schütte that are in the garden.

ENJOY THIS INTERVIEW? SHARE IT WITH A FRIEND.

30^th August 2017

New York

See also: John Richardson – “I am still obsessed by Picasso.”

and Laurent Le Bon – Director of the Picasso Museum in Paris, the Musée National Picasso.

The post Olivier Berggruen appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

Keith Christiansen is the John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

What’s happening in your department at the Metropolitan Museum at the moment? 

In the European Paintings department there is a very big project coming up, which will be a replacement of our skylights.

“Nowhere else in America is there a collection of  19th century French impressionists with the extraordinary depth that is found at the Metropolitan”

Press viewing of Caravaggio’s Last Two Paintings, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 13, 2017. (Milene Fernandez/The Epoch Times)

Why? 

The galleries of European paintings are in the original museum building dating back to1880. The present skylights were built in 1939, and their lifespan ran out years ago; they will have to be entirely removed.   In the coming four years we will close 60 percent of the Old Master galleries, and we will leave the remaining 40 percent open with masterworks. After two years, we will reverse the process and replace the skylights in the remaining 40 percent; all the galleries will reopen with optimal natural light conditions after four and a half years.

Is daylight very important for a museum? 

For Old Master paintings they are crucial.  Imagine, before electricity artists worked by natural light; and it was under these conditions that the color and value relationships were established. As soon as you throw on strong artificial light you disturb those relationships – even allowing for natural changes over time. It is a great irony that people frequently pay to go into churches in Italy to see paintings and frescoes that were made for specific sites with a consideration for the natural light conditions and see them in a way the artist never imagined. Old guide books invariably gave the optimal time of day when the natural light was best.

Which are the best known masterpieces in the Metropolitan? 

I have no doubt that in the 1950s El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’ was one of most famous Old Master pictures in the Museum, and in the 1960s it would have been Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle with a Bust of Homer’. Today it would probably be either Vermeer’s ‘Young Woman with a Water Pitcher’ or Velazquez’s ‘Juan de Pareja’.

Among your masterpieces do you have an icon at the Metropolitan? 

We are slightly different from a place like the Louvre, there’s not one icon that identifies the collection; there is a large number of great paintings. For instance, we own 40 paintings by Monet from which it would be very difficult to indicate just one. We don’t have one obvious masterpiece like ‘La Grande Jatte’ by Seurat in Chicago. Two paintings do stand out as utterly unique in this hemisphere: Bruegel’s ‘The Harvesters’ and ‘The Death of Socrates’ by Jacques-Louis David.

What do the crowds come for at this museum? 

The nineteenth century for sure.  But as at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, people want to see the collections as a whole—not merely one picture.  Nowhere else in America is there a collection of  19^th century French impressionists with the extraordinary depth that is found at the Metropolitan, thanks to the Havemeyers and other benefactors.

Have you been working here for 40 years? 

Yes, I just finished my 40^th year this last August. I came here with John Pope-Hennessy; he hired me when I was in the process of finishing my thesis on Gentile da Fabriano.

Which was your first big exhibition? 

‘The Age of Caravaggio’ in 1985, working with Nicola Spinosa and Mariella Utili, my colleagues in Naples. Since then I have worked on many, many exhibitions. The great pleasure is that every exhibition has required me to stretch my knowledge. Whether it was ‘Painting in Renaissance Siena’, or ‘Giambattista Tiepolo’, or ‘El Greco’, or ‘Jusepe de Ribera’, or ‘The Genius of Andrea Mantegna’, or ‘Valentin de Boulogne’, or ‘Poussin and Nature’, or ‘The Renaissance Portrait’, it has been a variety of larger exhibitions.  We have also done smaller exhibitions, as for instance the devotional paintings of Piero della Francesca, which we did with the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture (FIAC); and the Antonella da Messina exhibition that we also did with FIAC.

“It’s a challenge for all museums to make historical collections vibrant to a new generation.”

Do exhibitions bring more people to the museum? 

In my own field there are a very few that are a magnet, like Caravaggio or El Greco. The main point is to engage people with a theme or an artist in a way they otherwise could not. I think the number of people who might be interested has to be secondary. When I did ‘Valentin de Boulogne’ with my colleagues at the Louvre, we felt it needed to be done. He’s a major painter about whom no exhibition had ever been done and from which we would learn a great deal. I hope it contributed to our understanding of the early seventeenth century in Rome; and this previously sidetracked figure was placed back in the central position which he deserved.

Are Old Masters still much visited? 

Everyone who works in areas of any kind of art that preceded the nineteenth century has an obligation to find ways to engage a new generation of scholars. There is no question that young audiences feel more and more detached from the distant past. But those of us who have worked on historical subjects know that the past is not only where we came from, but also who we are. Conversations need to take place, and it’s a challenge for all museums to make historical collections vibrant to a new generation. You can make information available, but you can’t make people look.

What do exhibitions do to help this? 

Exhibitions take up themes in a more vibrant and dynamic fashion than the conventional gallery experience.

Are your visitors old or young? 

We have 6.5 to 6.7 million visitors a year and we cross all lines and ages. We have Chinese, Asians, Europeans, Americans. One of the changes, that has also happened in many places around the world, is that our largest percentage of foreign visitors is now Chinese. The challenge for us is that even if they have a culture with very little in common with western cultures they have a right to expect us to meet them, and to help them gain a footing in the different cultures.

Are they interested? 

At this stage they come here in groups and with guides, and they seem so.

Is the European paintings collection at the Metropolitan Museum’s paintings comparable to what is found in a European museum? 

Yes, but it depends on what you mean by comparable.  Many European museums are the product of a particular moment of time and a certain taste – usually royal. Our collection set out to be all encompassing, from the 13^th century to the present. We can say that in paintings the Louvre is a universal museum like us, and it is the most similar. Another one that is quite similar in our field of Old Masters is the National Gallery in London. But as a universal museum there is no museum in the world that represents human cultures like the Metropolitan.

What is the role of the Metropolitan in New York or in America today? 

Our role has not changed, it has only been magnified. The Met has always been the institution to visit if you want to connect with world culture. It gives you a wealth of potential experiences. No other museum has attempted to connect to people using the possibilities of the modern digital experience like the Metropolitan, which was conceived as the glory of the city, then it became the glory of the nation, and now it has a global presence. There are 30 million visitors to our website, and any student in any place in the world can find basic information for paintings in the collections, their provenance, reconstruction, conservation and so on.

Is your job very rewarding at The Metropolitan? 

It is an amazing place. My colleagues in Europe who have had the privilege of a fellowship here say it is an amazing place because you have specialists in virtually everything, and whether it is Islamic ceramics, contemporary textiles, European paintings, Egyptian beads or African masks, there is someone who knows about these things. It is an amazing place which has become more diverse with the city and now reflects the diversity of the nation.

Do you still buy art? 

We buy a lot. Among the most important recent acquisitions is a painting by Charles LeBrun, the most important painter of the second half of the 17^th century in France. It is a portrait of the German banker Everhard Jabach with his family. It is a landmark of French painting, of baroque painting, and of European portraiture.

Do you have the money to buy works of art? 

This was bought for us by Mrs. Wrightsman. We have pictures given by donors, and lately there are dealers who have given us paintings: Carlo Orsi, Fabrizio Moretti, Patrick Matthiesen, Marco Voena, Giovanni Sarti.  It is true that great Old Master paintings -for example Orazio Gentileschi’s ‘Danae’ bought by the Getty Museum – cost as much as they ever did, but what has disappeared are collectors of middle range pictures.

You think that the contemporary art market is too high? 

All markets are driven by competition and fashion, this has always been the case. Remember that a sculpture by the young Michelangelo cost less than an antiquity. The transformation in the contemporary field is that collectors are now paying speculative prices for art that does not yet have an established position in a historical narrative. Who will we look upon as the great contemporary figures fifty years from now? Picassos didn’t sell at the level of Old Masters until the 1980s; now he has become a firmly established ‘Old Master’.

Keith Christiansen standing in front of Velazquez Francesco d’Este from Modena

Monsignor Giuseppe Spina (1756–1828)  Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss, Chur 1741–1807 Rome)  Date:  1798  Medium:  Oil on canvas

Keith Christiansen

The Death of Socrates, Jacques Louis David (French, Paris 1748–1825 Brussels), 1787

Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614–1673), and Their Son Frans (1633–1678)  Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)

Sir John Pope-Hennessy

Jan van Eyck Virgin in the Church, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin

Poussin’s Inspiration of the Poet at the Louvre

“As a universal museum there is no museum in the world that represents human cultures like the Metropolitan.”

When will you have a new director and CEO at the Metropolitan, since Thomas Campbell has resigned? 

They are about to release the job description, and then they will start the selection process; but I am not part of that.

Is it true that over the years you became particularly keen on Nicolas Poussin? 

Whenever I go to the Louvre, I spend one or two hours in the Poussin galleries. They give me huge pleasure. Poussin calms me and gives me a feeling of serenity, as Cezanne does for some people. His is a completely ordered world. There is the sensation of a calibrated space with figures acting out life in an orderly fashion; and then there are moments of complete unexpected rapture that appear in his pictures. He is one of my favourite painters.

Which are your most loved? 

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca, and Poussin.

Do you consider Poussin an Italian painter, as he lived most of his life in Rome? 

He is a hybrid. He’s Italian with French gravity, a nice combination. In his art there is control, but with emotional warmth and unpredictability. I also love German baroque. I love Rembrandt and Rubens, and my first love was early Netherlandish painters like Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes.

What do you teach at the moment? 

I have not been teaching for a number of years; I didn’t have the time since I became the head of the department.

Do you still like to learn? 

Isn’t that what life is about? I like to learn as one project leads to another. Each question leads to another. It reminds me of Michel de Montaigne: “Que sais-je?” His was a process of self-examination, and each answer always led to another question. Knowledge goes on like that and in the case of art there is always a return in the pleasure it gives you, the deeper and deeper pleasure that comes as you learn; and with that pleasure there is an emotional engagement that gets richer over time.

New York, 17 September 2017

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

The post Keith Christiansen appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

Pierre Bergé was the business-partner and companion of the couturier Yves Saint Laurent. In 1961 they co-founded the eponymous fashion-house, and they became legal civil partners shortly before the designer died on June 1st 2008.

Bergé and Saint Laurent made Morocco their adoptive home, acquiring the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech in 1966. Today it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city. On March 31^st 2017 Pierre married Madison Cox, the American landscape designer and director of the charitable Fondation Jardin Majorelle. Pierre died aged 86 on September 8^th 2017.

This interview with Pierre Bergé was made in Paris and published in La Stampa on March 10^th 2010.  We publish this interview here today as a gesture of respect and friendship for Pierre Bergé, his work, his talent and his longtime devotion to Yves Saint Laurent.

“I wanted his work to be preserved, and I wanted to know where the collection ended up”

My life with Yves: In Love with a Genius

Pierre Bergé, who was Yves Saint-Laurent’s life partner until his death, is elegant as always, wearing a brown cashmere jacket and grey flannel trousers. He speaks enthusiastically about the exhibition that will be inaugurated tomorrow at the Petit Palais in Paris, featuring three hundred of the designer’s outfits. “It is the most important exhibition held to date,” he says. “It will feature pieces dating back to the first day of business in 1958 all the way to 2002.”

You have just published the book “Lettres à Yves” with Gallimard. What is it about?

Six months after Yves died, I felt the need to write letters to him. When you lose someone very dear to you, you can no longer turn to him and say, “Did you see that?” or “I need to tell you about such and such.” This allowed me to continue talking to him about me, telling him what I think and about things good and bad.

In the book, you talk about how you sold your collection at auction. What would he have done?

I knew that Yves would have not been able to sell. I also knew I was going against his wishes. This is why, throughout my life, I had always been worried that he would die first. He would have left it all as it was, and so our things, our paintings, and our furnishings would have gone who knows where. However, I wanted his work to be preserved, and I wanted to know where the collection ended up.

But why did you decide to sell?

Because I no longer had space, and I wasn’t interested in having the collection without him.

From your book, it seems as though your life together was full of moments of great joy and difficult moments. Is that the way it was?

Yves needed to have his experiences, even extreme ones like during the era of “Swinging London.” He always told me I was boring, too exacting. He loved me very much—I never had any doubts about that—but I didn’t drink, I didn’t do drugs, and I led a very normal life.

“I wasn’t interested in having the collection without him”

Was Saint-Laurent ever embarrassed for you to see him so overweight, considering you’d met him when he was thin and handsome?

He weighed more than one hundred kilos, and he would say that he’d turned into a monster. But it wasn’t all that important to me. He had an incredibly broad intellect, and an extraordinary way of seeing things.

Yours was a homosexual relationship that began back in 1958. It was always presented in a very nonchalant and free way…

Homosexuality is what it is. It is neither an illness nor an abnormality. Yves was a little scared to talk about it. He was a shy young man from Algeria. But I helped him make his way on his path. I wanted him to become the centre of the world.

“Saint-Laurent allowed women to feel free”

Why did Yves Saint-Laurent leave fashion?

Because it is a profession that no longer means anything today. Today it is a corrupt, commercial, and servile job. There is no longer the integrity there once was. Financial groups have bought fashion out. Fashion became something else, and there was no longer a place for him. He would have been considered passé, and he didn’t want it to come to that. He saw too many people who didn’t know how to leave and ended up in ruin.

Are there no new fashion geniuses?

No. Today, fashion is made more for brands than for tailors. I truly believe in the social aspect of fashion. I am talking about prices and who really can wear a certain type of dress. Yves didn’t dress rich women. He dressed active women. The era in which Dior created his “new look” and made women follow his rules is over. Saint-Laurent allowed women to feel free.

Today, how would you define Yves Saint-Laurent in just one word?

If I could only use one word, I would choose the word love. If I could choose three, I’d say: admiration, respect, and, again, love.

Paris, March 2010

Jardin Majorelle

Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

The post Pierre Berge appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

Christopher Niquet is the creative director at the New York fashion house of his partner, the American designer Zac Posen.

A few months ago you published “Models Matter”, a book of photographs and short essays about your favorite models. Are models and beauty an obsession of yours?

They are and they are not. Now that the book exists it is not only beauty and models that fascinate me. It was a starting point, but the book was to keep alive some faces that are going to disappear. I know them because I am an obsessive fashion magazine lover.

You have spent your professional life in the fashion world. What is the role of a model in that world?

 I used to think the role was to inspire designers, photographers, and writers. Now I realize it is only to sell. In the 90s, models were stars. I think of Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Carla Bruni. Now, however good looking a model can be, if she is not professional it cannot work. They are the ones that signed the death certificate for models. They were good looking, hard-working, inspiring, and they had a real commercial value. After that the fashion industry realized they had too much power and so they slowly took it away. Kate Moss was a gamble. They took that short, skinny girl with ugly legs and bad behavior and she became a star.

“What is interesting now is the “remix” of things.”

Giraffe Girl © The New York Times 1967, Gösta Peterson. Courtesy of TURN Gallery.

What can we say about today?

Now you have another kind. The Instagram “famous daughters of”. Reality stars. They don’t look like models, but because they have a name and they have followers the brand hires them because of the audience they have.

 Pierre Bergé, some years ago when with Yves Saint Laurent they sold their company, said that it was time to do it as “fashion was finished”.  Do you agree with that?

I do now. I did not understand it at the time. I thought it was an old man talking. Personally I felt it was very alive as I had just entered the fashion industry myself.  In retrospect I understand what he meant. He belonged to the old school where fashion was not just a business as it is now.

Do you consider yourself a stylist or a fashion writer?

I consider myself a writer, not a fashion writer, and I hate the fact that I wasted 10 years of my life as a stylist.

But don’t you still do it, for instance for Brooks Brothers?

Yes, in order to help Zac Posen, and also, to be fully transparent, because I am extremely well paid and then I can do other projects. For instance, I write a column for French Vanity Fair every month about “jet set” and “lifestyle”. It is about the dead Café Society of the 60s and 70s that I care about.

Is it nostalgia?

Yes. Super nostalgia. Everything you have not experienced for yourself you look at with nostalgia. I am more curious about the era of the Palace nightclub in Paris in the 60s and 80s when I was not born, than for the grunge music of the 90s because I was already there. I see the kids now in their twenties are obsessed by the 90s because they were not there.

You are a style witness in New York. Is there anything that happens today of special interest to you?

There is and there is not. What is interesting now is the “remix” of things. I don’t see anything really new going on, but I see a different way of mixing references.

For instance?

I think that for everything in music, magazines, fashion, it is about components that we all know, but the associations are different; and that is kind of exciting. Young people don’t necessarily know where their references are coming from. The letting go of context is interesting. All my education and professional life the emphasis was on knowledge.

Is it chaos now?

Yes, completely. I like the irreverence in the attitude. Now everything is on the same level. For the young generation there are no “sacred monsters”. Greta Garbo was considered better than Claudette Colbert. Today it does not matter where they come from or do.

 

“The fashion industry realized the models had too much power and so they slowly took it away.”

Are there still some stars?

It’s not the same. They become stars in a second, and in a second they will disappear. Look at Lindsay Lohan, a big Disney child star, then an adult star. She had her first grown up role with Meryl Streep and Robert Altman; and then disappeared.

You said that fashion is over in the historical sense but what are you and Zac Posen trying to do?

Zac is lucky because the core of his business is dressing for very specific purposes, a kind of dressing which is representation for galas, weddings, bar mitzvahs, red carpets… this still exists and there is still a clientele for it, on these particular occasions when a woman wants and needs to project an aura, to project beauty and confidence; and this kind of need is not going to disappear.

What will disappear?

Certain codes about how one is supposed to present himself, depending on the occasion.

Are we in a blue jeans time?

There are only a few places in New York or other cities where a man needs to wear a jacket and a tie. Women don’t wear tailleurs, and not even blue jeans anymore, but yoga pants. When you see photos of the Vogue offices and staff, until 5 years ago there was a kind of dress code. Now it is gone. I don’t think that 20 years ago a woman wearing hot pants and flip-flops would have been acceptable in a professional setting.

Are there new talents and new ideas?

 I think it goes back to what I said before. It is hard for me to see what is new because it melts into the “remix”. We have to wait, I think a few years, to see who has a real point of view.

What about photographers?

For me the last real photographer who emerged was Juergen Teller in the mid-90s. He stripped all the “artifice” and for the first time presented the very raw idea of the woman and of fashion. Since then we have had a technical evolution with digital photography, but it didn’t change the content.

Models Matter by Christopher Niquet

Greta Garbo

Iman by Francesco Scavullo

Lauren Hutton

Claudette Colbert

Carolyn Murphy by Vanina Sorbent for Zac Posen

“We have to wait, I think a few years, to see who has a real point of view.”

Why are you writing a book on Gösta “Gus” Peterson, who recently died?

The reason why is because he was extremely successful and prolific in the 60s, but he always refused to expose his images in galleries or in books. For him the fashion photo lives in a fashion magazine, except for the fact that in this new digital world if you want to exist for the future you have to exist digitally, take a photo of the book and post it online.

Being nostalgic do you miss your country?

With my head I live in France. But whenever I go back to Paris I hate it.

Why?

Maybe it is the context of political correctness that did not use to be; and I don’t think it fits with France. Macron to me is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is a Republican and not a man of the Left. The worst is that people believe he is a socialist. Of course he is better than Marine Le Pen and this is not hard, and it is the reason why I voted for him. But I was certainly not very inspired.

What do you feel about America today?

Since Trump was elected, since he is so extreme, it united citizens against him. And to me that is a nice thing. I am horrified about his behavior, but as I just said I am happy that the common hatred for him brought different people of different ideas together.

What about your experience in New York?

When you are a foreigner it gives you a freedom not to play too much by the rules. In France I would be less free. Here I understand the rules, but I am not obliged to follow them as I can say: “I am French.”

 

New York, September 2017

Images from the collection of Christopher Niquet.

Enjoy this Interview? Share it with a friend.

The post Christopher Niquet appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist and author.

Carl, why is it your motto that a reporter has to give the best obtainable version of the truth?

That’s what reporting is. Good reporting is the best obtainable version of the truth. This is the mission of the reporter.

Do you think that the journalists of today are living up to it?

You can’t make mass generalizations about journalism. In America today there is a tremendous amount of great journalism and there are also awful things being done in the name of journalism. There are far fewer great mainstream reporting organizations than 40 years ago.

Is their reporting good?

The reporting of the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, three great reportorial journalistic institutions, is very good, and in covering the Trump presidency they have been fabulous. It is a renaissance of great investigative reporting, with story after story. Television news is a different beast, but there has been a lot of excellent coverage of the Trump presidency on TV, especially cable TV, both at CNN and MSNBC.

“Trump, in all his wretched excess, is someone Made in America, a product of our peculiar cultural forces….”

The 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump

Today in the U.S. do you have a President that is against the press as never before?

It is more complicated than that. He disdains and hates a press that is truthful when it comes to reporting on him, but Donald Trump adores the press in a perverse way. He has manipulated the press since he was a young adult and he wouldn’t be anything without his use of the New York tabloids – the Daily News and the New York Post – in the 80s and 90s.  He understands the press and created the mythology of himself and promoted all his self-inflation and infatuation in their pages. Trump wouldn’t be president of the United States were it not for the press. The amount of free air time that he was clever enough to obtain and be given on the cable news networks by saying so many outrageous things during the primaries was a really grievous abdication of editorial responsibility.   An essential element of the best obtainable version of the truth involves journalists deciding what is news.

Would you say theirs is a love and hate relationship?

It’s about reporting on him factually and truthfully and contextually. What comes through is a picture of an authoritarian; ignorant, dangerous, sometimes unhinged, sometimes smart as a fox, sometimes crazy like a fox. I am struck by how many Republicans on the Hill and those in the top ranks of the military and intelligence realms tell you they think that he’s unstable and unfit for the presidency.

Do you agree that he’s very dangerous?

It’s dangerous to have a President of the United States who is as demonstrably uninformed and uninterested in the truth as this President is. He doesn’t know our history. He is surprisingly uninformed about much of what goes on in America, and even more so about the rest of the world.

And yet he still seems to hate the press?

His hatred is of those who get in his way. He dealt the same way in business with those who questioned his actions or said he was a con-man.   You cannot accurately accuse the press or the media of hating Donald Trump. They’re really trying to report on a chaotic, three-dimensional presidency and president, with context.   He is trying to cover up, undermine and impede a legitimate investigation into what his ties and those of others in the campaign and his business operations   have been to Russia. The great ‘mainstream’ news organizations – and some of those that are not traditional ‘mainstream’ – are doing a remarkably good job. This is especially true when you consider that this President of the United States lies almost reflexively, and with no apparent compunction, and instructs those representing him to do the same.

Like all demagogues he can’t stand being contradicted?

As I said, he’s authoritarian. And on the whole question of racism, whether or not he’s a racist he certainly has made a fundamental part of his calculation stirring racism and encouraging racism.  He has a racist history in business, of not renting his apartment properties to African-Americans to the point where the Justice Department had to take action.

Are the people who voted for him racists?

90 percent of the people who call themselves Republicans in this country voted for him. I don’t think you can call all Republicans racist by any stretch or means.

Do the people who voted for him now regret it?

One of the really disturbing things is how slow it has been for people who describe themselves as principled Republicans to disassociate themselves from his most demonstrable outrages. They have been willing to enable and not condemn an awful lot of what Trump has been doing.

Even though he has not been true to his campaign promises?

It’s true that he has not been able to deliver on his primary promises, but he has done an awful lot of important deregulating and very consequential things by executive order. Now he’s flailing, partly because he’s been unable to get some of the major things he wanted and partly because he’s not competent.

But surely he was competent earlier in his career and in the reality TV show, the Apprentice?

I talked to a lot of the top producers of The Apprentice before the election. Not the principal producer, he won’t talk to anybody, but four or five of those right under him. They all disdain Trump. They all say he was lazy. They all say he was abusive. They all say he was unprepared when he showed up on set. Take after take after take, he hadn’t done his homework.  The same picture we are getting of him as President.  Mostly he operates from his gut, without any kind of thoughtful preparation.

The 37th President of the United States Richard Nixon resigned in August, 1974, in the face of almost certain impeachment

The young Carl Bernstein and Edward Woodward

What about his Tweets?

The Tweets are not totally chaotic. The Tweets are a real road map of his mind, and what he believes and what he believes in and they’re often horrifying in that regard. That’s how we find out what he really thinks and believes in. That’s the real Trump. Not so much when he reads every once in a while from a Teleprompter.

Who is the real Trump?

I can’t think of many public figures of consequence in America in the last 30 or 40 years who have done so few admirable things in terms of the public good or the common good in their lives. Trump’s record is one dominated by self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment by any means, and questionable business practices.

But now he’s the President?

There is no evidence that he has changed. He is acting in total consistency with the way he’s lived his life. That includes the chaos and that includes the anger, and that includes the vitriol and the ignorance, the vindictiveness, and particularly the disdain for truth and the sensibilities of others.

There is a North Korean problem which is very bad and difficult. Is it very dangerous for him to be Commander-in-Chief?

It is dangerous to have a President of the United States about whom there is no evidence of the kind of methodical, careful consideration of information and issues and history that a President needs. You can have good instincts from the gut, which he would tell you he has. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. So far the evidence is dismaying.

Does he have good military advisers?

He’s surrounded by military people, McMaster, Mattis, Kelly, who have a huge burden to see that he acts responsibly because we have very little evidence that his instinct is to act responsibly. At the same time he’s somebody who does a lot more talking than doing. That’s one of the reasons it’s a dangerous situation.

“Trump’s record is one dominated by self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment by any means, and questionable business practices.”

Since the beginning of your career you have been very much used to being around Presidents. You played an important role in the Watergate impeachment. Have you always followed what happened?

I’ve been around it since I was a 16 year old who went into journalism in Washington in 1960.  I’ve written a biography of Hillary Clinton – unauthorized, of course – and I’ve covered the Presidency for almost 50 years, but I’ve also had great opportunities to learn outside Washington – all over America and the world. I co-wrote a biography of Pope John Paul II and his role in the fall of communism with the great Vatican journalist Marco Politi.

Is the Trump presidency very different from any other presidency you have seen?

This is a unique presidency, with an aberrant president. There is no precedent for this. Trump took office at a time when the country was in a cold civil war, and his winning the presidency has brought the temperature of that cold civil war to a boiling.

What do you mean by a cold civil war?

Fighting a Cold War, with great intensity and increasing hatred on both sides, but without people fighting in the streets.

Are you saying there was a Cold War in America, between American people?

There was already a Cold Civil War that has been building up for a while, but Donald Trump’s actions and words and attitudes have exacerbated it to the boiling point, to near-conflagration. He has done nothing to bring the people of this country together, but rather he has divided them further and he’s ignited incendiary passions. He’s a demagogue.

What’s going to happen?

There is no way of knowing. He has never been a real ideological Republican; his views are more ideologically consistent with the Republicans certainly than with the Democrats; but who knows what he believes about some things? He believes what he says about immigration and he believes what he says about a lot of things that are indicative of his anger and resentments and hatreds, often things that are not based in fact or reality.

Do you think he will end up being impeached?

If you mean leaving office because of the impeachment process, impeachment is just the first step – you have to be convicted. Bill Clinton was impeached, but he was acquitted and not convicted by the Senate. You have to have a two thirds vote of the Senate to convict a President of high crimes and misdemeanors and be removed from office. That’s a pretty high bar, and it is a long, arduous process. Nixon would have been convicted in the Senate had he not resigned, but the impeachment and conviction of a President has never happened in our history.

But there are there ongoing investigations?

Yes. In addition to the Special Counsel, there are several congressional inquiries.

What have they found?

Already it is clear that we’re dealing with very serious events and evidence and certainly the appearance of a cover-up and possible obstruction of justice by the President, and many other suggestions and allegations that need to be thoroughly investigated. He fired James Comey, the Director of the FBI. He pardoned Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in Arizona who had refused to follow the law in regard to immigrants. The sheriff’s pardon seems partly intended to hold out the promise of pardons to those who are under investigation in the Russia matters. The example of pardoning the sheriff may convince some of those people not to talk. We don’t know where these investigations are going to go, but we know they’re are very serious and that they’re closing in on him. This question of ‘collusion’ with Russia is a complicated business and only part of the investigations. Many inter-related areas of his campaign and businesses and those of his aides and associates and even family are under intense scrutiny. Perhaps ‘collusion’ is not altogether the right   term and what investigators are seeking, in part, is evidence of whether Trump and/or those closest to him knew   in advance of Russia’s attempts to intervene in our election on his behalf, and either encouraged it or did nothing to stop it.

Is what you are saying that the situation is very dangerous, like during Watergate?

Far more dangerous. Especially because this president of the United States seems determined to ignore and contradict evidence of what Russia did in terms of undermining the American electoral process.  The system worked in Watergate. The press did its job. The judiciary did its job and Congress did its job. The people of the United States came to a consensus that we had a criminal President and he had to leave office. By the end of Watergate there was not a huge division in the country. Nixon may have been a criminal President from the beginning of his presidency to the end, but he was a substantial person and a substantial intellect and he understood history and the country. Nixon was a politician who always wanted to be President of the United States, and was brought down by his almost tragic character flaws after he’d achieved the Presidency he’d always wanted.  Nixon was accused and was guilty of great abuse of his presidential power and authority, in addition to conspiring to cover up what he had done. The whole Trump equation is different.  We’re really looking at apples and oranges here in regard to Trump and Nixon. There is nothing remotely tragic about Trump, among other considerations.   The most obvious similarity is that both Trump and Nixon tried to make the conduct of the press the issue, instead of the conduct of the president and those around him.

There is another fundamental difference between our era now and Watergate:  Fewer citizens are interested in and open to the best obtainable version of the truth today.  There is no metric to measure this, but it seems obvious:   For many years now, more and more Americans have been seeking out news and information to reinforce and buttress   their already-held beliefs:  political, cultural, religious et cetera.   Instead of opening themselves to the best obtainable version of the truth,   as happened during Watergate and was more the norm until the scorched-earth cultural and political wars of the past quarter-century.

 

Carl Bernstein at the Newseum in DC (c)2014 Sam Levitan Photography

Is Trump a dilettante?

Worse than a dilettante, but the fact that Trump is not of the political class and has never been a politician is not necessarily the problem. It could be a strength if the right person were to emerge, who has no political background, to be president. Our system hasn’t been working very well with politicians of late, and one of the reasons Trump won is because he said unequivocally, and people identified with it: “The political system is broken.” It is, he’s not wrong about that.

Is this a major reason why Trump won?

Trump identified some basic difficulties about the American condition in his campaign. What he said about the so-called elites of the country having failed us is right. Too many of our institutions aren’t working: our educational system isn’t working, our political system isn’t working, and our medical care system isn’t working.  The three institutions that really continue to function with brilliance in this country are the military, entertainment, and tech. I don’t want to oversimplify something that’s vastly complicated, but the great post-war American meritocracy has ceased to function. The real opportunities in our country are greased for the children of the wealthy and connected at the expense of those from working-class and middle-class backgrounds. Trump hardly presented a coherent analysis of such things, but he hit some nerves.

What will happen?

We’re still a country of the greatest potential on earth, but we are being strained as never before in our modern history, not just by Trump. Trump has taken some of the frayed strings that were already there and is pulling at the very fabric now. He exploits the differences between Americans and pursues a strategy that is the opposite of trying to unite our people.

Do you mean that it’s not all his fault and that he is a consequence of the situation?

No, he is partly a consequence of it, but our underlying problems remain. He has subjected this country to division and danger as a result of his character flaws, his fundamental dishonesty and lying, his malevolence, and his lack of competence; and his spectacular ignorance and understanding of our own history and that of the modern world. That is a very different kind of danger than we have ever faced.

Because he says things that other politicians or diplomats have never said?

He says a lot of things that people have been wanting to hear and some of those things have a resonance rooted in legitimacy. Some. But he is also a provocateur and he knows he’s a provocateur and he intends to provoke. That’s part of what he does.

What is he interested in?

He’s really ultimately interested in Donald Trump. We see very little evidence that he’s interested in the United States of America and its people as a cohesive conceptual entity. Where is the desire to bring people together, to do great things, to articulate that desire and to come up with programs and pronouncements to make it happen? What we’re watching is a rhetorical fusillade of venom, not soaring rhetoric to do great things. “Make America great again.” OK. What does it mean?

Is he a neo-fascist?

Whatever neo-fascist characteristic he represents is peculiarly American and doesn’t accord with the European models. Some of it is a little Peronist perhaps. But there should be no illusions about his authoritarian impulses, his demagoguery, his willingness to traffic in racism and his disregard for the rule of law and constitutional principle as an elemental aspect of inciting his core supporters.

“Trump is surprisingly uninformed about much of what goes on in America, and even more so about the rest of the world.”

You are a reporter but also a very prominent witness of the American life. Has this country changed a lot since when you were a child, when black people didn’t wash their hands in the same sink as you?

I went to legally segregated public schools in the capital of the United States of America until I was in the sixth grade, when the Supreme Court ruled, in Brown versus Board of Education, that our schools had to be de-segregated. Great things have happened in this country in the post-war era, for all our people:  rich, poor, middle-class, black, white, straight, gay, men, and women.  The United States has led the world and not just in terms of international security but also in the kind of society we have built. Yes, there have been some great mistakes and fits and starts. Vietnam, Iraq – disasters. We haven’t always been right, but we’ve never had rot at our core.

Is America now somehow rotten?

I’m not ready to say that we have rot at our core now. I don’t think we do. But we are having trouble fulfilling the kind of principled continuity that we had through the end of the 20th century. We’re having troubles internally and we’re having troubles in terms of how we relate to the rest of the world. We’ve always been the most complex culture, probably in the world, in part because we have such a mélange of people and histories.

Things have changed after the fall of Communism in Russia and with the rise of China?

We expected that in our triumphalism about the end of the Cold War with the Soviets that the post-Cold War era was going to be a great one for the United States and for the West. Yes, the post-Cold War era has turned out to be liberating for hundreds of millions of people, but also nightmarish in ways that we could not have imagined, for the United States but also for Europe. The fall of Communism did not produce the wonderful peace that we had expected, it produced great disorder. And we did not anticipate the age of terrorism.

Is there a great imbalance in America today?

We still have by far the most stable economy in the world and a uniquely bright economic future in a macro sense, but at the same time we haven’t fulfilled our obligation to our own people, especially working-class people who have had a decline in real income over the last thirty-some years. And we have created a modern plutocracy. We have had plutocratic eras in our past but never a huge plutocracy with tens and hundreds of thousands of Americans – this so-called ‘one per cent’-living a life of fat ease and privilege and advantage.

Isn’t America known for being a meritocracy?

That great meritocracy has been eroded by this new plutocracy, so that it is much more difficult for those of modest means to achieve in the way people of my generation   of modest means were able to. Now the wealthy and the connected have a clear path to controlling institutions in our economy and politics that most other people don’t have a real shot at. So we have a real plutocracy.

Do you see these divisions elsewhere in the world?

 All of the democracies, including the democracies of the former Communist East and the West, have divided countries and cultures. Every one. In terms of extremes, we’re talking about Hungary or Poland or the Czech Republic. The divisions we’re seeing are consistent, and the temptation is for demagoguery, for authoritarianism, something like what we’re seeing with Trumpism. Look at the anti-immigrant sentiment all over Europe, East and West. But it’s more complicated than just that. As are the nationalistic impulses.

At the end of the day would you say that somehow Trump understands America? That he’s a complete product of America?

Trump, in all his wretched excess, is someone Made in America, a product of our peculiar cultural forces, including the huge role that entertainment plays in our basic modern identity.  He ran a very effective campaign based largely on his own instincts; he had a real understanding of what’s going on in the guts of a large part of America, and among the people who call themselves Republicans, not just working class whites. Again, he won with 90 percent of the Republican vote – and remember that Republicans control almost two thirds of the Governorships and State Legislatures in this country. So there you have a very big part of the equation. Trump was a very good fit for a big part of that Republican electorate. For a very big part of America.

Bridgehampton

September 16 2017

Enjoy  this interview? Share it with a friend.

 

The post Carl Bernstein appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

Mario Tavella is Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, and President General Director of Sotheby’s France.

You have worked at Sotheby’s since 1991, so you must have a loyal personality type?

Let’s say that it took me a long time to find a job that I liked. I finally found a job that fit me like a glove, so, at age twenty-eight, after having worked in family companies, I changed paths and careers.

You are an expert on the decorative arts. What does this mean at Sotheby’s?

Decorative arts are objects, and I’m specialised in objects from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. I have kind of abandoned the field, though I do still write articles about it. My training was in decorative arts, but, today, with the work that I do, I have had to widen my horizons to include other things, such as jewellery, African art, Art Deco, contemporary art, and the “Old Masters”. For example, in July, I was in Tel Aviv working with some colleagues on a contemporary art collection that we will sell in Paris in December.

“Italian sales are something new for Sotheby’s. We created a market that didn’t exist before.”

The Italian Sale at Sotheby’s London, October 2017

Speaking of decorative arts, antique furnishings are no longer popular today. Prices are very low. Why is that?

There has been quite a radical reversal in trends when it comes to collecting. It is going to be a long-term trend perhaps, given that things went too far in creating spaces that were too full, too cluttered, and so people have gone in the opposite direction. Today, people want to live in spaces that are lighter, and especially where they can combine the antique with the modern, the contemporary with archaeological elements, Art Deco and African art. The popularity of contemporary furnishings made by Gio Ponti, Carlo Mollino, or Jean Prouvé, for example, is off the charts.

Is this a trend?

It is most certainly a trend, like at the beginning of the last century when important American collectors collected Renaissance-era furnishings that are hard to sell today,  despite the fact that they are pieces of excellent manufacture. However, when I talk about it being a trend, I don’t mean that these are frivolous choices. There are highly informed clients behind these choices. But, as I said, these days, living in more linear spaces is the trend.

The same goes for antique paintings. Aside from some incredibly high quality paintings, the rest are in a free fall. Some bronze collectables or certain types of marble are holding up better, because they mesh well with modern styles.

Today, many collectors are collecting pieces from twentieth-century Italian artists such as Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, and Piero Manzoni or “arte povera” artists like Jannis Kounellis, Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, and Michelangelo Pistoletto. What has changed?

Fortunately, the auction houses have understood the importance of these Italian artists. For quite a few years now, auction houses in London—such as Sotheby’s, for example—have been organising auctions each October focused on art, especially Italian modern art. This has allowed us to get the names of these artists out there on a worldwide scale. Fontana’s value at auction and at the various art fairs around the world has led to quite significant prices. These prices have been achieved thanks to the promotion that has been done over the years.

Do you think that the prices for certain artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst, are overstated? Do museums have difficulty buying their work?  

It depends on the museum. It is all relative. If prices are exorbitant…and, for example, let’s say that the prices for London real estate are exorbitant! I think that only future generations will be able to judge if the prices were truly exorbitant. I can say one thing: Relative to the prices paid for contemporary art, other areas, such as archaeology and certain antique furnishings and paintings, seem extremely undervalued.

“Even though we are seen as a commercial organisation focused on profit, we are also a great cultural organisation.”

What is most important for an auction house?

Having excellent experts in every category. They are the backbone of the organisation. Administrative workers come and go, but it takes years to train good experts, and you need to know how to keep them. I think that a good auction house also needs to be innovative and branch into new sectors. For example, Italian sales are something new for Sotheby’s. We created a market that didn’t exist before. In this sense, even though we are seen as a commercial organisation focused on profit, we are also a great cultural organisation. For example, our catalogues have become full-blown art books in their own right, and we hold exhibitions that are curated just as if they were held in a museum.

Do auction houses sell some of everything?

Sotheby’s has existed since 1744. It is the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. We started with books, and now we sell in about forty different categories.

How are sales?

With the auctions we have good years and years that are not as good. We rely on family estates, and it depends on how the economy is around the world. If there is a crisis in China or Russia we feel it right away, just like dealers do for that matter.

Do people prefer to buy from dealers or from auction houses?

There are those that prefer to buy from a gallery owner or a dealer because they can take the piece home, look at it, and decide gradually. At an auction, you need to be fast and to be able to react quickly.

Some people say that the auction houses have killed off galleries. Is this true?

There is certainly a great deal of competition. Perhaps it is because we’ve modernised more and we are more effective in terms of marketing and being more visible…but I see that the most cultured and passionate gallery owners are not dying out. Actually, they are continuing to work very well.

The de Ligne Coral Cabinets, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Published by M. Tavella, Burlington Magazine, 2014.

Gathering Asian buyers, Sotheby’s Paris, 2017

Mixing the styles, Sotheby’s Paris, 2017

The Grimani hardstones table top, World record price £3,509,000, Sotheby’s London, 2015

“I’ve made some of my closest friends at work in one way or another, having created a relationship built on trust.”

Who are your clients?

The most disparate range of people. From ultra-rich collectors who once came from thirty different countries and now come from seventy different countries. We have private clients as well as dealers, interior designers, museums, jewellers, and public institutions. Currently, one-third of our clients come from across the Atlantic, one-third come from Europe, and the rest come from the Middle East and the East. We have an auction house in Hong Kong.

You have handled many collections and estate sales…

Yes, I’m really interested in these types of sales. I took part in the Lily Safra sale, I curated the auction for the Bruni Tedeschi family at the Castello di Castagneto, which was a big auction… and then the auction of pieces that had belonged to the Turin based antiques dealer Giuseppe Rossi, which was an enormous success. Managing collections is the most enjoyable part of my job, because you get on the same wavelength with the seller. The economic part isn’t the only important factor. It is also important to leave a good memory behind.

How important is the actual auctioneer?

I’ve never done it, although they’ve asked me many times. The auctioneer brings energy and rhythm, and knows when he can convince someone in the room to make the next offer, for example. I prefer to talk to the client on the phone, advising him when to bow out because the price has gone too high or telling him he should keep going because that piece is important for his collection. The most satisfying thing about my work is that I’ve made some of my closest friends at work in one way or another, having created a relationship built on trust. This is very gratifying, for example, when a client asks my opinion on something being sold by another auction house or a dealer.

Are you still enthusiastic about your work after so many years?

Yes, I am.

What kind of market is Paris today?

It was once the main market, but today it has fallen to fourth place, after New York, London and Hong Kong, but there has been a new energy in the air these last few months. This may be due, in part, to President Macron and also due to Brexit. People say that Paris is coming back into vogue. For me, it is very important because, in Paris we deal in all of the main areas, such as ancient art, African art, Art Deco, and modern and contemporary art. While London seems to be especially focused on contemporary art.

 

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

Paris, September 2017

Portrait of Mario Tavella by Samuel Kirszenbaum.

The post Mario Tavella appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

Caran d’Ache, the Swiss manufacturer of writing instruments and color products, has Carole Hubscher at the head of its Board of Directors. Caran d’Ache is a jewel in Switzerland’s manufacturing industry, a family business with a strong ethos of sustainability, and their factory in Geneva is a model for employing happy people.

Carole, you became head of Caran d’Ache in 2012. Have you now taken your father’s place?

Yes, definitely. It took a while.

You don’t have brothers?

No, we are an only girls family.

Before working at Caran d’Ache did you work in other places?

When you are in a family business it’s so important to take the time to see elsewhere what’s happening. I worked in different places to gain experience, to see other companies, other ways of marketing or working around the branding of your company.

Did you always think that you would work here?

No. One very wise advice I can give, it’s so important in a family business that you don’t put too much pressure on your kids to make sure that they are taking after you. Both my parents were very clear about that: make sure that you do something you are passionate about. You only have one life and so you have to make the most of it. So no, I didn’t know. Everything was open, which was fantastic.

“Today is a super day. We are launching a collaboration with Warner Bros. in their new movie called Justice League.”

Justice League Trilogy Box by Caran d’Ache

When did you discover your passion?

It’s after my first experience working for Caran d’Ache in New York that I fell in love with the brand and the products, and the flame started, even though as a child I had a lot to do with the products. What is absolutely fantastic is the variety of our customers. From the child, to the artists, to the collectors, we have all generations, and very different sorts of customers; and to address all those customers is very interesting.

You are the fourth generation in the Caran d’Ache family business. Why is a family business important?

A family business allows you to look for the long term, and one of our goals is to make sure that you pass it on to the next generation in a better shape than you received it. A lot has to do with transmitting strong values, family values I mean, and the long term vision.

What are your Hubscher family values?

Hard working. (She laughs) It’s an interesting question because when you are going on with the generations of course there are more and more people, so for us what is important is definitely the hard working. The honesty in everything we are doing. The responsibility.

When Caran d’Ache started during the war in 1915 what was it producing?

Three entrepreneurs started the company. They bought a factory that was manufacturing soap in the centre of Geneva. They transferred it into a manufacture that could produce black lead pencils.

Why?

Because there was a big demand, it was an opportunity. There were of course other manufacturers all over Europe, but especially in Germany and Czechoslovakia. At the time everybody was writing and it was an important opportunity to develop such a high end, quality product.

But how come Caran d’Ache is now famous around the world for its colored pencils, named Prismalo.

Because we invented water soluble colored pencils in the 1920s. It was really the expansion of the black lead pencils that we knew how to manufacture.  You have to bring innovation when you are not the first one in the market and when you have big competitors. Our engineers at the time invented a new technique.

Was it an immediate success?

No, not right away, but very quickly, yes.

Do children all over the world use these pencils?

Yes, especially in Switzerland, which has a special way of distributing the products to the classrooms. The state is providing the school materials to all the kids, which is not the case in most countries abroad where it’s the parents who have to buy the products.

How many colors do you make?

We have recipes for more than 500 colors, but our biggest assortment today contains a hundred and twenty colors.

Which is the most popular color?

White. Because of mixing that color with others, that’s the color we’re selling the most. It’s strange. Afterwards of course red, blue and green are the main colors. But the white is the number one.

“We produce the distance between Geneva to Rome every day, if you put the pencils next to each other.”

Since you took over the company what has changed?

There is much more transparency, the environment has changed completely. My father didn’t like to communicate very much, he was very discreet. I believe that we have a fantastic story to tell, and nowadays consumers want to know what is behind the brand. You have to tell the story.

What is behind the Caran d’Ache brand?

Quality that is Swiss-made. It’s like high end cuisine, you need the best ingredients. Everything is made here. Everything comes out of our ateliers here, so we have a full control of what we are producing. Sustainability nowadays is very important. You have a lot of wood dust coming out of the manufacturing process when we are making the pencils. We recuperate this wood dust and we make little briquettes that we use to heat the factory in winter. So we are creating our own energy. That’s one example.

How many pencils do you produce?

We produce the distance between Geneva to Rome every day, if you put the pencils next to each other.

Do you produce everything?

Everything. We are completely verticalised, and that’s unique in the world. When people ask me, “Who are your competitors?” I say, “I have many and none at the same time.” We have 300 people working here in manufacture, but more than 90 different know-hows.

What is the core business today?

Color and writing instruments. Color is part of our DNA. Not only the pencils, but also the fibre tipped pens, the paints, the pastels and in the writing instruments We are really the master of colors.

Why did you move into other writing instruments?

We start with the kids at school with the colors, and everything has a link with the hand. We are the tool of the creativity of the personalization. It’s this direct link that you have from your soul to what you want to write or what you want to draw. We offer a creative tool for every generation.

Nowadays in America they use biro pens and the fountain pen is something unique and special.

Hand writing has evolved as well, within this last century. Everybody had beautiful handwriting, and now handwriting has changed quite a lot.

Do you sell less than you did?

No. Computer notebooks and smartphones are a new competitor, but you don’t do the same thing with it. People write less for sure, but everybody still carries a pen or a pencil to write a quick note. The market is still in growth; even though it’s not a huge growth it’s fairly stable since many years and there is an increase for us.

In the global market?

There was a huge increase in the past few years because of the trend of coloring books for adults. Last year we produced plus 20 percent in volume.

Where do you sell the most?

Europe is still the historical market for us, but then of course you have certain regions where demand evolves, like North America and China. These are markets that are growing very fast for us.

Do you position yourself as a luxury brand?

A premium brand, yes. We are really trying to be the masters in everything we do. High end, Swiss made. We are always making sure to produce high quality products and to offer the best service to our customers.

Do you still have many competitors?

Of course there are a lot of mass market products on the market, but to our level I don’t think so.

What are you working on at the moment?

Today is a very special day, it’s a super day. We are launching a new collaboration with Warner Bros. in their new movie called ‘Justice League’. The three superheroes, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, asked us to produce their pens. We are manufacturing the pens, and the launch is taking place this afternoon at 5 o’clock on all the social media.

And you have the collaboration with Paul Smith and Peter Marino. How do you work with Peter Marino?

Peter Marino made a special pen, his special pen, because when he finishes a mandate, for instance the latest boutique for Chanel , he always writes a thank you note to say how much he enjoyed working on this project And he always leaves his pen behind, which is a Caran d’Ache pen called the Varius Ivanhoe. Therefore, we gave him the Varius collection that he dressed up the way he wanted to have it.

 

Operator on the pencils cutting line

Operator extrusion of leads

Encapsulation of PRISMALO pencils

Drying leads in basket

At Caran d’Ache

“We are a love brand, definitely, linked to emotions.”

Do you have famous clients?

Yes, but we are Swiss, so extremely discreet. In 2015 we made a very nice exhibition, ‘Les Caran d’Ache de Picasso’, with original paintings and drawings of Picasso made with our products. That was for our one hundred anniversary, and beautiful pictures of the photographer David Douglas Duncan. Karl Lagerfeld is a big user of our pastels called Neocolor. The architects Peter Marino, Mario Botta, Norman Foster; we know them. And amongst fashion designers, we can mention Paul Smith.’ It is a love story between our two companies since many years and we havea very nice collaboration with him. It’s actually the companies, the designers and the people that work with our products who are approaching us. They want to do something with us, which is nice. India Mahdavi as well, lately.

What is your core? You have the pencils, the colour pencils…..

…the crayons, the fibre-tipped pens, the pastels, the mechanical pencil called the Fixpencil that is really renowned amongst architects. We have the small biro pen, we also have – you were talking about computers and new technologies – a pen that has a double function that you can use on your phone or on tablets or on paper. We are also producing high end writing instruments with a know-how that is comparable to high watchmaking. It’s a wide range of artists, collectors, or everyday people that are just using Caran d’Ache for their daily life.

People don’t always know that Caran d’Ache is a Swiss firm, and your name is by origin a Russian name, karandash?

Caran d’Ache means pencil in Russian and we named our company after a famous French caricaturist of the Belle Époque, Emmanuel Poiré. In Switzerland we are on the top 10 most renowned brands. We are a love brand, definitely, linked to emotions. People talk about Caran d’Ache and have experienced the brand for the first drawings you made for your parents, or the art classes you had at school. The first love letter you wrote and things like that, very personal souvenirs.

What about the pen and the luxury products?

That is the perfect gift. You never make a mistake offering a pen. It’s fine for a man, for women, for different ages also. A nice pen is jewellery that a man can carry.

Yet you are not so renowned for the pen?

It depends on which countries. In Switzerland everybody uses Caran d’Ache, we have by far the biggest market share here. It’s a small but important market, where people make lots of gifts. We are very renowned in other countries like Japan for instance, where quality pens are part of the culture.

Obviously pencils are something that you use and finish. Is a pen for life?

It depends. All our products are lifetime guaranteed. You couldn’t say that if you’re not sure of what you are making, and that’s also unique. To make a good pen is difficult.

Companies always try to have something new, but what is your classic?

The Ecridor Collection.

Do you ever change it?

Yes, you have to make it evolve slightly, but no big changes.

Do you make many new things?

Nowadays you always have to bring innovation and activity around your products in order to maintain the attraction of the brand. It’s not necessarily a new collection, but a new color for instance, or a new packaging.

The black pen is always a favorite?

We make so many colours, but our customers always like black. It’s like clothing.

Do you change the boxes?

Yes, but not very much. The Prismalo box, for instance, features the Matterhorn; and it will remain the Matterhorn. This is our chocolate box. We made a slight evolution, otherwise on bestsellers like these you don’t change things, but we are always bringing new assortments, new colors.

What is the main feature of your own job?

Work on the strategy, making sure that our values are “lived” by everyone in the company. Just for the time being, I’m  travelling constantly because I want to be near the markets. It is very important to understand the market so I’m constantly with clients.

Does the market change?

Very fast. The market is changing so fast nowadays.

In which way?

Retail, the way it exists today. I was in the States three weeks ago, in the middle of North Carolina, just to see a mall over there and the parking lot was always empty Some of our clients are selling our products to Amazon, but we’re not selling to them directly, we have our own e-commerce boutique.. It’s growing very fast. It’s the reality of today’s market. In other words, we are using platforms that are more upscale, like Mr Porter or Net-a-Porter, or the web shops in England like Harrods for instance.

Is your best moment Christmas?

Yes. Definitely. The gifting season.

At the beginning you said that each generation wants to pass the business on to the next. How are you preparing them?

There are six members of the next generation, they are below 15. We are preparing them by influencing, and by the way we’re raising our kids and transmitting our values.

What are you doing to pass the business on in better shape?

Each generation has its own challenges. For the generation of my father, it was certainly the diversification and internationalisation of the brand. In my generation, it’s definitely this new era of fast innovation in terms of manufacturing processes, but also distribution.

Geneva, October 18 2017

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend

The post Carole Hubscher appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.

We go to see Achim Borchardt-Hume at Tate Modern where he is the Director of Exhibitions and Programmes. On this date in 1881, 25^th October, Pablo Picasso was born. Achim Borchardt-Hume is the curator of  Tate Modern’s forthcoming EY EXHIBITION: PICASSO 1932 – LOVE, FAME, TRAGEDY which runs from 8th March – 9th September 2018 and has been described as one of the most important shows that the museum has ever staged.

Do you curate all the exhibitions at Tate Modern?

No, I look after the whole programme. It’s a big team effort. Occasionally I curate exhibitions myself, such as the Picasso 1932.

Why do you show the Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibition that is now on at Tate Modern?

We have to show artists who have really made a contribution to recent art history. The exhibition gives you an overview of the work of the Kabakovs, and also gives you a feeling of time. 1989 and the fall of Communism was momentous, an epic historic moment, but to somebody 30 years old is almost outside their active memory.

Do you like to show these retrospectives at the Tate?

I think it’s important that the exhibitions give you a clear sense of positions, of ideas, of stories. There are different models. Picasso 1932 for instance is not a retrospective, but I thought it was really important to find a way to look closely at Picasso’s work. One of the interesting things with Picasso is how can you actually make an exhibition where you feel you come close to Picasso as a living, breathing artist, human being. With everything that that means, like ambition, doubts, happiness, sadness.

“In 1932 Picasso has to answer a great many questions to himself about what it is to be an artist.”

Cecil Beaton: Pablo Picasso, Rue la Boetie, 1933, Paris. Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s.

Aren’t there already so many Picasso exhibitions around the world?

Many Picasso exhibitions contain an ‘and’ in the title.  So ‘Picasso and the Mediterranean’, it’s Picasso and something. A category gets chosen, through which you then look at Picasso’s work.

Why was 1932 a very productive year for Picasso?

1932, for Picasso, was a moment where he faced a number of very common questions and dilemmas. In 1931 he turned 50. For most men that is quite an existential moment, to wonder where they have got to and where they want to go from here. He was a very famous mid-career artist, but the critics were debating whether he was an artist of the past, whether he was over or whether he had still anything to say for the present moment. He was successful and rich, but he lost more and more contact with his artist friends who couldn’t quite share that lifestyle. All of this happens against the moment in time when the world is taken by the Great Depression, so the art market is collapsing. Everywhere you see the signs of nationalism rising, and from 1933 Europe is on the course to disaster.

Was this why Picasso had his first major retrospective?

Picasso has to answer a great many questions to himself about what it is to be an artist. What is it to be a middle aged man and to create work that is genuinely new and makes a contribution? Where does he stand in relation to the more revolutionary work being made at the moment, like surrealism? How does he compete with Matisse, who was the other giant of it all and who had his retrospective in 1931? And he does it by having his first major retrospective, which unlike Matisse who left the decisions to his dealers, he decides he will curate himself.

What was going on in his personal life?

Picasso always digested the world through his personal life, through personal experience. He paints his daily life. He’s having two relationships, one of a respectable family and marriage to Olga Khokhlova, who was his muse throughout much of the late 1910s and 1920s, but he is now also in a relationship with this much younger, 28 years younger, woman, Marie-Thérèse Walter. All of which points to an incredible urge, how really to reinvent himself, how to start again. How can he go back to being an artist the way he was when he first came to Paris, when he threw the rulebook out of the window and started making a completely new type of art? That’s a real battle that is going on in 1932.

How will you show the story of this momentous year?

At the beginning of the year he is in this very self centred moment, very wrapped up with his family, very wrapped up with his relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter, and very concerned with making masterpiece paintings to be shown in his retrospective in the summer. Once the retrospective has opened he becomes much more experimental. The work changes quite dramatically. It becomes much darker in mood and atmosphere, and by the turn of the year I feel the big picture of the world is beginning to seep into Picasso’s work.

“I will not allow you to make me a historical artist, I am a contemporary artist. That’s the message. ”

What is new in 1932?

The eroticism and sensuality. It’s much more sensual than the painting before. The colour and the fluidity of line is unprecedented, and it is a real struggle to inject new life into painting through eroticism. Trying to show you something, what happens when you look, and in representation that cannot happen in any other art form.

Does he produce many masterpieces in 1932?

In January and in the first half of March, not in February, Picasso paints these extraordinary ambitious large paintings. In the second half of March he does something quite different, because he begins to engage with surrealism, and those paintings are not shown in his retrospective, they are just his personal work. The big moment comes in June when he curates his own retrospective at the Galeries Georges Petit. Matisse had a retrospective there one year before, but retrospectives at that moment in time for living artists are extremely unusual.

Why does Picasso take complete control of his retrospective?

It is key that he doesn’t allow people neatly to carve up his work into Cubism, Blue, Rose (pink), Classical, Surrealist. He just shows it all combined, and removes all the date information in the exhibition and puts his latest works, the paintings he made in the first half of 1932, all around the show. He does this to say, all of this is me now, I will not allow you to make me a historical artist, I am a contemporary artist. That’s the message. As a result there’s an extremely passionate debate in the press as to what this exhibition really is, and what it says about Picasso.

How does the debate about the exhibition go?

Famously Carl Jung, as a psychoanalyst, says that it shows that Picasso clearly suffers from mental health issues, and shows symptoms not dissimilar to the ones he observed in his patients. Which is a particularly sinister statement if you think that one year later, in 1933, Degenerate art (German: Entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe modern art), was founded as a policy in Germany. Degenerate art in Germany makes exactly the same claim, that modern artists have mental health issues. On the other hand you have an artist like Paul Klee, who goes and sees the show and says there’s absolutely no question that Picasso is the greatest artist of the moment, and that his recent work proves as much.

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust 1932. Private Collection © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017

Nude Woman in a Red Armchair 1932. Tate. Purchased 1953 © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017

The Crucifixion 1932. Musee Nationale Picasso © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017

The Dream 1932. Private Collection © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017

The Mirror 1932. Private Collection © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017

The Rescue 1932. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Sammlung Beyeler © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2017

“Picasso is an artist who never stops searching.“

What happens in 1932 after this retrospective?

In the second half of the year, as a story it becomes very interesting. In autumn he makes a series of truly extraordinary drawings, some of his most extraordinary works on paper, of The Crucifixion. Completely different from what happens in the first half. Suddenly it’s about this whole idea of suffering and pain and agony. The final group of works from the year are about rescue from drowning. We will show a painting from early 1933, in which the two figures – the figure who is about to drown and the figure who is rescuing – are fusing into one, and they are almost like the first appearance of the mother and child in Guernica.

Picasso is an artist who started as a child and carried on for 80 years. Is 1932 just another beginning, when you stop and change horse?

When Picasso had this retrospective in 1932 he couldn’t know that he would live another 40 years and would produce four more decades of work. The dilemma that every artist has every day is to start again and think, what am I going to do now? Every artist has that. I see a lot of artists at work, so I know what that is like.

In your view, what makes Picasso such a special artist?

I think what is very curious in the case of Picasso is that he is risk taking, in an almost unparalleled way. He’s done something and it’s critically recognized, and, when you have reached that position, to actually do something completely new is an extraordinary risk for any artist to take. He does this time and again. In 1932 he reaches for the first time in his life this moment where, by virtue of having this retrospective exhibition, he has his life in front of him. He talks about that. It’s like looking at his life 10 years after his death.

Is his double life, with his wife Olga and his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, stressing for him?

I think it’s a precarious balance. I wasn’t there, so there’s only so much I can say about it. From the archive research we have done, what is very apparent is that he spends a lot more time with his family than you might ordinarily assume. He spends a lot of time with Olga. Marie-Thérèse Walter is his total secret that nobody knows about. Nobody. And Françoise Gilot 30 years later describes Marie-Thérèse as his dream, while Olga was reality. He has to face the reality of being married, having a son, family life, all of that.

Was he restless?

You have an artist who arrived in Paris very young, and who always lived in Paris as a foreigner. He wants to be embraced by the system and to be successful, and he achieves all of that, and he achieves money and wealth and respectability. In a way he’s got everything he wants, and then it’s not enough.

Was he afraid of losing his talent?

There’s a constant search. If I were to describe Picasso in one short sentence, it is: He is an artist who never stops searching.

London, October 25^th 2017

To read more Picasso themed interviews please visit:

Olivier Berggruen

John Richardson

Laurent Le Bon

Enjoy this interview? Share it with a friend.

The post Achim Borchardt-Hume appeared first on Alain Elkann Interviews.