Wish You Were Here

Since 1991 Visionaire has pioneered the limited edition – bridging the worlds of art, fashion and design to create original and exclusive publications in all shapes and sizes. Different themes and formats are driven by each issue’s artistic direction that have included boxed, bagged and even audio presentations.

Inside Mr Porter's online closet is a selection of Visionaire’s highly collectible publications over the years that include issues by Hedi Slimane, Ricardo Tisci, Levi’s and Louis Vuitton. In 2000, Jean-Louis Dumas, President of Hermès created Issue 32 titled, Where?

Inspired by Dumas’s very own travel sketchbook, Where? takes the form of fifty-five silver-edged postcards with images contributed by international artists and photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Bruce Weber, David LaChapelle and Jeff Burton. The collection are presented in none other than a soft, tan leather pouch crafted in the workshop of the French luxury house in Paris.

An edition of 3500 numbered copies were produced and provide an alternative to the holiday postcard as well as a charming contemporary statement in an ever diminishing world of pen to paper correspondence. Whether it is from your private island or urban retreat these art postcards will guarantee best wishes for both sender and recipient par avion. 

Visit Visionaire to view their avant-garde series of issues to date.  

Mellow Yellow

Detox is word-dropped at the beginning of every new year when the excesses of December quite literally consume our body and mind. Earlier in the week I took refuge in Selfridges from the delayed festive weather to explore how London's luxury mecca was coping with its very own detox. After the adrenaline-fuelled sales period, the Oxford Street landmark has taken a leaf out of its founder's notebook - Mr Harry Gordon Selfridge created a Silence Room in 1909 for shoppers to "retire from the whirl of bargains and the build up of energy". This remarkable foresight is as relevant today in an age of instantaneous 24/7 commercial information and stimulation that is unfortunately not exclusive to Christmas but right across the other 364 days of the year. 

And so to the launch of No Noise - conceived by Alannah Weston, Creative Director, the campaign is directly inspired by Mr Selfridge's quiet concept and celebrates the beauty of function through a number of in-store projects free from the harshness of promotion that we are now so accustomed to. 

From the mellow felt-lined meditation pods dotted around the store, created by Headspace, to The Quiet Shop which showcases a curated collection of minimal items as well as a run of limited edition de-branded products that Weston describes as "iconic...needing no introduction". This includes the department store's equally iconic yellow shopping bags which have been rid of their black text and emphasise the power of brand recognition and the breakdown of unnecessary design that floods everyday life.

mellow yellow at Selfridges

The Quiet Shop concept space, located in The Wonder Room on the ground floor, has staged many exciting displays over the years (White Wonders, December 2011), and its subtle staging for No Noise is just as seductive as its previous guises. Acne, Jil Sander and Caran D'Ache are a number of brands that span The Quiet Edit and join Crème de la Mer, Heinz and Marmite who have exclusively de-branded their products from logos and text to create a silent, yet symbolic, installation of colour, form and utility in the shop space.

 No Noise Marmite 250g

 No Noise Heinz Baked Beans 415g

No Noise Heinz Tomato Ketchup 342ml

 No Noise Caran D'Ache Classic 844 Mechanical Pencil

No Noise Crème de la Mer Moisturising Cream 60ml

As with all concept projects, the window space that surrounds The Quiet Shop has been transformed into a gallery. In collaboration with the Hayward Gallery four works by London-based artist Katie Paterson have been installed on street level and present her mixed media practice that includes the work 100 Billion Suns - a confetti canon which is set off everyday at 12pm. 

However for the ultimate No Noise experience The Silence Room, located in the basement, has had a twenty-first century makeover by Alex Cochrane Architects and is a wonderfully serene space, isolated from noise and retail urge and would no doubt have made Harry Gordon Selfridge quietly content. 

You can escape the noise at Selfridges London until 28th February 2012 - for more information about the No Noise campaign including in-store events click here. 

Images courtesy of Selfridges. 

A Portrait Of A Duchess

HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, 2013 - oil on canvas by Paul Emsley

It was the morning after the media furore as I walked up St Martin's Place to the scene of much debate and criticism. While the press pack had come and gone only the day before, my Twitter feed on Saturday morning continued to show virtual commentary on the Royal state of affairs that was the first official painted portrait of Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge. “It’s just amazing…” said The Duchess to Paul Emsley, the award-winning Scottish painter who took brush to canvas for the Royal commission by the National Portrait Gallery, of which The Duchess is Patron.

With less than twenty-four hours since its official unveiling, it was a surprisingly quiet Saturday morning in Room 36 with only a handful of visitors standing face to face with the larger than life profile. Kate shares the space with the neo expressionist style of Paula Rego portraying Germaine Greer, the awkward repose of Thomas Adès by Phil Hale; John Keane’s bright strokes of Mo Mowlam and the requisite Royal military presence in neighbour, Lance Corporal Beharry from the Prince of Wales Regiment, in the illustrative style of Emma Wesley. The darkest canvas of them all, Emsley’s style of restrained oil application and glazing is in contrast to the liberal and fluid gestures that surround it. ‘The singularity and silence of form’ is how the artist describes his use of dark backgrounds – pair this with a limited colour palette of blues and greys, the result is certainly silent and perhaps misjudged for a young subject who only turned thirty this very week. Light, an element Emsley has gained recognition in capturing with his photorealist BP Portrait Award in 2007, has refracted into an unattractive haze that has unfortunately gifted her both unnecessary age and formality. Closing in on the canvas equally disappoints – no revelations are unearthed and the rather mottled skin tones that have had blue tones picked out from other areas in a hopeful attempt at depth, fall quite literally flat on The Duchess’s face. With only two sittings and a series of photographs taken by the artist himself, in a press release published by St James's Palace Emsley explains how Kate wished to be portrayed 'naturally' as opposed to her 'official self'. How then naturally translated into soft focus is a curiosity, however the amount of detail that has been dedicated to her hair and cascading locks – a feature that is globally scrutinized and which the artist surprisingly stresses its importance as being 'strong' and 'recognisable' in a trailer for the National Portrait Gallery (below) - has been executed with such staging and minute attention through a spectrum of grey and luminous copper hues; detail that has been starved from anywhere else across the visage. I found myself transfixed on the unusually defined right eyebrow that somehow escaped this soft focus – a distraction that would have been welcomed in the eyes that suffer from icy up lighting. And so to the mouth: does Emsley's notification that it turned from unsmiling to smiling contribute any more or less to my understanding? He only confirms Kate is in fact smiling, albeit enigmatically. In the words of my esteemed friend and artist Ana Cavic, is she the Mona Lisa?, a question that may be on the lips of art historians forevermore. 

It is however not entirely off with his head for Emsley. While he is the executioner, he is not alone for critical execution. It is reported that Kate was involved with choosing Emsley with the help of National Portrait Gallery Director, Sandy Nairne. Include the countless correspondence between palace and institution it would have been undoubtedly a daunting prospect for the new Royal. Yet given the strong signals that both Kate and her husband, Prince William have worked hard at expressing - that of a young, informal, changing face of the House of Windsor - the definitively conservative choice in artist and image is frustrating. The Sloane Ranger returneth is a message that instantly came to mind as I viewed the portrait, exposing another misjudgment on the part of Kate’s Royal advisors, or lack of if reports are to be believed. The Duchess’s choice of a navy blue pussybow blouse, made famous by former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, teamed with heirloom earrings, present not only a potentially loaded composition but a stiff and detached icon of twenty-first century Britain through in an irrelevant Eighties filter. Also to be noted are the blouse’s sleeves that expose a possible amendment from their sleeveless state in the artist’s original photographs, which on canvas display very little effort to unify blouse with sleeve. If Austerity Duchess were the intentions du jour of Kate and company then this equally falls flat with delusion. Emsley and the club of traditional portrait artists command far greater amounts for this formal style of work than an emerging contemporary talent, which in my opinion would have been a far suitable choice - if not only for style, but also for substance. A graduate from London’s many fine art schools such as The Royal Academy or The Slade School of Fine Art, of which aspiring artists from around the world fight for student places, would have been a refreshing and powerful statement against the inevitability of Royal protocol. 

What hangs in Room 36 is a portrait engulfed in safety and unexpected dullness of one of the most photographed women in the world. It is a pity an artist, who may have delved into allegorical integration or played with personality through colour or set design, was not elected. As for the choice of frame – a very plain silver number – unsurprisingly has invited damning comparisons to portraits that may be found in establishments on the British high street: a first in the comparison archives for Royal portraiture to date. 

Emsley will now have to accept his portrait of The Duchess of Cambridge will eclipse his more celebrated works. For Kate, an alumnus of history of art, her first painted portrait now joins its very timeline and with Prince William, their duty as future King and Queen will consist of a whole life ahead of them with portraits and various immortalizations in the name of State and institution. In her early years as a new member of the Royal Family and a time that precedes the imminent birth of her first child, she may have wanted to be reminded of this special occasion in a different light in years to come: when she really is old and grey.


 

HRH The Duchess of Cambridge is on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London from 11th January to 1st September 2013 - click here for visitor information. 

Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery 

Bowie's Back

2013 is set to be yet another year of British accolade. Drum roll please, or should that be synthesizer, for breaking news about a certain Mr David Robert Jones - or David Bowie for non-Ziggy-super fans - who has released a new single today, on his sixty-sixth birthday. 
Where We Are Now? is the first track ahead of a brand new album, The Next Day, scheduled for release in March. It has been ten long years since the Starman's last album and his reclusive nature, away from both public glare and stage, only fuels the anticipation and suspense of a pending new body of work and hopeful tour dates. Having turned down an invitation to perform in person at the London 2012 Olympic ceremonies, with only a few audio tracks to be contented with amidst the best of British fanfare (The Finish Line, 2012),  glam-rockers can look forward to a celebration of the iconic artist's contribution to art, fashion, film and music at the exhibition, David Bowie is at The Victoria and Albert Museum which will open in March and coincide with the album launch. The first international retrospective of its kind with unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive will incorporate over three-hundred objects - from handwritten lyrics to original costumes and set designs to his very own instruments - charting Bowie's sustained reinvention across five decades.
Collaboration will be one of the themes explored in the exhibition and if today's music video is anything to go by, we can expect Bowie will be back with a bang and on the money with continued interest in contemporary art association and the prospect of a digital renaissance across social media for twenty-first century digital addicts. The Where We Are Now? music video is directed by international multimedia artist, Tony Oursler and features his trademark animated projections onto handmade sculptural figures.

The artist's official website davidbowie.com has been relaunched with new content as well as the official twitter page. 

So here's to a new year and the return of the original new. 

Happy Birthday Mr Bowie!

Find out more about the forthcoming exhibition David Bowie is 23rd March - 28th July at The Victoria and Albert Museum, London here.  

Image courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum

Happy New Year

Midnight o'clock on the dot: a peculiar yet charming tradition

I was introduced to last year from Germany, via a British idyll

A Happy New Year to you all - here's to a bigger, better 2013

Merry Christmas

Three o'clock on the dot: a traditional British Christmas requisite

A very Merry Christmas to all my readers around the world

10 Ideas

My annual Christmas gift guide is back for another year and there's no better day than 10th December to drop my ten gift ideas that will get you some culture points under the tree this Holiday season. Taken from the worlds of art and design over the year from both my twitter and pinterest boards as well as this very blog, here's my curated countdown to the big two-five. Merry shopping to one and all...

1. Crème de la crème 

Contemporary artist, Kenny Scharf's Squirt character explodes onto this year's annual philanthropic art customisation of several product lines at Kiehl's

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2. Cellar envy

Power of Creation - limited edition 750ml from 2003 - by David Lynch for Dom Perignon

3. Ladies who lunch

Prêt-à-porter versus prêt-à-manger - Saco de Papel by ADAISM

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4. Men who munch

Something to put inside your missus's lunch bag - Band of Outsiders cookie cutters at Neiman Marcus X Target Holiday24   

5. Smooth operator
Hand-painted tortoiseshell case for iPhone 5 at Case-Mate

6. That's amore

My favourite childhood Christmas treats - Amaretti Di Saronno at I Camisa & Son

7. Globetrotting gin

Heritage tipple from British eccentric, Wing Commander 'Monty' Collins via India and Germany's Black Forest - Monkey 47 Dry Gin available at Manufactum

8. Diamond Queen

Stencil or thread to connect all sixty dots to create a silhouette of Queen Elizabeth II  - Queen's Head Stencil, limited edition of 100 by Studio Velardi

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9. Trompe l'oeil tablet

2012's brand comeback kid gets tech-appeal with this iPad case from Kenzo

10. Plastic Fantastic
Kartell - The Culture of Plastics at Taschen

The Clooney Effect

Geneva, Switzerland 2012

Follow the #highlife and #lowlife @JMVELARDI

The Art Of Packing

This week I'm in Europe with Studio Velardi and before leaving for my first pit stop in Geneva, Switzerland I've been featured on the lifestyle blog I Am Packed. Founded earlier this year and sponsored by Air New Zealand, the site features a selection of items, packed and ready to go for any eventuality by travellers from around the world. 

I Am Packed provides the necessary association of contemporary-cool that brands, such as Air New Zealand, look for within social media. The unexpected submissions that resemble more art, than casual throw-in-a-suitcase snapshot, give both blog and airline the curatorial credentials that will have everyone admiring the art of packing. 

Check out what's inside my luggage between LHR and GVA here - more from Geneva on my return so until then, à bientôt tout le monde!

Warhol At Windsor

The King of Pop Art, Andy Warhol said, “I want to be as famous as The Queen of England". Since the American artist’s death in 1987, countless retrospectives and iconic auctions of his trademark technicolour screen prints have travelled around the world, entering the public and private collections of the most powerful and popular personalities in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Contemporary culture continues to not only reference Warhol’s trademark aesthetic but also his intuitive prediction of the phenomenon that is celebrity today, coining the 'fifteen minutes of fame' expression in 1968,

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes".

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Edition 'R' - Andy Warhol, 1985

If there is anyone who is to defy fifteen minutes, or fame for that matter, it is The Queen of England. Presidents, dictators and actors have come and gone, however it has been Queen Elizabeth II who has surpassed Warhol’s eclectic global subjects: way beyond fifteen minutes, eighty six years and counting, of which sixty have been to serve her country. In an era when it has been possible for artists, namely Damien Hirst, to become as wealthy as The Queen, it is the untouchable allure of Monarchy that transcends time and remains an inspiration for artists throughout history past, present and most likely future. Hirst is regularly likened to Warhol in practice and panache. Should Warhol have been alive today, Hirst would undoubtedly have some competition on both art and rich list charts, but more importantly he would realize he had achieved the levels of fame akin to the British Monarch. One thing that he may not have predicted was that the person he wanted to be as famous as would one day also be his collector.

Windsor Castle in Berkshire - the world's oldest inhabited working castle

In the year that marks her Diamond Jubilee, in September The Royal Collection acquired a series of four screen prints of The Queen by Warhol. The four portraits on paper - edition 14 of 30 from Warhol's Royal Edition - were reworked from The Queen’s official Silver Jubilee photograph in 1977 by Peter Grugeon and form part of the portfolio Reining Queens, which include Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntombi laTfwala of Swaziland. Executed with a spectrum of colourways and sprinkled with fine particles of cut glass, known as ‘diamond dust’, the glittering purchase of Warhol’s work for The Royal Collection - property of the Monarch as Sovereign, held in trust for the British nation – signifies the conscious acceptance of the adage that has been synonymous of late with the House of Windsor: changing times. Joining the exclusive and spectacular roll call of artists from Holbein to van Dyck, da Vinci and Rubens, Lady Jane Roberts, Royal Librarian at The Royal Collection explains,

“The Warhol prints are in many ways the most important popular image of the queen to be created by an artist print maker over the last few decades.”

Opening today, the new works are on exhibit for the first time since their acquisition alongside select images by Beaton, Freud, Rankin and Leibovitz as well as a host of society photographers and international portrait artists as part of the exhibition, The Queen: Portraits of a Monarch, at Windsor Castle to commemorate the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation next year. Charting the very first photograph of The Queen after her accession, taken by Dorothy Wilding, to subsequent official and Jubilee portraits commissioned by state and institution, the exhibition consists of works from different Royal residences and presents the image of a woman – a fact society seems to forget when erratic waves of feminist absence stir - whose face and expression has been captured in various sittings and moments in time; for canvas, coins, bank notes and postage stamps.

 The Print Room in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle

The addition of Warhol to the collection in this landmark year for Monarchy makes for quite the fairytale: a Queen-to-be and the son of Slovak American-dreamers, born within two years of each other, both conscious of one another in the public eye and yet leading polar opposite lives across the Atlantic, now come to share the exceptional historical status in both word and image. The conceptual process of repeat that the artist pioneered in the mid-fifties now resides under the Wyatville-designed ceiling of a woman whose very own face has been the most repeated image to date.

Pop Art’s message is often lost by its unashamedly superficial surface and familiarity with the language of advertising, however it is a movement that manipulates and exposes the everyday to new narratives for social reflection and its inherent nature of colour and repetition remains a potent product in demand across creative markets. As an admirer of Warhol and Pop Art, I have been fortunate to view his prolific body of work on my travels over the years and I was very excited today to be able to merely walk up the road and come face to face with his works in my hometown of Windsor, Berkshire. The Queen: Portraits of a Monarch is a refreshing display in contrast to the more traditional exhibitions that are sourced from the collection’s vast archives for the gothic gallery space at Windsor Castle. Consisting of a variety of mediums and expressions, each with their own individual story, the exhibition complements The Royal Collection’s permanent installation in the State Apartments and reminds visitors that the story of British culture and identity is living and breathing - beyond fifteen minutes, years, decades and centuries.

I’m sure The Andy Warhol Foundation – whose original collection is currently being auctioned to fund future expansion for the Visual Arts across America – feel a sense of pride that their founder’s dream posthumously came true.

The Queen: Portraits of a Monarch is part of a visit to Windsor Castle and runs from 23rd November 2012 to 9th June 2013. Click here for further visitor information about Windsor Castle and the exhibits on display.

Visit Christie’s for more details on forthcoming auctions from The Andy Warhol Foundation.  

Images courtesy of Royal Collection Trust

Happy Thanksgiving!

Decadent dining with Pantone 1815 C

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers 

across the pond and beyond!

Thank You Cards

The curtains are beginning to be drawn on another year and with the chorus of Christmas now very much in the air, I thought it timely to share a personal seasonal message of my own before the clock strikes festive-mayhem and panic in a few weeks. I have been looking forward to the end of this year for some time and I may finally share with you, after a year in the making, news of the launch of my latest design collaboration with the charity, Thames Hospicecare.

Thames Hospicecare provides a palliative care service to those suffering from a terminal or life-limiting illness in my hometown of Windsor and Ascot in the Royal county of Berkshire. In 2009 my Mother, Lilli received the specialist care and support at the Hospice towards the end of her life after battling cancer for several years. I was guilty of projecting the stereotypes that many formulate around hospice care; it was not until my family had to access the support of the Hospice that I realised the overwhelming compassion and treatment that was received by all and how I am now deeply fortunate to hold what is a painful memory in a positive light.

I am eternally grateful to the Hospice's dedicated team of doctors and nurses as well as the bereavement support I received in the wake of my loss and at the realisation I no longer had family in Britain. I will never forget this time in my life and after much brainstorming on what I could do to say thank you, I approached Thames Hospicecare last year offering my design services. It therefore brings me great pleasure to announce a series of fundraising Christmas cards now available at Thames Hospicecare sites, shops across Berkshire and online. 

Fall In © 2012 - PURCHASE

Inspired by local and iconic scenes in this special year of both the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as the Hospice's very own twenty-fifth anniversary, three contemporary designs depict Windsor Castle, the Copper Horse in Windsor Great Park and the serving soldiers that are synonymous with the town. I hope residents of Windsor and beyond will support Thames Hospicecare's invaluable work and ability to provide palliative care in East Berkshire through my exclusive designs during what is a vital source of income for the charity over the Christmas period. 

 Windsor Castle Christmas Presents & Let It Snow © 2012 (Twin Pack) - PURCHASE

If you have been bitten by the British bug this year, please look to independent charities this Holiday season such as Thames Hospicecare by visiting their Christmas catalogue - 100% proceeds from sales go directly to the Hospice.
  

View the Press Release for more on the collaboration and my personal story with Thames Hospicecare. 

Thank you very much for your support.