To kick off, Matisse, who invented the idea of the completely red room. Personally I couldn't live with it, but I can see why people do rooms in this way. For me, my red dining room is enough to be going on with, and even that room I rarely enter.
The Red Studio (1911)
This is a wonderful abstract art piece by Theo Van Doesburg called Counter Composition, painted in 1924. Very radical for its time.
Its perfect match is this fantastic 1975 kitchen in a John Fowler house in the UK. I have seen red and black laminate kitchens but only rarely blue:
(Warning: water restrictions rant coming up)
It is rainy and awful (still, again) here in Melbourne. We have floods all over the state and yet our water storage is still only at about 42%. I can't work it out. Is there a leak in the dams? I am told the main reservoir is very extremely ginormous and will take years to fill. So now, after putting a dripper system in our garden and installing three huge water tanks four years ago when the drought began, I may just be able to start using my decommissioned sprinklers. But there is really no point as we pulled up most of our lawn years ago. And my water tanks are now overflowing.
Anyway, I am not so sure about this David Hockney, but you cannot go past him for blue skies and shimmering pools which to me are the epitome of LA.
Nick Wilder (1966)
This is the Kauffman house at Palm Springs built in 1946 and designed by Richard Neutra.
And this, the Petrucelli house in Kew here in Melbourne by McBride Charles Ryan.
To perfectly capture the misty waters of Venice, what better than Giorgione's The Tempest, painted in 1508, which is possibly the first landscape painting (where landscape is not just the background) in Western art. only 6 works survive and he died of the plague at the age of 34. Very little is known about him but the maturity and calm in his works influenced many Venetian painters including Titian. Something pretty creepy is going on here. But no one has ever really been able to work out what.
To accompany this work, a Venetian palazzo:
and an interior which seems to me to be very Italian in style and feel:
This work is by Ken Done, a designer and artist who was very famous in Australia in the 1980s for his almost Fauvist style vistas of Sydney Harbour. He uses bright primary colours, which are perfect for any children's room.
Happy weekend to one and all. We are off to have Greek for dinner with the children tonight and tomorrow I am hoping to buy some lawn from the nurseries to plump up the nude bits in our garden, and also some more herbs and possibly some silverbeet.
8 comments:
Jane, I just love your posts. I always feel so better informed. Thank you for sharing all this interesting and diverse info. I feel the same about red. I love it in highlights to make a room "pop", but don't know if I could spend alot of time in an all red room. Having said that, a friend of mine growing up lived in a beautiful Federation home with a red dining room complete with all the traditional furniture and silverware. Big family dinners in this setting were amazing and I just adored the pomp and ceremony of it all.
We had Greek tonight also - Lamb Kofta - only mine was homemade...would have loved to have had the real deal! Happy gardening, Meredy xo.
How did you find these interiors that match the paintings perfectly? You have such a great eye for this! Great post!!
We had a red family room/den for a while - which I loved - but then it was time for a change and we went for a more neutral tone. I think red is perfect for a dining room. I love that piece by Ken Done. Have a great weekend!
This is such fun & I love learning about all I can about amazing artists & their works. My parents had a red kitchen cabinets, when I think of red I think of how beautiful that room was. If I could own one house it would be the Palm Springs Kauffman home. Neutra was genius. I've stood at the end of the driveway a few times now just dreaming.
Hope your dinner was lovely & wishing you a fun weekend working in your yard & enjoying your family. xo deb
A great post Jane. I'm not sure about an all red room either, but I just adore that Matisse painting. It is my absolute favourite and I have a photo I took of it at MOMA as my screensaver. Perhaps if I had one or two Matisse's to hang in my red room it would be quite OK!
You've paired everything so well.
Have a great weekend. Hope the rain stops to let you enjoy the garden.
I've read your lovely, spritely remarks about, but the first time I have visited in your blog home! I love red. It's a neutral for me. Love the idea of library/dining rooms. Makes so much sense for so much space.
gosh i love these posts of yours. so much! jx
Very good blog.
You are very versatile.
If I had found you some weeks before I would have passed my Versatile Blogger award to YOU!
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