A collision between high art and commerciality

As you know, John Olsen is one of my favourite Australian artists.  His paintings make me feel like flying.  Even my son likes them, as I mentioned here.

Summer in the You Beaut Country (1962) National Gallery of Victoria

So my heart should have been gladdened at the news that as part of the Art Series Hotels, an Olsen Hotel is due to open just around the corner from me, in South Yarra, on 16 March.

The Art Series Hotels (leaving aside the name, which sounds like a Leeuwin Estate wine from the Margeret River) are high concept indeed. The idea is that an artist will lend his or her name to the hotel, which will be designed to 'showcase their art' and be furnished in the spirit of and to reflect that artist's style and character. 

So far, there is a Cullen Hotel in Prahran (artist Adam Cullen, now 43, is sometimes called an enfant terrible (always a bad sign) who paints what he describes as men and women from 'Loserville') and soon to be a Blackman (as in Charles Blackman) in St Kilda Road Melbourne.

Blackman is perhaps best known for his Alice series of paintings from the 1950s.  He is now over 80:

'Feet beneath the Table' 1956 National Gallery of Victoria

The Cullen Hotel has been completed for about a year.    Here is an example of Cullen's work - the portrait of actor David Wenham for which he won the Archibald Prize in 2000:

The Cullen is nothing short of ugly on the outside but some of the rooms look interesting - I have that little crystally stool thing (well a knock off anyway) at home:

This is all a bit challenging for me.  I simply can't decide whether I love or loathe this idea.   On one view it brings these artists (whom some may consider operate in the more elite sections of our society) into a mainstream area, and exposes their work to many who may not otherwise see it.  

On another view, is an 'Art Hotel' lowering the tone of such wonderful art, or devaluing its currency? Perhaps it is just an acknowledgement that today, art, like everything, indeed like people, is now all just a brand, to be bought, sold, partnered, diffused, brought down market then elevated again, or otherwise exploited.   What's next - the Angelina Jolie Amanresort in Namibia? 

Or perhaps it is just none of my business.  Maybe it is high time that these artists who are perhaps not as accessible as they could or should be, get their moment in the sun.   And I for one would never deny them that. 

Here is a rendering of the hotel once complete (architects Rothe Lowman, who designed the extension to our house as it happens):

Here is a bedroom - you can see behind the bed some characteristic Olsen squiggles.

Final thought - that well hidden entrepreunerial side of me thinks: good on you Will Deague for having such an original idea, and the courage of your convictions to actually follow it through. 

Tweet

Stormy Saturday

On Saturday afternoon at about 3 pm the sky went black and down came enormous hailstones (the biggest I have ever seen, easily 5 cm across and that is not a tall tale), and pouring rain.    We had 20 mm of rain in 15 minutes and there was flooding all across Melbourne.   People took to their canoes and surfboards and paddled down their streets.  People caught in the storm in their short sleeved T shirts suffered cuts and bruising. 

(A hygiene note for those who walk barefoot in flooded waters in the city streets - Don't. Often the floods are caused by backed up sewerage pipes.   Say no more.)

I love the Melbourne weather.  It is Never Boring.   Today it is sunny and the earth smells sweet as it always does after so much rain. 

This is part of our garden after the storm. Some hailstones are visible but many have melted. 

So sadly, all those leaves are what is left of our pear trees and maple leaves, they were shredded by the hailstones.  

But, you will no doubt be relieved to hear, the wooden horse, tricycle, cement mixer and garbage truck all survived.  And there are still plenty of puddles for gumboot splashing. 

Tweet

The Power of 150

Have a little seat and ponder this:

(Favourite setting this week, from Vogue Living Australia March 2010)

Or perhaps you would prefer a pink tufted chair. I know I would: 

Did you know that the human brain developed over time to manage a particular specific number of social connections?  This is known as our social channel capacity and is one of the reasons our brain is so large.  Anthropologists argue that the larger the social grouping, the larger the brain. 

That number is 150.

Any more, it becomes difficult.   The connections become thinner, and less solid.  The time we have to spend on each relationship becomes more limited. 

Any less, and we probably have more time to devote to these spiderwebs of friendship.

Anyone who has read Malcolm Gladwell's 'The Tipping Point' will be familiar with this concept.   He provides oodles of evidence in support, including:

• a religious group, the Hutterites, who split into smaller groups each time their grouping approaches 150.
• Gore Corporation, a madly successful US business, which has found its success in part through keeping its corporate groups, and plant personnel, to less than 150 people. 

And of course we can all think of our own examples of the power of 150. 

Perhaps this is why many weddings and engagement parties have guests which number between 100 and 200.  It is why smaller schools are often better for children than very large ones.   This may also be why those who live in small country towns, bereft of the infrastructure and services of a big city, are often so happy, content and well connected.  They know all the people they need to know.

Graham Greene also had views on this topic.   He said that every single person only has the ability to really know a certain number of people, streets and the insides of houses.  Any more and we risk becoming overwhelmed.  GG didn't need some anthropologist to tell him what he knew in his bones to be true. 

So I wonder what all this means in 2010, in an era of Facebook friends in the 100s, subscribers and readers of blogs in the 1000s and Twitterers with millions of followers.  Is it all too overwhelming?  Can you ever truly know all these people?  Or are these just loose social connections - no less satisfactory, but of course different to the ones you have over coffee or a glass of wine?    Some people are marvellously well equipped to have multitudes of social connections. They enjoy and thrive on the time required to sustain them.  Others really are better off in a small social circle.     And yet isn't it strange that you can still feel an innate connection with people just through a sharing of common interests, images or even a joke. 

Maybe our brains will have to grow to cope with it.   Just like one of my other theories which is that our fingers will eventually develop froglike pads on the end to cope with all the typing we do....

Tweet

A trip to Fitzroy for some silk

Melbourne's a small town, right?  Well, for a town of 3.5 million people.

I live in the inner suburbs and across the river is Fitzroy, only a twenty minute drive. And yet I never seem to be able to find the time to do it.

Like the north shore and the southern side of the harbour in Sydney, sometimes we in the east have a little psychological barrier about crossing the river.

You see,  in Gertrude Street Fitzroy, there is a magical shop called Vixen, where you can buy these lampshades.  Well not literally these, as these are the ones hanging in my hallway, but something just like it or maybe even better.

Yes I know, I know (impatient tone) you can make your own lampshades, but these are custom made, covered in Georgia Chapman's beautiful silk hand prints and lined with a contrasting print.   And for many months now I have been dreaming of having a shade like this, in blue tones for my bedside table.  
The lampshades are actually a late addition.  VIxen now does various home wares including wonderful rugs.

But originally, Vixen became famous for its silk clothes and in particular, its sarongs.  Vixen's philosophy is not to slavishly follow trends, but to create designs which are classic and long lasting.  All their sarongs are made of sections of different silks, like an off beat patchwork, but they don't look crafty or homemade.   They look glamourous and sparkling.   I can think of many ladies from the 1920s who would have been right at home in a Vixen sarong, probably the best example is the naughty Lady Idina Sackville (known as the Bolter when she came to life in a number of Nancy Mitford novels) who scandalised England and Kenya with her multi marriages and flexible sensuous approach to life:

Here she is on the cover of Tatler in 1923, newly engaged to Josslyn Hay. 

(The Bolter, by her great grandaughter Frances Osbourne is a book which must be read).

Over many painstaking years I have collected Vixen sarongs.  When I first started buying these Vixen was located in the city, in a turn of the century Art Nouveau office building with a hand cranked lift running down the centre of the stairwell. 

The fabrics were screen printed in a huge warehouse room which probably originally housed printing presses. 

And very occasionally in Melbourne we have the weather for sarongs.   But just owning them, even if I don't wear them much, improves my life.


(Image 3 Designer Rugs Image 4 from Vixen)

Tweet

A Southern Gothic on the Porch

In an attempt to spruce up my austere veranda I have been hunting around for some inspiration.

When I was very pregnant with my first child I spent most of the daylight hours over about 3 days sitting on our front verandah in the sunshine reading this book:

This is a mystery wrapped in a childhood memoir and has been criticised for its uncertain ending.  I love Ms Tartt with a passion. I love the fact she takes 8 years or more to write books, her chain smoking, her clipped enigmatic interviews, her hermitlike characteristics.  Please write another book Donna. 

Of course porches are a great place to sit and read Southern Gothic books.  Some books are meant to be read outside.    Especially dark and twisted stories.   To me, an Edgar Allan Poe book is not for curling up with in a darkened bedroom.  

Tennessee Williams described Southern Gothic as 'an intuition, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience'.    

So how about this shingled porch:

for a bit of Tennessee Williams preferably The Glass Menagerie, featuring the slightly annoying  and out of touch with reality Amanda:

And this verandah suggests mint juleps, lush gardens and a bit of heartbreak, so I would recommend:

Gone with the Wind, not Gothic at all, but Southern and hot and feisty and a really great read no matter how unfashionable Margaret Mitchell may be:

Back to porches and verandahs.  I need seating, cushions, a mirror to reflect the garden back, a little side table or two.  Very simple.  Like this:

Or this, but with no cane furniture.  Even though I love cane, someone else here does not. 

Maybe a painted bench: 

Or this, what a clean and crisp, wonderful spot: 

Late last year I read what is possibly the scariest book ever.    I read it in about 6 hours, and kept thinking and thinking about it.   Of course now it has been made into a film so it is widely known.   

This is not a book to read late into the night.   It is a book to read with the sun shining down on you, perhaps a little breeze through the bougainvillea, to remind you that the world is not as horrifying as Cormac McCarthy makes it seem.

So for The Road, I would suggest:

This lovely trellissed porch:

Or something with a stiff drink on hand:

And to finish, something slightly run down and peeling, for another frightening book (so much so I couldn't finish it), written I am sorry to say by a man I would not like to have dinner with:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

(Images: (2) Apartment Therapy (4) Country Living (6) Skona Hem (7) Coastal Living (8) Ideal Home (9) My Sweet Savannah (11) not sure sorry! (12) Country Living (13) Traditional Home)

Tweet

Thai Street Food at home

Who said Asian food was easy?  In my view it is not.  It involves pastes, crushing, mashing, mincing,  cutting, chopping, measuring, layers, steps, braising, carefully testing,  going away for a while, coming back, testing again, making sure the separate flavours sing together, and then eating.

Nothing easy about that.  Maggi Noodles it ain't.
I wrote here about David Thompson, the technically perfect chef and protector of Thai food recipes and history in the English language.

I was given Thai Street Food for Christmas which is his second cookbook. My main complaint is that it is very large and thus falls perilously close to being a Coffee Table Cookbook, which I have A Thing about.    It barely fits in my recipe book holder which makes me wonder whether he really expected people to cook from it.  

Nevertheless, it has some wonderful images, which make me want, so desperately, to return to Thailand. 

This image, to me, is what Thailand is all about:  Saffron robed monks gathering at a laminex chair and table street cafe for the all important midday meal:

Anyway I had some time yesterday, so to save time I made dinner in the afternoon.   Yes, I am MADE of time.  And besides what is better than the smell of roasting spices like cloves and cardamom in the afternoon. 

I cooked this dish from the book:  Chicken with banana chillies and assam.  Assam is dried Asian woodruff.  You can substitute tamarind paste, which is just as well because my pantry was bereft of woodruff.

The reason I picked this dish is that I bought these wonderful lime green banana chillies yesterday morning.  They must be in season.

Firstly, assemble spices in little piles:

Then roast them (separately says David Thompson, all together says I)

Then chargrill the aromatics (chilli, garlic, turmeric, ginger):

Then bash and smash.

Then fry the paste in coconut milk and cream, add the chicken and some seasoning and roasted other bits like cassia bark.

Then eat, greedily.

There is something very therapeutic about the slow banging of a mortar and pestle, and the adding of a little bit of fish sauce here, and sprinkling of palm sugar there.   And that is why I love cooking so much. 

If you are feeling strong, and have the space, buy this book:

Tweet

Begone Lilac Walls

I wrote here about the lilac walled room my 2.5 year old son was inflicted with. 

Time has moved on, he is a bit older now (2.11) and what have I managed to achieve?  Well, we have finally painted the room, and here it is in all its Dulux Antique White USA-ness.  

It took three coats to get rid of the purple walls.   The painters were very proud of their work. 

They used oil, and stripped back years of not so good paintwork to make the architraves  and window frames sing. 

I read a column in the Christmas Spectator by Toby Young which touched a chord with me. 

His son was asked by his teacher to write down his Christmas wishes.  The sole item on his wish list was 'Lite bulb'. When asked why, he told his teacher that the light globe in his bedroom blew several months ago and as he was still waiting for his father to replace it he thought maybe Santa could do the job instead.

Of course I wouldn't want you to think that I leave my children light-bulb-less in darkened rooms but there are all those little things we mean to get around to - pumping up the bicycle tyres, fixing the loose hem on the school dress, buying a lunchbox that doesn't have cracks in it, setting up the Lego properly, finding the time to sit down and do the paper doll book properly.  And so on.  

 Am I the only one?   Oh the guilt.    It never ends does it? 

Tweet