PaperCity Magazine

February 2014 - Houston

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T he Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's exhibition "Pattern Repeat: Wallpaper Then and Now" (through March 30) examines the medium's dual nature — decorative and artistic. Forming the core of the show are pieces given to the museum by Mrs. Thomas (Arlene) Ellis, who rescued 600 odd rolls from Boston-based design firm A.H. Harris. From this bequest, the museum acquired a collection of fragments that are a testament to wallpaper's dazzling, dizzying topical and technical possibilities. Included are creations by Zuber & Cie, the 200-year-old Alsatian company that created paper hangings for Jackie Kennedy when she renovated the White House, as well as the papers in Bayou Bend's upstairs music room. Works on display by the late-19th-century English designer William Morris include an embossed paper with a gilded, varnished sunflower block and a vine wallpaper — nostalgic views of pre-industrial times, which reference Elizabethan and medieval motifs. The show also features a striking gift from Ima Hogg: seven panels of a 25-panel creation from Dufour et Leroy that depicts a courtly crew lazing alongside the Bosphorus; each panel is unique, which means 25 separate wood blocks were cut for its creation. Also on display are examples of the Japanese technique kinkarakami, which recreates the look of leather via stenciling, embossing and lacquering multiple layers of paper. "Pattern Repeat" also celebrates contemporary wall- paper adaptations, including Marcel Wanders' Grace (2008) in an acid- yellow colorway and Dan Funderburgh's Elysian Fields, a dense floral pattern in cobalt that weaves bats, bones and Venus flytraps amidst thorny branches, and Vigilant Floral, which intersperses traditional chintz flower sprays with the imagery of surveillance cameras and razor wire. Paul Balin's take on Jacobean needlework approximates the warp and weft of a woven textile. A pigment on paper-backed cotton sateen wallpaper from Kiki Smith, given by Hiram Butler in memory of Margaret Skidmore, depicts a weeping willow's trailing branches. Christopher Pearson reimagines wallpaper as a projection in Willow Boughs 1887 — a reference to the hallmark William Morris pattern. The five-minute-long video, projected onto a blank wall, is from Pearson's "Look at your walls" series; it's an immersive notion of the possibilities when wallpaper evolves into a digital product — which, sadly, might be a bit like living in a screensaver. Dutch-born Piet Hein Eek's Scrap Wood wallpaper (2011) reimagines trompe l'oeil as a study of the imperfections of day-to-day life. Here, a digital image of worn painted wood planks, printed on paper, is perfectly imperfect. Glasgow Toile (2005) from Timorous Beasties — the collective name for designers Alastair McCauley and Paul Simmons — incorporates the oddities of Glasgow life (an addict shooting up in a graveyard, mums pushing prams, a gent taking a leak on a tree) in a manner that recreates the structure of a toile de Jouy in glowing metallic red. This exhibition seriously changes the paradigm: No longer should anyone see wallpaper as a conciliatory wall covering, sullied by its association with bourgeois breakfast rooms. Instead, as MFAH curator Christine Gervais urges, view it as a construct by which we might reimagine our abodes as capsules of cultural commentary. Through March 30; information mfah.org. Seth Vaughan Famed Parisian jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal — better known by the initials JAR — has been heralded as the jewelry genius he is with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's mounting of "Jewels by JAR" in New York City (through March 9). His creations seamlessly combine exquisite stones of the highest quality in astonishing settings that convey his remarkable sense of color and comprehension of earthly forms. The show includes 400 works from the master, who still creates from his Place Vendôme atelier. Known the world over for his unparalleled pieces, many of which find inspiration in nature, JAR continues to dream up sublimely jeweled marvels, as if actively warring with banality for the most discriminating connoisseurs around, including Lily Safra, Agnes Gund and Marie-Josée Kravis. metmuseum.org. Seth Vaughan DECORATION JAR-ING M ention Magritte (1898-1967), and images of green apples as big as rooms, men in bowler hats raining from the sky and a mysterious streetscape that exists in both night and day dance before one's eyes. This Belgium-born painter was one bookend of Surrealism and, along with Dalí, defined the movement; while the latter's canvases manifested creepy and unsettling landscape tableaux populated by distended objects, the former is identified with beauty, wit, word play and a sense of wonderment. Now the Magritte show to end all arrives at The Menil Collection, co- organized by the Menil, MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago, all three institutions taking turns hosting this traveling tour de force of Surrealism's most illustrious luminary. "Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938" (February 14 – June 1) boasts rare early works from the painter's formative years, a time when he honed his lexicon of symbols and developed an uncanny vocabulary. The exhibition also argues for the artist's place as a modern painter while lifting the veil on canvases that brood with a dark, unsettling beauty, foreshadowing the coming of the Second World War. As a pendant, the Menil organizes "Memories of a Voyage" (February 14 – July 13), a look at the later works of Monsieur Magritte, an exclusive for Houston audiences culled from the museum's rich trove, which is the largest and most in depth outside of his homeland. Menil director Josef Helfenstein co-organizes the blockbuster, along with MoMA and Art Institute colleagues, and also curates the jewel-box late-works show with assistant curator Clare Elliott, spanning 1941 until the artist's death, which include the fabled raining bowler gents in Golconde (1953) and mystical night/day The Dominion of Light (1954), as well as a pair of painted bottles imbued with the artist's ineffable vapor. menil.org. Catherine D. Anspon BEYOND the BOWLER A nn Sacks Tile & Stone is opening a showroom in Houston (the second in Texas) in an as-yet- undisclosed location on Kirby Drive in late spring/early summer. Tamara Smith heads up the Houston showroom, which will stock the full collection of stone and tile … Design Within Reach opens a new 10,860-square-foot store with mezzanine in Highland Village Shopping Center in the former Anthropologie space (which debunked to new digs across the street) with an expected May opening … Bailey McCarthy is moving Biscuit — her cache of bedding, gifts and all things home — to a new location at 1435 Westheimer Road. Watch for an opening late this month or early March … One of our favorite design-world personages, Jas Gundry, has relocated his charming Jas Gundry Antiques from his former cottages on Ferndale to a corner emporium on West Alabama and Edloe, in the former Cokesbury Christian Book Store space. More on this next month. Holly Moore DESIGN Buzz I t's that time! The PaperCity DesignAwards with Houston Design Center site is up and open for entries. Categories are listed on the site, and deadline for entries is Monday, February 17. All winning projects will be recognized at an awards ceremony at Houston Design Center Tuesday, April 1, and featured in the October 2014 Home + Art issue of PaperCity. All Houston-area design and architecture professionals, without regard to professional society affiliation, are invited to enter. Judging will be done by a panel of design professionals from outside the Houston area, selected by PaperCity and HDC. To enter a project, go to papercitymag.com/ designawards or email holly@papercitymag.com for a paper form or for more information. Geranium brooch PRIVATE COLLECTION / © 2014 C. HERSCOVICI, LONDON / ARS, NYC René Magritte's Le Thérapeute (The Healer), 1937, at The Menil Collection JAR Camellia brooch Antoinette from The Flock Collection, designed by Barbara Hulanicki, 2009, produced by Graham & Brown Ltd. Elsyian Fields designed by Dan Funderburgh, 2008, produced by Flavor Paper COVERINGS On Wit & Wall Scrapwood wallpaper designed by Piet Hein Eek, 2011, manufactured by NLXL

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