Sotheby’s Important Design:
Inspirational Living with Julianne Moore
Overview by Juan Marco Torres
Sotheby hosted its latest talk titled Important Design: Inspirational Living with Julianne Moore on May 19th celebrating iconic 20th century designers with Academy Award winning actress and collector Julianne Moore, senior curator at the Noguchi Museum Dakin Hart, gallerist Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand and Sotheby’s head of 20th century design, Florent Jeanniard. The discussion was hosted by author and curator Glenn Adamson and it highlighted pieces that will be included at Sotheby’s next design sale taking place in New York and Paris on the 25th and 26th of May such as works by Isamu Naguchi, Les Lalannes, and Diego Giacometti.
Dakin Hart introduced the conversation with Isamu Naguchi’s Play Mountain (1933), a proposal for a man-built mountain in the center of Manhattan. The curator expressed how it is symbolic of Naguchi’s push to shape social experience and consciousness. Moore, who has various of his pieces in her collection, recounted how there was such an easy entry point to his work for her in her early 20s. The Akari lamps she would see at the furniture stores and museums were design she could afford.
The panel highlighted how Naguchi thought that sculpture could be a vital force in our everyday lives, and how he is responsible for pushing it into communal usefulness. The actress picked out some of her favorite items from the upcoming sale and among her selection was one of Naguchi’s iconic Marble Tables (1945). She admired how “Naguchi was able to bring the natural world into the home and add that element of humanity to any situation.”
The table’s shape defies how historically most tables have communicated hierarchy or where the head of the group is. But as Hart said, “Naguhci delivered new realities to inhabit, ones that have the natural resonance of the sun but in a domestic use”.
Gallerist Jean-Gabriel Mittetrand, who worked with the artist couple François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne for years, introduced their work by explaining how “Les Lalannes did not accept to be a part of design” and how their sculpture with-a-use was an homage to surrealism. He said they approached design around the collector’s experience, focusing on how they could manipulate the sculpture and create a new relationship with it.
Sotheby’s design sale also features François-Xavier Lalanne’s Grand Carpe (1997) and Singe II (1999), which as Jeanniard pointed out, are both important sculptures with an exaggerated size. They show the humor and sensitivity that the artist could tap into from their vicinity in the French countryside.
Mitterand agrees and reflects how “both Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne were classic artists with a perfected sense of line and mechanism, reflected in their essential relationship with nature.”
When asked about her personal taste in style, Moore said she learned to respond to what she liked throughout time while pointing to her Nakashima coffee table as the first major piece of furniture she ever bought. She expressed how she is attracted to materiality, the feeling of patina, and a subtle sense of personality. She discussed the role of fashion in design – emphasizing how interested she is in the way design evolves along one’s personal tastes, questioning what lies behind making trends go back and forth.
In Claude Lalanne’s exemplary Giant Choupatte, the gallerist Mitterand recounted how the artist worked with electrolysis baths to make her dreamy copper pieces. The Chouppatte has become a symbol of her work and her historical relationship with the decorative arts. Claude Lalanne’s piece will be exhibited at the Grand Trianon Park in Versailles with Galerie Mitterand.
Sotheby also includes the works of Diego Giacometti such as his piece Table Aux Cariatides Et Atlantes (1976). There is an unquestionable eye-drawing quality of materiality in the patina table, which was commissioned by decorator Henri Samuel, being among the first decorators in history to commission directly to the artist.. The actress Moore picked out the pair of Etolies tables lamps from Giacometti’s collection, saying how she loves how the pair of lamps capture perfectly both the ancient and timeless, and taking her inability to categorize them to a specific era as the sign that they are a perfect fit for her home.
