London by Design With Paul Smith
Forget bad-boy rockers and bad-boy artists. The coolest creator in Britannia, as any clotheshorse will tell you, is designer Paul Smith. The first to put the savvy in Savile Row, Smith has devoted the past three decades to taking the familiar suit (not to mention boxer shorts and the Filofax) and transforming it, via color, cut, and pattern, into a witty wink at tradition. A Nottingham boy made good, he opened his first shop in 1970 in an alley with a few basic pieces; now his collections include women's wear, children's wear, leisure wear, formal wear--you name it, he designs it, from ties to toothbrushes. Indeed, as the British Empire has shrunk, the Smith empire has grown, and these days the designer spends seven months of the year jetting between his outposts in London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Manila, and Japan, where Smithmania has created the need for 200 shops. The Paul Smith Web site,
www.paulsmith.co.uk
/
www.psmake.com
(you can actually "walk" into the store and check out the goods), gets 1,000 hits a day, and his latest "shop in a home," occupying a Georgian town house in his London neighborhood, Notting Hill, is almost as big a tourist attraction as Buckingham Palace. The store, he says, is a "statement against minimalism and black-and-white chic." Not surprisingly for someone whose socks are Crayola-bright, he hates homogenization. As to what he likes, well, read on.
An Ideal Day in London
I start with a swim at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, a beautiful old private club. Then I go to Patisserie Valerie for breakfast. It's on the way to my office in Covent Garden and has a nice atmosphere--full of film people. They supposedly serve very good croissants, but I'm quite boringly English; I order toast. Afterward, I might swing by the Photographers' Gallery, or Hamiltons --it's got fantastic work by Helmut Newton, David Bailey, and so many others. For contemporary British and Russian painting, I'm partial to the Caelt Gallery, just across the street from Lacy Gallery, which has fabulous antique picture frames.
I don't really eat lunch, so in the afternoon I sometimes head to the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, in the East End near Brick Lane market, a good place for seeing the scruffier part of London. I'm interested in the minds that design toys, because there's no one harder to please than a kid. I have about 300 toy robots, including a dinosaur that walks. In summer, another place I go for inspiration is the Chelsea Physic Garden, which is open only on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons. It's primarily a serious garden devoted to medicinal plants. I'm especially partial to the colors of flowers just as they're fading. The garden is run by both staff and volunteers, and it's often full of lovely old ladies serving tea and cakes.
For dinner, I stay in Notting Hill (I've gotten lazy). I like Alastair Little, near my house; it's intimate, with a small daily menu, meaning you don't have to think too much. The food is light, concentrating on simple Italian dishes. I also like Assaggi, but it's tiny and you have to book weeks ahead. The chef is from Sardinia, and he does wonderful grilled fish. The best fish-and-chips in London is at Geales, just behind my local cinema. They serve wine, which is nice, because you can have your fish-and-chips and get pissed as well. The Windsor Castle does great pub food: sausage and mash, oysters and Guinness. When it's sunny enough for a picnic, I like Holland Park. It's full of rabbits and squirrels, and there's a Japanese garden. I go to Mr. Christian's Provisions, pick up some Parma ham, bresaola, cheese, something from their enormous selection of breads--and relax.
Plane Truths
I actually enjoy being on planes. It's the only time I get any peace and quiet. But I don't like airports. I use Heathrow because I can't be bothered to go all the way down to Gatwick. And I always try to get there late so I won't have to wait. I also hate waiting for bags, so unless I'm going to Tokyo for two weeks, I just bring this beautiful beat-up old nameless leather bag I have--like jeans, it gets better with age. Inside I pack lots of mesh bags from Muji in Tokyo: one for underwear and socks; another for shirts, which I leave in their dry-cleaner bags. I try to travel in a suit, or jeans and a suit jacket, so the jacket doesn't get crushed in the bag. If I do pack a suit, I use acid-free tissue paper--you can tell it's acid-free when it's very crinkly. On the plane I use nasal spray to clear my head and keep my ears from popping, and a geranium-based antibacterial oil from Micheline Arcier, an aromatherapist near Harvey Nichols. I put a few drops on my handkerchief to protect against all the germs floating around. Otherwise, I just bring a pen and a notebook. No books. No computer. The only thing I won't leave home without is my Braun travel alarm clock.
Markets and Other Manias
I'm an antique-aholic and a street-market addict. In London, the place to be on Saturdays is Portobello (get there by nine), and Bermondsey is on Fridays (but you need to be there by around seven). If I have any free time in Paris on a weekend morning, at about 10 I go to the Porte de Vanves (at Avenue Marc-Sangnier and Avenue Georges-Lafenestre), which is less well known than the flea market at Clignancourt and a great place to find the random perfect thing: a lamp, a pen, an old shirt. I can easily spend three hours there, and then I walk a block to a fantastic food market. (On Sundays, there's also an organic food market on the Boulevard Raspail; you can get wine, cheese, and veg and then picnic by the Seine.) Afternoons in Paris, I love going to the Musée d'Orsay. I could base a whole collection on Cézanne's use of color. I also love walking around the Left Bank, particularly the Rue Jacob and Rue de Seine area. There's a Picasso bust in the courtyard of St.-Germain-des-Prés that not many people know about.
In Tuscany, I go to Lucca, a medieval walled town that has an antiques market the third weekend of every month in summer. On Sundays in Tokyo there's an antiques market in the Togo Shrine, a three-minute walk from Harajuku station. I've bought furniture there and had it sent across the world on the Shanghai Express.
Favorite Hotels
For me, the most important thing at a hotel is the pool, so in Paris I always stay at the Ritz, and I always have the same room, but it's a secret. (The only other Paris hotels with pools that I'd consider are the Bristol and the Costes, but their pools are tiny, and I'm six foot three.) The Ritz has a real pool, as does the Okura in Tokyo. There's no hotel with a decent pool in Milan, so if I'm not too pressed for time I stay an hour's drive away in Cernobbio, at the Villa d'Este. It's probably my favorite place of all. I love the contrast between the mountains and the lake--the scale feels normal, until you see a seaplane go by and realize it's the size of a fly compared with the Alps. I think it would be a good place to die--not that I'm planning on that or anything.
Green Thoughts
A trip worth taking is to Wisley Garden (44-1483/224-234), the Royal Horticultural Society Garden, in Woking, Surrey, 25 minutes by train from Waterloo Station. It has model gardens (urban, herb) and is the place to solve any horticultural quandary. Less well known is Painshill Garden (Portsmouth Rd; 44-1932/868-113), in Cobham, 35 minutes from Woking Station. Part of an 18th-century estate, Painshill's green gardens are examples of English eclecticism at its best.
London, the Traditional Way
Stay at the Basil Street Hotel, the ultimate quaint, old-fashioned establishment. Stroll in Kensington Gardens -- start by the palace, walk around the pond, go to the Serpentine Gallery, then circle back to the Orangery, a park café, to have a cheese sandwich and champagne. For classic English clothes, check out Hackett or the Burlington Arcade. For high-end antiques, walk down New Kings Road. Then have roast beef at Simpson's on the Strand.
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Chinese Art Renaissance
Now Chinese oil painting painters and sculptors are developing, collectively, into a contemporary arts superpower. Asian artists, and in particular those from China, dominate a new list of the world’s best-selling contemporary artists of last year. Among the world’s most sought-after artists are the unfamiliar names of Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun and Zeng Fanzhi.
Of the world’s 20 top-selling artists, 13 are from Asia, with 11 coming from China. Asian artists make up six of the top 10 biggest sellers at auction, five of which are Chinese. Experts predict that within a decade, the term “Asian art” will be as widely used as “Western art” and will be responsible for most global sales.
The annual survey of the global art market by the auction tracking site Artprice and the Axa insurance company lists the 500 top-selling artists at 2,900 auctions between July 2007 and June 2008. While the top four selling contemporary artists at auction were the Western superstars Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst and Richard Prince, almost all the rest are Asian. Other Chinese artists in the top 10 include Wang Guangyi and Yan Pei-Ming. Japan’s Takashi Murakami comes in at number eight, while the Indian-born Anish Kapoor, who lives in England, is number 18. It is a seismic shift in an art market dominated by the Western tradition for almost 500 years.
“The total auction revenue generated by 100 Chinese artists in 2003-4 amounted to £860,000,” the report says. “The same 100 generated total revenue of £270m over the last 12 months. Of these 100, three are striking for having each generated more than £26m.”
Vinci Chang, head of sales at Christie’s Asian contemporary department in Hong Kong, said: “These artists grew up in a post-Mao China and have seen a country under decades of turmoil and political and social change. All this has informed their work.”
Such is the interest in Chinese art that Charles Saatchi has opened his new gallery in Chelsea with an exhibition of new Chinese talent. Originally, he said, he found Chinese art as very “kitschy” and “derivative”. “But there’s enough stuff to put on a good show,” he said in 2006. “My rule is: if you can put this in the Whitney Biennial and nobody is going to say, ‘Oh, that’s very good for a Chinese artist,’ then that will be fine.”
World’s 20 top selling artists
Wang Guangyi
The Chinese artist is seen as an exponent of ‘political pop’. His work, including 2005?2 ‘Porsche’, left, combines the styles of communist propaganda posters with consumer logos. ‘Stylistically merging the government enforced aesthetic of agitprop with the kitsch sensibility of American pop, Guangyi’s work adopts the Cold War language of the 1960s to ironically examine the contemporary polemics of globalisation,’ according to the Saatchi Gallery.
Takashi Murakami
Murakami is regarded as one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking Japanese artists of the 1990s. His work ranges from cartoon-like paintings and almost minimalist sculptures to giant inflatable balloons. He also puts on performance events and designs factory-produced watches, T-shirts and many other commercial products. Murakami, 46, is credited with creating the ’superflat’ style of painting, which features flat planes of colour and graphic images derived from the Japanese traditions of anime and manga. Much of his work is emblazoned with his signature character, Mr DOB.
Zhang Xiaogang
Zhang is known for his surrealist paintings, with Picasso and Dali among his influences. His Bloodline series of paintings, including ‘Big Family’, right, feature stylised and monochrome portraits of Chinese people in stiff, formal poses, which recall portraits done in the 1950s and 1960s.
Zeng Fanzhi
Zeng is among the most sought-after Chinese contemporary artists. He combines expressionist and realist styles in his work, which often deals with relationships between people. His series of Great Man paintings – featuring Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao among others – appear at first glance to be official portraits, but subvert the traditional representations with use of monochrome and expressive brush strokes. Pictured above: 2004’s ‘Tiananmen’.
Yue Minjun
Yue is a member of the Chinese ‘cynical realist’ movement. He is noted for depicting ‘cloned doppelgängers’, grotesquely contorted with maniacal grins, such as 2005’s ‘Backyard Garden’, left. The forced jollity of his anti-heroes echoes modern anxieties.
World’s 20 top selling artists
1 Jeff Koons, born 1955 in Pennsylvania, incorporates kitsch imagery. Sold £69.4m in the past year.
2 Jean-Michel Basquiat, born 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, was a graffiti artist who died in 1988. Sold £54.3m.
3 Damien Hirst, born 1965 in Bristol, a key member of the Young British Artists. Sold £45.7m.
4 Richard Prince, born 1949 in Panama, is an American painter and photographer. Sold £33m.
5 Zhang Xiaogang, born in 1958 in China’s Yunnan province. Sold £32.3m.
6 Zeng Fanzhi, born in 1964 in Wuhan, holds the auction record for a contemporary Asian artist. Sold £27.8m.
7 Yue Minjun, born 1962 in Heilongjiang. Sold £27.8m.
8 Takashi Murakami, born 1962, Tokyo, Japan. Possibly the best known Eastern artist on the list. Sold £15.5m.
9 Wang Guangyi, born 1957, in Heilongjiang. Sold £11.7m
10 Liu Xiaodong, born 1963, Liaoning. Painter and photographer documented the controversial Three Gorges Dam project. Sold £10.5m.
11 Cai Guo-Qiang, born 1957. Performance artist who uses gunpowder to produce ‘explosive events’. Sold £10.1m.
12 Yan Pei-Ming, born 1960, Shanghai. Best known for epic portraits of Mao Zedong and Bruce Lee. Sold £9.9m.
13 Chen Yifei, born 1946 in Zhejing. Among the first to break into Western art market. Died in 2005. Sold £9.7m.
14 Fang Lijun, born 1963, Hebei. Painter of the ‘cynical realism’ school. Sold £9.6m
15 Liu Ye, born 1964, veteran of the post-1989 avant-garde movement. Sold £8.8m.
17 Zhou Chunya, born 1955, Sichuan. Renowned for green portraits. Sold £8.3m.
18 Anish Kapoor, born 1954, in Mumbai, India. Turner Prize-winning sculptor who has lived in England since 1972. Sold £6.7m
19 Peter Doig, born 1959. The Scottish artist’s paintings are among Europe’s most expensive. Sold £6.7m.
20 Rudolf Stingel, born 1956, in Merano, Italy. Sold £6.5m.
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