ARTFUL INTERIORS
Work by female artists proving popular while mirrors make a lively impact on rooms
Most interior designers will tell you that the easiest way to create in an impact in your home or change the feel of a space, is by introducing some art work, be it paintings, drawings or sculpture. When it comes to what’s currently proving popular in art for the home, there is a growing interest in the work of female artists, says Troy Seidman, of online art marketplace Caviar20. “People are becoming a little more conscious of how many women artists they have in their collection and asking themselves some critical questions about that,” Seidman says. There have been some entrenched gender inequalities in the art world until not so very long ago, says Seidman, in that a gallery might represent 20 or 30 artists, and only a small number would be women. But he says awareness around this is definitely changing and he credits some institutions like museums for instigating or encouraging a re-evaluation of the gender makeup of different exhibitions or retrospectives. He suggests photographer Nan Goldin and sculptor Louise Nevelson are two examples of this inequality. “Those are two who I think are really examples of very, very accomplished artists whose prices are a fraction of their male contemporaries,” Seidman says, “even though they’ve both achieved tremendous success.” Goldin, says Seidman, is one of the “one of the most important photographers of the 20th century”. “Not only for working in colour, but also for depicting people on the margins of society who were also her friends and lovers,” he says. “So that includes drag queens, drug addicts, artists and other cultural misfits, and in addition to the subject matter and her use of colour, she also brought in the slide-show format into a high art setting. So she’s really, really incredible and very good value. Maybe a little edgy for some tastes. But regardless, a really special photographer.” Similarly, Seidman says, Nevelson, who is one of the most important sculptors of the last century, known for her pieces made from wood collected around New York City, produced work for two or three decades before she achieved critical or commercial success. “The climax of her career came as a fairly older person,” he says. “She’s an expensive artist, don’t get me wrong, but she’s still much less expensive than some of her male peers.” Seidman says simple, graphic art work is still proving very popular when it comes to art for the home, by likes of artists like Frank Stella or Kenneth Nolan. “That type of material is so simple and striking and really impactful in a different types of interiors,” he says. “Bold geometry continues to be very much in style.” Large-format photography in the home has gone somewhat out of fashion, he adds. “You just don’t see it as much in galleries or in art fairs as you did 10 years ago.” For those who aren’t quite ready to commit to artwork, but would like to make an impact on the walls, the new Vitrail mirror collection by French designer Inga Sempe is worth a look. “With a mirror, you can see yourself, but above all you can liven up a wall and light up a room as if it were a window or a lamp always left on,” Sempe says. “In antique shops, you can often find what we know as Venetian mirrors, in which the central glass is surrounded by other smaller pieces of mirror, a simple and attractive way to both frame and reflect. I wanted to develop this idea in the Vitrail collection, combining clear and coloured mirrors.”