Architecture that draws in art
Curating the right piece for the right place is an art in itself
Whether you’re a creator or a collector, curating the right piece for the right place is an art in itself.
TREE OF LIFE: When Lisa Reagan Love was building her dream home in Oklahoma, she vividly remembered Canadian artist Robert Marchessault’s large tree paintings she’d seen more than 15 years earlier.
The naked walls on either side of a big masonry fireplace in the great room were a natural backdrop for the bent, gnarly limbs that characterize his work, Love recalls.
“It’s notoriously windy here. The trees are literally bent like that,” the singer and musician says of Oklahoma City, where she and husband Greg Love — co-CEO of Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores — located their 12,000-square-foot house three years ago.
“Everything has an arch or a curve,” she says of its design, inspired by Spanish and Moorish architecture, and created by architect Michael Mahaffey.
With creamy white, plasterfinished walls that couldn’t be painted, colour and visual interest had to come from artwork and accessories, Love says, explaining her wish for trees that looked “like they had lived a life,” done in muted shades for a dreamlike feeling.
Enter Marchessault, whose 40-year career has been dominated by depictions of tree forms as a metaphor for humans.
“I love doing them for the simple reason that they represent character in the same way a hu- man face does,” explains the painter, who’s based in OroMedonte, Ont.
Marchessault, whose work typically sells for $12,000 to $20,000, will unveil new creations at his 30th anniversary exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto from Nov. 10-24.
In addition to the style of the client’s home, Marchessault says he considers a painting’s interaction with the light, space, colour and texture of its proposed surroundings.
The idea of two trees bowing to the fireplace, he explains, was inspired by the dark, heavy beams, furniture and Spanish Colonial style of the Loves’ great room.
Working from videos, photos and measurements, he produced a pair of five-by-fourfoot, oil-on-canvas paintings that didn’t quite hit the mark colour-wise. So he completed a second set which Love pronounced “perfect.”
“I look at them every day,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many compliments I get on these trees.” AN EYE FOR ARTISTRY: The late William Rubin and his wife Phyllis Hattis lived and breathed art, both personally and professionally.
So it was inevitable that their home, which served as a showcase for their collection, would be a masterpiece in its own right.
“Bill loved creating paradises,” Hattis says of her husband, master curator of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for 20 years.
Rubin, who died in 2006, was hailed as a pioneer in shaping MoMA’s sculpture and painting department in the 1970s and 80s.
Hattis is an art adviser and former curator of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
The waterfront estate the couple bought in the late 1990s is now being offered for $6.5 million (U.S.) by Neumann Real Estate, an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. Designed by Macedonianborn Vuko Tashkovich, the 9,358-square-foot house on Mallard Lake, outside NYC, features his signature curved vaults and clean rectangular lines enhanced by stucco, railings and glass, Hattis said in an email to the Star.
Rubin used the “same spirit and eye” he employed to build MoMA’s collection to “enrich” their home, according to Hattis, who credits master stone mason Luis Tapia with executing her husband’s ideas.
The design improvements included combining living and dining rooms to make one large, light-filled space for displaying contemporary and “tribal” artwork.
A 20-foot horizontal painting, as an example, fills an entire wall. Hattis also lauds Rubin for turning his talents to the 3.5acre blank canvas outside, where decks of blue stone, rock garden and rare tree species provide a backdrop for nature’s own artwork.