Transcript
Speaker: I often use three dirty words, taste, connoisseurship and beauty.
Speaker: To me, these are the trinity of attributes that one should be applying towards looking at works of art.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: Once a year, in June, the art and antiques world converges on London for a great fair called Masterpiece.
Speaker: The firm where I work, Shrubsell, exhibited there for the first time this year, so I had the chance to explore for myself.
Speaker: The dealers at this fair represent a vast range of material.
Speaker: I saw ancient Egyptian sculpture, 20th century Swedish furniture, Renaissance paintings, contemporary jewelry,
Speaker: And generally speaking, the dealers are all top world experts in their respective fields.
Speaker: The chairman of the fair and this episode's guest is Philip Hewitt-Jabor.
Speaker: Philip is the epitome of sophistication in a way that only an Englishman could be.
Speaker: He's led a notable career as a specialist, a scholar, and an art advisor.
Speaker: And in recent years as the head of this masterpiece, Faer.
Speaker: He is a legendary collector of many categories and materials, but most notably, as he'll describe for us, hardstones.
Speaker: A legendary collector with a keen eye, and a religious devotion to beauty.
Speaker: I think you can see why we wanted to have him on Curious Objects.
Speaker: To make matters even better, Michael Diaz-Griffith was also in London for the show.
Speaker: And Michael has his own experience with an art fair as a director of the Hallowed Winter Show in New York.
Speaker: So, one morning before the fair opened, Michael and I headed to the Masterpiece VIP lounge to sit down together with Philip.
Speaker: As you'll hear, we covered a lot of ground.
Speaker: Our curious object is a Roman alabaster vase from the mid-18th century that Philip actually bought from one of the dealers exhibiting at the fair.
Speaker: But the conversation ranges across time and space.
Speaker: Philip gave us an education on Egyptian quarries, Byzantine royalty, 18th century tourism, what to buy, what not to buy.
Speaker: It was really a lot of fun, and I think you are going to love it.
Speaker: We'll be right back with Philip and Michael after this.
Speaker: Freeman's is Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
Speaker: With international experience and comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freeman's work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine art, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
Speaker: Have you ever wondered about the value of your collection?
Speaker: Visit www.freemans.com slash selling dash auction today
Speaker: for a complimentary and confidential auction valuation from one of our many departments.
Speaker: We're sitting on the fairgrounds right now, and I do want to talk about the fair, and I also want to talk about your own collection and collecting and so on.
Speaker: But shall we start with the object du jour?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because there is a piece that represents a field of specialty and special inches for you.
Speaker: We're talking about an 18th century object, but it's an object inspired by classical designs and classical themes.
Speaker: Could you tell us what that object is?
Speaker: I absolutely can.
Speaker: This is an object made in Rome.
Speaker: probably in the mid-1760s.
Speaker: And it's a fluted alabaster of absolutely classical or indeed neoclassical form.
Speaker: And it's embellished with rare Rosso Antico marble Lancelot leaves and moulding around the base.
Speaker: How large is it?
Speaker: It's about 16 inches tall.
Speaker: I mean, it's probably, let's say,
Speaker: 40 centimeters, I think, or something.
Speaker: And it was an object I was particularly drawn to, so I have a passion for colored marbles and stones, and particularly ancient stones, acquired by the Romans, mainly in Egypt, that were reused.
Speaker: And this object was made at a time when Piranesi was published as drawings, when Winkelmann was doing his work on classical sculpture.
Speaker: and there was this great vogue, this vase mania as it were in Rome in the third quarter of the 18th century.
Speaker: this object particularly appealed to me because it is, the proportions are absolutely just so.
Speaker: The material, the alabaster, is extraordinarily fine quality.
Speaker: And I think it's interesting because I actually think, having studied this object for quite a long time as it's sitting in my dining room at home, I think it's quite possible that the body of the vase is actually ancient, but has been
Speaker: reworked to a certain extent and embellished with the Rosso Antico in the 1760s, which was a great fashion.
Speaker: So whilst it looks like a pure 18th century object, I think in part it's probably a reworked classical object.
Speaker: So not just aesthetically inspired by classical ideas, but literally taken from classical.
Speaker: I think it may be.
Speaker: Is there any way to prove that?
Speaker: Connoisseurship, I mean there's no technical way of proving that.
Speaker: I think the way there's a band of carving around the top of the vase which to me is not neoclassical carving and I don't think it's sort of Caffer Shepard-type trying to be neoclassical carving.
Speaker: And as with so many things, it's a gut feeling, it's instinct, it's years of looking at objects.
Speaker: Particularly, I purchased this object, that masterpiece, from Alessandro de Castro, who has an eye like nobody else for these sort of objects.
Speaker: She's a dealer in Rome.
Speaker: She's a dealer in Rome.
Speaker: And she's somebody who has the most marvelous works of art, but I mean, deeply concerned about beauty and deeply concerned and deeply knowledgeable about the sources of these things.
Speaker: You develop a sort of third eye, as it were, over the years.
Speaker: Ultimately, however, it actually doesn't matter.
Speaker: It's an extraordinarily beautiful object.
Speaker: And that is of primary importance.
Speaker: And I think we're seeing a change.
Speaker: I'm really pleased that beauty is coming back into the equation again these days.
Speaker: This leads me to wonder how your own thirst for heartstones began.
Speaker: A curious one.
Speaker: I had an uncle who I particularly adored who
Speaker: was a collector, but had the most extraordinarily beautiful objects, arranged beautifully, put together in absolutely ravishing interiors.
Speaker: And he was passionate about works of art, and he taught me a great deal.
Speaker: And as a young man, I spent quite a lot of time with him in his country house in Dorset.
Speaker: And he had a
Speaker: a number of pieces in Porphyry, particularly he had two wonderful Roman period porphyry mortals, which I'm happy to say now reside at home.
Speaker: And I think that just sort of got my imagination working.
Speaker: I mean, why?
Speaker: Where does it come from?
Speaker: And incredibly beautiful.
Speaker: And then you start doing the work and then you discover the whole history of these things.
Speaker: And I think that's probably what got me started.
Speaker: And I think one's lost the understanding of the resonance of these materials.
Speaker: For example, if you go around more or less any English 18th century, 18th century house, you will see Chippendale tables with coloured marble tops on them.
Speaker: And everybody now gets on their knees and examines the giltwood bases and, you know, admires the quality of the carving and so on and so forth, you know, the interest of the design of the bases.
Speaker: In the 18th century, it was the tops that were valuable.
Speaker: And this goes back to our Grand Tour discussion.
Speaker: Whilst you were buying your marble busts and vases and so on, you were also buying slabs of rare coloured marbles.
Speaker: These were enormously expensive.
Speaker: And as a sort of comparison, I remember looking through an archive, I think, down at Badminton, which has a fantastic collection of coloured marble tabletops, amongst other things.
Speaker: And the sort of comparison is you would have paid the equipment
Speaker: sort of £100 at the time for the marble slab and Mr Chippendale would have got sort of £1.5 for his base.
Speaker: I mean it was that distinctively different.
Speaker: But I think it's all the resonances of the meaning of colour that we've completely lost and there is a big resurgence of interest and there are
Speaker: two major publications about to appear that really investigate the whole symbolism and meaning of colour in marble, which are one of which has written by a great friend of mine, but I have not yet had the privilege of seeing what he's written.
Speaker: So I think for me it's
Speaker: there's a visceral excitement with the sort of colouring and so on of these marbles but what particularly interests me, I spend quite a lot of time in Egypt where there are a number of, well a large number but of absolutely extraordinary quarries and what one of the processes interests me and it's really all about apart from my personal interest in the stones themselves the
Speaker: understanding of getting people to understand works of art is such a passion I think of all of ours and one of the ways you do this is by examining how things are made how things are produced and so my interest in trying to explain to people why the marble slab on a Guildford base is so precious goes back to how it really all begins and
Speaker: I have a particular interest in imperial Egyptian porphyry, which comes from Mons Porphyry, which is Hebel de Kahn.
Speaker: in the Eastern Desert which has become a rather inane fashion of mine.
Speaker: But I want to, when I talk about it, what is so interesting, you see, as you'll see here at the fair, there's a fantastic porphyry vase that was one of our dealers here.
Speaker: And you look at the vase and it's super, it's a lovely design, it's beautifully polished, the colour's fabulous and everything else.
Speaker: But when you realize how it got from where it came to, to sitting here today, I think that story is fantastic.
Speaker: So this quarry is, there are a series of quarries that they're atop of mountains.
Speaker: They're about 1500 meters above sea level.
Speaker: They're very steep, they're very inaccessible.
Speaker: So in Roman times, these quarries were discovered.
Speaker: The thirst for stones was so great that legions of Romans were sent to scour
Speaker: the Egyptian, particularly the eastern Egyptian desert, which is mountainous, to discover these new stones.
Speaker: And this stone, which is extremely hard, was quarried, as I say, at a great height.
Speaker: It was lowered down long ramps down to the bottom mountains to the Wadi, to the valley below, loaded onto wheeled carts, taken about 100 kilometers across the desert to the Nile, loaded onto barges on the Nile, floated down the Nile to Alexandria, trans-shipped to special boats that were made to transport marble to Ostia, the port for Rome,
Speaker: transship from that up the canal that they've discovered runs parallel to the Tiber into central Rome into the marble workshops where the stone was then turned into columns and inlays and objects and so on.
Speaker: So all this is going on second, third, fourth centuries AD and
Speaker: The stones, the porphyry was particularly special because it was purple colour, so it was reserved for imperial use.
Speaker: Nobody else was theoretically allowed to use it.
Speaker: And it then moves on and it becomes the colour associated with the Byzantine emperors and the phrase born to the purple.
Speaker: derives entirely from the use of imperial Egyptian porphyry and porphyry in Constantinople was known as the Roman stone and the particular expression born to purple comes from the fact that in the
Speaker: royal palace in Constantinople, there was a birthing chamber and this was lined in porphyry.
Speaker: So when the empresses gave birth, the empresses were quite often fairly dubious background at that particular time, they gave birth in this room so their children were born in the purple.
Speaker: They were literally born in a porphyry lined room.
Speaker: It's even better than a silver spoon.
Speaker: Much better than a silver spoon.
Speaker: And then it gets taken over by the Christian church as a symbol of Christ and the spilled blood.
Speaker: And the Pope gets crowned sitting on a large rota of porphyry, which would have been drawn from a Roman column.
Speaker: So all these Roman period, this Roman period material was reused, recut.
Speaker: And so the vase I was just referring to would have started off top of the mountain, taken to Rome.
Speaker: It was probably, somebody would have found a column.
Speaker: They would have reused this ancient column in the 18th century and they would have carved it into a neoclassical vase.
Speaker: And that to me is such a sort of breathtaking sort of romantic story as well as being a story of, you know,
Speaker: It just adds a whole element to me of understanding these objects.
Speaker: It's a real thrill and excitement.
Speaker: So talk to me about Piranesi and the art scene in mid-18th century Rome.
Speaker: What context are we talking about this piece coming out of?
Speaker: Well, I think we're talking at a moment when there were a tremendous number of excavations going on in and around Rome.
Speaker: There was this huge thirst to feed avaricious sort of groups of grand tourists coming to Rome, coming to buy things, to...
Speaker: furnish their houses in England that were being built for them and so there was a tremendous demand which had to be really fulfilled and there was probably not enough original material there.
Speaker: So you were, I suppose, in an atmosphere where tremendous ancient classical works of art were being dug up.
Speaker: The demand was probably too great and Piranesi published
Speaker: a number of volumes of engravings of vases and antique decoration and so on which continue to feed this sort of frenzy I think in a way.
Speaker: A number of workshops sprung up, particularly Cavicepi.
Speaker: They were working very much, there were really a sort of group, there was Winkelmann who was writing, a German scholar who lived in Rome and who was writing about
Speaker: white classical sculpture, which of course originally it was not, but really because of his writings and subsequently and even today, we have less of an understanding, although that's sort of changing of actually how these sculptures would originally have looked.
Speaker: So the pure chaste white neoclassicism, which some of us adore enormously, is completely misplaced.
Speaker: So there was this sort of great intellectual sort of moment, I think, in Rome,
Speaker: with Piranesi, with Winkelmann, and then, you know, the highly knowledgeable restorers, such as Cavaceppe, who were conserving, embellishing, and, you know, at that particular point, I mean, you didn't really want to have a tour craft for your collection of torsos that didn't have legs and arms, you know, so, you know, the torsos that would have come out of a, you know, an absolutely, you know, pure, correct archaeological dig,
Speaker: would not in its sort of unfinished form as it were be so appealing so Kavachepi and his other colleagues there were really quite a lot of them working in this business would add a head to a headless torso quite possibly ancient but not original to the torso they would add arms and legs and so on so you would have a complete figure.
Speaker: They were surgeons really.
Speaker: Yes absolutely a very good way of putting it and that was what was so incredibly appealing to
Speaker: this group of young, not terribly knowledgeable on the whole, very rich British, mainly British but not exclusively obviously grand tourists in Rome.
Speaker: And what is so fascinating now is that many of these objects subsequently have ended up in major museum collections.
Speaker: And in the West Coast, for example, I'm very keen on Thomas Hope.
Speaker: And Thomas Hope had a great collection of antiquities bought absolutely during this period.
Speaker: And in his collection, there were two extremely fine life-size figures, which had later...
Speaker: arms and legs and bits of noses and everything else put on them.
Speaker: They reside in a major West Coast museum.
Speaker: And in the 1970s, I mean, also what one forgets about this world is fashion.
Speaker: And the fashion has completely changed.
Speaker: And from a museum point of view, it was really not considered appropriate to have later additions to a classical piece.
Speaker: So all these additional elements of these two incredible sculptures, it was a Hygieia and an Athena, I think, were removed and they were put back on display as they were sort of dug up in the 18th century.
Speaker: Fortunately, the spare parts were put in a box and sort of stuffed away in a basement.
Speaker: And the fashion again has now changed and they've stuck back the arms and the legs that they took off 45, 50 years ago.
Speaker: So they now look as Thomas Hope wished them to look and had them in his gallery in Dutchess Street in London.
Speaker: So it's very interesting this changing museological approach as to how you want your classical objects to look.
Speaker: Do you want them to look as how they look when they came out of the ground or how they were embellished when they were purchased in the thriving market in Rome in the 18th century?
Speaker: I think there was a tremendous amount of peer pressure
Speaker: as there is today, particularly among contemporary collectors.
Speaker: And I think, funnily enough, actually, that's probably quite an interesting analogy as a comparison between collecting contemporary art today and, you know, classical art in the 18th century.
Speaker: You know, my torso is bigger than yours, as it were, or more expensive or whatever.
Speaker: And I think there was a huge competitive atmosphere, certainly amongst the group buying at that time.
Speaker: One thing that strikes me when discussing these grand tourists, and especially professionals like Robert Adam, right, or Piranesi, they were measuring ancient buildings, for example, but they also were quite inventive and free in their approach to developing new ornament, right?
Speaker: So there's a, to compare that time with ours, there was a freedom in some of their work
Speaker: So it felt vital and contemporary.
Speaker: I'm wondering how that relates to... Well, I think you're absolutely right, but I think that is something that scholarship underpins all sorts of possibilities, and I think that's something that is an argument, perhaps, against the difficulty one has in appreciating a certain amount, and absolutely by no means all, but a certain amount of contemporary art, is that Adam and his compatriots
Speaker: were able to be inventive and free and innovative and exciting because they completely understood
Speaker: where it all came from.
Speaker: And that, I think, legitimizes what you do with it.
Speaker: If you sort of take a form and you're not intellectually engaged with it, you don't have the knowledge, you don't really understand, you shouldn't really be allowed to fiddle with it.
Speaker: But if you put all that work in, if you measured every Roman temple in Italy and so on at that point, then I think you can justify, well, this is what it...
Speaker: was conceived as this is how it looked, this is how it was done.
Speaker: This is a classical precedent, but I'm an imaginative, exciting, innovative artist, and I'm going to do it this way based on all of that.
Speaker: And I think that is the difference.
Speaker: And I think it's, it's, I mean, I think it parallels with this argument with some people have, um, who, um,
Speaker: perhaps don't understand so well, some contemporary art who say, well, you know, these people don't know how to draw, so how on earth do they come up with this?
Speaker: And, you know, I do myself personally believe that drawing is the backbone of everything.
Speaker: And if you, I mean...
Speaker: Tracy Emin for example whose work I do like she is the most marvelous drafts lady, drafts woman and so you can not forgive is not the right word but you can allow the fact that something has been taken to a very different sort of extreme because it's based on based on on real real knowledge
Speaker: I always like to take a moment to say thank you for listening and to remind you that you can see a picture of Philip Spaz at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: If you'd like to get in touch, you can send me an email at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: You can also find me on Instagram at Objective Interest and Michael at Michael Diaz Griffith.
Speaker: We'll be right back.
Speaker: Freeman's is Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
Speaker: With international experience and comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freeman's work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine art, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
Speaker: Freeman's is now inviting consignments for its autumn-winter 2019 auction season.
Speaker: Our team of renowned specialists are always available to review suitable consignments of American furniture, folk and decorative arts, modern and contemporary art, American art and Pennsylvania impressionists, fine jewelry, 20th century design, and more.
Speaker: To be connected with a member of our team who can help you navigate the auction process and teach you more about selling with Freemans, visit www.freemansauction.com.
Speaker: Some things never get old, like the annual New Hampshire Antique Show, back for its 62nd year.
Speaker: This year boasts 67 exhibitors from all over the country, showcasing some of the finest displays of antique jewelry, folk art, furniture, fine and decorative arts, and more.
Speaker: Highly reputable dealers will join together with thousands of buyers and enthusiasts in search of high-quality antiques.
Speaker: With on-site shipping and no sales tax, this is the event to find that one-of-a-kind Americana treasure.
Speaker: Show dates and hours are Thursday, August 8th, and Friday, August 9th from 10 a.m.
Speaker: to 7 p.m., and Saturday, August 10th, 10 a.m.
Speaker: to 4 p.m.
Speaker: Admission is $15 on Thursday, $10 on Friday and Saturday.
Speaker: Visitors under 30 with proper ID are admitted free, and we offer free return visits to the show after initial admission.
Speaker: For more information, visit www.nhada.org.
Speaker: So I want to read a quote from an interview that you did a couple of years ago with the Financial Times.
Speaker: Please do.
Speaker: And get your reaction to it.
Speaker: Because I found it very interesting.
Speaker: You said, I believe in taste and having an eye.
Speaker: Some might think I'm a bit prudish.
Speaker: Now, first of all, do you stand by that?
Speaker: And second, what do you think about prudishness?
Speaker: Because it's something we're sometimes told to be embarrassed about.
Speaker: But maybe we shouldn't be.
Speaker: I totally stand by that.
Speaker: I often use three dirty words, if that's the right expression.
Speaker: Taste, connoisseurship and beauty.
Speaker: All of which, me, in my prudish old-fashioned, if that's a parallel word, are of vital importance.
Speaker: I think you have to have that underpinned with scholarship.
Speaker: But to me these are the trinity of attributes that one should be applying towards looking at works of art.
Speaker: And I think that's coming back.
Speaker: I actually spoke at a conference a little while ago in New York and I started my opening remarks with those words.
Speaker: And the audience clapped.
Speaker: And I thought, wow, you know, we're getting back sort of to reality somehow.
Speaker: It's vital.
Speaker: I mean, you know, we love these objects basically because they are beautiful objects.
Speaker: They enrich our lives.
Speaker: They give us pleasure.
Speaker: They give us lines of inquiry and thought.
Speaker: They parallel with other things.
Speaker: It's absolutely vital.
Speaker: And I think without those attributes, I mean, you can't start.
Speaker: And you can apply them to everything.
Speaker: I mean, there's a...
Speaker: late 20th century painting here by an Italian artist who, not somebody, I mean he's a very famous artist, but it's not work that I particularly engage with myself.
Speaker: But this picture is staggeringly beautiful.
Speaker: This is a black canvas.
Speaker: There's something about it that gives me goosebumps.
Speaker: I know nothing about quite when it was made or how or why or the sort of actual context of it, but purely, and it's an object rather than a painting, it's the most extraordinary thing.
Speaker: It's the texture, it's the blackness of the black, it's the crackleur in the paint and so on.
Speaker: and it transcends what it actually is and that really brings me to the point that I think we think is such an important way of looking at works of art, particularly in a world where here we are trying to engage new groups of people to look at works of art who perhaps have not done so before, is you have to take these, it works both ways, I think you have to take these traditional
Speaker: works and put them in a different context.
Speaker: So your serve cup and saucer, which for most people is serve cup and saucer, until you look at the magic of the painting and you feel it and really understand it.
Speaker: But you have to look at it as a piece of sculpture.
Speaker: You have to look at it with different eyes.
Speaker: And my looking at this painting,
Speaker: I was looking at it not as a 70s Italian picture, but very much as a sculptural object and not as a painting.
Speaker: And I think if you can do that with a work of art, as I do think that if you can scale a work of art up or down and it retains its integrity, it's jolly good.
Speaker: Can we talk a little bit about art fairs?
Speaker: And this is an area where I want to pose some questions for both the two of you, because Philip, of course, you're the chair of the Masterpiece Fair, where we are right now.
Speaker: Michael, you've been a critical part of the Winter Show in New York.
Speaker: These are two cornerstone art fairs, the cornerstones of the art calendar.
Speaker: And I want to know a little bit, Philip, you and I were talking before we turned on the mics, a little bit about your approach to bringing in new blood and getting people interested in the fair.
Speaker: But I just want to pose a general question for both of you, maybe to talk a little about what you think the role of the art fair is today in bringing people to the material.
Speaker: and connecting people and dealers and connoisseurs and scholars.
Speaker: What do you think is the function of the art fair in that context?
Speaker: Well, I think that one of the words that I know Philip doesn't like is accessible or accessibility.
Speaker: And I rather agree with your distaste for that word.
Speaker: You know, a fair like this one or like the Winter Show
Speaker: can really connect a number of people who would never encounter each other, right?
Speaker: So, a young collector with a dealer whom they might never bump into in the course of their perambulations around New York or London.
Speaker: You know, a dealer and a curator they might not have met.
Speaker: So I think, you know, first and foremost, these are hubs that bring people together for all sorts of conversations.
Speaker: In the context of the Winter Show, and indeed Masterpiece, I think, the strong history of vetting and connoisseurship within the context of the show's sort of DNA,
Speaker: means that there are discussions about connoisseurship, about taste, about the eye and cultivating them that rub off on everyone present.
Speaker: So, you know, while there's this very technical side of vetting that we're all aware of, I think that
Speaker: in the air is a spirit of connoisseurship that's a little different from what one encounters at museums and at auction houses.
Speaker: And it comes from the dealers, you know, it comes from you, Ben, and your colleagues.
Speaker: But I don't think that there are other environments that are as good as fairs at drawing out those conversations.
Speaker: I think for younger collectors especially, there's almost no other context in which they're going to
Speaker: touch, feel, and discuss an object in a way that they might hear.
Speaker: And it's critical that they do that because, to use another kind of naughty phrase, this is an entry drug.
Speaker: We need for people to be exposed to the material so they fall in love with it and become obsessed.
Speaker: for their own good.
Speaker: I mean, I'll say for their own sake, because one of the delights of my life, and I'm sure of your lives, is the opportunity we've had to develop our eyes, to develop a cultivated taste that's a part of my own personal journey as a
Speaker: as a collector but as a person.
Speaker: It's a really fundamental part of my life, my interaction with old things.
Speaker: And so I'm glad that these fairs can help to stoke that.
Speaker: And I think that
Speaker: particularly because of this fair's diversity and eclecticism, there's an opportunity to bring groups in that would perhaps never see traditional material or interact with the traditional markets.
Speaker: So it's a rather remarkable context.
Speaker: I think you're totally correct in what you say, and I wholeheartedly agree with you.
Speaker: I think also what makes these two fairs particularly important
Speaker: exciting and interesting is that we put together, obviously, it sort of goes without saying, terrific works of art, beautiful works of art.
Speaker: It's also a place where our exhibitors choose to showcase for the first time great works of art that have not been on the market before.
Speaker: And I think this is a very important point of the role that the dealers play.
Speaker: We hear a tremendous amount of, because of the greater strength perhaps of publicity,
Speaker: the auction world and so on as to what is sort of available and it's rather more difficult for an individual dealer perhaps to get their voices heard in the broader sort of melee of news as to the important things that they bring to market through exhibiting at art fairs and it's something that I'm particularly proud of this year at this fair is there's a number of extraordinary works of art that's being seen
Speaker: for the first time.
Speaker: But I think what is really important, and we're all trying to engage with a whole group of potentially new collectors or modifying and enlarging the scope of taste and collecting habits of already established collectors.
Speaker: And that's something I very much see happening here because of our eclecticism, because of our diversity and our sort of ethos of cross-collecting as it were.
Speaker: But I think to be able to put together
Speaker: under one roof, such an astonishing ray of works of art from all over the world and all periods and presented in a glamorous setting in a relatively relaxed atmosphere, not too relaxed but relaxed enough.
Speaker: It has to be fun and I sort of, when I first started using that word I felt perhaps I shouldn't but actually I wholeheartedly stand by it.
Speaker: It has to be fun.
Speaker: You have to put an environment together where people want to come, come again, return and come back in.
Speaker: And our visitors have such an enjoyable time here as well as an engaging, serious time looking at works for art because we put it together in this incredibly glamorous and welcoming way.
Speaker: We have fantastic restaurants.
Speaker: We provide all the necessary sort of surroundings for people to feel that they can rarely engage and not to be, actually not to be sort of frightened of works of art.
Speaker: And I think this is the other important thing that we can all do is to take down these barriers that very many people still feel about approaching works of art.
Speaker: And here we do it both physically by encouraging our exhibitors, particularly yourself, not to put things in glass cases and to put that physical barrier up.
Speaker: And by removing that,
Speaker: and this is where I sort of have to find another word from the word that I dislike using.
Speaker: It takes away those barriers, it takes away the fear of approaching things, and because of that you then get totally engaged, looking at the objects you engage in talking to,
Speaker: All our exhibitors who are leading scholars in their fields, it's an unrivaled opportunity to get engaged with things you want to learn more about or you know nothing about in a way that is just frankly civilized.
Speaker: And I think this is tremendously important.
Speaker: It's unpressured.
Speaker: It's comfortable.
Speaker: That's a very good word.
Speaker: I think this is really the most comfortable fare in the world.
Speaker: I want to put that on the table.
Speaker: It's just the right size.
Speaker: It's glamorous, but it's easy to be here.
Speaker: And I think that's a real achievement.
Speaker: I think the size is incredibly important because if you're sort of super professional, you can sort of whiz around relatively quickly.
Speaker: But for somebody who wants to sort of take their time and have a more sort of broad view, as it were, you can spend the day here and have more than enough time to really spend real time looking at objects.
Speaker: And I think it's...
Speaker: Everybody's in so much of a rush these days and you can't buy works of art without seeing them in person, you can't buy them without handling them and you can't buy them without building a relationship with those who are selling them because that's where you get your knowledge for, that's where you get your confidence for, that's where you get this to-ing and fro-ing in conversations and that's how you learn.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And everybody learns, we are all learning and that's what's so exciting and
Speaker: We've all been in this business for a while, looking at works of art, but I go around the fair at 7 o'clock every morning here, which is a lovely privilege, and go on looking around the stands on my own.
Speaker: And every time I'm seeing things I haven't seen before, I'm seeing things I actually don't know about.
Speaker: That to me is hugely thrilling.
Speaker: Speaking of learning, you know, programming, lectures, booth talks has become an incredibly important part of fairs.
Speaker: And I know you have programming here.
Speaker: It's quite sophisticated and interesting.
Speaker: Could you tell us a bit about it?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, we do a number of different things.
Speaker: I mean, our exhibitors throughout the fair hold talks on their stands, which is tremendously exciting if they're contemporary art or design stands are very often those who are
Speaker: potted the pots and sculpted the sculpture and then and brought the silver and so on and so that's an enormously interesting opportunity for our visitors to actually engage with those who are in the process of creating works of art.
Speaker: We have a lecture theatre where we have I think probably two lectures
Speaker: Today I'm hosting a panel discussion with a small group of art advisors on why or why not we think it's important to work with a qualified art advisor to help with advice
Speaker: about acquiring works of art which I personally think is up to supreme importance.
Speaker: So we're really exploring ways of broadening it as we have a talk on technology in the arts with blockchain and so on which is a whole new world that whether one likes it or not is appearing one's going to have to learn about.
Speaker: You spoke about art advising and you've been in that role among many others since the 1980s, I think.
Speaker: I have.
Speaker: And Michael, you are also in a slightly different sense an art advisor these days or an art consultant.
Speaker: I don't know what the proper term is exactly.
Speaker: But to both of you, I'm interested in what you may have learned
Speaker: what you may know in your role as an advisor or as a consultant that your average collector or even a humble dealer like myself might not have picked up.
Speaker: I'll let Philip take this first.
Speaker: I think the most crucial part of the role of an art advisor is advising people what not to buy.
Speaker: Precisely.
Speaker: What should people not buy?
Speaker: I think we all wish we were paid on that basis.
Speaker: I think it's about what not to buy.
Speaker: I think what I really, apart from the underpinning of the knowledge, which I sort of
Speaker: doesn't go without saying but it sort of should go without saying.
Speaker: I think the real role of an art advisor is to help to work, to broaden the taste, broaden the viewpoint of the person whom one is advising and to make them stretch.
Speaker: I mean in my personal opinion it's always the thing that is slightly beyond you that you make the stretch to acquire
Speaker: that ultimately gives you the most pleasure.
Speaker: I'm not quite sure why that is, but from a personal point of view, I absolutely find that true.
Speaker: And with my clients, I absolutely, why not buy the very best as opposed to something that's sort of not quite, or much better off to buy one fabulous work than a couple of less work.
Speaker: There's more, you're more engaged, there's more curiosity, it stimulates the intellect far more than
Speaker: not having something that isn't the very best.
Speaker: I should introduce you to some of our clients.
Speaker: I think that, you know, it's notable that Philip's perspective is rooted in the connoisseurial vision that you've already shared with us as well, right?
Speaker: This is the art advisor as the companion on your connoisseurship journey, let's call it, as opposed to the type of advising that is familiar from the world of contemporary art.
Speaker: Even if it's just a caricature in which the advisor is the investment manager, right?
Speaker: Who's telling you what you should buy this season.
Speaker: That's a very good point.
Speaker: And I think it speaks, you know, very directly to the strength that we have in our part of the market in that
Speaker: We are focused on interest, quality, beauty, all of these elements that, again, speak to our deepest interests and desires and helping a client expand their taste or to find a new kind of pleasure.
Speaker: is obviously a much higher calling than attempting to help them make a better investment.
Speaker: I mean, they're financial managers for that.
Speaker: And so while an advisor can play a critical role in helping people spend their money well and not make mistakes, this sort of positive aspect of
Speaker: adding to the total of an individual's vision or their ability to comprehend the collecting practice.
Speaker: It's much more important.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I think if you come from that approach, you get a real understanding of how the person you're helping might react to something new.
Speaker: And I remember a moment when I was with one of my
Speaker: Clans, we were in New York and we were, I don't know, talking about English 18th century furniture or something.
Speaker: And I'd seen an 18th century drawing in a shop window on the way up.
Speaker: And I thought, I need to show that drawing to this person.
Speaker: I don't know why, but because I've been working with this person for many years, never expressed an interest in 18th century French art at all, and I hadn't really thought about it.
Speaker: and sort of out of the blue I just said come on we're going to go and look at this drawing.
Speaker: He said I don't want to go and look at any drawings, I'm not interested in that and we looked at it through the window which in those days galleries were on the ground floor you could do and he said why?
Speaker: I said what's that?
Speaker: That's really really exciting, really interesting.
Speaker: We went in, we looked at it, we bought it and he put together a very small but extremely fine collection of
Speaker: I think only six or eight great French 18th century drawings based on that sort of instinct that I'd had having got to know this person extremely well over the years that it just for some reason it might have been appealing and it worked, it clicked into place and I find that terribly exciting.
Speaker: I have no idea whether it was a good investment or bad investment or anything else and that's certainly not my role and it's not actually something I believe in.
Speaker: But at least it's paying good dividends.
Speaker: It is a beautiful, beautiful object.
Speaker: In the form of delight.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, thank you very much.
Speaker: This has been a pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: It's been extremely enjoyable.
Speaker: Thank you, Philip.
Speaker: Thank you, both.
Speaker: What a storyteller and what a passionate collector.
Speaker: It feels good to me to get back to the basics, by which I don't mean necessarily amateur or simplistic, but I mean collecting
Speaker: appreciating, looking at pieces of art and enjoying them.
Speaker: I mean, that's what it's all about.
Speaker: And even on this podcast, I think we often get tied up in the meta conversations and the philosophizing and the what's the significance of this and what's its place and so on.
Speaker: And that's important.
Speaker: But what's really important is, do you like it?
Speaker: Is it pretty?
Speaker: And what can we learn from it?
Speaker: And I'm thinking now about delight and how Philip expressed his delight in his collection and how fundamental that is to the kind of
Speaker: the deeper motivating energies in our world.
Speaker: You know, everything that we do has to lead to that kind of relish in beauty, in objects.
Speaker: And I was reminded a bit of Ari Kopelman, the former chairman of the Winter Show, who held a position much like Phillips for a quarter of a century, and how
Speaker: At every dinner party he hosts in his apartment or in every meeting he takes there, he, with great delight, begins showing his collection to whomever is visiting.
Speaker: And, you know, most of the material there was
Speaker: acquired at Masterpiece, at the Winter Show, or similar environments, and each object came with a story.
Speaker: And he tells those stories, and he's developed those stories, and he's become a part of the stories.
Speaker: to every visitor who might have any interest at all in history or objects.
Speaker: Something else that I've been thinking about, which is that
Speaker: A fair like the one we're sitting in, Masterpiece, in London, can be viewed as an elite space that's inaccessible.
Speaker: And if we look at it in a sort of socio-political context, you know, there's an argument to be made that it is, and that collecting is generally not accessible.
Speaker: Despite our, you know, protestations that you can start at any level, that you can start in a flea market, you can...
Speaker: begin wherever your eye takes you.
Speaker: But, you know, it's sometimes difficult, given what we do, Ben, to make that case convincingly.
Speaker: Because we deal with a lot of very high-end material.
Speaker: And so does Philip and so does this fair.
Speaker: But I feel like...
Speaker: His passion for storytelling and for all of these histories that are enfolded in objects makes a most convincing case for the real universality of their appeal and for the breadth of their accessibility in a way that's just exciting and re-energizes me.
Speaker: The conversations that we have about price and that dirty word accessibility
Speaker: You know, it's easy to get confused between the question of price and the question of value.
Speaker: And one thing that frustrates many, I think, on the outside of our world of high-end collecting is that you look at a work of art and you look at the price tag and you don't understand the relationship between one and the other.
Speaker: You know, why should, what the hell, how is this thing worth this much money?
Speaker: It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker: And I feel that someone like Philip is in a great position to persuade us that in fact, these objects are worth something.
Speaker: for a reason.
Speaker: And the reason isn't just hype and speculation and so on.
Speaker: The reason is that these are wonderful pieces that bring joy to people's lives and that are therefore in demand.
Speaker: And so it's not that some cabal of dealers and advisors have come together and sold a bunch of rich people a bunch of expensive things.
Speaker: It's that there are these objects in the world which are rare and which are wonderful and appealing and beautiful.
Speaker: And that is why they're assigned to these values.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this is a space where you can enjoy those works, learn about them, cultivate your eye, and that actually doesn't cost more than the admission ticket that you buy on your way in.
Speaker: It really doesn't.
Speaker: It is distinct from a museum in the fact that you can touch and feel the work.
Speaker: I'm excited to show you our stand because I think you're going to enjoy the lush.
Speaker: We've done a sort of Aladdin's cave style decoration with these rich oriental rugs and silver draped all over it.
Speaker: We're trying to bring fresh eyes, our own fresh eyes, but we're also trying to fall upon the eyes of visitors in a fresh way.
Speaker: Well, I can't wait.
Speaker: And, you know, on the level that these objects are products of history and that they anchor us somehow in time, it's...
Speaker: it's also, you know, in addition to just giving that simple pleasure, they really are gateways, as you've said, for years to stories, but to really specific histories that, you know, I think in the past we've associated often with, quote, great men, you know, the great men vision of history.
Speaker: George Washington sat in this chair, for example.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: In more recent approaches to history, you know, we might think of the economics of that journey of the porphyry from the mountaintop to Rome.
Speaker: And, you know, as Philip was talking, I was imagining all of these different approaches to thinking about that history
Speaker: Okay, well, Michael, this has been a lot of fun.
Speaker: It has been.
Speaker: I'll see you on the show floor.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: And that's all for today.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: A huge thank you to Philip Hewitt-Jabor for sharing his time with us.
Speaker: Today's episode was produced and edited by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: You've been hearing Michael Diaz-Griffith and me, Ben Miller.
Speaker: Till next time.
