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The Color of Beauty: Philip Hewat-Jaboor’s Neoclassical Vase
32 Plays6 years ago
Philip Hewat-Jaboor is chairman of Masterpiece London and owner of a fine alabaster and rosso antico marble vase. The vase has a fascinating transnational backstory, but, maybe more importantly, it's beautiful, a factor Philip says is “coming back into the equation” with regard to works of art.
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Transcript
Introduction to Art Appreciation
00:00:00
Speaker
I often use three dirty words, taste, connoisseurship and beauty.
00:00:04
Speaker
To me, these are the trinity of attributes that one should be applying towards looking at works of art.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:25
Speaker
Once a year, in June, the art and antiques world converges on London for a great fair called Masterpiece.
Highlights of the Masterpiece Fair
00:00:32
Speaker
The firm where I work, Shrubsell, exhibited there for the first time this year, so I had the chance to explore for myself.
00:00:37
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The dealers at this fair represent a vast range of material.
00:00:41
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I saw ancient Egyptian sculpture, 20th century Swedish furniture, Renaissance paintings, contemporary jewelry,
00:00:48
Speaker
And generally speaking, the dealers are all top world experts in their respective fields.
00:00:53
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The chairman of the fair and this episode's guest is Philip Hewitt-Jabor.
00:00:58
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Philip is the epitome of sophistication in a way that only an Englishman could be.
00:01:03
Speaker
He's led a notable career as a specialist, a scholar, and an art advisor.
00:01:08
Speaker
And in recent years as the head of this masterpiece, Faer.
00:01:12
Speaker
He is a legendary collector of many categories and materials, but most notably, as he'll describe for us, hardstones.
00:01:19
Speaker
A legendary collector with a keen eye, and a religious devotion to beauty.
00:01:25
Speaker
I think you can see why we wanted to have him on Curious Objects.
00:01:29
Speaker
To make matters even better, Michael Diaz-Griffith was also in London for the show.
00:01:33
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And Michael has his own experience with an art fair as a director of the Hallowed Winter Show in New York.
00:01:40
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So, one morning before the fair opened, Michael and I headed to the Masterpiece VIP lounge to sit down together with Philip.
Insights on Art History and Collecting
00:01:47
Speaker
As you'll hear, we covered a lot of ground.
00:01:49
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.
00:01:58
Speaker
But the conversation ranges across time and space.
00:02:02
Speaker
Philip gave us an education on Egyptian quarries, Byzantine royalty, 18th century tourism, what to buy, what not to buy.
00:02:11
Speaker
It was really a lot of fun, and I think you are going to love it.
00:02:14
Speaker
We'll be right back with Philip and Michael after this.
00:02:27
Speaker
Freeman's is Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
00:02:33
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.
00:02:45
Speaker
Have you ever wondered about the value of your collection?
00:02:48
Speaker
Visit www.freemans.com slash selling dash auction today
00:02:53
Speaker
for a complimentary and confidential auction valuation from one of our many departments.
00:02:59
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.
00:03:07
Speaker
But shall we start with the object du jour?
00:03:10
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:03:11
Speaker
Because there is a piece that represents a field of specialty and special inches for you.
00:03:17
Speaker
We're talking about an 18th century object, but it's an object inspired by classical designs and classical themes.
00:03:23
Speaker
Could you tell us what that object is?
00:03:25
Speaker
I absolutely can.
00:03:26
Speaker
This is an object made in Rome.
00:03:28
Speaker
probably in the mid-1760s.
00:03:31
Speaker
And it's a fluted alabaster of absolutely classical or indeed neoclassical form.
00:03:39
Speaker
And it's embellished with rare Rosso Antico marble Lancelot leaves and moulding around the base.
00:03:48
Speaker
How large is it?
00:03:49
Speaker
It's about 16 inches tall.
00:03:52
Speaker
I mean, it's probably, let's say,
00:03:55
Speaker
40 centimeters, I think, or something.
00:03:58
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.
00:04:10
Speaker
And this object was made at a time when Piranesi was published as drawings, when Winkelmann was doing his work on classical sculpture.
00:04:19
Speaker
and there was this great vogue, this vase mania as it were in Rome in the third quarter of the 18th century.
00:04:29
Speaker
this object particularly appealed to me because it is, the proportions are absolutely just so.
00:04:35
Speaker
The material, the alabaster, is extraordinarily fine quality.
00:04:41
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
00:04:59
Speaker
reworked to a certain extent and embellished with the Rosso Antico in the 1760s, which was a great fashion.
00:05:05
Speaker
So whilst it looks like a pure 18th century object, I think in part it's probably a reworked classical object.
00:05:13
Speaker
So not just aesthetically inspired by classical ideas, but literally taken from classical.
00:05:18
Speaker
I think it may be.
00:05:20
Speaker
Is there any way to prove that?
00:05:22
Speaker
Connoisseurship, I mean there's no technical way of proving that.
00:05:26
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.
00:05:42
Speaker
And as with so many things, it's a gut feeling, it's instinct, it's years of looking at objects.
The Role of Beauty in Art
00:05:48
Speaker
Particularly, I purchased this object, that masterpiece, from Alessandro de Castro, who has an eye like nobody else for these sort of objects.
00:05:55
Speaker
She's a dealer in Rome.
00:05:57
Speaker
She's a dealer in Rome.
00:05:59
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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.
00:06:11
Speaker
You develop a sort of third eye, as it were, over the years.
00:06:18
Speaker
Ultimately, however, it actually doesn't matter.
00:06:21
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It's an extraordinarily beautiful object.
00:06:23
Speaker
And that is of primary importance.
00:06:25
Speaker
And I think we're seeing a change.
00:06:27
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I'm really pleased that beauty is coming back into the equation again these days.
00:06:32
Speaker
This leads me to wonder how your own thirst for heartstones began.
00:06:39
Speaker
A curious one.
00:06:41
Speaker
I had an uncle who I particularly adored who
00:06:48
Speaker
was a collector, but had the most extraordinarily beautiful objects, arranged beautifully, put together in absolutely ravishing interiors.
00:07:00
Speaker
And he was passionate about works of art, and he taught me a great deal.
00:07:03
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And as a young man, I spent quite a lot of time with him in his country house in Dorset.
00:07:10
Speaker
And he had a
00:07:11
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.
00:07:22
Speaker
And I think that just sort of got my imagination working.
00:07:26
Speaker
I mean, why?
00:07:28
Speaker
Where does it come from?
00:07:29
Speaker
And incredibly beautiful.
00:07:30
Speaker
And then you start doing the work and then you discover the whole history of these things.
00:07:35
Speaker
And I think that's probably what got me started.
00:07:38
Speaker
And I think one's lost the understanding of the resonance of these materials.
00:07:44
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.
00:07:55
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.
00:08:11
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In the 18th century, it was the tops that were valuable.
00:08:16
Speaker
And this goes back to our Grand Tour discussion.
00:08:20
Speaker
Whilst you were buying your marble busts and vases and so on, you were also buying slabs of rare coloured marbles.
00:08:27
Speaker
These were enormously expensive.
00:08:29
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.
00:08:39
Speaker
And the sort of comparison is you would have paid the equipment
00:08:43
Speaker
sort of £100 at the time for the marble slab and Mr Chippendale would have got sort of £1.5 for his base.
Exploration of Historical Art Techniques
00:08:50
Speaker
I mean it was that distinctively different.
00:08:54
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
00:09:03
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.
00:09:21
Speaker
So I think for me it's
00:09:26
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
00:09:54
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
00:10:21
Speaker
I have a particular interest in imperial Egyptian porphyry, which comes from Mons Porphyry, which is Hebel de Kahn.
00:10:28
Speaker
in the Eastern Desert which has become a rather inane fashion of mine.
00:10:34
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.
00:10:43
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.
00:10:51
Speaker
But when you realize how it got from where it came to, to sitting here today, I think that story is fantastic.
00:10:59
Speaker
So this quarry is, there are a series of quarries that they're atop of mountains.
00:11:03
Speaker
They're about 1500 meters above sea level.
00:11:08
Speaker
They're very steep, they're very inaccessible.
00:11:11
Speaker
So in Roman times, these quarries were discovered.
00:11:13
Speaker
The thirst for stones was so great that legions of Romans were sent to scour
00:11:20
Speaker
the Egyptian, particularly the eastern Egyptian desert, which is mountainous, to discover these new stones.
00:11:28
Speaker
And this stone, which is extremely hard, was quarried, as I say, at a great height.
00:11:33
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,
00:12:02
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.
00:12:17
Speaker
So all this is going on second, third, fourth centuries AD and
00:12:24
Speaker
The stones, the porphyry was particularly special because it was purple colour, so it was reserved for imperial use.
00:12:30
Speaker
Nobody else was theoretically allowed to use it.
00:12:34
Speaker
And it then moves on and it becomes the colour associated with the Byzantine emperors and the phrase born to the purple.
00:12:45
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
00:13:01
Speaker
royal palace in Constantinople, there was a birthing chamber and this was lined in porphyry.
00:13:08
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.
00:13:20
Speaker
They were literally born in a porphyry lined room.
Art Restoration and Influence
00:13:24
Speaker
It's even better than a silver spoon.
00:13:25
Speaker
Much better than a silver spoon.
00:13:28
Speaker
And then it gets taken over by the Christian church as a symbol of Christ and the spilled blood.
00:13:38
Speaker
And the Pope gets crowned sitting on a large rota of porphyry, which would have been drawn from a Roman column.
00:13:46
Speaker
So all these Roman period, this Roman period material was reused, recut.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so the vase I was just referring to would have started off top of the mountain, taken to Rome.
00:14:01
Speaker
It was probably, somebody would have found a column.
00:14:07
Speaker
They would have reused this ancient column in the 18th century and they would have carved it into a neoclassical vase.
00:14:15
Speaker
And that to me is such a sort of breathtaking sort of romantic story as well as being a story of, you know,
00:14:25
Speaker
It just adds a whole element to me of understanding these objects.
00:14:28
Speaker
It's a real thrill and excitement.
00:14:30
Speaker
So talk to me about Piranesi and the art scene in mid-18th century Rome.
00:14:36
Speaker
What context are we talking about this piece coming out of?
00:14:39
Speaker
Well, I think we're talking at a moment when there were a tremendous number of excavations going on in and around Rome.
00:14:48
Speaker
There was this huge thirst to feed avaricious sort of groups of grand tourists coming to Rome, coming to buy things, to...
00:15:00
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.
00:15:12
Speaker
So you were, I suppose, in an atmosphere where tremendous ancient classical works of art were being dug up.
00:15:21
Speaker
The demand was probably too great and Piranesi published
00:15:28
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.
00:15:45
Speaker
A number of workshops sprung up, particularly Cavicepi.
00:15:49
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
00:15:58
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.
00:16:14
Speaker
So the pure chaste white neoclassicism, which some of us adore enormously, is completely misplaced.
00:16:22
Speaker
So there was this sort of great intellectual sort of moment, I think, in Rome,
00:16:27
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,
00:16:57
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.
00:17:18
Speaker
They were surgeons really.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yes absolutely a very good way of putting it and that was what was so incredibly appealing to
00:17:25
Speaker
this group of young, not terribly knowledgeable on the whole, very rich British, mainly British but not exclusively obviously grand tourists in Rome.
00:17:34
Speaker
And what is so fascinating now is that many of these objects subsequently have ended up in major museum collections.
00:17:43
Speaker
And in the West Coast, for example, I'm very keen on Thomas Hope.
00:17:50
Speaker
And Thomas Hope had a great collection of antiquities bought absolutely during this period.
00:17:55
Speaker
And in his collection, there were two extremely fine life-size figures, which had later...
00:18:02
Speaker
arms and legs and bits of noses and everything else put on them.
00:18:05
Speaker
They reside in a major West Coast museum.
00:18:08
Speaker
And in the 1970s, I mean, also what one forgets about this world is fashion.
00:18:13
Speaker
And the fashion has completely changed.
00:18:16
Speaker
And from a museum point of view, it was really not considered appropriate to have later additions to a classical piece.
00:18:24
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.
00:18:39
Speaker
Fortunately, the spare parts were put in a box and sort of stuffed away in a basement.
00:18:45
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.
00:18:54
Speaker
So they now look as Thomas Hope wished them to look and had them in his gallery in Dutchess Street in London.
Art Collecting and Creative Freedoms
00:19:00
Speaker
So it's very interesting this changing museological approach as to how you want your classical objects to look.
00:19:08
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?
00:19:16
Speaker
I think there was a tremendous amount of peer pressure
00:19:21
Speaker
as there is today, particularly among contemporary collectors.
00:19:23
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.
00:19:32
Speaker
You know, my torso is bigger than yours, as it were, or more expensive or whatever.
00:19:37
Speaker
And I think there was a huge competitive atmosphere, certainly amongst the group buying at that time.
00:19:46
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?
00:20:04
Speaker
So there's a, to compare that time with ours, there was a freedom in some of their work
00:20:11
Speaker
So it felt vital and contemporary.
00:20:14
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
00:20:40
Speaker
were able to be inventive and free and innovative and exciting because they completely understood
00:20:48
Speaker
where it all came from.
00:20:50
Speaker
And that, I think, legitimizes what you do with it.
00:20:55
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.
00:21:06
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...
00:21:18
Speaker
was conceived as this is how it looked, this is how it was done.
00:21:20
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.
00:21:28
Speaker
And I think that is the difference.
00:21:31
Speaker
And I think it's, it's, I mean, I think it parallels with this argument with some people have, um, who, um,
00:21:36
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?
00:21:45
Speaker
And, you know, I do myself personally believe that drawing is the backbone of everything.
00:21:50
Speaker
And if you, I mean...
00:21:53
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
00:22:23
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.
Engaging with the Art Community
00:22:31
Speaker
If you'd like to get in touch, you can send me an email at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com.
00:22:36
Speaker
You can also find me on Instagram at Objective Interest and Michael at Michael Diaz Griffith.
00:22:41
Speaker
We'll be right back.
00:22:47
Speaker
Freeman's is Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
00:22:52
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.
00:23:03
Speaker
Freeman's is now inviting consignments for its autumn-winter 2019 auction season.
00:23:07
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.
00:23:19
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.
00:23:28
Speaker
Some things never get old, like the annual New Hampshire Antique Show, back for its 62nd year.
00:23:32
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.
00:23:40
Speaker
Highly reputable dealers will join together with thousands of buyers and enthusiasts in search of high-quality antiques.
00:23:46
Speaker
With on-site shipping and no sales tax, this is the event to find that one-of-a-kind Americana treasure.
00:23:51
Speaker
Show dates and hours are Thursday, August 8th, and Friday, August 9th from 10 a.m.
00:23:54
Speaker
to 7 p.m., and Saturday, August 10th, 10 a.m.
00:23:57
Speaker
to 4 p.m.
00:23:58
Speaker
Admission is $15 on Thursday, $10 on Friday and Saturday.
00:24:02
Speaker
Visitors under 30 with proper ID are admitted free, and we offer free return visits to the show after initial admission.
00:24:08
Speaker
For more information, visit www.nhada.org.
00:24:14
Speaker
So I want to read a quote from an interview that you did a couple of years ago with the Financial Times.
00:24:20
Speaker
Please do.
00:24:21
Speaker
And get your reaction to it.
00:24:23
Speaker
Because I found it very interesting.
00:24:24
Speaker
You said, I believe in taste and having an eye.
00:24:30
Speaker
Some might think I'm a bit prudish.
00:24:34
Speaker
Now, first of all, do you stand by that?
00:24:36
Speaker
And second, what do you think about prudishness?
00:24:38
Speaker
Because it's something we're sometimes told to be embarrassed about.
00:24:41
Speaker
But maybe we shouldn't be.
00:24:44
Speaker
I totally stand by that.
00:24:47
Speaker
I often use three dirty words, if that's the right expression.
00:24:51
Speaker
Taste, connoisseurship and beauty.
00:24:53
Speaker
All of which, me, in my prudish old-fashioned, if that's a parallel word, are of vital importance.
00:25:01
Speaker
I think you have to have that underpinned with scholarship.
Appreciating Art Beyond Context
00:25:04
Speaker
But to me these are the trinity of attributes that one should be applying towards looking at works of art.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I think that's coming back.
00:25:16
Speaker
I actually spoke at a conference a little while ago in New York and I started my opening remarks with those words.
00:25:24
Speaker
And the audience clapped.
00:25:27
Speaker
And I thought, wow, you know, we're getting back sort of to reality somehow.
00:25:32
Speaker
It's vital.
00:25:33
Speaker
I mean, you know, we love these objects basically because they are beautiful objects.
00:25:36
Speaker
They enrich our lives.
00:25:38
Speaker
They give us pleasure.
00:25:39
Speaker
They give us lines of inquiry and thought.
00:25:41
Speaker
They parallel with other things.
00:25:45
Speaker
It's absolutely vital.
00:25:46
Speaker
And I think without those attributes, I mean, you can't start.
00:25:49
Speaker
And you can apply them to everything.
00:25:51
Speaker
I mean, there's a...
00:25:52
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.
00:26:03
Speaker
But this picture is staggeringly beautiful.
00:26:06
Speaker
This is a black canvas.
00:26:10
Speaker
There's something about it that gives me goosebumps.
00:26:13
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.
00:26:25
Speaker
It's the texture, it's the blackness of the black, it's the crackleur in the paint and so on.
00:26:32
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
00:26:53
Speaker
works and put them in a different context.
00:26:57
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.
00:27:09
Speaker
But you have to look at it as a piece of sculpture.
00:27:12
Speaker
You have to look at it with different eyes.
00:27:14
Speaker
And my looking at this painting,
00:27:16
Speaker
I was looking at it not as a 70s Italian picture, but very much as a sculptural object and not as a painting.
00:27:25
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.
The Significance of Art Fairs
00:27:37
Speaker
Can we talk a little bit about art fairs?
00:27:40
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.
00:27:50
Speaker
Michael, you've been a critical part of the Winter Show in New York.
00:27:53
Speaker
These are two cornerstone art fairs, the cornerstones of the art calendar.
00:28:00
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.
00:28:12
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.
00:28:24
Speaker
and connecting people and dealers and connoisseurs and scholars.
00:28:30
Speaker
What do you think is the function of the art fair in that context?
00:28:36
Speaker
Well, I think that one of the words that I know Philip doesn't like is accessible or accessibility.
00:28:45
Speaker
And I rather agree with your distaste for that word.
00:28:48
Speaker
You know, a fair like this one or like the Winter Show
00:28:54
Speaker
can really connect a number of people who would never encounter each other, right?
00:29:01
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.
00:29:08
Speaker
You know, a dealer and a curator they might not have met.
00:29:11
Speaker
So I think, you know, first and foremost, these are hubs that bring people together for all sorts of conversations.
00:29:19
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,
00:29:33
Speaker
means that there are discussions about connoisseurship, about taste, about the eye and cultivating them that rub off on everyone present.
00:29:43
Speaker
So, you know, while there's this very technical side of vetting that we're all aware of, I think that
00:29:52
Speaker
in the air is a spirit of connoisseurship that's a little different from what one encounters at museums and at auction houses.
00:29:59
Speaker
And it comes from the dealers, you know, it comes from you, Ben, and your colleagues.
00:30:04
Speaker
But I don't think that there are other environments that are as good as fairs at drawing out those conversations.
00:30:13
Speaker
I think for younger collectors especially, there's almost no other context in which they're going to
00:30:23
Speaker
touch, feel, and discuss an object in a way that they might hear.
00:30:28
Speaker
And it's critical that they do that because, to use another kind of naughty phrase, this is an entry drug.
00:30:35
Speaker
We need for people to be exposed to the material so they fall in love with it and become obsessed.
00:30:44
Speaker
for their own good.
00:30:45
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
00:31:03
Speaker
as a collector but as a person.
00:31:05
Speaker
It's a really fundamental part of my life, my interaction with old things.
00:31:10
Speaker
And so I'm glad that these fairs can help to stoke that.
00:31:15
Speaker
And I think that
00:31:21
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.
00:31:35
Speaker
So it's a rather remarkable context.
00:31:36
Speaker
I think you're totally correct in what you say, and I wholeheartedly agree with you.
00:31:40
Speaker
I think also what makes these two fairs particularly important
00:31:46
Speaker
exciting and interesting is that we put together, obviously, it sort of goes without saying, terrific works of art, beautiful works of art.
00:31:56
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.
00:32:05
Speaker
And I think this is a very important point of the role that the dealers play.
00:32:12
Speaker
We hear a tremendous amount of, because of the greater strength perhaps of publicity,
00:32:18
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
00:32:45
Speaker
for the first time.
00:32:46
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.
00:33:00
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.
00:33:11
Speaker
But I think to be able to put together
00:33:17
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.
00:33:33
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.
00:33:43
Speaker
It has to be fun.
00:33:45
Speaker
You have to put an environment together where people want to come, come again, return and come back in.
00:33:50
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.
00:34:03
Speaker
We have fantastic restaurants.
00:34:05
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.
00:34:15
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.
00:34:24
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.
00:34:36
Speaker
And by removing that,
00:34:38
Speaker
and this is where I sort of have to find another word from the word that I dislike using.
00:34:48
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,
00:34:57
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.
00:35:11
Speaker
And I think this is tremendously important.
00:35:13
Speaker
It's unpressured.
00:35:14
Speaker
It's comfortable.
00:35:14
Speaker
That's a very good word.
00:35:15
Speaker
I think this is really the most comfortable fare in the world.
00:35:18
Speaker
I want to put that on the table.
00:35:21
Speaker
It's just the right size.
00:35:23
Speaker
It's glamorous, but it's easy to be here.
00:35:26
Speaker
And I think that's a real achievement.
00:35:27
Speaker
I think the size is incredibly important because if you're sort of super professional, you can sort of whiz around relatively quickly.
00:35:35
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.
00:35:48
Speaker
And I think it's...
00:35:51
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.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:36:13
Speaker
And everybody learns, we are all learning and that's what's so exciting and
00:36:18
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.
00:36:32
Speaker
And every time I'm seeing things I haven't seen before, I'm seeing things I actually don't know about.
00:36:37
Speaker
That to me is hugely thrilling.
00:36:41
Speaker
Speaking of learning, you know, programming, lectures, booth talks has become an incredibly important part of fairs.
00:36:48
Speaker
And I know you have programming here.
00:36:50
Speaker
It's quite sophisticated and interesting.
00:36:52
Speaker
Could you tell us a bit about it?
00:36:53
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:36:54
Speaker
I mean, we do a number of different things.
00:36:57
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
00:37:08
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.
00:37:22
Speaker
We have a lecture theatre where we have I think probably two lectures
00:37:28
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
00:37:45
Speaker
about acquiring works of art which I personally think is up to supreme importance.
Guiding Collectors with Art Advisors
00:37:52
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.
00:38:11
Speaker
You spoke about art advising and you've been in that role among many others since the 1980s, I think.
00:38:18
Speaker
I have.
00:38:19
Speaker
And Michael, you are also in a slightly different sense an art advisor these days or an art consultant.
00:38:28
Speaker
I don't know what the proper term is exactly.
00:38:31
Speaker
But to both of you, I'm interested in what you may have learned
00:38:38
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.
00:38:52
Speaker
I'll let Philip take this first.
00:38:55
Speaker
I think the most crucial part of the role of an art advisor is advising people what not to buy.
00:39:01
Speaker
Precisely.
00:39:03
Speaker
What should people not buy?
00:39:05
Speaker
I think we all wish we were paid on that basis.
00:39:11
Speaker
I think it's about what not to buy.
00:39:13
Speaker
I think what I really, apart from the underpinning of the knowledge, which I sort of
00:39:18
Speaker
doesn't go without saying but it sort of should go without saying.
00:39:22
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.
00:39:36
Speaker
I mean in my personal opinion it's always the thing that is slightly beyond you that you make the stretch to acquire
00:39:44
Speaker
that ultimately gives you the most pleasure.
00:39:46
Speaker
I'm not quite sure why that is, but from a personal point of view, I absolutely find that true.
00:39:50
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.
00:40:05
Speaker
There's more, you're more engaged, there's more curiosity, it stimulates the intellect far more than
00:40:12
Speaker
not having something that isn't the very best.
00:40:14
Speaker
I should introduce you to some of our clients.
00:40:19
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?
00:40:26
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.
00:40:38
Speaker
Even if it's just a caricature in which the advisor is the investment manager, right?
00:40:44
Speaker
Who's telling you what you should buy this season.
00:40:46
Speaker
That's a very good point.
00:40:47
Speaker
And I think it speaks, you know, very directly to the strength that we have in our part of the market in that
00:40:55
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.
00:41:14
Speaker
is obviously a much higher calling than attempting to help them make a better investment.
00:41:19
Speaker
I mean, they're financial managers for that.
00:41:21
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
00:41:33
Speaker
adding to the total of an individual's vision or their ability to comprehend the collecting practice.
00:41:40
Speaker
It's much more important.
00:41:41
Speaker
It is.
00:41:42
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.
00:41:51
Speaker
And I remember a moment when I was with one of my
00:41:55
Speaker
Clans, we were in New York and we were, I don't know, talking about English 18th century furniture or something.
00:42:00
Speaker
And I'd seen an 18th century drawing in a shop window on the way up.
00:42:07
Speaker
And I thought, I need to show that drawing to this person.
00:42:10
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.
00:42:21
Speaker
and sort of out of the blue I just said come on we're going to go and look at this drawing.
00:42:25
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?
00:42:35
Speaker
I said what's that?
00:42:36
Speaker
That's really really exciting, really interesting.
00:42:39
Speaker
We went in, we looked at it, we bought it and he put together a very small but extremely fine collection of
00:42:46
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.
Concluding Thoughts on Art and Fairs
00:43:04
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.
00:43:13
Speaker
But at least it's paying good dividends.
00:43:16
Speaker
It is a beautiful, beautiful object.
00:43:18
Speaker
In the form of delight.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:19
Speaker
All right.
00:43:21
Speaker
Well, thank you very much.
00:43:22
Speaker
This has been a pleasure.
00:43:23
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:43:24
Speaker
It's been extremely enjoyable.
00:43:25
Speaker
Thank you, Philip.
00:43:26
Speaker
Thank you, both.
00:43:32
Speaker
What a storyteller and what a passionate collector.
00:43:36
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
00:43:48
Speaker
appreciating, looking at pieces of art and enjoying them.
00:43:53
Speaker
I mean, that's what it's all about.
00:43:54
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.
00:44:06
Speaker
And that's important.
00:44:08
Speaker
But what's really important is, do you like it?
00:44:12
Speaker
Is it pretty?
00:44:15
Speaker
And what can we learn from it?
00:44:18
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
00:44:33
Speaker
the deeper motivating energies in our world.
00:44:37
Speaker
You know, everything that we do has to lead to that kind of relish in beauty, in objects.
00:44:44
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
00:44:57
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.
00:45:15
Speaker
And, you know, most of the material there was
00:45:19
Speaker
acquired at Masterpiece, at the Winter Show, or similar environments, and each object came with a story.
00:45:30
Speaker
And he tells those stories, and he's developed those stories, and he's become a part of the stories.
00:45:38
Speaker
to every visitor who might have any interest at all in history or objects.
00:45:45
Speaker
Something else that I've been thinking about, which is that
00:45:49
Speaker
A fair like the one we're sitting in, Masterpiece, in London, can be viewed as an elite space that's inaccessible.
00:45:59
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.
00:46:10
Speaker
Despite our, you know, protestations that you can start at any level, that you can start in a flea market, you can...
00:46:17
Speaker
begin wherever your eye takes you.
00:46:20
Speaker
But, you know, it's sometimes difficult, given what we do, Ben, to make that case convincingly.
00:46:31
Speaker
Because we deal with a lot of very high-end material.
00:46:34
Speaker
And so does Philip and so does this fair.
00:46:39
Speaker
But I feel like...
00:46:43
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.
00:47:03
Speaker
The conversations that we have about price and that dirty word accessibility
00:47:09
Speaker
You know, it's easy to get confused between the question of price and the question of value.
00:47:15
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.
00:47:31
Speaker
You know, why should, what the hell, how is this thing worth this much money?
00:47:36
Speaker
It doesn't make any sense.
00:47:38
Speaker
And I feel that someone like Philip is in a great position to persuade us that in fact, these objects are worth something.
00:47:48
Speaker
for a reason.
00:47:50
Speaker
And the reason isn't just hype and speculation and so on.
00:47:54
Speaker
The reason is that these are wonderful pieces that bring joy to people's lives and that are therefore in demand.
00:48:03
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.
00:48:13
Speaker
It's that there are these objects in the world which are rare and which are wonderful and appealing and beautiful.
00:48:19
Speaker
And that is why they're assigned to these values.
00:48:21
Speaker
Right.
00:48:22
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.
00:48:37
Speaker
It really doesn't.
00:48:40
Speaker
It is distinct from a museum in the fact that you can touch and feel the work.
00:48:44
Speaker
I'm excited to show you our stand because I think you're going to enjoy the
Final Reflections and Episode Wrap-up
00:48:49
Speaker
lush.
00:48:49
Speaker
We've done a sort of Aladdin's cave style decoration with these rich oriental rugs and silver draped all over it.
00:49:00
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.
00:49:09
Speaker
Well, I can't wait.
00:49:12
Speaker
And, you know, on the level that these objects are products of history and that they anchor us somehow in time, it's...
00:49:26
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.
00:49:47
Speaker
George Washington sat in this chair, for example.
00:49:52
Speaker
But...
00:49:53
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.
00:50:07
Speaker
And, you know, as Philip was talking, I was imagining all of these different approaches to thinking about that history
00:50:18
Speaker
Okay, well, Michael, this has been a lot of fun.
00:50:20
Speaker
It has been.
00:50:21
Speaker
I'll see you on the show floor.
00:50:22
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:50:26
Speaker
And that's all for today.
00:50:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:50:28
Speaker
A huge thank you to Philip Hewitt-Jabor for sharing his time with us.
00:50:31
Speaker
Today's episode was produced and edited by Sammy Delati.
00:50:35
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:50:36
Speaker
You've been hearing Michael Diaz-Griffith and me, Ben Miller.
00:50:40
Speaker
Till next time.