L'Uomo Vogue April 2010 : Andres Serrano by Francesco Carrozzini

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vogue.it

 

[maxlinden]

ummm, the layout is pretty good

 

[Pedro]

s*cks as usual, i wonder how many of you guys really buy this? am i the only fool who still collects this?

 

[spiceboy]

gave up 6-7 years ago

By Francesco Carrozzini? Thats a surprise.

 

[MON]

I like it. Cool cover

 

[Fontastic]

am i the only fool who still collects this?

No, you're not alone. I wish I could stop buying it but every month I find myself outside the shop holding the issue with no memory of what happened inside the newsagent...

 

[romeoelliott]

how's the editorial usually like?

 

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The artist who has filled his New York home with ecclesiastical works of art. Surprising for someone who scandalised public opinion with his installation Piss Christ

Andres Serrano gained infamy for his 1988 word Piss Christ that featured a statue of Jesus submerged in a vitrine of urine. Since then, Serrano's work has continued to explore the sadism of hypocrisy through Catholic iconography. So, it may be considered ironic that the artist has furbished his New York loft with medieval, ecclesiastic objets d'art - the very same materials found in his iconoclastic photography.

It is a paradox the artist puts down to pure curiosity - whether it is opening up a morgue to see death close-up, meeting the Ku Klux Klan, or for simply new experiences - and a manifestation of his faith. Here he discusses regrets, the Vatican's reaction to his work, and hunting down that perfect Cassapanca with Xerxes Cook.

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The man with six thousand chairs confesses his weakness for Japanese robots

The extraordinary collection of chairs belonging to Rolf Fehlbaum, head of Vitra, began in the Eighties out of intellectual curiosity and in the spirit of research. Today the collection is made up of more than six thousand chairs, made between 1805 and 2007 and although they are not on public display, they make up the basis of the majority of the company's exhibition activities. This part of what is usually known as Vitra Project, the name given to the firm's manufacturing activities as a whole, has a central role in architecture and design in the gospel according Vitra. Rolf Fehlbaum does not collect only chairs, and admits to having had one weakness as a radical collector: "For a while, I had a passion for Japanese robots. I collected them for many years, but around ten years ago I stopped." Even passions change.

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Through his auction house, the former photographer and great collector is about to put the oldest camera in the world up for sale

In 2000, former advertising photographer, Peter Coeln, transformed his studio in Vienna into a museum dedicated to cameras and photography in general, the WestLicht Schauplatz Museum.

Eight years before he had founded the Leica Shop, while the opening in London of theRare Camera Company dates back to 1994. "In those years, London was the international centre of collecting, where the best specialised shops were located and the most interesting auctions were held. Arriving in the capital opened up a whole world to me.

We were soon able to organise exhibitions of photographic equipment in Japan, China, Brunei and many other places." In 2001, he opened WestLicht Schauplatz Museum of photography and the following year WestLicht Auction House. "I had built up a large collection, with around six thousand cameras to sell. It was too vast a quantity to be sold in our shop and hence the idea of an auction house."

Enthusiasts are anxiously awaiting the auction of the 29th May in particular, when the oldest and most expensive camera in the world will be up for sale (estimated to fetch a price of between 500,000 and 700,000 euros), a daguerreotype camera made in Paris at the beginning of September 1839 by Alphonse Giroux, the brother-in-law of the same Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre who, that same year, had invented the photographic process.

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Together with her husband Don, she has one of the best art collections in the world. What their secret? "Investing a quarter of our income in buying contemporary works of art."

"You don't have to be a multimillionaire to be an art lover and supporter," sustains Mera Rubell, who together with her husband Don has put together an astronomical collection with more than five thousand pieces over a period of more than forty years.

"We started out in 1964, when we certainly did not have an abundance of funds. We had just got married. I was teaching and he was a young doctor. We decided, by mutual agreement, to set aside 25% of our monthly salaries to invest in contemporary works of art." "And today," Don specifies, "even if our budget has changed, the procedure remains unchanged".

Theirs is a veritable mission: to discover, promote and raise awareness of the most diverse forms of creative expression - paintings, photos, installations and videos - by artists like Cindy Sherman, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Paul McCarthy, Charles Ray, Maurizio Cattelan, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Opened to the public in 1994, the Rubell Family Collection has contributed to the foundation of the Miami artistic community and supported the December showcase of Art Basel in Miami (it was Jason who suggested the idea of an exhibition "on the beach", under the Florida sun, to the organisers) and works as a museum under the aegis of the Contemporary Arts Foundation.

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The leader of Outkast and king of hip hop reveals his enormous passion for trainers

He earned the title of "Georgia's Godfather of hip hop" with the group Outkast. He has won six Grammy Awards and sold millions of records. Today Antwan Patton, a.k.a. Big Boi, is back on the scene with a new album and a series of projects.

We went to see him in his house in Atlanta (where he has even installed a stripper pole!), where he jealously guards a collection of more than 400 pairs of sneakers, one of his passions. His first love is music and what is most important to him is his family, friends and his foundation Big Kidz.

His new album "Sir Luscious Left Foot: the son of Chico Dusty", is set to be launched in June, but Big Boi is already working on a new music project with André 3000, the other half of Outkast. He voted for Obama and hopes for a better world, not just in words but in deeds. His motto is "Long live the funk!"

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tao-book

 

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The greatest specialist in his field, Otto Penzler collects first edition thrillers, noir fiction and detective novels and has sixty thousand volumes in his library

His Mysterious Bookshop in Tribeca, New York, is a favourite haunt of noir fiction, thriller and detective novel enthusiasts. His collection of mystery, crime, espionage and suspense novels is the biggest in the world: sixty thousand first edition books held in an elegant library that he has had specially built in his house in Connecticut.

Otto Penzler is a real authority on the subject. He is the author of anthologies and reports on ancient manuscripts. By contrast to other collectors, he has direct daily contact with his collection. "I flick through my books and study them every single day".

Recently remarried to a woman who is much younger than him, a lover of his work, he radiates an enthusiasm for life that is contagious. On his death, he will be leaving his paper treasure to his wife, but, he says, "I have no intention of dying for the moment!"

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[versustito]

nice cover !

 

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"I think I could live without art, but not without my 40 vintage bicycles", admits Tim Dawson. This fifty-year-old man from Essex, whose trade is the sale of photographs of works of art by the great masters of the Eighties, could describe himself as a cyclist-artist or vice versa.

At weekends, he gets on one of his adored "Penny-farthings", the bicycles of the late nineteenth century with a huge front wheel and a tiny back wheel, and pedals around the countryside outside of London.

"I mostly own bicycles constructed in the years before the two world wars. The oldest one dates back to 1867. The thing attracts me to them is their workings, their mechanisms - masterpieces of mechanical engineering and human ingenuity. I spend hours observing the sprockets, chains and spokes: to me they are truly fascinating. I photograph each piece precisely with great enthusiasm, as if I were putting together an art catalogue. However, it would be a soulless collection if I couldn't get on the saddle of each one and try them".

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[Donatello89]

that's always original ! i like it !!!!!!!!!

 

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The inventor of modern antiques describes how he ennobled plastic

Fulvio Ferrari, the soul of Mollino di Torino house museum, describes himself the inventor of the very concept of modern antiques within decorative arts. "At the beginning of the Eighties, I had an idea that sounded like madness: trying to understand whether manufactured plastic items, particularly those made in Italy between the early Sixties and 1973, when the oil crisis suddenly made the price of plastic sky rocket, could be considered antiques."

In 1984 Ferrari put his collection up for auction in an attempt to draw the attention of the general public to all the material purchased by promoting it on the international scene. The idea being to make sure it went down in history once and for all. "It was the first time that an industrially designed foam armchair had been treated with the same dignity as a Louis XV fauteuil."

In the early Eighties, architect, Toni Cordero, whom he asked to design his new gallery in Turin and to whom he owes the discovery of Carlo Mollino said, "Twelve years ago I received the house generated by the special hermeneutic outlook of Carlo Mollino. I returned it to its original condition, strictly adhering to the original style, eliminating non-pertinent additions and patiently recomposing the interior design."

(In the picture: jacket, shirt and pants, Yohji Yamamoto. Make up artist Claudia Marchetti @ Greenapple; hair stylist Lorenzo Cherubini @ Face to Face. Fashion editor Robert Rabensteiner)

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The owner of the Monster House opens the doors to L'Uomo Vogue, revealing his immense collection of Aliens, King Kongs and Gremlins from film sets

Life-size aliens, Star Trek monsters, Gremlins and predators are just a few of the more than five thousand film relics that have ended up in Frauefeld, in Roman Güttinger many coloured Zoo of Horror. Güttinger is probably the greatest collector in the world of film props from horror and fantasy films (and more besides).

He cannot choose a favourite prop amongst his immense collection, but reels off a list of pieces that he is most attached to: those given to him by his important connections in the film world, like the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, creator of the most famous monsters in Alien, and Peter Jackson, director of the series of The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, to whom he owes the fact that he has the right contacts to be the first to lay his hands on the most coveted props each time they become available.

This crazy Swiss collector, who complains that he enjoys collecting props much less since the activity has become a veritable business for many, has two secret wishes: to open a props museum and to undertake the direction of a feature film.

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He was 14 years old when he got his first hat designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. From then on, this eccentric American artist and fashion designer (one of Andy Warhol's pupils, loved by the celebrity for his "Surreal couture" clothes and "Surreal bijou" sculptural jewellery) has never stopped collecting.

Amongst the thousands of unique pieces that he has collected, many of which are exhibited in top museums, there are pieces that belonged to Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Pia of Savoy, Gabrielle Chanel, Josephine Baker and Denise Poiret.

However, he is also famous for being a great Barbie collector: he set up the first adult fan club dedicated to the doll, which he has had dressed by the greatest fashion designers, including Yves Saint Laurent, and which he celebrated in his best-selling book Barbie, her life and times (Crown).

"But what I really hold dear are the Kamkins art dolls by Louise Kampes, and the dolls clothing designed by artists like Käthe-Kruse, Dora Petzold and Paul Poiret". In 1983, he created his Mdvanii "glamour doll".

His collection of dolls houses is also very valuable: some of which are of great historic interest, such as the 1880 "Lala house", and one by the architect Mallet-Steven, dated 1925. He is currently working on a museum to gather together all of his collections.

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