#i lived in this house a couple years ago that was a 1930s terrace and honestly looked so stereotypically haunted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elizadoolittlethings · 6 years

Text

Funny peculiar

As one-quarter of The League of Gentlemen, Mark Gatiss is used to playing odd characters - great practice for his stage role in All About My Mother. He talks to Sarah Dempster

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/aug/20/theatre.arts]

Later, we will hear tell of Nubian effigies and septuagenarian sauce, of outrageous folly and the dashed inconvenience of finding oneself betrothed to not one but two Fannies. But first, a cautionary tale re: the hidden perils of high-street gadgetry. "I recently bought a digital dictaphone," announces Mark Gatiss, solemnly. "But when I got it home I noticed that there was already a 35-second recording on it. I thought, 'Hello'. So I pressed play and all I heard was (he adopts a casserole-thick cockney drawl): "'Errr ... Boxing Day mornin'. Lookin' aaht the window. Contemplatin' ... 'avin' a wank.' And that was it. Obviously, whoever it was had his festive wank, decided he had no further use for his dictaphone, and then took it back to the shop. Wonderful!" he hoots. "I immediately thought, 'Yes!' [He raises a fist in triumph.] 'This is the dictaphone for me!'"

Well, of course it is. Gatiss's imagination thrives on such peculiarities. From The League of Gentlemen's hapless, unemployable Mickey Michaels to Nighty Night's sexually stunted Glenn Bulb, his characters are often bleakly hilarious fusions of the strange and the wrong.

Today, sitting in a quiet corner of the National Theatre's artificial turf lawn, Gatiss cuts a rakish figure. Resplendent in a flapping, 1930s-style pinstripe suit and fetching brogues, there is an air of Boy's Own mischief to the chap, a dandy-in-aspic glee that echoes that of Lucifer Box, the all-quipping, all-boffing secret service hero of Gatiss's literary period romps The Vesuvius Club, The Devil in Amber and still-in-the-planning Clawhammer (in which a now-elderly Box finds himself up to his walloping libido in 1950s naughtiness).

In much the same spirit of adventure, Gatiss's latest role is that of a forthright transvestite called Agrado in the Old Vic's production of All About My Mother - Pedro Almodóvar's beloved paean to female resilience. The rehearsals, he says, are going "swimmingly". His fellow cast members - who include Diana Rigg and Lesley Manville - are "just wonderful". And yet a cumulonimbus hovers on his otherwise tranquil horizon.

"Word came from Madrid," he confides, sotto voce, "that Pedro wants me to lose weight." Clearly, this is preposterous. The man is thinner than rhubarb. And yet, having seen snaps of Gatiss dressed as volcanic redhead Agrado, the Spanish director was apparently insistent. "I know from my experience on the League that you can get quite ... boxy," he says. "I've got to have a prosthetic chest and the more you build out, the bigger you become. Nobody's saying I'm fat. But basically, I'm off the bread."

Now 40, Gatiss's voice is as warm as a recently vacated bath chair, his northern inflections softened by his many years in London and an outlook that always reached far beyond the terraced rooftops of his Sedgefield, County Durham childhood. His CV bears testament to this ambition, his enduring fascination with nostalgia and grotesques, and the overriding, shining importance of Not Just Doing Any Old Rubbish. "I'm very lucky," he says. "I always used to say, in the olden days, when any kind of career looked like a pipe dream, that the thing I'd really like to do is become well known for something and then, as a result, be offered all kinds of different things. And that's exactly what's happened. That was my dream plan - I never thought it would ever happen. It's amazing how the League has opened so many wonderful doors."

Roles in The Wind in the Willows (as Rat), BBC4's live remake of The Quatermass Experiment (as a worried boffin), the excellent Fear of Fanny (as the titular Cradock's downtrodden husband) and Starter for Ten (as Bamber Gascoigne) have demonstrated his versatility, but it is his involvement with the multi-award-winning League of Gentlemen that continues to generate the loudest online burble.

Persistent forum-generated rumours that the troupe has called it a day are met by Gatiss with a mock-theatrical sigh. "We haven't split up. We're on a sabbatical. We had lunch the other day. But it's difficult at the moment because we're all doing different stuff."

Will there be future projects with fellow Gentlemen Steve Pemberton, Jeremy Dyson and Reece Shearsmith? "I certainly hope so. I mean, Steve and Reece have written a new BBC2 thing by themselves (Psychoville), so that's interesting. I don't want it to be seen as the League, or only half the League, as it were, but I suppose that's inevitable. But we all want to do something together.

"When we sort of paused, we'd been working together continuously for almost 12 years, from the beginning of our Fringe life to the film (The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse). I would never have been able to do a show like All About My Mother because we never had three months off. So I think it's a lovely thing to step off the treadmill. And because we've all done different stuff we'll come back with different experiences. Then it'll become a total pleasure to reform, rather than, 'What the hell are we going to do next?'"

Television remains a constant source of passion for Gatiss, its highs ("Upstairs, Downstairs is wonderful!") and lows ("I want to write a drama about ratings - the whole system is fucking bollocks!") negotiated with equal gusto. Above all, however, is his love of Doctor Who. "In a way, it's been the spine of my career," he says. "It was my first TV memory and I always wanted to be in it and write for it. In the interregnum, in the dark days, I wrote Doctor Who books [he has written four to date]. And then when it came back, Russell [T Davies] asked me to write for it. And now I've been in it as well [as Professor Lazarus]. So it's all fantastic - hah-hah!"

His home life displays a similarly chipper disregard for convention. A few years ago, Gatiss decided to build a Victorian laboratory in a spare bedroom. "We had this fabulous room, blood red, beautiful fireplace. I bought all the furniture, chemical bottles and a fantastic wax head of a Nubian boy with a fez on it. All original. Amazing stuff. But then all I ever did was show it to people. I'm not quite sure what I thought I was going to be able to do with it - turn back time or something. It was a folly. At one point, I toyed with the idea of covering it in cobwebs and then just showing people it through the keyhole. But it was a case of be careful what you wish for. I wanted a laboratory as a kid; then I had one and just thought, 'Oh'. So I dismantled it. I've kept nearly all of the stuff, though. It's around the house."

Does his partner, Ian, share his affection for such monstrosities? "He ... tolerates it," says Gatiss, affectionately. As, presumably, does the couple's rumpled, sensible labrador, Bunsen. "He is extraordinary. He's the light of our lives."

The next few months will see the genial multi-tasker juggle a flurry of new projects - a situation that Gatiss ("not a workaholic, but nearly") is "very comfortable" with. The BBC are planning to adapt his Lucifer Box novels, he will "possibly" write an episode for the fourth series of Doctor Who, and there will be appearances in Consenting Adults - a BBC4 drama based around the Wolfenden report - and Andrew Davies's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility: "I play John Dashwood, who has a terrible wife called Fanny. Yes, another Fanny! It's my fate. What have I done to deserve them?

"As long as I'm able to write and perform stuff that gives me the same excitement as I've always felt, I can't imagine wanting much else," says Gatiss, smoothing out the creases in his voluminous trousers in preparation for a suitably dandy-ish evening stroll. "To be able to sit down and write, 'Interior: Tardis'. Or write a very spooky ghost story. They're the same preoccupations I've had since I was little. That's what makes me happy".

· All About My Mother is at The Old Vic from August 27. Box office 0870 060 6628.

#mark gatiss

6 notes · View notes

keywestlou · 4 years

Text

FROM ANCIENT AMORGOS TO THE GRANDEUR OF ATHENS

DAYS 31 and 32…..Greece the First Time

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Key West Lou

I am back! Missed a day. Yesterday. Big traveling day.

I am sad to say I left Amorgos. It is like Key West in my feelings. Twenty five years ago on my first visit I knew some day I wanted to live in Key West. Amorgos leaves me with the same feeling. No way, however. Key West is home and I am happy there.

I am in Athens. A big vibrant teeming city. After spending more than three weeks on three different Greek isles, I needed a return to the normal world.

I am doing my two days in Athens big time. Staying at the world famous Grande Bretagne. It is civilization. Opulent. Service till you fall over it. Tons of fresh clean towels. A woman to give me a manicure. A real shower. Not one of those small confines with a hand held shower head. Big bed with a great mattress. Clean sheets every day.

The modern conveniences!

My last day on Amorgos was spent doing exactly what I liked. I sat in my bathing suit with my feet propped on another chair on my terrace. A baseball cap on my head backwards. And read. Except for an hour in the afternoon when I went in to take a nap.

Dinner was with Demetrius. He made a fuss. I told him…..I shall return!

Yesterday was a new experience. My 9 hour boat trip to Athens. I was not excited. The starting time was too early. The length off the trip too long. I expected an old beat up trawler with a handful of people.

What a surprise! The boat was fantastic!

Big. Three stories. Long. A ferry boat in effect. The first floor for cars. Don’t know why. There are not that many cars in the Greek isles to fill the mammoth space. Two floors for passengers. Roughly 400. The second floor all economy class. The third, half economy and first class. The other half business class.

I was in business class. Explanation time. Classes when traveling are not the same as in the U.S. Whereas first class is tops, in Greece business class is. The Greek first class is comparable to our business class.

You would not believe the business class salon. Easy chairs and sofas. That’s all to sit on. Pure comfort. Always a table nearby for a drink or whatever. Service. Waiters. A small bar with little goodies to eat. Only half full.

The trip was a treat! Rather than the dreaded experience I thought was before me

The long boat trip gave me a chance to see many of the Greek isles. We were in and out of about 10 of them picking up passengers.

Politics could not be avoided. I was speaking with some Italian and Greek passengers. Fortunately, all spoke English.

Italian former Prime Minister Berlusconi is on his way back. He beat a sex charge involving a seventeen year old and won some sort of local election soon thereafter. Berlusconi is running again for the Prime Minister’s job. The election is next year.

Of the roughly 17 European nations making up the euro bunch, Italy is in the third worst shape. Only Spain and Greece are behind. Greece is last. Berlusconi has started blaming the Greeks for everything. He is siding with the Germans. The Greeks screwed up is his position.

I shuddered. History repeats itself. The scenario reminded me of the late 1930s when Mussolini joined with Hitler.

I further thought how dumb! Didn’t this guy realize that Italy will be one of the next. Sucking up will not avoid the grasp of the bill collecting Germans.

An example of how heated the conversation got was the boat we were on and ATM machines. The boat was built/bought 10 years ago with euro dollars. The Italian said that euro nation dollars had built the boat. Not Greece’s money. Further, he said that money the Greeks were taking out of ATM machines was made up of Italian and euro nation dollars. In effect, the Greeks were free loading…..all the way around.

I fear worse is yet to come.

Last night was a replay. Went to Plaka. To the same outdoor cafe I drank at several times three weeks ago. The manager saw me and shouted out…..Louis! He embraced me.

I had dinner on the poor side of Acropolis. At the restaurant where the Greeks dance. Under brightly lite Acropolis. Only one problem. Business was poor last night. Only three tables in use. No music. The food compensated. I had huge grilled lamb chops. The kind with fat. The taste spectacular!

Before leaving for dinner, I went to the bar and put down two gins. A magnificent big city type bar. Just like New York City. Then it was downstairs for a manicure.

Chrysa did me. A lovely young lady. Did a good job. We chatted. She was born and raised in Greece. Has a friend in New Jersey. She visits the friend on occasion. She thinks she may be visiting the last week of November and the first week of December. They are planning on driving to Florida. I asked…..South Beach and Key West? I do not think she understood these places. Her answer was Orlando. I told her we all love Mickey Mouse and she should go. But afterwards keep going south till you hit South Beach and then Key West.

I know Chrysa will be reading this blog today. Come to Key West! When you arrive, go to the Chart Room at the Pier House Hotel. I am there most evenings at cocktail hour. If not, tell the bartender who you are and how I may contact you. Do not miss South Beach and Key West!

I had a quick breakfast of nothing this morning. A double espresso. It was like drinking acid!

Enjoy your day!

—

A couple of items that come to mind which are not in the blog.

The magnificence of the Grand Bretagne I have already shared. Greece’s economic condition, also. The economy affected my stay at the Gran Bretagne.

The hotel was empty. I did not know it at the time.

I had no reservation. Walked up to the counter and explained I had just spent a month on Amorgos and wanted to spend a few days in their hotel. I explained I needed a return to civilization!

What a deal it turned out to be!

I had a huge magnificent room, bathroom and terrace. All for $172 a night.

I was placed on the valet floor. Did not understand what it meant till I reached my room. The floor had a valet. Tails and all. He was to provide all services.

Nice guy. He explained I was the only customer on the valet floor. Ergo, I was all his during my stay. He unpacked my bags. Packed them when I was to leave. He said anything and everything you want, call me. I did. I was cared for like a King.

Lamb is a big dish in Greece. What is on the menu, what you order, is not lamb. Generally, goat. The islands definitely goat. Big time hotels and restaurants in Athens I assume lamb. Smaller places goat.

Don’t say ugh at the mention of goat. Tastes like lamb. You cannot tell the difference.

Goat is especially served on the islands because it is plentiful. You frequently see herds of wild goats running across a mountain side.

I am excited! Extremely so! I am finally to get the vaccine shot. Tomorrow at the Frederick Douglas Gym in Key West.

The news a relief. My 85 year old age is constantly in the forefront of my mind. I should have been one of the first in line. At the moment, they are down to age 55 receiving the shot. What happened to me? I’ll never know and don’t care. That I am to finally receive the shot tomorrow is what is important.

Coronavirus is what? A year old. New things happening daily. Problems. Solutions.

One of the recent occurrences involves a baby born in Washington, D.C. in September. The baby was born with the virus. More dramatic and worse, the baby had 51,000 of some bad thing in his body. The 51,000 number far higher than those in other young patients.

No one knows why.

The baby was “very sick.” Responded well to treatments, however and is virus free today. Doctors believe the infection was from a coronavirus variant.

The baby was “lucky.” The young barely show symptoms.

We are all familiar with the saying when it rains, it pours. Somewhat like Murphy’s law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

I refer to Boeing. “Poor Boeing.” However the poor is not really applicable. Boeing has a glitch or two in its manufacturing process. People die when something goes wrong with a plane.

I mention Boeing this morning because a Boeing 777 made an emergency landing yesterday in Moscow after receiving an engine sensor warning.

A safe emergency landing was made. No injuries. No visible damage to the plane.

This is Boeing’s third engine problem this week. Another 777 engine problem and a 737 one.

Something’s wrong in the plant. Boeing better figure it out. And soon! Otherwise no one will fly their planes.

There will be no blog tomorrow. My time will be absorbed with the shot.

Enjoy your day!

FROM ANCIENT AMORGOS TO THE GRANDEUR OF ATHENS was originally published on Key West Lou

0 notes

architectnews · 4 years

Text

TS-H_01 by Tom Strala is a pared-back family home on a Swiss hillside

Architect Tom Strala has completed TS-H_01, a minimal family home just outside of Bern, Switzerland that includes separate living quarters for parents and children.

TS-H_01 perches on a grassy slope in the municipality of Kirchdorf and is occupied by a couple with two daughters and a son.

Local architect Tom Strala has designed the house to offer a "contemporary form of cohabitation" where parents and children can easily live side by side.

"I always aim to create a tailor-made suit for my clients," Strala told Dezeen.

"My approach is to first understand how my clients live, what their inner dynamic is and what's important to them on a daily basis," he continued. "With that knowledge, we together developed a concept that naturally became pragmatic-poetic."

The architect also wanted TS-H_01 to emulate the easy-going internal layout of his own home in Werkbundsiedlung Neubühl, a housing complex in Zurich that was built by a collective of Swiss architects between 1930-32.

"Spaces in Werkbundsiedlung Neubühl are not big but they are shaped in such a way that you never feel limited; it was built 90 years ago and I tried to translate this quality into our time."

The children's sleeping quarters have been allocated to the home's lower-ground floor.

Strala specifically wanted to contradict the arrangement of a typical family home, which he thinks are too-often organised in a way where "youngsters are either protected, guarded or spied on by their parents".

Each bedroom has two doors, one that grants access to the garden and another that leads to the children's private lounge area.

"Whether a 'good child' or a pubescent teenager, the child decides day after day for itself how strong a connection it wants to form with its family, its siblings or the outside world," explained Strala.

Family members can unite on the ground floor of TS-H_01, which accommodates the communal living spaces. This includes a sizeable sitting room fronted by sliding glazed panels that open onto an outdoor terrace.

At the centre of the adjacent kitchen is a chunky white prep counter, while down the side of the room is a sequence of full-height storage cupboards with circular timber-edged handles.

Two of the cupboards can be pushed back to reveal a hidden doorway to the home's indoor garage.

The parents have complete free rein over the attic, which is where their bedroom suite is located.

"It's similar to a single loft space," said Strala. "Even if you are a caring father or mother, you remain a human being with a life of your own."

The interior has been minimally finished throughout with raw plaster walls and pale timber floorboards.

Splashes of colour are offered in the bathroom facilities, where glazed, midnight-blue tiles clad the shower cubicle and window ledge.

Other pared-back properties in Switzerland include Haus Meister by HDPF, which boasts bare concrete surfaces, and Montebar Villa by JM Architecture, which is exclusively covered in dark grey tiles to resemble "a stone in the landscape".

The post TS-H_01 by Tom Strala is a pared-back family home on a Swiss hillside appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

0 notes

clausvonbohlen · 6 years

Text

24 Deligianni Street, Athens.

24 Deligianni street is where I live. It is a πολυκατοικία – an apartment block. Literally, this means: ‘many (πολύ) – relating to (κατά) - the home (οίκος) , a ‘many-home-dwelling’. Oίκος is the archaic root that resurfaces in English words such as ‘economy’ (the management of the home), and ecology (the study of the home, in this case planet earth). It is a good example of how, in Greece and in Greek, the ancient and the modern, the old and the new, are interconnected.

My building is located in Exarcheia, beside the archaeological museum and midway between Exarcheia square, to the south, and Pedio Areos park, to the north. This was once a very desirable neighborhood, but in the 1960s and 70s many of the more affluent inhabitants moved out of the centre and into the suburbs. Immigrant communities were drawn to Exarcheia because of low rents and good transport links, and now it is very diverse, with many Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nigerians, and, more recently, Afghans and Syrians.

The archaeological museum is next to the National Technical University of Athens, the Πολυτεχνείο, famous for the student uprising against the military junta in 1973, in which 23 students died. Exarcheia has been an area of politicised resistance ever since; the mantle has now been taken up by a broad group that define themselves as anarchists, though this appears – at least from the outside - to include anyone with any kind of grievance.

My building dates from 1930. It has an old cage lift built by Schindler lifts, a company founded in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1874. This lift is not much newer, and some of its important looking cables are patched up with yellow insulating tape. To step into it is, firstly, to feel a little bit nervous, and, secondly, to step back in time.

My apartment is on the fifth floor. It has a terrace on which I have recently started to grow bougainvillea, jasmine, wisteria, solanum and fragrant rhyncospermum. My mornings now begin with a round of watering, and then the sweeping of leaves and petals that the night breeze has shaken to the ground. It is a fine way to begin a new day, and reminds me of life in a Zen monastery.

The terrace overlooks the the archaeological museum, which houses the gold mask that Schliemann unearthed at Mycenae in 1876. Caution was not Schliemann’s guiding principle; upon finding the mask, he telegraphed King George of Greece to say, ‘I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon.’ Subseqent archaeological research has concluded that the mask predates the period of the legendary Trojan war by about 300 years. Nevertheless, when I sit on my sweet-scented terrace and feel the life-affirming tingle of inspiration, then I sometimes wonder whether I might be picking up the energetic emanations of an ancient warrior-poet, relayed to me across the ages through his gold death mask, just a stone’s throw away.

On other nights, the terrace is an excellent place to watch the clashes between anarchists, who throw Molotov cocktails, and the riot police, who mostly stand around smoking and looking bored. The clashes happen once or twice a month, and they have now acquired an oddly scripted quality, as if everyone involved is playing a role in which they no longer believe. The only exception are the journalists who pullulate behind the police. They are immediately obvious because of the luminous rectangles of their film cameras, and because they wear elephantine gas masks. Sometimes I feel as if I have box seats in an absurdist theatre.

My mother is coming to visit me next month. She will like the fact that I live beside the archaeological museum. When I was a teenager, she once told me that as a young girl she dreamt of becoming an archaeologist. But she never went to university, since from a young age she was a pawn in her parents’ acrimonious divorce, both of whom refused to pay for her education. She ended their ugly game by becoming a stewardess, thereby gaining her total independence at a comparatively young age. But it was a significant moment for me when she told me that she had wanted to become an archaeologist, because it was the first time that I had thought of her as a full person, with a life before I was born, and with dreams and ambitions of her own. I remember feeling a rush of tenderness for her then, as I do whenever I think back to that moment.

My landlady, Κυρία Φητίλης, lives on the floor below me. She is eighty years old and lives with what I initially thought was her mother, but I have since found out is the family’s former servant. This lady, whose name I do not know, is 99 years old. I don’t think I have ever met a 99 year old before. She is not surprisingly rather shrunken, with tremendous hairs sprouting from her upper lip and chin. She is very hard of hearing, and forgetful, so I have to shout to re-introduce myself every time I enter their apartment to pay my rent. However, she has a bat-like sensitivity for the sound of doorbells, and should her sonar pick up on the ringing of a bell, her tremulous cry of πιος είναι ? – who is it? – reverberates around the entire πολυκατοικία. But what I find most astonishing is the thought that she was already a young woman when the Nazis came goose-stepping through the centre of Athens.

Shortly after I moved in, I shared the lift with another tenant, this one in her sixties. Having confirmed that I was the new tenant on the 5ht floor, she then asked me if I was married.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Ah, you must meet my daughter. She works in the university museum in Plaka.’

Then she noted down my phone number. A couple of days later I received a bashful message from her daughter, offering me a tour of her museum. I took her up on the offer and she gave me a very thorough tour of a rather uninspiring museum.

24 Deligianni is pressed up against its neighbours. The buildings must share some of the inner stairwells, since from my own kitchen I can clearly hear the family who live in the next door building, when they are in their kitchen. Most often I hear the mother, whose accent is deep and African, and whose vocal range is impressive. She likes to chat on the phone while cooking; at least, that is what I infer from her long monologues, punctuated by laughter, and accompanied by bubbling and splashing noises.

In my mind’s eye I can’t help picturing her with a tea towel around her head and a big white apron, like Mammy in ‘Gone With the Wind’. That does, I fear, make me a racist, albeit an unconscious one. In my defence, I did grow up with a much-loved cuddly toy golliwog, and I remember collecting the rather natty little ‘Golly’ badges that came with jars of Robinson’s jam. It is not just Κυρία Φητίλης’ centenarian servant who has seen changes in their lifetime.

My direct neighbours are a young graphic designer couple who live on the same floor as me. Their apartment is similar in size and shape, but while I have tried to preserve the style and spirit of old Athens, theirs is contemporary and cool and decorated with bright pieces of pop-art furniture. It seems we are all attracted to the unfamiliar, though that means different things for different people.

I was reminded of this when I met Zoe, a Greek girl who has set up a small artists’ cooperative in an old villa, not far from my apartment. She took me for coffee near the cooperative, in an elegant and minimalist new cafe that serves artesanal coffee. ‘Some Swiss contemporary artists came to visit recently,’ she confessed to me, ‘and I brought them here. They were horrified. So inauthentic! they kept saying. So gentrified! Well, I pretended to agree with them, but the truth is that all my life I have been longing for Athens to get a little bit gentrified, and now that it has – even if it’s just one small cafe – I’m delighted!’

For some people, Athens is a city with longed for pockets of gentrification. For others, it is ‘the new Berlin’. For me it is a time-warp to a slower, more peaceful, analogue past. Once again I am brought to the realisation that we all seek out what pleases us, and ignore the rest, and thereby create the reality which we experience, and which we mistakenly assume to be the same for everyone.

If I walk directly north from 24 Deligianni street, I soon come to the Pedio Areos park. Many homeless people live here. During the day they mostly sleep in the park, screened from view by bushes and trees. At night they congregate in front of what is now a boarded up building, but was once a tea salon. When I walk past this area in the early morning, on my way to swim in the Panelinios Atheltic Club pool, it is a depressing sight. Some addicts lie passed out on the steps of the building, while others scour the pavement for lost drugs. Small fires smolder, kept alive by pieces of broken furniture. Food remains litter the area and are fought over by dogs and pigeons. But by the time I return from swimming, the street cleaners have swept everything away.

A few weeks ago I stumbled back this way late at night, rather drunk. I loitered for a few moments and was soon approached by an Afghan dealer, from whom I bought a small quantity of refined opium. I was reminded of organic farm-to-table restaurants in San Francisco, though happily my Afghan dealer spared me a lecture on the precise location of the poppy field where the opium poppies had been harvested. A bearded hipster waiter in San Francisco would not have been so reticent.

I also bought what I thought was crack, but turned out to be crystal meth. Service was excellent and the meth dealer even threw in a new glass pipe, for free. Then I went home and smoked my purchases. The alcoholic fug exploded instantly and I felt great. I was way too wired to sleep, but not in a jittery way, since the opium made for a dreamy wakefulness. I stayed up all night and read a book from cover to cover.

I was still feeling pretty good the following day, but when the crash finally came, it was worse than I have ever experienced. I know that you only ever borrow energy - the loan will always be called back in eventually. But I was not anticipating that eviscerating intensity of inner emptiness. It lasted for four days, during which I scanned every new room for places that could support a noose. Having come through safely on the other side, I can confidently state that this experience marks the end of my intermittent 20 year relationship with recreational narcotics.

The memory of that wintery narco-weekend has faded. We are now in άνοιξη – spring, literally ‘the opening’. The fine days are here again. And so, on an afternoon with a sky so blue that it hurt, I strolled up Pnyx, the hill where the ancient Athenians held their assemblies. In front of me two dogs were playing, pointed ears bouncing up and down above the meadow flowers. Their owners were two Greek girls whose limpid laughter reverberated in the clear air. Behind me was the βέμα, the speaker’s platform carved out of the rock, from which every Athenian citizen had the right to speak on matters concerning the polity. And beyond the girls and the meadow, hovering in the distance like a vision, was the Parthenon itself, sanctuary of the Goddess, icon of Athens, and symbol of Western civilization.

As I walked back home, I remembered the line attributed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’: ‘There was once a dream that was Rome.’ Perhaps the Emperor overslept; five hundred years earlier, there was a dream that was Athens. It excluded many, but it was a dream nonetheless.

I opened the heavy front door of 24 Deligianni street and took the cage lift up to my apartment. I went out to the terrace. A pale moon hung low above the archaeological museum. For a few moments, my own life here seemed unreal to me. But perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise; it is, in a sense, a dream within a dream.

0 notes

nofomoartworld · 7 years

Text

Hyperallergic: How Finland Helped Shape American Midcentury Modernism

Carl Milles’s “Europa and the Bull” (1926) on a terrace at Cranbrook (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — In 1917, Finland declared itself an independent nation, free from the Russian Empire.

In 1924, a University of Michigan student invited one of his instructors home to meet his father, the newspaper publisher and progressive capitalist George Booth.

These events seem unrelated, but they share one element: Cranbrook, the interdisciplinary educational community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, which Booth founded and funded, and which architect Eliel Saarinen — the Finnish teacher who came for dinner — brought to fruition.

The dining room in the Saarinen House

That brilliant collaboration of Finnish heritage and American foresight is celebrated in a pair of installations in two of the buildings that Saarinen designed for Cranbrook’s rolling, forested campus. One is Finland 100: The Cranbrook Connection, a straightforward and succinct display of Finnish design in the gently modern, limestone art museum. The other is an amplification of the domestic Gesamtkunstwerk that is Saarinen House, where the architect lived for some 20 years with his family.

Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen was born in 1873 in Rantasalmi in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Due to his father’s calling as a clergyman, he had a somewhat peripatetic childhood. Happily for him, one of his father’s congregations was in Russia, near St. Petersburg. His experience there, including access to the Hermitage, initially inspired him to be an artist, but after high school, he chose to pursue architecture instead. While at university in Helsinki, he and two other students formed a design partnership that lasted until 1907.

The firm’s first major project was the Finnish Pavilion for the 1900 world’s fair in Paris. Their design combined a variety of elements, drawing on Finnish folk art, British Gothic Revival architecture, and Art Nouveau. That stylistic fusion came to be known as National Romanticism and culminated in Saarinen’s 1904 design for the Helsinki central rail terminal.

Curtain designed by Loja Saarinen hanging in front of windows designed by Eliel Saarinen

The early years of Saarinen’s career were distinguished by a whirlwind of personal and professional developments that unfolded during an intensely tumultuous era in Europe. He became involved in urban planning and wrote books; got married; designed furniture for a studio-house, which he and his family shared with his work partners and their families; designed Finnish postage stamps and banknotes; co-designed dishware for Arabia pottery; got divorced and married the textile artist Loja Gesellius, with whom he had a daughter, Pipsan, and son, Eero; and in 1922 submitted a proposal for the Chicago Tribune company’s new skyscraper headquarters.

Over roughly the same span of time, Russia underwent two revolutions — and the czar and his family were murdered — which in turn triggered Finland’s claim to independence. These events occurred during the larger conflict of World War I. Finland became an independent republic in 1919, but had to continually negotiate a political and economic balance between the new Soviet state to its east and the German Empire, which had played a part in its civil war.

Entrance to the Cranbrook library

When his design for the Tribune building earned a highly praised second place, Saarinen decided to move to the United States. The situation in Finland and in Europe overall was fraught with political and economic instability, and Saarinen was convinced the U.S. would provide him and his family with more opportunities. Within two years of emigrating, he was employed to design the campus for Cranbrook, where he then became a member of the faculty. In 1932, he was appointed president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Saarinen’s philosophy was to always imagine an object within its larger context, and from there scale up to the next, and the next, and so on: “a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, environment in a city plan.” In this spirit, Saarinen not only designed Cranbrook’s lauded campus, but also populated it with great artists who collaborated with, rather than simply taught, their students. The ensuing community included the potter Maija Grotell; textile artist Marianne Strengell; designers Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Schust Knoll, and Harry Bertoia; and the sculptor Carl Milles. Between the two current exhibitions at Cranbrook, all of them are represented.

Installation view, Finland 100 at Cranbrook Art Museum

The museum installation, which was organized by collections fellow Steffi Duarte, offers an outline of Cranbrook’s impact upon midcentury modernism. The mix of utility and skillful crafting which Saarinen advocated is displayed in a group of chairs representing a pivotal point in modern design. A bent-and-laminated wood chair by Aalto establishes a Finnish context; its design is echoed in two late 1930s chairs by Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. With his wife, Ray, Eames went on to develop the Lounge Chair Wood (1946), which consisted of separate panels for seat and back. In contrast, Saarinen stayed with a unified seat and back but switched to a more flexible material, fiberglass, combining it with a pedestal base to create the Tulip Chair. Put into production by Knoll in 1955–56, the Tulip Chair exemplified the curvaceous, futuristic look most popularly associated with midcentury modernism. Between them, the chairs on view embody the functional but friendly Finnish aesthetic and the bravura American positivism that became Eero Saarinen’s leitmotif.

Two iconic chairs by Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames

The museum show’s clearly flowing narrative is complemented by a more diffuse, nonlinear presentation at Saarinen House. There, collections fellow Kevin Adkisson has created a sense of habitation in a setting that normally conforms to the typical, careful neutrality of house museums. For example, the ordinarily bare dining table is set with dishes, linens, and silver objects designed and/or made by members of the Saarinen and Cranbrook clans. Loja Saarinen’s living room rug is strewn with toys that Eero would have played with as a little boy, and case goods designed by Pipsan and her husband, Robert Swanson, are casually bunched together as if awaiting removal to a permanent site. It feels as though family members are about to converge and start up lively conversations about design or sit down to work through some new challenge. It also demonstrates how difficult it would have been for Pipsan and Eero not to have followed in their parents’ footsteps.

An 18th-century Finnish folk textile behind Eliel Saarinen’s desk in the Saarinen House studio

Between them, the two installations ably demonstrate the role that Cranbrook has played in design since the middle of the 20th century. But, given that they position Cranbrook as a link to a nation whose birth occurred 100 years ago, it would make sense to present artifacts of that deeper history. The shows do not, with very few older items that are actually from Finland on view.

Cranbrook’s vault contains objects that Eliel Saarinen designed before leaving his home country. Including, for instance, a couple of his rounded, three-legged chairs from that period would represent to visitors the roots of the holistic modernism that Cranbrook exemplifies. Unlike the International Style that ultimately prevailed, Eliel Saarinen’s was not a doctrinaire credo that turned away from temporal and physical context. The current installations could learn something from his approach.

View of Cranbrook vault with chairs by Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Harry Bertoia

Finland 100: The Cranbrook Connection continues at the Cranbrook Art Museum (39221 Woodward Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI) through January 14, 2018. Tours of the Saarinen House can be booked online. (The house will be closed in August 2017.)

The post How Finland Helped Shape American Midcentury Modernism appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2sJyoGI via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hyperallergic