Seen from Paris’s Pont de la Tournelle, the eight-story facade of landmark restaurant La Tour d’Argent looks much the same as it did when its third-generation owner André Terrail grew up there in the 1980s, which deploying toy parachutists in quayside traffic. . But the interior is no longer indifferent in the 21st century: Late last month, La Tour d’Argent reopened its doors after a year-long renovation led by Paris-based architect Franklin Azzi. “This is my Tour,” says Terrail, who took over after his father’s death in 2006. “The same, but stricter, more thoughtful.” The new look draws on the outsize history of the classic French fine-dining institution, which has been serving diners since 1582, taking particular inspiration from the streamlined motifs of its Art Deco era. On the seventh floor, the redesigned restaurant — overseen since 2020 by executive chef Yannick Franques — functions more than ever as a theater. The airy dining room, in shades of indigo and silver, overlooks an open-plan kitchen and a raised platform where the restaurant’s signature pressed-duck dish is prepared nightly. Upstairs and downstairs are new bars suited to less formal occasions: Le Bar des Maillets d’Argent, an all-day lounge with a fireplace, and Le Toit de la Tour, a rooftop terrace. Given that it has the welcoming air of a boutique hotel, it’s no surprise that the building can now host overnight guests in a private apartment on the fifth floor, complete with a touch of Scandinavian-style minimalism attributable, in part, to Terrail’s Finnish mother. tourdargent.com.
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Women Artists On Earth Receive Eligibility in Dallas
The stars of land art, the conceptual art movement that rose to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s, were mostly men. Think of Robert Smithson, who created “Spiral Jetty” (1970), a 1,500-foot-long coil of basalt rock and earth in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, or Michael Heizer, whose “Double Negative” (1969) consisted of two trenches dug from the Nevada desert. A new exhibit at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is shifting the focus to the women at the center of the movement: “Groundswell: Women of Land Art” opens next week, featuring the work of 12 female artists. Among the pieces on view are Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta’s “Silhouette” series (1973-80), which combines body, performance and landscape with film and photographs by American sculptor Beverly Buchanan’s “Marsh Ruins ” (1981), three. rock-like pieces made of concrete and tabby — a combination of oyster shells, sand and water — in Brunswick, Ga. The curator of the exhibition, Leigh Arnold, said that this group used a “softer and more poetic” approach than their male counterparts, “expressing their desire to cooperate with nature rather than dominate it here.” Take Agnes Denes’ “Wheatfield — A Confrontation,” a two-acre field planted in a former landfill near Manhattan’s World Trade Center in the spring of 1982 and harvested four months later. As Danes wrote, “It called attention to our wrong priorities.” In addition to debuting new work by pioneering public artist Mary Miss and visual artist Lita Albuquerque, the show will include works reimagined for the Nasher, such as Nancy Holt’s “Pipeline” (1986), a steel piping structure created by Holt in response to the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. “Groundswell: Women of Land Art” will be on view from September 23 to Jan. 7, 2024, nashersculpturecenter.org.
When the West Texas contemporary art museum Ballroom Marfa held its annual summer party at the Bridgehampton, NY, home of co-founder Virginia Lebermann last month, guests were greeted by a long table set in a grove of tulip trees. A dinner of Mexican-inspired dishes by chef Yann Nury was served on and alongside tableware and decor created by Mexico City-based fashion designer and artist Carla Fernández in collaboration with Mexican artisans. The collection is now on sale to benefit Ballroom Marfa. The setting for four includes clay plates with a mottled black finish, speckled ceramic cups, wooden napkin rings inspired by molinillos, or traditional chocolate whisk, ceramic creatures (two insects and 12 snakes) and a piñata mask lantern. Most of these designs can also be purchased separately. “You have this combination of artists, colors, and techniques from different parts of Mexico,” Fernández said. “They can live together, or not.” From $100 for a piñata lantern, ballroommarfa.org.
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A French Magazine Explores the Art of Folding
In the third and latest issue of Tools magazine — an annual French publication with a niche but cultish following in the art and design world — umbrellas and striped bistro napkins are folded and unfolded, as are camping tents, cameras bellows, paper lanterns, corrugated cardboard. boxes and ostrich-feather fans. This year’s theme, “To Fold,” follows “To Mould” (2021) and “To Weave” (2022), all studies of a simple technique common in industry and everyday life. life. The concept makes for a magazine with the methodical single-mindedness of a trade publication and the aesthetic sensibility of an exquisite reference book, filled with pop-bright colors set against grainy archival still lifes. Everyday objects are starred on covers and in improbably extended photo essays on subjects like bed skirts and rubber shoe soles. Paris-based artistic director Clémentine Berry, who runs the creative studio Twice, founded the magazine as a personal outlet for his design practice and as a way to highlight overlooked craftspeople. “We value intelligence and higher education, but there are many people who have a unique savoir-faire because they worked for 10 years in a factory,” says Berry, who populates this issue of Tools with people fold for all reasons, from the owner of a dry cleaner to the master fabric pleaters of Ateliers Lognon (who often work on haute couture pieces for fashion brands like Chanel) and the military officers of France responsible for refolding used parachute canopies. The 250-page bilingual magazine, the contents of which are only available in print, usually sells out within weeks, but there’s always the next volume to look forward to, including 2024’s “To Cut.” Available in Sept. 14, in English and French, tools-magazine.org.
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Hand-Knotted Surrealist Rugs From Yabu Pushelberg
In the 43 years since George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg founded their design studio, they have grown accustomed to working within the confines of briefs for clients such as New York department store Bergdorf Goodman. When it comes to the duo’s latest effort, however, they’ve managed to let their imaginations run wild. “Our motive is to express our creativity,” says Pushelberg of Memento, a collection of seven hand-knotted rugs made in collaboration with Milan-based company CC-Tapis. “It’s very liberating,” Yabu added. The pair began by considering the concept of “impossible architectures,” the artwork of Giorgio di Chirico and the incredible structures begun for Montreal’s Expo 67, among other inspirations. Each of the resulting rugs play with color, shadow and texture to create representations of conceptual building blocks. Some rugs break out of the usual quadrilateral arrangement, flowing into free shapes reminiscent of a Brutalist MC Escher creation. Made by Tibetan artisans in CC-Tapis’ Nepalese atelier, each rug features the weaver’s signature emblazoned on its binding edge, adding a personal touch to the handcrafted piece. Rugs from the Memento collection are available at cc-tapis.com and can be seen by appointment only at Yabu Pushelberg in New York City from September 18 to September 28, press@yabubushelberg.com.
In 2019, Courtney Gilbert, the curator at the Sun Valley Museum of Art in Ketchum, Idaho, began noticing a flurry of news articles about UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), NASA terms UFOs. Then, during the pandemic, Gilbert said, there was a big increase in sightings, especially in his home state. “At one point Idaho was the state where the most encounters were reported,” he said. Less interested in aliens than what drives his fellow humans to look for other signs of life, Gilbert commissioned Chicago artist Deb Sokolow, known for her semi- fictitious drawings and artist books, and Seattle-based artist Cable Griffith who created the works. for an exhibition, “Sightings,” which opens Sept. 14. Those pieces will be displayed alongside works by other artists such as Esther Pearl Watson, who – inspired by her father, once attempted to build a flying saucer – often painted flying UFOs. in scenes of American life, and Karla Knight, who creates paintings and drawings of what she describes as extraterrestrial symbols or diagrams. Artist talks and astrophotography workshops will also be offered September 14-16. “Sightings” runs through Dec. 2, svmoa.org.
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