What's up! trouvaillesdujour: February 2013

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Discover the Seven Deadly Sins at the Vice Versa Hotel

Opened in July 2012, the Vice Versa Hotel in Paris stands out for its original decor created by Chantal Thomass. The famous fashion designer was not only inspired by the 7 Deadly Sins to decorate the different floors of the Vice Versa Hotel, she also turned the reception into a corner of paradise and the hammam into a real but comfortable hell!

This luxurious boutique hotel has 37 rooms spread over 7 floors and each floor is a cardinal sin with a theme reflected from floor to ceiling. Passionate, Anger is tinged with red and black, and decorated with paintings tagged or guns on the carpet. Consisting of gold, statues and marble floors, Pride plunges you into an atmosphere of Etruscan palaces. Laziness can be felt in a rustic and very bucolic decor. Envy stirs up all desires with its very Parisian fashion accessories. Avarice leads in areas where bank notes are in abundance on the walls, ceiling....

Discover the Vice Versa Hotel, a dreamlike decor for a unique stay.

The reception area

Gluttony room

Avarice

Envy

Anger

Lust

Pride

Laziness

Hammam

Courtesy Vice Versa Hotel Paris

This post has been published on the HuffPost

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Michael Eastman: Havana, where decay meets beauty

Michael Eastman's Havana series exposes the colorful and crumbling interiors and exteriors of Cuba's capital. The details of these pictures make them fascinating and poignant: ghostly rectangles of lighter color on walls where paintings once hung, beach chairs that stand in for finely carved furniture, laden clothes lines hanging amongst chandeliers, above intricately tiled floors. But these deteriorating rooms and facades also tell a larger story: these are the homes of the successful and rich, who were knocked off their pedestals by the revolution and whose country, abandoned by its Russian supporters and blockaded by America, still has very little in the way of material goods.

While his photographs may provoke nostalgia for the glory days of Havana, Eastman's emphasis is on the subtle grandeur of these buildings in ruin, the beauty inherent in decay.

Michael Eastman is a self taught photographer, known for his large-scale photographs of the world's most beautiful cities including Rome, Paris, and New Orleans. He lives in St. Louis.

Michael Eastman's Havana series is currently on exhibit at Michael Hoppen Contemporary, UK.

Michael Eastman

Havana

Michael Eastman: Havana

Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

February 13th to March 16th, 2013

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Christian Tagliavini''s "Jeu de Cartes"

With a penchant for the whirls of fortune and a clin d'oeil to the relativity of vision, the Swiss-Italian artist Christian Tagliavini issues his very own "Carte".

The tittle means "playing cards", but cards, markings and figures do keep their names and mystery in Italian. You will meet characters clad in imaginary, timeless, paper and textile costumes with selected accents of color, making an original and voluptuous code of décor. Their bodies are real, while their gestures surrender, threaten, implore, betray, poison, seduce or irresistibly elude the viewer.

All the characters live in a visible but not tangible territory between bi and try-dimensional, totally created, materially hand-crafted and immortalized by the artist with the final photographic "click".
We could say that Tagliavini once again explored the paradoxical limits of flat and thick to invent something like flathickness.

Christian Tagliavini lives and works in Lugano, Switzerland, and is now solely devoted to art photography.

Carte

Inventing flathickness

Monday, February 11, 2013

Pablo Piatti's stunning "Baroque Impressions"

Wouldn't you like to live or spend some time in these lavish interiors painted by Argentinian artist Pablo Piatti!!

Pablo, when did you start this series on Baroque Impressions, and what inspired you?

I started this series on Baroque Impressions a month ago, triggered by Alexander Sokurov's film Russian Ark, which I probably watched 4 times since it came out in 2002.
The opulence and the feeling of fin de siècle is so tangible in the film, one can almost smell the scent of the oil paintings of the Hermitage galleries, the myrrh and incense hanging in the rooms filled with exquisite furniture carved in exotic woods.

Where are these magnificent interiors that you painted located?

Most of the interiors I painted are located in Germany and some in France. I didn't want to use specifically Russian palaces, that was the starting point and a quest for this kind of interiors where more is more, and also as a reflection of wealth in times when the rest of the population in those countries was struggling to survive.

From a more decorative point of view, I like to study the use of color and the proportions at that time, to see how timorous we are today when it comes to combine elements, furniture, curtains etc....
~~~Pablo Piatti

Pablo Piatti lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.

PABLO PIATTI

Baroque Impressions

Marble Hall, Ludwigsburg Palace, Germany

Bedroom of Empress Eugénie, Musée National du Château, Compiègne, France

Dining-room at Herrenchiemsee Palace built for Ludwig II of Bavaria, Germany

Marie Antoinette's Cabinet Doré at Château de Versailles, France

Bedroom of Napoléon II in Compiègne. Musée National du Château, France

Oval Hall, Sans Souci Palace built for Prussian King Frederic the Great. Postdam, Germany

Dining-room at Herrenchiemsee Palace, Germany

Small interior at Weissenstein Palace, Pommersfelden, Germany

Friday, February 8, 2013

Chinese New Year; The Year of The Snake

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!!

Rice cakes, dumplings and long life

Via Chinese horoscope

Some offerings at a Chinese restaurant

Monday, February 4, 2013

50 Fabulous Frocks at the Fashion Museum in Bath, UK

This year 2013 the Fashion Museum celebrates its 50th anniversary in Bath. The 50 Fabulous Frocks exhibition will include the iconic and influential names of 20th century couture - Schiaparelli, Poiret, Vionnet, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent - as well as today's most desired fashion designers and brands - Erdem, Burberry, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Ossie Clark, Comme des Garçons and John Rocha. This display will show both the richness of the Fashion Museum's collection as well as key moments in fashion history that continue to provide inspiration for modern day designers along with makers of period TV dramas and films such as Downton Abbey, The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina.

Also on display will be curious pieces from the Fashion Museum's world-class collection of original objects, such as a Champagne Dress worn at a fancy dress party in Edwardian times.

We hope that the 50 Frocks illustrate a 'slice' of the Fashion Museum collection, which numbers between eighty and one hundred thousands objects and has become a source of inspiration for fashion fans around the world. Some of the pieces in the show illustrate a personal wardrobe moment, while others mark an iconic moment in fashion history.
~~~Rosemary Harden, Museum Manager

50 Fabulous Frocks