5 posts tagged "Salman Rushdie"
In Chelsea, Portraits Of The Artist And The Primate
Anh Duong was in Chelsea last night, surrounded by a gallery full of Anh Duongs. The painter’s new show, at New York’s Sonnabend Gallery, was devoted exclusively to self-portraits. “I decided I’m going to paint myself because I’m always available and on time,” Duong deadpanned. “So it started as an excuse, basically, and then it became a sort of diary. I’ve been painting myself for the last 20 years.” The portraits, which have the slightly off-kilter fluidity of Alice Neel’s (and the liquid eyes of Margaret Keane’s), show the artist nude and clothed, outdoors and in, with cameo appearances by dogs and stuffed toys. They also offer Duong an ample opportunity to dress up for her sittings, spotlighting a killer collection of frocks, accessories, and jewels. “I think they are also great excuses to use a color or shape or to add something to the painting, to the composition,” she explained. “That’s why I’m interested in painting objects, the bag, the shoes, whatever. I think also the clothes have a personal significance. As I child I would always dress up; I felt like it was some sort of make-believe world, where if the clothes were perfectly put together, then I was safe. It was a response to a chaos around me…I felt like it was this ideal world, so it came naturally that I would use that in my portraits.” A fashion-heavy crowd, including Barry Diller, Carlos de Souza, Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa, and Phillip Lim, came by for a look. Lim, a friend of the artist, found an especially good reason to keep a sharp eye open. “I think one of our trenches is in here,” he said, before spinning off to have a look. But Duong herself said she preferred to see her paintings as expressions of emotion and technique, rather than portraits, per se. After all, she added, “I really think that every work of an artist is a self-portrait—I just push it further.”
At Paul Kasmin Gallery nearby, the new show by Walton Ford was testing that hypothesis. Ford is known for his large-scale watercolors inspired by the animal paintings of J.J. Audubon and others, but several of the enormous pieces in the new show had no history at all: wall-sized paintings of gorillas mid-scream, without the context of time or place. A portrait of the beast within? The gallery was as thronged with stampeding visitors—Daphne Guinness, Salman Rushdie, Padma Lakshmi, and Olivia Wilde among them—but the artist himself was the picture of civility in a sharply tailored three-piece suit.
Girl Power, All Grown Up
“I’m the token man,” Salman Rushdie half-joked at last night’s Women: Inspiration & Enterprise cocktail party. It’s true, he was entirely outnumbered. The celebratory rooftop fête (with a short set by Estelle) capped off a day-long symposium hosted by Donna Karan, Sarah Brown, and Arianna Huffington (pictured), that featured a formidable showing of the fairer sex—notable panel speakers included Queen Rania of Jordan, Jimmy Choo’s Tamara Mellon, Nora Ephron, and Christy Turlington Burns. Rushdie, for his part, seemed to be enjoying the ratio just fine. “He loves women!” writer pal Kathy Frette, who stepped in to emcee a panel last minute, chimed in. “I’ve known for Salman for 25 years. We have a group of women that get together, and he’s the only male invited.”
Proceeds from the inaugural symposium went to benefit the White Ribbon Alliance, which aims to bring international awareness to maternal health issues worldwide. That’s something co-host (and mother) Karan is passionate about; the designer curated a runway show for the cocktail that featured white dresses (meant to symbolize purity and rebirth) donated by the likes of Stella McCartney, L’Wren Scott, and Marchesa. For those feeling for some relatively guilt-free shopping, pieces will go for auction on CharityBuzz.com. Coming off a hectic fashion week, you would think Karan would have runway fatigue, but the designer was amped from the day’s speakers. “The symposium was amazing. I mean, the stories you heard were just incredible,” she said. “How can you not believe in change in the world when you get such an amazing group of women together?”
Who Knew? Paz De La Huerta Isn’t Afraid Of A Little Nudity
“Being young, you don’t have this self-awareness,” Paz de la Huerta said last night. “It’s like when you see children running around naked. It’s completely freeing.” In that case, she may be the freest girl around. De la Huerta has been photographed naked before, but never more so than in her latest project: She’s teamed up with lensman James Macari (above, with de la Huerta) and creative director Rachael Bergstein for No. 3, an exhibition of Macari’s photos of the actress in various country locales (windy fields, sun-baked porches, forlorn beaches), almost always in the altogether. Salman Rushdie, Ellen von Unwerth, and Erin Heatherton were three of the spectators who dropped by the opening at Milk Studios last night to take in every freckle, goose bump, and beauty mark. The collaboration might have had some actresses screaming for a body double, but Paz embraced her role. “Working with James and Rachael felt safe for me. The way in which they both directed me was not unlike playing a role in a film,” she explained. The shots manage a tricky balance between innocence and eroticism, but some lurkers seemed to feel the pull of one pole more than the other. One leering gentleman—no, not Rushdie—approached Paz to ask, “Are you one of the models in this exhibit?” He pointed to a seductive nude shot. “I’m a photographer, you know.”
Spring Rolls With Warhol, And More From Indochine
The first time Jean-Marc Houmard waited on Andy Warhol at Indochine, he accidentally brushed his hand while serving a pot of tea. This anecdote, one of many included in the new book Indochine: Stories, Shaken and Stirred (Rizzoli), edited by Houmard and Maer Roshan, sums up the place’s enduring appeal: glamorous enough that the famous go there to rub shoulders, mellow enough that they do so over tea. (And spring rolls, usually.)
Houmard co-owns the restaurant now, and has kept it as congenial to boldfaced names and bohemians as it’s always been. There’s certainly a healthy mix of them among the book’s contributors, from Salman Rushdie and Susanne Bartsch, who contributed reminiscences to the oral history, to artists Kenny Scharf, Ruben Toledo, and Ross Bleckner, who chipped in new work inspired by the restaurant. Indochine comes out next month; tonight, it will be fêted at Bergdorf Goodman at an event co-hosted by Linda Fargo, Richard Johnson, Narciso Rodriguez, and Veronica Webb. Here, Houmard talks to Style.com about Indochine’s quarter-century as a hot joint in town.
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blasblog: salman rushdie, watchmaker
Every once in a while, I find myself at a party that confounds me. Maybe it’s a black-tie gala for the Westminster Dog Show, or perhaps it’s a Republican fundraiser that I was tricked into attending with the promise of a goodie bag. Who knows? Well, last night was another one of those nights: I attended a cocktail event celebrating Vacheron Constantin watches designed by Charlie Rose and Salman Rushdie (I thought socialites had the lock on accessory collaborations) and featuring a performance by Grammy-winning hip-hop artist Ne-Yo—all in support of an Afghanistan charity. Got that? The good news is that whatever the party lacked in congruity it made up for in festivity. Rushdie and his fellow host, architect Richard Meier, hid behind a pole when a speechmaker tried to call them to the podium, giggling like schoolboys. And Lindsay Price and Kim Raver wrangled front-row perches for Ne-Yo’s set, but from where I was positioned I couldn’t tell if they followed his orders to “Raise your hands if you’re an independent woman!” In all seriousness, though, Afghanistan World Foundation, which builds hospitals and medical facilities in rural parts of that war-torn country, is a charity that can use this sort of attention. “For every one Afghan there are two mines,” said Rushdie. “And when children play, sometimes they find them. But the hospitals are so far—sometimes ten hours—that they often bleed to death before they get there. We want to fix that.”