NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2002 Apr 25 @ 07:30UTC-8 : PST/AKDT
PAIR OF FRENCH GILT and painted iron AND MIRRORED CONSOLES, CA. 1940 (2) 26 x 19 x 10 in. (66 x 48.2 x 25.4 cm) Estimate: $1,500-2,000 "The last word in elegance is elimination" APROPOS OF MARIE-LAURE Marie-Laure de Noailles, born a Miss Bischoffseim in Paris in 1902, became a legend worthy of the wealthy heiress that she was to a gloriously mixed heritage. On her mother's side she descended from centuries-old French nobility-her maternal grandmother was the great-granddaughter of the Marquis de Sade and Proust's inspiration for the Duchess of Guermantes, and Marie-Laure's Belgian father came from a long line of eminent bankers. A talented painter, poet and novelist, Marie-Laure simultaneously epitomized innate French style and trailblazing cultural eclecticism. She formed a dazzling albeit scandalous couple with her husband Viscount Charles de Noailles and together, by the roaring 20s, they were already staunch patrons of many artists from every discipline: painters, musicians, filmmakers, writers, architects, decorators and photographers. As Philippe Jullian wrote in the revue Connaissance des Arts in 1964, "The historian who attempts to draw a picture of the arts, literature and the great costume balls of mid-20th century Paris, will constantly stumble across the name of Marie-Laure de Noailles...while any historian of Taste has everything to learn from Viscount de Noailles. More than anyone else, this couple understood the duties incumbent on great wealth, that is to say, serving beauty either by helping poets and painters or by forcing the imagination of fashionable socialites with memorable parties. I am reminded of the phrase by Henry James, 'The rich are those whose means can satisfy the needs of the imagination...'." Not content with inheriting great art, Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles were the first collectors of Mondrian, as well as patrons of the Cubists and the Surrealists, all of whom they regarded highly enough to hang next to their works by Goya and Rubens. Forerunners in art-house film production, they financed films by Man Ray, Jean Cocteau and most notoriously, Luis Buñuel. Considered both scandalous and blasphemous when it first appeared in 1930, Buñuel's cult film The Golden Age caused them to be ostracized temporarily from Parisian society. They weathered the storm in their Cubist Villa built in 1923 by the architect Robert Mallet Stevens on the ruins of the Château St Bernard in the seaside resort of Hyères near Toulon and housing works by Picasso, Braque and Gris. Christian Bérard, whom Marie-Laure adored, Jean and Valentine Hugo, Balthus and François Poulenc, amongst many others, often tasted the delights of this winter holiday home, where they were initiated into the pleasures of a new life style energized by the now commonplace but then revolutionary sports of gymnastics and squash. Equally passionate about interior decoration, Marie-Laure asked Jean-Michel Frank, whose motto was "the last word in elegance is elimination," to refurbish their Parisian town mansion at 11 place des Etats Unis. Frank transformed the mansion into an extravagant temple to beauty and simplicity, juxtaposing his own contemporary materials such as parchment and shark skin (shagreen) with 18th-century Bischoffseim furniture and Eileen Gray creations. The once shy little girl had, over the years, become a personality to be admired and sometimes even feared. Immortalized in many of her different guises by some of the greatest artists of her times - Picasso, Giacometti, Balthus, Dora Maar, and Hoyningen-Huene - this Queen of Café Society changed faces as others might change masks, yet always remained faithful to her own spellbinding self, simply signing her paintings and books with an elusive and poetic "Marie-Laure." Forever curious, often whimsical, her large, candid eyes eternally shone with the "grenadine light" of her childhood. She adored the Rolling Stones, Goya, Warhol, Carpaccio, Op Art sunglasses and pink tights. Her bedroom, like her conversation, was sprinkled with allusions to the Louvre and Westerns, Mexico and Provence, creatures from outer space and chain stores. When Marie-Laure passed away on January 29, 1970, Paris was deprived of a cultural trailblazer who had spent her life appropriating a world of which she was both the last representative and the first antagonist. KlB
Auction Location:
United States
Previewing Details:
Friday April 19 10:00AM to 5:00PM; Saturday April 20 10:00AM to 5:00PM; Sunday April 21 1:00PM to 5:00PM; Monday April 22 10:00AM to 5:00PM; Tuesday April 23 10:00AM to 5:00PM; Wednesday April 24 10:00AM to 5:00PM
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