W14 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
A figure dressed in a cholera safety suit.
Breathtaking armor fit for a prince
Paris: In the 16th century, just as
firearms were about to render it ob-
solete on the battlefield, armor
reached its zenith as ceremonial
male plumage for European royalty.
Kings and counts, emperors and
electors in their precisely made-to-
measure, sumptuously decorated pa-
rade-dress suits of iron and steel
were ambulatory artworks, and of-
ten so were their steeds. “Under the
Aegis of Mars: The Armor of Euro-
pean Princes,” at the Musée de l’Ar-
mée brings together, for the first
time ever, an extraordinary array of
armor made in 16th-century French
and Flemish workshops for royal
courts across the continent, along
with the drawings and tools used in
their decoration. The works come
from the museum’s own rich collec-
tion of ancient arms and armor, and
from other museums in Europe and
the U.S., notably Dresden’s Rüstkam-
mer and the Staatliche Graphische
Jeanne Zaepffel in ‘A Magic Flute’ at the Barbican.
Friday - Sunday, March 25 - 27, 2011 Friday - Sunday, March 25 - 27, 2011 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. W3
REVIEWS PROFILE
Dishing the dirt on filth
London: Dirt has a bad name. “It Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860s. relished Igor Eskinja’s decorative,
encompasses dust, refuse, excre- In 1867 we go to Glasgow, where extraordinarily fragile dust carpet;
ment, bacteria and soil, and is used Joseph Lister’s epidemic-preventing and Serena Korda’s glorious idea of
to describe unethical, irreligious or hospital reforms included disinfec- gathering dust from interesting lo-
obscene behavior,” notes Kate Forde, tants; then in 1930, to the Hygiene cations and incorporating it into
curator of the Wellcome Collection’s Museum in Dresden. There, cleanli- house-bricks. Some of the dust came
imaginative, sometimes scary big, ness is not just the absence of bugs from the Sussex farmhouse of Van-
new exhibition. and dirt, but a doctrine of “purity of essa Bell and Duncan Grant, so
“Dirt: the Filthy Reality of Every- blood.” The association of dirt with probably includes some dead skin
day Life” (and the accompanying, otherness is a startling aspect of cells of the celebrated Bloomsbury
excellent but un-indexed, paperback racism and anti-Semitism. Group, and there is dust from the
book-cum-catalog; Profile, £20) ex- Another part is devoted to New houses of Sigmund Freud and
emplifies the great anthropologist Delhi and Kolkata today. Grim reflec- Charles Dickens, as well as the
Mary Douglas’s dictum that dirt is tions on the Dalits, the former “un- House of Commons and Royal Albert
“matter out of place.” Depending on touchables,” show vividly how societ- Hall. You’re invited to contribute
context, dirt can excite disgust, ies have relied on an underclass to some of your own.
moral outrage or sexual excitement. do their domestic and municipal The organizers deserve applause
It is also a marker of civiliza- cleaning. A film of the annual Durga for having the imagination to have
tion—the more urban we are, the Puja celebration is flanked by a giant included a selection of mid-19th-cen-
larger the quantity and variety of idol of the goddess (made of clay tury photographs and manuscripts
waste we generate. from the sacred river, plus some req- showing British civil servant A.J.
The exhibition visits six places: a uisite dust from a brothel), like the Munby’s fetish for working-class
domestic interior in 1683 Delft, de- ones the film shows being immersed women made grimy by their work
picting Dutch society’s obsessive ritually in the Ganges. (he secretly married one of them).
cleanliness coinciding with Antonie Finally, there is a future section, A video piece of handwashing by
van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of mi- dealing with the Fresh Kills Landfill Bruce Naumann sits comfortably
Wellcome Library, London/Wellcome Images.
croscopic “little animals”—bacteria. on New York’s Staten Island that with a splendid display of Delft
Then we go to the London streets, was recommissioned to take the de- tiles; and a blue-and-white chamber
starting with the cholera outbreak bris of 9/11, and how it is—mov- pot and several life-size sofa-type
of 1854, traced by physician John ingly—being renewed as a park. The objects with their “backs” made
Luis Aniceto for The Wall Street Journal
Snow to a single parish water pump, show ends with two vials containing from tons of processed human feces
which showed that the cause of dis- air from the cleanest and dirtiest somehow go nicely with the 1661
ease was germs, not “miasma,” foul cities on earth, part of the ambi- English delftware plate deflatingly
air; and the Big Stink, when the tious “Ghost Forest” project by Brit- inscribed “You and I are Earth.”
drains backed up in 1859. This event ish artist Angela Palmer. —Paul Levy
led to the heroic construction of the There is a good deal of contem- Until Aug. 31
enclosed London sewer system by porary art on display. I particularly www.wellcome.ac.uk
Sammlung in Munich. In 1565, Eliseus Libaerts, a Flem-
A 21st-century artisan
The beautifully presented ex-
hibit begins with smaller pieces of
ish goldsmith working in the French
Mannerist style, created a horse-
Fernando Brízio puts Portugal on the design map
armor, shields and helmets, some and-rider ensemble for Erik XIV of
together with the original drawings Sweden, who never got to wear his BY J. S. MARCUS stool and bowl, produced by the back their furniture.
for their mythological and histori- splendiferous outfit. The ship taking Portuguese company Amorim, at the Portugal in the 1970s was going
cal motifs—Neptune and Hercules, Libaerts and the armor to Sweden Paris’s Galerie Kreo is the red- Milan Furniture Fair. through a period of rising hope, but
Trojan heroes, fantastic animals was captured by Danes and diverted hot center of European design, dis- But arguably the stand-out also of great uncertainty, as the au-
and grotesques, sometimes envel- to Copenhagen, where the artist playing limited-edition pieces by the launch took place this week in Lis- thoritarian regime set up by the
oped in swirls of foliage. The metal spent four years working for the likes of Konstantin Grcic, Hella bon, when Portugal’s celebrated ce- country’s longtime prime minister,
is almost always iron, formed by ar- Danish King. Jongerius and the Bouroullec broth- ramics manufacturer, Faianças António de Oliveira Salazar, came to
morers and worked by gold- In the 17th century the Elector of ers. But the first thing that caught Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro, known for an end in a military-led coup. The
smiths—repoussé, engraved, etched, Saxony in Dresden bought the en- my eye during a recent visit was a its lush novelty items, debuted a Portuguese, who had been politi-
chiseled, polished, blackened, semble; it was shipped to Moscow by plain white vase, transformed into limited-edition set, featuring Mr. cally and culturally isolated from
gilded, inlaid with silver and gold, the Soviet army during World War an uncanny masterpiece, by Portu- Brízio’s take on the 125-year-old the rest of Europe, needed years to
even enameled in brilliant colors II, returned to the Dresden museum guese designer Fernando Brízio. firm’s traditional style. After going rejoin the European mainstream.
Paris, Musée de l’Armée, Dist. RMN
like the helmet and shield of in 1958, and—with the added wow The idea is simple enough. Mr. into the archives, Mr. Brízio rehabil- In the past few decades, Portugal
France’s Charles IX. The screeching factor of crimson and canary-yellow Brízio has taken some 30 felt-tip itated a pair of fanciful elephant has seen the rise of an internation-
Chimera crowning one black and plumes—it’s currently the center- pens in assorted colors, manufac- bookends and used them to sup- ally recognized architectural tradi-
gold helmet is a full-fledged sculp- piece of the show’s superb second tured by the Italian brand Giotto, port—and appear almost to tip tion, embodied by Pritzker Prize-
ture of ferocious beauty. half: a 30-meter-long procession of and attached them to niches up and over—an otherwise simple vase and winner Alvaro Siza, and a number of
Although the artistry and crafts- standing armor and accoutrements. down the surface. The color seeps fruit bowl. Portuguese artists are finding gal-
manship throughout the show is —Judy Fayard into the clay, creating a polka-dot I caught up with Mr. Brízio in leries and collectors in Europe and
breathtaking, only a few artists’ Until June 26 pattern; meanwhile the pens are left his family’s Lisbon apartment, near both Americas. However, design has
names are known. www.invalides.org This shield (circa 1560) is among the exhibits on show at Musée de l’Armée. suspended on the vase, sticking out the Alameda underground station. yet to catch up—it is hard for de-
like Technicolor flower stems. The His mother had recently moved out, sign-lovers, even inside Portugal, to Above, Fernando Brízio’s elephant vase; top, the designer at the Lisbon zoo.
effect, of a piece Mr. Brízio calls and Mr. Brízio, 43 years old, plans come up with a prominent name
“Painting a Fresco with Giotto #3,” to turn the cavernous ground-floor other than Mr. Brízio’s. Can he ex- for craftsmen of all kinds. a solo show in Paris.
A magical ‘Flute’ without the fanfare is mesmerizing.
In the rambling rooms of Galerie
Kreo, Fernando Brízio can more
flat into an archive and atelier. Al-
though Mr. Brízio spent the later
years of his childhood here, he was
plain why?
“The country was closed for de-
cades,” says Mr. Brízio, who recalls
Didier Krzentowski, co-director
of Galerie Kreo, sees Mr. Brízio as
working in a distinctively Portu-
In talking about his career and
his country, Mr. Brízio can sound
quite fatalistic, invoking the famous
London: Is it possible to get to major (the opera’s tonic key). And Figueroa’s Tamino and Agnieszka than hold his own with the design actually born in southern Angola, that the design profession in guese tradition—“he is an artisan of Portuguese melancholy, which per-
the essence of Mozart and his li- the orchestra is replaced by a sin- Lawinska’s outstandingly sung world’s superstars. However, outside in the twilight years of the Portu- Salazar’s Portugal had taken an en- the 21st century,” he says. meates Lisbon’s Fado music and sets
brettist Emanuel Schickaneder’s op- gle grand piano, played unspectacu- Pamina. Leila Benhamza’s Queen of that gallery, in the design world at guese empire, and was one of hun- tirely separate path. Mr. Brízio himself doesn’t like to the country apart from its gregari-
era “Die Zauberflöte”? Peter Brook’s larly but with splendor by Matan the Night was musically accurate, large, he is a bit like his country—an dreds of thousands of so-called re- “The expectation,” he says, of make great claims for his work, sep- ous Spanish neighbors and its dis-
bare-boards adaptation, “A Magic Porat (in the first of the doubled and I was moved at the end when exotic presence, at the very edge of tornados, Portuguese citizens who the period leading up to the time he arating himself from both European tant cultural cousin, Brazil. “I am
Flute,” at the Barbican, does just castings). she took the hand of her former the continent. Now, all that may came back to Portugal from its re- started studying design in the 1991, modernists and Portuguese crafts- melancholic,” he admits.
that; it strips away the Masonic Mr. Brook’s (and his co-adaptors arch-enemy, Sarastro. This owed change, as Mr. Brízio, based in Lis- belling African colonies. “was that you would work for pub- men. Does he hope to use design to Does this melancholy find its way
lore, the sets—reduced to a forest of Franck Krawczyk’s and Marie-Hé- something to the fact that she is bon, finds himself in the middle of a It could be said that Mr. Brízio’s lic institutions, not industry.” He invigorate, or just investigate Portu- into his designs? No, he says; but I
freestanding flexible poles—and lène Estienne’s) “Flute” is a tale of petite, and Patrick Bolleire is as- series of high-profile launches. career started right here, when he says a designer could look forward guese identity? No, he answers. “I would beg to differ. Although his
even the orchestra. anger quelled, love found, courage tonishingly tall—which feels reas- Last fall, Droog, the Dutch design found children like himself. to a career planning counters for don’t have a mission as a designer: I work often relies on humor and illu-
There is no chorus, only a cou- shown and differences reconciled, suringly right for his firm, solid label, came out with Mr. Brízio’s “In Africa, I used to play in the reception rooms. Design, as the rest don’t want to save the world.” sion, it is never pat or glib, and is of-
ple of sinuous, loose-limbed actors in only two hours, with singers who lower bass register. trompe l’oeil bedside table, called street and make my own toys,” he of Europe understands the term, “is He also seems to have a limited ten downright cerebral. His ghostly
(William Nadylam and Abdou Ouo- can really act. Otherwise they wear Virgile Frannais winningly sings “What You See is Not,” which com- says, citing bows and arrows made quite new here.” sense of commercial ambition. One ceramic elephants seem to represent
loguem), who move the poles lovely but simple costumes, and Papageno, and his comic acting is bines a photograph-like decal of a from the branches of pruned trees. Although the Portuguese design of his most celebrated projects—a the past itself, both supporting and
around the stage, and give the nar- rely on wonderful lighting effects far more subtle—and funny—than nightstand, stuck to a wall, with a “When I came to this neighborhood, scene may lack anyone with the gifts fashion adaptation of his Giotto imperiling the blank vessels of the
Pascal Victor/ ArtComArt
rative a polite shove when it needs and a few conjuring tricks with the is usual in this role. A lovely pro- real, functioning drawer. This win- some of the kids also came from Af- of Mr. Brízio, the country has a rich vase, called “Restarted Dress,” cre- present that dwarf them.
to move on. Papageno’s bells are flute itself. duction. ter, the Italian brand Il Coccio in- rica. In Portugal, people stay in the handicraft tradition. For centuries, ated between 2005 and 2008—has This is design at its most con-
reduced to a tiny orchestral trian- The international cast I saw —Paul Levy cluded Mr. Brízio’s piece Float in a house. But we had different habits.” the Portuguese have used elaborate yet to go into production because templative. Mr. Brízio may not
gle. The symbolic Masonic three- boasted some terrific acting. The Four more performances, March series of humidifiers created by de- They designed and built their own ceramic tiles to decorate building fa- Mr. Brízio could never decide on a want to save the world, or Portugal,
somes of the original (Boys, Ladies, Tamino-Pamina love story, in Mr. 25-27, including an extra matinee on signers such as Patricia Urquiola toy cars, he recalls, which they fash- cades as well as interiors. And cork, firm to work with. And Mr. Krzen- but he wants to create work that
Slaves and Temples) are gone, leav- Brook’s version, is credible and not March 26 and Achille Castiglioni. And next ioned out of the large wooden crates one of the country’s main natural re- towski complains that he has spent leads people “intellectually to
ing only the three flats of E-flat at all wimpish, thanks to Antonio www.barbican.org.uk month, Mr. Brízio will launch a cork the retornados had used to ship sources, has proved a testing ground years trying to get Mr. Brízio to do something unexpected.”