Gebhart Blazek: The Textile Dealer’s Textile Dealer
I have been a textile art dealer for about fifteen years. The longer I look at textiles, the more I see and appreciate them as works of art, and the more I look for pieces that speak first and foremost as aesthetic objects, and not just as ethnographic curiousities.
It is a standard interview technique to ask an actor who their favourite actor is, or an author who is their favourite author. The answer can be interesting, and instructive.
If you were to ask this textile dealer who is her favourite textile dealer, I would have to answer, Gebhart Blazek, based in Vienna and Graz, who specialises in Berber textiles and carpets.
Blazek has a superb eye, superb sources, and a superb talent for exhibition design.
He see his textiles as art. They are art. They are presented as such. I appreciate it enormously.
Jakarta Fashion Week 2008 : Personality Crisis
Nothing to do but quote the New York Dolls in this review. Personality Crisis. That characterises as well as anything could, Jakarta Fashion Week 2008, which ran from 20 to 24 August. That’s not to say it was a “bad” fashion week. Not at all. Genius, and talent (and utter absence of talent), were all floundering about messily in the throes of a national and institutional personality crisis. This all felt painfully apropos for an Indonesian fashion manifestation at this particular moment in the country’s history.
Get Met Mania This Summer : Radiance from the Rain Forest
Here is another special summer exhibition on at the Met that’s a crowd-pleaser, a kid-pleaser, and also pleasing to serious connoisseurs. Radiance from the Rain Forest: Featherwork in Ancient Peru, which stays up until 1 September.
Many of these seventy-or-so masterpieces of featherwork are a millenium and a half old. That tropical rainforest feathers could survive so long, and remain so brilliant is amazing. Also amazing is how such ancient works of art can correspond so strongly to tastes which we now call “modern”.
Images, ©2008 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Textile Designers Take Note: Big Batik Exhibition in Hawaii
Lush, crisp, sophisticated, graphic, earthy, arresting. Antique batik at its highest levels has much to offer contemporary textile designers. Far more than one would think based on the banal repertoire of tourist batiks which are the most frequently seen examples outside of Indonesia. Visit the Honolulu Academy of Art between now and 5 October to see Indonesian Batik from the Christensen Fund for yourself. What an exhibition. Inspirations abound.
Puzzling Evidence : Batik Boutique Gone Wild
About a week ago, I posted my report on the re-opening party at Quarzia, a designer batik boutique around the corner from my office and almost-built gallery in Seminyak. I promised to post photos if Marco and Simonetta, the Quarzians themselves, would send me some pics to post. Well, I got the photos, and all I can say is, the Seminyak crowd was totally unleashed by the potent Negronis served that night. These images provide puzzling evidence, shedding light on the question that begs to be asked: Is there any batik boutique so chic as Quarzia?
Marco of Quarzia, friend, painter Made Wianta, friend.
Simonetta of Quarzia, and master marquetier Etienne d’Sousa
Hot gossip on the steps. Architect Mauro, Bruno Piazza (sipping Negroni), Bona Kayaga (nose and turban), and yours truly.
(Many more puzzling picture below the cut . . . )
Tong’s Psychedelic Tigers
Illustrator Yehrin Tong has devised a stunning tiger pattern, for Maharishi Womenswear. We are mad about tigers in general, the name of our enterprise being Macan Tidur (“The Sleeping Tiger” in Indonesian).
BLUE Until 18 September
The colour blue has calming and restorative properties. If the stresses of a roller-coaster economy and the strains of everyday life are taking a toll, visit the BLUE exhibition at the Textile Museum in Washington DC. At least visit the website, then download the gallery guide, and look deeply into the blues there, like the Javanese “clouds” batik above. The BLUE exhibition runs through 18 September, so there is still time to dive into the blue in DC.
(Sorry, I shouldn’t have used the word “runs” in reference to blue textiles, even though indigo can be very colourfast. So, I’ll just say the exhibition “persists” through 18 September. How’s that?)
Who Put the “Boutique” in Batik?
Quarzia did. This boutique-chic little enterprise has been making slinky high art batik fashion in silk for years. Mixing a Marimekko-meets-Peter-Max eye for pattern with a subtle sense of colour and an acute understanding of cut, their clothes have given gorgeousity to the gorgeous-in-the-know of Bali (mostly Italians) for quite some time. Well last night the well-guarded secret went public.
Quarzia was a teensy little boite of a shop on the golden mile of Jalan Oberoi in Seminyak, until last week. Proprietors Marco and Simonetta, a design dream team from Bergamo have broken out from the closed circle of cognoscenti in Bali and are ready to take on the world.
They remodeled and hugely expanded their little shop and now it’s “wow”. Last night was the grand re-opening, and how grand it was, as in grandissimo, as only Bali’s Italian community can manifest. From sunset ’til long after dark the Corso-Como-cruising crowd in attendance at the opening bash sipped Negronis and slinked about in clumps, kissing, ciao-bella-ing and making like it was the day the new collections came in on Via Montenapoleane. One Anglo pundit was heard to exclaim, “It’s so Italian I can’t think straight!” But I think it was the Negronis from the free-flowing streetside bar that befuddled her mind.
Marco and Simonetta are generous by nature, and they warmly welcomed the SMS-invited crowd to their re-opening. Seen pawing the beautifully bias-cut silk batiks were artist Filipo Sciascia, designer-gallerista Susanna of Biasa, Bona Kaya Gaya the Duchessa of Seminyak, archaeologist-extraordinaire Ambra Calo (the blonde Laura Croft of Indonesia), architect Mauro Garavoglia, and everyone’s favourite warm-hearted perpetual convent-girl, Elisa Grattapaglia. Aside from the usual Italo-Indo suspects we caught up with Sophie Digby of The Yak Magazine, modern marquetier Etienne d’Souza, textile and costume designer Simon Marks and throngs of other drop-dead-gorgeous glamourati-Balinisti. There were acres of young silken flesh spread on the front steps to compete with Quarzia’s silk batik fashion; it’s the second generation of Italo-Indos, I think, and watch out for them. The only thing missing was Pino Confessa, the viviacious and congenial Honorary Consul of Italy for Bali (who never misses a good party). Perhaps he was busy with an Italian passport-holder tangled up in a messy Vespa crash?
I promise to post photos of the party as soon as Marco and Simonetta sleep off the Negroni hangovers and send me some. (I hope I get the multi-seamed indigo and ecru skirt as a prize for writing this. Although I would have written just as flattering a review skirt or no skirt. And this post is not nearly so flattering as that skirt will be on me!)
(Here are the photos I promised! Plenty of party pix below the cut.)
San Francisco Asian Art Museum Supporters Visit Macan Tidur
The “Jade Circle” of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum visited Macan Tidur last week during a cultural tour of Bali. Accompanied by chief curator, Forrest McGill, they arrived dressed in Balinese adat clothing, looking elegant. It wasn’t “fancy dress day” for the Jade Circle, they were dressed to attend the royal cremation ceremony taking place in Ubud later that day.
During the morning, I delivered a lecture on diversity in Balinese textile traditions, which was followed by a lively discussion and some hands-on study of textiles. I had put up an entire wall of traditional Balinese textiles from my collection, which looked a bit like a souk, but certainly illustrated the tremendous diversity of Balinese textiles. From prada to ider-ider with talismanic drawings, the variety of weavings draped on the gallery hanging bars was dizzying.