Eliana Willis

It’s been a slow build, but interest in French designer Line Vautrin appears to have hit critical mass with the show “Poetic Refléxion” at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in midtown Manhattan, on view through December 15.
A contemporary—and former employee—of Elsa Schiaparelli, Vautrin (1913–1997) shared the better known designer’s self-taught uniqueness of approach, whimsy, and popularity in postwar Paris, both socially and commercially. Yet somehow Vautrin, a metalworker’s daughter who prolifically turned out distinctive bronze and brass jewelry, accessories, lamps, small boxes, and, most notably, mirrors, was almost lost to history.
Line Vautrin, Roi Soleil (ca. 1960). Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
In the past 25 years, however, fans and auction houses have brought Vautrin back into view. Instantly recognizable, her accessories (and lost-wax fabrications) nod to ancient Egypt yet remain current, decorated with winking rebuses and riddles of images, letters, and words. Entire poems or prayers are carved into box tops. Suns, and the city of Paris, are recurring motifs. One compact holds a type-written note inside that reads, in French, “If this mirror breaks, don’t worry. You won’t have seven years of bad luck. Believe in Line Vautrin.”
Vautrin was the subject of a 1999 retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and Yves Saint Laurent paid homage to her with the radiant sun on the bottle of his 2006 fragrance Cinéma. More recently, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have stocked their London fashion boutique The Row with vintage Vautrin pieces for sale, having used them in their pre-fall 2023 runway show.
Line Vautrin, Folie ou le Soleil a Rendez-Vous avec la Lune (ca. 1965–1970). Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
“Poetic Refléxion”—one of a new series of art shows by Carpenters Workshop Gallery featuring designers from the past—showcases 10 of Vautrin’s mirrors from the 1950s and ’60s brimming with her lighthearted optimism and inventiveness. Collectible and rare, these mirrors are available for purchase, ranging in price from €55,000 to €400,000. 
Most of the mirrors on display feature convex mirrors surrounded by sun-like rays made of talosel—a cellulose acetate material that Vautrin invented—which was malleable and allowed for pieces of colored glass and mini-mirrors to be inset. Vautrin manipulated the frames by bending and scarring the talosel with pliers and scissors.
Line Vautrin, Huître (1958). Talosel resin, mirror. Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Two pieces in particular underscore the hailing of Vautrin as the “poetess of metal” and her work as “jewelry for walls”—a layered, curvaceous mirror titled Huître resembling its namesake oyster, and the 32-inch Folie ou le Soleil a Rendez-Vous avec la Lune, whose asymmetric rays curve out from the walls and a small “moon” mirror orbits the central “sun” one.
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Though stunning in its natural beauty, the Pacific Northwest takes on a mysterious undertone with its jagged coastlines, temperate rainforests, and emerald-green river valleys. The sullen yet cozy environment has served as an ample source of inspiration for various creatives; think David Lynch’s Twin Peaks or the grunge movement.
Tapping into a similar sentiment is multifaceted artist Ellen Pong with her latest collection of organic, slightly architectonic sculptures and furnishings. On view at Superhouse Vitrine in Chinatown, New York City (through January 8), her exhibition “Middle Fork” is an ode to the wooded mountains just outside Pong’s hometown of Seattle.
Presented against a dramatic crimson-red backdrop, a prolific offering of glass-blown tables, hand-textured ceramic lamp shades, and treated-steel sconces stem from different moments of “ecological creativity” in this “harsh, powerful, and indifferent” setting.
Installation view, “Middle Fork,” Ellen Pong. Photo: Sean Davidson, courtesy of Superhouse.
“The landscape derives its beauty from a sense of foreboding mystery,” the artist told Artnet News. “These works take inspiration from those moments of brief hallucination when you can’t help but see what the forest wants to show you.” The exhibition as a whole comes together as a kind of simulated woodland.
With this latest endeavor, Pong was interested in exploring how seemingly dissimilar elements can bypass each other, clash, meld, and co-exist harmoniously. Bridging amorphous shapes with rectilinear planes, as in the Lake side table or the Lichen (Bow) wall mirror with candleholder. Blending two typologies, for example Light Post bench with lamp, also demonstrates this preoccupation. 
“Ellen challenged herself to go beyond her traditional medium of ceramic for ‘Middle Fork,’” said Superhouse principal Stephen Markos. “The resulting work is a moving testament to the designer’s growth and demonstrates her prowess at harnessing material to evoke a mood, a memory, a sensation.” Pong is particularly adept at channeling tried and true craft techniques in unexpected and playful applications. Her work often situates between the serenity of untouched nature and the chaos of urban life.
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No matter what holiday traditions you keep, the Museum of the City of New York in East Harlem has assembled a show of crowd-sourced gingerbread houses to unite Big Apple residents around sweet treats, a baking competition, and the five boroughs themselves.
“Gingerbread NYC” opened November 11 and remains on view through January 8, 2023, presenting seven winners of a citywide “Winter in New York” themed bake-off. The idea took shape this summer and kicked off in the fall, when the museum launched its open call.
Professional and amateur bakers across New York applied for a chance to compete. Six judges, including Magnolia Bakery CEO Bobbie Lloyd and restaurateur Melba Wilson, awarded two competitors from each borough $500 to recreate sites in their neighborhoods in gingerbread.
Gingerbread house by historic Bronx bakery Egidio Pastry Shop.
From there, the judges picked winners in seven categories: Best Overall, Good Enough to Eat, Best Borough (Most Representative), Most Intricate, Sweetest, Grandest, Only in New York, and Most Resilient. All decorations had to be edible, and 75 percent of all structures had to be gingerbread.
John Kuehn, an architect who transitioned into food blogging during the pandemic, drafted blueprints for his first-ever gingerbread house using AutoCAD software. He rigorously tested dough samples to determine the strongest structural recipe, which skips butter for molasses and spices to enhance both sturdiness and smell. Kuehn spent 160 hours assembling Madison Square Park, the Flatiron building, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower from individual gingerbread bricks. His efforts won Grandest in the competition.
John Kuehn’s towering gingerbread complex.
Staten Island nabbed Best Borough, thanks to an expansive scene crowned featuring its famous ferry, crafted by Bruno’s Bakery in Dongan Hills, operated for more than 40 years by the Settepani family. Sherry Kozlowski, an amateur baker from Astoria, Queens, who also appeared on Food Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge in 2018 won Best Overall for recreating her favorite neighborhood shops from fondant, gum paste, isomalt, and candies. Egidio Pastry Shop in Belmont represented the Bronx, winning the Sweetest category.
It wouldn’t be New York without world-class art. Professional photographer and lifelong recreational baker Ida Kreutzer of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn won the Only In New York Award for her gingerbread replica of a Fort Greene brownstone where she once lived—including the Swoon artwork that graced its exterior.
After “Gingerbread NYC” closes, bakers will retrieve their creations. The show is perhaps the last to be overseen by outgoing director Whitney Donhauser, who’s leaving this month to serve as Deputy Director and Chief Advancement Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Brooklyn-based artist Thomas Barger has always used domestic objects as vessels to express ideas related to identity and sexuality. Now, he is pushing these ideas further at his second New York solo exhibition “Wholesome” at Salon 94 Design.
“Wholesome” is the first time Barger has displayed wall works, which are more conceptual in nature than functional. Also, they all have the word “interruption” in their titles. In a sense he is interrupting the world of design, in another sense he is interrupting the viewer who might have been ambling around the exhibition mistakenly thinking they were viewing objects of furniture rather than sculpture. The fact that some are also functional and can be used as chairs, shelves, coffee, and tables is simply a bonus. All the works are available for purchase and range from $5,000 to $24,000. 
Thomas Barger, Greasy Hole Pulpit Chair (2022). Wood, paper, sawdust, paint, polyurethane. Courtesy of Salon 94 Design.
“Making something functional like chairs and furniture makes me feel useful,” said Barger. “I really value that in myself, being wholesome, coming from the Midwest, that kind of pride. But there is another side of wholesome and I want to push this narrative further with my wall works. I included traditional utilitarian objects like baskets and wooden chair seats and combined them with holes and images of the body.” 
Barger has always used gingham as a placeholder for midwestern identity. His new works subvert this more pointedly; the holes are less grid-like and more spontaneous. “The holes interrupt the gingham, they pierce through it,” explained Barger. “They interrupt the sweetness.”
Thomas Barger, Innie or outie Interruption (2022). Wood, paper, sawdust, paint, found basket, photo, grommets. Courtesy of Salon 94 Design.
In his sculpture titled Innie or outie Interruption (2022), an intimate close-up image of a man’s belly is tacked to the top right hand corner of a gray paper-pulp canvas shaped sculpture dotted with holes and scattered with wicker baskets. Barger’s work began as an inherently personal exploration of his personal desire, but he has broadened his exploration to include outside narratives. Barger took photos of his friend’s navels, as well as his own, before finding the perfect image of a stranger’s stomach online. After sharing stories with other Midwesterners in New York, many of them also queer artists, Barger realized he was not alone in his experience.
Barger grew up in Illinois and studied architecture before he took a year off to find himself. He worked as a dog walker, collecting discarded furniture and scraps along the way. Soon Barger was creating pulp out of the paper he found and building it onto the salvaged furniture before filing it down into shapes, a process he still uses today to create the unique, curved bodies of his sculptures. Barger’s view of furniture as a metaphor crystalized during the five years he worked as an assistant to the artist Jessi Reaves, a mentor and kindred spirit who uses functional elements as materials for her own boundary-pushing sculptures.
Installation view, Thomas Barger, “Wholesome” (2022). Photo: Matthew Praley, courtesy of the artist and Salon 94 Design. © Thomas Barger.
Barger is part of an exciting new generation of artists and designers pushing past the decorative aspect of design and developing a new standard where the work should mean something, a concept that has largely been more rigidly applied to fine art. The wall works at Salon 94 are just the beginning: Barger plans to explore these ideas more in the future.
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How do you depict the decimation of the Amazon rainforest? How do you bear witness to the disappearance of thousands of people in the Balkans, who simply never returned from war? What about the global refugee crisis? Or the dozens of armed factions fighting one another in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
The Irish-born, New York City-based artist Richard Mosse‘s answer is to embed himself in these places of humanitarian crises, and to bear witness—literally, with his camera crew. Through this deep work, he sends images out into the world that tell a story beyond a simple headline.
In an exclusive interview filmed with Art21 as part of the Extended Play series, Mosse, along with his collaborators Ben Frost and Trevor Tweeten, trek across the globe to tell the stories that elude the news cycle. “I’m very interested in trying to find a way to express extremely, deeply complex things by looking very carefully at these loaded landscapes,” he says.
Production still from the “Extended Play” film “Richard Mosse: What the Camera Cannot See.” © Art21, Inc. 2022.
Mosse manipulates photographic tools like infrared film or the thermal mapping technology used by the military in order to show the human cost of armed conflicts in Africa, and the refugee crisis in Europe. The conflicts are “very opaque,” the artist explains, “and that as a result means it is overlooked.”
Instead, he explains, “I was taking a medium that literally can make visible what we can’t see and smashing it into an unseen-ness.”
In his new film, Broken Spectre, which is on view now at 180 The Strand in London, Mosse takes on the subject of the Amazonian Rainforest, the destruction of which is “on a scale beyond what we can perceive.” Most of the images projected by the media are aerial shots of treetops, or the startling lack of them. The artist aimed to peel back the layers of what makes up the extraordinarily complex Amazon, documenting different aspects of the ecosystems that are being affected. “If you take one square inch… it’s just tripping with life,” Mosse says, describing how he used spectral imaging to create “very strange, almost gothic nocturnes” capturing the richness of plant and animal life.
“My power, if I have any, is to be able to show you this, what I’ve seen, in a more powerful way,” Mosse says. “Or in a new and different way and to make you remember that.”

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Art in the Twenty-First Century, below. “Richard Mosse — Broken Spectre” is on view at 180 The Strand through December 30, 2022.
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This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

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An avid pilot who considers the sky his studio, James Turrell has shaped much of his career around the ethereal matter of light, air, and space. Works like the ambitious Roden Crater in Arizona challenge the limits of human perception on a grand scale.
Arguably the renowned American artist’s most significant contribution has been the innumerable “Skyspace” installations he’s conceived and realized throughout the world. Whether carved out of a museum’s architectural volume—like New York’s MoMA PS1—or staged as a pavilion, these enclosed environments all feature open roofs carefully framing the heavens above. Visitors are invited to enter and sit for a while to experience changes in color and cosmic movement. The meditative process helps them find grounding and reconnect with nature in unexpected ways.
Conceived with the technical expertise of architecture practice A-Works, Hardanger Skyspace is the 82nd iteration of its kind. The monolithic pavilion was commissioned by the village of Øystese, nearby Kunsthuset Kabuso, and Voss Folk Museum to sit in a park along the Hardanger Fjord and Hardangervidda mountain plateau. The northernmost Skyspace to date, this latest installation interacts with acute seasonal fluctuations. Turrell was careful to position the piece so that it could best engage the dramatic setting.
Exterior of Hardanger Skyspace (2022). Courtesy of A-Works.
A-Works principal Cristian Stefanescu played an integral role in designing the permanent structure, achieving the artist’s mission while also reflecting various contextual touchpoints. A specific strain of slate sourced in the region was selected to evoke the shiplap siding of a nearby church. From a distance, Turrell’s sculpture of sorts resembles this building but, on closer inspection, proportions skew and the work emerges as a much taller stacked-stone totem. Choosing the right coloration was essential to creating this illusion. 
“The whole work of art functions as a precise perception of light as a physical presence,” explained Stefanescu. The devil was in the details as he and Turrell envisioned a space that not only outlines the sky but also takes on specific material and formal qualities itself. Measured down to the millimeter, prefabricated concrete components were meticulously fitted into place. These considerations were vital to the overall concept.
The construction of Hardanger Skyspace. Courtesy of A-Works.
“The poetic is often known as a bohemian idea, something that just comes to you. I reject this idea,” added Stefanescu. “Something that is precise but appears imprecise involves a high degree of precision and knowledge of technical processes, pigmentation, prototyping, and art of thinking. Creating atmosphere is a ‘hard-core’ technical knowledge.”
The octagonal enclosure can only be entered through a door that becomes apparent once visitors have reached the end of a dedicated pathway. An unexpected white oval-shaped interior shuts off from the immediate surroundings. Curved benches blend in seamlessly with the cast concrete walls to accentuate the contours of the aperture above. As Hardanger Skyspace gains purpose through activation, the shifting patterns of natural light are brought to the fore.
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What’s it like seeing Gustav Klimt’s iconic Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer in person? For many, the answer exists only in their imagination. However, from November 11, 2022, through February 13, 2023, philanthropist Ronald Lauder is giving the public that very opportunity with a showing of his personal collection as it appears in his home—that is, an exact reproduction of his private residence within the Neue Galerie New York.
The show, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the museum’s founding, is the first time in a decade that a comprehensive look at the Ronald S. Lauder Collection has been publicly available. Comprising Greco-Roman sculptures from the third century B.C.E. through German and Austrian art from the 20th century, it is one of the world’s greatest private art holdings.
It’s also, apparently, caused something of a stir because the Gilded Age mansion where it resides was not built with a freight elevator. The Neue Galerie had to hoist numerous larger pieces through its windows. Suffice it to say, onlookers have been rapt the past few weeks watching Renaissance gold-ground paintings, medieval suits of armor, and other remarkable treasures pass into the museum’s upper stories.
And yet more startling, when viewed in person, is how so many of these stunning works have been arranged to create a home. More than museum curation, the show—with its astute attention to detail—imposes none of the stuffiness one might expect from having so many classic works under one roof. Instead, it feels relaxed, like visiting a friend whose life has been dedicated to celebrating the arts. In this way, it sheds the pretensions of displaying art in favor of experiencing it. It’s a feeling Lauder enjoys, we must imagine, on a daily basis—and one we hope the following collection highlights convey.
Monumental Head of a Goddess, Greek, Hellenistic, ca. mid-second century B.C.E., marble. Private Collection. Photo: Hulya Kolabas.
This Hellenistic, marble head (ca. 150 B.C.E.) is intriguing both for its mute, piercing gaze and its position on Lauder’s desk. “This is the one time that he decided to make his private rooms available to the public—and given the scope of the project, it will likely never happen again,” Neue Galerie Director Renée Price told Artnet News. “The works selected for the exhibition were chosen by Mr. Lauder himself, and arranged at the Neue Galerie in a manner that reflects how they are displayed in his home. The presentation demonstrates a unique, private taste—a vision.”
Installation view of “The Ronald S. Lauder Collection” on view at Neue Galerie New York. Photo: Hulya Kolabas, courtesy of Neue Galerie New York.
Containing the world’s premier assembly of works by Gustav Klimt, Lauder’s collection of early 20th-century Austrian art is replete with works visitors will recognize instantly. In a video produced to introduce the show, Lauder says he has three classifications of art: “Oh,” “Oh my,” and “Oh my God!”—and he only collects the last of these. As a result, he says, “It is impossible for me to choose a favorite work from my collection. When I love an artwork and decide to acquire it, I don’t fall out of love with it. I just get to know it better.”
Jug, Italian (ca. 1600). Rock crystal, gold, enamel. Private Collection. Photo courtesy of Neue Galerie New York.
Central to the Neue’s reproduction of Lauder’s private office is his impressive white-marble statue of Hermes (second century C.E.), Roman messenger of the gods, as well as his magnificent collection of exotic and exceptional objects, dating from the 15th through the 18th centuries. To properly display the precious decorative objects, Lauder thoughtfully designed a Kunstkammer (art cabinet) for his residence, which is replicated at the show. In discussing how the museum faithfully reconstructed the interiors, Price commented, “The process of developing the exhibition was a collaborative effort between Mr. Lauder, his curatorial team led by Elizabeth Szancer, and the Neue Galerie team. Discussions began long ago, with many Zoom calls, discussing and rearranging floor plans. Then the heavy lifting, which involved getting permits to hoist large-scale works into our historic building, and install the works on-site. The final result is a testament to the dedication of a great team of people.”
Installation view of “The Ronald S. Lauder Collection” on view at Neue Galerie New York. Photo: Hulya Kolabas, courtesy of Neue Galerie New York.
Numerous works in the Neue exhibition exemplify how Lauder’s personal taste goes into the selection of everything he collects, such as this painting by lesser-known German expressionist Conrad Felixmüller, My Brother–Mining Engineer (1922). Commenting on his process, Lauder told Artnet News, “Art collecting for me is a passion. It’s about what speaks to me on a personal level. It never has been about the market, or the need to collect (or to avoid collecting) what others do. It doesn’t take great connoisseurship to buy a world-famous Picasso. It only takes money.”
Erich Heckel (1883–1970), Bathers in a Pond (1908). Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Photo courtesy of Neue Galerie New York.
Commenting on a reproduction of the mantelpiece—over which hangs one of the first works Lauder acquired, Erich Heckel’s Bathers in a Pond (1908)—Price said, “At the Neue Galerie, we are always thinking about the Gesamtkunstwerk—or total work of art. The experience of visiting our museum is all-encompassing for the senses: a view of the galleries that present fine art and design at an intimate scale, a taste of the Austrian cuisine in Café Sabarsky, a tactile moment in the design shop and bookstore. While our mission is focused on Austrian and German art from the early 20th century, this exhibition is placing what we do here in a much broader context. The underlying principle is the Gesamtkunstwerk, everything together, of the highest quality. That is the philosophy of the Neue Galerie, and the Lauder Collection is so exemplary of that philosophy.”
Bernardo Daddi (Italian, active ca. 1312/20), Madonna and Child with Four Angels (1348), Florence. Tempera and gold on panel. Private Collection.
In a wider sense, the Neue’s exhibition presents a unique accretion of histories, not only of Lauder’s as a collector and of what the works depict, but of each piece’s provenance—many were stolen by Nazi authorities and recovered after World War II—and art history itself. According to Lauder, “The exhibition reflects the evolution of my collecting interests over the course of the past decade, as highlights from my collection were first presented at the Neue Galerie for the museum’s 10th anniversary. Over the past ten years, I became interested in new areas, including antiquities and gold ground paintings, rekindled my interests in Old Masters, and deepened existing areas of my collection.”
Installation view of “The Ronald S. Lauder Collection” on view at Neue Galerie New York. Photo: Hulya Kolabas, courtesy of Neue Galerie New York.
In addition to magnificent works of art, the show also features a room dedicated to Lauder’s remarkable collection of medieval armor and weapons. “In every era, there are great artists,” Lauder explained to Artnet News. “The thread of excellence of the great masters runs through the centuries, from ancient Greek and Roman art to Medieval Art, from gold-ground paintings of the early Renaissance to Old Master paintings and Kunstkammer objects of the 15th to the 18th century, through to the early 20th century Austrian and German art and decorations. Most early works do not have the artist’s identity but even without their names, they are of great quality. I have always been fascinated by masterworks throughout the centuries.”
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