FRIDAY-SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3-5, 2010

Amsterdam rapher, known for his black-and-white art depictions of historical and cultural “Amsterdam Heritage Weekend” lets events of the 20th century. visitors access major monuments Museum für Angewandte Kunst around town, including some that are Sept. 4-26 % normally closed to the public. 49-221-221-2860-8 Various locations www.museenkoeln.de Nickolas Muray Photo Archives

Sept. 11-12 s % 31-20-2514-900 Copenhagen www.bma.amsterdam.nl art “Anselm Kiefer: Art and Myth” shows Basel 90 works by the German sculptor and painter, ranging from his early years art to the present day. “Andy Warhol: The Early Sixties Paint- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art ings and Drawings 1961-1964” exhibits Sept. 10-Jan. 9 70 paintings and drawings, including % 45-4919-0791 the “Star” series, featuring Elvis. www.louisiana.dk Museum für Gegenwartskunst Sept. 5-Jan. 23 % 41-61-2066-262 Dublin www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch art “Futures 10” exhibits works by emerg- ing artists such as Oisín Byrne, Rhona Belfast Byrne and Fiona Chambers, presenting music paintings, sculptures, prints, photogra- “Wilco” bring their Grammy Award- phy and architectural models. winning rock music to Europe, per- Royal Hibernian Academy forming with support from Philip Sel- Until Oct. 24 way, the drummer for Radiohead. % 353-1-6612-558 Sept. 10 Open House Fest, Belfast www.royalhibernianacademy.ie Sept. 12 End of the Road Fest, Dorset Düsseldorf Sept. 14 Royal Festival Hall, art London “Nam June Paik” presents 30 large Sept. 15 Academy, Newcastle sculptural installations by the Korean Sept. 16 Barrowland, Glasgow artist often considered to be the first Sept. 18 Take Root Festival, video artist, including the German pre- Groningen miere of “Laser Cone.” Sept. 19 Leffingeleuren Festival, Museum Kunst Palast Leffinge, Belgium Sept. 11-Nov.21 Sept. 20 Tonhalle, Duesseldorf % 49-211-8990-200 More European dates at www.museum-kunst-palast.de www.wilcoworld.net Frankfurt Berlin music music “Auftakt” is a series that highlights “Musikfest Berlin 10” presents solo- works by contemporary musicians, ists, choirs, ensembles and orchestras this year featuring work by Swiss performing in 24 classical-music composer Beat Furrer and German pia- events, featuring a total of 60 works nist and conductor Christian Zacharias. by 25 different composers, including Alte Oper Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Ravel. Sept. 5-30 Various venues % 49-69-1340-400 Until Sept. 21 www.alteoper.de % 49-30-2548-9244 www.berlinerfestspiele.de Leverkusen art photography “Bernard Frize: And How and Where “Face/Project” showcases 30 collabora- and Who” offers a retrospective of tive works by artists Tina Berning and the contemporary French artist, includ- Michelangelo Di Battista, mixing ele- ing photography and paintings. ments of fashion photography with Museum Morsbroich drawing and painting. Sept. 5-Nov. 7 Camera Work % 49-214-8555-60 Sept. 4-Oct. 30 www.museum-morsbroich.de % 49-30-3100-773 www.camerawork.de London Tate Britain Imperial War Museum North www.openart.biz photography Sept. 8-Jan. 16 Sept. 18-Feb. 27 Cologne “Eadweard Muybridge” aims to % 44-20-7887-8888 % 44-161-836-4000 Paris photography present a full range of the art created www.tate.org.uk www.iwm.org.uk/north music “René Burri—Das Werk” shows a retro- by the British photographer and pio- Yo-Yo Ma, the acclaimed cellist and spective of work by the Swiss photog- neer of motion photography. history Milan multiple Grammy Award-winner, per- “Inventing the 21st Century” examines ballet forms J.S. Bach’s complete cello groundbreaking British inventions suites. Meeting “Serata Forsythe” is a staging of three from this century’s first decade with pieces by William Forsythe: “Artifact Theatre des Champs-Elysees original drawings and designs, includ- Suite,” “Herman Schmerman” and “In Sept. 14-15 % ing the Dyson “Air Multiplier” and the The Middle, Somewhat Elevated.” 33-1-4952-5050 Karbon Kinetics “Gocycle” folding bike. Teatro alla Scala www.theatrechampselysees.fr British Library Sept. 6-23 of minds ‘Halsschmuck’ (2010) by Evert Nijland, Sept. 6-Nov. 28 % 39-02-72-003-744 Vienna in Munich; top, ‘Frida on White Bench’ % 44-193-754-6060 www.teatroallascala.org art (1939) by Nickolas Muray, shown in Vienna. www.bl.uk “Frida Kahlo” shows a retrospective TheThe architectural wworldorld comes comes Munich featuring 60 paintings, 80 works on paper and 20 objects, exploring the togetherh at theh Venice Biennalel Manchester art life and art of the Mexican painter. photography “Open Art” offers a series of openings Bank Austria Kunstforum “The Gulf War 1990-1991: Photo- at 65 museums and galleries, introduc- Until Dec. 5 graphs by John Keane” presents a col- ing the new season of art in the city. % 43-1-5373-326 lection of photographs by the British Various locations www.bankaustria-kunstforum.at artist, some of which are on public dis- Sept. 10-12 play for the first time. % 49-89-2920-15 Source: WSJE research Curtesy of Galerie Spektrum

W16 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL Travel: The allure of Karpathos Wine: Choosing the right glass v Books Contents Blair’s Journey

3 | Fashion 8-10 | Cover story Architecture 13 | Top Picks By Martin Rubin Mr. Blair structures his book during the couple’s sleepover at just say it.” But over time, he as the tale of a political journey Balmoral Castle, the royal resi- says, he came “to admire the It is now painfully obvious that vaulted him at an astonish- dence in Scotland. But he some- simplicity, the directness” of Mr. Something new A temporary peek at the Stedelijk that Tony Blair—the man who led ingly young age (43) to an unprec- times does provide too much in- Bush’s approach, “finding in it

t Meeting in space Britain for a decade, who trans- edented three consecutive terms formation—recollections of an strength and integrity.” in Tiffany blue formed the country’s dully ortho- as head of the British govern- eccentric relative’s foul smell, This back-and-forth quality is Architects come together in Venice Home of Hendrix and Handel dox Labour Party into dashing, ment. But “A Journey” is a his encounters with a childhood common in Mr. Blair’s efforts at moderate “New Labour,” who deeply personal book, too, full of bully, his unhappy experience as portraiture, where criticism is of- faced down parliamentary oppo- candid revelations. For all his a schoolboy boxer. All seemed ten followed by a softening com- Rediscovering Charlotte Perriand nents with brio and eloquently de- seeming confidence and ease, Mr. designed to elicit empathy but pliment. Even Gordon Brown, Mr. The Tiffany fended the invasion of Iraq—is no Blair tells us, he desperately pre- may cause a reader to cringe. Blair’s successor as prime minis- Reversible Tote 14 | Books longer much of a hero in his own pared for Prime Minister’s Ques- Still, Mr. Blair has a pleasing ter—with whom Mr. Blair often and a matching pouch. country. Indeed, he is intensely tions—where he excelled each capacity to take us with him into bitterly quarreled and whom he Bryan Derballa disliked, not least for his loyalty week in the House of Commons, privileged places, whether it’s up- blames for the party’s recent elec- to the “freedom agenda”—the parrying the thrusts of opposi- stairs at the White House (where, tion lost—is said to be “brilliant” 4-5 | Food & Wine Europe's war-time idea that, after 9/11, Western de- tion MPs—and confides that even over dinner, he finds Mr. Bush and indispensable. When it comes mocracies had a duty to face “unbelievably, almost preternatu- to Bill and Hillary Clinton, writers recaptured down tyrants like Saddam Hus- rally calm” before his major though, Mr. Blair’s admiration is sein and end the threat they rep- A Journey speech to Congress after 9/11) or unalloyed. There is no doubt that Wine: Clear differences resented. By Tony Blair to Balmoral itself, where he must he regards them as political soul 15 | Books Those outside the U.K., under- (Hutchinson, 700 pages, £25) dash down long corridors to the Associated Press mates. standably, have less intense feel- toilet facilities, which are both re- vasion, Mr. Blair has no apolo- Mr. Blair is perhaps proudest Mapping the way for French fouées ings about Mr. Blair. They may re- mote and old-fashioned—Victo- gies. He reveals that although of his role in getting the Labour member him most of all for artic- now, three years after his leaving rian water closets. He gives a Vice President Dick Cheney was Party to shed its commitments 6-7 | Travel Blair's Labours ulating George W. Bush’s foreign- office, the hairs on his neck frank account of how hard it was, adamantly opposed to involving to unilateral nuclear disarma- policy ideas—especially the logic prickle just before noon on in his early years as prime minis- the U.N., Mr. Bush did not take ment and the nationalization of of the Iraq war—a bit more grace- Wednesdays, when Question ter, to get on with Queen Eliza- much persuading. In any case, Britain’s industries. Both posi- 16 | Time Off fully than Mr. Bush did. It was at Time begins. In the minutes be- beth, who treated him with “hau- the U.N. declined to authorize tions were ardently backed in The alluring such moments, in speeches and fore plunging into that arena, he teur.” the use of military force, and the party’s 1983 manifesto, a joint press conferences with Mr. says, he would gladly have ex- Not surprisingly, Mr. Blair of- the invasion went ahead anyway. document that was later called, remoteness of Karpathos Our arts and culture calendar Bush, that Mr. Blair made his changed an equal amount of time fers a robust defense of his role Clearly, for Mr. Blair, it was bet- after Margaret Thatcher’s sec- greatest impression on the world under Laurence Olivier’s sadistic in taking Britain into the Iraq ter to have tried multilaterally ond, landslide victory, the long- 12 | Art stage—as a loyal American ally dentist’s drill in the movie “Mara- war, though he agonizes over the and lost than never to have est suicide note in history. By and gifted orator. thon Man.” invasion’s violent aftermath. To tried at all. fighting so hard to transform his But the man himself, not to Mr. Blair writes movingly of this day he sees the overthrow of Mr. Blair’s feelings about Mr. party, whether from genuine con- mention the arc of his career, is his mother’s death from cancer Saddam Hussein as the one true Bush are mixed. He calls him, viction or pragmatic calculation, Tessa Farmer's less familiar. “A Journey,” his po- when he was 22 and of his fa- course for his country. More sur- backhandedly, a man with a Mr. Blair achieved, he believes, Barbara Tina Fuhr Editor litical memoir, is thus especially ther’s disabling stroke a few prisingly, he notes that his close “great intuition . . . about what the long-sought aim of making

Frankenstein fairies © Sergio Pirrone Elisabeth Limber Art director welcome. Luckily it is not one of years earlier, which devastated relations with the U.S., despite he thought was right or wrong.” Labour the “natural party of gov- 'Decay of a Dome' by Amateur Architecture Studio. Brian M. Carney Books page editor those leaden bricks of official the family. When it comes to the war’s unpopularity, gave him Mr. Bush’s intuition, moreover, ernance.” “A Journey” provides Questions or comments? Write to [email protected]. reminiscence. The tone is confid- less profound personal details, increased stature with other “wasn’t expressed analytically a priceless glimpse into the COVER, The entrance of the Australian Pavilion. Please include your full name and address. ing, informal and forthright, Mr. Blair does not sink to the world leaders, who assumed that or intellectually. It was just mind of the man who devoted Photograph by Sergio Pirrone for The Wall Street Journal. though Mr. Blair has not given up level of revelation achieved by he had Mr. Bush’s ear. stated.” Mr. Blair confesses that, himself to that transformation. his habit of handling certain mat- his wife in her 2008 memoirs, As for the joint U.S.-British listening to the U.S. president at ters in an on-the-one-hand/on-the- when she described how their decision to seek (in vain) United a press conference, he would Mr. Rubin is a writer in Pasa- other sort of way. son Leo came to be conceived Nations approval for the Iraq in- think: “George, explain it; don’t dena, Calif.

THE JOURNAL CROSSWORD / Edited by Mike Shenk 55 Unseat Down 52 “The Wanderer” singer 80 East German 56 Facilitates 1 Mad-hatter link 53 She played Anna in secret police “Anna Karenina” and 83 Nikita’s no Across 21 Tribe that lent its 31 Cost to compete 44 Quran creator 57 First Family of the 1980s 2 Ballot abbr. Life in the Limelight ___ “Anna Christie” 84 Unwrapped name to a state 34 Becomes besieged 59 Rio Plata 3 Handy moving company? 1 Target 46 It might be 58 2007 NCAA basketball enthusiastically 22 Cisco, to Pancho 38 City founded in four letters 60 Baserunners try to beat it 4 This place is buzzing 6 Part of many and football champions 85 Birthright seller 23 Explorer whose 1906 by U.S. Steel 47 Reaper’s tool 62 Heroine of Cather’s 5 Soft fabric By Paul Genders is the invention of a character ristos Blanco, “the writer vener- lar Richter as a self-portrait, stars’ names 60 Paces of pieces 88 Liver autobiography is 39 “___ Blue?” 49 Online payment “The Song of the Lark” from an earlier story, an author ated by half the planet and however cartoonish, of the au- 11 Cash on hand? 6 Versatile plant used 61 “Let me think titled “Alone” 41 Scratched method 64 Did some crunches? in herbal medicine 91 Service elevators? It is not surprising that fame “of intricate short stories full of mildly despised by the other,” re- thor; particularly so when he an- 14 He often receives about that” 25 July 1 celebration (out) 51 Status attained 65 “Don’t these clothes I just got 94 Clipper or cutter 7 Smash’s counterpart 62 Even chances should be on Daniel Kehlmann’s complicated mirror effects and appear throughout “Fame,” read nounces his wish to write “a a touching 27 You are here 42 It may be used by after passing look good on me?” 96 Put in a vault portrayal 8 Butt in 63 “How’s that?” mind. The Munich-born author’s unpredictable shifts and swerves and espoused by its characters. novel without a protagonist . . . 28 Computer Professor Plum the Trials of 69 Shine, in brand names 98 University of 19 Engage in petty drive part Skill, Spirit, and 9 Gosling’s first sound 66 Family on which 2005 novel, “Measuring the that were flourishes of empty The book’s sixth story finds [possessing a] structure, the con- 43 Org. that produces 71 Jayma Mays’s “Glee” role Maine town criticism 30 Prefix with the Congressional Knowledge 10 Gérard’s “Green Card” “Please Don’t Eat World,” about the 19th-century virtuosity.” Mr. Kehlmann ex- Blanco contemplating suicide af- nections, a narrative arc, but no 72 Malia’s little sister 99 Cut 20 GPS forerunner comedy Record 54 Mason’s burden co-star the Daisies” is based scientists Alexander von Hum- pects us to see the joke. The ter realizing that his life’s work main character advancing 100 Played (with) 73 Compound parts: Abbr. 11 Material for breeches 67 Emulate a crane boldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, links between these nine narra- is founded on a lie. The lie—that throughout.” Sets in Order 76 “Dadaland” author 12 Coming-in approx. 68 “Fold” 101 Lola’s dog, was a surprise commercial hit. tives are intricately embedded, there is “an order in the world This, of course, describes / by Joe DiPietro in an Inge play 78 Benchmarks: Abbr. 13 Like some wedding 69 Family subdivisions Selling more than 1.5 million arise unpredictably and show and life could be good”—has “Fame.” It also introduces a 12345 678910111213 1415161718 103 It’ll do for the present 79 Sacred texts receptions 70 It helps take hooked copies to date, the book has their author is not short on tech- made him wealthy and famous, meta-fictional note to the book 104 January 1944 19 20 21 22 81 Curry of NBC 14 ___ Speaker fish from the water which tells you much, Mr. Kehl- that swells into an intriguing Allied landing site made Mr. Kehlmann the most nical flair. 82 It contains spooled documents 15 Figurative writing 74 Major Pasadena The genesis of the opening mann implies, about wealth and theme. This theme—the powers 23 24 25 26 108 Certain pool stat successful young writer—he is 86 Dated weapon 16 Steve Urkel catchphrase thoroughfare in his mid-30s—in the German story is the aforementioned blun- fame. and responsibilities of author- 109 Burning feeling 27 28 29 30 87 Five kings of Portugal 17 Titled Turk 75 Shepherd with a self- language. der, a clerical mistake that leads There are more famous writ- ship—surfaces in a story about a titled Lifetime sitcom 110 IV squared 89 Thank-___ 18 Latte variety to a white-collar family man, ers in the book’s third strand. On terminally ill woman traveling 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 76 Practical joker 112 Shaq’s alma mater (gift acknowledgments) 24 Justice Dept. agency Ebling, being assigned the same a lecture tour of Central Asia, the to a Swiss suicide clinic. The 77 Mil. address part 113 Isr. neighbor Fame 38 39 40 41 42 90 “Hey, over here!” 26 Ready for battle telephone number as a film star, esteemed crime novelist Maria story comes, we learn, from the 78 Sport in a walled court 114 Scrollwork shape 92 Mound stat 29 Swordfish servings By Daniel Kehlmann Ralf Tanner. This mistake is actu- Rubenstein is cut adrift from her pen of Richter, a point brought 43 44 45 46 47 48 79 Regd. names 115 ___-Foy, Quebec 93 View from Sandusky 31 Spurred (on) Translated by Carol Brown Janeway ally made, off-stage, in the eighth tour group; without money or a home arrestingly when the main 49 50 51 52 53 54 94 Miles of film 32 Went out for a bit (Quercus, 304 pages, £12.99) story, by the narrator of the sev- visa, she quickly descends into a character starts to plead with 95 Cable bill encl. enth, an Internet-addicted tele- cline only accelerates. hellish anonymity for which celeb- the author to let her live. 55 56 57 58 33 Key of Scriabin’s Last Week’s Solution 96 Playboy Club attire Symphony No. 1 communications worker named For all the cross-connecting pa- rity has not prepared her. No one In the collection’s final story 59 60 61 62 63 64 97 Did diagnostic work 35 Prefix with pad or port ASB I G COLA CCC I B I B In “Fame,” his seventh work of Mollwitz. nache with which Ralf Tanner’s in this strange unnamed land rec- Richter casts acquaintances from 102 Pope with the shortest reign 36 Time’s 2007 Invention MOO L A F E AR E D AAA S I NA fiction and the third to be trans- When we meet Ralf Tanner, in fall is achieved, and though Mr. ognizes or understands Rubin- his Central American jaunt in an- 65 66 67 68 (13 days) of the Year PUBLICEXPENDITURE OST lated into English, Mr. Kehlmann the fourth story, he is ensnared Kehlmann offers amusing satiri- stein, but were she not so feted other of his fictions. When his ECU NAMER T INHAT INCH 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 105 Early whirlybirds 37 Cries out for turns his attention to the present in the bizarre chain of events cal details along the way, the fi- in her own country she would not characters complain about losing DIPLOMATICENVOY LAIRS day and, one suspects, his own re- that began when he suddenly nal moral is unremarkable. Fame, be here. Once more fame gets its their true identities, Richter de- 106 “Call on me! I know 40 Sympathetic reply INS ECON DAVINCI 76 77 78 79 80 the answer!” 44 Very, to Verdi RILL PRAY PHENOM EBB cent experiences. The results are stopped receiving telephone calls. the author informs us, is flimsy, comeuppance; but Rubinstein’s cides to abscond from the story 81 82 83 84 85 86 107 Con game 45 Stone Mountain honoree ATTACHE P I ES LAWYER dazzling, but in a manner that But Tanner’s phone has gone si- easily counterfeited and no guar- story is told with such fairy-tale altogether, disappearing “above 108 Popular operating system 46 Its biggest city PSYCHI CENERGY AUSTERE leaves you wondering if you lent only because Ebling is an- antee of happiness. Mr. Kehl- economy and eeriness you are in- the sky and beneath the earth 87 88 89 90 91 92 111 Some demarcated is Chicago, Ill. TORSOS EURO ULM OSSA haven’t been hoodwinked. swering his calls for him, back in mann’s virtuosity looks here to clined to forgive the predictabil- like a second-class God.” “Fame” parking areas COOL I NGCENTER 93 94 95 96 47 Bundle of papers At first glance, “Fame” com- the first story. Ebling, drunk on be in the service of a sentiment ity. fools cleverly around its title sub- CHAS RVS ROMP OUT I ES 116 Hog the mirror 48 El-overseeing org. prises nine short stories. As you newfound power, repeatedly ar- too commonplace, surely, to de- Rubinstein’s friend Leo Rich- ject, but is more puzzling and sub- 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 117 Garden party? CAMACHO TRAG I CEND I NGS read, you discover these are not ranges late night liaisons with a serve it. ter, inventor of those “intricate,” stantial when, as in these stories, 50 Ban choice CRADLE PROM FEELFOR 118 Jed Clampett portrayer stand-alone narratives: bit-part female friend of Tanner’s, and re- A second narrative strand, “empty” fictions, is also on a lec- it makes a subject of the author’s 105 106 107 PET ORDA I N SPOT LOSS ___ 119 “Hello, Be Going” For an interactive MISUSER VERA IRE characters in one story take cen- peatedly stands her up; it is the concerning a Paulo Coelho-like ture tour, of Central America. power to fool. 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 120 Quebec underground version of The Wall OPCIT ARCTICEXPLORERS ter stage in another; someone actor who is eventually punished, author of New Age philosophy, Here he rages against the fame

t Street Journal blunders in one and the conse- violently attacked by the woman similarly has satirical bite and that has seen him invited across Mr. Genders is a freelance editor 116 117 118 119 121 Vietnam Veterans BAER ADORED SAVES RAT Memorial designer Crossword, WSJ.com ENL STAT I CELECTR I C I TY quences are suffered in another in a scene that is filmed by pass- technical sparkle, but again con- the world to speak to “brain- and writer based in London. His 120 121 122 123 122 Applies sloppily subscribers can go to STL ER I E HOSTAS TAKEN by someone else entirely; you fol- ersby and becomes an Internet forms to an ordinary, cautionary dead” admirers. It is tempting to book reviews have appeared in 123 Way bigger than big WSJ.com/Puzzles ESO WARD SSTS ABASE low a character only to find she sensation. From here, Tanner’s de- curve. The works of Miguel Au- see the neurotic, somewhat bipo- the Times Literary Supplement.

W2 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W15 v Books v Fashion Rediscovering Europe’s war-time writers Tiffany puts its signature blue on handbags

By Tobias Grey By Elizabeth Holmes work and didn’t want to go that good way,” Mr. Lambertson says. HE GREAT SOVIET-era Rus- IFFANY & CO. now has bags route with Tiffany. Instead, they de- Mr. Truex adds, “What would not sian author Vasily Grossman to match its little blue cided to play with Tiffany’s eye- be Tiffany is a bag that is too avant- Tbelieved it wasn’t just a writ- Tboxes. The jeweler launched catching blue. The strap on the garde or extreme, or too hard-edged er’s duty to tell terrible truths but an expansive collection of hand- black leather Blake tote (which and not feminine enough.” also a reader’s civic duty to learn bags, ranging from clutches to costs $995) includes a Tiffany-blue Tiffany has tried small collec- these truths. totes to satchels, in a dozen of its stripe. The clasp and rivets of many tions of handbags before, most re- Grossman initiated this pact in U.S. stores this week. Every piece bags also include a bit of Tiffany- cently in the mid-1990s with a line his newspaper article “The Hell of © ullsteinbild / TopFoto (portrait) bears an element of Tiffany’s signa- blue enamel, along with the words, created by in-house designers, but Treblinka,” which he wrote in ture robin’s egg blue, whether on a “Tiffany & Co.” this will be its first full assortment. 1944 after witnessing the Red Ar- clasp, in a lining or all over a dyed- For those who want more, some Jon King, Tiffany’s executive vice my’s liberation of Treblinka II—a crocodile purse. Prices for wom- of the bags are saturated in the president in charge of merchandis- Nazi death camp in occupied Po- en’s handbags start at $395 (Œ310) shade. The Holly clutch ($595) ing and marketing, says the new line land, where approximately for a small suede tote and rocket comes in a Tiffany-blue satin, as was sparked by the availability of 900,000 Jews and 500 Gypsies up to $17,500 (Œ13,690) for a large does the snakeskin Hadley shoul- Messrs. Lambertson and Truex. were murdered in 13 months. crocodile handbag. der bag ($1,495). The new bag collection will take Grossman’s unsparing, literary Handbags have enjoyed spar- “The color can be kind of fright- up display space in stores that has account of the horrific ways Nazi kling sales in recent years and are ening,” Mr. Lambertson says. “It’s been vacated by tabletop china and Germany implemented its ethnic- in some ways easier for a retailer not subtle.” silver. Tiffany says it has been trim- cleansing program at Treblinka to move: Women are more likely to Both designers say Tiffany’s ming down its selection of table- was one of the first reports of a splurge on bags for themselves strong brand helped to guide them. ware, which also includes crystal, Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal death camp anywhere in Europe than on jewelry. “Unlike jewelry, “Here, we’re restricted—in a very for a “number of years.” The Tiffany Bracelet bag comes in 25 colors, including the jeweler’s famous blue. and eventually provided prosecu- which sometimes feels extrava- tors at the Nuremberg War gant, handbags always serve a pur- Crimes Tribunal with crucial back- pose,” says John Long, a retail ground information. strategist with consultancy Kurt The surprise is that up until Salmon Associates. now an English-language transla- Tiffany is joining a crowded field tion of Grossman’s lengthy article of retailers selling handbags. Ac- has never been published in its en- cording to market-research firm tirety. That will soon change with NPD Group, dollar sales of handbags the publication of “The Road,” a col- that cost $200 or more rose 15% in lection of some of Grossman’s best the 12 months that ended in June short stories and war-time articles, from the year-earlier period. And including “The Hell of Treblinka.” Tiffany continues to walk a thin line “The Road,” which is being pub- as it tries to drive sales through ac- lished in the U.K. on Sept. 30 by cessibly priced goods, while main- MacLehose Press and in the U.S. taining its upmarket image. on Sept. 28 by New York Review The designers of Tiffany’s new Books Classics, is translated from bags, Richard Lambertson and John the Russian by Robert and Eliza- Truex, say the biggest challenge in beth Chandler, the husband and designing handbags for Tiffany was wife team also responsible for new coming up with a way to identify the translations of Grossman’s later product. “We wanted to have some- novels “Life and Fate” (2006) and thingrecognizableabout the bags so “Everything Flows” (May 2010). that people would say ‘Oh! That The coming publication of “The Left, Hans Fallada plays chess in 1934. mustbeaTiffanybag,’”Mr.Lambert- Road” has been made possible son says. “It’s really hard to do that." thanks to the commercial and criti- The two men are well-known cal success of “Life and Fate” in replicated in Britain. “At least un- among handbag enthusiasts, hav- particular, but also because there til a few years ago in Britain a ing designed leather goods and is a growing demand for new writer like Zweig met with blank sold them at luxury department translations of European fiction faces; now he is regularly ‘book of stores for a decade under the Lam- and nonfiction from the years lead- the week’” says Will Stone, whose bertson Truex label. After the reces- ing up to and including World translation of Zweig’s pre-World sion drove their company into U.S. War II. The trend is most preva- War II travel writing “Journeys” bankruptcy court in spring 2009, lent in France and Britain, where will be released in the U.K. in Octo- Tiffany bought the trademark and rediscovered European novelists ber under the independent Hespe- hired the designers. from the 1930s and 1940s, such as by Knopf on Oct. 19, says he be- ver Age of German Letters” where Berlin’ but other novels by Fal- rus Press imprint. “The reason The pair eschewed the heavy use the French writer of Ukrainian- lieves that a changing mood in Eu- the standard of writing was excep- lada, you will see repeating Zweig has caught on in the U.K. is of logos in their Lambertson Truex Jewish origin Irène Némirovsky, rope has slowly brought about the tionally high. scenes, opinions and objects,” because he is finally being mar- the Austrian-Jewish writers Ste- translation and publication of liter- “In the early days of popular notes Mr. Hofmann. “You see that keted correctly, namely as a fantas- fan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Hunga- ature and memoirs that were of- cinema in Europe, as well as Amer- all the people in Fallada’s book— tic storyteller.” Arbitrage ry’s Sándor Márai and Germany’s ten shied away from in the past. ica, writers had to learn to be and it’s a bit like Flaubert—really But for some publishers, such as Hans Fallada, have each sold hun- “I think the whole World War very vivid,” says Mr. Hofmann, are him; that’s the way it’s sup- MacLehose Press’s founder Christo- American Express dreds of thousands of books over II question and particularly the Ho- who has also translated German- posed to happen in good books.” pher MacLehose, even the best sto- the past few years. locaust assumed fresh relevance language writers like Roth and Just as the two novellas that rytelling doesn’t do World War II, Platinum card At the same time a growing with the end of the Cold War,” Franz Kafka. “Fallada’s just a constituted Némirovsky’s “Suite and the Holocaust in particular, ad- number of war-time memoirs have says Mr. Riding. “Only when the great and greatly gifted popular Française” came out of her experi- equate justice. Mr. MacLehose, who membership fee begun to be unearthed by discern- communist bloc—notably East Ger- writer. ‘Alone in Berlin,’ which is ence of the daily humiliations of published “The Journal of Hélène ing French and British publishers. many, Poland, Hungary and Roma- based on the residents of this the German occupation of Paris, so Berr” in the U.K. in 2008 and is These include moving first-hand nia—disintegrated, did the extent house, and what happens to them, too did Fallada write “Alone in Ber- also responsible for coming titles testimonies of the Holocaust like of the persecution of the Jews be- is like a super, Dickensian page- lin”( the first anti-Nazi novel to be like “The Road” and Chil Rajch- “The Journal of Hélène Berr,” come fully apparent. In a way the turner, amplified because it’s set published in Germany after the man’s “Treblinka: A Survivor’s which came out in France and the Cold War had frozen history.” in Berlin in the 1940s, in the civil- war) with the searing insight of Memory,” believes that publishers U.K. in 2008, Chil Rajchman’s “Tre- It was not until after the col- ian world.” one who had spent more than 12 have a responsibility to bring out blinka: A Survivor’s Memory,” lapse of the communist bloc that In some ways the qualities of years being hounded by the Nazis. books “of real historical value.” which will be published in the U.K. Hungarian-Jewish Nobel Prize-win- “Alone in Berlin” are reminiscent “It’s a period that still fasci- “I think there has to be a real on Jan. 11 by MacLehose Press, ning author Imre Kertész’s most of those of Irène Némirovsky’s nates people,” says French writer literary response to the tragedy of and Zalmen Gradowski’s Aus- famous novel “Fatelessness,” novel “Suite Française,” which Pierre Assouline, whose literary the Holocaust,” says Mr. MacLe- Local chwitz memoir, which was pub- about his teenage years in Aus- was first published in France in blog La République des Livres is hose. “In my view, you don’t need City currency Œ lished in France last year under chwitz and Buchenwald, finally 2004 and was subsequently trans- the most popular of its kind in ‘Schindler’s List,’ you don’t need the title “Au Coeur de l’Enfer” got to be published in German and lated into 38 languages, selling France. “The popularity of writers ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but you do need New York $450 Œ352 (“In the Heart of Hell”). Recent re- other European languages. more than 2.5 million copies, as of like Stefan Zweig and Joseph Hélène Berr and Chil Rajchman.’ London £300 Œ365 issues have also included French- The German-born poet and 2008. Though “Alone in Berlin” Roth, especially in a country like He believes that publishers woman Agnès Humbert’s “Résis- translator Michael Hofmann—who was first published in Germany in France, has a lot to do with an must play their part. “The priority Paris Œ490 Œ490 tance,” an intense memoir about was widely praised for his English- 1947, whereas “Suite Française” acute nostalgia for Mitteleuropa I think is to educate the next gen- the first tentative steps of the Re- language translation of Hans Falla- was discovered years after the [middle Europe], a nostalgia for a eration and their children,” he Frankfurt Œ500 Œ500 sistance and Humbert’s subse- da’s novel “Alone in Berlin,” which war had ended, both novels have a highly cultured and diverse Eu- says. “And the more that the Rome Œ550 Œ550 quent capture by the Gestapo. was published in the U.K. in Janu- similarly visceral expressionistic rope, with its Jewish dimension, books we publish are real and of The Paris-based English writer ary and is expected to exceed sweep that could only have been that existed between the wars.” irreproachable quality the more Brussels Œ570 Œ570 Alan Riding, whose cultural his- sales of 250,000 copies there by the result of experiencing some- The kind of following writers you can give them to be read.” Note: Prices of annual membership fee for the tory of Nazi-occupied Paris “And the end of the year—believes that thing dreadful at first hand. like Zweig and Roth have long had Tobias Grey is a writer charge card, plus taxes, as provided by retailers the Show Went On” is published Fallada “was coming out of a Sil- “If you read not only ‘Alone in in France is now beginning to be based in Paris in each city, averaged and converted into euros.

W14 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W3 v Food & Wine v Top Picks A clear difference A temporary peek inside the Stedelijk USED TO have a bit of a glass fe- served me well. But lately I have Itish. Don’t get me wrong, there been rethinking my stance. I have Amsterdam: “If you want a pic- was nothing sinister in my apprecia- been to a few dinners of late ture of the future, imagine a boot tion of glassware, it’s just that imme- where the wine in question was, in stamping on a human face—for- diately after university, when I was no uncertain terms, ruined by the ever.” George Orwell’s doom-laden

first getting into wine seriously and glass. Moreover, on other occasions Julien Hekimian for the Wall Street Journa words from the novel “1984” domi- had a bit of money in my back when I have been served wine in nate four walls of the “Hall of pocket, I went out and bought a Georg Riedel glass I have found it Honor” in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk number of Georg Riedel wineglasses. immeasurably improved. Museum and welcome visitors to the For those of you who haven’t It reminded me that perhaps it museum’s first exhibition since it heard of Georg Riedel, he is by far was time to restock the glass cabi- closed for renovation six years ago. net. So, with an open mind, an empty Before it reopens fully next year, notebook and a bottle of wine, I vis- Amsterdam’s flagship museum for Wine ited Around Wine, Britain’s largest contemporary art is inviting the Courtesy of Christie's WILL LYONS glassware retailer, for a tasting. public back with a pair of tempo- Charlie Chaplin Back in the days when I was rary exhibitions collectively labeled buying serious wineglasses, Georg “The Temporary Stedelijk.” Half the the most influential man in wine Riedel had the field to himself. ground floor is dedicated to “Monu- glass design. When he inherited his Now I am delighted to say there mentalisme,” an exhibition of Comedian’s father’s glassware factory in Aus- are several considerably cheaper video, photography and sculpture tria, the young Georg decided to de- suppliers that are worth tracking that reflects on the role of history Lake Geneva sign a range of glasses suited to down. Most notably, Schott Zwie- and national identity in contempo- various styles of wine. The premise sel, Zalto Glasmanufaktur, Darting- rary art. “Taking Place” occupies was based on what Riedel de- ton and Eisch. Before we get on to the rest of the museum, filling the furnishings scribes as the tongue map, whereby the tasting, it is also worth bear- newly renovated spaces with instal- by directing the flow of the liquid ing in mind that it isn’t necessary lations such as Barbara Kruger’s HARLIE CHAPLIN, legend- toward a specific area of the to spend a fortune on your glass. “Past/Present/Future,” with its wall- Cary gentleman tramp, will be in tongue, a glass can actually alter As long as you follow a few basic height Orwell quotation, and intro- the auction limelight this month. the flavor of the wine. The Riedel principles when choosing, most ducing the visitor to the museum During a decorative-arts sale portfolio is huge, with glasses for glasses will suffice. The three guid- room by room. Gert Jan van Rooij at Christie’s Amsterdam (Sept. young Bordeaux, old Bordeaux, Char- ing principles are: The glass should The installations in “The Tempo- ‘Scattered matter brought to a known density with the weight of the world / Cusped’ (2007) by Lawrence Weiner. 21-22), furnishings will be offered donnay, Chianti, Burgundy, Riesling be as thin as possible; it should rary Stedelijk” range from the humor- from the famous comedian’s and so on. The prices can also be not have a rim that interrupts the ous to sharp social critique. Louise home at Corsier-sur-Vevey on huge, ranging from £15 for a basic flow into the mouth; the bowl Lawler’s voice installation “Bird- the alienation of the individual in the have no way of knowing you’re walk- dow. Like a magic lantern, the Lake Geneva. They include chairs, tasting glass to £100 for the Bur- should also be as fat as possible, Savoring fouée calls,” a collection of warbles and corporate world, with its bloodless ing across the work on your way to merry-go-round of mirrors creates tables, beds, mirrors and other gundy glass. At various stages dur- with the widest part a third of the whistles that turns the names of fa- interactions and stilted language. the next room. a shifting panorama of the historic objects of everyday life. ing my glassware fad I owned most way up—this is the level up to mous male artists from the 70s and There is also the playful. Ger Van But perhaps the work that best il- buildings that surround the mu- of the major examples, including which you should pour the wine. 80s (think Andy Warhol and Gerhard Elk’s “The Well-Polished Floor lustrates the Stedelijk’s reopening seum and visitors to the exhibition. the Riedel Sommeliers Burgundy Now, on to the tasting. I se- A taste of the puffy, delicacy-stuffed bread offers Richter) into unique ‘calls’, while Mar- Sculpture” is exactly what the title to the world is Germaine Kruip’s —Joel Weickgenant Collecting Grand Cru, whose elaborately bal- lected a 2003 Chambolle-Musigny, ianne Flotron’s “Fired,” a scripted implies, and without reading the de- “Daytime,” a rotating set of inter- Until Jan. 9 MARGARET STUDER looned bowl has earned it a place in a bid to test the capricious Pinot a mouthwatering trip into France’s distant past video sequence from 2007, riffs on scriptive plaque on the wall, you locking mirrors installed in a win- www.stedelijk.nl on permanent display in New York’s Noir grape variety. I tasted it in five Museum of Modern Art. different glasses. An ISO, a Schott By Jacqueline Friedrich pette, a large (locally cultivated) row streets, the lush river banks. Chaplin (1889-1977) lived for But my relationship with very ex- Zwiesel standard white wineglass, AT WITH YOUR fingers. mushroom, stuffed and baked to And most of the other fouée restau- the last 24 years of his life in Le pensive wineglasses ended when Riedel’s Vinum Bordeaux, Zalto’s It’s more practical.” melting crunchiness in the hearth. rants are located in similarly capti- Manoir de Ban, a 16-room man- they began to break. One by one, my handmade burgundy glass and “E That seems shocking Next the fouées are brought from vating settings such as troglodyte 25 Brook Street: Hendrix and Handel’s London home sion surrounded by a wooded collection disappeared as the rough Riedel’s famous burgundy glass. In advice from the owner of a French the hearth to be filled with rillettes, caves—enormous, hydra-headed park, with his wife Oona and and tumble of living in a shared flat each glass, the wine’s taste restaurant. Etiquette is so hard- butter or, better yet, both. And along labyrinths created when the stone London: One of London’s best- edge in their own time. ings. His autograph song lyrics, hast- their eight children. took its toll. Whether it was break- changed dramatically. In the ISO, it wired into the French brain that its comes a lightly chilled Anjou rouge, in was quarried for building the local kept secrets is Handel House, a tiny The current “Hendrix in Britain” ily scrawled directions for getting to U.K.-born Chaplin settled in ing them during washing-up, knock- was very intense, with overpower- well-bred citizens attack chicken this case, a forthright Cabernet Franc. châteaux, churches and homes. museum commemorating the 18th- show marks the 40th anniversary of the Isle of Wight Festival (where he Switzerland in 1953 after more ing them off the table or even on ing notes of baked cherry. In the wings with bold knife and fork. We The main course, confit de ca- Many now serve as winemaking or century composer who was the best- the great American singer/guitar- made what was to be his last appear- than 40 years in the U.S. He left one occasion cracking them under Schott Zwiesel standard white are, however, in La Grange à Dîme, nard and mogettes, cooks in the mushroom-cultivating cellars. known occupant of 25 Brook Street ist’s death on Sept. 18, 1970. The top- ance in 1970), and concert programs the U.S. after being caught up in hot, running water, I came to the con- wineglass, spicier notes were high- a fouée restaurant in the French hearth in a big casserole to lip- About 21 kilometers west of Mon- in smart Mayfair. The upper floors of floor flat was his home for long peri- and memorabilia are displayed the anti-communist witch-hunts clusion that drinking wine from hand- lighted, while the Vinum Bordeaux town of Montreuil-Bellay, a breed smacking crustiness. I stuffed every- treuil-Bellay you’ll find some of the No. 23 next door have been incorpo- ods while he played in many venues alongside his outrageous costumes. of the McCarthy era. Accused of made lead crystal probably wasn’t revealed an earthy character. The of eatery known by few travelers. thing into the fouées, which I had al- Loire’s most remarkable troglodyte rated into Handel House as the muse- across London, including the two The show traces Hendrix’s rise to un-American activities, his work for me. I went out and bought six latter two glasses were the obvious And fouée-restaurant fare practi- ready smothered with butter. Dis- caves, among them Dénezé-sous- um’s offices; and an even better- great concerts “the Jimi Hendrix Ex- fame, his songwriting craft, his virtu- in the U.S. film industry had be- boxes of ISO (International Organiza- stars, making the wine taste more cally defies cutlery. gustingly delicious. Then came Doué, its walls completely covered kept secret is that one of the most perience” at the Royal Albert Hall in oso electric-guitar playing, and spec- come virtually impossible. tion for Standardization) wine-tast- refined, pure and balanced. In short, Fouée is an ancient bread. His- celebrated musicians of the 20th cen- February 1969. ulates on his legacy for music and Chaplin—known for such ing glasses, the approved size and they took all the heat out of it. The tory tells us that it was born as a way tury, Jimi Hendrix, lived there with The show explores his London popular culture. quips as “A day without a smile shape—a tapered tulip bowl—for Riedel was by a margin the winner, for bakers to test the heat of their his English girlfriend, Kathy Etching- life, music, performances and leg- After moving to Brook Street in is a wasted day” and “I am one wine judging and competitions and I drawing out more nuanced flavors. wood ovens: they’d rip off a piece of Fouée is an ancient bread—history tells ham, in 1968-’69. It’s a long way from acy, in the rooms where he lived, 1968, thrilled by the Handel connec- thing and one thing only—and have used them for tasting, bar the But at a £100 a glass compared dough, roll it out and stick it in the us that it was born as a way for bakers George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” wrote, played and entertained his tion, Hendrix bought all the recordings that is a clown. It places me on odd exception, ever since. with Zalto’s £28, I know which I oven. Minutes later, out comes a to Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” but both friends during the particularly pro- of Handel’s music he could find. His a higher plane than any politi- And I must say that, for criti- would prefer, especially considering puffed-up bubble of hot crust filled to test the heat of their wood ovens. musician/composers were cutting lific period just before his untimely, rent, by the way, was £30 a week; when cian”—made his name in silent cally evaluating a wine, they have my breakage record. with air. Its closest relative may be still slightly mysterious death. Handel lived next door from 1723-’59, films. His first “talkie” was “The the pita. But your standard pita is There is a good deal of material he paid £60 a year. —Paul Levy Great Dictator” (1940), a master- burlap to the fouée’s gossamer. Orange velvet jacket (late 1967), never before seen in the U.K., includ- Until Nov. 7 piece satirizing Hitler and Nazism. Nature abhors a vacuum and so salad and tangy goat cheese, fol- with enigmatic 16th- and 17th-cen- formerly owned by Jimi Hendrix. ing images, film clips and record- www.handelhouse.org Far from retiring after his move does a fouée. You prick it open and lowed by the first strawberries of tury sculptures, and La Rocheme- Experience Music Project permanent collection to Le Manoir de Ban, Chaplin con- DRINKING NOW fill it with various stuffings, most of the season and topped with the best nier, a 20-room troglodyte village, tinued to make films and com- them dictated by local tradition, to whipped cream I have ever eaten. with farms and a chapel, of more pose musical scores. wit: rillettes (unctuous pork spread La Grange à Dîme, a 15th-century than two acres. La Genevraie is, Rediscovering the classic designs of Charlotte Perriand Kicking off Chaplin’s section called “brown marmalade” by novel- structure, was once the storage blessedly, part of this ensemble. of the decorative-arts sale will Les Monts Damnés ist Honoré de Balzac), mogettes (the place for “gifts” (taxes, really) that La Genevraie’s setting is enchant- Zurich: French designer Char- ents went beyond furniture design be an Italian red-and-black Vendée’s celebrated dried white commoners were obliged to give lo- ing: A path curves down to the en- lotte Perriand was one of the rare and included photography as well as painted organ (estimate: Sancerre, France beans), Loire goat cheese and cal lords. The heavy wood beams, try, bordered with flowering rose- women to establish herself in Paris’s politics, which in turn influenced Œ600-Œ800); and an oak and lightly salted butter. the magnificent chestnut eaves all bushes. The main room is surely as male-dominated art world in the her work as a designer. brass gramophone (estimate: Vintage: 2008 Here you have the mainstays of date from the building’s origins. close as a troglodyte cave can ever 1920s, winning praise from stars Together with French painter Œ150-Œ250). the honest-to-God fouée restau- From time to time musicians per- get to evoking a proper English tea such as Swiss architect Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger and architect Pierre A set of 24 beech wood Price: about £25 or Œ30 rant, a style of eatery pretty much form medieval music, and the staff, parlor—with its candles and vases who asked her to join his renowned Jeanneret, Perriand in the 1930s dining chairs and extending ta- limited to the Saumurois in the at all times, wears period dress. filled with fresh roses, its window office in 1927 after seeing her chased for so-called “objets trouvés” ble, which Chaplin used for fam- western stretch of the Loire Valley. This, at first, made me fear termi- sills lined with antique dolls and its chrome steel design for a bar that re- during long walks along the sea and ily dinners and entertaining 12.5% guests, is expected to fetch Alcohol content: The set menus vary little from one nal corniness. What the staff was ac- walls hung with old kitchen utensils. flected his own taste for clear lines. in the woods, always on the lookout place to another and are usually tually wearing, however—long Chopped mushrooms, cooked to photograph magic forms. Œ12,000-Œ18,000. A show in Zurich at the Museum Loire’s village of Sancerre fleshed out with mushrooms, a skirts, embroidered vests and smocks— with carrots and seasonings, come Her interest in politics and her An opulent white-painted, für Gestaltung, called “Charlotte meat preparation, salad, dessert was no different from what they wear stuffed into fouées. Then rillettes sense of social responsibilty—she four-poster bed in the style makes some of the world’s Perriand—Designer, Photographer, most glorious Sauvignon and serviceable regional wine. during the numerous local fairs and followed by rillauds, large cubes of stunned the French public in 1936 of Louis XVI is estimated at Killjoys might dismiss these as reunions of wine brotherhoods. This pork which have been salted and Activist,” reminds us that furniture with a huge photo wall depicting Œ4,000-Œ6,000; an English gilt Blancs, and this is a classic “theme” restaurants, but their food- is Plantagenet country. There is al- simmered in water until fork-ten- classics such as the B306 Chaise the plight of Paris’s poor—led her to wood mirror in the style of example. With time, it opens up stuffs are based on ancient food- ways a reason to don medieval garb der. These have been sliced into glis- Longue and the LC2 Grand Confort develop furniture such as the 1954 George III, at Œ1,000-Œ1,500; ways—many known to Rabelais— and cue the local Jordi Savalls. tening little strips and piled onto su- armchair were in part developed by stackable wooden chair “Chaise Om- a Louis XV-style tulipwood and in the glass to reveal plenty of and are resolutely home-grown. What’s more, it fits the setting. perb mogettes. There is a break be- this French artist, whose other bre” that speaks of her wish to pro- rosewood commode, at fresh citrus flavors, underneath Your meal at La Grange à Dîme, Montreuil-Bellay, an enchanting fore cheese and dessert (excellent work remains unduly overshad- duce affordable but beautiful house- Œ2,500-Œ3,500; and an Edward- for example, starts with a glass of town on the river Thouet with an pear-and-chocolate tart) to tour the owed by her former boss. The exhibi- hold objects. —Goran Mijuk ian mahogany writing table, at which lies a rich texture. © AChP / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich sweet Chenin Blanc from the Cote- 11th-century château, invites stroll- caves, see the oven and chat with tion portrays a free-spirited, rebel- Until Oct. 24 Œ400-Œ600. aux du Layon to accompany a gali- ing—around the fortress, the nar- the owner-baker. lious artist, whose interests and tal- www.museum-gestaltung.ch ‘Pavillon de l’Agriculture: La France agricole’ (1937) by Charlotte Perriand/Fernand Léger.

W4 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W13 v Art Farmer’s Frankensteinian fairies British artist crafts minuscule insect sculptures that embrace the grotesque with a zeal that sets her apart

By Melissa Goldstein rather shocking narratives of vio-

London lence and interspecies warfare. Julien Hekimian for the Wall Street Journal (3) F WE MET in a bar, I would Tessa creates a parable of the worst say ‘I’m an artist,’” Tessa in human behaviors—torture, im- “I Farmer says, sitting in her prisonment, etc.—and reminds us East London studio and giggling that we continue to do these things softly. “You would say ‘Oh! Do you generation after generation.” paint?’ And I would say, “No, I make But the artist herself shies away small stuff.” To illustrate her point, from linking her work to a comment she gestures to the disembodied in- on mankind. “I’m not trying to say sect wings that lie strewn across her something about humanity,” she in- work surface—a tabletop resem- sists. “I’m trying to reflect the strug- Clockwise from left page: foueés are prepared and cooked in a traditional oven by bling an entomological Guernica of gle of nature ... Darwin was quoted Jean-Pierre Hay, chef of ‘La Grange a Dime’; foueé stuffed with mushrooms and miniature proportions. somewhere saying that he found it carrots, a speciality at ‘Les Caves de la Genevraie’; a view of ‘Les Caves de la Since the late 1990s, Ms. Farmer, difficult to believe in God, because Genevraie’, a famous foueé restaurant; foueé restaurant ‘La Grange a Dime’. 32yearsold,hasbeenpopulatingthe why would God invent the parasitic artworldwithaspeciesoffairiesshe wasp, which eats the host alive?” meticulously crafts from compos- She pauses for effect before com- ites of insects, leaves and root mate- menting appreciatively. “It’s really rials.Thefairiesarethecentralchar- quite grotesque.” acters inthe artist’s sculptures,each Though Ms. Farmer’s work em- of which comes packaged with a ma- braces the grotesque with a zeal that cabre narrative that sees the unde- sets her apart from others, her tectable beings wreaking all sorts of choice of materials positions her at Darwinian havoc. the center of an artistic zeitgeist. Born in Birmingham, England, “There are an incredible number of Ms.FarmerattendedOxfordUniversi- artists using organic materials to- ty’s Ruskin School of Drawing and day,” says Mr. McFadden. “I think it Fine Art. It was during an anatomy is part of a zeitgeist that is informed class that inspiration struck, and the by issues of sustainability, our am- artist’s ensuing “ah-ha moment” biguous relationships with the natu- Above, ‘Swarm’ (2004); took the form of a 1.5 meter skeleton ral world, and a fascination with below, artist Tessa Farmer in her studio. constructedfromtwigsandbark.Her death and resurrection.” species “evolved” from there, shrink- “People don’t know whether taxi- ing down to its current eye-straining dermy is good or bad, so often you measurements (each fairy measures throwitinapieceofartanditgetsalot between7millimetersand10millime- of attention,” says Melissa Milgrom, ters), though the artist hopes to fur- author of “Still Life: Adventures in The authenticity and the quality parking area you must descend a ther whittle the size, “perhaps to- Taxidermy,” published in March. of the products served at both La rocky path to a dirt road, past a pri- ward the microscopic,” she says. What is clear is that Ms. Farmer Grange à Dîme and La Genevraie vate home, before getting to the tro- “One day, I gave them wings,” she has never been in higher demand. have been guaranteed by the Parc glodyte that houses the restaurant. explains, then stops, correcting her- This summer alone, she has shown Naturel Régional Loire-Anjou-Tou- The fouées here are oblong rather self: “They grew wings.” This is the works in the company of Ron Arad, raine, which supervises activities than round and might win the gold way she often speaks, adopting the MatCollishawandDamienHirstinex- associated with the Loire since it medal for quality. The young server David Attenborough role of presenter hibitionsthroughouttheworld.InOc- has been recognized as Unesco’s keeps them coming and lights a can- and naturalist when discussing her tober, her work “Swarm,” which is largest World Heritage site. Two dle under a serving dish for the mo- Frankensteinian creation. composed of 120 suspended moving other restaurants are also recom- gettes—which follow the rillettes “I wanted to make a skeleton parts, will be included in the second mended: Le Cave aux Moines, where and butter, accompanied by slabs of sort of fetus to go inside a bright red installment of the Saatchi Gallery’s fouées are served with mushrooms smoky Vendée ham cooked in the tulip in the garden—something I “Newspeak: British Art Now” exhibi- grown on the spot, and Le Moulin wood oven. There’s salad, excellent could fool my brother with,” she con- tion—a survey of contemporary Brit- de Sarre, a working flour mill with a goat cheese from north of Angers fides. The impulse seamlessly links ish talent billed as the unofficial se- fouée restaurant adjunct. and, for dessert, Tarte Tatin. her to one of her professed influ- quel to Saatchi’s landmark YBA exhi- Many of the ever-increasing num- Each of these restaurants is cav- ences, Victorian artists the Wright bition “Sensation,” which previously ber of fouée restaurants don’t make ernous. They accept tour buses. sisters, who were famed for the long- opened at the State Hermitage Mu- the grade. Le Clos des Roches, deep Fear not. You’re likely to be sur- running artistic hoax begun in 1917, seum in St. Petersburg. Charles Saat- in the fields of Grezille, however, is rounded by locals out for a down- when they successfully convinced a chi, one of Ms. Farmer’s early fans, every bit as good as the best. home feast. segment of the public that fairies snapped up “Swarm” in 2004 before You might want to bring a flash- Jacqueline Friedrich is did indeed exist by manipulating pa- the artist had a chance to finish the light when dining here. From the a writer based in Paris. per cut-outs in photographs staged companion segment of the piece— in their garden. once she had completed it, he Of course, where the Wright sis- promptly purchased that as well. Where to stay The restaurants ters’ fairies frolicked among flowers With no slowdown in sight, Ms. in a sweet, Hans Christian Andersen Farmer is prepping for a group exhi- Château de Verrières La Grange à Dîme manner, Ms. Farmer’s fairies are bitionnextmonthatBathSpaUniver- A 10-room gem in the center of open nightly in season and for predatory things whose cunning sity and for a solo show in the spring Saumur, behind the National Riding Sunday lunch; open weekends grows in tandem with the artist’s at her London gallery, Danielle Ar- Academy (Cadre Noir), with a off-season. Closed Mondays. own studies of insect behavior. To naud. She also plans to begin work dreamy park and a pool. Owner % 02-41-50-97-24; date, the fairies have waged a war of on a new sculpture incorporating a Yolaine de Valbray-Auger couldn’t be grange-a-dime.com terror against insects in battleships gift of a recently deceased chinchilla more accommodating. Rates from constructed from animal bones bythenameofYetiPolaszek,thefam- Œ150 for a double and Œ290 for an Les Caves de la Genevraie (“Swarm” 2004); adopted the stom- ily pet of an entomologist friend apartment-size suite decorated with % 02-41-59-34-22; ach-turning behavior of parasitic from London’s Natural History Mu- museum-quality Chinese pottery. http://genevraie.troglodyte.info wasps by inhabiting a fox as their seum, where Ms. Farmer did a resi- % +33-241-38-05-15 (from abroad) host and filling its ears and fur with dency in 2007. [email protected] Le Clos des Roches larvae (“Little Savages” 2007); and The gift came with conditions: a teamed up with the gray squirrels of handwritten note from the entomolo- open for lunch and dinner with Demeure de la Vignole Northumberland,England,todobat- gist’swife stipulating thatthe lateMr. reservation; closed Mondays, Friday tle with the endangered native red Polaszek be represented “only as a If the owner’s froideur doesn’t de- lunchtimes and Sunday nights squirrels for commissioned installa- good character recognizable for what ter you, this 10-room semi-cave ho- except during bank holidays. tel overlooking the vineyards of % 02-41-45-59-36, tion “A Darker Shade of Gray” he was.” Ms. Farmer reads back the Tessa Farmer (t); Domenico Pugliese for The Wall Street Journal (b) (2010), on view as part of Belsay note. “I agreed to honor their wishes, s Saumur-Champigny has lesclosdesroches.fr Hall’s current “Extraordinary Mea- so I will, but I don’t know how. These a lot to offer: a charming site; the- sures” exhibition until Sept. 26. people might not be happy if I cover matically decorated rooms; and, La Cave aux Moines “Tessa’s work takes concentra- their chinchilla in wasps nests,” she above all, a dramatic heated swim- % 02-41-67-95-64, tion to unravel, says New York’s Mu- saysbeforeaddingwistfully,butdiplo- ming pool carved into the rock of cave-aux-moines.com its own troglodyte cave. Think Fell- seum of Arts & Design curator matically, “I think I can make it really *NFL GAME PASS IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE U.S., MEXICO, BAHAMAS, BERMUDA, ANTIGUA, David McFadden, who included her beautiful,butmyideaofbeautymight ini. Rates from Œ95 for a double. Le Moulin de Sarré AND U.S. TERRITORIES. NFL GAME PASS IN THE U.K. DOES NOT INCLUDE NFL REDZONE. ADDITIONAL in the museum’s current “Dead or not be their idea of beauty.” % +33-241-53-67-00, % 02-41-51-81-32, RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY, INCLUDING BLACKOUT RESTRICTIONS. ©2010 NFL ENTERPRISES LLC. TEAM NAMES/LOGOS/INDICIA ARE TRADEMARKS OF THE TEAMS INDICATED. Alive” exhibition. “The magic sets —Melissa Goldstein is a writer [email protected] www.moulin-de-sarre.fr ALL OTHER NFL-RELATED TRADEMARKS ARE TRADEMARKS OF THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE. in as visitors begin to read the based in London. Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London

W12 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W5 v Travel Alamy

         
     
    
  
  
  
  
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95 NORKELING A METER above there is rarely more than one plane Œ7 to Œ20 will take you on a day from Monza, Italy, and an experi- at almost all restaurants on Karpa- the seabed, an excited 7-year- parked there at a time, and reach- tour to popular beaches. enced scuba diver, was on her first thos, there were makarounes,a Sold is tugging on my ankle. I ing the island by ferry from Athens Part of the reason so few boats diving trip to Karpathos. “There are whole-wheat pasta dressed with twist to see my son act out an is a 20-hour, 415-kilometer affair. berth in its waters is the meltemi, a some marvelous rock formations fried onions, olive oil and aged feta, aquatic pantomime of agitation, In addition to fewer tourists, constant summer wind so strong it here, including underwater caves and saganaki, a pan-fried fresh eyes bulging behind his mask, a more privacy and relatively low bends pine trees over permanently and grottoes,” she says. “You don’t goat cheese. finger stabbing down through the prices, there were few signs of the into bonsai-like sculptures. This have the variety of sea life you’d Nina’s Taverna is run by Aposto- seawater to point at…What? turmoil investing the rest of the strong wind makes mooring along find at a tropical destination, but lis Ekizoglou, 30, while his brother The water is so clear we can country during our visit to Karpa- the island’s coast difficult at best, the water is crystal-clear and Leftekis, 26, oversees the kitchen. $&  %    make out distant swimmers churn- thos in August. When Greek Prime but keeps temperatures generally there’s still plenty to see. Best of Both moved back to Karpathos af- ing their legs on the opposite end Minister George A. Papandreou set lower than on other Greek isles. all, there are so few tourists that ter studying and working in large of the cove. A school of blue-lined stringent economic austerity mea- During the third week of August, most of the time you’re alone.” hotels in Athens. “I like it much sardines sweeps around us, star- sures in place earlier this summer, when most of Greece was in the Despite its beautiful waters, Kar- more here. Life is easier, no stress,” tled by my son’s splashing to slip the island has remained essentially grip of a heat wave, the meltemi pathian culture is concentrated on says Apostolis Ekizoglou, gesturing away over the rocks like a lady’s free of the strikes, protests and died down and temperatures on land rather than the sea. Evidence out from the restaurant terrace to scarf caught in the wind. A lone widespread social unrest that have Karpathos promptly shot above 40 of this can be found in the food the vast blue Amoopi Bay below. bright silver sea bream streaks off plagued other parts of Greece. degrees centigrade during the day. served in its restaurants, where “We serve the traditional foods, into deeper blue, its black half- While the turmoil has taken a “We never have heat like this,” com- meats such as lamb, chicken and but my brother studied as a chef in moon tail slicing the water in a toll on stores and supermarket plained Nina Ekizoglou, owner of pork play a leading role. Tender Athens, and he likes to surprise peo- burst of energy. Dentex and rain- shelves, nearly everywhere want Nina’s Studios, a restaurant and ho- spiced skewers called souvlaki, feta- ple.” The surprise that evening was bow-colored wrasse snuffle the was met with a shrug and a smile. tel complex in Amoopi. “Without cheese-stuffed hamburgers called a delicious lamb stuffato, cinnamon- white sand below, stirring up a On an island where almost every- the wind, we’re all suffering!” bifteki and a range of oven-roasted flavored roasted lamb served on a meal, while tiger-striped gobies one speaks workable English, a The coast itself is a collection of meats with potatoes, green beans, bed of pinoli-shaped pasta. lay among the rocks, waiting to rapid-fire “it’s O.K.” has become a water-worn escarpments, creating eggplant and tomatoes can be Two days later we took an after- snap the smaller fish up in turn. sort of island mantra. There’s no an endless succession of individual found on every menu. noon to drive up to Olympos, a Any one of these could capture coffee on the shelf? “It’s O.K. It’s coves and bays. There is a beach for Seafood dishes are walk-ons, mountain town in the north of the my attention. What, exactly, has O.K. It’s O.K.,” responds a clerk in every flavor, from the small, rocky limited to the rare grilled octopus, island, where centuries-old tradi- captured his? a single breath. “Next week.” and abandoned for people in search fried calamari, tiny Karpathian tions still reign supreme. The 27-ki- We were exploring a cove in Geographically, Karpathos com- of privacy, to broad, sandy and ser- shrimp or sardines, and occasional lometer road leading up to the town Amoopi Bay, one of several lime- prises mostly coastline—a thin, viced for sunbathers who like to fish fillets, more often than not ac- was all dust, gravel and potholes, stone-lined turquoise pools of wa- 47-kilometer long sliver of moun- people-watch. Our tourist map companied by little asterisks that but cranes and massive construc- "   $ "   ""    
     ter on the Greek island of Karpa- tains jutting up out of the Mediter- showed 68 official beaches. Adding lead to small print reading “some tion machines parked along the
 

  
  
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 tined to showcase them. Among the Fewer than a dozen small, brightly beaches would easily push that During our two-week-long stay, In the town square, Massimo ( southernmost islands in the Dode- painted towns dot its arid hillsides, number into the hundreds. we ate several meals at Nina’s Tav- Oneglia, 39 years old, a lawyer from A   + G ' &  #  G     .   8  < #   .   A=  .   canese chain, it is deep in the heart and none is more than a few min- But whether deep and craggy, erna, which specializes in tradi- Milan, Italy, mused about the   0  :!
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9:: of the Aegean Sea. There is no way utes’ drive away from a beach. smooth and sandy, level and rocky, tional Karpathian meals. We en- changes he’d seen the island make to stumble onto Karpathos; you In Pigadia, the island’s capital, or vast and shallow, these beaches joyed classic Greek salads, tzatziki, in just a few years. He returned to "  ! #$   %     &  '   ( )%%   *        % &   +    ,  %    ++ -     &&+  + &   +  +  +      &  have to make an effort to get here. only a handful of small fishing all have one thing in common: ex- a traditional dish made with yo- Karpathos this summer with his ./ 0   )&&     The distance from the rest of boats are docked at the port, as well traordinarily crystalline water. gurt, cucumbers and garlic, as well wife after an initial visit in 2005, the world, however, is part of the as bigger vessels, with names such Snorkeling the coast of Karpathos as tender pork roast lined with and found it surprisingly modern-

W6 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W11 returned to inspect it again on the second day of previews, appeared to have happened to a section of it. This concentration on the qualities of air and space in building environ- ments,ratherthanonmodelsofproposedgrandsprojets,characterizedmany of the exhibits. Perhaps it is a response to economic circumstances. If actual construction is unlikely, virtual constructions have licence to be unlikely, too. Malaysia offered models of conventional towers, but on closer inspec- tion some were in trees, or under water. The popularity of Denmark’s white miniatures of real construction projects (entitled “What Makes A Livable City?”) may have been due not only to the country’s enviable repu- tation for architecture but also to the fact that, unless one was prepared to Sergio Pirrone for The Wall Street Journal climb into a jam-packed horizontal inflatable balloon, their opening was Clockwise from top left, Getty; Gijs de Kruijff; Aaron Maines (2) the only one that offered beer. Only in the American pavilion, where the history of John Portman’s Peachtree development in Atlanta in bar charts of profits, jobs and square footage, projected on the wall, rose like the perspex models on the table be- hind, was there the uncompromising number-crunching of dollars per brick. Three pavilions above all share a theme relating to Mr. Baratta and Ms. Sejima’s idea of “listening to the space in which we live” in a practical fash- ion, even when expressed in wildly different interpretations. The Dutch, Jap- anese and French national entries each examine the notion of the void in modern cities. The Netherlands pavilion does it in the most straightforward manner, simply pointing out that the building lies empty for almost nine months of the year. As you enter an empty room, there is a suspended blue foam ceiling that, when one proceeds to the upper level, turns out from above to be a model of a city. It provides a neat visual example of the percent- age of empty space in European urban spaces. Dominique Perrault, who curated the French pavilion, entitled “Metropo- lis?,” says he believes, “The future of the city is to control the quality of that empty space.” In a kinetic, vertiginous multimedia representation of sev- eral French cities, his presentation argues that these spaces mean that our notions of the territory of a city are bound to change. “At first I was con- cerned that the void would be commandeered by developers or the state, but it is simply too big—85% or more. It’s impossible now to imagine expan- sion continuing,” he says. Mr. Perrault is so cheerfully enthusiastic that I hesitate to mention the Japanese entry, entitled “Void Metabolism.” He roars with laughter. “I know, they are arguing exactly the opposite.” Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow, which designed the elegant domestic models in Japan’s pavilion, uses a film of the rapidly changing lay- out of Tokyo to make his point. “During the 20th century, architects could test different expressions and techniques, but the house was always particu- larized by consumers. Especially in Tokyo, where the ownership of small plots means that the average life span of houses is only 26 years,” he says. “But there is no real connection with neighbors. We feel that the Internet Clockwise from opposite page: A quiet harbor on and social networks have changed those dynamics, and that there is now Karpathos; whitewashed windmills overlooking the opportunity to create a new typology; to make a house as generous as the sea; a priest walks through the town of Olympos; possible and at the same time begin to use the adjacent spaces to create new 7-year-old Michelangelo Maines builds a sandcastle community frameworks.” on Michaliou Kipos beach. Looking at Mr. Tsukamoto’s spare, graceful wooden model of an ordi- nary townhouse is a reminder that the end purpose of this huge gathering, these dozens of installations, models, films, meetings, discussions and dif- ferent approaches is, after all, as simple as the theme suggests: providing a pleasant room to sit in, an agreeable place for people to meet. —Andrew McKie is a writer based in Cambridgeshire, England.

ized. “You can drive almost every- town the following evening to dine ON THE ISLAND DISTINCTIVE PROPERTIES &ESTATES where now,” he said. “When we first at a restaurant that had caught came here none of the secondary our eye during the festival, we Where to stay roads were paved. We had to rent a found it still full of life, with chil- The Apolis features luxury accom- In Menetes, Pelaga Taverna serves CARIBBEAN UNITED STATES motorbike just to get to beaches dren chasing each other up and modations including a beautiful ter- excellent Karpathian fare at tables Top to bottom: ‘Decay of a Dome’ by Amateur Architecture Studio; (from left) Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima and Wim like Apella and Agios Nikolaos.” down the town’s narrow alleys, race restaurant and pool overlooking set up outside on the main square. Wenders at a talk about Mr. Wenders’s film of the architects’ Rolex Learning Centre at Lausanne; the townhouse in the In Olympus the surroundings re- and old men drinking ouzo and ar- the bay. During peak season, double % +30-22450-81135 Japanese pavilion, created by Atelier Bow-Wow; the pavilion extends through the floor with a further story below. mained reminiscent of a time long guing about soccer outside the rooms range between Œ100 and ago with its whitewashed cement café in its main square.
  
Œ120 per night, including breakfast. What to do walls—common to many of the The streets leading to Menetes
 
 % +30-22450-81200 In Pigadia, the Karpathos Diving        Greek isles—and an elegant bell were all paved, and satellite dishes           www.apolis.eu School provides training courses,       !  tower cupola outlined in blue, sat atop almost every house. For all    !"   tours and equipment to divers. bright red geraniums and fuchsia its modernization, there was noth-  #    !   Nina’s Studios provides studio www.diveinkarpathos.gr $%&' "    bougainvillea. Elderly women ing cynical about Menetes, no hint        apartments with kitchenettes—tradi- dressed in traditional garb of black, of the commercialization of Karpa- billowing dresses with crisp white thos we’d found in Olympos. tionally a popular solution across On the southern tip of the island, Nevertheless, the greatest de- Greece—and is located just above Club Mistral Karpathos provides
 

   
      lights lay down below, off the picturesque Kastelia Bay. Double windsurf stations, training and       
        Our tourist map showed 68 official beaches. coast and underwater. rooms from Œ50 per night, including equipment.                      !"#   In the bay in Amoopi, my son breakfast at Nina’s Taverna, which www.windsurfing-karpathos.com $   %           finally managed to direct my atten- serves a variety of Greek and Kar-    %    &            Adding the unmarked ones would easily    '())))) tion to what he’d seen: a dark pathian specialties.


        green, black-speckled Mediterra- % +30-22450-81006 studios      push that number into the hundreds.  nean moray eel coiled near the % +30-22450-81044 edge of a vast rocky plateau [email protected] shirts and vests of colorful cloth, barely a meter beneath us. skillfully sold handmade olive oil We followed the moray as it The Aegean Village provides both and honey soaps that the island is swam out over the edge. The pla- full hotel services and independent famous for to interested tourists. teau dropped dizzyingly away to suites with kitchenettes, and is lo- A visit a few days later to Me- white sand and seabed at least six cated directly above Amoopi Bay. To advertise netes, a hilltop town located at the meters below, where every individ- Double rooms start Œ90 per night, MAKE GREAT Stephen Levey center of the island, coincided ual rock, urchin, seaweed and sea- including breakfast. CONNECTIONS with Panagia, an annual religious shell was clear in the bright sun- % The Wall Street Journal Europe +30-22450-81194 IN EUROPE. festival. In keeping with tradition, light. With a kick of our feet we’d www.aegeanvillage.gr THE WALL STREET +44 (0) 207 842 9626 tourists were genuinely treated as flown off a mountain’s edge and JOURNAL EUROPE. [email protected] honored guests and pressed by lo- out over a vast aquatic valley, no Where to eat cals to accept thick slices of home seatbelts required. Rina, a restaurant located on the baked bread, the crusts constel- Returning to the surface to main road between Amoopi and lated with sesame seeds and fra- clean our masks, my son’s face was the airport, is famous for its excel- A plate of makarounes, a traditional grant anise, then roasted bell pep- radiant. “Dad!” he exclaimed, “it’s lent Karpathian dishes such as Karpathian whole-wheat pasta pers, black kalamata olives, white just like flying, but in the water!” makarounes and roast lamb. dressed with fried onions, olive oil wine and cloudy, iced glasses of —Aaron Maines is a writer % +30-22450-91051 and aged feta at Nina’s Taverna. ouzo. When we returned to the based in Milan.

W10 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W7 v Architecture

Meeting Sergio Pirrone for The Wall Street Journal in space The Venice Biennale brings together architects

By Andrew McKie HE TITLE SEEMS simplistic, but it can be interpreted in many ways,” says Kazuyo Sejima, the first woman to direct the Venice Architecture Biennale, at the news conference to open this year’s exhibition, “People meet in Architecture.” “T If people meet in architecture, architects meet in Ven- ice. Not in the architecture of the imposing and venerable churches, muse- ums and palazzi that line the Grand Canal; nor even, strictly speaking, in the abandoned warehouses of the Arsenale and exhibition pavilions in Giardini, which constitute the exhibition venues, the permanent structure of which the architects largely disregard; but in the temporary, imagined and poten- tial spaces represented within them. The 12th gathering of the most important show for those concerned with what is now usually called “the built environment,” which runs until Nov. 21, may have an apparently less opaque subject than some previous years’ themes—“Metamorph”; “Out There”; “Next”—but those attending are as de- termined as ever to interpret it in many ways. And, indeed, as the architects, critics, engineers, urban planners, academics and design fans trudge from pavilion to pavilion through the dusty gravel and punishing heat, sweltering in their emphatic eyewear and their black designer suits so unsuited to the heat, their T-shirts emblazoned with the names of type- faces (in those typefaces), acquiring more and more cloth tote bags packed with catalogues and manifestos as they go, there is nothing if not variety. Here, in the Arsenale’s warehouses, Smiljan Radic and Marcela Correa of Chile have carved a hole, just large enough for one person, into a large stone. Matthias Schuler’s Transsolar of Stuttgart and Tetsuo Kondo of Tokyo have filled a room with a cloud, through which one walks on a spiral gangway. Ja- net Cardiff has assembled a circle of speakers playing Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet “Spem in alium.” Here, too, is Wim Wenders’s 3D film of Ms. Sejima and her collaborator Ryue Nishizawa riding bicycles and Segways around the Rolex Learning Center they designed in Lausanne. “The building and the film needed movement,” Mr. Wenders says. “They were courageous enough to try it and, by the end, I think they became stunt riders.” Over there, in the Giardini, the Czech and Slovak pavilion’s opening ap- pears to be impeded by Health and Safety officials trying to dismantle the timber structures hanging outside with chainsaws, though this turns out to be a performance. The Australians, in a remarkable day-glo orange exhibit entitled “Now and When,” are showing an extraordinary rendering (also in 3D) of the country’s western cities, contrasted with the ziggurats of quar- ries in the east that have provided the ore to build them. Belgium has pieces of flooring and plywood table-tops retrieved from redundant factories hung on their walls like abstract expressionist paintings. Philip Beesley, at the Ca- nadian pavilion, is explaining how his strange, unsettlingly beautiful, fern- like structures, which react to light, heat and movement, may lead to respon- Clockwise from top left: The gangway through the cloud made by Transsolar and Tetsuo Kondo Architects; sive, breathing, perhaps even conscious, forms of architecture. large balanced struts by Antón García-Abril and Ensamble Studio; ‘Matter/Antimatter’ by Attilio Stocchi, “Well, it is not just a trade fair,” says Mirko Zardini, director of the Cana- as a part of the ‘Italy 2050’ exposition at the Italian pavilion; One of the three fishing huts on stilts presented by Bahrain, dian Centre for Architecture. “The Biennale serves a different purpose which won the Golden Lion for the national entry; the fern-like structures by Philip Beesley in the Canadian pavilion. from, say, London’s Festival of Architecture, or the versions of it now repro- duced elsewhere. The curatorial element gives it a different momentum. And though the national pavilions don’t always follow the themes closely, at its best, the director is able to capture a moment, not just in visual themes, but underlying attitudes.” This echoes Paolo Baratta, the Biennale’s president. “An exhibition of ar- chitecture cannot be like other exhibitions of knowledge,” he argues. “Its intention is to provoke imagination and creativity—and it’s also a meeting point. Sejima has given us the idea that clients, architects and citizens must share the capability of listening to the space in which we live; which is the starting point for building a better building, and a better society.” These sentiments may seem both lofty and vague, but the most success- ful exhibits here are, for the most part, those which have attempted to en- gage with this debate, whether conceptually or with fully worked-out mod- els and proposals. The Golden Lion for the best national pavilion was awarded last Saturday during the official opening of the exhibition to the Kingdom of Bahrain, which triumphed over 52 other participating coun- The exhibition’s intention is ‘to provoke imagination tries at its first participation in the event. Its entry consisted of three huts belonging to families involved in fishing, which had been dismantled and and creativity—and it’s also a meeting point,’ reconstructed in an Arsenale warehouse; each contained screens playing in- terviews with people from those communities. the Venice Biennale’s president explains. “Land reclamation in Bahrain has often seen people like these dis- placed,” co-curator Noura Al-Sayeh explained. “In some cases, families from fishing villages have found their homes a mile and a half inland, and these huts have sprung up along the water’s edge.” The prize for an individual project was given to Junya Ishigami for an almost invisible cuboid form, which appeared to be made of very thin white thread that, as could just be made out, was supported by even finer fila- ments; diagonal buttresses, which, like spiders’ webs, could be seen only when the light and observer’s angle were right. The explanatory notes ex- plained that were this “Architecture as Air” to be built, it would be likely to fall like rope under the slightest external forces—something which, when I

W8 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W9 v Architecture

Meeting Sergio Pirrone for The Wall Street Journal in space The Venice Biennale brings together architects

By Andrew McKie HE TITLE SEEMS simplistic, but it can be interpreted in many ways,” says Kazuyo Sejima, the first woman to direct the Venice Architecture Biennale, at the news conference to open this year’s exhibition, “People meet in Architecture.” “T If people meet in architecture, architects meet in Ven- ice. Not in the architecture of the imposing and venerable churches, muse- ums and palazzi that line the Grand Canal; nor even, strictly speaking, in the abandoned warehouses of the Arsenale and exhibition pavilions in Giardini, which constitute the exhibition venues, the permanent structure of which the architects largely disregard; but in the temporary, imagined and poten- tial spaces represented within them. The 12th gathering of the most important show for those concerned with what is now usually called “the built environment,” which runs until Nov. 21, may have an apparently less opaque subject than some previous years’ themes—“Metamorph”; “Out There”; “Next”—but those attending are as de- termined as ever to interpret it in many ways. And, indeed, as the architects, critics, engineers, urban planners, academics and design fans trudge from pavilion to pavilion through the dusty gravel and punishing heat, sweltering in their emphatic eyewear and their black designer suits so unsuited to the heat, their T-shirts emblazoned with the names of type- faces (in those typefaces), acquiring more and more cloth tote bags packed with catalogues and manifestos as they go, there is nothing if not variety. Here, in the Arsenale’s warehouses, Smiljan Radic and Marcela Correa of Chile have carved a hole, just large enough for one person, into a large stone. Matthias Schuler’s Transsolar of Stuttgart and Tetsuo Kondo of Tokyo have filled a room with a cloud, through which one walks on a spiral gangway. Ja- net Cardiff has assembled a circle of speakers playing Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet “Spem in alium.” Here, too, is Wim Wenders’s 3D film of Ms. Sejima and her collaborator Ryue Nishizawa riding bicycles and Segways around the Rolex Learning Center they designed in Lausanne. “The building and the film needed movement,” Mr. Wenders says. “They were courageous enough to try it and, by the end, I think they became stunt riders.” Over there, in the Giardini, the Czech and Slovak pavilion’s opening ap- pears to be impeded by Health and Safety officials trying to dismantle the timber structures hanging outside with chainsaws, though this turns out to be a performance. The Australians, in a remarkable day-glo orange exhibit entitled “Now and When,” are showing an extraordinary rendering (also in 3D) of the country’s western cities, contrasted with the ziggurats of quar- ries in the east that have provided the ore to build them. Belgium has pieces of flooring and plywood table-tops retrieved from redundant factories hung on their walls like abstract expressionist paintings. Philip Beesley, at the Ca- nadian pavilion, is explaining how his strange, unsettlingly beautiful, fern- like structures, which react to light, heat and movement, may lead to respon- Clockwise from top left: The gangway through the cloud made by Transsolar and Tetsuo Kondo Architects; sive, breathing, perhaps even conscious, forms of architecture. large balanced struts by Antón García-Abril and Ensamble Studio; ‘Matter/Antimatter’ by Attilio Stocchi, “Well, it is not just a trade fair,” says Mirko Zardini, director of the Cana- as a part of the ‘Italy 2050’ exposition at the Italian pavilion; One of the three fishing huts on stilts presented by Bahrain, dian Centre for Architecture. “The Biennale serves a different purpose which won the Golden Lion for the national entry; the fern-like structures by Philip Beesley in the Canadian pavilion. from, say, London’s Festival of Architecture, or the versions of it now repro- duced elsewhere. The curatorial element gives it a different momentum. And though the national pavilions don’t always follow the themes closely, at its best, the director is able to capture a moment, not just in visual themes, but underlying attitudes.” This echoes Paolo Baratta, the Biennale’s president. “An exhibition of ar- chitecture cannot be like other exhibitions of knowledge,” he argues. “Its intention is to provoke imagination and creativity—and it’s also a meeting point. Sejima has given us the idea that clients, architects and citizens must share the capability of listening to the space in which we live; which is the starting point for building a better building, and a better society.” These sentiments may seem both lofty and vague, but the most success- ful exhibits here are, for the most part, those which have attempted to en- gage with this debate, whether conceptually or with fully worked-out mod- els and proposals. The Golden Lion for the best national pavilion was awarded last Saturday during the official opening of the exhibition to the Kingdom of Bahrain, which triumphed over 52 other participating coun- The exhibition’s intention is ‘to provoke imagination tries at its first participation in the event. Its entry consisted of three huts belonging to families involved in fishing, which had been dismantled and and creativity—and it’s also a meeting point,’ reconstructed in an Arsenale warehouse; each contained screens playing in- terviews with people from those communities. the Venice Biennale’s president explains. “Land reclamation in Bahrain has often seen people like these dis- placed,” co-curator Noura Al-Sayeh explained. “In some cases, families from fishing villages have found their homes a mile and a half inland, and these huts have sprung up along the water’s edge.” The prize for an individual project was given to Junya Ishigami for an almost invisible cuboid form, which appeared to be made of very thin white thread that, as could just be made out, was supported by even finer fila- ments; diagonal buttresses, which, like spiders’ webs, could be seen only when the light and observer’s angle were right. The explanatory notes ex- plained that were this “Architecture as Air” to be built, it would be likely to fall like rope under the slightest external forces—something which, when I

W8 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W9 returned to inspect it again on the second day of previews, appeared to have happened to a section of it. This concentration on the qualities of air and space in building environ- ments,ratherthanonmodelsofproposedgrandsprojets,characterizedmany of the exhibits. Perhaps it is a response to economic circumstances. If actual construction is unlikely, virtual constructions have licence to be unlikely, too. Malaysia offered models of conventional towers, but on closer inspec- tion some were in trees, or under water. The popularity of Denmark’s white miniatures of real construction projects (entitled “What Makes A Livable City?”) may have been due not only to the country’s enviable repu- tation for architecture but also to the fact that, unless one was prepared to Sergio Pirrone for The Wall Street Journal climb into a jam-packed horizontal inflatable balloon, their opening was Clockwise from top left, Getty; Gijs de Kruijff; Aaron Maines (2) the only one that offered beer. Only in the American pavilion, where the history of John Portman’s Peachtree development in Atlanta in bar charts of profits, jobs and square footage, projected on the wall, rose like the perspex models on the table be- hind, was there the uncompromising number-crunching of dollars per brick. Three pavilions above all share a theme relating to Mr. Baratta and Ms. Sejima’s idea of “listening to the space in which we live” in a practical fash- ion, even when expressed in wildly different interpretations. The Dutch, Jap- anese and French national entries each examine the notion of the void in modern cities. The Netherlands pavilion does it in the most straightforward manner, simply pointing out that the building lies empty for almost nine months of the year. As you enter an empty room, there is a suspended blue foam ceiling that, when one proceeds to the upper level, turns out from above to be a model of a city. It provides a neat visual example of the percent- age of empty space in European urban spaces. Dominique Perrault, who curated the French pavilion, entitled “Metropo- lis?,” says he believes, “The future of the city is to control the quality of that empty space.” In a kinetic, vertiginous multimedia representation of sev- eral French cities, his presentation argues that these spaces mean that our notions of the territory of a city are bound to change. “At first I was con- cerned that the void would be commandeered by developers or the state, but it is simply too big—85% or more. It’s impossible now to imagine expan- sion continuing,” he says. Mr. Perrault is so cheerfully enthusiastic that I hesitate to mention the Japanese entry, entitled “Void Metabolism.” He roars with laughter. “I know, they are arguing exactly the opposite.” Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow, which designed the elegant domestic models in Japan’s pavilion, uses a film of the rapidly changing lay- out of Tokyo to make his point. “During the 20th century, architects could test different expressions and techniques, but the house was always particu- larized by consumers. Especially in Tokyo, where the ownership of small plots means that the average life span of houses is only 26 years,” he says. “But there is no real connection with neighbors. We feel that the Internet Clockwise from opposite page: A quiet harbor on and social networks have changed those dynamics, and that there is now Karpathos; whitewashed windmills overlooking the opportunity to create a new typology; to make a house as generous as the sea; a priest walks through the town of Olympos; possible and at the same time begin to use the adjacent spaces to create new 7-year-old Michelangelo Maines builds a sandcastle community frameworks.” on Michaliou Kipos beach. Looking at Mr. Tsukamoto’s spare, graceful wooden model of an ordi- nary townhouse is a reminder that the end purpose of this huge gathering, these dozens of installations, models, films, meetings, discussions and dif- ferent approaches is, after all, as simple as the theme suggests: providing a pleasant room to sit in, an agreeable place for people to meet. —Andrew McKie is a writer based in Cambridgeshire, England.

ized. “You can drive almost every- town the following evening to dine ON THE ISLAND DISTINCTIVE PROPERTIES &ESTATES where now,” he said. “When we first at a restaurant that had caught came here none of the secondary our eye during the festival, we Where to stay roads were paved. We had to rent a found it still full of life, with chil- The Apolis features luxury accom- In Menetes, Pelaga Taverna serves CARIBBEAN UNITED STATES motorbike just to get to beaches dren chasing each other up and modations including a beautiful ter- excellent Karpathian fare at tables Top to bottom: ‘Decay of a Dome’ by Amateur Architecture Studio; (from left) Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima and Wim like Apella and Agios Nikolaos.” down the town’s narrow alleys, race restaurant and pool overlooking set up outside on the main square. Wenders at a talk about Mr. Wenders’s film of the architects’ Rolex Learning Centre at Lausanne; the townhouse in the In Olympus the surroundings re- and old men drinking ouzo and ar- the bay. During peak season, double % +30-22450-81135 Japanese pavilion, created by Atelier Bow-Wow; the pavilion extends through the floor with a further story below. mained reminiscent of a time long guing about soccer outside the rooms range between Œ100 and ago with its whitewashed cement café in its main square.
  
Œ120 per night, including breakfast. What to do walls—common to many of the The streets leading to Menetes
 
 % +30-22450-81200 In Pigadia, the Karpathos Diving        Greek isles—and an elegant bell were all paved, and satellite dishes           www.apolis.eu School provides training courses,       !  tower cupola outlined in blue, sat atop almost every house. For all    !"   tours and equipment to divers. bright red geraniums and fuchsia its modernization, there was noth-  #    !   Nina’s Studios provides studio www.diveinkarpathos.gr $%&' "    bougainvillea. Elderly women ing cynical about Menetes, no hint        apartments with kitchenettes—tradi- dressed in traditional garb of black, of the commercialization of Karpa- billowing dresses with crisp white thos we’d found in Olympos. tionally a popular solution across On the southern tip of the island, Nevertheless, the greatest de- Greece—and is located just above Club Mistral Karpathos provides
 

   
      lights lay down below, off the picturesque Kastelia Bay. Double windsurf stations, training and       
        Our tourist map showed 68 official beaches. coast and underwater. rooms from Œ50 per night, including equipment.                      !"#   In the bay in Amoopi, my son breakfast at Nina’s Taverna, which www.windsurfing-karpathos.com $   %           finally managed to direct my atten- serves a variety of Greek and Kar-    %    &            Adding the unmarked ones would easily    '())))) tion to what he’d seen: a dark pathian specialties.


        green, black-speckled Mediterra- % +30-22450-81006 studios      push that number into the hundreds.  nean moray eel coiled near the % +30-22450-81044 edge of a vast rocky plateau [email protected] shirts and vests of colorful cloth, barely a meter beneath us. skillfully sold handmade olive oil We followed the moray as it The Aegean Village provides both and honey soaps that the island is swam out over the edge. The pla- full hotel services and independent famous for to interested tourists. teau dropped dizzyingly away to suites with kitchenettes, and is lo- A visit a few days later to Me- white sand and seabed at least six cated directly above Amoopi Bay. To advertise netes, a hilltop town located at the meters below, where every individ- Double rooms start Œ90 per night, MAKE GREAT Stephen Levey center of the island, coincided ual rock, urchin, seaweed and sea- including breakfast. CONNECTIONS with Panagia, an annual religious shell was clear in the bright sun- % The Wall Street Journal Europe +30-22450-81194 IN EUROPE. festival. In keeping with tradition, light. With a kick of our feet we’d www.aegeanvillage.gr THE WALL STREET +44 (0) 207 842 9626 tourists were genuinely treated as flown off a mountain’s edge and JOURNAL EUROPE. [email protected] honored guests and pressed by lo- out over a vast aquatic valley, no Where to eat cals to accept thick slices of home seatbelts required. Rina, a restaurant located on the baked bread, the crusts constel- Returning to the surface to main road between Amoopi and lated with sesame seeds and fra- clean our masks, my son’s face was the airport, is famous for its excel- A plate of makarounes, a traditional grant anise, then roasted bell pep- radiant. “Dad!” he exclaimed, “it’s lent Karpathian dishes such as Karpathian whole-wheat pasta pers, black kalamata olives, white just like flying, but in the water!” makarounes and roast lamb. dressed with fried onions, olive oil wine and cloudy, iced glasses of —Aaron Maines is a writer % +30-22450-91051 and aged feta at Nina’s Taverna. ouzo. When we returned to the based in Milan.

W10 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W7 v Travel Alamy

         
     
    
  
  
  
  
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95 NORKELING A METER above there is rarely more than one plane Œ7 to Œ20 will take you on a day from Monza, Italy, and an experi- at almost all restaurants on Karpa- the seabed, an excited 7-year- parked there at a time, and reach- tour to popular beaches. enced scuba diver, was on her first thos, there were makarounes,a Sold is tugging on my ankle. I ing the island by ferry from Athens Part of the reason so few boats diving trip to Karpathos. “There are whole-wheat pasta dressed with twist to see my son act out an is a 20-hour, 415-kilometer affair. berth in its waters is the meltemi, a some marvelous rock formations fried onions, olive oil and aged feta, aquatic pantomime of agitation, In addition to fewer tourists, constant summer wind so strong it here, including underwater caves and saganaki, a pan-fried fresh eyes bulging behind his mask, a more privacy and relatively low bends pine trees over permanently and grottoes,” she says. “You don’t goat cheese. finger stabbing down through the prices, there were few signs of the into bonsai-like sculptures. This have the variety of sea life you’d Nina’s Taverna is run by Aposto- seawater to point at…What? turmoil investing the rest of the strong wind makes mooring along find at a tropical destination, but lis Ekizoglou, 30, while his brother The water is so clear we can country during our visit to Karpa- the island’s coast difficult at best, the water is crystal-clear and Leftekis, 26, oversees the kitchen. $&  %    make out distant swimmers churn- thos in August. When Greek Prime but keeps temperatures generally there’s still plenty to see. Best of Both moved back to Karpathos af- ing their legs on the opposite end Minister George A. Papandreou set lower than on other Greek isles. all, there are so few tourists that ter studying and working in large of the cove. A school of blue-lined stringent economic austerity mea- During the third week of August, most of the time you’re alone.” hotels in Athens. “I like it much sardines sweeps around us, star- sures in place earlier this summer, when most of Greece was in the Despite its beautiful waters, Kar- more here. Life is easier, no stress,” tled by my son’s splashing to slip the island has remained essentially grip of a heat wave, the meltemi pathian culture is concentrated on says Apostolis Ekizoglou, gesturing away over the rocks like a lady’s free of the strikes, protests and died down and temperatures on land rather than the sea. Evidence out from the restaurant terrace to scarf caught in the wind. A lone widespread social unrest that have Karpathos promptly shot above 40 of this can be found in the food the vast blue Amoopi Bay below. bright silver sea bream streaks off plagued other parts of Greece. degrees centigrade during the day. served in its restaurants, where “We serve the traditional foods, into deeper blue, its black half- While the turmoil has taken a “We never have heat like this,” com- meats such as lamb, chicken and but my brother studied as a chef in moon tail slicing the water in a toll on stores and supermarket plained Nina Ekizoglou, owner of pork play a leading role. Tender Athens, and he likes to surprise peo- burst of energy. Dentex and rain- shelves, nearly everywhere want Nina’s Studios, a restaurant and ho- spiced skewers called souvlaki, feta- ple.” The surprise that evening was bow-colored wrasse snuffle the was met with a shrug and a smile. tel complex in Amoopi. “Without cheese-stuffed hamburgers called a delicious lamb stuffato, cinnamon- white sand below, stirring up a On an island where almost every- the wind, we’re all suffering!” bifteki and a range of oven-roasted flavored roasted lamb served on a meal, while tiger-striped gobies one speaks workable English, a The coast itself is a collection of meats with potatoes, green beans, bed of pinoli-shaped pasta. lay among the rocks, waiting to rapid-fire “it’s O.K.” has become a water-worn escarpments, creating eggplant and tomatoes can be Two days later we took an after- snap the smaller fish up in turn. sort of island mantra. There’s no an endless succession of individual found on every menu. noon to drive up to Olympos, a Any one of these could capture coffee on the shelf? “It’s O.K. It’s coves and bays. There is a beach for Seafood dishes are walk-ons, mountain town in the north of the my attention. What, exactly, has O.K. It’s O.K.,” responds a clerk in every flavor, from the small, rocky limited to the rare grilled octopus, island, where centuries-old tradi- captured his? a single breath. “Next week.” and abandoned for people in search fried calamari, tiny Karpathian tions still reign supreme. The 27-ki- We were exploring a cove in Geographically, Karpathos com- of privacy, to broad, sandy and ser- shrimp or sardines, and occasional lometer road leading up to the town Amoopi Bay, one of several lime- prises mostly coastline—a thin, viced for sunbathers who like to fish fillets, more often than not ac- was all dust, gravel and potholes, stone-lined turquoise pools of wa- 47-kilometer long sliver of moun- people-watch. Our tourist map companied by little asterisks that but cranes and massive construc- "   $ "   ""    
     ter on the Greek island of Karpa- tains jutting up out of the Mediter- showed 68 official beaches. Adding lead to small print reading “some tion machines parked along the
 

  
  
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 tined to showcase them. Among the Fewer than a dozen small, brightly beaches would easily push that During our two-week-long stay, In the town square, Massimo ( southernmost islands in the Dode- painted towns dot its arid hillsides, number into the hundreds. we ate several meals at Nina’s Tav- Oneglia, 39 years old, a lawyer from A   + G ' &  #  G     .   8  < #   .   A=  .   canese chain, it is deep in the heart and none is more than a few min- But whether deep and craggy, erna, which specializes in tradi- Milan, Italy, mused about the   0  :!
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W6 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W11 v Art Farmer’s Frankensteinian fairies British artist crafts minuscule insect sculptures that embrace the grotesque with a zeal that sets her apart

By Melissa Goldstein rather shocking narratives of vio-

London lence and interspecies warfare. Julien Hekimian for the Wall Street Journal (3) F WE MET in a bar, I would Tessa creates a parable of the worst say ‘I’m an artist,’” Tessa in human behaviors—torture, im- “I Farmer says, sitting in her prisonment, etc.—and reminds us East London studio and giggling that we continue to do these things softly. “You would say ‘Oh! Do you generation after generation.” paint?’ And I would say, “No, I make But the artist herself shies away small stuff.” To illustrate her point, from linking her work to a comment she gestures to the disembodied in- on mankind. “I’m not trying to say sect wings that lie strewn across her something about humanity,” she in- work surface—a tabletop resem- sists. “I’m trying to reflect the strug- Clockwise from left page: foueés are prepared and cooked in a traditional oven by bling an entomological Guernica of gle of nature ... Darwin was quoted Jean-Pierre Hay, chef of ‘La Grange a Dime’; foueé stuffed with mushrooms and miniature proportions. somewhere saying that he found it carrots, a speciality at ‘Les Caves de la Genevraie’; a view of ‘Les Caves de la Since the late 1990s, Ms. Farmer, difficult to believe in God, because Genevraie’, a famous foueé restaurant; foueé restaurant ‘La Grange a Dime’. 32yearsold,hasbeenpopulatingthe why would God invent the parasitic artworldwithaspeciesoffairiesshe wasp, which eats the host alive?” meticulously crafts from compos- She pauses for effect before com- ites of insects, leaves and root mate- menting appreciatively. “It’s really rials.Thefairiesarethecentralchar- quite grotesque.” acters inthe artist’s sculptures,each Though Ms. Farmer’s work em- of which comes packaged with a ma- braces the grotesque with a zeal that cabre narrative that sees the unde- sets her apart from others, her tectable beings wreaking all sorts of choice of materials positions her at Darwinian havoc. the center of an artistic zeitgeist. Born in Birmingham, England, “There are an incredible number of Ms.FarmerattendedOxfordUniversi- artists using organic materials to- ty’s Ruskin School of Drawing and day,” says Mr. McFadden. “I think it Fine Art. It was during an anatomy is part of a zeitgeist that is informed class that inspiration struck, and the by issues of sustainability, our am- artist’s ensuing “ah-ha moment” biguous relationships with the natu- Above, ‘Swarm’ (2004); took the form of a 1.5 meter skeleton ral world, and a fascination with below, artist Tessa Farmer in her studio. constructedfromtwigsandbark.Her death and resurrection.” species “evolved” from there, shrink- “People don’t know whether taxi- ing down to its current eye-straining dermy is good or bad, so often you measurements (each fairy measures throwitinapieceofartanditgetsalot between7millimetersand10millime- of attention,” says Melissa Milgrom, ters), though the artist hopes to fur- author of “Still Life: Adventures in The authenticity and the quality parking area you must descend a ther whittle the size, “perhaps to- Taxidermy,” published in March. of the products served at both La rocky path to a dirt road, past a pri- ward the microscopic,” she says. What is clear is that Ms. Farmer Grange à Dîme and La Genevraie vate home, before getting to the tro- “One day, I gave them wings,” she has never been in higher demand. have been guaranteed by the Parc glodyte that houses the restaurant. explains, then stops, correcting her- This summer alone, she has shown Naturel Régional Loire-Anjou-Tou- The fouées here are oblong rather self: “They grew wings.” This is the works in the company of Ron Arad, raine, which supervises activities than round and might win the gold way she often speaks, adopting the MatCollishawandDamienHirstinex- associated with the Loire since it medal for quality. The young server David Attenborough role of presenter hibitionsthroughouttheworld.InOc- has been recognized as Unesco’s keeps them coming and lights a can- and naturalist when discussing her tober, her work “Swarm,” which is largest World Heritage site. Two dle under a serving dish for the mo- Frankensteinian creation. composed of 120 suspended moving other restaurants are also recom- gettes—which follow the rillettes “I wanted to make a skeleton parts, will be included in the second mended: Le Cave aux Moines, where and butter, accompanied by slabs of sort of fetus to go inside a bright red installment of the Saatchi Gallery’s fouées are served with mushrooms smoky Vendée ham cooked in the tulip in the garden—something I “Newspeak: British Art Now” exhibi- grown on the spot, and Le Moulin wood oven. There’s salad, excellent could fool my brother with,” she con- tion—a survey of contemporary Brit- de Sarre, a working flour mill with a goat cheese from north of Angers fides. The impulse seamlessly links ish talent billed as the unofficial se- fouée restaurant adjunct. and, for dessert, Tarte Tatin. her to one of her professed influ- quel to Saatchi’s landmark YBA exhi- Many of the ever-increasing num- Each of these restaurants is cav- ences, Victorian artists the Wright bition “Sensation,” which previously ber of fouée restaurants don’t make ernous. They accept tour buses. sisters, who were famed for the long- opened at the State Hermitage Mu- the grade. Le Clos des Roches, deep Fear not. You’re likely to be sur- running artistic hoax begun in 1917, seum in St. Petersburg. Charles Saat- in the fields of Grezille, however, is rounded by locals out for a down- when they successfully convinced a chi, one of Ms. Farmer’s early fans, every bit as good as the best. home feast. segment of the public that fairies snapped up “Swarm” in 2004 before You might want to bring a flash- Jacqueline Friedrich is did indeed exist by manipulating pa- the artist had a chance to finish the light when dining here. From the a writer based in Paris. per cut-outs in photographs staged companion segment of the piece— in their garden. once she had completed it, he Of course, where the Wright sis- promptly purchased that as well. Where to stay The restaurants ters’ fairies frolicked among flowers With no slowdown in sight, Ms. in a sweet, Hans Christian Andersen Farmer is prepping for a group exhi- Château de Verrières La Grange à Dîme manner, Ms. Farmer’s fairies are bitionnextmonthatBathSpaUniver- A 10-room gem in the center of open nightly in season and for predatory things whose cunning sity and for a solo show in the spring Saumur, behind the National Riding Sunday lunch; open weekends grows in tandem with the artist’s at her London gallery, Danielle Ar- Academy (Cadre Noir), with a off-season. Closed Mondays. own studies of insect behavior. To naud. She also plans to begin work dreamy park and a pool. Owner % 02-41-50-97-24; date, the fairies have waged a war of on a new sculpture incorporating a Yolaine de Valbray-Auger couldn’t be grange-a-dime.com terror against insects in battleships gift of a recently deceased chinchilla more accommodating. Rates from constructed from animal bones bythenameofYetiPolaszek,thefam- Œ150 for a double and Œ290 for an Les Caves de la Genevraie (“Swarm” 2004); adopted the stom- ily pet of an entomologist friend apartment-size suite decorated with % 02-41-59-34-22; ach-turning behavior of parasitic from London’s Natural History Mu- museum-quality Chinese pottery. http://genevraie.troglodyte.info wasps by inhabiting a fox as their seum, where Ms. Farmer did a resi- % +33-241-38-05-15 (from abroad) host and filling its ears and fur with dency in 2007. [email protected] Le Clos des Roches larvae (“Little Savages” 2007); and The gift came with conditions: a teamed up with the gray squirrels of handwritten note from the entomolo- open for lunch and dinner with Demeure de la Vignole Northumberland,England,todobat- gist’swife stipulating thatthe lateMr. reservation; closed Mondays, Friday tle with the endangered native red Polaszek be represented “only as a If the owner’s froideur doesn’t de- lunchtimes and Sunday nights squirrels for commissioned installa- good character recognizable for what ter you, this 10-room semi-cave ho- except during bank holidays. tel overlooking the vineyards of % 02-41-45-59-36, tion “A Darker Shade of Gray” he was.” Ms. Farmer reads back the Tessa Farmer (t); Domenico Pugliese for The Wall Street Journal (b) (2010), on view as part of Belsay note. “I agreed to honor their wishes, s Saumur-Champigny has lesclosdesroches.fr Hall’s current “Extraordinary Mea- so I will, but I don’t know how. These a lot to offer: a charming site; the- sures” exhibition until Sept. 26. people might not be happy if I cover matically decorated rooms; and, La Cave aux Moines “Tessa’s work takes concentra- their chinchilla in wasps nests,” she above all, a dramatic heated swim- % 02-41-67-95-64, tion to unravel, says New York’s Mu- saysbeforeaddingwistfully,butdiplo- ming pool carved into the rock of cave-aux-moines.com its own troglodyte cave. Think Fell- seum of Arts & Design curator matically, “I think I can make it really *NFL GAME PASS IS NOT AVAILABLE IN THE U.S., MEXICO, BAHAMAS, BERMUDA, ANTIGUA, David McFadden, who included her beautiful,butmyideaofbeautymight ini. Rates from Œ95 for a double. Le Moulin de Sarré AND U.S. TERRITORIES. NFL GAME PASS IN THE U.K. DOES NOT INCLUDE NFL REDZONE. ADDITIONAL in the museum’s current “Dead or not be their idea of beauty.” % +33-241-53-67-00, % 02-41-51-81-32, RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY, INCLUDING BLACKOUT RESTRICTIONS. ©2010 NFL ENTERPRISES LLC. TEAM NAMES/LOGOS/INDICIA ARE TRADEMARKS OF THE TEAMS INDICATED. Alive” exhibition. “The magic sets —Melissa Goldstein is a writer [email protected] www.moulin-de-sarre.fr ALL OTHER NFL-RELATED TRADEMARKS ARE TRADEMARKS OF THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE. in as visitors begin to read the based in London. Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London

W12 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W5 v Food & Wine v Top Picks A clear difference A temporary peek inside the Stedelijk USED TO have a bit of a glass fe- served me well. But lately I have Itish. Don’t get me wrong, there been rethinking my stance. I have Amsterdam: “If you want a pic- was nothing sinister in my apprecia- been to a few dinners of late ture of the future, imagine a boot tion of glassware, it’s just that imme- where the wine in question was, in stamping on a human face—for- diately after university, when I was no uncertain terms, ruined by the ever.” George Orwell’s doom-laden first getting into wine seriously and glass. Moreover, on other occasions Julien Hekimian for the Wall Street Journa words from the novel “1984” domi- had a bit of money in my back when I have been served wine in nate four walls of the “Hall of pocket, I went out and bought a Georg Riedel glass I have found it Honor” in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk number of Georg Riedel wineglasses. immeasurably improved. Museum and welcome visitors to the For those of you who haven’t It reminded me that perhaps it museum’s first exhibition since it heard of Georg Riedel, he is by far was time to restock the glass cabi- closed for renovation six years ago. net. So, with an open mind, an empty Before it reopens fully next year, notebook and a bottle of wine, I vis- Amsterdam’s flagship museum for Wine ited Around Wine, Britain’s largest contemporary art is inviting the Courtesy of Christie's WILL LYONS glassware retailer, for a tasting. public back with a pair of tempo- Charlie Chaplin Back in the days when I was rary exhibitions collectively labeled buying serious wineglasses, Georg “The Temporary Stedelijk.” Half the the most influential man in wine Riedel had the field to himself. ground floor is dedicated to “Monu- glass design. When he inherited his Now I am delighted to say there mentalisme,” an exhibition of Comedian’s father’s glassware factory in Aus- are several considerably cheaper video, photography and sculpture tria, the young Georg decided to de- suppliers that are worth tracking that reflects on the role of history Lake Geneva sign a range of glasses suited to down. Most notably, Schott Zwie- and national identity in contempo- various styles of wine. The premise sel, Zalto Glasmanufaktur, Darting- rary art. “Taking Place” occupies was based on what Riedel de- ton and Eisch. Before we get on to the rest of the museum, filling the furnishings scribes as the tongue map, whereby the tasting, it is also worth bear- newly renovated spaces with instal- by directing the flow of the liquid ing in mind that it isn’t necessary lations such as Barbara Kruger’s HARLIE CHAPLIN, legend- toward a specific area of the to spend a fortune on your glass. “Past/Present/Future,” with its wall- Cary gentleman tramp, will be in tongue, a glass can actually alter As long as you follow a few basic height Orwell quotation, and intro- the auction limelight this month. the flavor of the wine. The Riedel principles when choosing, most ducing the visitor to the museum During a decorative-arts sale portfolio is huge, with glasses for glasses will suffice. The three guid- room by room. Gert Jan van Rooij at Christie’s Amsterdam (Sept. young Bordeaux, old Bordeaux, Char- ing principles are: The glass should The installations in “The Tempo- ‘Scattered matter brought to a known density with the weight of the world / Cusped’ (2007) by Lawrence Weiner. 21-22), furnishings will be offered donnay, Chianti, Burgundy, Riesling be as thin as possible; it should rary Stedelijk” range from the humor- from the famous comedian’s and so on. The prices can also be not have a rim that interrupts the ous to sharp social critique. Louise home at Corsier-sur-Vevey on huge, ranging from £15 for a basic flow into the mouth; the bowl Lawler’s voice installation “Bird- the alienation of the individual in the have no way of knowing you’re walk- dow. Like a magic lantern, the Lake Geneva. They include chairs, tasting glass to £100 for the Bur- should also be as fat as possible, Savoring fouée calls,” a collection of warbles and corporate world, with its bloodless ing across the work on your way to merry-go-round of mirrors creates tables, beds, mirrors and other gundy glass. At various stages dur- with the widest part a third of the whistles that turns the names of fa- interactions and stilted language. the next room. a shifting panorama of the historic objects of everyday life. ing my glassware fad I owned most way up—this is the level up to mous male artists from the 70s and There is also the playful. Ger Van But perhaps the work that best il- buildings that surround the mu- of the major examples, including which you should pour the wine. 80s (think Andy Warhol and Gerhard Elk’s “The Well-Polished Floor lustrates the Stedelijk’s reopening seum and visitors to the exhibition. the Riedel Sommeliers Burgundy Now, on to the tasting. I se- A taste of the puffy, delicacy-stuffed bread offers Richter) into unique ‘calls’, while Mar- Sculpture” is exactly what the title to the world is Germaine Kruip’s —Joel Weickgenant Collecting Grand Cru, whose elaborately bal- lected a 2003 Chambolle-Musigny, ianne Flotron’s “Fired,” a scripted implies, and without reading the de- “Daytime,” a rotating set of inter- Until Jan. 9 MARGARET STUDER looned bowl has earned it a place in a bid to test the capricious Pinot a mouthwatering trip into France’s distant past video sequence from 2007, riffs on scriptive plaque on the wall, you locking mirrors installed in a win- www.stedelijk.nl on permanent display in New York’s Noir grape variety. I tasted it in five Museum of Modern Art. different glasses. An ISO, a Schott By Jacqueline Friedrich pette, a large (locally cultivated) row streets, the lush river banks. Chaplin (1889-1977) lived for But my relationship with very ex- Zwiesel standard white wineglass, AT WITH YOUR fingers. mushroom, stuffed and baked to And most of the other fouée restau- the last 24 years of his life in Le pensive wineglasses ended when Riedel’s Vinum Bordeaux, Zalto’s It’s more practical.” melting crunchiness in the hearth. rants are located in similarly capti- Manoir de Ban, a 16-room man- they began to break. One by one, my handmade burgundy glass and “E That seems shocking Next the fouées are brought from vating settings such as troglodyte 25 Brook Street: Hendrix and Handel’s London home sion surrounded by a wooded collection disappeared as the rough Riedel’s famous burgundy glass. In advice from the owner of a French the hearth to be filled with rillettes, caves—enormous, hydra-headed park, with his wife Oona and and tumble of living in a shared flat each glass, the wine’s taste restaurant. Etiquette is so hard- butter or, better yet, both. And along labyrinths created when the stone London: One of London’s best- edge in their own time. ings. His autograph song lyrics, hast- their eight children. took its toll. Whether it was break- changed dramatically. In the ISO, it wired into the French brain that its comes a lightly chilled Anjou rouge, in was quarried for building the local kept secrets is Handel House, a tiny The current “Hendrix in Britain” ily scrawled directions for getting to U.K.-born Chaplin settled in ing them during washing-up, knock- was very intense, with overpower- well-bred citizens attack chicken this case, a forthright Cabernet Franc. châteaux, churches and homes. museum commemorating the 18th- show marks the 40th anniversary of the Isle of Wight Festival (where he Switzerland in 1953 after more ing them off the table or even on ing notes of baked cherry. In the wings with bold knife and fork. We The main course, confit de ca- Many now serve as winemaking or century composer who was the best- the great American singer/guitar- made what was to be his last appear- than 40 years in the U.S. He left one occasion cracking them under Schott Zwiesel standard white are, however, in La Grange à Dîme, nard and mogettes, cooks in the mushroom-cultivating cellars. known occupant of 25 Brook Street ist’s death on Sept. 18, 1970. The top- ance in 1970), and concert programs the U.S. after being caught up in hot, running water, I came to the con- wineglass, spicier notes were high- a fouée restaurant in the French hearth in a big casserole to lip- About 21 kilometers west of Mon- in smart Mayfair. The upper floors of floor flat was his home for long peri- and memorabilia are displayed the anti-communist witch-hunts clusion that drinking wine from hand- lighted, while the Vinum Bordeaux town of Montreuil-Bellay, a breed smacking crustiness. I stuffed every- treuil-Bellay you’ll find some of the No. 23 next door have been incorpo- ods while he played in many venues alongside his outrageous costumes. of the McCarthy era. Accused of made lead crystal probably wasn’t revealed an earthy character. The of eatery known by few travelers. thing into the fouées, which I had al- Loire’s most remarkable troglodyte rated into Handel House as the muse- across London, including the two The show traces Hendrix’s rise to un-American activities, his work for me. I went out and bought six latter two glasses were the obvious And fouée-restaurant fare practi- ready smothered with butter. Dis- caves, among them Dénezé-sous- um’s offices; and an even better- great concerts “the Jimi Hendrix Ex- fame, his songwriting craft, his virtu- in the U.S. film industry had be- boxes of ISO (International Organiza- stars, making the wine taste more cally defies cutlery. gustingly delicious. Then came Doué, its walls completely covered kept secret is that one of the most perience” at the Royal Albert Hall in oso electric-guitar playing, and spec- come virtually impossible. tion for Standardization) wine-tast- refined, pure and balanced. In short, Fouée is an ancient bread. His- celebrated musicians of the 20th cen- February 1969. ulates on his legacy for music and Chaplin—known for such ing glasses, the approved size and they took all the heat out of it. The tory tells us that it was born as a way tury, Jimi Hendrix, lived there with The show explores his London popular culture. quips as “A day without a smile shape—a tapered tulip bowl—for Riedel was by a margin the winner, for bakers to test the heat of their his English girlfriend, Kathy Etching- life, music, performances and leg- After moving to Brook Street in is a wasted day” and “I am one wine judging and competitions and I drawing out more nuanced flavors. wood ovens: they’d rip off a piece of Fouée is an ancient bread—history tells ham, in 1968-’69. It’s a long way from acy, in the rooms where he lived, 1968, thrilled by the Handel connec- thing and one thing only—and have used them for tasting, bar the But at a £100 a glass compared dough, roll it out and stick it in the us that it was born as a way for bakers George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” wrote, played and entertained his tion, Hendrix bought all the recordings that is a clown. It places me on odd exception, ever since. with Zalto’s £28, I know which I oven. Minutes later, out comes a to Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” but both friends during the particularly pro- of Handel’s music he could find. His a higher plane than any politi- And I must say that, for criti- would prefer, especially considering puffed-up bubble of hot crust filled to test the heat of their wood ovens. musician/composers were cutting lific period just before his untimely, rent, by the way, was £30 a week; when cian”—made his name in silent cally evaluating a wine, they have my breakage record. with air. Its closest relative may be still slightly mysterious death. Handel lived next door from 1723-’59, films. His first “talkie” was “The the pita. But your standard pita is There is a good deal of material he paid £60 a year. —Paul Levy Great Dictator” (1940), a master- burlap to the fouée’s gossamer. Orange velvet jacket (late 1967), never before seen in the U.K., includ- Until Nov. 7 piece satirizing Hitler and Nazism. Nature abhors a vacuum and so salad and tangy goat cheese, fol- with enigmatic 16th- and 17th-cen- formerly owned by Jimi Hendrix. ing images, film clips and record- www.handelhouse.org Far from retiring after his move does a fouée. You prick it open and lowed by the first strawberries of tury sculptures, and La Rocheme- Experience Music Project permanent collection to Le Manoir de Ban, Chaplin con- DRINKING NOW fill it with various stuffings, most of the season and topped with the best nier, a 20-room troglodyte village, tinued to make films and com- them dictated by local tradition, to whipped cream I have ever eaten. with farms and a chapel, of more pose musical scores. wit: rillettes (unctuous pork spread La Grange à Dîme, a 15th-century than two acres. La Genevraie is, Rediscovering the classic designs of Charlotte Perriand Kicking off Chaplin’s section called “brown marmalade” by novel- structure, was once the storage blessedly, part of this ensemble. of the decorative-arts sale will Les Monts Damnés ist Honoré de Balzac), mogettes (the place for “gifts” (taxes, really) that La Genevraie’s setting is enchant- Zurich: French designer Char- ents went beyond furniture design be an Italian red-and-black Vendée’s celebrated dried white commoners were obliged to give lo- ing: A path curves down to the en- lotte Perriand was one of the rare and included photography as well as painted organ (estimate: Sancerre, France beans), Loire goat cheese and cal lords. The heavy wood beams, try, bordered with flowering rose- women to establish herself in Paris’s politics, which in turn influenced Œ600-Œ800); and an oak and lightly salted butter. the magnificent chestnut eaves all bushes. The main room is surely as male-dominated art world in the her work as a designer. brass gramophone (estimate: Vintage: 2008 Here you have the mainstays of date from the building’s origins. close as a troglodyte cave can ever 1920s, winning praise from stars Together with French painter Œ150-Œ250). the honest-to-God fouée restau- From time to time musicians per- get to evoking a proper English tea such as Swiss architect Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger and architect Pierre A set of 24 beech wood Price: about £25 or Œ30 rant, a style of eatery pretty much form medieval music, and the staff, parlor—with its candles and vases who asked her to join his renowned Jeanneret, Perriand in the 1930s dining chairs and extending ta- limited to the Saumurois in the at all times, wears period dress. filled with fresh roses, its window office in 1927 after seeing her chased for so-called “objets trouvés” ble, which Chaplin used for fam- western stretch of the Loire Valley. This, at first, made me fear termi- sills lined with antique dolls and its chrome steel design for a bar that re- during long walks along the sea and ily dinners and entertaining 12.5% guests, is expected to fetch Alcohol content: The set menus vary little from one nal corniness. What the staff was ac- walls hung with old kitchen utensils. flected his own taste for clear lines. in the woods, always on the lookout place to another and are usually tually wearing, however—long Chopped mushrooms, cooked to photograph magic forms. Œ12,000-Œ18,000. A show in Zurich at the Museum Loire’s village of Sancerre fleshed out with mushrooms, a skirts, embroidered vests and smocks— with carrots and seasonings, come Her interest in politics and her An opulent white-painted, für Gestaltung, called “Charlotte meat preparation, salad, dessert was no different from what they wear stuffed into fouées. Then rillettes sense of social responsibilty—she four-poster bed in the style makes some of the world’s Perriand—Designer, Photographer, most glorious Sauvignon and serviceable regional wine. during the numerous local fairs and followed by rillauds, large cubes of stunned the French public in 1936 of Louis XVI is estimated at Killjoys might dismiss these as reunions of wine brotherhoods. This pork which have been salted and Activist,” reminds us that furniture with a huge photo wall depicting Œ4,000-Œ6,000; an English gilt Blancs, and this is a classic “theme” restaurants, but their food- is Plantagenet country. There is al- simmered in water until fork-ten- classics such as the B306 Chaise the plight of Paris’s poor—led her to wood mirror in the style of example. With time, it opens up stuffs are based on ancient food- ways a reason to don medieval garb der. These have been sliced into glis- Longue and the LC2 Grand Confort develop furniture such as the 1954 George III, at Œ1,000-Œ1,500; ways—many known to Rabelais— and cue the local Jordi Savalls. tening little strips and piled onto su- armchair were in part developed by stackable wooden chair “Chaise Om- a Louis XV-style tulipwood and in the glass to reveal plenty of and are resolutely home-grown. What’s more, it fits the setting. perb mogettes. There is a break be- this French artist, whose other bre” that speaks of her wish to pro- rosewood commode, at fresh citrus flavors, underneath Your meal at La Grange à Dîme, Montreuil-Bellay, an enchanting fore cheese and dessert (excellent work remains unduly overshad- duce affordable but beautiful house- Œ2,500-Œ3,500; and an Edward- for example, starts with a glass of town on the river Thouet with an pear-and-chocolate tart) to tour the owed by her former boss. The exhibi- hold objects. —Goran Mijuk ian mahogany writing table, at which lies a rich texture. © AChP / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich sweet Chenin Blanc from the Cote- 11th-century château, invites stroll- caves, see the oven and chat with tion portrays a free-spirited, rebel- Until Oct. 24 Œ400-Œ600. aux du Layon to accompany a gali- ing—around the fortress, the nar- the owner-baker. lious artist, whose interests and tal- www.museum-gestaltung.ch ‘Pavillon de l’Agriculture: La France agricole’ (1937) by Charlotte Perriand/Fernand Léger.

W4 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W13 v Books v Fashion Rediscovering Europe’s war-time writers Tiffany puts its signature blue on handbags

By Tobias Grey By Elizabeth Holmes work and didn’t want to go that good way,” Mr. Lambertson says. HE GREAT SOVIET-era Rus- IFFANY & CO. now has bags route with Tiffany. Instead, they de- Mr. Truex adds, “What would not sian author Vasily Grossman to match its little blue cided to play with Tiffany’s eye- be Tiffany is a bag that is too avant- Tbelieved it wasn’t just a writ- Tboxes. The jeweler launched catching blue. The strap on the garde or extreme, or too hard-edged er’s duty to tell terrible truths but an expansive collection of hand- black leather Blake tote (which and not feminine enough.” also a reader’s civic duty to learn bags, ranging from clutches to costs $995) includes a Tiffany-blue Tiffany has tried small collec- these truths. totes to satchels, in a dozen of its stripe. The clasp and rivets of many tions of handbags before, most re- Grossman initiated this pact in U.S. stores this week. Every piece bags also include a bit of Tiffany- cently in the mid-1990s with a line his newspaper article “The Hell of © ullsteinbild / TopFoto (portrait) bears an element of Tiffany’s signa- blue enamel, along with the words, created by in-house designers, but Treblinka,” which he wrote in ture robin’s egg blue, whether on a “Tiffany & Co.” this will be its first full assortment. 1944 after witnessing the Red Ar- clasp, in a lining or all over a dyed- For those who want more, some Jon King, Tiffany’s executive vice my’s liberation of Treblinka II—a crocodile purse. Prices for wom- of the bags are saturated in the president in charge of merchandis- Nazi death camp in occupied Po- en’s handbags start at $395 (Œ310) shade. The Holly clutch ($595) ing and marketing, says the new line land, where approximately for a small suede tote and rocket comes in a Tiffany-blue satin, as was sparked by the availability of 900,000 Jews and 500 Gypsies up to $17,500 (Œ13,690) for a large does the snakeskin Hadley shoul- Messrs. Lambertson and Truex. were murdered in 13 months. crocodile handbag. der bag ($1,495). The new bag collection will take Grossman’s unsparing, literary Handbags have enjoyed spar- “The color can be kind of fright- up display space in stores that has account of the horrific ways Nazi kling sales in recent years and are ening,” Mr. Lambertson says. “It’s been vacated by tabletop china and Germany implemented its ethnic- in some ways easier for a retailer not subtle.” silver. Tiffany says it has been trim- cleansing program at Treblinka to move: Women are more likely to Both designers say Tiffany’s ming down its selection of table- was one of the first reports of a splurge on bags for themselves strong brand helped to guide them. ware, which also includes crystal, Bryan Derballa for The Wall Street Journal death camp anywhere in Europe than on jewelry. “Unlike jewelry, “Here, we’re restricted—in a very for a “number of years.” The Tiffany Bracelet bag comes in 25 colors, including the jeweler’s famous blue. and eventually provided prosecu- which sometimes feels extrava- tors at the Nuremberg War gant, handbags always serve a pur- Crimes Tribunal with crucial back- pose,” says John Long, a retail ground information. strategist with consultancy Kurt The surprise is that up until Salmon Associates. now an English-language transla- Tiffany is joining a crowded field tion of Grossman’s lengthy article of retailers selling handbags. Ac- has never been published in its en- cording to market-research firm tirety. That will soon change with NPD Group, dollar sales of handbags the publication of “The Road,” a col- that cost $200 or more rose 15% in lection of some of Grossman’s best the 12 months that ended in June short stories and war-time articles, from the year-earlier period. And including “The Hell of Treblinka.” Tiffany continues to walk a thin line “The Road,” which is being pub- as it tries to drive sales through ac- lished in the U.K. on Sept. 30 by cessibly priced goods, while main- MacLehose Press and in the U.S. taining its upmarket image. on Sept. 28 by New York Review The designers of Tiffany’s new Books Classics, is translated from bags, Richard Lambertson and John the Russian by Robert and Eliza- Truex, say the biggest challenge in beth Chandler, the husband and designing handbags for Tiffany was wife team also responsible for new coming up with a way to identify the translations of Grossman’s later product. “We wanted to have some- novels “Life and Fate” (2006) and thingrecognizableabout the bags so “Everything Flows” (May 2010). that people would say ‘Oh! That The coming publication of “The Left, Hans Fallada plays chess in 1934. mustbeaTiffanybag,’”Mr.Lambert- Road” has been made possible son says. “It’s really hard to do that." thanks to the commercial and criti- The two men are well-known cal success of “Life and Fate” in replicated in Britain. “At least un- among handbag enthusiasts, hav- particular, but also because there til a few years ago in Britain a ing designed leather goods and is a growing demand for new writer like Zweig met with blank sold them at luxury department translations of European fiction faces; now he is regularly ‘book of stores for a decade under the Lam- and nonfiction from the years lead- the week’” says Will Stone, whose bertson Truex label. After the reces- ing up to and including World translation of Zweig’s pre-World sion drove their company into U.S. War II. The trend is most preva- War II travel writing “Journeys” bankruptcy court in spring 2009, lent in France and Britain, where will be released in the U.K. in Octo- Tiffany bought the trademark and rediscovered European novelists ber under the independent Hespe- hired the designers. from the 1930s and 1940s, such as by Knopf on Oct. 19, says he be- ver Age of German Letters” where Berlin’ but other novels by Fal- rus Press imprint. “The reason The pair eschewed the heavy use the French writer of Ukrainian- lieves that a changing mood in Eu- the standard of writing was excep- lada, you will see repeating Zweig has caught on in the U.K. is of logos in their Lambertson Truex Jewish origin Irène Némirovsky, rope has slowly brought about the tionally high. scenes, opinions and objects,” because he is finally being mar- the Austrian-Jewish writers Ste- translation and publication of liter- “In the early days of popular notes Mr. Hofmann. “You see that keted correctly, namely as a fantas- fan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Hunga- ature and memoirs that were of- cinema in Europe, as well as Amer- all the people in Fallada’s book— tic storyteller.” Arbitrage ry’s Sándor Márai and Germany’s ten shied away from in the past. ica, writers had to learn to be and it’s a bit like Flaubert—really But for some publishers, such as Hans Fallada, have each sold hun- “I think the whole World War very vivid,” says Mr. Hofmann, are him; that’s the way it’s sup- MacLehose Press’s founder Christo- American Express dreds of thousands of books over II question and particularly the Ho- who has also translated German- posed to happen in good books.” pher MacLehose, even the best sto- the past few years. locaust assumed fresh relevance language writers like Roth and Just as the two novellas that rytelling doesn’t do World War II, Platinum card At the same time a growing with the end of the Cold War,” Franz Kafka. “Fallada’s just a constituted Némirovsky’s “Suite and the Holocaust in particular, ad- number of war-time memoirs have says Mr. Riding. “Only when the great and greatly gifted popular Française” came out of her experi- equate justice. Mr. MacLehose, who membership fee begun to be unearthed by discern- communist bloc—notably East Ger- writer. ‘Alone in Berlin,’ which is ence of the daily humiliations of published “The Journal of Hélène ing French and British publishers. many, Poland, Hungary and Roma- based on the residents of this the German occupation of Paris, so Berr” in the U.K. in 2008 and is These include moving first-hand nia—disintegrated, did the extent house, and what happens to them, too did Fallada write “Alone in Ber- also responsible for coming titles testimonies of the Holocaust like of the persecution of the Jews be- is like a super, Dickensian page- lin”( the first anti-Nazi novel to be like “The Road” and Chil Rajch- “The Journal of Hélène Berr,” come fully apparent. In a way the turner, amplified because it’s set published in Germany after the man’s “Treblinka: A Survivor’s which came out in France and the Cold War had frozen history.” in Berlin in the 1940s, in the civil- war) with the searing insight of Memory,” believes that publishers U.K. in 2008, Chil Rajchman’s “Tre- It was not until after the col- ian world.” one who had spent more than 12 have a responsibility to bring out blinka: A Survivor’s Memory,” lapse of the communist bloc that In some ways the qualities of years being hounded by the Nazis. books “of real historical value.” which will be published in the U.K. Hungarian-Jewish Nobel Prize-win- “Alone in Berlin” are reminiscent “It’s a period that still fasci- “I think there has to be a real on Jan. 11 by MacLehose Press, ning author Imre Kertész’s most of those of Irène Némirovsky’s nates people,” says French writer literary response to the tragedy of and Zalmen Gradowski’s Aus- famous novel “Fatelessness,” novel “Suite Française,” which Pierre Assouline, whose literary the Holocaust,” says Mr. MacLe- Local chwitz memoir, which was pub- about his teenage years in Aus- was first published in France in blog La République des Livres is hose. “In my view, you don’t need City currency Œ lished in France last year under chwitz and Buchenwald, finally 2004 and was subsequently trans- the most popular of its kind in ‘Schindler’s List,’ you don’t need the title “Au Coeur de l’Enfer” got to be published in German and lated into 38 languages, selling France. “The popularity of writers ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but you do need New York $450 Œ352 (“In the Heart of Hell”). Recent re- other European languages. more than 2.5 million copies, as of like Stefan Zweig and Joseph Hélène Berr and Chil Rajchman.’ London £300 Œ365 issues have also included French- The German-born poet and 2008. Though “Alone in Berlin” Roth, especially in a country like He believes that publishers woman Agnès Humbert’s “Résis- translator Michael Hofmann—who was first published in Germany in France, has a lot to do with an must play their part. “The priority Paris Œ490 Œ490 tance,” an intense memoir about was widely praised for his English- 1947, whereas “Suite Française” acute nostalgia for Mitteleuropa I think is to educate the next gen- the first tentative steps of the Re- language translation of Hans Falla- was discovered years after the [middle Europe], a nostalgia for a eration and their children,” he Frankfurt Œ500 Œ500 sistance and Humbert’s subse- da’s novel “Alone in Berlin,” which war had ended, both novels have a highly cultured and diverse Eu- says. “And the more that the Rome Œ550 Œ550 quent capture by the Gestapo. was published in the U.K. in Janu- similarly visceral expressionistic rope, with its Jewish dimension, books we publish are real and of The Paris-based English writer ary and is expected to exceed sweep that could only have been that existed between the wars.” irreproachable quality the more Brussels Œ570 Œ570 Alan Riding, whose cultural his- sales of 250,000 copies there by the result of experiencing some- The kind of following writers you can give them to be read.” Note: Prices of annual membership fee for the tory of Nazi-occupied Paris “And the end of the year—believes that thing dreadful at first hand. like Zweig and Roth have long had Tobias Grey is a writer charge card, plus taxes, as provided by retailers the Show Went On” is published Fallada “was coming out of a Sil- “If you read not only ‘Alone in in France is now beginning to be based in Paris in each city, averaged and converted into euros.

W14 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W3 v Books Contents Blair’s Journey

3 | Fashion 8-10 | Cover story Architecture 13 | Top Picks By Martin Rubin Mr. Blair structures his book during the couple’s sleepover at just say it.” But over time, he as the tale of a political journey Balmoral Castle, the royal resi- says, he came “to admire the It is now painfully obvious that vaulted him at an astonish- dence in Scotland. But he some- simplicity, the directness” of Mr. Something new A temporary peek at the Stedelijk that Tony Blair—the man who led ingly young age (43) to an unprec- times does provide too much in- Bush’s approach, “finding in it t Meeting in space Britain for a decade, who trans- edented three consecutive terms formation—recollections of an strength and integrity.” in Tiffany blue formed the country’s dully ortho- as head of the British govern- eccentric relative’s foul smell, This back-and-forth quality is Architects come together in Venice Home of Hendrix and Handel dox Labour Party into dashing, ment. But “A Journey” is a his encounters with a childhood common in Mr. Blair’s efforts at moderate “New Labour,” who deeply personal book, too, full of bully, his unhappy experience as portraiture, where criticism is of- faced down parliamentary oppo- candid revelations. For all his a schoolboy boxer. All seemed ten followed by a softening com- Rediscovering Charlotte Perriand nents with brio and eloquently de- seeming confidence and ease, Mr. designed to elicit empathy but pliment. Even Gordon Brown, Mr. The Tiffany fended the invasion of Iraq—is no Blair tells us, he desperately pre- may cause a reader to cringe. Blair’s successor as prime minis- Reversible Tote 14 | Books longer much of a hero in his own pared for Prime Minister’s Ques- Still, Mr. Blair has a pleasing ter—with whom Mr. Blair often and a matching pouch. country. Indeed, he is intensely tions—where he excelled each capacity to take us with him into bitterly quarreled and whom he Bryan Derballa disliked, not least for his loyalty week in the House of Commons, privileged places, whether it’s up- blames for the party’s recent elec- to the “freedom agenda”—the parrying the thrusts of opposi- stairs at the White House (where, tion lost—is said to be “brilliant” 4-5 | Food & Wine Europe's war-time idea that, after 9/11, Western de- tion MPs—and confides that even over dinner, he finds Mr. Bush and indispensable. When it comes mocracies had a duty to face “unbelievably, almost preternatu- to Bill and Hillary Clinton, writers recaptured down tyrants like Saddam Hus- rally calm” before his major though, Mr. Blair’s admiration is sein and end the threat they rep- A Journey speech to Congress after 9/11) or unalloyed. There is no doubt that Wine: Clear differences resented. By Tony Blair to Balmoral itself, where he must he regards them as political soul 15 | Books Those outside the U.K., under- (Hutchinson, 700 pages, £25) dash down long corridors to the Associated Press mates. standably, have less intense feel- toilet facilities, which are both re- vasion, Mr. Blair has no apolo- Mr. Blair is perhaps proudest Mapping the way for French fouées ings about Mr. Blair. They may re- mote and old-fashioned—Victo- gies. He reveals that although of his role in getting the Labour member him most of all for artic- now, three years after his leaving rian water closets. He gives a Vice President Dick Cheney was Party to shed its commitments 6-7 | Travel Blair's Labours ulating George W. Bush’s foreign- office, the hairs on his neck frank account of how hard it was, adamantly opposed to involving to unilateral nuclear disarma- policy ideas—especially the logic prickle just before noon on in his early years as prime minis- the U.N., Mr. Bush did not take ment and the nationalization of of the Iraq war—a bit more grace- Wednesdays, when Question ter, to get on with Queen Eliza- much persuading. In any case, Britain’s industries. Both posi- 16 | Time Off fully than Mr. Bush did. It was at Time begins. In the minutes be- beth, who treated him with “hau- the U.N. declined to authorize tions were ardently backed in The alluring such moments, in speeches and fore plunging into that arena, he teur.” the use of military force, and the party’s 1983 manifesto, a joint press conferences with Mr. says, he would gladly have ex- Not surprisingly, Mr. Blair of- the invasion went ahead anyway. document that was later called, remoteness of Karpathos Our arts and culture calendar Bush, that Mr. Blair made his changed an equal amount of time fers a robust defense of his role Clearly, for Mr. Blair, it was bet- after Margaret Thatcher’s sec- greatest impression on the world under Laurence Olivier’s sadistic in taking Britain into the Iraq ter to have tried multilaterally ond, landslide victory, the long- 12 | Art stage—as a loyal American ally dentist’s drill in the movie “Mara- war, though he agonizes over the and lost than never to have est suicide note in history. By and gifted orator. thon Man.” invasion’s violent aftermath. To tried at all. fighting so hard to transform his But the man himself, not to Mr. Blair writes movingly of this day he sees the overthrow of Mr. Blair’s feelings about Mr. party, whether from genuine con- mention the arc of his career, is his mother’s death from cancer Saddam Hussein as the one true Bush are mixed. He calls him, viction or pragmatic calculation, Tessa Farmer's less familiar. “A Journey,” his po- when he was 22 and of his fa- course for his country. More sur- backhandedly, a man with a Mr. Blair achieved, he believes, Barbara Tina Fuhr Editor litical memoir, is thus especially ther’s disabling stroke a few prisingly, he notes that his close “great intuition . . . about what the long-sought aim of making

Frankenstein fairies © Sergio Pirrone Elisabeth Limber Art director welcome. Luckily it is not one of years earlier, which devastated relations with the U.S., despite he thought was right or wrong.” Labour the “natural party of gov- 'Decay of a Dome' by Amateur Architecture Studio. Brian M. Carney Books page editor those leaden bricks of official the family. When it comes to the war’s unpopularity, gave him Mr. Bush’s intuition, moreover, ernance.” “A Journey” provides Questions or comments? Write to [email protected]. reminiscence. The tone is confid- less profound personal details, increased stature with other “wasn’t expressed analytically a priceless glimpse into the COVER, The entrance of the Australian Pavilion. Please include your full name and address. ing, informal and forthright, Mr. Blair does not sink to the world leaders, who assumed that or intellectually. It was just mind of the man who devoted Photograph by Sergio Pirrone for The Wall Street Journal. though Mr. Blair has not given up level of revelation achieved by he had Mr. Bush’s ear. stated.” Mr. Blair confesses that, himself to that transformation. his habit of handling certain mat- his wife in her 2008 memoirs, As for the joint U.S.-British listening to the U.S. president at ters in an on-the-one-hand/on-the- when she described how their decision to seek (in vain) United a press conference, he would Mr. Rubin is a writer in Pasa- other sort of way. son Leo came to be conceived Nations approval for the Iraq in- think: “George, explain it; don’t dena, Calif.

THE JOURNAL CROSSWORD / Edited by Mike Shenk 55 Unseat Down 52 “The Wanderer” singer 80 East German 56 Facilitates 1 Mad-hatter link 53 She played Anna in secret police “Anna Karenina” and 83 Nikita’s no Across 21 Tribe that lent its 31 Cost to compete 44 Quran creator 57 First Family of the 1980s 2 Ballot abbr. Life in the Limelight ___ “Anna Christie” 84 Unwrapped name to a state 34 Becomes besieged 59 Rio Plata 3 Handy moving company? 1 Target 46 It might be 58 2007 NCAA basketball enthusiastically 22 Cisco, to Pancho 38 City founded in four letters 60 Baserunners try to beat it 4 This place is buzzing 6 Part of many and football champions 85 Birthright seller 23 Explorer whose 1906 by U.S. Steel 47 Reaper’s tool 62 Heroine of Cather’s 5 Soft fabric By Paul Genders is the invention of a character ristos Blanco, “the writer vener- lar Richter as a self-portrait, stars’ names 60 Paces of pieces 88 Liver autobiography is 39 “___ Blue?” 49 Online payment “The Song of the Lark” from an earlier story, an author ated by half the planet and however cartoonish, of the au- 11 Cash on hand? 6 Versatile plant used 61 “Let me think titled “Alone” 41 Scratched method 64 Did some crunches? in herbal medicine 91 Service elevators? It is not surprising that fame “of intricate short stories full of mildly despised by the other,” re- thor; particularly so when he an- 14 He often receives about that” 25 July 1 celebration (out) 51 Status attained 65 “Don’t these clothes I just got 94 Clipper or cutter 7 Smash’s counterpart 62 Even chances should be on Daniel Kehlmann’s complicated mirror effects and appear throughout “Fame,” read nounces his wish to write “a a touching 27 You are here 42 It may be used by after passing look good on me?” 96 Put in a vault portrayal 8 Butt in 63 “How’s that?” mind. The Munich-born author’s unpredictable shifts and swerves and espoused by its characters. novel without a protagonist . . . 28 Computer Professor Plum the Trials of 69 Shine, in brand names 98 University of 19 Engage in petty drive part Skill, Spirit, and 9 Gosling’s first sound 66 Family on which 2005 novel, “Measuring the that were flourishes of empty The book’s sixth story finds [possessing a] structure, the con- 43 Org. that produces 71 Jayma Mays’s “Glee” role Maine town criticism 30 Prefix with the Congressional Knowledge 10 Gérard’s “Green Card” “Please Don’t Eat World,” about the 19th-century virtuosity.” Mr. Kehlmann ex- Blanco contemplating suicide af- nections, a narrative arc, but no 72 Malia’s little sister 99 Cut 20 GPS forerunner comedy Record 54 Mason’s burden co-star the Daisies” is based scientists Alexander von Hum- pects us to see the joke. The ter realizing that his life’s work main character advancing 100 Played (with) 73 Compound parts: Abbr. 11 Material for breeches 67 Emulate a crane boldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, links between these nine narra- is founded on a lie. The lie—that throughout.” Sets in Order 76 “Dadaland” author 12 Coming-in approx. 68 “Fold” 101 Lola’s dog, was a surprise commercial hit. tives are intricately embedded, there is “an order in the world This, of course, describes / by Joe DiPietro in an Inge play 78 Benchmarks: Abbr. 13 Like some wedding 69 Family subdivisions Selling more than 1.5 million arise unpredictably and show and life could be good”—has “Fame.” It also introduces a 12345 678910111213 1415161718 103 It’ll do for the present 79 Sacred texts receptions 70 It helps take hooked copies to date, the book has their author is not short on tech- made him wealthy and famous, meta-fictional note to the book 104 January 1944 19 20 21 22 81 Curry of NBC 14 ___ Speaker fish from the water which tells you much, Mr. Kehl- that swells into an intriguing Allied landing site made Mr. Kehlmann the most nical flair. 82 It contains spooled documents 15 Figurative writing 74 Major Pasadena The genesis of the opening mann implies, about wealth and theme. This theme—the powers 23 24 25 26 108 Certain pool stat successful young writer—he is 86 Dated weapon 16 Steve Urkel catchphrase thoroughfare in his mid-30s—in the German story is the aforementioned blun- fame. and responsibilities of author- 109 Burning feeling 27 28 29 30 87 Five kings of Portugal 17 Titled Turk 75 Shepherd with a self- language. der, a clerical mistake that leads There are more famous writ- ship—surfaces in a story about a titled Lifetime sitcom 110 IV squared 89 Thank-___ 18 Latte variety to a white-collar family man, ers in the book’s third strand. On terminally ill woman traveling 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 76 Practical joker 112 Shaq’s alma mater (gift acknowledgments) 24 Justice Dept. agency Ebling, being assigned the same a lecture tour of Central Asia, the to a Swiss suicide clinic. The 77 Mil. address part 113 Isr. neighbor Fame 38 39 40 41 42 90 “Hey, over here!” 26 Ready for battle telephone number as a film star, esteemed crime novelist Maria story comes, we learn, from the 78 Sport in a walled court 114 Scrollwork shape 92 Mound stat 29 Swordfish servings By Daniel Kehlmann Ralf Tanner. This mistake is actu- Rubenstein is cut adrift from her pen of Richter, a point brought 43 44 45 46 47 48 79 Regd. names 115 ___-Foy, Quebec 93 View from Sandusky 31 Spurred (on) Translated by Carol Brown Janeway ally made, off-stage, in the eighth tour group; without money or a home arrestingly when the main 49 50 51 52 53 54 94 Miles of film 32 Went out for a bit (Quercus, 304 pages, £12.99) story, by the narrator of the sev- visa, she quickly descends into a character starts to plead with 95 Cable bill encl. enth, an Internet-addicted tele- cline only accelerates. hellish anonymity for which celeb- the author to let her live. 55 56 57 58 33 Key of Scriabin’s Last Week’s Solution 96 Playboy Club attire Symphony No. 1 communications worker named For all the cross-connecting pa- rity has not prepared her. No one In the collection’s final story 59 60 61 62 63 64 97 Did diagnostic work 35 Prefix with pad or port ASB I G COLA CCC I B I B In “Fame,” his seventh work of Mollwitz. nache with which Ralf Tanner’s in this strange unnamed land rec- Richter casts acquaintances from 102 Pope with the shortest reign 36 Time’s 2007 Invention MOO L A F E AR E D AAA S I NA fiction and the third to be trans- When we meet Ralf Tanner, in fall is achieved, and though Mr. ognizes or understands Rubin- his Central American jaunt in an- 65 66 67 68 (13 days) of the Year PUBLICEXPENDITURE OST lated into English, Mr. Kehlmann the fourth story, he is ensnared Kehlmann offers amusing satiri- stein, but were she not so feted other of his fictions. When his ECU NAMER T INHAT INCH 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 105 Early whirlybirds 37 Cries out for turns his attention to the present in the bizarre chain of events cal details along the way, the fi- in her own country she would not characters complain about losing DIPLOMATICENVOY LAIRS day and, one suspects, his own re- that began when he suddenly nal moral is unremarkable. Fame, be here. Once more fame gets its their true identities, Richter de- 106 “Call on me! I know 40 Sympathetic reply INS ECON DAVINCI 76 77 78 79 80 the answer!” 44 Very, to Verdi RILL PRAY PHENOM EBB cent experiences. The results are stopped receiving telephone calls. the author informs us, is flimsy, comeuppance; but Rubinstein’s cides to abscond from the story 81 82 83 84 85 86 107 Con game 45 Stone Mountain honoree ATTACHE P I ES LAWYER dazzling, but in a manner that But Tanner’s phone has gone si- easily counterfeited and no guar- story is told with such fairy-tale altogether, disappearing “above 108 Popular operating system 46 Its biggest city PSYCHI CENERGY AUSTERE leaves you wondering if you lent only because Ebling is an- antee of happiness. Mr. Kehl- economy and eeriness you are in- the sky and beneath the earth 87 88 89 90 91 92 111 Some demarcated is Chicago, Ill. TORSOS EURO ULM OSSA haven’t been hoodwinked. swering his calls for him, back in mann’s virtuosity looks here to clined to forgive the predictabil- like a second-class God.” “Fame” parking areas COOL I NGCENTER 93 94 95 96 47 Bundle of papers At first glance, “Fame” com- the first story. Ebling, drunk on be in the service of a sentiment ity. fools cleverly around its title sub- CHAS RVS ROMP OUT I ES 116 Hog the mirror 48 El-overseeing org. prises nine short stories. As you newfound power, repeatedly ar- too commonplace, surely, to de- Rubinstein’s friend Leo Rich- ject, but is more puzzling and sub- 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 117 Garden party? CAMACHO TRAG I CEND I NGS read, you discover these are not ranges late night liaisons with a serve it. ter, inventor of those “intricate,” stantial when, as in these stories, 50 Ban choice CRADLE PROM FEELFOR 118 Jed Clampett portrayer stand-alone narratives: bit-part female friend of Tanner’s, and re- A second narrative strand, “empty” fictions, is also on a lec- it makes a subject of the author’s 105 106 107 PET ORDA I N SPOT LOSS ___ 119 “Hello, Be Going” For an interactive MISUSER VERA IRE characters in one story take cen- peatedly stands her up; it is the concerning a Paulo Coelho-like ture tour, of Central America. power to fool. 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 120 Quebec underground version of The Wall OPCIT ARCTICEXPLORERS ter stage in another; someone actor who is eventually punished, author of New Age philosophy, Here he rages against the fame

t Street Journal blunders in one and the conse- violently attacked by the woman similarly has satirical bite and that has seen him invited across Mr. Genders is a freelance editor 116 117 118 119 121 Vietnam Veterans BAER ADORED SAVES RAT Memorial designer Crossword, WSJ.com ENL STAT I CELECTR I C I TY quences are suffered in another in a scene that is filmed by pass- technical sparkle, but again con- the world to speak to “brain- and writer based in London. His 120 121 122 123 122 Applies sloppily subscribers can go to STL ER I E HOSTAS TAKEN by someone else entirely; you fol- ersby and becomes an Internet forms to an ordinary, cautionary dead” admirers. It is tempting to book reviews have appeared in 123 Way bigger than big WSJ.com/Puzzles ESO WARD SSTS ABASE low a character only to find she sensation. From here, Tanner’s de- curve. The works of Miguel Au- see the neurotic, somewhat bipo- the Times Literary Supplement.

W2 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL WEEKEND JOURNAL | Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 W15 FRIDAY-SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3-5, 2010

Amsterdam rapher, known for his black-and-white art depictions of historical and cultural “Amsterdam Heritage Weekend” lets events of the 20th century. visitors access major monuments Museum für Angewandte Kunst around town, including some that are Sept. 4-26 % normally closed to the public. 49-221-221-2860-8 Various locations www.museenkoeln.de Nickolas Muray Photo Archives

Sept. 11-12 s % 31-20-2514-900 Copenhagen www.bma.amsterdam.nl art “Anselm Kiefer: Art and Myth” shows Basel 90 works by the German sculptor and painter, ranging from his early years art to the present day. “Andy Warhol: The Early Sixties Paint- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art ings and Drawings 1961-1964” exhibits Sept. 10-Jan. 9 70 paintings and drawings, including % 45-4919-0791 the “Star” series, featuring Elvis. www.louisiana.dk Museum für Gegenwartskunst Sept. 5-Jan. 23 % 41-61-2066-262 Dublin www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch art “Futures 10” exhibits works by emerg- ing artists such as Oisín Byrne, Rhona Belfast Byrne and Fiona Chambers, presenting music paintings, sculptures, prints, photogra- “Wilco” bring their Grammy Award- phy and architectural models. winning rock music to Europe, per- Royal Hibernian Academy forming with support from Philip Sel- Until Oct. 24 way, the drummer for Radiohead. % 353-1-6612-558 Sept. 10 Open House Fest, Belfast www.royalhibernianacademy.ie Sept. 12 End of the Road Fest, Dorset Düsseldorf Sept. 14 Royal Festival Hall, art London “Nam June Paik” presents 30 large Sept. 15 Academy, Newcastle sculptural installations by the Korean Sept. 16 Barrowland, Glasgow artist often considered to be the first Sept. 18 Take Root Festival, video artist, including the German pre- Groningen miere of “Laser Cone.” Sept. 19 Leffingeleuren Festival, Museum Kunst Palast Leffinge, Belgium Sept. 11-Nov.21 Sept. 20 Tonhalle, Duesseldorf % 49-211-8990-200 More European dates at www.museum-kunst-palast.de www.wilcoworld.net Frankfurt Berlin music music “Auftakt” is a series that highlights “Musikfest Berlin 10” presents solo- works by contemporary musicians, ists, choirs, ensembles and orchestras this year featuring work by Swiss performing in 24 classical-music composer Beat Furrer and German pia- events, featuring a total of 60 works nist and conductor Christian Zacharias. by 25 different composers, including Alte Oper Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Ravel. Sept. 5-30 Various venues % 49-69-1340-400 Until Sept. 21 www.alteoper.de % 49-30-2548-9244 www.berlinerfestspiele.de Leverkusen art photography “Bernard Frize: And How and Where “Face/Project” showcases 30 collabora- and Who” offers a retrospective of tive works by artists Tina Berning and the contemporary French artist, includ- Michelangelo Di Battista, mixing ele- ing photography and paintings. ments of fashion photography with Museum Morsbroich drawing and painting. Sept. 5-Nov. 7 Camera Work % 49-214-8555-60 Sept. 4-Oct. 30 www.museum-morsbroich.de % 49-30-3100-773 www.camerawork.de London Tate Britain Imperial War Museum North www.openart.biz photography Sept. 8-Jan. 16 Sept. 18-Feb. 27 Cologne “Eadweard Muybridge” aims to % 44-20-7887-8888 % 44-161-836-4000 Paris photography present a full range of the art created www.tate.org.uk www.iwm.org.uk/north music “René Burri—Das Werk” shows a retro- by the British photographer and pio- Yo-Yo Ma, the acclaimed cellist and spective of work by the Swiss photog- neer of motion photography. history Milan multiple Grammy Award-winner, per- “Inventing the 21st Century” examines ballet forms J.S. Bach’s complete cello groundbreaking British inventions suites. Meeting “Serata Forsythe” is a staging of three from this century’s first decade with pieces by William Forsythe: “Artifact Theatre des Champs-Elysees original drawings and designs, includ- Suite,” “Herman Schmerman” and “In Sept. 14-15 % ing the Dyson “Air Multiplier” and the The Middle, Somewhat Elevated.” 33-1-4952-5050 Karbon Kinetics “Gocycle” folding bike. Teatro alla Scala www.theatrechampselysees.fr British Library Sept. 6-23 of minds ‘Halsschmuck’ (2010) by Evert Nijland, Sept. 6-Nov. 28 % 39-02-72-003-744 Vienna in Munich; top, ‘Frida on White Bench’ % 44-193-754-6060 www.teatroallascala.org art (1939) by Nickolas Muray, shown in Vienna. www.bl.uk “Frida Kahlo” shows a retrospective TheThe architectural wworldorld comes comes Munich featuring 60 paintings, 80 works on paper and 20 objects, exploring the togetherh at theh Venice Biennalel Manchester art life and art of the Mexican painter. photography “Open Art” offers a series of openings Bank Austria Kunstforum “The Gulf War 1990-1991: Photo- at 65 museums and galleries, introduc- Until Dec. 5 graphs by John Keane” presents a col- ing the new season of art in the city. % 43-1-5373-326 lection of photographs by the British Various locations www.bankaustria-kunstforum.at artist, some of which are on public dis- Sept. 10-12 play for the first time. % 49-89-2920-15 Source: WSJE research Curtesy of Galerie Spektrum

W16 Friday - Sunday, September 3 - 5, 2010 | WEEKEND JOURNAL Travel: The allure of Karpathos Wine: Choosing the right glass