< img src=" https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/41c/066/c56a366db5bb48bb3d6233c1dcdc9b5e88-Lefebvre118--1-.rhorizontal.w700.jpg" width=" 700
” height=” 467″/ > Picture: Thanks To Galerie Lefebvre Francois-Xavier Lalanne did not make numerous marble birds. The artist is understood for his sheep-shaped chairs, his rhinoceros desk, a bird bed– a practical menagerie of attentively crafted, typically funny works that make use of scale to provide a surreal twist on the natural world. However in Galerie Lefebvre’s booth at TEFAF New york city, there was a group of a little more ominous works by the artist– two sets of marble-bird chairs. At first created in 1974 at the demand of Alexander Iolas, his Paris-based gallerist at the time, Lalanne later refined the structure and material in an edition he produced Yves Saint Laurent around 1978. Only 12 of the massive chairs were made, and these, at TEFAF, are the only known surviving set.
Unlike the majority of the animals in his menagerie, which tend toward close replica of the source product (case in point: the wool-covered sheep chairs), the marble birds are sophisticated and extra. Their presence at an art and antiques fair of this stature serves as a counterpoint to the products that have actually dominated postmodern and contemporary style over the last twenty years: plastics and resins, chrome, steel, glass, and wood. Working marble by hand requires the ability, time, and focus that few artists are able to harness in our attention-burning, overproducing economy. It makes good sense that the working of stone would appear practically sublime in this context.
The chairs clearly display what is possible at the hands of a master artisan. In this case, Lalanne worked out restraint, utilizing just the most very little gestures to represent the bird’s anatomy and improve the chair’s function: an easy dot for an eye and a perfectly straight line cleaving the bird’s beak. A lot of remarkably, the chairs, specifically from the side, seem animated by an almost predatory power. When somebody is seated in them, the chairs fuse the human form to the avian, with the skull and beak of the marble bird jutting out of the back of one’s head and creating an intra-bestial Janus. Like his Babouin— the primate-shaped cast-iron range Lalanne designed in 1973– his marble birds feel threatening. There is a sense that they may remove the moment you sit down.
< img data-src=" https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/f96/b85/da5ba567bec821ea85222cdb613d404810-11379-02.rvertical.w570.jpg" width=" 570" height=" 712" src=" https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/f96/b85/da5ba567bec821ea85222cdb613d404810-11379-02.rvertical.w570.jpg"/ > From left: Roman columns decorated with laurel from the Augustan Duration. Photo: Courtesy
of Galerie Lefebvre Picture: Thanks To Galerie Lefebvre From top: Roman columns embellished with laurel from the Augustan Duration. Picture: Thanks To Galerie Lefebvre Photo: Thanks To Galerie Lefebvre
At previous editions of TEFAF, gallerists brought stone Cycladic figures from the Bronze Age, a classification of art that seems like an ancient precursor to the marble birds. Like the birds, these Cycladic forms transfer the enormous skill of their makers, appearing practically too slim and slight to be real. In Charles Ede’s cubicle at TEFAF this year, the acanthus leaves that twist and unfurl around a set of waist-high second-century Roman columns look soft as silk. Each leaf is like the sugar rose on a high-end birthday cake: delicious and deceptive at the same time. You want to peel or lick them off. Today it would likely take an experienced worker a number of, uninterrupted months of labor to sculpt a single column with this style at this size.
Giacomo Raffaelli, A circular table top, Rome, ca. 1830. Image: Courtesy of David Zwirner
A brief walk from the Park Opportunity Armory, a brand-new, collaborative program at David Zwirner delves even further into the enjoyment of the medium. Curated by art advisor Emma Kronman and sixth-generation antiquarians Laura Kugel of Galerie Kugel, the exhibition, “Set in Stone,” pulls from late geologist, author, and collector Roger Caillois’s writings on stone as a product of great clinical, artistic, spiritual, and metaphorical worth. Modern works like a Giorgio Morandi still life of jugs exist beside historical product like a carved amber container made in Germany throughout the middle of the 17th century, most likely by Jacob Heise. Contemporary pieces such as Andra Ursuta’s cast-glass Grande Odalisque highlight the fragility of a small, fragile agate casket from between 1640 and 1650 nearby. An ancient first-century sardonyx amphora (the most costly item in the exhibition at numerous million dollars), the Dashkov Vase, is unique for the extraordinary ability utilized to sculpt its little form out of a single piece of stone. One-third of the method up from its base, the vase is surrounded by 2 fine, carved lines. As your eye goes up, you catch its broken arm, which, Kugel recommends, improves the exceptionally fragile nature of the item.
< img data-src="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/0d4/b27/29f7d4e5e9d137672466e1b585bcc037a8-BAUTO0001-V1.rhorizontal.w700.jpg" width="700" height="467" src="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/0d4/b27/29f7d4e5e9d137672466e1b585bcc037a8-BAUTO0001-V1.rhorizontal.w700.jpg"/ > From left: Vase, Rome, ca. 1640– 1660, by an anonymous artist. Picture: © Galerie Kugel. Courtesy GalerieKugel and David Zwirner Picture: © Galerie Kugel. Courtesy Galerie
Kugel and David Zwirner Fromtop: Vase, Rome, ca. 1640– 1660, by a confidential artist. Image: © Galerie Kugel. Courtesy GalerieKugel and David Zwirner Picture: © Galerie Kugel. C.. more From top: Vase, Rome, ca. 1640– 1660, by a confidential artist. Photo: © Galerie Kugel. Courtesy Galerie Kugel and David ZwirnerPicture: © Galerie Kugel. Courtesy Galerie Kugel and David Zwirner
These objects bring the story of an ancient material, a reflection of the earth’s eons of damage and regeneration and representing countless years of geological data and memory. Encountering them today, they feel glamorous, not because of their prices or rarity but due to the fact that of that embodied history and their openness to analysis. How will the Lalanne birds check out to those living a centuries from now? We can’t potentially know, which is what makes them so constantly engaging.
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