You have seen this many times at the cinema or, maybe, for real. I have but without noticing it until I was watching La Bohème from the Met in Chelsea on Saturday.
May I digress? It has always puzzled me why La Bohème, an opera sung in Italian although set in Paris, should have a French title. Shouldn’t it be Il Boemia? Anyway, enjoying a glass of sparkling, pinot noir rosé from New Zealand with my host in our seats at the interval he pointed to the proscenium arch at the Met and wondered what the enigmatic ornamentation at the top, centre is. It is rather a distant view at the cinema but I guessed that it’s a boat with oars and a small jib sail at the prow. He, more practically, suggested that I look into the matter and write a post here; an excellent suggestion. Here is what it is.
Bronze over plaster maquette of the sculpture surmounting the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, NY; 13″ x 6 1/2″ x 6 1/2″
It was sold at auction last year in New Jersey for $2000 which seems cheap until you realise how small the maquette is compared to the one at the Met.
Mary Callery was born in New York in 1903 where she studied Art before moving to Paris in 1930. She became friends with Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Aristide Maillol, and other leading artists of the day while experimenting as a sculptor. She was not a Bohemian living in a garret. Her father was a leading businessman in Pittsburgh and by 1931 she was on her second husband, a rich Italian industrialist. Although the marriage didn’t last long she was able to collect work by her new French friends. She stayed in Paris until the German Occupation when she returned to New York with, it is said, more Picassos than anyone in America. Her collection is now dispersed in museums and galleries across America.
Now a little bit of gossip. She developed such a close friendship with Mies van der Rohe that he designed a house for her at Huntington, Long Island. While he was there he also designed an elegant public lavatory.
She continued as a sculptor and her best known, certainly her most seen, work is her abstract at the Met. Officially it is described as “an untitled ensemble of bronze forms creating a bouquet of sculptured arabesques”. Its unofficial title is The Car Crash.
Interesting discovery re Callery . Convinced Mies public pavilion is possibly Californian or even Hawaiian in locale.
Palms and gum trees do not jibe with Long Island but have resisted impulse to seek out the Googleteers on this.
You have exposed my ignorance. Seeing that Callery lived in Huntington and that MvdR did the public lavs at Huntington Beach I made a false assumption. Now I realise that Huntington Beach is a city in California. Too late to change the post now and thank you for such a tactful correction. By the way, I have only just got round to reading the property section of the WeekendFT and an article about the Los Altos Hills headlined “Exclusive and Reclusive” – I think it describes you and Suzy.
We’re immured in stockbrokers Tudor down our way pace Julian Barnes. Cheering ourselves up by reordering the wine closets…have a cellar but we’re in a riparian flood zone. So…Turns out ’13 was a good almond year and we bought cases of Napa Valley cabs….few breached since I was on a Pinot noir and Zin diet. Point is the 13s turned out to be “… A vintage of a generation”Antonio Galloni and “…best in my 37 year career”Robert Parker. This certainly helps take the sting out of this year’s crop freeze. Ancient Amerone fetched up and some Waugh (A not E) favorites St-Estephe de Montrose 98. Have sent your piece on to friends at the Met Opera Club.
Will report back.