Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Anglo-French born 1947
The Jewish Museum housed in the magnificent townhouse completed in 1908 for the banker, Felix Warburg, on 5th Avenue in New York is hosting an exhibition about the aesthetic sensibility of Marc Camille Chaimowicz.
The Jewish Museum, 92nd and 5th Avenue, New York. Photo from the web
The artist was born in 1947 in Paris, the son of a Polish Jewish émigré father and a French Catholic mother. His father’s family died in the Holocaust. French is his primary language.
When he was eight, the family moved to London where the artist still lives.
Known for his merging of both performance and installation art, the artist has always used his own home as inspiration for and staging of his art: painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, ceramics, furniture, lighting, textiles, wallpaper; and art books. 1975 to the present day.
He uses Central European, French and British design elements.
He places the objects he creates – often with artisans – as on a stage with fixtures which he has also designed.
A young woman told me that here is the artist’s dream world. It seems, rather, that this is the artist’s real world.
A second young woman took as happy coincidence that the artist had placed a bottle of the Yves Saint Laurent perfume, Paris, on a dressing table. She was wearing a single drop on her wrist from her hoarded and depleted 10-year old bottle to raise her childhood in memory on this her birthday.
The artist would be pleased with this, I thought.
Faint images. Objects set down without crowding each other or you: carefully as if carelessly. Colours, shades, shapes, outlines changing throughout the day in the light of large mirrors.
Pristine. Nothing portentous or pretentious.
A light-touch oasis of suggestions for human comfort and contentment alone or in company: a ‘housely heaven’ in the words of the poet, David Whyte.
THE HOUSE OF BELONGING, 1996
David Whyte, American born England, 1962
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
Wallpaper
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
Wallpaper with photographs
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
Detail of an art book
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
Detail of an art book
this is the black day
Design for an art book
someone close
Detail of an art book
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
curtains designed by the artist
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
Dual, 2006-07, Finnish birch plywood, woven fabric, and powder-coated metal
in the quiet pathway
of light,
Wallpaper with photographs
the tawny
close-grained cedar
Wallpapers
burning round
me like fire
Wallpapers
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
Wallpapers, some with photographs
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
Dual, 2006-07, Finnish birch plywood, woven fabric, and powder-coated metal
this is where
Various furniture maquettes, 1975-2018, mixed media
I ask
my friends
Rope Vase in ceramic, 2014 with a sofa of the artist’s design
End game, 2018, etched mirrored glass and chrome nobs
to come,
Lamp 11, 2014, collage on fabric, wood, concrete, and electric wiring
this is where I want
to love all the things
Coffee Table Fossil Brown 197, 2015-2016, marble, hardwood with lacquer and a commercially produced coffee service
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
Detail of art books
of my adult aloneness
Man looking out of the Window, 2006, black and white resin print on aluminum
and I belong
Seven Day Hat Rack, 2015, wood and glass
to that aloneness
Seven Day Hat Rack, 2015, wood and glass
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
Bespoke coat hangers for clothes the artist decorated and wore; wood, paper, fabric and acrylic paint, 2011