The Way We Were

BEAUTY: Painting--Ekaterina Popova

There is something charming, soothing, and sweet about these domestic interior images by Ekaterina Popova. But the longer I look at them, there is something heartbreaking about them too...the intimacy and tenderness...the view of a private place, the kind of place we all have, where we let down our guard, fall asleep and dream. It is a little corner that belongs to us, small and fragile. It recalls Van Gogh's painting of his bedroom in Arles, his floor swept clean, his belongings neatly organized, the little yellow chair next to his bed set just so...these are the things that whisper, "I am me, I only take up this little amount of room, please just let me exist."

Top to bottom: Bedroom Study; Bedtime Stories; First Apartment; Guest Room; Memories Remain; Restful; untitled; Vermont III; Vermont

https://www.katerinapopova.com/

The Cozy Cabin...For Winter

BEAUTY: Interiors--Kara Mann

Master interior designer Kara Mann was hired to design some model rooms at the legendary and infamous Hotel Chelsea in New York City. The Hotel has been undergoing a deep renovation for the last many years and last year, the building was sold for $250 million and the new owners have announced that they are going to reopen The Hotel in 2018 as a combination of a hotel and condos.

Since its inception in 1885, The Hotel Chelsea has been more than a hotel...it has been a haven and home for writers, poets, artists, musicians, singers, and creative people of all types. Mark Twain was among the earliest long term residents at the Chelsea. Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY while living at the Chelsea...and Kerouac wrote ON THE ROAD there. Dylan Thomas died of pneumonia at the Chelsea in 1953. The list is long and staggering but musicians from Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd to Edith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen have all lived for a time at The Chelsea. Sex Pistol member Sid Vicious lived there and in fact, the hotel is where Nancy Spungen, his girlfriend was found stabbed to death. Artists as varied as Diego Rivera, Robert Mapplethorpe, Willem de Kooning, Christo, and Nikki de Saint-Phalle have all called The Chelsea home. But the most well-known residents are surely the Warhol Superstars: Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman, Paul America, Rene Ricard, Nico, and Brigid Berlin. In fact, Warhol and Paul Morrissey directed "Chelsea Girls," a 1966 underground film about the lives of these Warhol Superstars and Factory regulars.

In 1966, the same year as Warhol's film, The Chelsea Hotel was named a New York City landmark, and in 1977 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Given this incredible pedigree, The Chelsea Hotel conjures up many styles, faces, and periods. Designer Mann (previously here) tends to produce dark, moody interiors but kept rooms light for her Chelsea remodel while miraculously managing to maintain a dark, moody feeling that is tinged with a sense of decadent rock n' roll. She coupled this with peculiar art, collected patchwork Bohemiana, and a worn look that tells the tale of The Chelsea from today's perspective. Fantastic work.

http://www.karamann.com/hotel-chelsea/

Sleep in Van Gogh's Bedroom

To promote its current show "Van Gogh's Bedrooms," The Art Institute of Chicago has created a replica of Van Gogh's bedroom at Arles which he painted three times. The museum is bringing together all three paintings in an historic showing.

The replica bedroom is listed on Airbnb here and is actually available for nightly stays! The listing is amusingly written from the point of view of the master himself:

"I'm charging $10 for no other reason than that I need to buy paint. However, I will be happy to provide you with tickets to my exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. "

Van Gogh painted this room three different times. The Art Institute's site elaborates:

Vincent van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles is arguably the most famous chambre in the history of art. It also held special significance for the artist, who created three distinct paintings of this intimate space from 1888 to 1889. This exhibition—presented only at the Art Institute of Chicago—brings together all three versions of The Bedroom for the first time in North America, offering a pioneering and in-depth study of their making and meaning to Van Gogh in his relentless quest for home.

Van Gogh painted his first Bedroom just after moving into his beloved “Yellow House” in Arles, France, in 1888. He was so enamored with the work, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, that after water damage threatened its stability, he became determined to preserve the composition by painting a second version while at an asylum in Saint-Rémy in 1889. Identical in scale and yet distinct from the original, that second work is now one of the icons of the Art Institute’s permanent collection. Van Gogh created a smaller third version, now at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, as a gift for his mother and sister a few weeks after making the second. While the three paintings at first appear almost identical, when examined closely, each reveals distinct and unique details.

http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/van-goghs-bedrooms