Paris Scene: Art Elysees

Irwin Weiner ASID - A distinct pleasure in visiting a city like Paris is soaking up the beautiful art scene. Take your pick for genre, artist, and style in this city filled with many art choices. It was a wonderful opportunity to see the annual Art Elysees exhibits set up along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, exhibiting private gallery stashes of contemporary art.

In today's featured video, the curator of Galerie Dil talks about Bernard Buffet and other featured French artists from his exhibit. Buffet's 1950s minimal, stark style is extremely expressive, and I enjoyed the equally spare interpretation of some of his exhibited pieces, particularly the one which described a sailboat scene as being "filled with dreams."

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The "Jewelry Effect" Hits Everyday Design

Jay Johnson - We're seeing the strong trend in everyday objects to guild the lily by adding a jewelry element. Today's design must be both beautiful and functional. Take a spatula, for instance. We could have a boring, traditional stick of wood with a white rubber spreading tip affixed to the end, or we could add color and interesting materials like bamboo or steel or resin to really make the object pop and distinguish it from the ordinary.

UK artist Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull, 2007, helped start the trend

Enter the jewelry effect. We're seeing precious and semi-precious stones added to art, like Damien Hirst's diamond skull (above), and everyday objects to greatly increase both their bling and price tag. Click on each photograph for more info on the be-jeweled items.

Vertu: diamond-covered model is costliest cell phone in the world

The Natural Sapphire Company: $700,000 for its white gold and sapphire-encrusted iPad caseIndia's Nano Car: the cheapest car in the world has a gold, silver, semi-precious stone edition

HYLA Vacuum: $21,900 model boasting 32,000 Swarovski crystals

Dussault jeans: $10,000 denims boast gold, diamond, ruby wallet chains

We thank Sheffield School, New York, NY, for permission to reprint this post. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

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Triple Threat Deborah Buck Combines Design, Collectibles, and Art

Irwin Weiner ASID - If you're in Manhattan, visit Deborah Buck at her Madison Avenue store. If you're not, check out her beautiful book, Tableau, and you can see her handy online inventory, on her Buck House website and in her 1st Dibs store. A client of mine recently gave me a copy of her book and a catalog of her artwork, and I must say, her design eye and artistic sense is impressive.

In Tableau, Deborah creates tablescapes and arrangements of collectibles, antiques, and found objects, then summons her artistic muse and creates art and wallpaper designs from an element within the tableau. Click on any photo spread from her book to learn more about Tableau, and visit the Deborah Buck website for decor and merchandise.

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Latest Contemporary Art Displayed at FIAC, Paris

Irwin Weiner ASID - While we were in Paris the weekend of FIAC, the International Contemporary Art Fair, we weren't keen to stand in long ticketholder lines at the Grand Palais and queue up to see an infinite number of art spaces. (A lame excuse; we probably were too late to get tickets.) Instead, we saw other exhibitions nearby, took in an art and design fair just outside FIAC - more on that in a future post, and saw an inflatable Stonehenge that we thought was a kiddie amusement feature (nope; even though everyone was bouncing around inside it, we learned later that it was an outdoor FIAC art installation). In today's featured video, you'll see some of the latest contemporary artwork. I'm not astounded, I must be honest.

There are "room installations" (a treehouse built in a corner gallery space, a disheveled bathroom scene), contemporary works in acrylic, photography (close-up on a body part or industrial and architectural), playful use of objects-as-art (car wash brushes, decaying grand pianos, faceted mirrors turning), and many works in neon and mixed media showing English language words and sayings (done to death; hopefully the trend is over with).

My favorite artwork in the video was a lenticular or video framed canvas (I couldn't tell which) of a man juggling; supremely clever and mesmerizing. The winner of FIAC 2012, however, was the sculpture shown in the top photo, a reclining tombstone figure called Diving Man by Daniel Dewar and Gregory Gicquel. Does this herald the death of contemporary art? (It really is a sculpture privately commissioned for a cemetery.) You be the judge.

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