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The critical voice in Roberta Smith’s head is mercifully, blessedly silent.
“I can walk into a show now and not have the first line of the review pop into my head,” said Ms. Smith, 76, who retired last month as the co-chief art critic of The New York Times.
The announcement prompted tributes on social media from fellow critics, artists, gallery owners, curators and readers, who called her “legendary,”“peerless” and “a critical model for a lifetime.” Over her 38-year career at The Times, Ms. Smith cultivated a reputation for intimate observations conveyed in accessible prose. She began her career as a freelance critic for The Times in 1986 before being hired in 1991. In 2011, she was promoted to co-chief art critic — the first woman to hold the title, which she shared with Holland Cotter.
But now, without the pressure of having to present a point of view in The Times, she’s free to do what she loves most — visit shows and galleries just to look.
“I look at shows less intently when I’m not writing about them,” she said. “That means sometimes I may not come out with a really formed opinion, because there isn’t that pressure.”
In a recent phone conversation from her Greenwich Village apartment, where she lives with her husband of 32 years, the New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, Ms. Smith discussed her journey to becoming a professional critic, how her taste in art has changed over the years and what it’s like being married to a fellow critic. These are edited excerpts.
How did you get started as a critic?
I began writing when I was 25 as a freelancer at Arts Magazine — which is now defunct — with an article on the painter Brice Marden. I became a critic in the same way a lot of people become critics: by immersing themselves in a subject and having enough confidence to listen to their opinions. Criticism isn’t really an academic subject. I don’t think it can be taught at school; it’s much more visceral. It happens when you’re in front of art, examining it, articulating opinions and trying to convert those opinions into clear prose.
Before joining The Times, you worked at the Museum of Modern Art, the Paula Cooper Gallery and with Donald Judd, the celebrated minimalist. How did those experiences shape your career?
All of those jobs exposed me to different people and their professions, their thinking and also some understanding about how the art world works on a very personal level. But it was writing for The Village Voice in the early 1980s that shaped me most. It gave me a very real sense of writing on deadline. It proved to me that I actually was a critic, not a fraud. That was momentous for me. I had never taken a journalism course. Editors and copy editors — especially at The Times — were my real teachers.
How has the art world, and in response, your beat, changed over the years?
When I started writing about art in 1972 at Arts Magazine, the art world was a completely different place. SoHo barely existed as an art destination; Madison Avenue and 57th Street had the main galleries. Conceptual art was dominant then, which meant an emphasis on ideas and not much on form or materials. It forced me to write more about narrative — and sometimes about everyday life — in a way that hadn’t previously been the case. There was also a tendency in the ’70s to think, well, that’s over; painting is dead; figurative sculpture is not going to be happening anymore. As time went on, those assessments proved wrong, thankfully.
How have you grown as a critic?
I think I’ve changed a great deal. At the beginning of my career, I kind of assimilated Donald Judd’s point of view — which was extremely rigorous in applying judgment. Critics need to be more flexible than artists. You have to be open to being changed and pushed into new directions by art. I don’t feel an obligation to take a strong stand on things.
My main goal has always been to point out art that people would enjoy seeing, and to show them how I saw it and enjoyed it. I think if I have any legacy, it’s teaching people how to look at art. It takes a certain kind of concentration, attention and openness.
What is it like being married to a fellow critic?
Being a critic is really lonely. Jerry made it so I wasn’t alone, and that was a huge gift. He also has really interesting instincts about art that startle me. It helps that we have different approaches to our work and to art. Basically, I stick fairly close to art objects and the experience of them, and I work within a more traditional format. For Jerry, the object is often just the starting point for a larger discussion. He’s more free-form and fluid with his writing.
Your retirement announcement was met with a cascade of tributes on social media. What was that like to see?
It stunned me. There are plenty of times when I absolutely despise my work, so I was quite taken aback. It’s been amazing.
Located outside Maebashi, a city in Japan‘s northern Gunma Prefecture, this House in Nonakamachi is a unique project hosting a single-family residence and a hair salon. Designed by architecture studios SNARK and OUVI, the house prioritizes openness and adaptability, creating a living environment that opens broadly onto the surrounding orchard, from which is takes its name.
Unlike similar homes in urban areas, House in Nonakamachi does not rely on proximity to its neighboring to inform its structure. Instead, the design takes advantage of the spacious rural site, celebrating the vast sky and distant horizon. The simple layout is a long rectangular volume with a width of 14 meters and a depth of 3.6 meters. It is constructed entirely of 4-inch square lumber, resulting in a lightweight and visually slender frame that contributes to the airy, open atmosphere.
The living space of the House in Nonakamachi is shaped by an open, adaptable design by studios SNARK and OUVI. Essential living functions are concentrated on the north side of the building, allowing the south side to embrace the sunny orchard, immersing visitors within the natural site through large vertical windows. The slender timber structure is the result of a wood shortage during the planning phase. By using a standardized unit of four-inch square lumber throughout the construction, from foundation to beams, the project optimized the scarce resource.
This approach also resulted in a visually light and adaptable structure that seems to adjust to its surroundings. To ensure structural integrity, the short sides of the building feature double pillars, and the central axis is slightly widened to accommodate utility lines and built-in elements. The resulting gaps between structural elements create a subtle division within the open floor plan.
the house takes advantage of the spacious site, with a design that integrates with the vast sky
structure beyond mechanics
House in Nonakamachi’s design philosophy prioritizes a concept the architect terms ‘structure before structural mechanics.’ This approach starts with establishing a modular system that transcends the traditional hierarchy of large and small beams in wooden construction. The resulting structure is a combination of linear frames and solid elements that respond to the surrounding environment. The modularity also introduces a degree of flexibility, as the gaps between elements, initially unforeseen, became integrated into the design as spaces for utilities and built-in features. This adaptability extends to the roof structure, which employs diagonal braces to eliminate the need for a central pillar, creating a large, open space.
the adaptable living space allows residents to transform it to suit their needs large vertical windows create a sense of immersion in the natural surroundings standardized units of lumber optimize resource use and create a visually light structure
Originally stipulating an open workspace, private offices, and meeting rooms, the brief was expanded to also include several flexible working areas, a boardroom, library, prayer rooms, a hot desking zone and phone booths. “As our ambitions outgrew the available space, we expanded vertically, adding platforms interconnected by a set of complex staircases that terminate at the flood-lit exhibition level”, explains the designer. The result is a new steel-clad volume positioned near the entrance that houses the female and male prayer rooms, the former concealed inside, while the latter is perched on top along with a meeting lounge. Delineated by suspended aluminium chains, the cubic volume of the male prayer room boldly complements the curvaceous steel-clad volume underneath. A set of complex staircases, which terminate at the light-flooded exhibition level, further add to the structure’s sculptural rigor.
The maze-like configuration of the entrance volume echoes the complexity of the original space which yields unexpected advantages. With multiple entry points, including access from various levels, the experience can differ for each user: visiting dignitaries, for example, might enter directly from the main building entrance to the exhibition area via the lift and then descend to the boardroom. Alternatively, they can be greeted with refreshments in the workshop area, all without disrupting the employees in the open-plan office.
Designed by Studio Qasabian, the charming Mulholland home is a minimalist gem located in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California. The project emerges as a distinguished example of mid-century modern architecture, distilled through the lens of contemporary minimalism. Envisioned by principal and interior architect Adrienne Qasabian, this project represents a multifaceted approach encompassing interior design, architectural planning, and the creation of bespoke furniture tailored for the residence.
While rooted in its 1960s origins, and in a storied locale, the updated structure marries vintage pieces with newly designed elements for a modern sophistication that can be appreciated across decades. Assorted furnishings, including vintage sofas and tables, are meticulously spliced into contemporary contexts to blend seamlessly. Central to the design narrative is an art collection featuring Armenian artists, reflecting both the homeowners’ heritage and Qasabian’s cultural background.
It’s those personal touches that imbue the residence with spirit. “At the most basic level, shelter represents a fundamental human need, providing refuge and sanctuary,” says Qasabian. “For most of the modern world, interior space is where we spend the majority most of our time, and the impact of our surroundings extends far beyond aesthetics. Our interior environment has a direct effect on our physical well-being, mental health, productivity, creativity, and overall sense of tranquility.”
To learn more about Qasabian’s eponymous practice visit StudioQasabian.com.
Leo Lei translates his passion for minimalism into his daily-updated blog Leibal. In addition, you can find uniquely designed minimalist objects and furniture at the Leibal Store.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s most famous image back when she was Sam Taylor-Wood, the talented Young British Artist, was a self-portrait standing in a black suit holding a rigid upwards-pointing hare. Hares appeared in her work elsewhere and it is a cornered hare, ready to dart any second, that comes to mind as I sit opposite her now. She’s 57, and has the clean beauty of someone who spends time in California, but uses London teenager slang, like “bare” to mean “very”. She is wearing a blue Sézane shirt that the eldest of her four daughters gave to her on Mother’s Day, embroidered with “Sam”– which was going to be “Mum” except her daughter feared she wouldn’t wear it – and eating seed crackers and a pistachio dip, which she insists I try.
She hopes I don’t mind that she’s sitting here in a London restaurant “with my zip and button undone. Because,” her voice rings with amusement, “why not wear jeans when you’ve got a tummy ache?” It’s been upset for days, a possible consequence of being “in a hole” for two years making Back to Black, her Amy Winehouse film. Anyway, she is glad to catch me fresh from a screening of it and is ready to hear what I think.
Self-portrait in Single-breasted Suit with Hare, chromogenic print, 2014, based on a work of 2001. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London/Sam Taylor-Wood
This is her fourth film. All are beautiful to look at, but the story of Winehouse, the singer who died aged 27 of alcohol poisoning in 2011, might be the most devastating. Taylor-Johnson says she “seemsto pick intense, deep subjects”, as if by accident. Like Winehouse, her life has always been everywhere in her work. Plus, for very different reasons, both artists have been picked over for their choice of partner. Winehouse was pursued by paparazzi through Camden’s cobblestone alleys because of her bad-boy, drug-hound husband Blake Fielder-Civil. Taylor-Johnson has been called a “groomer” online by deranged teens because she is married to heart-throb actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 23 years her junior.
She has a soft spot for Nowhere Boy (2009) about the young John Lennon because it was her first feature (and where she met Aaron), but “Back to Black probably is the best thing I’ve done”. You see, she learned from the “horrendous” experience of directing Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), on which there were incessant struggles with author EL James, “never to compromise my creative process again”. And what she drew from A Million Little Pieces (2019), the low-budget adaptation of James Frey’s crack memoir, was teamwork and never to forget the “nuts and bolts creativity of art school”. (She gleefully recounts mixing brown paint for consistency and rigging up a system with pin-pricked rubber tubing to create the effect of shit sliding down walls.)
On Back to Black, she set out to immerse herself fully in “Amy’s psyche: her world, her life, her trajectory, her music, her lyrics, her environment. I became instinctive in her space. That was really what I loved doing and what I feel I’m good at doing.” The more she walked in step with Winehouse, saw what Winehouse saw, the more she felt she was slipping into “madness”. It took its toll, “emotionally, mentally, physically, because it sucked me to a place that I didn’t understand how to get back out of at the end. I can’t really explain that without sounding, you know, quite out there.”
The result is at times impressionistic, at times poetic. Taylor-Johnson was told by Janis, Amy’s mother, about a canary Amy kept called Ava, a bird she loved so much that when it died she put it in a sunglasses case and insisted on taking it to a cemetery for a proper burial. “That really stuck with me. That bird is so reflective of her, her state, the fragility of it.”
Navy pinstripe suit, bellafreud.com; gold long chain, ateliervm.com; gold pendant, alighieri.com. Other jewellery, Taylor-Johnson’s own. Photograph: Linda Brownlee/The Guardian
It’s the second Winehouse film; the first was the Oscar-winning documentary Amy (2015) by Asif Kapadia. Taylor-Johnson describes hers as the “love story” between Winehouse (played by Marisa Abela) and Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell). Poor old Reg Traviss, her boyfriend when she died, doesn’t get a look in. Winehouse had issues before meeting Fielder-Civil, not least bulimia. She liked a drink – “rickstacy” in the film, an evil-sounding concoction made with banana liqueur – and was partial to the odd spliff, but opened gigs shouting, “Class A drugs are for mugs”. By the middle of the film, she is both obsessed with Fielder-Civil and smoking a crack pipe. Because it’s Winehouse’s perspective, Taylor-Johnson turns the volume down on the entire universe shrieking Leave him! as she became visibly more addicted. “Amy loved him,” she says, “and we’re seeing him through her eyes. Whether we judge him for what’s right or wrong is a separate issue.”
Of course, sailing upwards from the wreckage of this turbulent, edge-of-sanity love, is the lyrical and musical genius that formed the tracks on Back to Black. Did Taylor-Johnson meet Fielder-Civil? “No. We had a few meetings set up, but the closer they got, he would cancel. Jack [O’Connell] met him and was like, ‘I understand who he is. He’s somebody I could’ve hung out with.’” Alison Owen, the film’s producer, found him charismatic, and understood why Winehouse fell in love with him. “And that’s so important. I couldn’t present Blake as someone twisted, tortured. He had to be somebody who we as an audience understood and loved.”And, anyway, Taylor-Johnson doesn’t believe in “stupid one-dimensional demon” characters.
Although she met the Winehouse family, “out of respect, because it would’ve felt really wrong if I hadn’t”, she paid less attention to Winehouse’s diehard fans. She knew they might disapprove, just like the Beatles fans who had made an “overwhelming” noise over Nowhere Boy. “So, it wasn’t my first rodeo of handling massive fanbase subject matters, but I had to push everything out [of mind]. I’m shooting, thinking, ‘Is this how she would want it to be seen?’ Right down to door handles and curtain fabric, an earring or sofa.”
Winehouse is rooted in her Jewish background. Her heritage was important to her, Taylor-Johnson says. She wore a Magen David necklace, “and I wanted to couple that with her family connection”. Winehouse’s grandmother Cynthia (Lesley Manville), for instance, is a huge influence. Winehouse’s father, Mitch, like Fielder-Civil, has been vilified after her death – accused of greed and a failure to get her proper treatment. (He called the Kapadia documentary “horrible”). Here, Eddie Marsan gives a sympathetic portrayal. Yes, Mitch is a bit controlling, but father and daughter are close and loving. “I actually met Mitch with Eddie on that table over there,” Taylor-Johnson says, pointing to a quiet corner behind me.
Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse and Jack O’Connell as Blake Fielder-Civil in Back to Black. Photograph: Courtesy of Dean Rogers/Focus Features
She thought at first Abela wouldn’t “inhabit the grit and the toughness” of Winehouse. “Because Marisa is sweet, gentle, charming, self-effacing; quiet. There were other girls who came in and had that raw energy.” But Abela said, “Give me a minute”, as Taylor-Johnson was setting up the camera. “And then she looked up and into the lens. I went, ‘Oh my god, it’s her.’ She just summoned the spirit.”
Taylor-Johnson still cries at key moments, despite having seen the film “a gazillion” times. Did she come to understand what lay behind Winehouse’s self-destruction? “Not really. Most addicts I know say, ‘I’m the only one who could have ever saved me.’ So it’s difficult to cast blame. I spent a lot of time with James Frey, for example. He was like, ‘I have no idea where it came from. I had a healthy upbringing. Great parents. Middle-class. Happy.’”
“Sorry,” she says, breaking off to double-kiss someone from Los Angeles. She seems to know everyone here, including all the waiting staff. The sofa she’s parked on faces the door, so there’s constant interruption. When she returns, she says she and Aaron, also British, have recently moved back to the UK. They made this sudden decision one evening two years ago, when summer was high and hot and England looked seductive. “We were like, ‘Let’s not go back.’” Meaning: let’s not go back to California. “It was June. It was heaven.”
So, the family uprooted. That is, Angelica, 26, and Jessie Phoenix, 17 – her daughters with ex-husband Jay Jopling, the art dealer – and Wylda Rae, 13, and Romy Hero, 12, her daughters with Aaron. They have settled in Somerset, in arcadian bliss, along with dogs, cats, cows, pigs, chickens and rabbits. “I’ll turn to Aaron and say, ‘Should we get another dog?’, and he’ll look at me for a minute and go, ‘Yuh.’ He always says yes to any mad thing I suggest. That’s why we’ve got 14 animals.”
She’s not sure if she regrets the move now, with a stomach ache on a rainy day in spring, she jokes. “Post-pandemic, it was that feeling of wanting to come home. I mean, LA is great if you’re always in the nature aspects of it – walking in canyons, down at the beach, surfing. But shopping malls are the most depressing places to find yourself on a Saturday afternoon. I much prefer Golborne Road [near Portobello market, in west London]. Or Bath or Bruton or Frome.”
The Taylor-Johnsons are an unconventional pairing, because it’s still unusual for a high-profile woman to be much older than her husband, as opposed to the other way around. Arguably, the director–lead star dynamic was in some senses a reversal of the dealer–artist dynamic of her marriage to Jopling. She met Aaron when he was cast aged 18 as the young John Lennon on Nowhere Boy in early 2009. Their chemistry was unmissable to those on set. She was 42 and recently separated from Jopling. Aaron was not “groomed”, as the online trolls suggest, but the one pursuing her, he has said. They were engaged by the time the film premiered in October 2009 and their first child was born the following year. They married in 2012.
Was she at all hesitant, I ask. She had experienced abandonment by her father, then when she was 15 her mother handed her a note and said: “Give this to your stepdad, I’m leaving you all.” Did that not make her cynical about relationships? “If I had been cynical for a second, it wouldn’t have worked. If I had questioned anything, it would never have worked. I’m quite instinctual. I’ve gone feet first into everything in my life. I’m always, ‘This seems amazing’, and I jump straight in and go through the experience, whether good or bad. It’s definitely a ‘Fuck it, let’s go with it’ approach. And I’m a great believer that the heart overrides everything. Love conquers all.”
In interviews, she has often stressed that the family is never apart. They used to move en masse, all six upping sticks to film sets; alternating jobs “one on, one off”, so that one parent could always be hands-on with the children. More recently, Aaron’s career has really taken off. This year alone he stars in Kraven the Hunter, a superhero blockbuster; Nosferatu, with Bill Skarsgård and Nicholas Hoult; and at the time of writing he was tipped as the next James Bond (a rumour he seemed to scotch, saying, “I don’t feel like I need to have a future drawn out for me. I feel like: whatever’s drawn out for me, I can fuckin’ do better”). For the first time in their married life, they were separated when he flew alone to shoot The Fall Guy in Australia for six weeks while she was on Back to Black. “We drafted in his parents to help with the kids and we all went, ‘Bye!’” She mimes waving Aaron off on the plane. “But that was tough and neither of us enjoyed it, so it’ll be back to one on, one off now.”
The couple arriving at the screening of Nowhere Boy at the London Film Festival, 2009. Photograph: Joel Ryan/Joel Ryan/AP
I am curious: does the age gap ever show up? In terms of different interests or cultural reference points? “No, it never does. I mean, it’s coming up now because you’re asking. And it comes up on the outside perspective of people who don’t know us, because I guess people will always … ” She flicks her hand but can’t capture the word. “We’re a bit of an anomaly, but it’s that thing: after 14 years you just think, surely by now it doesn’t really matter?”
Both of them have distinct fanbases. She says she only really likes being recognised in the street if she’s with one of her children and can say: “See? I’m not just a mum. I am actually important in the world, so you can actually help me by putting your socks on.” Who are Aaron’s fans? She gives me a look. “The obvious,” she says, by which she means teenage girls. “And every so often a diehard, big-bearded Marvel fan.”
Interactions are “mostly” nice in person, but there are vicious people online. “They’re abusive about anything,” she says, nonchalant. Does she avoid going on social media? “No, I don’t. Because it’s just there, but it doesn’t mean anything. It is just people upset with their own sadness; with misgivings about their own life.” Do their children face prejudice? “Not really. Or, if so, I don’t think they care. They see two loving, happy parents, so it doesn’t really register. They just think people are a bit mean, or mad.” She says again that they have been married for 12 years and together for 14. She was with Jopling for nine. “So, if you think of it in that way, then the age gap doesn’t really make any difference.”
Sam Taylor-Johnson (then Wood) graduated from Goldsmiths in its “golden era”, a photographer and video artist. Michael Craig-Martin and Jon Thompson were among her lecturers. Students, including her then boyfriend Jake Chapman, were taught to be “artists in the real world, not just sitting in your studio”. The ethos, she says: “Do it, don’t wait.” Her early works such as Fuck Suck Spank Wank (1993) – in shades with her trousers down – capture the sulky, defiant spirit of the YBAs.
She and Jopling got together before he was the king of the British art scene, when his now famous White Cube gallery was just a 14 x 14 sq ft space. “Tiny: it was like an office room. One of the first times I went there, he had a Tracey Emin show, just her little drawings on the wall.” She quips of the Emin-Jopling decades-long professional relationship, “Tracey used to say, ‘He’s a great dealer and a great deal more.’ They are still going strong, Tracey and Jay. She is the great love story in his life.” But Taylor-Johnson is still on good terms with her ex-husband: “We get on really well.”
In 1997, Taylor-Johnson won Most Promising Artist at the Venice Biennale. That same year, Angelica was born and she and Jopling married. But she returned again and again to the doctor fearing something wasn’t quite right. “I felt like I had no energy. I felt like shit. I was feeling all these pains and not eating really well. Maybe the passing blood thing should have been a red flag. But it was just like,” she mimics a doctor’s annoyed voice, “‘You’ve just had a baby. That’s what it is.’” That December, she was diagnosed with the first of two primary cancers she has had (“I think it’s called being unlucky”) and a foot and a half of her colon was removed on Christmas Eve. In 1998, she was nominated for the Turner prize, while undergoing treatment.
Two years later, in 2000, she had breast cancer. “You won’t believe it, but I got misdiagnosed the second time as well.” She had enrolled with a “fancy” doctor and went to see him with an underarm lump, thinking, ‘That’s not normal.’ Without an examination or tests, she was dispatched on grounds she didn’t need any more prodding or needles. “Let’s leave you alone,” he told her (“very English”), and so the cancer was left for a whole year. “So bad,” she says now. “I had to have a mastectomy and six months of chemo. I see him on the street and I want to punch him.” She watched the opening of Tate Modern from the chemotherapy ward.
All the pain and fear of death she felt was channelled into her art: Still Life (2001) is the speeded-up film of a decaying bowl of fruit; A Little Death (2002), a hare, arranged legs upwards, decomposing stomach first. Later she made Suspended (2003), a series of photographs in which, dressed in vest and knickers, she appears to float. She had hired a bondage expert to tie her up in different shapes and positions, and afterwards digitally removed the ropes to create a sense not of torturous constraint but freedom, of letting go. Although, she said afterwards: “I don’t think you ever really let go of cancer once you’ve been through it.”
Her later work features a lot of celebrities. There is David (2004), a 107-minute video of David Beckham asleep that was shown at the National Portrait Gallery, and a series of photographs of actors crying that included Laurence Fishburne (2002) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (2004). Was that the precursor to a move into film? “I always wanted to make films in the back of my mind,” she says, but it wasn’t until she met Anthony Minghella when they were both judges for the British Independent Film Awards that the opportunity presented itself. She said she was mouthing off, ‘That film is a piece of shit, blahlala. And then someone would say [puts hand up], ‘Actually, I produced that.’” This somehow tickled Minghella. “He said, ‘You’re very … ’, I think he meant opinionated, but he said ‘… knowledgable. Have you ever considered making films?’” They made Love You More (2008), a gem of a short film written by Patrick Marber that revolved around a Buzzcocks soundtrack. “It completely gave me the bug for film-making.”
Was her art abandoned? “It feels like two different sides of my personality: my art world life and my film world life,” she says. She’d like to return to it, “but because I exited the art world, it’s a really strange position to be in in terms of trying to come back in again”.
She shows me some new work: a series of exquisite photographs of her suspended from a crane in Joshua Tree, the US national park, surrounded by nature. They represent a moment in space and time, of reflection, feelings she had about living in America, the alien landscape – beautiful, but at the same time “brittle and quite brutal”. In hindsight, she realises stringing herself up 50ft in the air above ginormous rocks was pretty dangerous. “And painful. I did the first ones nearly 20 years ago. I’m still pretty physically strong and fit, but, I’ve got to admit, I noticed the changes. I was like, waaaahhh, as I went up. And hanging upside down. It really fucking hurt. For about three weeks I wasn’t able to walk properly.”
Demin shirt, withnothingunderneath.com. Hair: Mike Mahoney. Makeup: Emma White Turle at the Wall Group. Stylist’s assistant: Rosalind O’Donoghue. Photograph: Linda Brownlee/The Guardian
In December, she put on a new exhibition of this work in a gallery in Rome. “And no one … ” she falters. I think both of us are surprised by what she is about to say: that few people came. “It really blew my mind.” Apart from the date – too near Christmas – she and the gallerist both wondered if people had failed to make a connection between Sam Taylor-Johnson and Sam Taylor-Wood.“They didn’t realise that we are one and the same.” The idea that this might be a problem “just hadn’t crossed my mind”. She and Aaron blended their surnames when they married, which Aaron described as the desire to be part of one another. It seems astonishing, nonetheless, that she would sacrifice the name recognition she had built up over years of hard work.
But then Taylor-Johnson emphatically does not believe in looking back. One critic described her as someone who lives “a chronologically compartmentalised life”. Perhaps this survival skill was forced on her by her bolting parents. When I ask about moving to East Sussex aged 11 with her mother and stepfather, she says she is processing it in real time as we speak. The entire period was bleak. The house, in the village of Crowborough, “had a very dark atmosphere” – ironic, given it was named Sunny Villa. “It was an old house, which makes it sound grand, but it was not.”
It had thin walls covered in brown hessian and was damp, and so riddled with rats that when she went to her attic bedroom at night, she could hear them scrabbling above her head. (She is now so phobic that walking down the street with the actor Naomi Watts in New York recently, two rats popped out of a drain close to her, and, “I was two or three blocks away before Naomi even noticed.”)
From this “terrible fucking squalor”, her mother and stepfather had run a “post-hippy, meditating, yogi-kind of, but not quite” commune with a constant carousel of strangers. Taylor-Johnson, her younger sister and half-brother were largely left to their own devices in a way that she describes as “unhinged and boundary-less”. I ask what she means by this. “I’m racking my brains as I process my childhood. Because they didn’t care, is the simple answer. At 14, I could go out and come home three days later. They’d be like, ‘Oh, hey.’ Which is quite difficult and confusing as a kid.”
About six months after her mother, Geraldine, left, Taylor-Johnson was walking to school and saw a kitchen blind go up in a house nearby. There in the window was her mother. She hadn’t seen or heard from her since she left. The blind went quickly down again. Geraldine had run off with another man.
Geraldine has since written a memoir claiming she left because a series of visions guided her to seek the holy grail. She subsequently moved to Australia with her third husband. Taylor-Johnson, meanwhile, was struggling through O-levels, moving into a bedsit by 17. “You go through that phase of anger and hurt and pain. Then there comes a point where forgiveness is as healing for you as it is for the other person. It gets to a point where you don’t want to carry that pain and anger any more. And, then also feeling, ‘Actually I’d quite like a relationship with one or both of my parents.’” That is made difficult by the fact that Geraldine still lives in Queensland. “Yeah, she’s really full-on.” Her father is remarried and living in Barbados, “so I don’t really see him, either”.
Does she understand their behaviour? “They had me when they were 18, so I understand to a certain degree. But I’m a parent, so, at the same time, I think, ‘Wait, how could you have headed off like that?’”
A waitress interrupts to ask if the gluten-free option Taylor-Johnson has ordered is because of an allergy or a preference. Taylor-Johnson tells her not to worry, but afterwards mutters: “I could explain that gluten just fucks my stomach up.” She went to the doctor yesterday, but the doctor flapped her away saying, “It’ll go”, in the way that UK doctors do. “In LA, I’d be given five different things.” She laughs unhappily, and says that in a way she admires the stoicism of the British patient.
She regrets telling an interviewer a few years ago that she was an alcoholic, because she’s not. She just meant the YBAs used to drink a lot in the heady 90s. Actually, after being ill “your capacity to do anything harmful to yourself in any way just makes you panic”. She stopped drinking completely in the pandemic. Then in August, thought, “Oh, this is ridiculous. Of course, I can have a drink. Oh boy, battery acid on a fragile system.” It took until Christmas to recover, she says. “I’m not even joking.”
Her friends give her the eye-roll when she says this, but with a life so busy shuttling between Somerset and London, she has to be careful not to be capsized. “There’s no downtime.” She tries to decompress with an evening routine that involves taking a magnesium salt bath, listening to a podcast and drinking a mug of Yogi bedtime tea. And there’s Aaron. “He gives me that sort of stability, calmness. I’m definitely the kind of frenetic, mad energy that needs someone to anchor me. Keep me a bit more grounded. Which he certainly does. He really loves being quiet, in nature. He’s a real stay-at-home person.”
The fear of cancer comes and goes, she says. Mostly, it’s “deep in the rear-view mirror. But when I have to go for annual check-ups, it comes quickly into the forefront.” Sometimes, she will cancel appointments and not tell Aaron, who “gets very irate. I turn into a tantrum-y five-year-old, like, ‘I’m not going.’” She shakes her head furiously. “I could throw myself from a moving car on the way to any hospital appointments. Aaron has to double lock the car to make sure I can’t get out, then get me there, push me through the doors, hold me down. It’s quite a process.”
She says nothing bothers her – not stepping on set with hundreds of people, not the fans, not the trolls – because, “the most frightening thing I can do is walk through those hospital doors”.She’s laughing as she says this, but also packing her phone into her bag to leave. I imagine Aaron trying to reassure this wild creature in the car before she leaps away. I feel as if I am trapping her myself as I glance down at my last few questions and attempt a stalling tactic. But the instinct to escape is hardwired, like the restless need to keep moving forward.
For half a century, the Sernesi family lived in a storied villa overlooking Florence, in which the Renaissance artist Michelangelo was raised and later owned. The property came with several buildings, an orchard and a drawing of a muscular male nude etched on the wall of a former kitchen. Tradition has it that the work was drawn by a young Michelangelo, though scholars are not as sure.
Last year, the Sernesi family sold the villa. Now they want to sell the mural drawing, which was detached from its original location in 1979 so that it could undergo a much-needed restoration. Etched with charcoal or black chalk on plaster and measuring about 40 by 50 inches, art historians have identified the figure — who is well built, but a little wizened — as a “triton,” a god of the sea, or a “satyr,” part man part beast.
Over the decades, the drawing has been loaned as a Michelangelo work to exhibitions in Japan, Canada, China and, most recently, the United States, where it was included in the Metropolitan Museum’s blockbuster 2017 show “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.” The catalog entry for that exhibition, by Carmen C. Bambach, the Met’s curator of drawings and prints, describes it as “the only surviving manifestation of Michelangelo’s skill as a draftsman in large scale.”
News that the drawing is going on the market is likely to expand what has until now been a rather low-key, academic debate over the authorship of a work that has remained in private hands, and mostly out of the public eye, for the past five centuries.
“It’s very interesting, and now it’s surely necessary to carry out further investigations,” said Cecilie Hollberg, the director of the Accademia Gallery in Florence. She had already been to take a look at the drawing, at the request of the Sernesi family, she said.
Years ago, culture ministry officials declared the work of national importance, meaning that it cannot leave Italy, except on loan. In the case of a sale, the culture ministry has the right of first refusal to match the sale price and buy the piece for the Italian state.
Hollberg’s museum, which houses some of Michelangelo’s most famous sculptures including his “David,” might be a good fit if the state decides to exercise this option. Either way, Italy’s tough cultural patrimony laws could significantly impact the sale, restricting both the number of potential buyers and the sale price.
Works by Renaissance masters like Michelangelo rarely come onto the market, and when they do, they can reach sensational prices. In 2022, Christie’s in New York sold a Michelangelo sketch for more than 23 million euros.
But in Italy, such works normally sell for a fraction of what the owners would get if they sold them internationally, said Carlo Orsi, an art dealer with galleries in Milan and London. Italy’s export laws depress the market, he and other experts said.
There are wealthy Italian collectors, he added, but “they’re not so forward-looking,” so “finding customers for these things at those prices is practically impossible.”
At the same time international buyers may think twice about buying a piece they can’t take home with them, said Francesco Salamone, a lawyer who specializes in cultural heritage laws. “So that cuts out the foreign market, making the work less attractive from a financial point of view,” he added.
Though the family declined to put a price tag on the piece, Ilaria Sernesi, one of the owners, pointed out that when the work traveled to the Met show, it was insured for nearly $24 million. (Experts say that insurance prices don’t always reflect sale values.)
But the Sernesi family said it’s not about money.
“We think it’s a work that merits being seen, appreciated and loved,” said Ilaria Sernesi, a retired biologist, whose family bought the villa in the 1970s.
In the late 19th century, Michelangelo’s descendants sold the estate to a French count, and it passed through several hands before it was bought by an American, who left it to his Italian heirs, who sold to the Sernesi family. The previous owners don’t seem to have given the work much thought. “When we arrived it was in a state of complete neglect,” covered by a cardboard sheet, Sernesi recalled.
In 1979, the drawing was detached from the wall so it could be restored at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, one of Italy’s leading restoration laboratories. When it returned to the Sernesi home, it hung in the villa’s vaulted dining room until the family decided that it was best kept in a more secure location. The drawing moved to a protected warehouse on the outskirts of Florence.
The Sernesis track the drawing’s attribution to Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo’s contemporary biographer, who wrote that the young artist honed his skills by drawing on “papers and walls,” though Vasari does not give precise indications where. Some visitors to the villa over the centuries wrote of seeing Michelangelo’s doodles there.
When the drawing first began making the rounds in exhibitions, several of the catalog entries attributing the piece to Michelangelo were written by Giorgio Bonsanti, an Italian Renaissance expert who also oversaw the 1979 restoration. “I just can’t imagine another person entering Michelangelo’s house and drawing a figure on the wall of his kitchen,” he said.
Bonsanti was a protégé of Charles de Tolnay, the Hungarian-born naturalized American who wrote a five-volume study of Michelangelo that says the artist drew the mural as a teenager. Comparisons between the Sernesi drawing and a study by Michelangelo of a bearded man, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, have led some scholars to date the work to Michelangelo’s mid-20s.
Bambach, the Met curator, referred to it in a 2013 paper as a “neglected work by Michelangelo.” She declined an interview request for this article, citing her museum’s policy of not commenting on works that are on sale. But she confirmed that she stood by that article and her attribution.
Footnotes in Bambach’s article give a detailed breakdown of the “long attribution history” between those in favor of Michelangelo’s authorship, those against and those undecided.
Paul Joannides, a Michelangelo expert and emeritus professor of art history at Cambridge University, said there was a “lot in favor” of a Michelangelo attribution. “However,” he wrote in an email, “for what it’s worth, personally I have never been convinced by it. I see is as clumsy, poorly foreshortened, crude in its facial expression, ill-articulated and generally as of low quality. I find it hard to believe that even the very young Michelangelo could have drawn so badly.”
Francesco Caglioti, a Renaissance expert who teaches at the Scuola Normale in Pisa, Italy, said that if the work were by Michelangelo, he hadn’t been in top form. The artist, he added, had been “a very strict judge of himself,” who destroyed many early works at the end of his life. “Maybe he forgot this one,” Caglioti said.
The Sernesis haven’t contacted a dealer, antiquarian or an auction house to assist in the sale, though Salamone, the lawyer, said it was “extremely rare for an important work of art to be sold without an intermediary,” as it limited the number of potential clients.
“Those are details that we’ll deal with, we haven’t decided anything yet,” said Ilaria Sernesi, one of six family members who own the work.
She was aware, she said, that the export ban would impact the sale. “It’s obvious people will aim to lower the price,” she said, “but it’s also true that there are limits beyond which we won’t go.”
Readers may recall designboom’s initial coverage of dot.ateliers, the artist residency designed by David Adjaye in Accra, Ghana. Since its completion in December 2022, the team has offered a closer look inside the unique work of architecture. The project is conceived as a three-story ‘architectural tool’ for artist Amoako Boafo, functioning as an incubator, showroom, and gathering point, all while promoting sustainable design. The rammed-earth structure itself is a series of stacked volumes, each floor expanding in size and height. This design caters to the various needs of the residency, from a ground-floor garden and cafe to studio and gallery spaces on the upper floors.
dot.ateliers is built with sustainability at its Core
For the architects led by David Adjaye, sustainability is a key consideration in the design of dot.ateliers. The building takes shape with a double envelope facade of rammed earth. This technique creates an expressive, layered texture while also leveraging the natural insulating properties of local earth. The air gap between the facade and the interior structure lends natural ventilation and mitigates heat gain. Meanwhile, large windows throughout the space offer carefully curated views. The north-facing windows provide glimpses of the city, while the south-facing windows, softened by the rammed earth facade, reveal the Accra coastline. This connection to the surrounding environment allows the art created within to be in constant conversation with its context.
dot.ateliers is an artist residency in Accra designed by David Adjaye
light and materiality
The first floor features a flexible studio space. With expansive white walls and ample natural light, this area is perfect for creating large-scale artworks. The open floor plan can be divided to accommodate multiple artists simultaneously. Natural light plays a crucial role in the upper floor gallery. North-facing skylights with a sawtooth design ensure optimal illumination while keeping the harsh tropical sun at bay.
The material palette of dot.ateliers transitions from the solidity of rammed earth and exposed concrete on the exterior to a lighter and more refined interior composed of terrazzo, white plasterboard, and timber. Custom-designed furniture further complements the overall design. The use of locally-sourced materials underscores the project’s commitment to ecological practices and its connection to the surrounding Ghanaian landscape.
the three-story building functions as an incubator, showroom, and gathering place
‘Artists bring so much value to the world and don’t ask for much in return except for support in the form of spaces and materials to create and freedom to experiment with their creativity and maybe recognition to crown it all,‘ says artist Amoako Boafo, the founder of dot.ateliers. ‘Hopefully a little assistance from us all can help grow their talents, add value to themselves and their works, thus allowing them to continue adding value to the world.’
large windows frame views of the city and coastline, inspiring the art within skylights bathe the top floor gallery in diffused natural light
Underpinned by complex geometric shapes in contrasting colours, the intention behind using Dazzle camouflage was not to conceal but to make it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed and heading, not unlike the effect created by the patterned coats of animals such as the giraffe, zebra and jaguar. In the case of this apartment, which combines small rooms with five-meter-high ceilings, the irregular stripe pattern both subverts the spatial perception, making for example, the kitchen feel wider and the mezzanine higher and more spacious, and creates a unified atmosphere, painted as it is across floors, walls and ceilings. By toning down the colour contrast, opting for an almost monochromatic white and light grey combination as a counterpoint to the zany geometries, the team has also managed to create a calming environment.
Strategically positioned mirrors increase spaciousness and brightness, while an eye-popping warm yellow colour, used to paint the interior of the kitchen cabinets and wardrobes, as well as the entire bathroom and hallway, create surprising moments of pure delight that playfully animate the scheme’s minimalist starkness.
Vision is perhaps the most acute sense with which humans discern information about the world – in the context of interiors, space – so much so that it can elicit a visceral reaction. If utilized properly, wallpapers can dramatically support the aesthetic and energetic goals of a fully realized design. When introducing color, pattern, and texture at any scale, it’s important to consider how those elements might hold a deeper meaning and with whom there may be resonance.
“I always bring it back to a feeling place with my clients. Prioritizing what they are navigating in their lives, and the effect that has on the intention and use of the space, is paramount to me,” says Sarah Rigano, vibrational designer and founder of FORM + LIGHT. “From there I gently guide them toward what would be of greatest benefit as our spaces are vital containers that can nurture, heal, and inspire us if we treat them so,” she adds. “For example, someone in need of grounding, respite, or anxiety reduction? Organic shapes, reflections of the natural world, muted colors. Working through loss, grief, unease, or trouble sleeping? Soft colors, curved lines, blurred forms. Seeking inspiration, focus, boundaries? Bold patterns, strong lines, statement colors.”
With a market supersaturated in surface pattern designs and a myriad of options, it can be difficult to parse prints to find one accommodating of taste, budget, installation limitations, as well as material, like printed, plaster, or textile. Laura Guido-Clark, the former Creative Director of Materials Innovation at Herman Miller and founder of Love Good Color, offers a roadmap for those looking for nuanced decision making – and a bit of anthropological commentary on contemporary visual language. Guido-Clark breaks it down into four shared throughlines:
Vertical to Horizontal Symbology
Studies cite that horizontal lines are more calming than their vertical counterparts. Experts argue that horizontal lines represent wide open spaces and vastness, or primordially speaking where a threat can’t hide or be threatening as they are visible from far away. In contrast, vertical lines can imply grandeur or spirituality, broad gestures from the earth below to the heavens above. They can also imply strength depending on the weight of the line where boldness, thickness, and opacity are in direct correlation to it.
Emotional Representation
A great deal of emotional response to wallpaper is derived from isomorphic correspondence – how the viewer interprets information, finds meaning, and formulates a response based on past experiences. Many colors, shapes, and patterns pull from nature and speak to an innate fondness to flora and fauna while others imbue prints with an otherwise intangible energy. Dynamic and kinetic energy is generated in the proximity and scale of print demanding attention. Visual vibrations generated restlessness.
Organic vs. Geometric
Compositions can comprise themselves with any combination of organic and geometric forms. Organic forms are found in the natural world and often trade a sense of uniformity or perfection for spirit, whereas geometric forms exist in stark contrast appearing man or machine made. It is often the difference between flow and ease, or rigidness and order.
Color Story
Unlike an even coat of paint only activated by its finish in the light, wallpapers are multifaceted in color, often dominated by undertones. Monochromatic or analogous schemes imply a sense of calm or harmony while contrasting color articulated through pattern can create vibrancy. Perception of color is also impacted by shape, shade, and proximity of other colored elements.
The selection below represents a small swath of emotive and contemporary wallcoverings from powerhouse brands, intimate design studios, and solo illustrators. Of the roundup Guido-Clark adds: “I am so excited about these, first because I love wallpapers and second because I believe they signify an undercurrent of our innate desire for connection with nature. I do feel that they imply a sense of softer landings, or perhaps our need for that emotion in this current time.”
Affreschi Affreschi style SM02B
Affreschi Affreschi style SM02B plaster detail
Calico style Ephemera in Pastiche
Calico style Ephemera in Avant
Josh Greene style Banda in Denim photographed by Ethan-Herrington
Pictalab style Atellano in Variation 3 photographed by M. Pescio.
York Wallcoverings Gilded SumiE print in OrchidGlint
Tara-Hogan Milkbath Series in Style 2
Kelly Wearstler x Lee Jofa style Intargia in Buff
With professional degrees in architecture and journalism, Joseph has a desire to make living beautifully accessible. His work seeks to enrich the lives of others with visual communication and storytelling through design. Previously a regular contributor to titles under the SANDOW Design Group, including Luxe and Metropolis, Joseph now serves the Design Milk team as their Managing Editor. When not practicing, he teaches visual communication, theory, and design. The New York-based writer has also contributed to exhibitions hosted by the AIA New York’s Center for Architecture and Architectural Digest, and recently published essays and collage illustrations with Proseterity, a literary publication.
Queensland’s Tom Lynagh is tackled by Glen Vaihu of the Melbourne Rebels during a Super Rugby Pacific match on 15 March. The Reds proved too good on the night, running out 53-26 winners at AAMI Park.
Clambering across the sloped roof of King’s College Chapel with the agility of an undergraduate, Toby Lucas, 56, pointed to where his craftsmen had welded solar panels to an expanse of newly installed lead. It was the scariest part of the project, he said, because an errant spark could have ignited the 500-year-old timbers underneath, which hold up the roof of this English Gothic masterpiece.
“It’s an iconic landmark in Cambridge, and it’s part and parcel of where I live,” said Mr. Lucas, whose firm, Barnes Construction, did the restoration. “You don’t want to be the person who is responsible for burning part of it down.”
The chapel came through the project unscorched and now stands at the heart of Cambridge University, no longer just a glorious relic of the late-medieval period but also a cutting-edge symbol of the green-energy future. Its 438 photovoltaic panels, along with solar panels on the roofs of two nearby buildings, will supply a shade over five percent of the college’s electricity.
King’s College Chapel is one of several landmark houses of worship in England that have installed solar panels in recent years. The cathedrals in Salisbury and Gloucester have them, and this project may open the door to more: A neighboring Cambridge college, Trinity, is contemplating whether to put photovoltaic panels on the roof of its chapel, which dates to the 16th century.
But this being a college town, and King’s College Chapel being such a nonpareil work of architecture, the debate over installing panels was long and lively — a heady mix of aesthetics, economics and politics. Even now, with the scaffolding dismantled and the panels beginning to soak up the late-winter sunlight, critics are eager to point out why the project was a mistake.
“You have this extraordinary openwork parapet, which is a really bold feature,” said John Neale, gesturing toward the top of the chapel, where a crenelated wall runs along the north and south sides. “You can see through the parapet.”
“Now what you can see through the parapet, and indeed above it, depending on where you’re looking from, is a reflective layer of solar panels,” said Mr. Neale, the director of development advice at Historic England, a preservation group. “That will be radically at odds with the historical character of the building.”
In truth, the solar panels are scarcely visible from ground level, though they are more noticeable from a distance. But Mr. Neale noted that they change color depending on the weather, as light plays off them. While the effect is muted during the frequently overcast winter, it could become more conspicuous in the summer, with clouds scudding across a blue sky.
Mr. Neale was at pains to say that he does not, on principle, oppose retrofitting old buildings with new features. He pointed to a nearby cafe in the nave of St. Michael’s Church as a worthy example of converting an old building into new uses. Historic England, he said, has endorsed panels on other churches.
But “on the whole, you shouldn’t put panels on prominent roofs,” Mr. Neale said. Far from setting a precedent, “this actually is the outer limit, and we think has crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.”
Other critics argued that the relatively small percentage of electricity generated did not justify the aesthetic cost. In a hint of a culture war, some suggested the solar panels were the kind of politically correct gesture typical of a progressive institution like King’s College, whose graduates include the economist John Maynard Keynes, the World War II code breaker Alan Turing and the novelist Zadie Smith.
“There are many ways to address fears about rising temperatures,” David Abulafia, an emeritus professor of history at Cambridge, wrote in the right-leaning Spectator magazine last year, as Cambridge City Council weighed whether to approve the project. Installing solar panels, he added, was “quite simply, another example of virtue-signaling.”
Asked how he viewed the panels now that they were in place, Professor Abulafia kept his sword sheathed. “It’s happened now!” he said.
The leaders of King’s College were aware of these critiques when they considered installing panels, along with a new lead roof. The dean of King’s College Chapel, Rev. Dr. Stephen Cherry, said he was initially skeptical of the idea, which came up during a planning meeting several years ago.
“We needed to think very carefully about the visual impact and the amount of energy generation we would achieve,” he said. “I was very concerned that we would be tempted to make an empty symbolic gesture.”
A study concluded that the photovoltaic panels would generate an estimated 123,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per year. That is enough to reduce the college’s carbon emissions by more than 23 tons each year or the equivalent of planting 1,090 trees. The college’s nearby Wilkins Building and Old Garden Hostel have panels, but no other surface offered that kind of opportunity.
As for the visual impact, Dr. Cherry said it was mitigated by the fact that the panels virtually covered the roof, which at least made it consistent. While the polished sheen of the panels was a change from the textured gray of the lead, both were utilitarian rather than decorative features, he argued.
“Nobody has said, ‘Goodness me, that’s quite an eyesore,’” Dr. Cherry said.
Among the students, he said, the project has been popular, perhaps even giving the chapel a currency it has not had at King’s College for years. With its magnificent fan vault, carved between 1512 and 1515 and the world’s largest, the chapel almost stands apart from King’s College, a tourist attraction that draws visitors who barely linger to look at the manicured frontcourt or the dining hall.
“It’s not so much signaling virtue as signaling a clarion call for change,” Gillian Tett, the provost of King’s College and a columnist for The Financial Times, told The Guardian in November. “Yes, it’s a symbol, but symbols reinforce what’s normal, and we’re trying to change what’s thought of as normal.”
For Mr. Lucas, the construction supervisor, who has restored several old buildings in Cambridge, it was an engineering challenge and a labor of love. To reduce the risk of fire, he used thermal imaging every evening to make sure his workers did not leave behind hot spots. In laying the frame, they had to compensate for a barely perceptible sag in the middle of the 289-foot-long roof.
After months on the roof, Mr. Lucas became a student of its ways. He pointed out peregrines that alight on the chapel’s four corner towers to hunt. He noted how over centuries, visitors carved their initials in the stone wall along the spiral stairs leading to the roof. “Helen 2009,” reads a recent inscription.
Given that the chapel has stood for half a millennium — the product of a 70-year construction project under four kings: Henry VI, VII and VIII, plus Richard III — the furor over the solar panels will end up being at most a transitory distraction.
“The new roof should last 100 years,” Mr. Lucas said. “The life span of these panels is 25 to 30 years. They can always take them off.”
