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Fashion Talk
Tamara de Lempicka, one of the favorite painters of celebrities and creators, is revisited. In addition, a historic building in Miami is reopening as a hotel and club.
By Ruth La Ferla
In the Fashion Chatter section, Ruth La Ferla reports on the latest developments in the industry and offers analysis.
Obviously, Madonna was right when, in the late 1980s, she began collecting the works of Tamara de Lempicka, an Art Deco-era Polish painter known at the height of her fame for her portraits of a murky, elitist Parisian society.
Lempicka, whose fame peaked in the interwar period, moved from Paris to Beverly Hills, California, in 1939. In her heyday, the artist liked to paint herself as a self-centered femme fatale, projecting the kind of icy height that’s a magnet for fashion tribes.
By the time of his death in 1980, Lempicka’s reputation had been overshadowed by a younger generation of artists, as his paintings seemed overpainted and out of step with the times. But in the decades since, interest in the artist has grown greatly. thanks to enthusiastic creditors such as Barbra Streisand; Jack Nicholson; fashion designers Donna Karan and Wolfgang Joop; and Material Girl from pop music.
“I have a lot of paintings of hers in New York,” Madonna told Vanity Fair in a 1990 interview. “I have a Lempicka museum. ” The singer has also referenced the artist and his art in some of her music videos and performances, adding concerts from her recent Celebration tour.
Lempicka’s highly polished, hyper-glamorous and erotically charged portraits are the subject of “Tamara’s World: A Celebration of Lempicka and Art Deco,” a new exhibition and sale at Sothethrough’s in New York through April 18. It includes works such as “Nude in the Buildings,” which shows a nude with a pale cloth covering the lower part of his body, and “La Polonaise,” a portrait of a woman whose hair is covered by a colorful floral-patterned veil.
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