Ideal Artist House
Initially the Ideal Artist House was called Ideal Artist Studio because it concerned only my studio which I conceived, renovated and built in order to stimulate my production.
Then I got commissioned to do somebodies’ home using my studio of Villa Riberolle as an example. I wondered how to conceive a house and to give it a feel of an artist studio? Why do people like artist studios? Why do they like my studio?
I started to present my work in the Ideal Artist Houses. The one in New York was sold as a total concept by the Raphaël De Niro Group in 2012 and in the same year on 8 December Amsterdam, Herengracht 254, Netherlands, was presented to the public and functions since as an independent art gallery.
The houses are an attempt to extend the idea of living with art to an essential everyday need. I hope to create a need for paintings never to part from them.
The impetus for these projects are my studios: from the beginning they would become places for exchange. People from different fields would come, architecture, business, finance, science, music etc. and we would engage vivid conversations in these places. That’s why I had sometimes two adjacent spaces: one where to receive and one for work.
Art is about looking, making and about possessing…. traditional venues of profiling art and art commerce should not be cast in stone.
I offered my Ideal Artist House nr. 5 in Paris as an exhibition space for the Icar foundation which I directed for some time. It was a new approach in this new space I conceived to profile art and artist. A space where art came first and commerce was led to follow. “Humanism” as Medium “as Nina Rodriguez from Observatoire de l’art contemporain would describe it.
And indeed my Ideal Artist House is inscribed within a humanist approach- a philosophical space that is at once mental and sensual; a reconstructed natural environment, a total art.
This is why, as an experience, the viewer is invited to spend time to achieve intimacy with the oeuvre, to reach the light of what is essential.
In my studio of Villa Riberolle in Paris, I had everything turned over to create a space of light. I then built a Light-Wall, a freestanding 5x5 m wall receiving light from the top right where I had installed a long 0.60x15 m window towards the south and at the opposite side of the light wall a large 3.5x3.5 m window on the west above a mezzanine. This way the wall would receive light from noon till the sunset. Sometimes I would put a work – a polyptych – against it and photograph the work with a light ray falling onto it through the window along the ceiling.
Villa Riberolle became a precursor to the Ideal Artist House concept and the Light-Wall lead to both the Light Box at Varickstreet in New York and The Light Observation Field in Friesland-Netherlands.
The space had become like a pair of lungs breathing with the light. The works became organically connected to the architecture.
The studio is a space of magic, without definition, an open space and a space of becoming. It makes people talk more easily, for it is not their normal context. Thus it stimulates the mind and is a catalyzer of ideas. It gives energy through the junction of light, art and architecture. And it cheers up when needed. This synergy of art and architecture is what I wanted to convey into the first private dwelling I designed as an Ideal Artist House.
The role of the installed art is prominent. Therefore, I always bear in mind not to get into design.
The walls are as smooth as possible and I studied the natural light by creating (roof-) windows etc. Afterwards I would find the right artificial lighting, nothing too obvious, no large chandlers taking away all attention. The focus has to remain for the art.
This way the art would find an almost active role in daily life and not just a mere decorative one.
Art takes us by surprise, sometimes not even by looking consciously at it. It might bring you to another way of thinking, it comforts and gives energy.
In IAH no.9, Prikkedam, Friesland, Netherlands, I decided not to install any doors between the different rooms ground floor, between kitchen area, dining and livingroom area. Instead I had made large door openings floor-ceiling in mahogany (door-)frames. Anywhere else in the house I had done the same but with sand blasted hardened glass doors to let the light go through.
Large roof windows were installed above the bedroom and central area bringing in the necessary light from above.
The house was wrapped on two sides by a large terrace with many doors all around to go in and out on the same level. In the living room area were two large windows built under a triangle hanging out of the house. They were sufficiently large so two people could sit in them to read, look into the landscaped surroundings and into the house and see the art works, one painting in each room. Because of the absence of doors, one could always see (some parts of) the painting in the other room. Again no chandlers hanging, but just pure white space for the light to play with the art works and with all artificial light-fixtures completely integrated.
I like to look at paintings in an accidental way, not frontal but just from one room to the other. A bit like in a museum where you see from one space into another with their works.
In my studios I like to lie down to see the work. Horizontally you look differently at things.
Therefore, I designed “Sleeping Cabins” for the IAH no. 9 (Friesland-Netherlands). One has the shape of a large ammonite and has a half round cover which can be closed. Its base is a half rounded shape as well. Inside it has bed linen “IAH no.9” and comfortable pillows as in a real bed.
I like the idea of art integrated in daily life and not solely as an outside element we look at in a merely rational way. Hence my work has a total approach integrating art in daily life through the concept of an IAH. Part of my work as an artist involves this question: How to view my work at its best? I have taken position towards the art market, stating that the galleries propose just a one-way viewing of art, like a teacher lecturing a student. More on this subject later on (see “thoughts on the art market”).
IAH No. 1 – Faubourg Saint Antoine — (France, Paris)
A small loft converted into a workspace. My first “Lightbox”: a 6x12 m space with four large southwest windows for which I used two types of curtains, one to diffuse the light and the other to block it entirely. Later on I would install the same in the Varick Street studio, New York.
IAH No. 2 — Rue Debelleyme — (France, Paris)
A semi-independent building which I had converted to be used primarily as a photo studio.
IAH No. 3 — Villa Riberolle — (France, Paris)
A renovated 500 m2 factory in the east of Paris.
For this IAH no. 3 I designed drawing/dining tables which could be inserted into a kitchen or taken out and raised to drawing table height.
Long benches to put a polyptych, a bed, but not much more furniture. All furniture consisted of folding chairs that could easily be put away to keep it as empty as possible.
IAH No. 4 — Tynje — (Netherlands, Friesland)
A large gentleman’s farm with an 11x11x11 m attached barn converted into a studio. The barn had the shape of a Mayan temple.
The roof was made of reeds underneath shingles and it was therefore a rather dark space. It would influence my color palette. That’s where I painted Great Winter Landscape and the works with steel insertions following the colors of the daylight, the change of light by the hour from sunrise until evening.
IAH No. 5 – Quai de Valmy – (France, Paris)
A fully renovated and partly rebuilt old manufacturing building of around 700 m2. The building was used for the art-science program of the American Icar foundation which I directed.
The program consisted of a number of large exhibitions of works by artists, both known and unknown, exploring through different media the subject of the relationship of work of art with its surrounding. It very quickly became known as an unusual place to view art and as a place where many came to exchange ideas.
I liked the idea of an art and research center operating within the framework of my studio – my workspace, really – and using the open-plan layout made it possible to maximize the flow of natural light (and human exchange) and created a sense of transparency and ambiguity of interior and exterior.
IAH No.6: - Varick Street (The Lightbox) - (USA, New York)
IAH No. 7 — Bleecker Street, New York Penthouse — (USA, New York)
The Bleecker street penthouse was sold as a total concept through the Raphael De Niro group.
I redesigned this 330 m2 New York penthouse as an apartment-installation and entertainment space to be enjoyed in the company of others.
The space had an open New York architecture which gave a lot of freedom to play with art and yet remained utilitarian.
Long 30x220 cm benches were added to present large works of art, and small libraries were built to accommodate smaller works of the Roses and Cauliflowers series. A wall was built perpendicularly into a window on the south to accommodate a larger red painting with steel insertion referring to sunsets. The wall had another small window separating it from the ceiling and so the viewer could have a glimpse towards the west through this small window above the painting.
IAH No. 8 — Leidijk, Cuckoos House and Farmhouse — (Netherlands, Friesland)
This project is a conversion of a local “woonboerderij” (Dutch farm) adapted for living and working. The striking feature of the design is its location next to the land-art project Light Observation Field.
For the site-specific project arthouse, I chose a prefab wood house from the Carpathians, where I visited some 12 factories and chose one still working in the old way: sawing wood at the full moon, etc. This would be “The Cuckoo’s House”. The house was positioned as an observation center for the Light Observation Field which runs exactly north-south along its length.
The different studies for prefab houses and Sleeping Cabins are part of this project.
IAH No. 9 – House on a Canal “Prikkedam” — (Netherlands, Friesland)
This IAH is a project for a small residential conversion or new construction. Here I took part in extensive land works: enlarging and clearing the pond and the moat, creating new paths, enhance the house’s position as an observation center, etc. I literally spent days pollarding willows, planting hedges, and seeding wildflowers and grass borders… and that’s why it ended up with the Ideal Artist Pond, The Wandering Stones, ancient boulders strewn across the lawn and even The Ideal Artist Shower, with hot water “on tap”.
All features were designed by me and custom made by local craftsmen. The house is experimentally used for an art installation: each room has its own particular work of art.
I went into the house with a large format camera (4”x5”) and took a series of photographs as well as some videos.
I see this as a different way of living in our time and space.
IAH No. 10 – Herengracht, Canal House from 1606 — (Netherlands, Amsterdam)
My goal was to turn the dark, damp, closed spaces of the interior – badly disfigured by earlier renovations – into a contemporary arthouse suitable for living. So I created a light central area which would dispatch the natural daylight into the adjacent spaces. That is why the doors were made of glass, as were some floors and walls.
As every space has its light, its material, its solitude, this historical place had to retain – or actually, regain – its essence as a canal house of Amsterdam: a living and a working space combined.
Many utilitarian elements were designed specifically for this space and can be seen under “Sculptures & Other Objects”.
The house was presented to the public in December 2012 and functions currently as a gallery-space.