Artist Larry Bell Doesn’t Trust Art Collectors—Except Billie Milam Weisman The legendary Los Angeles artist talks with collector Billie Milam Weisman about navigating the city that defined their careers. In 1982, Frederick R. Weisman purchased a historic Mediterranean-style villa in the leafy Holmby Hills neighborhood...

In 1964, Noguchi — now 60, world-famous and at the height of his powers — was ready to return to Japan on his own terms. He began looking for a second home, and an atelier capable of producing the monumental stone sculptures that would define the last 20 years of his career. He found both when architect Tadashi Yamamoto introduced him to 25-year-old Masatoshi Izumi, who would become his most treasured assistant. Izumi was born into an exalted lineage of stonecutters. Where Noguchi was cut off from his inheritance, Izumi inherited his family’s studio, craft, and quarry. Izumi’s father taught him — just as his father’s father had taught him — ...

  Notes from a conversation with Ryan Soniat, architectural preservationist. First, there is the learning of a language. A pattern passed between generations and spaces, rolled over surfaces and catching on hardware, snagging on door handles and flattened into linoleum. The preservationist, practises. They must...

Logically, Frankly THE HOME OF GALERIE 54 FROM A SEEMINGLY INFINITE SPIRAL STAIRCASE TO A MIRRORED HALLWAY, ELEMENTS OF CUBISM AND SURREALISM APPEAR AMONGST THE INTERIORS. Entering the 77-metre long rue Mallet-Stevens in Paris’s 16th arrondissement feels like walking onto a film set. Six expansive...

Inside the Sublime World of Late Sculptor J. B. Blunk A stunning, handmade idyll where redwood, river stones, ceramic, and creativity reign Imagine living not only in the midst of pristine natural surroundings but actually feeling truly embraced by them, breathing in warm woody aromas as an abundance of curvaceous redwood forms hug you inward. Such is the state of being inside the intimate, hand-built abode of the late prolific American sculptor J. B. Blunk, who began creating it in the late ‘50s in Inverness, California, after his friend and patron, the surrealist painter Gordon Onslow-Ford, offered him an acre of land. Though he was Kansas-born and UCLA-educated in ceramics, Blunk’s earthbound life traces to Japan, where he spent four years living in the early ‘50s and where he met renowned artist Isamu Noguchi by chance. Noguchi was responsible for the introduction to Onslow-Ford, who allowed Blunk to climb trees on his land in search of the perfect plot for his future home, which became the pure expression of his artistic being...

Flamingo Estate is the glamorous 7-acre home and apothecary with golden-era Hollywood history. WORDS BY MAX BERLINGER, PHOTOGRAPHY BY YOSHIHIRO MAKINO   IN ANY OF the images from the lifestyle brand Flamingo Estate, you’ll rarely, if ever, see just one of something — a flower,...

THERE IS A level of expectation that comes with any landmark, and in New Orleans, where everyone has an opinion and feels just fine sharing it with you, that expectation hits ever higher. It’s why, when hotelier Jayson Seidman made the decision to buy and...

PERU The Salt of the Earth In Yoshihiro Makino’s photographs from Peru, we see that culture is made by place. This is a lesson we need to absorb. The earth matters. Colours and words arise from the dirt itself. Even as ideas and technologies blow across borders like the wind, creating a false culture we call ‘global culture,’ what happens in one particular place is still made mostly by the place itself. “I was impressed that the salt ponds of Maras haven’t changed for hundreds for years. That, I respect,” says Makino. “I am not against mass production and technology – I live in that world – but here is how the earth itself shapes our ideas. Our ideas don’t just come to us from nothing. Sometimes they come from a place.”...

The Lovell Health House MEMORY OF MELANCHOLY I enter the Lovell Health House wearing a mask. Before the pandemic, the house was briefly open for tours – the inner corners of the famous casement windows scrubbed clean, the soft grey carpets vacuumed for the tread of incoming guests. Preserved almost unchanged for over half a century, the house is ready for restoration; it is an icon calling to be healed from the foundations up, soothing arthritic steel and boosting scarred stucco. Since lockdown, the doors have been closed to visitors – open only for the aesthetically intrepid and constitutionally foolhardy. I’ve made my way up the hill on an electric bicycle that rattles like a stairlift – a health-conscious replacement for a car, which only leaves me more vulnerable to the whims of passing Maseratis. But here, up high, the roads are narrow and slow, shaded by strata of palms, eucalyptus, the sudden purple of jacaranda. By the time I reach the house, I’m in good spirits – and entirely unprepared for the melancholy which rises like a fever as I cross the threshold...

Partners in life and work, Antonin and Noémie Raymond forged deep ties to Tokyo and Japanese craftsmanship. Here, just off the Meguro train stop, design historian Alexa Griffith Winton visits their design of St. Anselm’s Catholic Church, a Brutalist structure that combines modern construction with...

Traces of Dreams While there are several routes to access the White Sands of New Mexico perhaps the most known is from the south. Making your way up from El Paso Texas, up the old railroad and past the many ghost towns that occupy the land before you arrive at the White Sand lighting up the horizon, illuminated by crystal clear sunlight of New Mexico. The simple beauty of the contrasting white and blue view emphasises the preciousness of all mother nature and all its creation. It is very refreshing to put yourself into a place and situation where you feel completely isolated, feel at peace with yourself, be completely alone with your thoughts, hear every footstep, even witness the sight of wind in the desert...