MASSAGE THERAPY

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE October 24, 2008

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www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

Beauty reunited

Love of history helped curator bring three designers' work together for the first time in 108 years

by Anthony Glassman

Go up to a lover of the finer things in life and ask them to name someone known for decorative arts and one of three names will be tossed back:

Fabergé. Tiffany.

Lalique.

Thanks to the effort of one gay man with an overweening love of art and design, those three artistic houses are now in one incredible show, the first time the trio's works have been together on this scale since the 1900 World's Fair in Paris.

Stephen Harrison is the curator of the "Artistic Luxury" show, running through January 19 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It brings together pieces from sources as diverse as Queen Elizabeth of England, Russian businessmen, and Joan Rivers, who happens to have a lush collection of Fabergé jewelry that would make a czarina jealous.

Stephen Harrison

was a boy in the South.

The seeds of the show were sown a couple of decades ago, when Harrison

"My interest in art and design really began with an interest in historic architecture," he noted. "Where I grew up in Louisiana, we didn't really have an art museum, so my grandmother and my mother took me to see old plantation houses."

"That really awakened in me a love of looking at history through object, through the things that people owned and made,” he continued.

"Later on, I continued to follow my interest in historic architecture, and that led me to looking at objects that went into these historic buildings, and I discovered that was where my true passion lay, in studying decorative arts," he concluded.

During his tenure at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the idea for the show began to take form. Originally, he thought about a show on the work of Fabergé, perhaps best known for his clockwork eggs, prized gifts for the royalty of Europe.

"I didn't really want to do a show with

Curbside

AT SEVENTEEN Mr

HOWARD AGRIESTI, THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

Tiffany necklace, c. 1885-95, with diamonds, pink tourmaline, yellow gold and platinum, loaned by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

just Fabergé because we've had so many shows of just Fabergé," he realized.

PART from "The Ex Files" OR KIRBY. 2008

He delved further into the idea, realizing that to really understand the artist and his work, you had to place it all in context, "What were the factors that went into the way his things looked? Who were his peers, his rivals, his clients?"

"Most people don't realize that Fabergé, Tiffany and Lalique lived at the same time and were great rivals," he explained. "They only ever showed together at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, so I thought that was a great time to focus on. For me, that was an exhibition just waiting to be done, and no one else had done it."

"What I found was, there was a rich rivalry and a very, very dynamic interplay back and forth in their work," Harrison noted. "You see them approaching the same questions of design, though in different ways. They were very diverse in their stylistic motifs, they all embraced early modernism, again in very different ways, and I think that

Y JECOND DATE" " PLAYED OUT MUCH AS THE FIRST, THOUGH DATE #2, ED, DIDN'T BOTHER WITH THE FORMALITY OF LUNCH BEFORE -

So he's 39... he's still sexy

HAND.

WELL, HERE WE ARE!

WE WATCHED LOGAN'S RUN" (REMEMBER THAT?) ON TELEVISION, BUT SOON LOST INTEREST.

THAT MUST

BE...... THE LOOK OF BEING OLD.

will come out very well in the show."

He outlined some of the difference between the three, in style and in their clientele.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, known best for stained glass compositions, was famous for "layering glass in order to create a threedimensional effect, almost like painting with glass without actually painting."

"Many of Lalique's clients were actors and actresses, men buying for their mistresses, very much on the fringe of avantgarde society, but also conventional society, too, flocked to his door," Harrison explained. A scion of Jeptha Wade, after whom Wade Park is named, purchased an enameled Lalique comb at the World's Fair that is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art's collection.

Beyond Fabergé's fantastic designs, Harrison noted, one of the most notable features was his "use of Russian stone, how he uses all these multicolored agates and Continued on page 10

by Robert Kirby

I DIDN'T SEE STARS OR ANYTHING, BUT IT WAS A FUN TIME.

WHO

NEEDS

To EAT?

Brian Keating

3052 West Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44111 216-671-0663

AVING HAD A COUPLE OF DIFFERENT SEX PARTNERS IN PRACTICALLY THE SAME WEEK, I WAS ALL AGLOW FOR DAYS.

THEY WERE BOTH So-0-0 INTO ME...)

Sigh

'MEMBER

HOW JON SERVED

ME CHAM-

PAGNE, NAKED

I NEVER KNEW I WAS THAT

www.curb-side.com

CUTE

HEY, MOM

SAYS IT'S

DONNER TOME

Now? shoot.... well, I'll

just whack off later....

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO FOCUS MUCH ON ANYTHING.

HOW WAS SCHOOL TODAY?

EVENTUALLY, I RECOVERED FROM MY POST SEX DREAM STATE TO PICK UP THE PHONE FOR RECONNECTS.

SINCE I SAW JON

FIRST I'LL

CALL HIM FIRST

GEE, I CAN'T WAIT TO HAVE

SEX AGAIN

he liked me,

right?

Um,

yeah,

HELLO

#399