Latest news with #Miró
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nobu Hotels Amp Up Fashion and Design Services
Room service is a given at most hotels, but now the Nobu Hotel Barcelona is adding 'dress service' to its menu. Through an alliance with the Spanish start-up Trent, guests will be able to rent or buy designer clothing, accessories and jewelry from well-known brands and emerging Spanish ones. Starting Monday, overnighters can scan a QR code to place an order or connect with the company via WhatsApp with specific questions. Their choices will be delivered to the hotel within an hour. After the garments are worn, guests leave them with the concierge, who will see to it that they are returned. Trent also has a new showroom in Barcelona for those who want to try on their rentals beforehand. More from WWD Chantecler Embarks on Capri-to-Alicudi Boat Ride With Artistic Collab Step Inside Van Cleef & Arpels' First Store in Florence Gucci Names New President for EMEA Region As is the case with the other 18 Nobu Hotels, the Barcelona locale aims to ingrain itself with the local community. Lorna Turnbull, director of marketing, said, 'For us, that is so important. Nobu is a worldwide and powerful brand. But it's been fun, discovering how we can cement Nobu into each place to give each hotel and restaurant a real link to where we are.' Nobu Hotels was created by the famed chef Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro and Meir Teper with a spotlight on creating a sense of place with refined service. Nobu Hotel Barcelona is located near the Montjuïc neighborhood, where several museums are based including the Joan Miró Foundation, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary from June through March. The exhibition 'Exchanges: Miró and the United States' highlighting how American artists like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Louise Bourgeois were influenced by Miró will be part of those festivities. For the Barcelona property, design is also being infused through a new walking tour. And at its San Sebastian 20-room retreat, there is a Balenciaga Experience that whisks travelers to the Balenciaga Museum. The Trent concept was created partially due to airlines' scaling back on passengers' baggage allowances, especially European carriers. Another incentive was driven by the many visitors who travel to Barcelona for specific events like music festivals and want to have a certain look. Access to Trent's rentals is meant to make packing easier and the chance to discover designers, whom they might not be familiar with. It is also a more sustainable option than buying an outfit that they would never wear again, Turnbull said. Nobu Hotel Barcelona liked the idea of supporting Trent's founders Laia Cusco and Alejandro Assens, and the prospect appealed to the hotel's client base, who tend to be slightly younger guests who are more into fashion and events, according to Turnbull. 'Tourism for live events is booming,' she said. Guests who are in the city for extended stays can also arrange for monthly rentals through Trent. The capital city location is one of 19 Nobu Hotels, and more are in the pipeline through 2030. Rome and Toronto openings are slated for this year, followed by Madrid, Lisbon and possibly some of the Middle East locales are expected to bow next year. Bangkok, Vietnam and other outposts in Asia are being planned. Next month, Nobu Hotel Barcelona will host the opening party for Off Sónar and it will welcome popular DJs like Elrow and DJ Tennis to headline events on specific nights. The tie-in with DJ Tennis, who is a 'big foodie,' will include his 'Munchietown' cooking club, as that aligns with Nobu's culinary reputation. Through a partnership with Barcelona Fashion Week, the property periodically has pop-up shops. In advance of Barcelona becoming the UNESCO World Capital of Architecture next year, which will coincide with the centennial anniversary of the death of the city's prized architect Antoni Gaudí, Nobu Hotel Barcelona hotel has teamed up with Barcelona Design Tours. The end result is a walking tour of the Sants neighborhood, which used to be a separate village before it was absorbed by the city. The area once housed many factories and helped to start the trade unionism movement, but it has evolved from being an industrial heartland. This summer locals will show off their style, as in years past, by having neighbors get together to decorate their respective streets in a theme for a competition that is part of the annual Sants Festival. On another front, the Nobu Hotel San Sebastian has partnered with the Balenciaga Museum in Getaria to offer guests guided tours. With 7,000 archival pieces, the museum's current exhibition 'Cristóbal Balenciaga: Technique, Material and Form' features interviews with former seamstresses who are now in their 90s. 'They talk about the experiences working for him in San Sebastian and some worked with him in Paris. They say how meticulous he was,' Turnbull said. 'One said, 'The doors closed at nine. And if you were late, you didn't get to work. So we would go to the beach.'' Ever intent on giving a global brand a sense for the city that is in, Nobu Hotel San Sebastian will be offering flower workshops to the public with a local florist and yoga classes with a local yoga instructor. The property has also teamed up with the Basque Culinary Center, which trains people and promotes Basque gastronomy. When the center flies in some of the best chefs in the world for an event, they will be hosted in the hotel. Emphasizing the importance of having locals enjoy Nobu Hotels, Turnbull said, 'We want people to know that the hotel is part of the city and it's for them as well.' Best of WWD Model and Hip Hop Fashion Pioneer Kimora Lee Simmons' Runway Career Through the Years [PHOTOS] Salma Hayek's Fashion Evolution Through the Years: A Red Carpet Journey [PHOTOS] How Christian Dior Revolutionized Fashion With His New Look: A History and Timeline
CBS News
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
On this day in 1981: Joan Miró's Chicago sculpture is unveiled downtown
On April 20, 1981 — 44 years ago Sunday — a long-awaited piece of public sculpture was unveiled to a crowd on a chilly day in downtown Chicago. Going back to the 1960s, a sculpture by Spanish Catalan artist Joan Miró had been part of the plan for the plaza next to the George W. Dunne Cook County Office Building — previously known as the Cook County Administration Building and originally the Brunswick Building. The building at 69 W. Washington St. was completed in 1964, and architect Bruce Graham of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill told Betty Blum of the Society of Architectural Historians that he was talking with Miró about the sculpture when the building was still in its early planning stages. But at first, the Brunswick Corporation — which used the building as its headquarters before Cook County took over — decided not to have it built, Graham said. In the meantime, Pablo Picasso's iconic untitled sculpture in Daley Plaza — then known as Civic Center Plaza — was unveiled in 1967. The Chicago Loop Alliance said Miró's sculpture was supposed to be unveiled the same year as the Picasso, but it ended up being shelved until more than a decade later. Finally, a deal was finally reached to have it built with the cost split between the City of Chicago and private fundraisers, according to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. At last on that chilly day a few months into President Ronald Reagan's first term, the sculpture known as "Miró's Chicago" made its debut. Joan Miró (his first name is pronounced "zho-AN") was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona. He began business school there at the age of 14 while also attending art school, but ended up abandoning business for art studies following a nervous breakdown, according to a biography from the Guggenheim . Miró attended Francesc Gali's Escola d'Art in Barcelona between 1912 and 1915, and art dealer Josep Dalmau staged Miró's first gallery show in Barcelona in 1918, according to the Guggenheim. He went on to split his time between Paris and Mont-roig, Spain, and he joined the Surrealist group — an avant-garde creative movement led by poet André Breton. Miró's work appeared in the First Surrealist Exhibition in Paris in 1925 — along with works by other masters such as Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Man Ray, and Picasso himself. But as noted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art , Miró was branching out from the Surrealists by the end of the 1920s. He began to experiment with novel materials and artistic techniques, and began developing collages, sculptures, and artworks on paper during the 1930s, the Met noted. In 1941, Miró had his first major museum retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. After World War II, he settled in Palma, Majorca, Spain, where he began working with ceramics and making models for large-scale abstract sculptures, the Met noted. "Miró's Chicago" — completed toward the end of the artist's life — was just such a creation. The 36-foot sculpture, originally known as "The Sun, the Moon and One Star," was built from steel, concrete, bronze, wire mesh, and some colorful ceramic tile. A description published by the Public Art Archive describes the sculpture as being imbued with "the mystical presence of an earth deity, both cosmic and worldly." The bell-shaped base — with its red, white, black, and blue tile patterns — represents Miró's association of the female form with the earth, the spherical center represents the moon, and the shape of the face is based on a ceramic hook, the Public Art Archive notes. The fork on the top of the sculpture's head represents a star, with each tine representing a ray of light, according to the Public Art Archive. Ahead of the long-anticipated unveiling of the sculpture, Bill Kurtis and his Focus Unit celebrated the artwork and the artist with a special Channel 2 News report — which included a visit to Majorca, Spain for an interview with Miró. When asked what he hoped people looking at his work on Washington Street in Chicago would think about upon seeing it, Miró said through an interpreter that he hoped they would "think that they're looking at something marvelous, and that tickles them up here," while rubbing his forehead. This report, unfortunately, is not available in the CBS Chicago archive. Monday, April 20, 1981, was Miró's 88th birthday. It was also the day that Mayor Jane Byrne pulled a cord to unveil Miró's iconic contribution to the aesthetics of downtown Chicago. But everything did not quite go as planned that day. In a Chicago Tribune report, Kurtis noted that he and CBS Chicago talk show host Lee Phillip co-anchored the dedication of Miró's sculpture — this, unfortunately, is not available in the CBS Chicago archive either. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was also supposed to play, but it was too cold and their instruments risked being damaged. A massive crowd turned out nonetheless to see Mayor Byrne unveil the sculpture sometimes called "Miss Chicago." "As the years go by, as we continue to appreciate the work of the masters, that I myself will know that not just the city that works, but the city that has sort of a little heart, played a role today in Joan Miró's birthday in saying the commitment that was made to you in the 50s — to you, Picasso, and to you, Miró — is now completed," Mayor Byrne said. "It's a city that loves you. It's a city that loves its art. It's a city that loves itself. And for that reason, I'm delighted that today we have the completion of a promise." Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream" — better known as the Olympic Anthem — played as Mayor Byrne tugged a rope to send the yellow veil dropping free. The veil did not cooperate at first, and the fur coat-clad mayor had to keep tugging repeatedly to get the veil off. The crowd applauded when the veil fell and the sculpture was revealed at last. One man called the sculpture "the high energy and style that's Chicago." But speaking to the late Channel 2 reporter and intrepid adventurer Bob Wallace, few seemed to be in agreement that it looked particularly like a woman. One man even called the sculpture "ugly" and said he didn't like it at all. It took less than two weeks for Miró's Chicago to be back in the headlines again. On May 1, 1981, as a May Day rally was going on downtown, someone threw a container of oil-based red paint at the base of the sculpture. Police quickly arrested art student Crister Nyholm, 24, of Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood. Police said at the time that they were already in the area when the vandalism happened, and responded to the scene to find Nyholm just sitting there staring at what he'd done. As Channel 2 News reporter Frank Currier reported, Nyholm told police at the time that he vandalized the sculpture because he hated it, and it was something he had to do. Third Coast Review reported that art conservators from the Art Institute of Chicago stripped off the paint, and a judge sentenced Nyholm to probation and imposed a fine. Miró died Dec. 25, 1983, at the age of 90. In 2025, 44 years after it was unveiled, Miró's Chicago still stands proudly in the plaza between the George W. Dunne Cook County Office Building and the Chicago Temple. The sculpture will be covered temporarily this spring and summer during renovations of the walkways surrounding the county office building, and all measures are being taken to ensure it is protected to go back on proud display once the work is done.
The Guardian
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘CSI: Miró': X-ray reveals Spanish artist painted out his mother – but why?
Three clumps of raised paint, an old X-ray and months of scientific analysis and dogged detective work have revealed that a portrait of Joan Miró's mother has lurked, undetected, beneath the cobalt-blue surface of one of the Spanish artist's inimitable works for the best part of a century. Between 1925 and 1927, Miró created a small, oil-on-canvas picture, titled Pintura (Painting), which he gave to his great friend, the art promoter Joan Prats. By that time, having made the inevitable artistic pilgrimage to Paris, experimented with fauvism, post-expressionism and cubism – in the process comprehensively dashing his parents' hopes that he might one day find stable employment as an accounts clerk – Miró had alighted on a freer, more individual style. Pintura underlines what Marko Daniel, the director of the Fundació Joan Miró, describes as the artist's commitment to 'exploding the conventions of painting, of pictorial space, of the way in which painting works'. But it may also hold a deeper, hidden meaning that reflects the artist's attempt to break away from the bourgeois constraints of his family as he set out on his famous quest to 'assassinate painting'. Five years after Prats' death in 1970, the painting became part of the collection of the foundation, which is based in Barcelona. Time, and humidity, had not been kind to the canvas, which had suffered microfissures and other damage. A year ago, experts at the foundation, led by Elisabet Serrat, its head of preventive conservation and restoration, decided to take another look at Pintura. A decades-old X-ray had hinted that something else lay beneath Miró's brushwork, as had the edges of the painting, where the blue paint cedes to older, darker colours. Using X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared light, hyperspectral imaging, visible raking and transmitted light, Serrat's team and researchers from organisations, including the Centre de Restauració de Béns Mobles de Catalunya and the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, discovered the portrait of a well-dressed, middle-aged woman, painted in a style that could not have been more different from Miró's. They soon clocked that her earrings and the brooch at her neck corresponded to the three spots of raised paint already glimpsed on Pintura's surface. 'So now we had a good-quality image of the portrait, which looked almost like a photo,' says Serrat. 'But we didn't know who it was of.' Unable to find any clues as to the woman's identity in Barcelona, Serrat headed to Tarragona a few weeks later to visit the Fundació Mas Miró, a museum situated in the farmhouse where the artist and his family spent their summers. 'But none of the portraits there was a match,' she adds. 'The director of the foundation said that the portrait could be in Mallorca, where Miró also lived and worked.' The steer was a good one. At Miró's Son Boter studio on the Balearic island, Serrat found a 1907 portrait signed by the artist Cristòfol Montserrat Jorba. Not only did the face match that of the woman in the Pintura X-rays, its subject was one Dolors Ferrà i Oromí – better known as Miró's mother. 'The [Mallorca portrait] is exactly the same, bar a few differences: the dress was different and the earrings were different, but there's no doubt that it's the same face,' says Serrat. Such discoveries are vanishingly rare. Uncovering the face of Dolores Ferrà, Serrat adds with a degree of understatement, was 'a delightful surprise'. Her team believes that Miró cut down another version of Montserrat's portrait – Pintura measures just 49cm x 60cm – and flipped it from portrait to landscape, but deliberately chose to keep the central portion that showed his mother's face. All of which raises the obvious question: why? Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion Serrat and Daniel see Miró's decision as a deliberate act and as a foreshadowing of the over-painting that the artist would apply to his own, earlier works in the 1950s. Over-painting was also a technique he visited on the kitsch, tacky works of hack artists towards the end of his life, when he set about defacing what he saw as cheap, bad and cheesy art. 'That said, the new discovery is not situationist over-painting, nor his own, revisionist over-painting,' says Daniel. 'It is an act of rebellion. But Miró was already 32 when he started this, so it's not a juvenile act of rebellion against his parents … [but] against the kind of world that his parents represented; the middle-class aspirations to being ever so slightly posher than you really are.' He is convinced Miró did not choose the Montserrat portrait by accident: 'There was no technical need for him to paint on top of that; he wasn't like Gauguin in the South Pacific, without access to materials. For him, this really was an act of choice.' And yet, to Serrat's mind, the artist's odd gesture was not without a certain affection. 'He could have chosen another portrait,' she says. 'But he chooses this one, and he cuts it and keeps his mother's face complete, so there's a respect there.' She also notes that he left the trio of paint clumps – the x that marked the spot of his mother's jewellery – intact, when he could easily have scraped them flat. The experts' findings, which Daniel refers to as 'CSI: Miró', are laid out in a new exhibition, Under the Layers of Miró: A Scientific Investigation, and in an accompanying documentary, El Secret de Miró. The show, at the foundation's Barcelona headquarters, will allow visitors to see both Pintura and Montserrat's portrait of Ferrà. Almost a century after the brilliant blue paint dried on Miró's enigmatic painting, Daniel feels the world is finally beginning to understand the artist's intentions. 'In a way, Miró left us really good clues – especially the brooch, which is really three dimensional and you can see it in raking light,' he says. 'He left us these clues, so he must be thinking, 'Why on earth did it take you so long to discover this? A hundred years later, you've worked out what I did!''
