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New York Times
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Christophe de Menil, Art Patron and Designer, Is Dead at 92
Christophe de Menil, a costume designer, oil heiress, philanthropist and financier of scores of the world's leading figures in art, design and architecture, died on Aug. 5 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92. Her death was confirmed by her brother George de Menil, who said she had been bedridden with arthritis. Ms. de Menil, a tall, graceful, even regal woman, lived a life of extraordinary wealth and artistic involvement, not unlike that of her parents, John and Dominique de Menil, who used their immense fortune from the Schlumberger multinational oil-field services company — her mother was a Schlumberger — to amass one of the world's largest private art collections and to finance the building of museums. For two decades, Ms. de Menil was a costume designer for the avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson, who died on July 31. An art collector herself, she was a patron of Willem de Kooning as well as the choreographer Twyla Tharp. She introduced the Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry to New York as the designer of her Upper East Side carriage house in Manhattan. And as a society grande dame she was an inveterate party giver whose guests included Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Susan Sontag, John Cage and Patricia Kennedy Lawford. Hers was a privileged life that began in Paris between the world wars. Her father came from a titled but relatively poor family and worked as a banker. Her mother, a mathematics graduate of the University of Paris, was the principal heiress to a family textile fortune accrued in the 19th century before her own father and a great-uncle formed the Schlumberger enterprise. The parents met at a ball in Versailles, married in 1931 and, as an upper-class young couple, rode horses in the sylvan Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Marie-Christophe de Menil was born in Paris on Feb. 5, 1933, her parents' eldest child. With the onset of World War II and invading Nazis arriving in Paris, the mother fled to Marseilles with Marie-Chistophe, her sister Adelaide and her baby brother George. In Marseilles, the two girls contracted chickenpox, and their mother wrapped them in loden coats to conceal their spots. Making their way west to Bilbao, in northern Spain, they boarded a small freighter for Cuba. In Havanna, they were met by the children's father, who had arrived from his base in Romania, where he had run the Schlumberger company operations. They went on to Houston, the company's American base, and it was there that Christophe grew up and another brother, Francois, and a sister, Philippa (known as Phip), were born. The de Menils led an opulent, cultured life in Houston. Today, the city is home to the Menil Collection, a museum that houses the extensive art holdings accumulated by Ms. de Menil's parents. In New York, where they also maintained a residence, the family's social circles included artists, architects, poets, playwrights and Black activists. Each child was endowed with a formidable financial legacy, thanks to their grandfather Conrad Schlumberger, a physicist, and the great-uncle, Marcel. Together the two men pioneered well-logging, which, using the electrical resistance of the earth, determines with considerable accuracy the location of oil deposits. When the five de Menil brothers and sisters were still young, their parents placed half of their Schlumberger company shares in trust funds for them. At her debut in 1952, Ms. de Menil was already showing an unconventional if not eccentric side. She wore a white four-leaf clover gown by Charles James, a renowned designer for society women. The dress weighed nearly 15 pounds but allowed her to glide effortlessly across the ballroom floor. Beneath it, she wore pedal pushers. In the spring of 1959, she married Robert Thurman, who was eight years her junior and who would enter Harvard that fall. He dropped out two years later with wanderlust and headed toward India by way of Turkey and Iran in search of enlightenment through Buddha. He left behind his infant daughter, Taya, as well as his wife, who, he was quoted as saying, was 'nervous, scared of the whole thing.' Ms. de Menil maintained for years that it was not India where he had been headed but the mountains of Mexico, where he proposed to camp and explore mind-altering drugs, neither of which she felt was appropriate for an infant. The marriage ended in divorce, and Mr. Thurman, who became a distinguished scholar of Buddhism and a monk, later married a German-Swiss model who had divorced Timothy Leary, the proponent of LSD. One of their children, born in 1970 in Mexico, is the actress Uma Thurman. In 1963, Ms. de Menil entered Columbia University to study religion and launched her 'Midsummer' series of parties and exhibits in the Hamptons, showcasing artists like Ms. Tharp, the avant-garde composer La Monte Young and the multimedia artist Robert Whitman. There she got to know de Kooning while working as a sound coordinator on Hans Namuth's documentary about him. She eventually became a collector of de Kooning's works. Ms. de Menil married for a second time — to Enrique Castro-Cid, a Chilean artist — in 1971. They divorced three years later, and she never remarried. By 1976, Ms. de Menil was ensconced in New York and a country house on the East End of Long Island. In Manhattan, she purchased a three-story Georgian townhouse with a lap pool on East 69th Street that had been a carriage house. She hired a young up-and-coming Frank Gehry to redesign it, but the relationship ended in tears when she fired him over a glass of champagne, unhappy with his idea of gutting the townhouse and creating two buildings, one for Ms. de Menil and one for her teenage daughter, with a bridge connecting them. 'I think she was afraid of it,' the architect Paul Lubowicki, an associate of Mr. Gehry's, told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. To finance her transformation of the house into what became effectively a fashion atelier, she sold more than $2 million worth of major paintings at a Sotheby Parke Bernet auction in 1965, a sum equivalent to about $20.7 million today. Ms. de Menil sold the house in 1987 to the art dealer Larry Gagosian and moved to a Park Avenue apartment. By then she had developed a talent for creating clothes and jewelry and had been discovered by Robert Wilson, the avant-garde theater director. He started turning to her for costume designs in 1980 and would continue to do so for the next two decades or so. Among his productions she worked on was 'The Golden Windows' and his 12-hour opera, 'The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down,' with music by Philip Glass. Her fashion creations were less design than invention. She delighted in shocking people, as she did with a gown of ivory foam rubber that she wore to a waltz in 1984. That was the year she presented her first major collection, called XS. The fashion reporter John Duka of The New York Times pointed out that the name could be read as ''Excess,' in case anyone missed the point.' 'I'm extreme, and I have strong tastes,' Ms. de Menil told The Times in 1986. 'I get that so much from my mother — decide what you're aiming at and strike out after it. Before, I did things for others, and now I'm doing something for myself. Flowering, in a way. Expanding. Now I have a vocation and much better bearings.' At the same time, she was using her considerable fortune to back a stable of artists, including Mr. Glass, Mr. Young, Ms. Tharp, the choreographer Trisha Brown (for whom she also designed costumes) and the composer Terry Riley. It was funds from Ms. de Menil that allowed the Metropolitan Museum of Art to purchase Michael Heizer's 46-ton Guennette sculpture, created from warm pink granite, originally for the plaza of the Seagram Building on Park Avenue. In addition to her brother George, she is survived by another brother, Francois de Menil; two sisters, Adelaide de Menil Carpenter and Fariha de Menil; a daughter, Taya Thurman; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A grandson, Dash Snow, an artist whose work was shown at the 2006 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, died of a drug overdose at 27 in 2009. Ms. De Menil was briefly in the news again in 2021, when Alina Morini, who said that she had been Ms. De Menil's longtime live-in companion at her recent Manhattan home, on East 81st Street, sued Taya Thurman, contending that Ms. De Menil, who was ailing at the time, had been subjected to 'forced and currently ongoing isolation' at the hands of her daughter. Ms. Morini said that she herself had been 'falsely arrested' on trespassing charges and detained by the authorities for 30 hours. The suit was dismissed in New York State Supreme Court the next year. Beyond promoting the careers of artists, Ms. de Menil prided herself on her own creative work, her fashion and jewelry designs, and saw it as rivaling that of her more celebrated peers. When she made her debut presentation in 1984 before a who's who of fashion and society, including Marie-Hélène de Rothschild and Bianca Jagger, Mr. Duka wrote in The Times, 'When Miss de Menil descended the stairs to greet her audience, she may have thought she had joined the ranks of Carolina Herrera and Jacqueline de Ribes.' Years later her self-confidence remained intact. At a society event in East Hampton in 2012, a young blogger posed with Ms. de Menil and asked her, 'Who is your favorite designer?' 'Alexander McQueen,' Ms. De Menil answered. 'And also myself.' Adam Nossiter and Ash Wu contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
CNN
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Inside the home of Pauline Karpidas, the art-world ‘grande dame' who could be the last of her kind
Behind the elegant but unassuming entryway to an apartment near London's Hyde Park, one of Europe's most prominent collectors has amassed a remarkable trove of Surrealist and postwar art in a home bursting with color and eclectic design. Now in her 80s, Pauline Karpidas is selling nearly all of the art and custom furniture housed in her dwelling, where major contemporary artists and other cultural figures have socialized among works by René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. As a patron, she's been an influential and connecting force in the art world for decades, yet Karpidas has remained a private figure who rarely speaks to press. But her upcoming sale, expected to fetch some £60 million, ($79.6 million), will be the most expensive collection from a single owner ever offered by Sotheby's in Europe. 'I cannot think of a more comprehensive place, outside of any major museum collection, really, to study and to look and to be encircled with so many core masterpieces from the surrealist movement and beyond,' said Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby's Europe, in a phone call from London. Karpidas' Warhol works feature Marilyn Monre (left) and the artist Man Ray (right). In the living room salon hang paintings by Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Francis Picabia, Leonora Carrington and Yves Tanguy, among others. Out of the sale's 250 artworks and design pieces the top lot is a later Magritte painting 'La Statue volante,' estimated to sell for £9-12 million ($12-$16 million). Other highlights include two Warhol works inspired by the painter Edvard Munch; a Dalí pencil drawing of his wife, Gala; a Hans Bellmer painting made just before the artist was imprisoned in France during World War II; a formative, mystical Dorothea Tanning painting of her dog; and the collector's bed, made of sculptural copper twigs and leaves, by Claude Lalanne. The sale will take place on September 17 and 18, and the works will also go on view in London earlier in the month, providing a rare glimpse at many artworks that have been off the market for decades and will soon be scattered into private hands. The landmark auction comes just two years after Sotheby's sold off the contents of Karpidas summer home in Hydra, Greece, which became a summer hotspot for artists through her Hydra workshops. In that sale, which more than doubled its high estimate, works by Georg Baselitz, Marlene Dumas and Kiki Smith earned a combined €35.6 million ($37.6 million). 'She's a real diva, in the most positive sense of this word,' said the Swiss artist Urs Fischer in a video call. 'She's also a bit of a mystery to me, despite knowing her for a long time.' Fischer met Karpidas more than two decades ago when he was in his twenties, participated in one of her Hydra gatherings in the mid-2000s, and has regularly attended art-world parties with her. Fischer noted her 'larger-than-life' presence: She's often in striking hats, cigarette in hand, and has the tendency toward telling grand stories and scrawling, multi-page handwritten letters, he said. 'When I think of any memory of her, she's always at the center of a place — she's not the person on the periphery,' he recalled. 'A mirror of her' Karpidas, originally from Manchester, was introduced to art collecting through her late husband, Constantine Karpidas, known as 'Dinos,' whose own eye was fixed on 19th-century art including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Then by meeting the art dealer Alexander Iolas, Karpidas found her own path. Iolas, nearly retired by that point, had been a formidable dealer of major 20th-century artists, particularly Surrealists, and his approach was the 'blueprint' for international mega-galleries such as Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth today, according to Barker. But with Karpidas' financial means and determination, he worked with her to build a singular collection of 20th-century art. Pauline with Constantinos Karpidas, known as Dino, who introduced her to art collecting when they married. Karpidas is part of the lineage of 'grande dames,' Barker said — the affluent 20th-century women who built social networks across the most prominent artists, fashion houses and designers of the time — and she may be the last of her kind, he noted. She was close friends with Andy Warhol and frequented his parties at The Factory, she was dressed by Yves Saint Laurent, and her homes were the efforts of prominent interior designers Francis Sultana and Jacques Grange. She's been compared to the late, great female patrons Peggy Guggenheim and Dominique de Menil, both of whom she knew. But though her counterparts' collections have become important cultural institutions, through Sotheby's, the bulk of Karpidas' collection will be disseminated across the art market. In her London residence, Fischer said, 'the whole space became one artwork. Every fragment of that apartment has its own little story.' While he's been in many homes of affluent collectors over the years, Karpidas' apartment stands out for how personal and exuberant it is. 'In some way, it's probably a mirror of her interest and her psyche,' he said. 'It's not just like a wealthy person's home. It's like a firework.' Barker explained that Karpidas' acquisitions have not only been the result of her financial means, but her judicious timing, too. She was well-positioned in 1979 for the record-breaking sale of the collector and artist William Copley's personal collection, netting a 1929 painting by the French Surrealist Yves Tanguy, which will be resold in September. Many works owned by Karpidas have been passed down through famous hands, such as Surrealism founder André Breton, poet Paul Éluard, gallerist Julian Levy, and the family of Pablo Picasso. 'She was not only there at the right time, but she was choosing the right works,' Barker said. Important patrons have often become subjects themselves, and the same is true of Karpidas. In 2023, Fischer depicted her in an ephemeral piece, with a lifespan of a single gallery show. On the floor of LGDR (now Lévy Gorvy Dayan) in New York, he cast a sculpture of the collector gazing at a reproduction of the 2nd-century 'Three Graces,' an iconic Ancient Greek statue symbolizing beauty and harmony in art and society, which Karpidas purchased in 1989 before selling it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Fischer's version, he rendered the three female nudes, as well as Karpidas, as life-size wax candles. All white except her dark oversized jewelry, the wax effigy of Karpidas looked to the sculpture she'd purchased decades before, all of the figures' wicks' aflame. Eventually, like many of Fischers' works, they all melted down, the fire winking out.
CNN
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Inside the home of Pauline Karpidas, the art-world ‘grand dame' who could be the last of her kind
Behind the elegant but unassuming entryway to an apartment near London's Hyde Park, one of Europe's most prominent collectors has amassed a remarkable trove of Surrealist and postwar art in a home bursting with color and eclectic design. Now in her 80s, Pauline Karpidas is selling nearly all of the art and custom furniture housed in her dwelling, where major contemporary artists and other cultural figures have socialized among works by René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. As a patron, she's been an influential and connecting force in the art world for decades, yet Karpidas has remained a private figure who rarely speaks to press. But her upcoming sale, expected to fetch some £60 million, ($79.6 million), will be the most expensive collection from a single owner ever offered by Sotheby's in Europe. 'I cannot think of a more comprehensive place, outside of any major museum collection, really, to study and to look and to be encircled with so many core masterpieces from the surrealist movement and beyond,' said Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby's Europe, in a phone call from London. Out of the sale's 250 artworks and design pieces the top lot is a later Magritte painting 'La Statue volante,' estimated to sell for £9-12 million ($12-$16 million). Other highlights include two Warhol works inspired by the painter Edvard Munch; a Dalí pencil drawing of his wife, Gala; a Hans Bellmer painting made just before the artist was imprisoned in France during World War II; a formative, mystical Dorothea Tanning painting of her dog; and the collector's bed, made of sculptural copper twigs and leaves, by Claude Lalanne. The sale will take place on September 17 and 18, and the works will also go on view in London earlier in the month, providing a rare glimpse at many artworks that have been off the market for decades and will soon be scattered into private hands. The landmark auction comes just two years after Sotheby's sold off the contents of Karpidas summer home in Hydra, Greece, which became a summer hotspot for artists through her Hydra workshops. In that sale, which more than doubled its high estimate, works by Georg Baselitz, Marlene Dumas and Kiki Smith earned a combined €35.6 million ($37.6 million). 'She's a real diva, in the most positive sense of this word,' said the Swiss artist Urs Fischer in a video call. 'She's also a bit of a mystery to me, despite knowing her for a long time.' Fischer met Karpidas more than two decades ago when he was in his twenties, participated in one of her Hydra gatherings in the mid-2000s, and has regularly attended art-world parties with her. Fischer noted her 'larger-than-life' presence: She's often in striking hats, cigarette in hand, and has the tendency toward telling grand stories and scrawling, multi-page handwritten letters, he said. 'When I think of any memory of her, she's always at the center of a place — she's not the person on the periphery,' he recalled. Karpidas, originally from Manchester, was introduced to art collecting through her late husband, Constantine Karpidas, known as 'Dinos,' whose own eye was fixed on 19th-century art including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Then by meeting the art dealer Alexander Iolas, Karpidas found her own path. Iolas, nearly retired by that point, had been a formidable dealer of major 20th-century artists, particularly Surrealists, and his approach was the 'blueprint' for international mega-galleries such as Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth today, according to Barker. But with Karpidas' financial means and determination, he worked with her to build a singular collection of 20th-century art. Karpidas is part of the lineage of 'grande dames,' Barker said — the affluent 20th-century women who built social networks across the most prominent artists, fashion houses and designers of the time — and she may be the last of her kind, he noted. She was close friends with Andy Warhol and frequented his parties at The Factory, she was dressed by Yves Saint Laurent, and her homes were the efforts of prominent interior designers Francis Sultana and Jacques Grange. She's been compared to the late, great female patrons Peggy Guggenheim and Dominique de Menil, both of whom she knew. But though her counterparts' collections have become important cultural instructions, accessible to the public at institutions, through Sotheby's, the bulk of Karpidas' collection will be disseminated across the art market. In her London residence, Fischer said, 'the whole space became one artwork. Every fragment of that apartment has its own little story.' While he's been in many homes of affluent collectors over the years, Karpidas' apartment stands out for how personal and exuberant it is. 'In some way, it's probably a mirror of her interest and her psyche,' he said. 'It's not just like a wealthy person's home. It's like a firework.' Barker explained that Karpidas' acquisitions have not only been the result of her financial means, but her judicious timing, too. She was well-positioned in 1979 for the record-breaking sale of the collector and artist William Copley's personal collection, netting a 1929 painting by the French Surrealist Yves Tanguy, which will be resold in September. Many works owned by Karpidas have been passed down through famous hands, such as Surrealism founder André Breton, poet Paul Éluard, gallerist Julian Levy, and the family of Pablo Picasso. 'She was not only there at the right time, but she was choosing the right works,' Barker said. Important patrons have often become subjects themselves, and the same is true of Karpidas. In 2023, Fischer depicted her in an ephemeral piece, with a lifespan of a single gallery show. On the floor of LGDR (now Lévy Gorvy Dayan) in New York, he cast a sculpture of the collector gazing at a reproduction of the 2nd-century 'Three Graces,' an iconic Ancient Greek statue symbolizing beauty and harmony in art and society, which Karpidas purchased in 1989 before selling it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Fischer's version, he rendered the three female nudes, as well as Karpidas, as life-size wax candles. All white except her dark oversized jewelry, the wax effigy of Karpidas looked to the sculpture she'd purchased decades before, all of the figures' wicks' aflame. Eventually, like many of Fischers' works, they all melted down, the fire winking out.
CNN
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Inside the home of Pauline Karpidas, the art-world ‘grand dame' who could be the last of her kind
Behind the elegant but unassuming entryway to an apartment near London's Hyde Park, one of Europe's most prominent collectors has amassed a remarkable trove of Surrealist and postwar art in a home bursting with color and eclectic design. Now in her 80s, Pauline Karpidas is selling nearly all of the art and custom furniture housed in her dwelling, where major contemporary artists and other cultural figures have socialized among works by René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. As a patron, she's been an influential and connecting force in the art world for decades, yet Karpidas has remained a private figure who rarely speaks to press. But her upcoming sale, expected to fetch some £60 million, ($79.6 million), will be the most expensive collection from a single owner ever offered by Sotheby's in Europe. 'I cannot think of a more comprehensive place, outside of any major museum collection, really, to study and to look and to be encircled with so many core masterpieces from the surrealist movement and beyond,' said Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby's Europe, in a phone call from London. Out of the sale's 250 artworks and design pieces the top lot is a later Magritte painting 'La Statue volante,' estimated to sell for £9-12 million ($12-$16 million). Other highlights include two Warhol works inspired by the painter Edvard Munch; a Dalí pencil drawing of his wife, Gala; a Hans Bellmer painting made just before the artist was imprisoned in France during World War II; a formative, mystical Dorothea Tanning painting of her dog; and the collector's bed, made of sculptural copper twigs and leaves, by Claude Lalanne. The sale will take place on September 17 and 18, and the works will also go on view in London earlier in the month, providing a rare glimpse at many artworks that have been off the market for decades and will soon be scattered into private hands. The landmark auction comes just two years after Sotheby's sold off the contents of Karpidas summer home in Hydra, Greece, which became a summer hotspot for artists through her Hydra workshops. In that sale, which more than doubled its high estimate, works by Georg Baselitz, Marlene Dumas and Kiki Smith earned a combined €35.6 million ($37.6 million). 'She's a real diva, in the most positive sense of this word,' said the Swiss artist Urs Fischer in a video call. 'She's also a bit of a mystery to me, despite knowing her for a long time.' Fischer met Karpidas more than two decades ago when he was in his twenties, participated in one of her Hydra gatherings in the mid-2000s, and has regularly attended art-world parties with her. Fischer noted her 'larger-than-life' presence: She's often in striking hats, cigarette in hand, and has the tendency toward telling grand stories and scrawling, multi-page handwritten letters, he said. 'When I think of any memory of her, she's always at the center of a place — she's not the person on the periphery,' he recalled. Karpidas, originally from Manchester, was introduced to art collecting through her late husband, Constantine Karpidas, known as 'Dinos,' whose own eye was fixed on 19th-century art including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. Then by meeting the art dealer Alexander Iolas, Karpidas found her own path. Iolas, nearly retired by that point, had been a formidable dealer of major 20th-century artists, particularly Surrealists, and his approach was the 'blueprint' for international mega-galleries such as Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth today, according to Barker. But with Karpidas' financial means and determination, he worked with her to build a singular collection of 20th-century art. Karpidas is part of the lineage of 'grande dames,' Barker said — the affluent 20th-century women who built social networks across the most prominent artists, fashion houses and designers of the time — and she may be the last of her kind, he noted. She was close friends with Andy Warhol and frequented his parties at The Factory, she was dressed by Yves Saint Laurent, and her homes were the efforts of prominent interior designers Francis Sultana and Jacques Grange. She's been compared to the late, great female patrons Peggy Guggenheim and Dominique de Menil, both of whom she knew. But though her counterparts' collections have become important cultural instructions, accessible to the public at institutions, through Sotheby's, the bulk of Karpidas' collection will be disseminated across the art market. In her London residence, Fischer said, 'the whole space became one artwork. Every fragment of that apartment has its own little story.' While he's been in many homes of affluent collectors over the years, Karpidas' apartment stands out for how personal and exuberant it is. 'In some way, it's probably a mirror of her interest and her psyche,' he said. 'It's not just like a wealthy person's home. It's like a firework.' Barker explained that Karpidas' acquisitions have not only been the result of her financial means, but her judicious timing, too. She was well-positioned in 1979 for the record-breaking sale of the collector and artist William Copley's personal collection, netting a 1929 painting by the French Surrealist Yves Tanguy, which will be resold in September. Many works owned by Karpidas have been passed down through famous hands, such as Surrealism founder André Breton, poet Paul Éluard, gallerist Julian Levy, and the family of Pablo Picasso. 'She was not only there at the right time, but she was choosing the right works,' Barker said. Important patrons have often become subjects themselves, and the same is true of Karpidas. In 2023, Fischer depicted her in an ephemeral piece, with a lifespan of a single gallery show. On the floor of LGDR (now Lévy Gorvy Dayan) in New York, he cast a sculpture of the collector gazing at a reproduction of the 2nd-century 'Three Graces,' an iconic Ancient Greek statue symbolizing beauty and harmony in art and society, which Karpidas purchased in 1989 before selling it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In Fischer's version, he rendered the three female nudes, as well as Karpidas, as life-size wax candles. All white except her dark oversized jewelry, the wax effigy of Karpidas looked to the sculpture she'd purchased decades before, all of the figures' wicks' aflame. Eventually, like many of Fischers' works, they all melted down, the fire winking out.
