The Missing Stettheimer Furniture

A while back, I mentioned artist Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944),  to whom I regularly refer for whimsical, candy colored inspiration and witty quotes.  Surely, she was an interesting character (for one, she bucked social conventions and chose not to marry in favor of a career), and although her work was supported by some of America's most prominent artists (Marcel Duchamp was a close friend), art critics (Henry McBride wrote raving reviews), gallery owners (Alfred Stieglitz) and society figures, she is obscure compared to some of her contemporaries- Georgia O'Keefe and Charles Demuth, for example.

Above: Florine Stettheimer's apartment, including furniture designed by the artist, and her paintings Music (1920) and Portrait of Myself (1923)

Even lesser known than her paintings is the careful consideration she took in displaying them, designing each frame and even furnishings (consoles, benches) to complement her canvases. Stettheimer had no financial need to sell her work and instead displayed the vignettes in her fashionable (if slightly insane) New York City apartment overlooking Bryant Park.  Swathed in a VAST amount of cellophane and copious quantity of lace, one gets the sense that her apartment, and furnishings were an extension of her aesthetic- her paintings and especially the sets she designed for Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts reflect the same brand of whimsy.

Above: Stettheimer's studio space, complete with cellophane galore, a crystal floral bouquet, and another of her trompe l'oeil drapery furniture pieces. 

Anyway, the voyeur in me LOVES a good, intimate peep into the life of an artist via her interior, and I've always found Florine's (oh, it's like we're on first name basis) interesting because of the scope of her aesthetic.  She didn't miss a detail!  What's more, I find it even crazier to think about this is the context of some of the more industrially influenced, modernist designs of her time- her frouf flies in the face of that, and yet, she was obviously... committed to her aesthetic.

Above: Sketches for furniture, and Florine Stettheimer's apartment, with Sun (1931) hanging over a commode the artist designed

Her divinely cool trompe l'oeil furniture reflects the aesthetic of her paintings. Tragic that it was all donated to Columbia's student theater, where every single piece has since gone missing over the years. 

 

Above: Sun (1931)

Above: Portrait of Myself (1923)

Above: Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1923), in the frame that the artist designed

Above: Portrait of Virgil Thomson (1930)

Florine, My Ondine

I like slippers of gold / I like oysters cold / And my garden of mixed flowers / And the sky full of towers / And traffic in the streets / And Maillard’s sweets / And Bendel’s clothes / And Nat Lewis hose /And Tappés window arrays / And crystal fixtures / And my pictures / And Walt Disney cartoons / And colored balloons. - Florine Stettheimer

Imagine my delight when this wondrous dressing room peered up at me from within the pages of January's Architectural Digest:

Dressing room, by Samuel Botero, in Architectural Digest, January 2009

Let's see what we've got here: emerald crystal, mirrors (x10), a Fornasetti-meets-Edward Gorey mat, a graphic cameo cabinet. Naturally, this fantastical and arguably weird throwback to Victoriana with an eccentric flourish appealed to me. Yet, I had this unsettling feeling every time I'd look at it. Sure, it's unapologetically girlish, and yeah, I'll admit that it sort of has a hall-of-mirrors-in-a-fun-house thing going on. But that wasn't it; it was more like an experience of deja vu. And then, today, I realized why: this dressing room, in spirit and execution, intensely reminds me of the work of the artist Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944), known for her portrayal of the New York avant garde art scene in the 20s and 30s. And it's not just her paintings, but also her sets, poems, and interiors, all of which have the same frolicky quality, and bizarre underlying (or maybe overt) fantasies of girlish eccentricity.

Two of my favorite Stettheimer paintings. Florine wanted her paintings destroyed upon her death. Thank god her sister had the sense not to listen to her:

Left: Spring Sale at Bendel's, 1921 Right: Natatorium Undine, 1927

Stettheimer's set for Four Saints in Three Acts, a play by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein:



And her New York City apartment:

House and Garden, May 1991

If there's anyone who makes me want to wrap myself and my interior in swaths of cellophane, it's Florine. And trust me, that's not something I would think about ordinarily. I generally run for the hills when I see plastic, but in this case, will you look at those drawing room drapes?!