Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2020 i Robb Report

Chris Buck A photographer and director based in New York and Los Angeles, Buck has shot celebrities from Tom Hanks to Simon Cowell. For “The Joker” (p. 78), he photographed artist and provocateur Maurizio Cattelan, a tricky endeavor, as the Covid-19 crisis presented a logistical challenge. “The outbreak led to a last-minute location change, so we lost over half of our prep time,” he says. “Eventually, we ended up shooting on a fire escape in the Flatiron District.” Buck’s portraits have won placement in American Photography more than 40 times and have appeared in the pages of Wired, The Guardian Weekend and numerous other publications. Julie Belcove This month Belcove, Robb Report’s features director, exchanged e-mails with Maurizio Cattelan (“The Joker,” p. 78), got “The Answers” from Iwan Wirth (p.…

Since 1992, when Iwan Wirth teamed with Ursula Hauser, an astute collector and retail magnate, and her daughter Manuela to found a small gallery called Hauser & Wirth in Zurich, the art world has grown exponentially. As has Hauser & Wirth. In order to compete with the big boys in the early days, the gallery honed a reputation for catering to artists’ wants and needs. Now it is one of the big boys. Iwan and Manuela soon married, and the gallery has since opened spaces in London, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, St. Moritz, Gstaad and Somerset, in the English countryside. Their latest, a major expansion of their presence in New York’s Chelsea, is set to mount its inaugural exhibition in the fall. The mega-gallery has a daunting roster…

Who doesn’t want to get behind the wheel of the latest and greatest—like the Bentley Bacalar or Jaguar F-Type? But the nostalgia factor of classic convertibles also has strong allure. Consider one of these drop-tops from the 20th century, an era when the automobile truly was king. For inspiration we turned to design guru Jonathan Ward, CEO of Icon, one of the top restomod shops in the country, and tapped the valuation experts at Hagerty for estimates on examples in good or excellent condition. Ward’s own convertible projects include a canvas-top 1950 Buick Roadmaster and an inspired 1966 Bronco “roadster.” J.H.H. THE CLASSIC’S CLASSIC 1906 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost 40/50 HP Original Royces were sold as a rolling chassis, and coachbuilders were free to make wildly inventive bodies. A pristine, topless…

Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless Earbuds Germany’s headphone-industry leader breaks new ground with technology that offers perfectly synchronized wireless audio for video applications and stunning sound for music. Sennheiser Smart Control, the brand’s latest app for iOS and Android, allows listeners to control, update and configure their ’buds. With Bluetooth 5.0, the lightweight and splash-resistant earbuds have touch-pad technology that enables users to access voice assistants. $300, sennheiser.com Cardas A8 30th Anniversary Edition Respected audiophile cable designer George Cardas set about making in-ear headphones that employ his Golden Ratio cables combined with a miniature transducer. These smooth performers deliver full, linear output, from subsonic to top-octave frequencies and particularly deep bass. Oh, and the black chrome housings look like jewelry. $350, cardas.com Empire Ears Bravado These impressive in-ear monitors feature dual-driver…

Securing a big reduction is more an ego-boosting victory than anything to do with the bottom line. It’s startling but true: A third of households with a net worth of $5 million or more shop regularly for rollbacks at Walmart. While affluent families might not need to nickel-and-dime, what surprises those who are less fortunate is that bargain hunting can be a blood sport for blue bloods, and whether discreet or delegated, it’s always de rigueur. And brag-worthy. Take fashion, where discounts are hidden in plain sight in any upscale boutique from Rodeo Drive to Madison Avenue in a system that’s equal parts furtive and lucrative. While average shoppers browse the table displays of designer shoes unawares, the well-heeled regulars right next to them are receiving VIP markdowns of 40…

About a decade ago, with the economy beginning to recover following the global financial meltdown, a budding art collector flew from New York to Art Basel Miami Beach to buy a painting. “In my head I was the dream person, the up-and-coming collector that they want,” he recalls. “I was a decent-sized collector but not well-known. Not a banker who wants to flip. Someone who would buy as a long-term investment.” An admirer of the hyper-realist artist Karel Funk, the collector, armed with a budget of $400,000, inquired at the 303 Gallery booth about buying one of Funk’s signature hooded-anorak paintings, then priced around $40,000, “but of course there was no price on display,” he says. The gallerist’s curt response: “There are some in the Whitney you can go and…

Can a car be art? The curators of two new exhibitions on the topic, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Detroit Institute of Arts, don’t make that claim. But cars were arguably the most iconic objects of the 20th century, and their designs can certainly be brilliant. The best go far beyond a pretty shape, or an intelligent packaging of mechanical components, to reflect and even represent the culture around them. Think of the tail fin and how it became easy visual shorthand for ’50s America. So cars are certainly appropriate subject matter for major exhibitions, and it’s a pleasing coincidence for enthusiasts that two are slated to open this year. Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City, 1950–2020, now scheduled for November at…

Audemars Piguet has a big statement to make for 2020—just don’t call it a comeback. After last year’s rocky response to its unconventional Code 11.59 collection, the brand’s first new line of watches in decades, Audemars has returned to its roots with the [Re]master01, a stunning reboot of a 1943 chronograph that celebrates AP’s new Bjarke Engels–designed museum in Le Brassus, Switzerland, slated to open to the public later this year. And while many watchmakers are accused—justifiably—of relying too heavily on their heritage, this case of nostalgia looks not only perfectly timed but also perfectly executed. “We wanted to shake things up a little bit,” says Michael Friedman, head of complications at Audemars. “We didn’t want to create a historical reissue, because we do not make watches today like we…

The career of painter Philip Guston (1913–1980) continues to resonate because his dramatic stylistic shifts, from pure abstraction to neoexpressionism, reflected not just the evolution of 20th-century art but the wider culture as well. And the timing of Philip Guston Now, his upcoming blockbuster show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (currently slated for June), seems prescient, with over 200 of his works set to introduce the late artist to a new generation 40 years after his death, but in a turbulent, politically charged time he’d surely recognize. The Montreal-born Guston started out as a figurative painter with a surrealist bent, later took a hard left toward completely abstract canvases and then, at the end of his life, invented a wholly new, cartoonish style that perfectly channeled…

Already known for a model line that complements baronial styling with brute power, Bentley now wants to revive the art of coachbuilding within its Mulliner customization division. And its first step is a doozy: the roughly $2 million Bentley Mulliner Bacalar, a roofless two-seater. Adrian Hallmark, the automaker’s CEO, gives Robb Report an exclusive look at the W-12-powered car and insights on what we can expect from the 101-year-old marque moving forward. bentleymotors.com Jörn Frederic Kengelbach Why introduce the Bacalar now? This is the first year of Bentley’s second century, one where we will reinvent the company with the aim of becoming the benchmark for luxury cars. We celebrate that with an open car, just as we did 100 years ago. The Bacalar is a pure two-seater like the famous…

The next wave of boat buyers could find themselves aboard a vessel propelled by a colossal kite sail, turning what was once the realm of what-if into the now-possible. The superyacht industry has made strides, great and small, in the last five years to become a global eco-player. Hybrids are becoming increasingly common, giant boats such as the 600-foot REV Ocean are doubling as mobile research vessels and the most forward-looking builders are experimenting with zero-fossil-fuel propulsion—from full solar to kite sails to sci-fi-level converters that create instant, renewable electric power. In the next six months, expect an even greater sea change, not only in the way the yacht world measures sustainability but also in how it deals with emissions. Two families responsible for the world’s largest superyachts, Lürssen and…

To shop at the Museum of Modern Art in New York doesn’t actually require you to go there. Only one of MoMA’s stores is in the museum itself. The others—five more—are as near as across the street and as far-flung as Kyoto. They’ve become important hubs on their own. Brands have even used the outposts as a springboard for entry into new markets: Both Muji and Hay celebrated their Stateside debuts at shops in MoMA’s SoHo location. That’s not to neglect the in-museum offering, which, after MoMA completed its redesign last October, totals 5,300 square feet and now has a more public-facing placement. “They took a stand when they moved their store down to the main area, where you can see it from the street,” says Susan Tudor, president of…

California’s wine capital is best known for fruit-forward, high-proof, ready-to-drink wines. But a recent shift toward a more restrained and age-worthy style favors grapes from mountainside vineyards, with wineries such as Lokoya, Girard, Lamborn and Michael Mondavi Family growing in the high-altitude American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) of Howell Mountain, Atlas Peak, Diamond Mountain District, Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder. These sites can climb as high as 2,700 feet above sea level, similar to the soaring vineyards of Argentina’s famed Mendoza wine region. It’s a radical shift not just in philosophy but technique and, for those who favor sophisticated, old- world-style wines, one that’s well worth the extra effort. While grapes grown on the valley floor are covered with a daily cooling fog that protects them from harsh sunlight, grapes grown…

WE CAN THINK of no better antidote to winter and a global lockdown than this: a speedy, freeing escape into the countryside in a convertible. A warm breeze suffuses the cabin, and the smell of flowers hangs in the air. That wonderful sound? That’s a 5-liter V-8 engine breaking into a raucous song. We’re arrowing down narrow back roads in Portugal’s wine country, as gorgeous a location as you might hope to find. Though, in truth, any pretty place with scant traffic will do when it comes to a drop-top. The whole point is to taste the wind and revel in the freedom that comes with it. But, you know, which convertible? Since the season is upon us, you may feel the urge to get yourself into a roofless ride…

1 SuRi This hulking, 208-foot explorer, dubbed “the world’s most adventurous superyacht,” is currently on a voyage in the Indian Ocean, with her Triton submersible diving to one of the deepest points in the world’s oceans. SuRi also typically visits Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Palau. Her rear hangar is packed with everything from a four-seat Eurocopter Squirrel helicopter and SeaRey amphibious plane to her two-seat Triton sub and 30-foot StanCraft wooden speedboat. Able to accommodate 12 guests with 20 crew, she has a range of 9,900 miles at 11 knots. ICING ON THE CAKE: Glass floor panels in the salon to view sea life below. RATES: From $350,000 per week. mysuri.com 2 Legend The herculean 254-foot Legend started life as a Russian ice-breaking tug, crunching through the floes of…

Art fairs—those movable feasts of dealers, collectors and thousands of artworks shipped around the world—have proliferated like crazy. Dozens were on the docket for this spring alone. Everybody complains, but everybody goes. Or they did, before Covid-19 cut down or postponed just about every festival and event slated for spring, from Asia Week New York to Art Paris to the Venice Biennale. I was at Frieze London last fall when it struck me with force: I had flown from New York and was seeing art dealers whose gallery spaces are only a block or two from my apartment. What was the environmental cost of transporting all of us and the works themselves? Ecologically speaking, it’s hard to imagine a worse concept. And there was rich irony in that some works…

For all the fuss made over the exponential growth of the contemporary art world—fairs and biennials popping up around the globe like Shake Shacks, finance experts labeling art an “asset class,” hours-long lines for Yayoi Kusama’s psychedelic “Infinity Mirror Rooms” and other experiential, Instagram-worthy phenomena—a paltry few 21st-century artists have succeeded in permeating mainstream culture. Sure, the pseudonymous Banksy made headlines when he rigged a picture frame to shred one of his paintings after the hammer fell at Sotheby’s, though the media coverage focused on the destruction of an expensive object—and its potential rise in value as a result. And Marina Abramović was lampooned on Sex and the City for her 12-day stint living on display at Sean Kelly Gallery like an animal in the zoo, but most fans of…

On a late Friday afternoon in February, Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani—the mega art-collecting couple based in Dhaka, Bangladesh—had just placed their Haegue Yang commission, a tall, almost Seussian-looking sculpture titled North of the Mountain, by a floor-to-ceiling window on the fifth floor of their six-story house in the capital’s fashionable Gulshan neighborhood. The Berlin-based artist’s joyful piece, which invites viewers to join the fun by giving it a gentle push, thereby ringing its hundreds of tiny gold-colored bells, is the newest jewel in their growing cutting-edge modern and contemporary collection, which totals around 2,000 artworks. “You can try it later,” Rajeeb promises with a broad smile. The Samdanis situated the sound work next to a second piece with a musical theme: a copper, granite and coal sculpture of long tubes…

With a career trajectory that has taken her from curating and advising private clients to senior posts at Christie’s and now Sotheby’s, Amy Cappellazzo has become a mainstay of the international art world, known as much for her sharp wit and boundless energy as for her well-trained eye and fiercely competitive nature. Cappellazzo joined Christie’s in 2001, rising to chairman of postwar and contemporary development and helping propel the auction house to dominance over its chief rival, Sotheby’s. When she left in 2014, she teamed with respected curator and adviser Allan Schwartzman to found Art Agency, Partners, which Sotheby’s snatched up less than two years later for $50 million, plus performance incentives of up to $35 million. Cappellazzo made the most of her return to the auction world: In a…