MICHAEL GIBSON
PRESS
September 2004
 VINTAGE SUBURBAN Collectors are revisiting the 1970's, gathering furnishings like, top right, a gold leather Karl Springer chair, a Maria Pergay totem lamp and contemporary art by Michael Gibson. MY stylish friend Scott is politic about the more questionable things I collect. I bought a 1960's tufted sofa last year, puffy and colorful. It looks like someone who fell off the South Beach diet, in South Beach. "It's directional," Scott said, after a few beats of silence, looking at it with a cold eye, then approval. Not good, not bad, but directional. In today's quick world, that might be enough. Even my sofa is so five minutes ago, as the market for collectible modern design races forward this fall into the future of the past, rediscovering with a shortening half-life the last gasps of the 20th century - the 1970's, 80's and 90's- and pioneering the edges of acceptable taste. What is at an expensive height of voguishness, like the French 1940's and 50's, is so 10 minutes ago, say the directionalists. (The Eameses, Knolls and Nelson are clocking in at 15.) Consider instead Maria Pergay, Paco Rabanne, Gabriella Crespi, Karl Springer, Willy Rizzo, John Dickinson, Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, Paul Evans, Joe D'Urso, Pierre Cardin and Jay Spectre. Directional is the new good and bad. You don't have to choose anymore. Though unproven by time or track record in important sales, what excites the moment owns the moment. And decorators, dealers, clients and collectors right now seem to be daring one another to blink, as the less and less likely is reappraised and begins to appreciate. "You push it each time a little bit further," said Oliver Miller, who picks over used furniture out in the field for resale to modern design shops in New York like Duane. "I'm doing a lot of buying on Long Island, and I'm starting to find good quality 80's furniture, which sort of scares me - vintage 80's `decorator taste.' It has a look that hasn't yet taken hold, but I'll fill a warehouse and put it away for five years." Mr. Miller might not have to wait. "It's a Long Island aesthetic," said William Stewart, an Atlanta interior designer, describing his work for two clients, Deb and Tony Clancy. Mr. Stewart assembled a sizable collection of Karl Springer, a directional favorite, who specialized in big shapes and exotic coverings like Asian bullfrog. Mr. Springer had a good run in Architectural Digest in the 1970's and 80's. In fact much of what is directional looks like a homage to that publication's extravagant, stilted style, with a 20-year retard. "Trust me. When I first starting showing LaVerne and Springer, people were holding their nose," said Evan Lobel, of Lobel Modern, a New York gallery. "Decorators can make the leap." Pascal Boyer, also a New York dealer, has sold five LaVerne items since June, including a pair of tables to Juan Montoya, a prominent interior designer, but, he said, "Clients and collectors look at it and don't really understand." Mr. Stewart in Atlanta explained: "Modern is changing - modernism has become decorator taste of the past. You look at it and say, `Is that good design or not good design?' But it's kind of fresh, and it goes together beautifully with contemporary designs like J. Robert Scott and Donghia- they're the Karl Springers of the 2000's." The next wave of collecting, especially from the 1970's and 80's, now involves serious money, too, at prices accelerating as fast as the tight cycle reviving the reputations of designers - now a scant eight years, according to one auction house expert. To continue reading this feature article: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/garden/23COLL.html?ex=1096910662&ei=1&en=3d6ad47125ded398 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/garden/23COLL.html?ex=1096910662&ei=1&en=3d6ad47125ded398shapeimage_1_link_0
A New High-Risk Look
September 23, 2004
 
 By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON
Art by
Michael Gibson