In 1983, when I was dabbling in art criticism for several publications, Friedensreich Hundertwasser invited me to accompany him round his art exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London.
I met him that first and simply time when he was engaged placing potted plants and bushes around the art museum – to counterpoise the Barbican’sitting grey cemented interior.
“If you put any more plants in here,†I told him, “people will need a machete just to see your work!â€
He shrugged, told me how much he hated cement, and asked me to give him a hand-breadth.
Later, after an hour or in like manner walking on every side with him, discussing the lush flamboyant opulence of colour in his art and the feasible influence of Johannes Itten’s The Art of Color, we came to the after all the rest exhibit: a large wooden barrel filled with earth on which he’breakfast placed a toilet seat.
He called it his “Shittenpotten†and had added some steps for people to get up and have a look. There was a trowel and a froth next to the steps.
It was quite part of Hundertwasser’s phantom notwithstanding improving the world – which included enlivening otherwise dull areas under motorways and other places with gardens for people to enjoy. He’d probably got the idea from seeing cows grazing without ceasing rooftops in Austria.
Hundertwasser was a unique Austrian artist who refused to abandon his humanity for the sake of aesthetics. His vision expressed itself in pictorial art, environmentalism, architecture, postage stamps, clothing, flags and philosophy.
“Excuse me for asking, Herr Hundertwasser,†I said, “but how would you feel if somebody used the Shittenpotten? Would you reflect upon this a positive or negative view of your ideas and work?â€
He looked at me, smiled, and said, “It doesn’t matter. As long as they appliance the trowel and the spray.â€
His Austrian PR representative – a dour Olga Kleb-lookalike (the female villain in the film ‘Goldfinger’ who’d tried to kick James Bond to death with the poisoned knives protruding from her shoes), added, “Ja! They would just do that wouldn’t they, the dirty English schwein.â€
All of which came to me in a flashback the other day. And then I thought how Hundertwasser could have transformed several cruise ships that were, in the old days, not much better than a floating motel.
Which reminded me of Joe Farcus, the architect and designer for all of Carnival’sitting vessels for for the most part three decades. In 1999, he began designing interiors for Carnival Corporation’s Costa Cruises, winning critical acclaim for his drudge on Costa Atlantica, Costa Mediterranea and Costa Fortuna.
I interviewed Mr Farcus a few years agone. Judging by dint of. the results, he has long understood what cruise passengers want, and is not averse to adapting popular culture and history to create thematic areas attached cruise ships.
Could he subsist the cruise industry’s answer to the other famed dreammaker, Steven Spielberg?
“In the end, I’m crafty a ship that I would like to go on,†said Farcus. “Yes, I’m into familiar culture and record as well at the same time that design, nevertheless it’s not altogether popular culture, it’s not all history, and some of it is normal pure personal design. That’s a part of the mix and part of the vitality I’m seeking to create. The enemy of having a good time and an enjoyable experience on a ship is boredom. And, like Steven Spielberg, I want to get as far away from boredom at the same time that possible.
“If every unoccupied space on the ship is handsome but the same, within a appointed time or two you’ve seen the whole ship. And no matter how beautiful it is, there’s no more excitement, no more discovery. A ship isn’t a museum, People aren’t coming to sit in a lounge chair and look at the beauty of the room on a continuous basis. Passengers are there to have a good time, and the interiors of the ship be the subject of to encourage, not deter, that feeling.â€
I account Mr Farcus would have got attached very accurately with Herr Hundertwasser. What a shame the Austrian visionary never designed a cruise ship.
www.hundertwasser.at
More hither and thither Joe Farcus
James Leavey
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