Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/32301
Peter Marino is not one to adhere to confines. Architect or designer, art or furniture—Marino has been stirring up these definitions throughout his long career. It’s been a recipe for success: Marino has done award-winning, integrated designs around the world for such lines as Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and residences for Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani and more. We asked him about his eclectic mix. What do you specifically keep in mind when working with collectors of fine art and design? I always take an integrated approach. A cook pulls out all of his ingredients first, puts them on the counter and then makes a stew, right? I kind of do that. I tend not to be an architect who makes a white box and then fills it. Most of my clients have been collecting for years, and what they’re bringing to the party is already a part of the texture of the stew. Calvin Klein came to me with his gorgeous Georgia O’Keefe paintings, and the sequence of looking at them became the fabric of the apartment. In Dresden’s Zwinger museum, I did one room with porcelain from floor to ceiling, and the next room was just one vase. You see the effect of a lot [of objects], which is very moving, and then you look at just one piece of incredibly beautifully painted porcelain. It’s like when Chanel comes to me and says, “take this bag and do something with it.” Everything revolves around this one product. How have your experiences working on both residential and commercial proj- ects informed each other? As the brands say when they come to me, “you know what the clients we’re aim- ing for like. You’ve been doing their homes for 30 years.” Having done homes led to the commercial jobs. It’s all based on how it looks, how it makes you feel and whether it works. I really hate things that don’t work. There’s a lot of interplay among textures, scales, styles and eras in your work. It’s a question of how the objects relate to each other. The most fun I have is hanging paintings on a wall. You take six paintings, and six architects like me, and you’ll have six completely different ways of viewing art. With me it’s about juxtaposition. My living room became famous because I have a wall of Willem de Koonings and in front of them I have 36 baroque bronzes. Because—of course!—de Kooning is a baroque painter. It’s so much movement; it doesn’t settle anywhere. I love grouping things from different eras based on their inher- ent features. It’s about taking the spirit of the piece and joining it with pieces that have similar feelings. What about the increasingly blurry line between contemporary art and design? Well, the clients who are buying art also need furniture. They’re big collectors, they’re aesthetes, what are they going to do, go to Bloomingdale’s? I’ve always believed that there isn’t really a difference between decorative art and fine art. I’ve always resented calling an amazing 18th-century commode decorative art— what’s the difference between that and an 18th-century painting? It’s almost a higher art form, because you can open a drawer and put a sweater in it. Artists themselves have been terrified of being labeled decorative artists. I’ve always thought that’s a crock of shit. What role do design trends play in the work you do? I’m not one of those architects who saw a Le Corbusier building once and was locked in for his entire career. I look at some of my work from the 1980s, and things look overly rich; from the ‘90s, not so much. I like being swept away, like when we had this great movement toward minimalism—and then, when things woke up again, we did the Chanel tower all lit up. Super blingy. I like helping de- fine the zeitgeist of the time in which we live. How do you think Design Miami/ works in the larger discourse? Fairs concretize trends. That’s why I attend them. From year to year, if you take pictures of fairs, you can say, “oh, 2002, oh 2003.” I’m less fond of, may I call them, antique fairs; the conglomeration somehow loses its relevance. What I like about Design Miami/ is it’s really art of the minute, and it’s kind of fabu- lous—we don’t have too many of those. 62 CULTURED ‘‘Fairs concretize trends... it’s really art of the minute.’’ —Peter Marino