Contemporary Art

In 1291, the rulers of Venice ordered all glass foundries to relocate to the little island of Murano, about a mile to the northeast of the main cluster of islands, because of the fire hazard they posed to the city’s wooden buildings. Ever since then, the island’s name has been synonymous with hand-blown, luminously colored, deftly crafted glass.

Just outside a former pipe and piano factory in London’s Camden Town, several tons of rusted steel and iron scraps sit parked like refugees from the Industrial Revolution. Acquired from junkyards around Europe, these twisted bits of detritus and mysterious machine parts serve Anthony Caro as the building blocks of his brand of modernism—one that has elevated the 85-year-old British sculptor into the upper reaches of art history.

Russel Wright’s longtime home and studio, Dragon Rock, was built along a rocky slope overlooking the Hudson River about an hour north of Manhattan. The designer envisioned Dragon Rock as a modern country retreat that melds unnoticed into 75 acres of oaks, ferns, white pines, wildflowers, streams, moss, meadows and Chevy-size boulders. “His key philosophy in developing and creating Manitoga (meaning, ‘place of the great spirit’) was to live in harmony with nature, and he achieved this by blending the indoors with the outdoors,” says Lori Moss, assistant director of the Russel Wright Design Center

Santa Fe, which celebrates its 400th anniversary next year, is one of the oldest cities in America. It also has one of the largest art markets in the country—either the third largest or the second largest, depending on whom you ask. Steeped in Native American, Spanish and Old West traditions, Santa Fe has long been known as the place for collectors to go for blue-chip art and objects in those fields.

The large painting on the easel is still somewhat inchoate. But it already evinces an impressive form and scale. It is the jagged outline of a majestic summit in the Himalayas. “I was trekking for several weeks last November in Nepal and Bhutan,” says Richard Estes in his matter-of-fact way, not acknowledging that such vigorous activity is at all out of the ordinary for a 72-year-old.

“I did that one in ’28,” says Will Barnet, pointing to a drawing of an elegant young man in a double-breasted suit, one hand draped languidly across his lap. He was a poet named Sully De Vito who lived in Barnet’s hometown of Beverly, Mass. “I don’t know what happened to him,” muses Barnet. Nineteen twenty-eight was a long time ago; few people alive today were doing much of anything then, let alone creating serious artwork.

When race car driver Hervé Poulain asked his friend Alexander Calder to embellish the exterior of his 480hp BMW 3.0CSL for the 1975 Le Mans, Poulain’s car became Calder’s ultimate kinetic sculpture. The resulting colorful expression also launched BMW’s Art Car series, which has grown during the past three decades to comprise 16 cars by artists from several continents, including the most recent from Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, who encased a hydrogen-powered H2R in reflective ice and called it Your Mobile Expectations.