A fabulous late monologues

I find images of unpeopled interiors infinitely more satisfying than pictures of populated rooms. I love the way they appear to wait in quiet anticipation. This is probably why I never tire of looking through decades-old back issues of World of Interiors or Country Life. Empty rooms, especially other people’s, are like handwritten invitations, not to mention oblique self-portraits of the artists who make them. I literally waggled my wrists in excitement when I read about “Bella Foster, Interior,” which opens Nov. 6 at Art Since the Summer of ‘69 on the Lower East Side. I’ve been a fan of Foster’s loose and juicy work for years and can’t wait to see the pieces in person. The show, in an atelier setting, will feature interiors she’s painted, some belonging to her friends, others of places she admires. Foster has been posting her watercolors of “other people’s stuff” on her blog, Here, There and Them, for a little more than a year. Her light touch and intuitive lines bring genuine life and love to the rooms.

The Dining Room, Courtesy Art Since the Summer of ‘69 Bella
Foster, “The Dining Room.”

Foster’s interiors reminded me of one of my most treasured books, “Interieurs,” by Pierre Le-Tan. The limited-edition catalog accompanied a 1999 show at Munich’s Galerie Bartsch & Chariau. Le-Tan’s exquisite crosshatch always casts a spell, but in this haunting series, each scene contains a note of quiet anxiety: a glove, a hat, a solitary lemon. In his introduction, he explains that the images “represent interiors observed in moments of lassitude or sadness.” Le-Tan comes by his mastery of spatial composition honestly: he is an occasional interior and furniture designer as well. A new show of his work, “Cityscapes and Interiors,” opens Dec. 1 at Nicolas Schwed, 346 Rue Saint-Honoré, in Paris. ©Pierre Le-Tan

After lunch with friends in Berlin a few weeks ago, I was delighted to see three of Andrea Ventura’s paintings installed handsomely in their living room. Ventura, an Italian-born illustrator who is well known for his portraits of authors for The New Yorker, began a series of large canvases called “Sunday Afternoon” in 2003. His empty halls and violet shadows describe the particular hush and melancholy of those long hours. Ventura’s dun-yet-rich palette evokes the darker layers of urban European history. An exhibition of his rooms and nudes ends Saturday at WTC in Hamburg, Germany.

Courtesy Andrea Ventura Andrea Ventura, “Sunday Afternoon,” 2003.

.