Louis Comfort Tiffany, Autumn Landscape, 1923. The Metropolitan Museum, Engelhard Court.

The gated entrance to Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu. Film still from Citizen Kane, 1941 by Orson Welles.

Remains of the Loggia of Laurelton Hall, ca. 1905, installed in The Metropolitan Museum’s Engelhard Court, NY.

Interior of Laurelton Hall, Living Room, ca. 1925.

The Real Xanadu: Laurelton Hall

In Citizen Kane (1941), Charles Foster Kane has a palatial private mountain estate called Xanadu. Described as containing the “Loot of the World” it had the art collections of 10 museums, a zoo, Venetian canal, and sprawling gardens. But it turns out that there might have existed a real life version in America: Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall.

Laurelton was a complete living artwork, with its own railway station, private beach, greenhouses, farm and chapel. Chock-a-block with the choicest artwork literally dripping from floor to ceiling, Laurelton Hall was Louis Comfort Tiffany’s dream manse that he built in Laurel Hollow, Long Island.  A 65+ room mansion complex on 600+ acres of land, the interiors were decorated with thousands of unique objects from around the world, including the very best works Tiffany himself handpicked from Tiffany Studios, works that had even won him international fame and gold medals.

No doubt, that if it still stood today, Laurelton would be a historic site and a permanent museum: the ultimate legacy of Tiffany’s ouvre. But the vagaries of fashionability would not be so kind, unfortunately. In its day, Laurelton became sort of the ultimate white elephant, a monument to supposedly another time’s kind of artwork, considered demode and passe.

 “Arabian night’s dreams vanish, at Laurelton a phantom has become reality, eternal.”

  – A visitor to Laurelton Hall.

Wisteria Transom Panel, c. 1910–20, From the Dining Room of Laurelton Hall, Long Island, New York. Wisteria. Charles Hosmer Morse Museum, FL.

The Central Hall, Courtyard & Fountain.

Color Autochrome, ca. 1914 of The Bathers by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Metropolitan Museum, NY. (destroyed).

The Bathers

Only one of the many masterpieces installed in Laurelton Hall, firefighters actually smashed through The Bathers to gain access to the living room during the fire that burnt Laurelton Hall down to the ground in 1957. This amazing early color photograph dated in the early teens hints at what must have been one of Tiffany’s most incredible palettes.

Entrance Hall of The White House, 1882.

Peter Waddell, The Grand Illumination, Sunset of the Gaslight Age, 1891. oil on canvas, White House Historical Association.

The White House Screen

One of the most legendary objects in The White House’s history is the colored glass screen by Tiffany that was located in the Entrance Hall. Commissioned by President Chester A. Arthur in 1885, it was removed on the orders of new President Teddy Roosevelt in 1902, who supposedly wanted it “smashed” into little pieces. Rumor has it that the tremendous lost screen was instead removed, auctioned off for $275, and eventually installed into the Belvedere Hotel in Maryland, which burnt to the ground in 1923. Some historians speculate President Roosevelt’s motivations in removing a national treasure might date back to his personal animosity to Tiffany, possibly inspired by the bitter litigation and dispute with the town of Oyster Bay during Tiffany’s acquisition of the property of Laurelton Hall, originally public picnic grounds and an old hotel of the same name.

Computer reconstruction of The Blue Room in The White House, circa 1886, Nest magazine, 2000.

Tiffany also redecorated and designed the Blue Room, the East Room and the Red Room in the White House at the time. The Blue Room, or Robin’s Egg Room — as it was sometimes called for its egg blue color – had ornaments in a hand-pressed paper, touched out in ivory, as well as Tiffany’s trademark lighting fixtures.

Favrile glass mosaic column, ca. 1905, Metropolitan Museum. One of a pair of mosaic columns originally flanking the entrance to Tiffany Studios.

Favrile glass over concrete: Fragment of the mosaic sign from The Tiffany Studios building, 347-355 Madison Avenue, NY.

Tiffany Studios

If Laurelton Hall might be the equivalent to something like Orson Welles’ Xanadu, then Tiffany Studios in today’s light might be almost equivalent to something like Edison’s studio, or perhaps Leonardo’s workshop, filled to the rafters with the inventory of decades of the finest handmade glass objects of all time.

Workmen at Tiffany Studios.

A five story building including workrooms and showrooms, Tiffany Studios held an unparalleled collection of original designs, samples, Favrile glass sheets and more, employing some of the finest workmen, designers, craftsmen and chemists. To this day, Favrile glass and works the likes of Tiffany Studios still cannot be authentically equaled, even with today’s technology.

Tiffany Studios showroom, ca. 1913.

Tiffany Studios was liquidated in 1933. More on this, and collector Vito D’Agostino’s rescue of works from Tiffany Studios that year, to come.

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Re/Mix! Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals A New Course by John D’Agostino
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Cornell Remixes Bronzino: Joseph Cornell, Medici Princess, 1952-54,  Angelo Bronzino, Portrait of Medici Girl, 1542.			Oft-times an overlooked & misunderstood tradition, the art of sampling historical source material into new works of art and music is a rewarding, sophisticated and ingenious practice rife with departures, ruptures & contradictory possibilities.
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Joseph Cornell, Medici Boy, 1943. Wood box construction using elements from Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy, ca. 1500.			Raw material for artists to re-combine can be found literally anywhere, from archaic media, vinyl records, and trash, to photographs or finished works like painting. Challenging, subverting, co-opting, even re-inventing mediums, the Re-Mix in assemblage art, collage, Hip Hop music, photography and more is a tour de force of creative practice in the 21st century, encompassing an entire spectrum of originality (or lack thereof), from one-dimensional Appropriators, to Hackers, cover artists and mashups, to entirely new, emergent digital artforms.Featured artists include: Joseph Cornell, Romare Bearden, Yves Klein, Vik Muniz, Thomas Ruff, John Stezaker, Louis Comfort Tiffany, E.J. Bellocq, Dr. Lakra, Idris Khan, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg, Wangechi Mutu, Marcel Duchamp and Kehinde Wiley, among many others.
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			Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Acrylic on canvas, using an original publicity still of Marilyn Monroe from the film Niagara, 1953.
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Louis Comfort Tiffany, At the New Circus, ca. 1894. Favrile stained glass, using Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s watercolor At the Nouveau Cirque, 1892.			Re/Mix! will employ the art of sample-based Hip Hop as the quintessential paradigm for the visual artist. From the very first DJ’s of the South Bronx employing turntables and a mixer, sampling in Hip Hop music is the foundation of the genre. Much like their visual counterparts, its most innovative practitioners exemplify a selective, three-dimensional and highly sophisticated synthesis of old material into new, from producers like Prince Paul, DJ Premier and Da Beatminerz, to acts like De La Soul or Beastie Boys, to those that sample their own sounds, such as Portishead.
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Enrique Gomez de Molina, Rhinoplasty, 2010. Hybrid taxidermy sculpture, using jewel beetle wings, peacock feathers and buffalo horn.         John Stezaker, He II, 2008. Photo collage, using old film portraits.			Course Schedule Week 1: The Innovators Featured Artists: Joseph Cornell · Andy Warhol · Romare Bearden · Kurt Schwitters · Yves Klein · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Louis Comfort Tiffany · John Stezaker   Week 2: The Appropriators Featured Artists: Roy Lichtenstein · Marcel Broodthaers ·Sherrie Levine · Claes Oldenburg · Cindy Sherman · Vik Muniz · Jeff Koons · Banksy   Week 3: Copyright Criminals Featured Artists: Danger Mouse · Shepard Fairey · Da Beatminerz · Richard Prince ·Prince Paul · Hank Willis Thomas · Beastie Boys · Cory Arcangel   Week 4: The Bricoleurs Featured Artists: Jacques de La Villegle · Max Ernst · Wangechi Mutu · Conrad Marca-Relli · Robert Rauschenberg · Robert Heinecken · Marcel Duchamp · Dr. Lakra   Week 5: The Hackers Featured Artists: Alvin Langdon Coburn · Thomas Ruff · Adam Fuss · Walead Beshty · Lucas Samaras · Wade Guyton ·  Marco Breuer
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This course is currently in development for venues TBA 2013. For more information, please contact John D’Agostino.

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Promiscuous Visions:

The Hackers At The Heart of Photography

A New Course by John D’Agostino

-Captain Crunch, legendary Phone Phreaker.

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1925.

Matthew Brandt, From the series Rivers, Lakes & Reservoirs, 2010. C-Print soaked in source water.

John Chiara, 8th at Hooper, 2003. Dye Destruction Photograph.

Kim Keever, River Keeper, 2003. C-Print made with fishtank diorama.

Eileen Quinlan, Yellow Goya, 2007. Folded chromogenic paper.

Course Schedule

Week 1: Dégredés

Featured Artists:

Joseph Nicephore Niecpe · Marco Breuer · Lillian Bassman · E.J. Bellocq Curtis Mann · Edmund Teske  · Jacques Villeglé · John Chiara · Chris McCaw

Week 2: The Threat of Abstraction

Featured Artists:

Man Ray · Jaroslav Rossler · Barbara Kasten ·Roger Catherineau · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Walead Beshty · Aaron Siskind · Frederick Sommer · Eileen Quinlan

Week 3: Printers, Painters & Pictorialists

Featured Artists:

Mario Giacomelli · Jan Saudek · Alvin Langdon Coburn · Wade Guyton · Lucas Samaras · Robert Demachy · Matthew Brandt · Matt Saunders · Henry Peach Robinson

Week 4: Fire & Ice

Featured Artists:

Adam Fuss · Susan Derges · Yves Klein ·Hiroshi Sugimoto · Jorma Puranen · Kim Keever ·Wilson Bentley · Dupreez & Jones · Christopher Colville

Week 5: Digitalis Hybrida

Featured Artists:

Thomas Ruff · Jason Salavon · Andreas Gursky ·Idris Khan · Andreas Gefeller · Carter Mull ·Richard Misrach · Aziz + Cucher · Loretta Lux

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