Christophe de Menil, a collector, designer and patron, has established long-standing connections with many of the leading artists of the last century, and he died in New York on August 5. New York Times First reported her death on Monday.
She is a member of the wealthy large Menier family. Her parents, John and Dominique de Menil, owned a large stake in the arts and founded the Menil Collection, a museum in Houston, Texas. Partly because of her social circle, she gained unusual opportunities from famous 20th century artists.
Christophe considers Merce Cunningham, Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning to be close friends. exist w Since 2010, she even talked about attending a speech by European Mystics and then competing with Jasper Johns at the Cunningham show at Lincoln Center. She recalled, “I sat in a box next to Jasper and I said to him, ‘Oh my God. I just heard this pretty interesting speech – I think we are divine.’ “He said, ‘Well, you almost get it. ‘Too big! ”
Her artistic connections even extended to her personal life. After her first husband, Robert Thurman, left her, she married artist Enrique Castro-Cid. Her grandson is Dash Snow, an artist who died at the age of 27 in 2009, and started his career. (With Thurman, she has a daughter, Taya.)
Partly due to the consequences of these connections, she was also granted the ability to start her collection. With the rest of her family, she is Artnews List of the top 200 collectors from 1990 to 1992. Her collection includes René Magritte, Barnett Newman and more.
Sometimes, she sells art from her collection in a public-oriented way. this era In 1965, in order to fund her home renovation, she reportedly told $2 million in art at Sotheby’s Parke Bernet. In 1985, she sold Barnett Newman Ulysses (1952) at Sotheby’s. The painting sold for $1.59 million, setting a record for Newman since entering the Menil collection.
Marie-Christophe de Menil was born in Paris in 1933. When the Nazis came to power, De Menils fled to France for Spain, then to Havana, and then to Houston, Schlumberger, where the oil company John de Menil helped run the American business.
In the 1950s, Christophe de Menil entered the fashion world, famously wearing a ‘Three-Leaf’ dress designed by Charles James. Then, in 1963, she began to attend Columbia University where she studied religion.
De Menil sold $2 million in art in 1965, so he properly started her fashion career, turning her home into a studio. Since 1980, she has served as a designer for drama director and artist Robert Wilson, whose works often feature her clothes. In 1984, she began designing clothing for private clients. (A red “night robe” from her 1992 series is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
Meanwhile, De Menil is undergoing a renovation of her New York home, where she brought Frank Gehry to redesign and supervised the lighting with light and space sculptor Doug Wheeler at hand. In 1987, she sold the house to Larry Gagosian, two years after the dealer expanded his Gagosian gallery to New York and moved to the city.
In her later years, her collection acuity was not dim. She went on to buy art from artists such as Gedi Sibony and Daniel Arsham. “Gedi Siboney reminded me of [American abstract expressionist] Both Barnett Newman and Daniel Arsham are better than any Magritte. ” Nowness. “It only takes a while to see.”
