FQR LA Focus
GETTING THE PICTURE Michael Chow describes his great passion for and patronage of art and the way it has shaped his life and work
Michael Chow by Warhol, Rivers, Basquiat, Hockney and Haring
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EING asked to write about art for Finch’s Quarterly comes at an interesting time for me, as I have been sitting in my house in Los Angeles finishing my script. It’s about 20thcentury China. Naturally, I think it’s a great script. It’s about a father, who is my father, and a son, which is me. It is about a family relationship and the terrible ending of the Cultural Revolution involving all the political characters, so it’s a big epic but, at the same time, a very personal family story. Art is a big part of that story. When I started out with my restaurants I wanted to create my own identity and was determined that art would be a part of that. I left China when I was 13 and had
H A M I LT O N S For a quarter-century, one of the world’s pre-eminent galleries specialising in the modern masters of photography Works by
IRVING PENN RICHARD AVEDON HELMUT NEWTON ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE DIANE ARBUS ANDY WARHOL HERB RITTS HORST P. HORST Representing renowned contemporary artists including
ALISON JACKSON GUIDO MOCAFICO ALBERT WATSON DON MCCULLIN JIM LEE STEVE SCHAPIRO Advising private and corporate collections on the very best acquisitions HAMILTONS 13 Carlos Place LondonW1K 2EU +44 (0)20 7499 9 4 9 4 art@hamiltonsgallery.com www.hamiltonsgallery.com A few steps away from the Connaught Hotel and Grosvenor Square, Mayfair
SPRING 2009
to create my own culture, my own country, so to speak, so the restaurant became a self-appointed ambassador. Anyway, the art part of the restaurant started because I wanted to create an international environment with authentic food. The idea of art came from a restaurant in Zurich, the Kronenhalle, where they had an incredible clientele and incredible paintings. And then, of course, there is La Colombe d’Or in St Paul de Vence. So one day back in the Sixties I was having dinner at Alvaro’s in London and I saw the art dealer Robert Fraser sitting there with Jim Dine. I told him that I wanted to borrow a few Impressionist paintings to decorate my restaurant and he said, “Why do you want to borrow? Why not ask artists to do it? Why don’t you ask Jim?” And Jim said, “Yes, absolutely.” And that was how the concept really came about. I approached five artists and all of them produced works for me in exchange for food. They were Patrick Caulfield, Richard Smith, Jim Dine, Peter Blake and David Hockney. David Hockney made a portrait of me and I thought it was incredible, but Hockney tore it up and I had to sit through it again. Peter Blake had a wonderful idea: “Why don’t I make a portrait of you in which you’ll be a wrestler and the two people in the back will be half Chinese and half Italian” – because although the food at Mr Chow was Chinese, the waiters were Italian. That painting became very important for Mr Chow and maybe also for Peter Blake’s career. Jim Dine did the hearts, which are beautiful and are still in the London restaurant now. Coming from London in the Sixties, which was so culturally alive, opening in LA in the early Seventies was very different. It was a desert by comparison. I’d thought this was where the most sophisticated people in the world came from. If you look at old Hollywood movies they are the most sophisticated people in the world, right? Except, of course, those films were all directed by foreigners – Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang… these brilliant, sophisticated Europeans. So when I got here it was a bit of a shock, but I persevered and now I live in Los Angeles. I am persistent – I don’t give up!
It was only after I had made a success of LA that I opened in New York and that was just at the end of the Studio 54 era. There is, of course, a picture that Andy did of me. The Eighties in New York were unbelievable. There were some great artists, including Keith Haring, who had the idea that I become a green prawn in one of his works – that’s also a very strong painting. The funny thing is that when I commissioned people to do portraits, they always seemed to work extra hard on them, maybe because I’m an artist or perhaps because I am Chinese and not Western so they were not so familiar with the face. Anyway, they were always good and I think the Haring portrait was one of his great paintings. I also commissioned Helmut Newton, and he conceived a picture that romanticises me with slick hair, wearing a tuxedo and a Cartier watch in Singapore in the Thirties. I am holding up a beautiful Mr Chow menu on watermarked paper. He took it with a little 35mm camera and blew it up to something like 6ft by 4ft so you can read all the menu prices. HILE on the subject of menus, there’s an Ed Ruscha that I call Seating Plan. In New York there is a law that says a restaurant is only legal if there is a menu. I took that idea and asked Ed Ruscha to do a drawing with this seating plan for me. It’s huge: 4ft by 2ft in crayon. And then Keith Haring did a “No Smoking” sign. So I have this romantic illusion of grandeur – with humour, I hope. Part of that grandeur is about the obsession and aggression with which I collect art, but the ambition and aggression come from a good place. I think the best example of that is my artists’ book. My artists’ book has gone from location to location – the restaurants are all in very cosmopolitan, incredible places. I started in London so I got all the London artists. Eduardo Paolozzi was the first and I went through all the artists such as Allen Jones, Peter Blake, Richard Smith and Francis Bacon, who is also in the book. When I got to New York I got Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg… everybody. Most recently, the book has been in LA, and here I
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have got Richard Prince and Jeff Koons. So I try to keep it colourful. There are some portraits in there. Larry Rivers did one, Julian Schnabel did a portrait of Francesco Clemente, Clemente did a portrait of Julian Schnabel… It’s an incredible book. If an artist comes in, the restaurant gives them watercolours, pencil, pen, crayons, all the equipment. It is made with very good paper and it’s very serious, I mean very serious – people like Julian did a lot of work on it. I mean, they got really into it and they take it very seriously. So the artists’ book has been around for over 30-something years and it’s incredible – it’s an artistic memoir of the second part of the 20th century. As I said, I’m very aggressive, I would do anything to get an artist. If I hear of artists coming to the restaurant I want them to see the book because the minute they see it, they realise how good it is; it’s not like they open it and it’s all rubbish, unknown artists and bad art. If it were, they would probably not be so forthcoming. It’s a very important book, an historical document. A lot of the artists have now passed away and over the years other artists have tried to destroy parts of it. Andy Warhol poured soy sauce over it and Damien Hirst took household paint and destroyed Howard Hodgkin’s drawing in the back. But he did an incredible butterfly, a huge 5in butterfly, and stuck it on. He was in LA and he took it home for 48 hours – he was very serious. That was quite something, and very personal. At the moment the book’s in restoration because I have to lift out the Damien Hirst “destruction”, so to speak, and I’m putting in more papers. So it will change character but in a way I don’t mind because these are historical events and there is a story behind all of it. The book shows how important art is to my life. It is not just a case of having lots of money – it’s an incredible document of globally important artists, but it is also extremely personal to me and to what I have done with my life. It’s all integrated: the restaurants, the interiors, the book, the clientele, the passage of time… it’s all connected. – Michael Chow is finishing a screenplay about his father.
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