One wall, built for one work

The bar is the social center of this apartment: a marble counter, backlit shelves of bottles and glassware on either side, a brass rail at the foot, and in the middle a panel that was clearly built to hold a single picture. The client loves to entertain. That was the whole brief, and it is the kind I prefer, because how a person hosts tells me what the wall should say.

What the wall needed

One piece, not a group. Large enough to hold the center of the bar wall between the shelves, and with the energy of a room full of guests, so the mood is set before anyone has poured a drink. It also had to sit inside a restrained interior: dark stools, grey stone, city light through the windows. Playful, but not loud.

The collage

A large format digital collage that draws on the visual language of glamorous social gatherings: a woman in an evening dress at a laid table, a man in a dinner jacket leaning in, glasses in hand, the figures cut and repeated across vertical panels so the scene reads like a party caught in a mirror. The work references Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère, painted by Édouard Manet in 1882: the barmaid behind her marble counter, and the crowd that appears only in the mirror behind her. A work that quotes Manet above a private bar gives the room a lineage. Guests feel the reference before they place it, and the client has a work that says, in one glance, what the apartment is for.

How the choice was made

I started with the client, not with the art: how they host, who comes, what the room should feel like late at night. From there I narrowed to work that carried that feeling and could be produced at the size the panel required. Then the practical part I manage on every project: production at the right scale, framing, and installation above a bar, where lit shelves and marble put reflections everywhere and the hanging height has to be set for people standing, not sitting. The project was finished when the piece was up and the client was happy standing in front of it.

If you are furnishing a New York apartment and want one work chosen with this kind of attention, write to me at Stav@stavtheodor.com or use the contact form. Read what to expect from an art advisor for a Manhattan apartment, or see a whole collection built for a new house in Closter, New Jersey.