ART PRICES Search... INTERNATIONAL VISUAL ARTS ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN PERFORMING ARTS LIFESTYLE GALLERY GUIDE TRAVEL EVENTS QUICK LINKS From Muse to Painter, the Art of Gloria Vanderbilt by Rea McNamara 25/06/13 10:30 AM EDT Like 4 Tweet 1 Share 1 Share RELA TED A RTICLE Window Shopping: The Marina Abramovic Method READ MORE » View Slideshow (The Chronicle Herald/Canadian Press) Gloria Vanderbilt — the American heiress, artist, and writer — is 89 years old. Recently in town for the opening of her first Canadian solo show at Toronto’s De Luca Fine Art Gallery, she begins this interview by praising the “not too close together” hanging of her works, and is remarkably endearing in her enthusiasm for the show’s modest and slender catalogue. “Have you seen it? Oooh! The texture of the paper is extraordinary. It’s like suede.” (This is coming from a selftaught artist who had her first onewoman show of paintings in 1952, and lent the use of her works in a collector’s edition of Susan Miller’s “The Year Ahead 2014 Astrological Wall Calendar.”) The painted canvases — think vivid colors of a Fauvist bent — are undeniably sensitive and even naïve. (“All my work is of a very feminine impulse,” she surmises.) Brushstrokes of seemingly disharmonic pink, red, and cobalt violet dominate, as do representations of dolllike angels, girls in white dresses, and fullbodied women. As she admits in her artist statement, the works are biographical sketches of dreams and memories containing a selfdescribed “narrative quality.” Indeed, Gloria Vanderbilt has lived a gilded life across headlines and tabloids. At the age of ten, she was “the Poor Little Rich Girl” of a nasty Depressionera custody battle that left her an orphaned inheritor of a fivemillion dollar trust fund (just over $60 million in contemporary currency). Despite living with her aunt and guardian Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney — a sculptor and philanthropist who founded the Whitney Museum of American Art — she came into her creative authorship with very little support. As she admitted to “Gotham Magazine,” her “very reserved” aunt shockingly “never, ever discussed art” with Vanderbilt. “I’m never satisfied,” she says of her quiet dedication to arts and letters, which also includes the publication of memoirs, short stories, poetry, and even a novel of erotica. “In talking of this, I think about a story I wrote once about Michelangelo — not that I’m comparing myself to Michelangelo — on his death bed, and his last words were, ‘that’s not what I meant.’” Vanderbilt’s dedication is especially admirable when you consider her greater legacy as an iconic American beauty. She was 15 when she first appeared in the pages of “Harper’s Bazaar” at the request of its thenfashion editor, Diana Vreeland. Through the years, she has been the muse for some of fashion’s great photographers, winding up on many a Pinterest “ladies who lunch” mood board: there she is at 17, shot by Horst P. Horst, or striking an early 1960s pose in a Mainbocher column dress for Richard Avedon. From left: Vanderbilt as a 1941 student of Miss Porter's, modelling for Horst P. Horst at 17, and posing for Richard Avedon in a Mainboucher column dress. (Credit: Pinterest) In the early Toronto afternoon summer daylight, there’s no softfocused lighting to explain away this 89yearold’s preternaturally young visage. Freely admitting to the “Telegraph” in 2004 of her extensive plastic surgeries, Vanderbilt evinces the appearance of a wellmaintained womanhood massaged in the spotlight. In a 2011 television interview, she noted that being a frequent photographer’s muse “gave me a sense of who I was and who I was becoming.” Thus she still looks the part of a Truman Capote “swan,” that famous flock of society beauties of which she was once part. Dressed in a light champagne cotton knit sweater and matching linen slacks — headtotoe Zoran — there are irreverent Vanderbilt touches, like an iridescent cooper shawl tied in a casual shoulder wrap, or a can’tmiss sculptural Patricia Von Musulin Lucite ring. (This is a woman, who, according to her famous son Anderson Cooper, once embarrassed him by wearing a purple beaverskin Zandra Rhodes coat to his grade school’s report card day). She remains, however, very much a woman in her lateeighties: crossed legs reveal spider veins not hidden by nude compression hosiery. “I wear Zoran a lot,” she says of her style now. “He’s very minimal. There’s never any buttons or hooks on his things. I was once being photographed in something of his for ‘Vogue,’ and I had bare feet. I never wear nail polish [on my fingers], but I always wear nail polish on my toes. And he had a wonderful assistant named Garance who was there for the sitting, and when I sat down and I was in bare feet, she came over and whispered: ‘Zoran doesn’t like nail polish’ expecting me to go and take it off! I didn’t, of course.” Look more closely at some of those Pinterest images, and flashes of an artistic workinprogress emerge. Another Horst shot from 1970 reveals Vanderbilt in full gypsy regalia, matching the throw pillows and floor of one of the rooms of her townhouse at 67th Street off Park Avenue. As her son Anderson Cooper recalls in a lovingly nostalgic “Vogue” tribute, “my mother covered [the bedroom] entirely in patchwork quilts: the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, she’d even glued quilts to the floor and had them coated with polyurethane. It was like being inside a collage. I’ve never seen anything like it since.” From left: wearing an Adolfo coat in her patchwork quilt bedroom for Horst in 1970, a detail of "A Taste of Illusion, Desire & Escape." (Credit: foulala.blogspot.ca/De Luca Fine Art Gallery) When the room comes up in conversation, she speaks of the interior as a work of décor. “The thing about [those] quilts that is amazing that there were so many put together and yet it all worked,” she says in hindsight. “It was really like a Moroccan room with this pattern on pattern kind of thing. I don’t really know what it came out of. I just got very involved with quilts and thought of putting them on the floor and on the walls.” Indeed, not much attention is given towards how Vanderbilt commercialized her art as a means of transcending her beauty cage and establishing her livelihood; before Jane Fonda and Gwyneth Paltrow, Vanderbilt was the first celebrity to massmarket the trappings of her plutocratic pedigree via bed sheets, clothing, perfume, and even tofu frozen desserts. At the age of 45, with four children and four marriages behind her, she showed her paintings and whimsical fabric collages of gingham, lace, paisley, and floral at New York’s Hammer Galleries in 1969. Johnny Carson was so taken by the works that he invited Vanderbilt to present them on the “Tonight” show. The publicity would lead to an early 1970s home accessories line you can still find on eBay. Soon after, she moved into clothing: her paintings were turned into scarves, and most famously, Vanderbilt was the first to cash in on the late 1970s designer denims craze with her eponymous stitched swan, a logo inspired by the title of her first professional stage acting role. In 1979, she sold six million pairs, grossing $120 million. She was 55 years old by then. From left: an advertisement for Vanderbilt's eyewear, Vanderbilt surrounded by her denims. (Credit: Pinterest) When asked about her relationship today with the 360degree lifestyle brand on which she emblazoned her name, Vanderbilt was understandably reticent. “Well, I was in the fashion business. I started out in home furnishings, and I did plates, I painted on sheets. But then I was defrauded of my business,” referring to the late1980s loss of her clothing empire. After signing over financial control to her therapist and lawyer, the two sold her license and swindled her to the cool tune of $2 million, leaving her finances in such disarray — there were years of unpaid back taxes — that Vanderbilt had to sell off her Southampton summer home and Manhattan townhouse. 20 years later, her wealth seems to be standing: according to Celebrity Net Worth, she’s worth $200 million. “So I’m completely out of that now,” she says. “I don’t really think much about it, you know? But I know what works for me, what colors work for me. When I’m painting or writing, I don’t wear any makeup. I don’t care about how I look. That’s one of the things about being a woman — we’re pressured and also wanting to look our best and present our best selves. Whereas men just put something on, and off they go. It takes a kind of narcissism to think about yourself and what you’re wearing. And it also takes a lot of energy, and so I don’t really think much about it.” As the filmmaker Michael LindsayHogg makes known in the De Luca catalogue essay — an excerpt from a January 2013 “Town & Country” feature on Vanderbilt’s art — she’s now more likely to be found in her Beekman Place studio, sans makeup, in “a light blue painter’s smock over black slacks and a black sweater, with Chinese slippers on feet.” Without a doubt, it’s a look she’s probably been the most comfortable with. Click here for a slideshow of Gloria Vanderbilt's paintings. View Slideshow Like 4 Tweet 1 Share 1 Share TAGS Fashion Fashion NEWS Accessories Designer Spotlight Gloria Vanderbilt Fashion art De Luca Fine Art Gallery Toronto Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney the Whitney Museum of American Art Diana Vreeland Anderson Cooper Horst P. Horst Richard Avedon Vogue Patricia Von Musulin Zoran Rea McNamara Type Your Email Here RECOMMENDED AGO Ex h ib it Co in cid es w ith Frid a K ah lo 's Vo gu e Mo m en t Th e Pro p h esy o f th e J aso n Wu an d Nate Lo w m an Tee Dsq u ared 2 Ex h u m es Ho llyw o o d Siren s fo r Po p Glam o u r At Ch ristie's, an Aved o n Ph o to Ach ieves a R eco rd Price fo r th e Artist