イセタン ザ・スペース

HOTEL OLYMPIA BIO

このページをシェアする

2023/04/17

Pierre Le-Tan BIO

Pierre Le-Tan (1950-2019) was born in Paris to a Vietnamese father and French mother. His father, the well-known painter Le-Pho, son of a Tonkinese Viceroy, emigrated to France before the war. Le-Tan learnt to draw at his father’s knee, who frequently gave him old Japanese and Chinese books and prints. At age 18, Le-Tan was commissioned by the New Yorker Magazine for his first cover, which would mark the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with and work with many other American publications, such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

Spanning over more than 50 years, Le-Tan’s career has been rich and varied, from set design for film and theatre, to his association with his daughter Olympia’s Parisian fashion label and designing over 100 book covers, film posters and advertising campaigns. His close friendship with Nobel prize winner Patrick Modiano resulted in a number of collaborative works, with Modiano’s melancholic prose serving as the perfect subtext to Le-Tan’s reflections of a forgotten Paris, full of strange and endearing characters. One of Le-Tan’s key publications, Album (1992), epitomises his intimate, eclectic style: a “scrapbook” full of past encounters with Greta Garbo, Christian Lacroix and Mick Jagger, holiday souvenirs, photos of old friends, hundreds of drawings ranging from his visit to Cecil Beaton’s house to a cigarette box made by Picasso, Cardin shoes and a chair from the Palace of Versailles.

“I knew very early on that this was it for me and nothing else: drawing and my art collection.” As a child, Le-Tan frequented Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, the famed antiques market near Paris, with his father. He started collecting at age seven (his very first collection was Japanese katana swords) and his Parisian apartment was full of lacquered Japanese boxes, Chinese ceramics, drawings by Giacometti, Warhol and Hockney, ancient Greek antiquities and 18th century Turkish carpets. Le-Tan’s collection underlined his constant visual dialogue between East and West, the antique and the contemporary. His avid passion for collecting was reflected in his drawings, his minute attention to objects and detail, and his careful curating of miniature museums on paper.

Le-Tan described himself as an entomologist, focused on detail and observation, using Chinese ink to portray a mixture of tenderness and cruelty through his nostalgic and timeless interiors and characters. “His drawings must be read and his words must be seen,” said his friend and writer Umberto Pasti, who curated Le-Tan's exhibition, The collection of Monsieur X at Tristan Hoare in 2018. Indeed, Le-Tan, who described himself as Asian in his style of drawing, perpetuated the Asian tradition of blurring the boundaries between what should be read and what should be seen, creating a wonderful and intimate visual language.

During his life, Le-Tan presented his work in many art galleries across the world including Galerie Perrotin in Paris, Paul Kasmin in New York, Shiseido Gallery in Tokyo. In 2003, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid (home of Picasso’s Guernica) showed a retrospective of the artist’s work. Tristan Hoare presented a series of early works by Le-Tan at Frieze Masters 2022. This was Le-Tan's first exhibition since his passing in 2019.

The drawings shown here today at Isetan the Space are part of this series of early works and include very rare 1970’s cover proposals for the New Yorker magazine, book cover illustrations for British publisher Faber & Faber as well as some very personal black and white sketches from the 1960s.

All drawings are from the family estate.

 

Olympia Le-Tan BIO

Olympia Le-Tan started her career at the age of 19 at the Chanel design studio with Karl Lagerfeld. She then went on to work with creative director Gilles Dufour for 7 years (at Balmain and for his own line)

In 2009, she launched her eponymous accessories label, combining her two obsessions, embroidery (a talent she inherited from her grandmother), and literature (a passion she shared with her father, Pierre Le-Tan) to create one-of- a-kind handbags and minaudières.

The brand’s signature book-clutch was an instant hit, bought by luxury stores around the world (Colette and Le Bon Marché in Paris, Harrods, Matches and Browns in London, Isetan in Tokyo, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus in the USA...) and very popular on the red carpet.

In March 2012, she launched her first ready- to-wear collection. Classic clothes with a twist, a mix between Olympia's British and Parisian heritage. Olympia has always enjoyed working on very thematic collections which include elements of culture and art world as well as many collaborations. One of her presentations was a short animation movie directed by Spike Jonze.

In July 2018 Olympia parted ways with her namesake label and shortly after, took on a role as Creative Director of THE MARC JACOBS (the contemporary line of the luxury brand) for 2years.

She currently works as an independent creative director and lives in New York City.

“Hotel Olympia” is her first personal project after a 3year hiatus.

 

 

 

※数量に限りがある商品もございますので、品切れの際はご容赦ください。

※価格はすべて、税込です。

このページをシェアする

OTHER NEWS

その他のニュース