His first piece of furniture was, perhaps, a symbol of desperation. A horse and two human figures, whose open hands were thrust up to support a glass top, seemed to be asking ruefully, ”What are we going to do?”
When Mario Villa created the table for the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans four years ago, it was a last-ditch effort to keep afloat the art gallery he was running.
”The piece was very primitive,” said Villa (pronounced VEE-ya). ”I just put my drawings on metal and cut them out.” The table sold for $350. ”I felt rich,” he said. Not long after that, he was famous, too.
Villa immediately was commissioned to design chairs for a French Quarter restaurant. The chairs, now part of a line of his signature metal furnishings, eclipsed the cuisine; the restaurant eventually folded.
But soon his chairs, benches, chaises, tables, lamps, mirrors and beds, handcrafted from what the Nicaraguan-born artist calls ”honest materials”-
bronze, steel and copper-began to show up in trendy design magazines. What distinguished his classically simple work, besides the material in a milieu where upholstery and wood dominate, was the way Villa manipulated it.
The back of one steel chair was draped with a bronze swag. Another sported a back whose top curved gracefully as an Ionic column. From the base of a lamp grew gilded palm fronds. Vines snaked around chair legs. A table base was formed by three dancing feminine silhouettes resembling a Matisse painting brought three-dimensional. Lamp shades were crafted of copper, gleaming or weathered, smooth or pierced.
Metals were treated with muriatic acid that colored them in shades of turquoise and rusty red, lending an ancient patinated finish, enhanced by sgraffito (scratched markings) that are indigenous to hand tooling of metals. Neoclassical allusions and elegant curves softened what might have been hard- edged.
Soon Villa`s work also captured imaginations abroad. Princess Margaret, to whom Villa was introduced in New Orleans, was so taken with him and his oeuvre that she nudged editors at the prestigious London-based World of Interiors to check it out. Reluctantly, they contacted Villa in New Orleans. The upshot: a four-page color feature in November, 1987. The editors said Villa`s furniture ”appears dug up and dusted down-as if from a recently opened Roman tomb, though its genesis is distinctly New World.”
As his star rose, celebrities began to snap up Villa design. Mario Villa furnishings have decorated Saks Fifth Avenue windows, Guy Laroche boutiques, the VIP rooms of Delta Airlines terminals and restaurants on both coasts (New York`s Cave Canem and Los Angeles` Paradise). Last October Villa teamed with French clothing designer Karl Lagerfeld to design an interior for
Bloomingdale`s French promotion at its flagship store in Manhattan.
”Either God loves me very much,” he said, ”or I have charisma,”
leading into the word with a throaty ”h.” After 15 years or so of living in the Big Easy, he has not lost his lilting Latin accent, and he speaks at a rapid clip more suited to his native tongue. Trouble is, he recently lamented that he speaks English poorly, is losing his Spanish, so he has resorted to taking up Italian. Indeed, Villa is charming, whimsical, handsome, expressive- all characteristics that also can be applied to his furniture.
Dream maker
”My dream,” he said, ”is to give people their dreams.” He means that. He tells of one client who fantasized about sleeping under coconut trees. He responded with a brushed bronze bed that replicates the image. Another client envisioned Botticelli`s ”Birth of Venus.” A shell motif figured into the design of that bed.
In a sense, he always has regarded what he does as fantasy furniture, as much as it is art. ”Art should be part of everyday life, like brushing your teeth,” he said. ”Some ask, `Is this a table or a piece of sculpture?` It is a piece of sculpture you can eat on. I make furniture with a human scale. I try to keep it small. I am very much against mass-produced. Everything I do is handmade-with all the human errors-and it`s signed. I want to reach the public in a very personal way.”
Such altruism seems antithetical to Villa`s background. He was born 35 years ago to a privileged family in Managua, Nicaragua. His father, a prominent architect, studied with the late Luis Barragan, a Miesian-inspired Mexican who developed about a quarter of the buildings in the city`s downtown area.
”I grew up in an ultramodern house. The rocket had been adapted as a symbol for everything. We had chairs and tables in funny shapes-amoeba, kidney. It was like `The Jetsons`-it was horrible.”
But his father also was an arts connoisseur, a collector of German Expressionism and Mexican masters, and from him Villa developed an eye for fine art. Because of the 10-year age difference between Villa and his older brother, Villa learned to play alone. He drew and sculpted when he was about 6, and early on he developed a curiosity about archeology, which he fed by visiting building sites and getting ”incredible finds-tons of pre-Columbian art were just a couple of feet below the surface.” Villa, whose childhood coincided with the beginning of the revolution, resided with his family in a gated villa outside the city.
”It was like living in a mission. When the revolution came they confiscated everything from anyone who had money. My father said, `We are going to be here until the end.` I said, `No, I want to save my skin.`
Villa`s father eventually ended up in exile in Florida. Villa, who fell in love with New Orleans during a family vacation, decided to go to school there. In 1975 he got an anthropology degree from the University of New Orleans and several years later added one in architecture from Tulane. In between he adopted a bohemian lifestyle in Europe.
”After 10 years of being Mr. College, I didn`t know how to work. I didn`t know a thing about reality. I was so proud, I did not even know how to ask for a job.”
Designing to sell
A New Orleans artist he was associating with offered the first floor of his historic house in the French Quarter in exchange for Villa`s help in running a gallery. There, Villa exhibited his own drawings and sculpture and the works of other artists. A precarious cash flow ultimately led to his design of ”something practical and useful that would sell.”
His foray into furniture was less painful than he might have anticipated. When the restaurant commissioned him, he was asked to design a classic chair with a whimsical feeling. ”I thought of a cafe in Paris, the idea of festivity, a swag in the old days.”
Historical and artistic references are as important to Villa as his medium of metal. ”I love patinas and anything with classical connotations. I love very much history, Greek, Roman, Egyptian feelings. We romantics want to make the past come alive.
”I also love the sculptural element. One of my favorite pieces is the
`Three Graces` table, which was inspired by Matisse. When you`re happy, you jump up and down. Your body moves. I love expressing that joy.
”The weakness of many designers is that they work on paper. They never get their hands dirty. I might keep seven or eight pieces of copper next to my bed so that I can play with it to see what it can and can`t do. Copper is soft, so many things that I can do with steel are not possible” with copper. What Villa especially loves about his work is meeting clients. Between his New Orleans showroom on Magazine Street and his first gallery outside that city, at 505 N. Wells St. in Chicago, which he chose over both coasts because he was impressed with its design and art market, Villa keeps busy. His travels take him to Paris; Venice; Basel, Switzerland; Zurich; and Tel Aviv, among other places.
Consequently, Villa has very little personal life. ”I work seven days a week. I spend my time with very few wonderful people I find mentally stimulating. It`s very important to reinforce friendships with people you love.”
Homes that contrast
He lives in two homes, one in the French Quarter and the other on a lake. Both are decorated eclectically, dominated by his metal pieces but mixed with architectural pieces and antiques. There is much religious imagery, evidenced by collections of icons. But many of the Spanish Colonial and pre-Columbian artifacts he had gathered as a student are on loan at museums (”I can`t afford the insurance,” he said).
The French Quarter ”house has the feeling of decay and history. I like to make altars there, with pictures, fruit, dried flowers and palms. I love palms so much. They make me happy. The place is filled with clutter. It looks like nobody has been there for 200 years. Much of that is to compensate for the fact that it is an ugly space. There are low (8-foot) ceilings. I hide certain things with low-voltage lighting.”
The other home is next to a plantation and a bayou, with an herb and rose garden. A gilt wash over what looks like layers of peeling paint give the rooms an aged appearance. Art is spare, but paintings are displayed in ornate gilded frames, sometimes propped on old broken pieces of sculpture. The bed and daybeds are cloaked in pristine white linens.
”It has a ballroom with a 19th Century mantel, a 40-by-40-foot grand salon, 12-foot double French windows overlooking the Mississippi River on one side. It`s like a theater set. Here the space talks.
”Both places are changing every week. In order to appreciate something, you have to move it,” he said. ”A house takes a lifetime.”
Villa would dearly love a commission to design someone`s entire home. Karl Lagerfeld is making a considerable investment in Villa`s work, and he listens carefully to the artist`s inspirations. Villa is creating a fantasy bed for the couturier`s home in Rome and entire suites for his country chateau in Normandy, a major interior design project being orchestrated by no less than French architect and designer Andree Putman.
Lagerfeld has christened the 18th Century-inspired library ”the Villa room”; with so many of the artist`s pieces, it`s a mini-shrine.
”Lagerfeld is one of the few people who understands me. I hate to put one chair in one place, another in another room. It`s very important to group them together so the entire interior is like an ensemble. A cutesy lamp here, a cutesy chair there is nice, but it doesn`t come across as art.”
Artistic influences
If anyone has influenced Villa`s art it has been the ironmaster Diego Giacometti and Picasso. He applauds the designs of architect Patrick Magger, early Michael Graves, Philippe Starck (”he`s gutsy, futuristic”).
”I like tastemakers, even if I do not agree with their design ideas. What offends me is people who fake taste, who buy things because they think they are fashionable.”
In the interest of promulgating quality design, he is eager to contribute to most any category of products for the home, from dinner plates to flatware to blankets to lights. He has done a prototype for a crackle-patterned dinnerware. He wants to produce a line of good linens, ”not as expensive as Pratesi, in cotton pique, damask, hard-to-find, simple, 100 percent natural fabrics with patterns you cannot see” and has had offers from manufacturers in this country and abroad.
”Design is very important today, because you can have a better life with it. In the `90s we will be looking for better quality of what we live in.”
Villa believes that the spirit of a home emanates from little details. ”They are what make you regard it with great pride-that something was made by your grandmother. You are what you are because of your background.
”I think we have to go back to our roots for some of the classic designs.”
PRICE GUIDE
”Three Graces” table, $2,500; one-knot lamp, $425; Arc de Triomphe lamp, $650; campaign daybed, $3,333; double swag console table, $2,450; circle cross lamp, $550; Nefertiti lamp, $800; swag barstool, $650.
