City News
The Palace of Versailles is continuing a summer tradition that began two years ago of installing contemporary artworks in its ornate halls and legendary gardens. This time, Bombay-born and London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor will be the featured artist (June 16 - November 1; chateauversailles.fr). Known for gigantic and simple sculptures that unite a contemporary feel with mythological elements, Kapoor is one of the world’s best-known modern-day sculptors. His artworks are said to be both material and immaterial, destroying preconceptions about time and space and drawing in the viewer into an emotional abyss worthy of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. The famous artist’s works will be shown in the palace gardens and in the Hall of Mirrors, which is considered to be the heart of the stately edifice.
Paris’ hotel scene, for its part, has been supplemented this season by three no less provocative and noteworthy newcomers. The Chess Hotel (6 rue du Helder; thechesshotel.com) has a classically elegant interior with an emphasis on black-and-white. The vestibule looks like a giant chessboard – choose a square on the black-and-white floor and make your move forward. Elegant and with panache. The Chess Hotel is located in the 9th arrondissement, not far from the opera and the Printemps and Galleries Lafayette fashion department stores. The establishment has 50 rooms, with other interior colours added to a similar extent as the bright red lipstick on the faces of Alfred Hitchcock’s fabled femmes fatales.
The Hotel Henriette (9 rue des Gobelins; hotelhenriette.com) offers a completely different atmosphere set up by fashion journalist Vanessa Scoffier. The small 32-room hotel can be found in the bohemian Rive Gauche area, its interior reflecting a mix of contemporary design and flea-market finds, design classics and personally chosen trinkets from fashion outings to Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen.
Of Paris’ three newest hotels, Les Bains (7 rue du Bourg l'Abbé; lesbains-paris.com) has definitely made the biggest splash. It is housed in a legendary late-19th-century building that once served as a public bathhouse and that was a favourite haunt of such celebrities as writer Marcel Proust. During the the1970s the bathhouse was transformed into the famous Les Bains Douches nightclub, which was frequented by numerous celebrities and was known for its wild parties. Its rebirth as a hotel was overseen by French movie director and producer Jean-Pierre Marois. The hotel has 39 rooms and a special hall in the basement for concerts and performances, thus paying tribute to the edifice’s tumultuous past.
Image: Descension. Anish Kapoor 2015
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