April 23, 2022
The Best
of
The
News
from
Abroad
No. 145
Weekend
Edition
Saturdays

at 6:00 AM
Love For Sale

Nancy Jo Sales wonders why a big-money dating service that promises to introduce women to wealthy men has allegedly signed up bar crawlers, felons, and stalkers …

(In)human Resources

David Kaufman on the rise of Gen Z’s “corporate Karens,” unleashing woke terror in the office …

No Roman Holiday

The French grab Abramovich’s exquisite and historic château in Cap d’Antibes …

Still in Vogue?

Former British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman casts an experienced eye on a new biography of Anna Wintour …

The Privileged Few

From London, Simon Kuper reveals how Boris Johnson and a tiny caste of Oxford elites from the 1980s brought the U.K. down to where it is …

Inspector Gadget

Jonathan Margolis reports on tech-and-gear solutions you need—including a smart new way to view those treasured 35-mm. slides of family holidays …

Issue No. 145

The View from Here Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the office—beware the rise of the “corporate Karen”

By David Kaufman
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The Whistleblowing Wife Gaslit, starring Julia Roberts, tells the story of Martha Mitchell, the first and most improbable person to publicly accuse Nixon over Watergate

By Martin Fletcher
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It’s Complicated Single middle-aged women of means have been known to rely on matchmakers. But with men in short supply, one high-end fixer-upper is turning to lowlifes

By Nancy Jo Sales
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No Roman Holiday A 32,000-square-foot château on the French Riviera once lived in by Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson is another property that Abramovich can’t access

By Dominic Midgley
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The Lost Fans of CNN+ Management snuffed the new network after 32 days. Yet there were plenty of fans out there!

By John Ficarra
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Air Supply

Classics Major

Channel your inner academic with an Ivy League–inspired shopping list—items for the study, wardrobe, and even tailgate—which will serve you well long after the semester’s over. When it comes to style, we are always delighted to help with your early-decision application
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Photo: Lionel Kazan/Condé Nast/Shutterstock (students)
Guest Edit

My Favorite Things Vanessa Barboni Hallik launched Another Tomorrow in 2020 with the intention of making a lasting impact on climate change. Herewith, she pulls back the curtain on her best-loved possessions

By Vanessa Barboni Hallik
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Photo: Another Tomorrow (Hallik)

War Crimes Sixty years ago, a Russian poet inspired the creation of a Holocaust memorial at Babi Yar, in Ukraine. This year, a Russian missile strike nearly destroyed it

By Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
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Chiwetel Ejiofor The actor on what he’s seeing, reading, watching, and listening to—plus, the app he uses to identify plants and flowers

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The Sages of Montecito

Harry and Meghan offer Netflix some business tips

A Woman’s Place Is in the Kremlin Estonia’s prime minister considers how different Europe would be if more women were in power

By George Grylls
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“Oh, God, it’s the Herefords. Pretend you don’t see them.”
“Oh, God, it’s the Herefords. Pretend you don’t see them.”

A Guide to the Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale officially opens today, a sensory overload of art that will twist your mind and reshape your thoughts. READ ON

René Magritte’s 1945 painting Black Magic is on view at the 59th Venice Biennale.

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Discover
“I am an unstoppable force of nature, I am not defined by my past, and I make a chermoula paste that will blow your friggin’ mind!”
“I am an unstoppable force of nature, I am not defined by my past, and I make a chermoula paste that will blow your friggin’ mind!”

The Social Stir There’s never been a bigger appetite for celebratory food and festive drinks. Colu Henry’s new cookbook reveals the winning formula

By Laura Neilson
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Click here to visit

Boston

Cue the violins: at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, pianist Zhu Wang joins violinist Randall Goosby for a Sunday sonata …

Philadelphia

Old as time: 40 dealers head to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the city’s annual antiques show …

Brussels

Brush with death: the spotlight shines on Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts …

Centerport

Welcome to the dollhouse: Christopher Tennant’s Victorian-style dioramas and vitrines decorate the Vanderbilt Museum, on Long Island …

Online

When not in France: a 2009 performance of Jean Racine’s French classic Phèdre, with Helen Mirren in the lead role, streams on the National Theatre Web site …

Landing Gear Virtual reality undergoes a transformative upgrade; a laser measurer that’s truly spot-on; old 35-mm. projector slides get a second chance; and more

By Jonathan Margolis
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David Beckham and Rafael Nadal Take to Court And other strange news about these curious days …

By George Kalogerakis
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Sergey Elkin’s Sketchbook
3
Russian political cartoonist Sergey Elkin fled Russia last week. Over the course of his career at The Moscow Times, Elkin has fearlessly mocked Vladimir Putin and dared to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. New wartime laws in Russia leave people accused of spreading “fake news” vulnerable to arrest and facing up to 15 years in prison. Elkin is now safely in Bulgaria, where he continues to strike back with pen and ink.
Russian political cartoonist Sergey Elkin fled Russia last week. Over the course of his career at The Moscow Times, Elkin has fearlessly mocked Vladimir Putin and dared to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. New wartime laws in Russia leave people accused of spreading “fake news” vulnerable to arrest, facing up to 15 years in prison. Elkin is now safely in Bulgaria, where he continues to strike back with pen and ink.
Russian political cartoonist Sergey Elkin fled Russia last week. Over the course of his career at The Moscow Times, Elkin has fearlessly mocked Vladimir Putin and dared to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. New wartime laws in Russia leave people accused of spreading “fake news” vulnerable to arrest, facing up to 15 years in prison. Elkin is now safely in Bulgaria, where he continues to strike back with pen and ink.

The Only Podcast You Need You bring the coffee; we’ll bring the buzz

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Tom Blyth The British actor went from sidewalk charity campaigner to the star of a new series on Billy the Kid

By Bridget Arsenault
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“I found a vicious sidekick. Can I pleeeease keep him?”
“I found a vicious sidekick. Can I pleeeease keep him?”
Air Mail Jr.
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Spires, Squires, and Liars A contemporary of Boris Johnson’s and Dominic Cummings’s traces Brexit, and the state of politics in Britain today, back to 1980s Oxford

By Simon Kuper
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Architecture and Design

A Grand Tour of Italy, but Make It Modern The intimate, under-the-radar homes and studios of 20th-century Italian architects, artists, and designers, from Achille Castiglioni and Gae Aulenti to Giorgio Morandi, are as stunning as the country’s ancient and Renaissance treasures. And they’re open to the public

By Patricia Zohn
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In a quiet section of Rome, behind a perfectly ordinary door, stands Casa Balla, the magical apartment of the futurist artist Giacomo Balla. Though his ingenious designs represent the tradition of functional Italian handicraft, his fanciful universe was also an aesthetic laboratory dedicated to modernity. From the benches that double for characters in his daughter Elica’s favorite fables to the brightly painted walls, to the yellow-and-blue-medallioned tableware, “all these are more pleasing to the eye than a dingy insignificant little picture by a traditional painter hanging on a gray wall,” he once said, adding: “Abolish the wishy washy!”
Balla in his studio with daughter Luce, 1931.
The kitchen in Casa Balla.
In Giorgio and his wife Isa de Chirico’s spacious Roman apartment, atop a trendy hair salon, the revolutionary artist is oddly missing from the bourgeois furnishings and late, less valuable work chockablock on the walls. (De Chirico even began backdating paintings to achieve more robust prices: if anyone was going to make money from de Chirico knockoffs, it would be de Chirico.) Nevertheless, on the top-floor studio (come prepared for lots of stairs), with his gray painting smock laid over a rattan chair near a can of Jolly solvent, one feels for a moment the energy of the much admired young artist, whose metaphysical, mythological work took the art world by storm. Top, the atelier at Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico; above, the salon.
De Chirico at home with his paintbrushes, 1963.
De Chirico’s bedroom.
The Museo Morandi has meticulously reconstructed Casa Morandi, Giorgio Morandi’s humble Bologna apartment above a courtyard, now filled with the bicycles of university students. The treasured bottles, shells, and vases that populate his works are crammed into closets and spill over into the spartan bedroom—evidence of a life devoted to work. Morandi, who taught at the Fine Arts Academy, did not marry and rarely traveled, though celebrity visitors from abroad were in frequent attendance. Doted on by his three sisters, he found instead among these everyday objects and views outside his windows an entire universe. Top, Morandi’s atelier; above, the painter at home, 1959.
The town of Grizzana, outside Bologna, became Morandi’s refuge from the summer heat and visitors, though not from war, as rebels hid throughout its rugged hills. His simple house with sparse furnishings contains a studio where the large windows framed some of his most evocative landscapes. There, the neat rows of paintbrushes he painstakingly customized, his sister’s bottle of Miss Dior, and the Ovomaltina cans he collected from a neighbor’s grandchildren because he liked their shape sit on his worktable. His sisters were ordered not to dust there as it might alter the quality of his precious light. Pictured, the interior and exterior of Casa Museo Morandi.
Gae Aulenti, a rebel against strict modernism, was at home with both pop and handicraft sensibilities mediated by new technologies. Though she designed many lamps and chairs, Aulenti is best known for her conversion of a Paris train station into the Musée d’Orsay. She was the lone woman to be included in the seminal MoMA exhibition “Italy: the New Domestic Landscape,” in 1972, which catapulted Italian design onto the world stage. Her home studio, now the Archivio Gae Aulenti, in the heart of old Milan, is not only an archive of her many commissions but also of her vibrant, eclectic life. The architect and designer is pictured here smoking in a Milan boutique in 1967.
Top, Gae Aulenti Square, in Milan; above, an interior of the Archivio Gae Aulenti.
Franco Albini pushed wood and rattan to their utmost limits in the Luisa chair, created with Franca Helg, one of just a few female designers of the period. The pair also became known for the Rinascente department store in Rome and for Line 1 of the Milan metro, studded with alluring red handrails (a motif they re-purposed from chair arms). At Albini’s studio, now the Fondazione Franco Albini, in Milan’s Magenta district, his granddaughter Paola shares insider memories, while a radical bookshelf seems to levitate the contents. His designs speak to the enduring appeal of the elegant combined with the artisanal. The Italian architect and designer is photographed here by Mario De Biasi and Sergio Del Grande, 1956.
Top, an interior of the Fondazione Franco Albini; above, a folding seat designed by Albini and exhibited at the IX Triennale, in Milan, 1951.
The studio of designer Achille Castiglioni, across from the grand Sforzesco Castle, in Milan, is a playful fun house of designs, many still in production. Chairs collapse into beds, are mounted like tractors, sprout from stepladders, or are even attachable to a belt. A lamp recalls its previous life as a film bobbin; a salad shaker becomes a bracelet; a sleek spoon extracts the last bit of mayonnaise from a jar. At first with his brothers, then on his own, mingling the delicate with the humble, Castiglione proposed that unremarkable objects tell remarkable stories. Top, the designer in 1984; above, an interior of the Fondazione Achille Castiglioni, featuring his signature Arco floor lamp.
From within the diminutive Milan studio of Vico Magistretti, not far from the Duomo, sprang the big ideas of one of the most prolific and influential Italians of the fertile postwar period. Magistretti kept his practice small on the advice of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who reminded him that, if his staff grew, he wouldn’t have time to think. Magistretti’s granddaughter Margherita, surrounded by his vibrant sketches, lighting, and a series of chairs—many still in production—tells visitors that, for her grandfather, “being modern [meant] being part of a chain, with one hand in the future and the other in the past.” The foundation’s helpful free guide to Albini’s Milanese projects underscores these dual reverences. Top, the Fondazione Vico Magistretti; above, Magistretti in his studio, 2004.
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Alexandra Shulman On

Anna: The Biography

by Amy Odell
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Abhrajyoti Chakraborty On

Ways of Escape

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Murder, They Wrote

by Lisa Henricksson
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Lily Baldwin from the video “Through You” poses for a portrait in the WireImage Portrait Studio presented by DIRECTV during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017 in Park City, Utah. Listen Stories of the Stalked In the true-crime genre, intimate stories of murder and abuse are often told—and controlled—by charismatic… Re-watch Wattstax On August 20, 1972, Memphis soul pioneer Stax Records held a benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to commemorate… Wear La Vie Style House Fanciful caftans are a lifestyle. If you are wearing guipure lace and tulle to the beach, we salute you, and would like an invitation to your… Sleep P. Le Moult It’s been nearly a year since we last visited Chez Dédé, a boutique in Rome that surely has one of the best selections of piped pajamas… Read The New Era The look of The New Era, a quarterly magazine dedicated to Scandinavian design, is as clean and minimalistic as the homes and interiors… Cook McCall’s Meat & Fish Co. For just over a decade, McCall’s Meat & Fish Co. has been the go-to East Los Angeles butcher for high-quality… Lily Baldwin from the video “Through You” poses for a portrait in the WireImage Portrait Studio presented by DIRECTV during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017 in Park City, Utah. Listen Stories of the Stalked In the true-crime genre, intimate stories of murder and abuse are often told—and controlled—by charismatic… Re-watch Wattstax On August 20, 1972, Memphis soul pioneer Stax Records held a benefit concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to commemorate… Wear La Vie Style House Fanciful caftans are a lifestyle. If you are wearing guipure lace and tulle to the beach, we salute you, and would like an invitation to your… Sleep P. Le Moult It’s been nearly a year since we last visited Chez Dédé, a boutique in Rome that surely has one of the best selections of piped pajamas… Read The New Era The look of The New Era, a quarterly magazine dedicated to Scandinavian design, is as clean and minimalistic as the homes and interiors… Cook McCall’s Meat & Fish Co. For just over a decade, McCall’s Meat & Fish Co. has been the go-to East Los Angeles butcher for high-quality…

Dirck Halstead From Saigon’s fall to Reagan’s shooting to Monicagate, the photographer was at the center of history as it happened

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Fishing for Complements The charming owner of Estiatorio Milos has returned to his homeland with an alluring new hotel in Athens

By Alexander Lobrano
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Elaine May celebrated her 90th birthday on April 21. The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Reds, Tootsie, and dozens more movies, TV shows, and plays couldn’t have happened without this comedienne, actress, playwright, screenwriter, and director. May’s most acclaimed film, 1972’s hilarious and cringe-inducing The Heartbreak Kid, will mark its 50th anniversary later this year. Happy birthday, Elaine!
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Richard David Story Peter Bogdanovich André Leon Talley

Issue No. 145
April 23, 2022
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Issue No. 145
April 23, 2022
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