A Dynamo in the Dynasty, Art Review
Francesca von Habsburg is following her father’s world-famous collection by assembling one of her own. By Bettina von Hase.
Francesca von Habsburg with Norman Rosenthal
The Croatian city of Dubrovnik is not usually known for showing the latest in contemporary art, but recently it staged an exhibition which measured up to any group show in New York or London. Called "Brightness", it was an exploration of goodness and beauty in a dysfunctional society, and it was the brainchild of Francesca von Habsburg, burgeoning collector and daughter of the late Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. His world-famous art collection, now housed in the Villa Hermosa in Madrid, inspired von Habsburg to launch her own contemporary art foundation; the 30 works displayed in the show were the first glimpse of what is yet to come. Von Habsburg's plan is to build a 21st-century collection of new media works and sculpture, thereby bringing the extensive Thyssen-Bornemisza collection into the contemporary era.
"Brightness" was an exciting and timely venture, fuelled by von Habsburg's phenomenal energy and drive. Artists from all over the world were represented, including Olafur Eliasson, Darren Almond, Philippe Bradshaw, Candice Breitz and Angela Bulloch, all of whom came to Dubrovnik to celebrate the opening and the foundation's launch in the Museum of Modern Art, a mock-medieval palace built in the 1930s as a summer villa for ship-owner Bozo Banac. A massive stone staircase swept visitors up to the first floor terrace. overlooking the Adriatic bathed in moonlight. The party was in full swing, with a carefully chosen global art crowd including Norman Rosenthal, head of exhibitions at the Royal Academy: Simon de Pury, chairman of Phillips; Sam Keller, director of the Basel Art Fair; art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac; plus other enthusiasts and friends.
I found von Habsburg walking around the exhibition, which she curated with Max Wigram, who is also adviser to her foundation. The two have increased her holdings from 40 works to well over 100 in the last year. Von Habsburg seemed exhilarated by the evening, particularly seeing all of the works together for the first time. “Having so many of them together in one space, I just remember the excitement of buying this one and that one, at very different times and different places in the world,” she tells me the following day. “Some I bought in Miami, some in Copenhagen, some in London, some in New York, many in Berlin, some I even I bought over the internet... “
“The great thing about working with Francesca is that she is an instinctive person," Wigram says. "She's not doing it for her mates — she's doing it for herself." Norman Rosenthal, who has known von Habsburg for 20 years, thinks she's "a very public- spirited person". When she sees him on the terrace, she throws her arms around him, then proceeds to tie his undone shoelaces, a gesture at once affectionate and respectful. Rosenthal acknowledges that those who don't know her see her as a socialite, which is how the media has tended to portray her, recalling the fun-loving antics of her younger days.
But beneath the charm and peripatetic lifestyle lies a person of substance and ambition. This is more apparent than ever now that she has made a commitment to follow in her father's footsteps — albeit in her own way. De Pury, who in the 1980s worked for the Baron as chief curator of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, sees a direct line from father to daughter. “They both have a very serious side. Heini's motto was 'you've got to work hard and play hard'. Even if he partied all night, he was at his desk, razor-sharp, by 7am. Francesca has a similar work and fun combination, and she also sees herself as a cultural ambassador." Her mother, Fiona Thyssen, 72, second of the Baron's five wives, says it was inevitable that her daughter was going to become a collector. "Heini would have been thrilled. It is a natural mantle for her to wear."
It has not been an easy role to assume, and when her father was alive, von Habsburg consciously chose restoration as her domain, setting up her foundation ARCH (Art Restoration for Cultural Heritage) 12 years ago. stayed away from collecting. It was a deliberate choice to get into restoration; you feel a different kind of ownership with works of art you restore, leaving them on sight or returning them to their original location rather than appropriating them for yourself."
ARCH has projects all over the world, and von Habsburg helped restore artworks in Dubrovnik damaged by the 1991-92 war and decades of neglect. This cemented her love of Croatia as a place of inspiration. ARCH will continue to run alongside her new focus: "The collecting is something new to me; it's an exploration."
She concentrates on work that has a technological element to it, technology used as a material to create ambiguity and emotional response, whatever its subject. "I think there is a central theme to the kind of work she buys," says Wigram. "It interests her who you are, where you are, and how complicated that awareness can be.”
The show's layout unflinchingly zeroes in on this complication, examining the human experience of light and dark. On the ground floor, Bill Viola's Silent Mountain shows a man and a woman in contortions of increasing emotional stress, installed on two screens hanging side by side but framed separately to underline their isolation. Peter Land's Staircase shows a man falling in slow motion down an endless flight of stairs; it is installed opposite Mariele Neudecker's Another Day, a film of the sun setting and rising, projected simultaneously on either side of a single screen. Large-scale photographic works by Peter Fischli and David Weiss of night-time Lugano, and Thomas Struth's cityscape of Drammen I.Norway set the scene of sleek alienation with their futuristic and surreal urban environments. On the first floor, Angela Bulloch's Geometric Audio Merge 2002, a light-box sculpture placed in a small room, evokes a Seventies disco world, playing “Good Times“ by Chic, translated into flashing colour sequences of infinite variety. The effect is of a compressed dance floor, on which Julian Opie's girl in a black dress — a video installed next door — could be about to dance.
The show's success lies in its underlying concept of a journey, confidently moving from external stimuli provided by popular culture to dream-like states of inner contemplation, brilliantly realized by Olafur Eliasson's first-floor installation Room with yellow light and waves. Eliasson, whose commission for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall opens on 16 October, transformed the largest high-ceilinged room into a cool blue space reflecting light and colour to create shimmery, watery waves. "With reflections, you can distort our sense of perspective," he says. "The eye is one of our main sources of balance, and in this space, the eye starts to float around. It's important to evaluate what makes us stable. Being unstable is not that interesting."
He could have been quoting von Habsburg, who seems to have mastered this lesson, despite a fractured family background. In the catalogue of "Brightness", she rather poignantly dedicates the exhibition to her father and mother, which signals more than anything how her life has come together. Her marriage in 1993 to Karl von Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, gave her the security she looked for, and three children, Eleonore, nine, Ferdinand, six, and Gloria, four, with whom she lives in Salzburg and Vienna. But her own family, based on an extended structure with uneasy alliances, has a history of bickering and fighting. Her father was a man of extremes, with a £1.7 billion fortune, a great art collection, four ex-wives and five children. But in February last year, a milestone was reached with the resolution of a family lawsuit, just before Baron Thyssen's death.
Since the settlement, von Habsburg's life has moved forward. There are now two seats on the board of 12 trustees of the Museo Thyssen- Bornemisza in Madrid — presided over by the Baron's formidable widow Tita — which represent the interests of the children. Von Habsburg has one and Rosenthal the other. She has managed to strike a balance between the two family dynasties that are part of her life, without losing track of who she is herself. "I've started being more the person that I am," she says. "It feels good to have both of these worlds." She also realized that the Thyssen-Bornemisza name opens doors. "Going into the artworld now, I know the name is very much alive. It only hibernated for a while."
Born in Switzerland in 1958, she was brought up with her younger brother Lorne, 40, a film-maker, at the Villa Favorita, her father's home and where the collection was installed until its move to Madrid. The family moved between St Moritz and Jamaica, where they had a house which von Habsburg now owns. Called Chessie by her friends, she went to Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland, and then to St Martin's School of Art for two years. She became a successful model, but was better known for her parties and hanging out with exotic men.
Her life changed when she started working as a curator for her father's collection at the Villa Favorita. A programme of exhibitions the Baron organised in collaboration with then Soviet Russia in the mid-1980s emphasized the importance of culture in forging links between countries. It was a pioneer move at a time of tension between east and west. "He had great leadership qualities, he understood the value of what he was doing, and used it," she says.
The same could be said about her. Her commitment to Croatia has resulted in a multitude of projects; according to de Pury, "she needs to have more than she can handle to fuel her energy and motor".
She has taken a 100-year lease on a Franciscan monastery on the island of Lopud, near Dubrovnik, which she is restoring in a private initiative. She talks of Richard Serra possibly making an iconic piece for the island, and says she'd like to work with Zaha Hadid. Most of all, she wants to support and promote young contemporary artists through her new foundation, with more commissions, site-specific projects and other exhibitions.
"Let yourself be challenged, let some of the more difficult work come your way and buy it," she says of her new direction. "What's interesting if you gradually build up a foundation, is that you immediately start buying above and beyond what you can fit in your home, and what you want to live with — and that's where you can take risks. I have learned to take risks, and I enjoy taking them."
