Vladimir Kagan's Blog: January 2013

THE OTHER JOSEFOWITZ ARTIST

Cathy Josefowitz's poster for her show as seen on Geneva street kiosks

There are two Josefowitz artists in the family: my sister Tanya and her daughter Cathy. Both have been untiring painters all of their lives. I can never envision my sister without a drawing pad in her handbag. Cathy is a painter of a different ilk. She would need to carry a roll of canvas twice her size. Though Cathy also sketches prolifically in a Lilliputian sized, beautifully bound, blank book; hers are not spiraled drawing pages to be simply ripped out.

Cathy Josefowitz has been a free spirit all her life, having left home at 16 to pursue an uncertain path in the arts, sometimes circuitously, but always productive. She would paint on any blank surface. Her career has taken her from street graffiti to super large canvases. Her art is predictably unpredictable. She exhibits frequently, although her canvases are often too large to hang on most walls, that does not deter her at all. She paints passionately and creatively.

My first encounter with her extraordinary talent was in her Paris atelier, a third floor walk-up in the 14th Arrondissement. There were vivid flashes of color, textures and materials. Her pallet was created out of salvaged textiles, her favorite media: Collages.

Cathy Josefowitz in her Paris Studio

The Art Gallery in Saint Germain where Cathy had an exhibit of her colages

The colages of Cathy Josefowitz at her exhibit in Saint Germaine Paris

In 2002 Cathy and I had a collaborative show of our works in Brera, the art district of Milan. It was an exciting blend of her graphic paintings and my sculptural designs.

Cathy Josefowitz and Vladimir Kagan - a joint enxhibit in Milan at the Club House Italia Gallery in 2002

Cathy does not stand still. Her moods change; her style changes; her message changes. Like her mother, she is a Jekyll & Hyde. Cathy paints by day. Each morning, after an intensive Yoga session, she arrives at her bright loft in Carouge, an artist’s enclave in Geneva. She steps out of her fashionable dress into colorful overalls and immerses herself into the canisters of paint and rolls of canvas that cover the studio floor. Since her canvases are too big for an easel, she paints on the floor, all day long into the early evening.

Cathy painting in her Geneva Studio - The sketch books

Cathy is a petite, beautiful woman 5 foot tall in her bare feet. She is a single mother raising a bear of a son 6 feet tall. When she is not painting, she choreographs modern dance (to music that is beyond my grasp!). In years past, she had danced professionally. She formed a dance theater company with Mara de Wit called “Research & Navigation”. They lived, worked, and performed in Wales, with the support of the Arts Council of Wales, Cardiff. Cathy’s career had taken her from Switzerland, to Paris, to Wales, to Boston, Italy, back to Paris and finally home to Geneva. Her vocation is all embracing, comprising dancing, midwifery, political activism, lover, and always the eternal painter.

Opening night at Cathy's show WORKS IN PROGRESS in her Atelier in Carouge, Geneva

I arrived in Geneva a week too late for the opening of Cathy’s latest exhibit WORKS IN PROGRESS, held in her colossal loft. The multi-media show included a film presentation of her dancing, installation art, sketchbooks, collages, and the three-dimensional canvases that have become her current métier. While her Mother’s works are often expressed in small-framed drawings, Cathy’s work is gargantuan. Only the walls of a major private collector are large enough to hang her art, the only other suitable spaces being museum walls and the actual floor. Her current focus is landscape, not those of Cézanne or Van Gogh. Her canvasses are moods of color covering large surfaces, undulating on the floor, climbing up the walls or hanging from the ceiling. Some are teasingly spiked with tiny Netsuke-like sketches in a forgotten corner of the canvas. Making a change from the gargantuan to the diminutive, the windowsills of her studio are lined with her precious sketchbooks, and miniature fanciful flights of paper and sheet-metal cutouts

Works In Progress an exhibit in Cathy Josefowitz's studio in Carouge, Geneva 2012

Cathy's miniature cut-out figures part of her exhibit

Cathy is exceptionally well organized; her keen eye ensures that all is tidy and carefully arranged. Her studio walls are lined in library fashion with floor to ceiling bins to store her prolific output of canvasses as archives for future exhibitions.

The studio with Cathy's tidy wall of racks to store her collection

Cathy’s home reflects the serenity of her devotion to yoga. It is tranquil, spacious, with colors from her art ingeniously woven into her lifestyle. She is an avid fan of my designs and has meticulously amassed an amazing collection of my furniture. Cathy is custodian of my very first design, (a set of dining chairs dating back to 1946) handed down from my parents, to my sister, and ultimately to Cathy, all serendipitously integrated into her art collection. Her home has been featured in Paris Elle Decor and is a showcase for the harmony between art and design.

Cathy Josefowitz's esthetic apartment with her collection of my furnture - the dining chairs were my first design from 1946 - the dining table was designed by my father Illi Kagan at the same time

To see more of Cathy Josefowitz’s work, please go to her website: <http://WWW.cathyjosefowitz.com>

photo cresits: Cathy's apartment: Luxproductions.com - Jean-Francois Jaussaud

Geneva: A Calm, Clean, Attractive City!

Yes No

Not so in the eyes of its citizens… and they are right… it is overrun with foreigners; the citizenry is no longer homogeneously Swiss! But this trend started after World War 1 with the League of Nations, The Genevese just didn’t wake up to this reality until now.

Geneva is an ancient city dating back to Roman times. It is Switzerland’s second most populous city after Zurich. By world population standards, it is insignificant with only 450,000 inhabitants. But size isn’t everything; Geneva is the worldwide center for diplomacy and banking. Streets and restaurants are filled with buttoned-up briefcase carrying, black suited men, It is also home for every major watch manufacturer in the world… watches that unabashedly sell into the hundred of thousand dollars. During my two month residency, I assiduously kept up with the world by reading the International Herald Tribune, which is filled with full page adds for these bombastic male and female adornments. Geneva is rated as the third-highest quality of life city in the world, (only slightly behind Vienna and Zurich) and in a 2011 survey it was ranked as the fourth and fifth most expensive city in the world. (So much for you brief History 101 lesson.)

Turn of the century buildings in Chene Bougeries

The bucolic view from my window - following the seasonal change from fall to winter

The rape of the neighborhood!

One block away from our bucolic, wooded area, a developer has uprooted countless hundred-year old trees and replaced them with five soulless apartment buildings, adding over five hundred cars to the single lane country roads that serve this neighborhood. It is estimated that two thousand new residents will stress the local infrastructure beyond its limits… This mad building craze is happening in every neighborhood of Geneva.

Two interesting modern buildings offering agreeable decorative elements to their simple facades

Simplicity enhanced by a bold use of color - recycled space from an old railroad yard

The city is bulging at its seams; it is being over-built with soulless residential block of Flats adding thousands of new apartment dwellers… A new rail line is being constructed into France to facilitate commuters from as afar away as Annemasse. Traffic is horrendous. Geneva is like a train terminal: a large cul-de-sac with no exit. Traffic enters and leaves via the same routes. The weather is nothing to rave about either, it is surrounded on three sides by mountains and the huge lake creates strange weather patterns. Geneva is often covered in cloud while Lausanne, only 56 KM (36 miles) away is bathed in sunshine, Geneva is hemmed in on three sides by France. Its borders are porous and Border Patrol is minimal at best. Criminal types infiltrate freely and the good old Geneva police department is overwhelmed. Geneva is one of the most crime-ridden cities in the civilized world. Burglary is rampant. But to the casual onlooker, Geneva is a wonderful, calm, functioning city. I am one of those admirers!

Buildings are a uniform 6 stories tall, giving the city a gracious skyline. At night, the colored neon signs on top of the waterfront buildings give a festive sparkling look as they are reflected in the lake. Public transportation is abundant: The Trams are splendid as they silently glide through streets. Buses are either electric or propane propelled; pollution is low compared to other cities. There are lots of motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles that keep automobile traffic under control. Most major streets have designated bicycle lanes and the pick-one-up here – drop it off there, makes biking an easy alternative to vehicular traffic. (This benevolent traffic pattern will rapidly change when thousands of new residential buildings will have gone up in every neighborhood). When it comes to public behavior, everyone is extremely law-abiding. Zebra stripes at crossings are strictly observed, ensuring safety for pedestrians. A yellow traffic light means slow down and come to a stop! Elsewhere in the world it signals hurry-up before it turns red. To enforce this law, cameras are installed at major crossings and woe to you if you go through a yellow light. Expect two tickets in the mail: one for speeding (as they assume you stepped on the gas), and the second for going through the light. An expensive game, which Genevans assiduously avoid.

Because of my walking impairment, I am not able to partake in all of Geneva’s multi-cultural offerings. I can best describe Geneva from the passenger seat of a car! For me Geneva is an architectural experience; especially when the old is compared with the new. Irrational as it may seem for a modeernist, I love Geneva’s elegant turn-of-the-century buildings. They stand in stark contrast to the nondescript contemporary edifices that have spoiled so much of the city’s charm.

The unchanging beauty of the Old Town with it's pristine streets and architecture dating back to th 15th Century

Of course, the old town will never change, it is a gem preserved forever. Ugly industrial development is unavoidable. The artist’s enclave Carouge, is the Greenwich Village of Geneva. It has been considerably disfigured by industrial and commercial development. To avoid congested city traffic, signs to the airport take you through this suburb. But if you leave Geneva via the Lakeside, the road takes you along miles of beautiful Parks that morph into gracious estates, villas and palaces.

My favorite drive into Geneva, Quai Gustave Ador, along the Lake with the French alps in the background and Geneva's elegant buildings lining the shore

Instead of a conquering hero in armour, a bronze riderless horse being led by a young boy, graces the lake.

Pollarded trees frame Geneva's famous Jet d'Eau which rises 140 meters into the air

A gracious residence overlooking Laka Geneva

This is NOT Queen Victoria's monument to Price Albert - it was put up by the grateful Geneves in thanks to Count Brusnwick, who donated the land to the city.

Lakefront buildings line the Lake on both shores – inclement weather is part of the Geneva experience

For the purpose of this article, I took a drive through the city to photograph the old, the good and the horrid. Some common features became apparent: Geneva’s architects have always been enamored with a corner Lot. This is due to fortuitous street layouts and happens throughout the city. Another favorite architectural detail is the oriel or bay window. In the old days, these protuberances afforded an oblique view down a street often to a view of mountains and lake. These oriels have been added to many of Geneva’s modern buildings, to relieve the tedium of the flat fronts, but not always with felicity. Another frequently used element is the round corner facade, whether it faces a railroad yard or just the building opposite, thereby nicely softening the rigid squares of a city block.

Geneva's ubiquitous Bay Windows - old and new

Geneva's Wonderful wedge shapped buildings

Round cornered building new and old are prolific in Geneva

proliferate

When it's not a wedge, rounded corners are very popular - I like both examples: the classic and the modern version

This is not a gas storage facility! It is a modern church by one of Switzerland's top architects: Ugo Brunoni. (See my previous article on Super Stars!)

Isn't it refreshing to find houses of worship that look their part! The Russian church and a synagogue in town

The modernist movement in Geneva is alive and burgeoning, but the process can be painstaking; working through a myriad of regulations and approval boards can take year and years to bring a new design to fruition.

There are many modern buildings that are noteworthy though even more are just “plain Vanilla” with some bordering on monstrosities… (But that is in the eyes of this beholder.)

My favorite Genevoise transport - the elegant Trams that glide silently though the city