Things are rocky at home. My house is upside down. We get on like a house on fire. I immediately related to the five pretty and witty watercolours that Francesco Clemente painted specially for our cover. Oh, how smug I was, that I finally understood art. From this moment on, I thought, I would no longer be confronted by questions, even by the difficult-to-decipher performance art of Nikhil Chopra, but would instead be instilled with instant intellectual critique. Or so I hoped. When Francesco sent his accompanying artist statement, it came in the form of an ancient Sanskrit text, and I was more clueless than ever. When pushed for more clarity, he emailed from New York (the watercolours were painted there, rather than at his Chennai studio), to explain that the covers depicted the teaching of the Atharva Veda, that “architecture is the leftover of an offering”. My smug buzz killed, I was once again an editor out of his depth. I felt at home.
This is a special issue not only because of our collaboration with the legendary American-Italian artist who was part of the same movement as his friends Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The houses we feature include some of the finest we have ever published: the Brazilian ambassador's residence, an impeccably proportioned Lutyens Delhi bungalow decorated with rare Oscar Niemeyer furniture and a jaw-dropping collection of Greek antiquities, is wildly sophisticated in its mix of art, design and family heirlooms; while Paradise Road founder Shanth Fernando's Colombo townhouse represents a life lived in pursuit of great style, complete with its own three-storey art gallery. Enjoy the issue.
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