By Charles Baran
Take one American agricultural industrialist with a penchant for European art. Throw in an Italian Renaissance inspired mansion. Then add an openly homosexual interior designer. If you think this sounds like the recipe for an episode of HBO’s The Gilded Age, you’re not wrong. It is also, however, part of the rich history of Miami’s legendary Villa Vizcaya, today known officially as Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.
In 1910, James Deering, the youngest son of farm tool conglomerate Deering Harvester’s founder William Deering, set out to build his masterpiece, a seventy-room palatial stone Italianate mansion on one-hundred-eighty magnificently landscaped acres overlooking Biscayne Bay in south Miami. To complete his daunting task, he employed as his “artistic director” and de facto shopping companion, interior decorator and artist, Paul Chalfin, who was well known in society circles of the time for having exquisite taste and refinement. He was also known in the very same society circles for being an openly gay man, a fact that Deering, a progressive individual, had no problem with. In fact, Deering allowed Chalfin to live in a houseboat behind Vizcaya’s main house with his romantic companion at the time, Louis Koons, who also worked as a clerk and assistant to the designer. Together, Deering and Chalfin would repeatedly sail to Europe, purchasing and sending back important 15th through 19th century furniture, architectural elements and objet d’art to furnish a project so vast that it was possible to arrive by ship and disembark in its own backyard Venice inspired mooring. Sadly, Deering only got to enjoy his stunning estate for a brief nine years, from 1916 to 1925, passing away suddenly on an ocean liner headed back to the United States. Chalfin, however, remained involved with Vizcaya and at the behest of Chauncey McCormick, the husband of Marion Deering, one Deering’s two nieces who had inherited the estate, oversaw repairs to the damage suffered to the main house and grounds from the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.
Chalfin, who died in 1959 at a nursing home in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, at the age of 84, would have turned 150 on November 2nd of this year. To celebrate this sesquicentennial and honor the designer’s achievement and contribution to the history and culture of Miami and South Florida, the Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, has commissioned Miami based artist Lauren Shapiro to create an exhibit titled Pastiche. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines pastiche as “a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work.” This is exactly what Shapiro has set out to do. Vizcaya Museum curator, Helena Gomez, explained that in each of the three rooms the artist selected for the exhibit; the Breakfast Room, the Reception Room, and the Enclosed Loggia, Shapiro organically drew from various elements and themes contained in each when developing her colorful sculptures in bold Miami shades of pink, green and blue, thus exploring and playing off the concept of pastiche. Gomez further explained that while Shapiro’s work has traditionally focused on environmental issues, specifically through the lens of the South Florida land and seascape, her nature-based practice ties in nicely with Vizcaya, a building in which coral and other locally sourced materials were originally used in the design. In Gomez’s view, “There was an organic synergy between artist and site.”
This exciting exhibit opened to the public on October 23rd and will remain on view through May 19, 2025. More information on Lauren Shapiro and her work can be found on the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens website, Vizcaya.org, along with admission times and tickets. To further explore the work of this fascinating local artist, visit Lauren Shapiro’s website at LaurenShapiroStudio.com.
