Esther, cyanotype creator 🇫🇷

♥ Do you remember your first aesthetic shock?
When I noticed my mother’s paintings hanging in the museum, it took me a little longer as a child to understand how they got there and that someone else had painted them. I was a little shocked at first. Today, my mother paints her own beautiful pictures.

Another aesthetic shock that I remember well, but I was already older, was when I was lying on the floor in the turbine hall of the Modern Tate in London and was looking with many other people at the giant installed sun of Olafur Eliasson’s “weather project”. Mirrors were attached to the ceiling of the gigantic hall, so that one could observe simultaneously one’s own perception process and the behavior of others. Quite impressive! And just then, a parade of about 100 Santas entered. I had to make up my mind aesthetically.

♥ The artist you would like to meet? What would you say to her?
Cindy Sherman. It’s amazing how she creates, for example in her “film stills,” portraits composed in minute detail and how she manages to create stereotypes that make the viewer swear they’ve seen the film she’s staging. I would like to know more about the identity of a woman who manages to slip so precisely into roles and to challenge clichés.

♥ What is your favorite color? What does it inspire you?
Drum roll …. TATATATA: “Berlinblau” the blue of Berlin! (surprise). I also really like lemon yellow and mint green. But of course, the context is important. I would not like to have a lemon yellow car.

♥ Which museum gives you the greatest emotion? Why?
I think the Tate St Ives in Cornwall is beautiful. It’s small but great and the location is amazing with a view of the sea.

♥ What piece of art would you buy without hesitation if you had an unlimited budget?
I would ask Chiharu Shiota to decorate a room in my house. I find her installations so poetic, the way she weaves filigree webs through space and around objects from simple wool, and the way she creates such strong emotions and meanings in such a simple way.

But if I really had an unlimited budget, I would of course hit it even harder. I would definitely have to add a large Rothko. And since I’m on a shopping spree, I’d also like to have Polke’s “Apparition of the Virgin”!

♥ In which city do you feel happiest? Why or why not? Share your 3 favorite addresses.
Viry-Chatillon (daily happiness)

Cologne (happiness to be at home)

Fontainebleau (happiness at work)

Peratallada (vacation happiness), a small medieval Spanish town, without cars, on the Costa Brava, where an old 24 Kodak color camera would never have been enough, because you have to stop every two meters to take postcard pictures. This is where I’ve been starting my summer vacations for years, in what I consider probably the most beautiful vacation home in the world, whose address I unfortunately can’t reveal, otherwise it will be booked later. But the restaurant El Pati is a good tip.

♥ What book keeps you up all night?
A book that I actually stayed up half the night for is, for example, “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy. Every sentence is so full of images that it’s impossible to sleep.

♥ What are your biggest sources of inspiration?
The best inspirations always come to me when I’m jogging around the lake.

♥ What’s the funkiest thing you’ve done in your life?
Oh boy. There are probably several stories. But night plankton diving in a remote bay on Koh Rong Sanloem Island in Cambodia with my husband was pretty funky; a kind of drug-free intoxication. And the light show continued on the beach, there we were surrounded by fireflies.

♥ What is your definition of happiness?
I have a big candy jar in which we collect the happiest moments throughout the year and review them on New Year’s Eve. On the last few newsletters, there were:

-crocodile game in the wading pool with the whole family

-chain ride with my oldest friend

-horseback riding on the beach in Normandy