User:Jayjaywink/Jean-Michel Frank

Jean-Michel Frank (28 February 1895 – 8 March 1941) was a French interior designer known for minimalist interiors decorated with plain-lined but sumptuous furniture made of luxury materials, such as shagreen, mica, and intricate straw marquetry. He had an eye for exotic patterns, specifically in veneers, including snake and sharkskin. His work became widely known in the 1930's when select, higher classes demanded his furniture. He is known for being associated with the Art Deco movement.

Early life
Jean-Michel Frank was born in Paris, a son of Léon Frank, a banker, and his wife and cousin, the former Nanette Frank. He was a first cousin of Otto Frank and, therefore, a first cousin, once removed, of the diarist Anne Frank.

Frank was fluent in French, English and German. During school, he was bullied by his classmates for being Jewish; this was during the time in which the Dreyfus Affair divided France.

World War I came with many challenges for the Frank family. First, it disrupted Frank’s original plans to go into the field of law or banking. From 1904, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris and began law school in 1911. However, his two older brothers, Oscar and Georges, were sent off to fight in the war, both having died within two months of each other in 1915. Both of Frank’s parents were German nationals, so they were placed under house arrest. After losing his civil rights and money, Frank’s father was fearful of being taken by the Germans. On November 11, 1915, he committed suicide by jumping from the window of his apartment. Frank’s mother became depressed and eventually died in 1928 after being in a Swiss asylum for several years. Distressed by the deaths he had experienced, Frank suffered from depression throughout his whole life. He also became addicted to drugs, particularly opium.

Career
Frank found himself with a substantial family inheritance, enabling him to travel around Paris from 1920 to 1925. His newfound wealth also allowed him to become acquainted and work with an elite network of people. In Venice he met the cosmopolitan society that gathered around Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Around 1927, Eugenia Errázuriz introduced him to 18th century styles and her own modern, minimalist esthetic, and she became his mentor. Frank never received any formal training or education in the design field.

Frank sought to design spaces that were uncluttered and featured neutral color schemes. Ancient Egypt, Louis XVI, and the Art Deco movement are attributed as being among Frank’s inspirations.

Throughout his career, he had worked with Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Salvador Dali, Emilio Terry, and Christian Berard.

In the 1920's, Frank and Adolphe Chanaux, a Parisian decorator, met and inaugurated a collaboration that launches them into the center of Parisian art life. Frank and Chanaux searched for "balance" and developed a classic expression of spaces. Together, they decorated apartments for Jean-Pierre Guerlain, Marie-Laure de Noailles, and Louis Aragon. During the 1930s, a combination of Art Deco and Modernism, Frank was a teacher for design at the Paris Atelier, now known as Parsons Paris School of Art and Design, where he developed the famous Parsons Table. Frank challenged his students to create a table that would retain its integrity whether sheathed in gold leaf, mica, parchment, or even painted burlap. Thus, the T- square table was developed. This table got its name due to the perpendicular relationship between the leg and the tabletop. Constructed by a Parsons handyman according to the design drawings drawn by Frank's students, the table was first executed in New York for a student exhibition.

In 1932, with Chanaux, he opened a shop at #140 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. This was to be the consecration of ten years of collaboration, when he decorated for Guerlains. His search for lines, curves, and mixing of materials lead him to the Nelson Rockefeller's lavish Fifth Avenue apartment in New York in 1937. Nelson Rockefeller was one of the most legendary and wealthy public figures in the United States at the time. The Rockefeller living room included expensive furnishings, Aubusson rugs, armchairs, and thirteen meters of green and white hand woven silk delivered from France. During the winter of 1939-40, he left France for Argentina.

In Argentina, Jean-Michel Frank worked with his old friend and business associate Ignacio Pirovano on several important private and commercial projects. Jean-Michel Frank kept his private apartment in Buenos Aires on the top floor of the company of which he was the Artistic Director in Argentina, COMTE. This building was located on the corner of Florida Street and Marcelo T. De Alvear Avenue. He also visited many of his clients in Buenos Aires including the Born family whose mansion in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires remains his single most important project. The entire collection is still intact and in-place in precisely the manner that Jean-Michel Frank conceived it. Recently published books shed more light on Frank's work with Comte in Argentina.

A unique collection of home furniture designed by Frank for Hermès in 1924 is considered a classic set of minimalist homeware. The iconic designs – including a sheepskin club chair and parchment-covered dressing table – hold an enduring popularity, and Hermès rereleased many of the items to great fanfare in early 2011.

Sudden death
Throughout his life, Frank was troubled by loss, depression, drug addiction, homophobic taunts and anti-Semitism. On March 8, 1941, while in New York City, he committed suicide at the age of 46. Despite claims that Frank died by throwing himself from the window of the Manhattan apartment he was staying in, he actually overdosed on barbiturates. Maarten van Buuren, Frank’s biographer and a professor of modern literature at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, confirmed this when reading Frank's autopsy report and death certificate. Frank left the following suicide note, written in English: “I do this for no reason but ill health. I ask all my friends who have been so good to me to forgive me. I thank them deeply for trying to help me, but I have no strength to go on. I am too ill.” His personal possessions were left in his apartment in Buenos Aires.

Lasting impact
Today, Frank is recognized by leading designers around the world as one of the greatest sources of inspiration to many present-day designs. His works are highly sought after by leading collectors worldwide. Many of the premier auction houses offer his pieces, and prices are often in excess of 200,000 EUR. An important exhibition was mounted towards the end of 2010 at a leading gallery in New York's SoHo. This exhibition highlighted Frank's work with Comte in Argentina.