{"id":129468,"date":"2024-06-27T13:43:12","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T11:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.apartamentomagazine.com\/?p=129468"},"modified":"2025-09-22T17:07:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T15:07:35","slug":"arranging-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.apartamentomagazine.com\/stories\/arranging-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Arranging Things: A conversation between Leonard Koren & Nathalie Du Pasquier"},"content":{"rendered":" \t\t
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\n\t\t\t\tTo access this post, you must purchase Apartamento Membership<\/a><\/span>.\t\t <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":129645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","text_author-apartamento","photo_author-robbie-whitehead","membership-content","access-restricted"],"acf":{"link_archive":false,"archive_story":null,"archive_bg":"#F5F4EE","archive_title_color":"#000000","cover_bg":"#f4f4f4","cover_title_color":"#efe440","body_bg":"#F5F4EE","body_text_color":"#000000","body_captions_color":"#dd0404","related_bg":"#ffffff","related_text_color":"#000000","stories_bg":"#EDECEC","alternative_image":"","hover_image":"","credits":"","title_format":"center","font_size":"big","image_format":"cover","hero_image_mobile":"","video":"","video_excerpt":"","video_format":"cover","content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"quote","quote":"Arranging Things:

A Rhetoric of Object Placement","caption":"A conversation between Leonard Koren & Nathalie Du Pasquier"},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_40_60","content_type_left":"credits","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":null,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":122496,"credit_link_left":{"title":"Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement","url":"https:\/\/www.apartamentomagazine.com\/product\/arranging-things-a-rhetoric-of-object-placement\/","target":""},"content_type_right":"text","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":null,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":"Milan: For decades now, readers have searched for a rare glimpse of Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement<\/i>, a design-world landmark turned instant classic since the book\u2019s 2003 publication and its first, sold-out print run. In Arranging Things<\/i>, American artist and author Leonard Koren offers an original approach to design that frames arrangements as a form of \u2018persuasive communication\u2019. Leonard\u2019s visual journey through the heart of design philosophy applies his own insights to commissioned paintings by artist Nathalie Du Pasquier, a founding member of the renowned Memphis Group. This spring, Apartamento launched a new edition of Arranging Things <\/i>that revives these paintings in an immersive, full-page format, paired with a new foreword by the author, a warm and welcome greeting to longtime fans and new readers alike.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThroughout Arranging Things<\/i>, Leonard invites readers to consider the mundane\u2013from the familiar chrome of an espresso maker to a deck of cards, an off-kilter tablescape, or a spiral of seashells\u2013and understand the resonance behind everyday objects. \u2018Most arrangements are little noticed, yet some stop you in your tracks\u2019, he writes. \u2018A \u201csuccessful\u201d arrangement \u2026 is one that powerfully engages your attention and sustains your interest\u2019. Through Koren\u2019s expert analysis, grounded in a history of rhetoric, Arranging Things<\/i> is not merely a popular book on design; it is a practical manifesto of aesthetic beauty, one for brightening and broadening the ways we understand and arrange our worlds.<\/strong>\r\n\r\nNathalie and Leonard have each been featured in Apartamento<\/i>, in issue #8, Autumn\/Winter 2011-12<\/a> and issue #19, Spring\/Summer 2017<\/a>, respectively. While their practices are quite different, what comes through in their interviews is how they are both fiercely, quietly independent. To open up a window into their creative process, we asked what they were thinking about Arranging Things<\/i> now versus when they first began the project over 20 years ago. The following conversation covers this and all the revered history in between.<\/strong>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129488]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"How did you meet, and how did you come to know each other\u2019s work?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard Koren: Nathalie may have a different recollection of this, but I think I met her the first time around 1983, or possibly \u201884, when I came to Milan to see a new friend, Ettore Sottsass. I met Nathalie and George and a few other people who were working with Ettore. And was this pre Memphis?\r\n\r\nNathalie Du Pasquier: No, no, no. It was at the time of Memphis. I think it was also during the furniture fair, actually, because it was the time that we were in a small apartment, and we were doing a big drawing of a city. I think this is when you came.\r\n\r\nLeonard: And it was summer. I remember because we\u2014\r\n\r\nNathalie: It was September.\r\n\r\nLeonard: Yes. You and I were maybe going to go to the beach, but we didn\u2019t. Instead, I went to a Bob Dylan concert with Barbara and Ettore. So that\u2019s when we met, but when we really connected was Ettore\u2019s 80th birthday party, and it was in a courtyard where Aldo Cibic, the designer, used to live. Something clicked, and mentally we were on the same wavelength with a number of things. I\u2019m not quite sure exactly what all those elements are, but yes, I started following what Nathalie was doing with great interest."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[122411,122409,122415]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"How did the book project come about? How did you choose Nathalie, and how did you first contact her about the project?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: I found myself making a certain kind of book in which I would ask myself about an aesthetic issue. I was curious about certain questions, and then I would proceed to make a book about that. The particular issue of this book was, Why are some people able to arrange things in a way that is extremely evocative, emotionally potent, and visually potent, whereas other people try to do it and can\u2019t?<\/i> I\u2019d been following Nathalie\u2019s work, and I saw she was doing a lot of paintings of arrangements, for want of a better term, paintings of different kinds of objects that were in her studio, so I asked her if she would do this project with me."},{"question":"And what did you think about it at first?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: I think it was in 2001, and it was a year that a lot of sad things were happening in my family, so I was very happy to have a project to focus on. For almost a year, Leonard would send me sentences describing relationships between objects or between things without telling me that they had to be things from my studio. That was something I decided, because he also sent photos of different things just to give me an idea of something like \u2018an important object between two less important things\u2019. It was extremely amusing, and I understood, thanks to these requests by Leonard, that in fact, this is what I had already been doing. I\u2019d never thought of myself like that, you know, I had never thought I was painting still lifes. It\u2019s later that I understood this is what I did."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129475,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129476,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129477,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129614,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"So sometimes it was photographs, and sometimes it was sentences. Were they very vague?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Yeah, I think with the photographs\u2014I understood quite early on, and it was quite clear to me, having published a magazine and art directed it and dealing with artists versus illustrators, that Nathalie was not an illustrator. And so, I wanted to present her with food for the imagination, but not in an offensive way. I didn\u2019t give her precise instructions, but sometimes the photographs were included because I couldn\u2019t describe it that well myself. So that was a kind of auxiliary element to help with my communication to her.\r\n\r\nNathalie: So, I would receive these yellow envelopes where there was the description of the relationship that had to be between the objects and then inside some information, some further information you would provide."},{"question":"Do they exist anywhere?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: I can show you because Leonard did an exhibition in Brussels at La Loge, which is an ex-Masonic lodge where they organise exhibitions. They did an exhibition and a talk with Leonard that was about five years ago, and I couldn\u2019t be there, but I made a little book for the occasion, one of my little publications where I explained all that and included photos of the paintings that we decided not to put\u2014that you<\/i> decided not to put in the book."},{"question":"We would love to see it. I was just imagining email, but it seems a lot more beautiful than it was actually a physical piece of mail that you would open.<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: It was quite physical. Yeah. It was not very much about email.\r\n\r\nLeonard:\u00a0There was an email component in that I was living in San Francisco at the time, and Nathalie is in Milan, so there was a nine-hour time difference. Nathalie would be working all day, and, at the end of the day, she could send me images of what she had worked on. I would see it, and we could discuss it via email because of that time difference.\r\n\r\nNathalie: It was great we had this possibility. For me, it was really the beginning\u2014I\u2019d had the computer for maybe one or two years, so I was not so good at it. I was able to take a photo and put it in the computer. But I was not at all tech."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129618,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129613,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129603,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129615,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"I wanted to ask about one of my favourite drawings. Do either of you remember the prompt for Figure II (pg. 25)?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Yeah, it was \u2018organic and manufactured\u2019."},{"question":"That\u2019s it?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: It surprised me too. I was really enchanted with the way it happened. When information goes from one mind to another mind, the way it gets transformed.\r\n\r\nNathalie: That was super interesting.\r\n\r\nLeonard: It\u2019s beautiful."},{"question":"Were you surprised by her paintings? <\/b>","answer":"Leonard: I was surprised by most of them. I had no idea, and it was like, okay, here\u2019s my wish, and I threw it into the ocean. Then it comes back onto the shore. It was like that."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"full","gallery":[129492]},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129602,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129624,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"And were any of the prompts very surprising to you, or did you surprise yourself?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: I very much like to have a starting point for doing something. Some people don\u2019t like to be told what to do, but, to me, to have a starting point was really interesting. I also immediately understood I wanted to put very personal things in the compositions. One has a photo of George, and others have things that I like, books that I like."},{"question":"I was going to ask about Figure IX (pg. 39) and the stacks of books<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Yeah, this was a very big book painting. This book was by a friend of mine, a poet who had died some years before. I love his poems, so this is also an homage to him in a way. You know, I was really able to put very personal things because they were also fitting."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[122414]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129471]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"Figure XXII (pg. 65) really surprised me with the way the text interacts with it. This was not my immediate favourite, like the endive and the stapler, and it didn\u2019t stand out to me so much until I read the text. You give the options of the figures being a child with a parent or lovers or like a friend needing help. And for me, that just made it.<\/b>\r\n\r\n ","answer":"Leonard: When I look at it right now, it\u2019s very poignant, actually. I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s\u2014\r\n\r\nNathalie: Glue Leaning on Soap<\/i>.\r\n\r\nLeonard: You see, Nathalie has this very practical streak too, which is good, you know, I think it\u2019s something we share. We could both operate in that mode of being very down to earth and straightforward. Yet that level has a lot of resonance; on the one hand, it\u2019s very practical and straightforward. On the other hand, it\u2019s the poetry of life."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129498]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"When you think of your projects, it seems like you kind of expect them to be a success. You see them working.<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Well, ha, yeah, that\u2019s my delusion. I mean, that\u2019s the hope of all of us who create things. In order to have the energy and the confidence to actually do something, you have to believe that it will have value and work in the world. That\u2019s not always the case for me, but that\u2019s\u2014\r\n\r\nNathalie: But it has for you. It has value for you<\/i>, which is the main thing, like for me, this is the only drive I have.\r\n\r\nLeonard: And the other thing is that\u2014I know it seems very much for Nathalie and for me, too\u2014I can\u2019t get to point C without going through point B, which means that I have had to do the books I\u2019ve done in the order I\u2019ve done them and the way I\u2019ve done them to get where I am now. And I don\u2019t understand how that works or why it works, but that\u2019s just the way it is."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129479,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129600,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"video_autoplay","image_size":"regular","video_url":"https:\/\/vz-a6a6cda4-492.b-cdn.net\/18be3d68-c9de-4ce8-ab05-ffc439425689\/play_720p.mp4","video_caption":"Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement.<\/em>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"What about scale? It surprised me that the paintings were all in different mediums and different scales. How did you decide, or did you have any sense of the scale?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: I was surprised, actually.\r\n\r\nNathalie: Because I don\u2019t like to do things smaller than what they are. So, if I have to do a chair, it has to be in the scale of the chair. This is why some are small, because they are made of small objects. If there are some bigger things, like the chairs, then there are bigger paintings.\r\n\r\nLeonard: Interesting, ah, I should have said I needed large animals."},{"question":"An elephant.<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Yes! An elephant."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129619]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"And were these just things that were in season or real flowers?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Everything is real. Everything<\/i> is real. I don\u2019t invent anything. I installed the set in front of me.\r\n\r\nLeonard: She was a realist then."},{"question":"So, depending on what time of year you were receiving the prompt, it would be one flower over another.<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Yeah, though not so many flowers because I am more into objects, but here there are these little spring things which I like."},{"question":"Were they done in this studio?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Yes, and I can show you some of the props if you like."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129601]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"We would love to see and especially photograph a few of them. And do you have a favourite, or has it changed over the years?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Oh, this one [Figure XV, pg. 51], this one we have at our house, at our apartment.\r\n\r\nNathalie: But this is on paper?\r\n\r\nLeonard: No, it\u2019s on canvas. And you know what? I have to say, all the paintings are much more beautiful in real life than the way they are reproduced. This painting is so beautiful in real life, I can\u2019t tell you. Nathalie is an amazing colourist, and it\u2019s something that you don\u2019t think of at first, but then when you actually see the paintings, you realise that there\u2019s a magical thing that she does with colour, that it\u2019s a whole other level. So, we\u2019re talking about the imagery here, we\u2019re talking about the objects, but this colour, it\u2019s not really a bluish\u2014it\u2019s really kind of a grey and a very special grey in real life.\r\n\r\nThe other day I saw this painting [Figure XI, pg. 43] for the first\u2014I\u2019d say it\u2019s for the first time\u2014Nathalie says I\u2019ve seen it before, the one with the objects in the glass jar. When Nathalie shows you this real painting\u2014look at the colours of the actual painting. I mean, it\u2019s just so soothing."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129496]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"But this goes against your scale theory, no? Or was it this big?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: No, I don\u2019t like to do things smaller, but I like to do them bigger because it allows me to be more detailed. I can transform what I see into a sign, which you can\u2019t do if it is very small. I can\u2019t, at least."},{"question":"There\u2019s a note about titles, right? So, no \u2018glue leaning on soap\u2019, but by not including a title for each work you wouldn\u2019t influence\u2014<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: No, no title.\r\n\r\nLeonard: No, that would make them quote-unquote Works of Art. You know, and then it\u2019s a whole other level. I think I addressed that in the Arranging Things<\/i> book. You\u2019d have to\u2014I wanted them to look like arrangements of things done by an artist, but not\u2014\r\n\r\nNathalie: But not art pieces.\r\n\r\nLeonard: Not art pieces in the normal context that we think of as art pieces."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129474,129473]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"Do you have a favourite? <\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: No, I like them all actually. Or this one [Figure VIII, pg. 37], I like it because there is a photo of George. This is a photo, you know, for\u2014"},{"question":"Passports?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Yeah, and then where I have coloured the red. I think it was taken in \u201881 or so, and then with Morgan, George\u2019s son, we were colouring them. I very much liked this little image. I think it was \u2018arranged as a temple\u2019."},{"question":"That was the brief?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Yeah, I might have used the word shrine.\r\n\r\nNathalie: Yeah, yeah, I think that was the word you used."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"full","gallery":[129494]},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129485,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129490,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"Could you tell us a bit more about Dario Villa?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: Dario Villa is a great poet."},{"question":"Do you have a favourite poem?<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: No, I don\u2019t have a specific poem, but I did a book with him, before he passed away, with the black and white ink drawings. I like his work, and he was also a good friend.\r\n\r\nHe passed away in \u201896, but George designed the cover of this book for Feltrinelli, which is an Italian editor. All his work was collected, and this was the anthology."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[122418,122417,122420]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"And you talked too about being inspired by random shop windows in Europe and America. After you were working on this book, did you continue to pay attention to those, or do you have a city that has your favourite?<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: While I was working on this book, I ran into this flower shop in Vienna that I really liked because it was sort of the best business that I\u2019d ever encountered, in the sense that it was very idealistic. They catered to the soul of their customers, you know, their emotional needs. They worked very hard, and they were also artistically very inventive, and they arranged things very interestingly. So, I spent time with them on a book, but other than that, I had satisfied my curiosity about the mechanics of arranging things with this, and so I moved on to other ideas. You know, my most popular book is a book called Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers<\/i>, and people often think, Oh, you must live a wabi-sabi life<\/i>. And, you know. No, not really. I mean, obviously everything that we do as creators is part of who we are or some reference to who we are. But, no, I\u2019m not obsessive about ideas that I\u2019ve done in the past."},{"question":"I imagined it going two ways, either the book is almost a way of exorcising that idea, and you you\u2019re satisfied with where you\u2019ve landed because you\u2019ve done this exercise. It sounds like you had this idea, you put it down on paper, and then you\u2019re able to move on to different ideas.<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Exactly."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129480]},{"acf_fc_layout":"two_blocks","block_sizes":"half_50_50","content_type_left":"image","image_size_left":"regular","image_left":129622,"video_left_url":"","video_caption_left":"","video_left_type":false,"text_left":"","credit_image":null,"credit_link_left":null,"content_type_right":"image","image_size_right":"regular","image_right":129616,"video_right_url":"","video_caption_right":"","video_right_type":false,"text_right":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":[{"question":"Have people come to you with different interpretations? Because some of your interpretations are so very particular.<\/b>","answer":"Leonard: Yeah. Somebody I actually became friends with, she\u2019s a computer engineer who started a company and sold it handsomely to Google. It\u2019s now part of the infrastructure of the Internet. And she wrote and told me that she uses the interpretations to see if she agrees with them or not. She\u2019s very involved with experience design, which is a completely different kind of design. So, she uses it as a paradigm in a different context. Does that answer your question?"},{"question":"Yes, I was wondering if you ever encountered anyone who said, No, that\u2019s not how I interpret this.<\/i><\/b>","answer":"Leonard: She is one of these people. She said, I don\u2019t agree with all of your interpretations<\/i>, but that\u2019s good, because just the paradigm made me think of the way in which we interpret things and how everybody\u2019s interpretation is different and just how various the interpretations could be. You know, my books are a little bit dogmatic in a sense, but they\u2019re meant as kind of springboard for other people.\r\n\r\nNathalie: It\u2019s a dogma in order for other people to negate it, and this is interesting. I mean, I think this should be\u2014a lot of dogmatic things are interesting for that.\r\n\r\nLeonard: When I used to read a book, I would have a dialogue with the author: Oh, no, I don\u2019t agree with that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.<\/i> In fact, I had a friend who used to write notes. Every book he has in his bookshelf is like a running dialogue in the margins with the author of the book."},{"question":"Well, we\u2019d love to see the objects.<\/b>","answer":"Nathalie: We can look, and I think I have some of the works on paper as well."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":[129484]},{"acf_fc_layout":"interview","interview":null},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image_size":"regular","gallery":""}],"related_text":"","issue":"","button_text":""},"yoast_head":"\nArranging Things: A conversation between Leonard Koren & Nathalie Du Pasquier<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Arranging Things, American artist and author Leonard Koren offers an original approach to design that frames arrangements as a form of \u2018persuasive communication\u2019. 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