Reserve Directions Call

ART & DESIGN

Art is at the heart of the building, with The Audley acting as a showcase for extraordinary and important works alongside specially commissioned site-specific art interventions created by Hauser & Wirth’s roster of globally celebrated artists. This includes Phyllida Barlow in The Audley Public House, Rashid Johnson in Mount St. Restaurant and Anj Smith in the Games Room turret.

Art & design continue to integrate throughout the space, from the table lamps to the dining chairs, cabinets to chandeliers.

In addition to this, over 200 pieces of art feature throughout Mount St. Restaurant & Rooms, including works by Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Lucian Freud, Philip Guston, Peter Fischli and David Weiss.

Watch more

Rashid Johnson (b. 1977)

“Broken Floor”, 2022

Mount St. Restaurant floor

American artist Rashid Johnson has transformed the floor of Mount Street Restaurant into an enveloping site-specific commission, made of exquisite shades of Palladian marble, that allows guests the opportunity to experience an artwork differently – they are able to dine on it, walk on it and dance on it!  The design for the mosaic, titled ‘Broken Floor’, was inspired by his ‘Broken Men’ series, which deconstructs images into fragmented pieces. These works reflect on the current discourse of the human condition, how we are exposed, where we fit into society and gender bias, but they also offer a spiritual journey of how to fit these pieces back together and reconstruct ourselves.

WATCH MORE

Anj Smith (B. 1978)

Octopia 2022

The Games Room

British artist Anj Smith was commissioned to paint the turret of The Games Room and her artwork, ‘Octopia’, responds intuitively to accommodate the architectural character of the space. Exploring subjectivity and subversion, Smith references sensuality and a strong agency from the inside out. The floating organic forms evoke both physical sensation and a psychological inhabitation of a female body. Once seated in the luxurious turret, nothing is quite what it seems, and Smith hopes ‘that the hallucinatory nature of the ceiling might lend itself to making people take leaps of logic or to have conversations they might not otherwise have in this room.’

A round table with glasses and napkins laid out

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943)

Table Lamps

Continuing the integration of art and design throughout the restaurant, the table lamps are inspired by the iconic 1918 Powder Box by the late Davos-born Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

 

A salt and pepper dispensers on a table

Paul McCarthy (b. 1945)

Salt & Pepper Cruets

The salt and pepper cruets are inspired by American artist Paul McCarthy’s much-discussed ‘Tree’ (2014) sculpture.

Our Collection

The walls are bursting with a collection of artworks including pieces by Lucian Freud “Head of a Girl” (1962) and “A Plate of Prawns” (1958); Andy Warhol “Lobster” (1982), Georgio Morandi “Natura morta” (1946) and Keith Tyson “Still Life with White Carbs” (2011).

Keith Tyson Still Life with White Carbs artwork

Keith Tyson (b. 1969)

“Still life with white carbs”,  2011 

Oil on aluminium 

149 x 149 cm / 58 5/8 x 58 5/8 inches 

Keith Tyson is a Turner Prize winning British Artist who incorporates systems of logic, scientific methodology and chance into his work. Tyson continually challenges what constitutes reality using a wide variety of materials through a multitude of styles, displaying immense artistry and variation. ‘Still Life with White Carbs’ (2011) is inspired by the Dutch 16th Century still life tradition and plays on the idea of symbolism with a candid humour. In the original vanitas paintings, objects such as skulls or decaying fruit would symbolise the inevitability of death, while items from instruments to jewels would reflect what brought pleasure during life. In Tyson’s photorealist ‘Still Life with White Carbs’ where we might expect to see an abundance of fruits, flowers, or meat we are met with pies, breads, chips, and pastries. These often processed foods from around the world reflect on our modern global society, our consumerism, our reliance on fast food, our health and our wealth, or lack thereof. 

DAVID HOCKNEY ‘iPad drawing 'No. 643'’, 2011. iPad drawing printed in colours

David Hockney (b. 1937)

“iPad drawing ‘No. 643’’, 2011

15/25

81.5 x 61 cm / 32 1/8 x 24 inches

‘iPad drawing ‘No. 643’’ (2011) is an early example of David Hockney’s digital drawings. Hockney began experimenting with the Brushes app on his iPhone in 2007, later moving onto increasingly complex and detailed digital drawings with the introduction of the iPad into his practice in 2010. Reflecting on the immediacy and new possibilities of this technology, Hockney says, ‘I know a lot about drawings and paintings, I’ve spent sixty years doing them. But this is new because of the layers, and because you can go back to them. You can’t do that on paper or canvas.’ With its vivid palette of bright emerald, saffron, tangerine and teal, ‘No. 643’ depicts a classic still life composition, rendered in a distinctly modern medium. Full and juicy oranges are shaded by a luminous neon light, whilst dots enabled by the iPad stylus create shadows that recall both digital pixelation and nineteenth century Pointillism. Reflecting on the ways in which digital technology has reinvigorated his practice, Hockney stated: ‘Picasso would have gone mad with this. So would Van Gogh. I don’t know an artist who wouldn’t actually’.

GEORGE CONDO, (b.1957) ‘Female Drinker’, 2024. Mount St Restaurant Art

George Condo (b. 1957)

“Female Drinker”, 2024

Crayon and coloured pencil with wash on paper

76.2 x 55.9 cm / 30 x 22 inches

‘Female Drinker’ (2024) is characteristic of George Condo’s ability to reimagine, reconfigure and transform art historical references. Its depiction of the seated female nude recalls the long history of this motif in European painting, conversing with a historic, formal tradition that traces from Renoir, Degas and Cezanne through to Picasso and Braque. ‘Female Drinker’ exhibits an unsettling multiplicity for which the artist is renowned. ‘Reconfiguration has played an enormous role in my own paintings,’ Condo said of his work, which radicalises historical techniques and subject matter by introducing contemporary characters and images from the artist’s imagination. His image of the ‘Female Drinker’ is fractured in this way; above the female subject’s neck, two heads loom, one painted and one drawn in shadow, which coalesce to form a psychological portrait of the sitter. ‘People have more than one personality,’ Condo has said of his portraits. ‘All personalities being seen simultaneously, and all painterly styles being applied simultaneously’.

A painting of a plate of shrimps

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) 

“A plate of prawns”,  1958 

Oil on canvas 

22.2 x 26.9 cm / 8 3/4 x 10 5/8 inches 

Lucian Freud’s ‘A Plate of Prawns’ (1958) once graced the walls of Barney ‘BJ’ Eastwood, an infamous boxing promoter and manager of six world champion boxers, who Freud was acquainted with. Painted on a visit to Freud’s friend Lady Jane Willoughby at her estate in the Scottish Highlands, ‘A Plate of Prawns’ brings the same directness seen in Freud’s portraiture to this still life. The heaped prawns, encircled by the grey shadow of the plate and yellow tablecloth are painted with an uncompromising exactitude. Each prawn is savoured as an individual. Visceral shades of coral, ivory and scarlet glint through the translucent shells much like the subtle fleshy application of paint we are so accustomed to seeing in Freud’s masterful figurative paintings. 

FRANK BOWLING Mount St Restaurant Art

Frank Bowling (b. 1934)

“Shallowtrench”, 2014

Acrylic on collaged canvas with marouflage

109.5 x 188 cm / 43 1/8 x 74 inches

Poured, flicked, spattered, smoothed and pooling paint characterise the surface of Frank Bowling’s ‘Shallowtrench’ (2014). Thinly applied in some places, and wrought in thick impasto in others, ‘Shallowtrench’ is a powerful example of Bowling’s fascination with the materiality of his chosen medium. Embodying the artist’s innovative and experimental ethos, ‘Shallowtrench’ is ambitious in both scale and scope: it presents a joyful study in the expansive possibilities of colour and paint.

Appearing panel-like, the fold lines and stitch-like staple marks draw the eye meditatively into its horizontal planes; neon pink and forest greens shimmer across a canvas that is deepened by a poured area of dark red paint. The horizontal crease at this point of the canvas is a remnant of how the 3m roll of canvas was stored and transported by Frank from the art supplies shop in central London, to his studio.

The title ‘Shallowtrench’ is a reference to the system of drainage canals that were used to regulate water in Bowling’s hometown of New Amsterdam in Guyana. These trenches were visible from Bowling’s Variety Store on Main Street, which housed his mother’s dress-making business and the Bowling Family home.

ALEXANDER CALDER (1898 - 1976) ‘Shapes with Butterfly’, 1963

Alexander Calder (1898–1976)

“Shapes with Butterfly”, 1963

Oil on linen

11/46

80.6 x 115.9 cm / 31 3/4 x 45 5/8 inches

Painted in 1963, Calder’s ‘Shapes with Butterfly’ was created during an energetic period in which the artist worked in a secluded studio in Saché, in the Loire Valley, France. Reflecting his lifelong interest in movement, flux and the natural world, ‘Shapes with Butterfly’ presents a tableau of distilled depictions; a black butterfly hovers beneath an opaque sun, whilst organic swirls and shadows suggest a balmy, pastoral scene. As Calder wrote, ‘there is always a feeling of perpetual motion about animals and to draw them successfully this must be borne in mind’. The work bears striking resemblance to many of the sculptures created during this period in Saché, particularly through its combination of Calder’s signature palette of red, yellow, and black with a sense of kinetic movement evoked by the unfurling spiral that sits at its centre. By treading the line between figuration and abstraction, ‘Shapes with Butterfly’ illustrates Calder’s close connection to his close friends, Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian. It was Miró who influenced Calder away from traditional modes of representation and towards a language of Surrealist abstraction, and Mondrian who inspired Calder to reconsider the term ‘abstract’ itself, prompting him to reflect after a visit to Mondrian’s studio, that ‘now, at thirty-two, I wanted to paint and work in the abstract’.

LUCIAN FREUD, (1922-2011) ‘Head of a Girl’, 1962, Mount St Restaurant art

LUCIAN FREUD, (1922–2011)

“Head of a Girl”, 1962

Oil on canvas

81.3 x 71.1 cm / 32 x 28 inches

One of Lucian Freud’s earliest portraits of one of his children, ‘Head of a Girl’ (1962) depicts the artist’s eldest daughter, Annie Freud. Rendered in thick brushstrokes, the painting’s corporeal heft marks a stylistic shift from the precision of Freud’s earlier works, such as those that capture Annie’s mother, Kitty Garman, in the late 1940s. By contrast, in ‘Girl with Kitten’ (1947), every hair is distinct, and even the markings in her irises can be discerned with clarity. This move towards the more freeform style exemplified by ‘Head of a Girl’, was partly inspired by Freud’s close friendship with Francis Bacon, who he described as having ‘talked a great deal about the paint itself…carrying the form and imbuing the paint with this sort of life.’ This change in style is also indebted to Freud’s adoption of the hog-hair paint brush in 1958, a thicker implement that allowed him to create broader strokes. In ‘Head of a Girl’, Freud’s new vitality is evident in the painting’s gestural expressiveness, as well as the swirling pinks, ochres and earth tones that shape and model Annie’s head.

Subodh Gupta (b. 1964)

“Wash before eating”, 2018

Oil paint on bronze, ceramic fountain, brass tap

Unique

60 x 45 x 22 cm / 23 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 8 5/8 inches

Indian artist Subodh Gupta has often woven in food and its accoutrements into his practice – from using tiffin carriers or stainless-steel utensils as a medium; casting potatoes and mangos in bronze; photographing unfinished plates of food from New Delhi to New York, before translating them into photorealist paintings; to curating dinner happenings. Despite the differing methods they are all an exploration that reflects on everyday cultural practices. Gupta’s ‘Tiffin’ and ‘7pm’, both painted in 2013, take a table down view, translating the meals atop stainless steel dishware on display, alongside the domestic rituals associated with them, into symbolic and elegant still lifes. In doing so, Gupta re-establishes the link between traditional artworks of the Western cannon and the wider world of food, which has always been at the centre of the artist’s creative practice and personal biography. He thus explores the effects of cultural translation and dislocation, demonstrating art’s ability to transcend cultural and economic boundaries.

Henri Matisse (1869–1954)

“Éperlans” (Smelts), 1920 (Executed in Étretat)

Oil on canvas

38 x 45.5 cm / 15 x 17 7/8 inches

Henri Matisse’s remarkable and varied career spanned over six decades and within that time he became one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His stylistic innovations, would alter the course of art history. In 1920 Matisse, with his family, spent the summer on the Côte d’Albâtre in Étretat. Étretat was a popular seaside resort and fishing village, whose majestic chalk cliffs and beaches were painted by Eugène Isabey as well as Gustave Courbet and Monet. It was here that Matisse painted the fluid ‘Éperlans’ (1920), surprisingly realist painting, but one that offers daring combinations of patterns and colour. The fish curl across the plate in graceful arabesques, while the cerulean blue contrasts with the vermillion red, which is reflected in the deep umber plate. Within this intimate canvas, playing with the still-life tradition, Matisse achieves a jovial virtuosity of colour and dynamism.

Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938)

“Nu Allongé sur un canapé (Reclining nude on a divan)”,  1916

Oil on canvas

65.3 x 92.3 cm / 25 3/4 x 36 3/8 inches

Growing up in Montmartre, the bohemian quarter of Paris, Suzanne Valadon turned to waitressing, nannying and was even a circus performer to support herself – though a fall from a trapeze led her to model for artists including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Valadon learned swiftly from the painters around her, becoming an artist in her own right and the first self-taught woman to exhibit at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Valadon would often paint friends and family and ‘Nu allonge sur en canape’ (1916) likely depicts Gaby, who worked as the artist’s housekeeper. The unapologetic nude, reclining in a pose reminiscent of Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’, takes on a portrait-like quality. This is seen in the realistic depiction of an imperfect figure, the sensitivity to flesh and self-awareness, which coupled with Valdon’s radiant palette and precise black outlines offers an enchanting truth. 

ANDY WARHOL, (1928-1987) ‘Self-Portrait with Skull’, Mount St Restaurant Art

ANDY WARHOL (1928–1987)

‘Self-Portrait with Skull’, 1978

Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen

40.6 x 33 cm / 16 x 13 inches

Dating back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as well as the still lifes and self-portraiture of seventeenth century Spain and Holland, the skull has functioned as a metaphor for the inevitability of death, epitomising the art-historical genre known as vanitas. In ‘Self-Portrait with Skull’ (1978), Andy Warhol invokes these traditions by presenting death with a banality that is simultaneously absurd and compelling. In so doing, he revisits tropes that were established in his ‘Death and Disaster’ series of the 1960s. A striking example of Warhol’s memento mori pictures, ‘Self-Portrait with Skull’ is part of a broader group of works that address questions of Warhol’s mortality, a topic he returned to with increased urgency following a near death experience and failed assassination attempt in 1968. Here, Warhol stares through a wash of pastel peach and baby blue, the skull perching jauntily like a hat above his head. Warhol’s assistant, Ronnie Cutrone once said that to paint a skull ‘is to paint the portrait of everybody in the world’. Through his serialised repetition of this subject, Warhol desensitises and makes universal the inescapable fact of his own mortality. In his words, ‘The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.’

Curious Rooms

Above Mount St. Restaurant sit a collection of private rooms: four beautifully designed spaces each with its own story and available for private hire: the Italian Rooms, the Swiss Room, the Scottish Room, and the Games Room.

DISCOVER OUR CURIOUS ROOMS

Giorgio De Chirico (1888–1978) 

“La Muse”,  1974 

Oil on paper laid on panel

25.4 x 18.3 cm / 10 x 7 1/4 inches

Location: The Italian Room

Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, turned to the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer to inform his disquieting and dreamlike paintings. ‘La Muse’ (1974) features one of de Chirico’s iconic half mannequin, half Doric column figures in a near empty landscape, with extended shadows and flattened planes in an enigmatic and perplexing scene. The ‘muse’ swathed in classical drapery, was a recurring image in de Chirico’s work and represents the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who were the inspirational goddesses of literature, science and art. Within de Chirico’s Metaphysical composition he offers us no clear narrative – we are set adrift in a part classical, part theatrical landscape of hidden meanings and mysterious signs offering us only uncanny, unanswered questions.

PIPILOTTI RIST, (b. 1962) Ein liebeslebender Hula-Hoop (A Love Life Hula-Hoop

PIPILOTTI RIST (b. 1962)

Ein liebeslebender Hula-Hoop (A Love Life Hula-Hoop), 2022

Video installation, round flatscreen, integrated player, translucent handmade front hood, silent

Diameter: 69 cm wide x 10 cm deep (including front hood). Loop length: 10′ 15″

Location: The Swiss Room

‘Ein liebeslebender Hula-Hoop (A Love Life Hula-Hoop)’ (2022) is a potent example of Pipilotti Rist’s unique ability to create dreamlike spaces that draw viewers into fantasy worlds. Composed of saturated colours, swirling glitter resin and shifting globules that move slowly across a rounded flatscreen, ‘Ein liebeslebender Hula-Hoop’ seamlessly combines digital and analogue forms to create a hybrid art object. The slow caress of Rist’s hypnotic and psychedelic rainbow is coupled with its lollipop-like composition, forming a curious and childlike object of desire. Peter Schjeldahl has described Rist as an “evangelist of happiness”, whilst she herself has said that as humans we are all “permanently juicy machines”. For Rist, showing vulnerability is a sign of strength from which she draws much of her inspiration. Through its dreamy and guileless palette, tactile form and the lack of a clear or obvious narrative, ‘Ein liebeslebender Hula-Hoop’ carefully illustrates this approach.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, (b. 1949)

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ (b. 1949)

Allyse Ishino, San Diego, California, 2004/2021

Archival pigment print

1/8

3 x 110.8 x 3.8 cm

Location: The Games Room

This joyful portrait of American gymnast Allyse Ishino captures the athlete in a moment of playful respite before the summer Olympics in Athens. Taken on assignment for Vogue, Ishino’s portrait was included in a feature about athletes competing for a spot on the US gymnastics team. Ishino, who was then the Pacific Alliance all-round champion, went on to place as an alternate for the 2004 Olympic team.

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, (1888-1978) ‘Trovatore’, 1953, Oil on canvas

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (1888–1978)

‘Trovatore’, 1953

Oil on canvas

60 x 80 cm / 23 5/8 x 31 1/2 inches

Location: The Italian Room

Painted in 1953, Giorgio de Chirico’s ‘Trovatore’ depicts a faceless automaton standing against a heavy emerald sky, flanked by elongated shadows and a Renaissance loggia. Its body, bound to a golden stake, recalls depictions of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Italian Renaissance painters such as Antonello da Messina and Andrea Mantegna. The uncanny wooden figure at the centre of ‘Traovatore’ is most likely inspired by the wandering poet or ‘troubadour’ of Nietzsche’s 1882 text, ‘The Gay Science’. Here he stands amidst a deserted and desolate landscape, a reprisal of one of de Chirico’s most renowned works, ‘Il Trovatore’ (1917), which was created at the height of the artist’s Metaphysical period. By repeating and referring to both the compositions of Old Masters and de Chirico’s own work, ‘Trovatore’ (1953) illustrates a practice of self-reflexiveness that was groundbreaking in its time. Challenging the modernist drive for authenticity, it prefigured Pop Art’s penchant for serialisation and reconfiguration as a means of understanding the visual zeitgeist. Andy Warhol was particularly drawn to de Chirico’s work, stating that, ‘de Chirico repeated the same images throughout his life…because he liked it and viewed repetition as a way of expressing himself. This is probably what we have in common’.

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980) a) ‘Landscape’, 2023, Soft pastel on linen

NICOLAS PARTY (b. 1980)

“Landscape”, 2023

Soft pastel on linen

186.1 x 156.8 cm / 73 1/4 x 61 3/4 inches

Location: The Swiss Room

With its pale pink sunlit sky, leaning umbrella pines and elongated, spindly cypress trees, Nicolas Party’s ‘Landscape’ (2023) provides an otherworldly rendition of a traditional subject matter. Born in Lausanne, Party spent his childhood surrounded by Switzerland’s idyllic Alpine scenery, which sparked a lifelong fascination with natural landscapes. Similarly, he has retained an enduring interest in the history of landscape painting, particularly artists such as Ferdinand Hodler and Georgia O’Keefe who carefully straddled the boundary between abstraction and figuration. In ‘Landscape’, Party evokes many of the tensions he is known for; his subject is both familiar and uncanny, traditional and new. Layered, contrasting colours are deployed with great precision to produce depth; resulting in a composition that appears almost like a stage set, dramatically lit and symmetrical. Discussing his approach to landscape painting, Party noted, ‘When I paint a landscape, I’m trying to find the moment where an element that is recognisable … becomes a shape’.

ROXY IN THE BOX (b. 1967) ‘Campare d'arte’, 2024, Lightbox

ROXY IN THE BOX (b. 1967)

“Campare d’arte”, 2024

Lightbox

35 x 70 cm / 13 3/4 x 27 1/2 inches

Location: The Italian Room

Part of a series of lightboxes that irreverently subvert the iconography of consumer brands such as Martini, Starbucks and Nutella, ‘Campare d’Arte’ (2024) is firmly rooted in the Pop Art tradition. By invoking the font, format, colours and lettering of the iconic and nostalgic Italian liqueur brand, Campari, Roxy in the box pairs familiar visual cues with the unexpected through word play. Riffing on the phrase ‘compare d’arte’, or ‘art lover’, she poses the question as to whether greater value is placed on art, or on the brands and products that have come to populate our world. Despite its glamorous associations and joyful aesthetic, ‘Campare d’Arte’ illustrates Roxy in the box’s desire to go, via modern culture, ‘beyond the Pop Art’, and into, what she describes as ‘the reflection, the individual and his troubles, his suffering and his loneliness.’

Wooden dining table with chairs, with a painting at the back

(Giorgio) Domenico Dupra (1689–1770)

“Prince Charles Edward Stewart (‘The Young Pretender’ (1720-1788)”,  1740

Oil on canvas in 18th century (probably original)

French frame

82 x 66 cm / 32 1/4 x 26 inches

Location: The Scottish Room

Sitting proudly in the Scottish Rooms is an important portrait of Charles Edward Stuart, also known as ‘the Young Pretender’ or ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. Painted by celebrated Italian court artist Domenico Dupra in 1740, the charismatic portrait may have been commissioned by his father James to disseminate the image of the young figurehead and inspire his Jacobite followers. ‘Bonnie Prince Charles’ conspicuously displays the Order of the Thistle woven in gold onto his sleeve, a Garter sash, and an elaborate St. Andrew badge. Standing defiantly, hand on hip, the Prince is set against a landscape, no doubt as a reminder of the lands for which he was fighting. It is thought this image was copied by numerous engravers and widely circulated to build support for a restored Stuart monarchy.