Why Frank?
When people meet our team and find out nobody is called Frank, the question that usually follows is ‘Why Frank?’ So what’s the story behind our name? ‘Frank and honest?’ Well, yes partly. Our photography does aim to capture interior spaces in the most honest, non contrived way possible. But we didn’t call it Honest Photo, did we? (although that was on the list at one point). Perhaps you could say the name is some sort of double entendre as it was also inspired by the story of one of the most genius designers of the 20th century; Jean-Michel Frank. Maybe not as famous as his namesake Basquiat, but an artist in his own right and perhaps just as influential.
Jean-Michel Frank the self-taught interior decorator, designer and furniture connoisseur was born in Paris in 1895 to the wealthy, well known Frank family. His father was the banker Léon Frank, his cousin was Otto Frank the father of diarist Anne Frank.
After what most would see as a privileged start in life, his fortune sadly began to change. After enrolling in law school at the age of 16 the course was soon disrupted in 1915 by the death of his older brothers Oscar and George, both fighting in World War I. Jean-Michel’s early life was plagued by tragedy and shortly after the death of his brothers, his father Léon committed suicide. Having always been the physically frail younger brother and feeling like he could not achieve what his brothers had, Jean-Michel developed somewhat of an inferiority complex from an early age. Left alone with his mother, Jean-Michel briefly worked for a local businessman but he was always more interested in the intellectual and artistic world.
In a memoir about Frank, the designer Elsa Schiaparelli claims that “He was small in stature and had a terrific and desperate inferiority complex, but limitless wit.”
By 1918 Frank became a close friend to French writer Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and renowned poet Louis Aragon. For both, he improvises himself as a decorator, despite having no formal education that would say so. Frank later goes on to decorate both of their apartments by painting the walls white and curiously arranging the furniture in a neither ordered nor symmetrical manner. Franks favourite colour was white, which he made appear both spare and rich. A refined and minimalist style.
“You can furnish a room very luxuriously by unfurnishing it” is one of Frank’s most famous quotes.
Facilitated by his large inheritance, the early 20’s was a period of much travelling and befriending members of high society in both Paris and Venice. Frank had started to draw the attention of the influential elite who were open to modernity and fascinated by his unique style.
His continued use of creamy whites and non colours became an era defining style after renowned photographer Man Ray captured Frank’s 1926 design of the Charles de Noailles’s hôtel salon (although few people know Man Ray photographed the Noailles’ salon before art had been hung). Frank had quickly risen to be a highly sought after decorator amongst the “tout-Paris”, who were entrusting him with their interiors.
However, throughout his travels and particularly during his time in Italy, Frank was using a lot of cocaine and heroin. Perhaps a form of escapism from the nervous depression he had developed, yet he was still fulfilling important commissions whilst battling with addiction. At various points he checked into clinics for drug addiction and nervous collapse; most urgently in 1928 after his mother Nanette died in a Swiss asylum, where she’d been for several years. A further burden of tragedy he had gathered.
During the 1930’s Frank began designing furniture and went on to open a shop at 140 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with fellow Parisian decorator Adolphe Chanaux. He was also spending his time working alongside students at the Paris Atelier (today known as the Parsons Paris School of Art and Design). This is where he went on to create and develop the now famous Parsons Table. A Modernist table design whose legs are equal in thickness to its top. Frank designed furniture that was beautifully simple, subtle and exquisitely proportioned. His furniture, which was often clad in vellum, bleached leather or shagreen, featured clean lines and served to complement the art collections of his clients.
“I wish one could more often see artists collaborating in arranging houses,” said Frank. “The result would be, at the very least, something of our time, and alive.”
Over time Frank started adding colours to his decorating palette, a shift partially attributable to his collaboration with designer, painter and set designer, Christian ‘Bébé’ Bérard. Throughout the decade he delivered some of the most timeless interiors ever created, notably designing for Elsa Schiaparelli, Nelson Rockefeller and the Guerlain family.
Unfortunately for Frank, whilst at the height of his fame, this period too came crashing to an end. At the start of the Second World War he was forced to flee Paris, being hunted by Hitler’s anti semitic Nazis and their relentless persecution of the Jewish population in Europe. Via Portugal and then Brazil he settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here he took a position as the Artistic Director of Comte, a modernist furniture and decorating company. Among his clients in Argentina were the Born family, whose glamorous mansion remains unchanged to this day, nearly a century later. The Born house is widely regarded as Frank’s most complete vision of his aesthetic, perhaps the pinnacle of his work.
Despite his seemingly continued success away from home, in 1941 at the age of 46, whilst on a trip to New York Frank jumped from a Manhattan building to end his life.
“He was profoundly fragile yet extraordinarily prolific,” says Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier, author of Jean-Michel Frank: L’étrange luxe du rien (The Strange Luxury of Nothingness). “He had enormous energy and accomplished so much, in spite of these terrible forces against him.”
Today Jean-Michel Frank’s designs are amongst the most sought after by collectors, and still provide inspiration for great modern day interior designers. However, we at Frank Photo aren’t solely inspired by the timeless designs that represent Jean-Michel’s legacy; but also his unrelenting perseverance to pursue his passions, his experimental approach to learning and his courage to create multi-dimensional, luxurious interiors through the mixing of styles and cultures.
For much of his career Jean-Michel Frank was known as the maître of understatement, creating calm interiors, allowing volume, form and texture to dictate the spaces.