| Thursday 20 February 2014 |
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Mario Buatta, interior designer to Mariah Carey
Don't talk to Mario Buatta about your great new sofa from Restoration Hardware. He's not a fan of the beige and grey palette that company as well as other modern design firms use. "We're in a grey and beige period," Buatta said in recent phone call from his home in Manhattan. "How can people live in that? There's nothing personal about it."
In his 50-year career as an interior designer to the likes of Mariah Carey, Henry Ford II, Malcolm Forbes and Billy Joel, Buatta has piled on the personality and the color in the homes he has done. He likes to call the looks he creates "undecorated, which means it looks like it wasn't done by a decorator," he said.
Buatta will be talking about his career, which he has captured in a 432-page book called "Mario Buatta: Fifty Years of American Interior Decoration", at a luncheon at the Huntsville Museum of Art on February 25. The luncheon is the first of three events that are part of this year's Museum Gala fundraiser. The other events include a black-tie dinner and live auction on February 27, and a cocktail party and silent auction on March 1. Nashville artist Anne Blair Brown is this year's featured artist.
"I call the book the Buattapedia," Buatta said of his book. "It's almost everything I've ever done." As he worked on the book, which he co-wrote with Emily Evans Eerdmans, Buatta got a good overview of the work he has done. "I was amazed what I did in 1963 still looks good today. That's what people tell me," Buatta said from his warm kitchen where he has spent a lot of time during New York City's cold winter. His rooms "always have a feeling of someone living in them".
He likes to create spaces that are cozy, comfortable, colorful and livable. One of his favorite tips is to "arrange your furniture so its talking to each other before your friends arrive," said Buatta, who has been called the "Prince of Chintz".
In his talk here, Buatta said he will show pictures from the book as well as talk about his inspirations. He also uses a lot of cartoons that he has saved from "The New Yorker" magazine over the years. "I keep it light and comical," Buatta said. "Some decorators get up and act like they're talking about brain surgery. This isn't brain surgery."
Now 78, Buatta's mission is to share his love of decorative history, an interest he developed as a child through the influence of his Aunt Mary, who "loved old things", he said. He began collecting decorative items when he was 11, filling up his bedroom and his family's attic and basement with his finds.
"Young people have no sense of history anymore," Buatta said. "They don't know what they are putting together," something he blames on the fact that interior design schools no longer teach the history of decoration. Fortunately, Buatta said he has seen signs the grey and beige period is beginning to wane. "Patterns are coming back," he said. After all, "how much of a Crate and Barrel catalog look can you do." (AL.com)
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