T
EDITORIAL
he vast scale of Alex Liberman���s modernist steel beam
sculptures were in marked contrast to the small, crowded
studio of his Connecticut house where he showed me his
paintings. Positioned to invite close examination, I chanced
guessing their order of execution. Alex confirmed my accuracy and invited me to lunch at Le Cirque.
As the creative director of the Conde Nast publishing empire, Alex was an international taste-maker. Over our lunch
he reinforced a sense I had that in all great and satisfying
design and art there is balance, a line around which and
from which the object or work of art derives harmony.
However complex, however simple, however traditional
or modern, one can seek to ascertain and derive contentment from perceiving this balance.
It seemed to me then, and now even more so, that Alex���s
robust sculptures and his intimate paintings were of the
same bent. They both possessed superior artistic balance
honed by years of a wide diversity of creative decisions
and by millennia of human experience.
Now, thirty seven years after those encounters with Alex,
and after thousands of my own creative decisions, I am
happy to assert that, through the genius of the artists, designers, decorators, and others presented in Hyland, the
underlying balance and the excellence that I discussed
with Alex continues.
The ancients of all cultures need not fear, to the extent
that balance guided them, their legacy perseveres.
Christopher
Hyland
