Anthony Baratta and William Diamond do nothing by
half-measures, so even when they launch a "traditional"
interior, the chinoiserie runs wild, the furniture is all curves
and carving, the gilding slathered on; a fine madness only
just contained, with, however, a distinctive method, that
of using a single electric color, often blue, as leitmotif.
Upon beholding their rooms, one wants to shout Stephen
Calloway's
book
title,
Baroque, Baroque with an
exclamation point. Diamond
Baratta manage exquisitely
what Calloway calls "the
culture of excess"; they
are heir to the 20th century
avatars of the Baroque
whose progress—anything
but the plodding pilgrim's—
Calloway charts in his book:
The Sitwells, Cecil Beaton,
Angus McBean and Stephen
Tennant.
In fact, so ebullient are
these
rooms—witness
especially the dining area,
with its lightning flashes of
bright yellow and white slanting across the walls, set
off by huge, spiky gladioli on the mirrored table—that
I must cite a work of depth psychology, Kay Redfield
Jamison's treatise, Exuberance, an exploration of the
minds of successful individuals touched with fire rather
than the irony of our age, enthusiastic creatures, historic
or mythic, who simply go for the gusto, Teddy Roosevelt
and Achilles among them.
HYLAND
