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Performance Art

Peter Ross Winsome Brown and her daughter, Maud, block out a scene on the Poul Kjærholm coffee table. The red lamp, by Arredoluce, dates from around 1960.

If you’re not paying close attention during the Gothic ﬁlm short Shadows Choose Their Horrors, you might miss the original Charlotte Perriand bench (ca. 1958) in the background, or the Poul Kjærholm table and chairs that the living dead narrowly miss banging their noggins on as they stumble and tumble to the ﬂoor in various stages of disrepair. You might not cotton to the fact that the operating slab upon which the depraved hostess practices necromancy is (in real life) a 14-foot marble banquet table, custom made by the award-winning architectural ﬁrm Shelton, Mindel & Associates. When the cameras aren’t rolling, the table, which occupies the dining room of the ﬁlm’s star and co-writer, Winsome Brown, is surrounded by a set of rare, early Jean Prouvé steel chairs. It comfortably seats 18 but can take 22 in a pinch.

Beyond the double duty of Thanksgiving feasts and art ﬁlms, this remarkable table has also accommodated Shakespeare readings, play rehearsals, collaborative writing projects, and more in the ﬁve years since 20 men hauled it upstairs and assembled it in situ, completing the floor-to-ceiling transformation of Brown’s Tribeca loft. “I’m lucky to have so much space to live in and work in,” says the Toronto-born writer, actress, and director. “I use it as much as possible as a place in which to generate art.”

Brown’s husband, Claude Arpels—scion of the jewelry dynasty Van Cleef & Arpels and currently the managing partner of NettoCollection, a designer baby furniture business—is the visionary behind the showpiece. He’s charmed by Brown’s irreverence about high design; it’s a perfect foil to his own curatorial precision. When they renovated their home in 2001, he chose architects Lee Mindel and partner Peter Shelton for their high-modern sensibility. “One of the key features of modernism,” he says, “is that spaces should have deﬁned functions—not hard wired, but distinct.” Arpels ﬁnds solace and a sense of structure in formalism. Brown likes to challenge it. Asked where she and Tanya Selvaratnam collaborate on their new multimedia theater piece, Quantum Theory Mata Hari, she says, “In the front, on the couch, or at the table, or in the back, there, there or...there—we use laptops.”

Winsome's apartment There’s consensus, however, on the kitchen, which is bright, busy, elaborately well appointed—the literal and ﬁgurative heart of the house. Brown and Arpels love to cook and entertain (he’s currently studying at the French Culinary Institute), and the expansive common spaces—from the classical dining room to the front parlor to the library/living room in the rear of the loft—radiate from the kitchen’s central island. With more than a dozen places to sit, even lounge, in each room, the emphasis is on family, conversation, and company. The couple’s 1 1/2-year-old, Maud, sleeps in a nook off the living room. Brown has held performances there, including an interpretation of a William Carlos Williams short story, directed by David Levine, and acting master classes with André Gregory.

This is, ultimately, a busy, creative home that looks a little like a small museum—and that’s not a paradox but a conceptual triumph. After all, “simplicity,” according to Mindel, “is the most complicated thing to pursue, but when all elements synthesize, they transcend mere enclosure and become an art form.”