Words Stephen Greco Photographs Chris Mottalini
Originally published in No 13
The single-story Stillman II house, featuring white stucco above walls made from local stone, was built in 1966 for Rufus and Leslie Stillman in Marcel Breuer’s signature style: a strong modernist statement in Connecticut’s rural environment.
It makes sense that a pioneering modernist architect like Marcel Breuer should have been at the center of a group of affluent, left-wing intellectuals in the conservative Litchfield, Connecticut, of the 1960s — a group that was challenging established social mores with pastimes like nudism, wife-swapping, and Communism. Modernist design, at its core, was always more than the next fad in the parade of Western visual styles.
It was created early in the 20th century to sweep away centuries of obsolete norms, to rethink everything (as far as our bodies were concerned) about what humans needed now: to live in, to wear, to eat off, and to sit on. Indeed, some of 20th-century architecture’s most respected pathfinders were also notorious womanizers — including Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Frank Lloyd Wright
Breuer used the same unusual window treatment for the Whitney Museum, completed the same year.
For those who had the stamina for it, modernism was sexy — an exciting parallel to the era’s sped-up transportation and communications, which could also impart a feeling of buoyancy. And no one was more buoyant than the Litchfield bunch, which included not only Breuer but his chief American promoter, industrialist Rufus Cole Stillman, and several of their forward-looking friends, for whom the architect built several masterpiece houses. A documentary film entitled Breuer’s Bohemia looks thoughtfully at the architect’s experimental post-war house designs in the U.S. and the people who commissioned them. Written and directed by James Crump — known for, among other films, Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe (2007) and Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco (2017) — and produced by Crump’s partner, art historian, author, and collector Ronnie Sassoon, the film premiered in June ‘21 at the Provincetown International Film Festival. A companion book of the same name was released in September by the Monacelli Press and Phaidon.
The courtyard, adjacent to the living / dining area, features a picnic table and bench by Breuer. The two white stools, a gift from the Italian architect Massimiliano Locatelli. Two wire mesh HiTech lounge chairs, 2005, by Piero Lissoni for Living Divani, were left behind by the previous owners.
Inspiration for the film came partly from the 1965 Breuer house they happen to live in, say Crump and Sassoon: an elegant yet elemental, stone-and-stucco Litchfield house known as “Stillman II,” meaning the second of three homes originally built for Rufus Stillman, which the filmmakers acquired five years ago. “Stillman was an enforcer of modernism,” says Crump, a “partisan of change” whose obsession was building “in his own time.”
In the living area, a leather DS-600 Non Stop sofa, 1972, by Ueli Berger, Eleanore Peduzzi-Riva and Heinz Ulrich for de Sede. Round ‘60s nesting tables by Gianfranco Frattini for Cassina. On the wall, Mica, 1966, by Michelangelo Pistoletto. Coffee table by Gary John Neville, 1971. Upon it is a ‘70s marble bowl from Angelo Mangiarotti and a Biagio Table Lamp, 1968, by Tobia Scarpa for Flos. In the foreground, Fachiro beanbag chair, 1969, by Marzio Cecchi.
Since recently selling their loft in New York’s SoHo, Crump and Sassoon have made the Breuer house their base of operations and — along with Richard Neutra’s sleek, 1959 Singleton house on a hillside in Bel Air, California, which Sassoon bought and renovated with late husband Vidal Sassoon — a home for their collection of art from the Arte Povera movement and Zero group. Included in the collection are artworks by Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, and Alighiero Boetti, and midcentury designs by Carlo Scarpa, Frederick Kiesler, Gae Aulenti, and others.
In addition, the kitchen of their Breuer house, from which the filmmakers spoke to us recently by Zoom (with the help of their Shih Tzu, Monkey), is the epicenter of what Crump calls “Ronnie’s epicurean feats,” which draw on the broad array of purveyors from the Hudson Valley, Litchfield County, and the Berkshire Mountains.
The 1970s dining table, from the Eros series by Angelo Mangiarotti, is paired with “Africa” chairs, 1975, by Tobia and Afra Scarpa.
STEPHEN GRECO: How did you find this marvelous house?
RONNIE SASSOON: I first saw it in World of Interiors magazine, ten or twelve years ago, and I fell in love with it. I'm partial to a U-shaped house, because I think that it feels like the house is wrapping its arms around you.
I kind of became obsessed with it but I knew that whoever owned it would never, ever, sell. I mentioned this to a friend of mine who spends all his time looking at houses, and it was midnight one night — James was asleep — when I got a text from my friend saying that the house was coming on the market.
SG: It was a sign.
RS: I woke up James and said, "We have to rent a car, because we're driving to Litchfield, Connecticut, wherever in the world that is. We drove in four feet of snow. "We have to be prepared,” I said, “because houses from late '50s and early '60s are sometimes chopped up into a million little rooms.” We like light. Then we walked in, and here is this sweeping room. We just looked at each other and said, "Okay, that's it." We called the real estate agent and bought it immediately.
In the guest room, a 1970s Angelo Mangiarotti marble desk from the Eros series and a Carlo Scarpa chair for Gavina, 1974. A Boalum light by Frattini and Castiglioni and three vessels by Renato Bassoli from the 1950s. On the wall, Un ovale nero, 1970, by Turi Simeti.
SG: It’s sad, isn’t it, the way some modernist houses, designed to be open, were subsequently chopped up.
RS: I think a lot of the chopping up was about privacy. In Breuer's case, he did bi-nuclear houses, so he actually kept the children on one side of the house, and then the parents on the other side of the house. What do you think, James?
The Arco floor lamp, by brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni for Flos, sits next to Superstudio’s Bazaar Sofa, 1968, made by Giovanetti.
JAMES CRUMP: I think the people who commissioned these houses in this group of Breuer commissions were more progressive-minded people — iconoclasts. The men were coming back from the war. They had an idea, possibly, about the future, and they wanted something new, more open — some new way of living.
The screening room features Autoritratto, 1962, by Michelangelo Pistoletto, along with Piero Gilardi’s Pave Piuma tile panel by Gufram, 1965.
SG: Did you see this kind of cutting up in your Neutra home in California?
RS: We had to remove a couple of walls just to let the house breathe, and just to see the view. I mean, people had the most magnificent view in all of Los Angeles and you couldn't see it.
SG: In the film you depict a certain cultural friction between the Litchfielders who built modern houses and those who wanted the area to have only the traditional architecture. What’s Litchfield like today?
RS: Well, now they've kind of embraced the Breuer houses, because they're sort of vintage and historic. But they did not embrace them then. I mean, you heard [Rufus’s daughter] Katherine Stillman, in the film, saying that when she went to school the kids would tell her that she lived in a chicken shack, because that’s what they overheard their parents say.
In the Master bedroom, Lullaby Bed, 1970, with matching side tables by Luigi Massoni.
SG: You have several residences. How do you use this house?
JC: First and foremost, it's a place for us to recharge from the city, to come and be closer to nature, and to have this open environment. And to become creative as well — to get back to interiority. We've actually done projects here — work on films or writing projects. It's been a very productive space. But we also entertain here. Friends come frequently from the city, or from around here or the Berkshires.
SG: Since you collect, I’m wondering how much of your collection you live with.
RS: We started out not having a huge amount of our collection here — just a few pieces that we loved. The bulk of the collection was in New York and Los Angeles. Then, as the fires got worse and worse in L.A., I started getting really nervous about the collection. At a certain point, James and I just made the decision to send things back to New York and Connecticut, where we felt it was safer.
SG: And now you’re selling your New York loft, so what will happen with the collection?
RS: We're not completely sure. I mean, the Neutra house is small. This house is small. And James and I are both minimalists, so we're not interested in cramming things into a space. I don't think it's fair to the objects, and I don't think it's fair to the space. We both believe that objects have energy, and we don’t store anything. So, we’re working on that.
In the master bedroom, Rock Lamps, 1969, by Andre Cazenave, next to late ‘60s Tube Chair by Joe Colombo for Flexform. On wall, La Fine di Dio, 1964, by Lucia Fontana.
SG: How do the pieces in your collection, their concepts, their materials, etc., work with the architecture here?
RS: I think the two definitely go hand-in-hand. When I first moved to Los Angeles, Vidal and I bought a Hal Levitt house, it was almost all steel and glass. I just felt that there was so much going on outside the house — because of all the glass, everywhere you looked, it was a genre scene — I couldn't imagine putting anything else in the house but something super sculptural, three-dimensional, and something super minimal.
JC: Certainly in this house, Stillman II. It's called Breuer's most Mediterranean in its design and materials … you know, the fieldstone masonry, the stucco… They work so well with the idea of Arte Povera.
Rufus Stillman lost part of his left leg in World War II. This was the “spy” window he peered through to see which unexpected person was knocking at the front door.
SG: One thing I’m wondering about the film is how you got people to be so frank about intimate details of their lives. Did you have to do a lot of convincing? Were they eager to talk?
JC: Some of the participants were very eager, but some were more reticent. You just have to be tenacious. And then once you get hold of them, you have to bring them in and convince them that this is a really important project we want them to participate in. We felt very fortunate that we were able to interview Katherine Stillman, for instance, before she died.
SG: She seemed so measured and philosophical — accepting of all that had happened…
JC: She was very open, very forthcoming. There were others who were more guarded, I think, and perhaps had a more challenging time growing up in that kind of residence than possibly Katherine did.
SG: I must say I wondered if the women experienced that whole environment differently from the men: one moment, it’s nudity and wife-swapping; the next, it’s a shirtwaist and pearls.
RS: Katherine said, "My mother hated parties. She didn't like to cook, particularly. She did it all for my father." And if the father wanted her to go topless around the house, she went topless around the house. If her husband wanted her to have a foursome with somebody else, or decided he wanted to be with a man's wife, he would say, "Why don't you go and be with her husband?" So, I think it was really all about the women just trying to please their husbands.
SG: Exactly. I kept wondering who gets to say when and how these things happen.
RS: Well, I think we have to remember that women did not have a lot of rights. They couldn’t even get credit at the bank at that time. I remember trying to get credit in my twenties, and the bank said, "You have to either have your husband's signature or your father's signature.”
SG: Lord!
RS: I mean, can you even imagine?
SG: The film weaves together so many interesting themes. How are you positioning it for distribution?
The pool.
JC: We were never trying to produce a kind of academic film about architecture. We wanted something that was really rich, gave you some information, gave you the idea behind the architecture, gave you a sense of the sociopolitical context. And the drive of these people, the kind of ambition they had, and the kinds of futuristic thinking on their parts, in commissioning Marcel Breuer. Though the Breuer scholarship and literature is immense, this is actually a chapter that's little known and overlooked.
RS: And I think what really drove us is, we felt that we were in a unique and privileged position to have access to the people we interviewed, and to know about these back stories, which most people don't know about. As filmmakers, we felt compelled to share that.
To learn more, visit Breuer's Bohemia.
Selection: Art, Architecture and Design from the Collection of Ronnie Sassoon is published by August Editions.
Stephen Greco wrote the live shows Inside Risk: Shadows of Medellin and Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood. His most recent novel Now and Yesterday, was published by Kensington.
Chris Mottalini shoots for AD France, Elle Decor, August Journal and Casa Vogue, among others.