August 24, 2015Ray Azoulay, proprietor of Obsolete and SLETE Gallery in Los Angeles, scours the globe for perfectly dilapidated objects. Top: A patio behind the shop features Ron Pippin’s African Antelope, 2013; a bird cage, ca. 1890; a trestle table, 1920; and a pair of lion mask urns, 1940.
I am a lone coyote traveling the world with a voracious appetite to buy cool things,” Ray Azoulay says with a sly grin. Azoulay, the founder and owner of Obsolete — the Los Angeles antiques, vintage design and contemporary art gallery that sells gothic vitrines, 17th-century Swedish ceremonial weapons and enormous anatomical models of insects — has become part of an international community of dealers specializing in unique designs and curiosities. “Doing an autopsy on what catches my eye, it’s really about form, materials and patina, no matter what period something comes from,” he explains.“To me, it’s a selfish endeavor, and I trust that all the kooky things I find work together because they’ve all been chosen by the same head.”
That instinct has served Azoulay well. A former Manhattan-based menswear design director for Macy’s and Liz Claiborne, he established Obsolete in 2001 as what he calls “a science experiment,” and he has since cultivated a clientele that includes top architects and interior decorators as well as such A-list celebrity collectors as Barbra Streisand, Diane Keaton, Ellen DeGeneres, filmmaker Marc Forster and artist Takashi Murakami. He has also emerged as something of a design activist, filing a lawsuit against Restoration Hardware in 2011 claiming intentional misrepresentation, false advertising and unfair competition, after Azoulay saw in the mass retailer’s catalog a reproduction of a rare architect’s lamp he had sourced in Europe and sold to an unidentified Restoration Hardware employee. (Restoration Hardware filed a cross-complaint, claiming defamation and trade libel. Both matters were settled out of court.)
Having outgrown a rented shop in Venice, Azoulay recently relocated to his own 6,500-square-foot Culver City building. Transforming it from what he calls a “Cinderella’s-ugly-stepsister office with drop ceilings and cubicles,” he created an open and airy space complete with a back garden filled with his latest obsession — bonsai arrangements. “They’re little forests, worlds unto themselves,” he remarks.
Azoulay’s unerring eye for both decorative objects and fine art is on display with, clockwise from top: Sputnik chandelier, ca. 1960; haberdashery mannequin, ca. 1870; Study of Nénette the Jack Russell, 1927, by Yvonne Dupont; library light, 1950–60; and Moch Figuren mannequin legs, ca. 1950.
So, too, are his painstakingly arranged, “constantly, neurotically curated” vignettes inside the store. On a recent visit, an Eames surfboard coffee table sat between a pair of 19th-century French settees near an antique museum cabinet flanked by 1930s dentist trays mounted to the wall. Elsewhere, a 21st-century lamp illuminated a 17th-century chair. “With 1stdibs, I can sell to a global market,” he explains, “but it’s still important that this place looks amazing.”
Indeed, Azoulay has dedicated a sizable portion of the new showroom to a formal fine-art space for his recently founded SLETE Gallery, which represents 14 living artists. Among them are sculptors Tricia Cline, whose figural works have a Surrealist edge, and Harris Diamant, whose assemblages echo Dada and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; the contemporary expressionist portrait painter Marianne Kolb; and Amanda Demme, who recently photographed the accusers of Bill Cosby for New York magazine and produces studio work with dramatic Old World lighting. He has also used the gallery space to flex his own artistic muscles with an installation piece entitled Walking in Silence, comprising antique artist-model figures from his personal collection. “I elevated them and lit them so you could see their shadows,” he says. “I wanted them to look like a Chanel runway show.”
Azoulay’s flair for display has roots in his previous fashion career in New York, which also afforded him the opportunity to buy and decorate a 1790s stone farmhouse on 40 acres in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which he sold a few years after he relocated to L.A. in 1999. “Out there, you are in the heart of the antiques world,” he says. “I was like a big little boy, buying beautiful old brass microscopes, outdated institutional and industrial objects and rustic furniture. These things were more beautiful to me because they were no longer considered useful or valuable. They were obsolete. And that’s how the store got its name.”
After a tour of his new digs and his latest SLETE Gallery show of Anne Siems paintings depicting children in intricately rendered 19th-century finery, Azoulay sat down with Introspective to discuss his favorite haunts, his thoughts on refinishing furniture and his uncompromising take on contemporary art.
Inside a copper display cabinet, ca. 1920, a wax head, ca. 1900, appears transfixed by a set of Komenium cardboard crystal forms, ca. 1950.
What design books do you look at again and again?
John Pawson’s Minimum is a small handbook of words and images about simplicity in design that has real elegance. Leonard Koren’s Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers is always an inspiration. And I love all of Axel Vervoordt’s books, the way he combines fine art and antiquities is extraordinary.
Which museums do you frequent?
In London, I love the Tate and the converted oil tanks at Tate Modern, which houses their video center. I recently went to the newly reopened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The way they’ve reconstructed it so the light comes into the gallery is brilliant. It’s like seeing all the famous Old Masters and van Goghs for the first time. I also like Deyrolle, in Paris, which isn’t a museum but a taxidermist shop. In Los Angeles, I like the Hammer because it is so accessible. I don’t like big museums. They’re like Home Depot, and I’d rather go to the local hardware store.
When you visit Europe, what do you shop for?
In England, I look at furniture. It’s magnificent the way pieces are made, the beauty of the design and the age of the wood. In France, it’s primitive farm tables and garden pieces. In Belgium, I find industrial pieces. I go to Italy for primitive pieces and some lighting. And Germany is where I find contemporary artists like Goran Djurovic, a Berlin-based painter who does massive, moodily lit, slightly Surrealistic figurative work.
Is contemporary art a good investment?
A lot of contemporary work seems stupid. It’s not interesting or masterful — there is not a lot of craft in in it. The kind of art I admire and show is largely figurative and highly detailed, like the sculptures of Ron Pippin and pencil drawings of Ethan Murrow, the grandson of Edward R. Murrow. I don’t think economics should come into collecting. If there is an artist whose work you like, that’s a smart investment. And if they increase in value, that’s great.
Azoulay believes a little wear and tear is a good thing. Case in point: this fiberglass Greek Revival garden statue, ca. 1910.
How do you size up antiques and vintage items?
Don’t look at the obvious parts. People who are trying to reproduce antiques are obsessed with getting the surfaces that face you correct, so look under the thing. If the back of a mirror had been removed, the glass is probably not original. So I always check the undercarriage of a piece and look at the joinery of drawers. If you see new nails or Phillips-head screws, it’s been worked on, and for me that lessens the value.
Where do you draw the line with refinishing furniture?
We do very little. We don’t do anything to polish metal. If something is corroding and we want it to stop, we use a matte finish Rust-Oleum. For wood, we use Howard products; they add the moisture that time takes away, although I think some primitive things look best dry. And for dried, cracked leather we use Connolly leather cleaner and conditioner, an English product that has been around for years.
What’s the greatest piece you ever purchased?
I have collected hand-carved artist models for years, and they can run from $10,000 to $200,000. When I was in Parma for an antiques fair, dealers in Italy who specialize in these pieces told me they had two figures from an artist’s castle. One was made in the 17th century from pear wood with the most theatrical face and white hands. I thought, I can’t buy them because they’re crazy expensive, but I at least could look and then politely pass. And the minute I saw them, they were so extraordinary, I said, “I’ll take them both.”
TALKING POINTS
Ray Azoulay shares his thoughts on a few choice pieces.
