A Smashing New Talent

Breaking into the art world has been as smooth as breaking into art-making.

“I hadn’t really shown the work to anybody apart from some friends up until three months ago because I wanted to build up a group of work,” he says. “There was no point in showing somebody two pieces and saying this is the idea. Do you get it?”

One of the friends who had seen the work—de Vries had given her a piece—was Meredith Etherington-Smith, a locomotive of the London art world. Etherington-Smith, in turn, told Kay Saatchi, a curator with an expertise in emerging artists. Saatchi, who had been charged with choosing artists for a show organized by Flora Fairbairn’s Murmur art in Selfridges Wonder Room, took herself off to see de Vries’ work.

Saatchi loved de Vries’ pieces, saw the connection to Dutch still life and plonked him in the show. It opened June 30 and he quickly sold five pieces, with the first going to one of London’s more keenly watched collectors, Anita Zabludowicz.

“It’s gone all so quickly, “ says de Vries, who frequently scours London’s Portobello Road for inspiration. “I mean when we travel we go to flea markets. But Portobello is still the best. Because of England’s history, with China and everything, they have the biggest supply and the best supply of good-quality things. I can buy a beautiful broken Worcester for £10. It’s ridiculous! Because it’s still beautiful.”

For now, de Vries is still keeping his day job, but he plans to devote more time to his art.

By the way, which piece did Zabludowicz buy?

“It’s in a glass dome with a NO NO NO on it,” de Vries says. “It’s a portrait of Amy Winehouse. I found that figure. It was a Samson copy of a Meissen and she was the muse of music, that figure. And she was broken. I thought broken? The muse of music? So I did the whole hairstyle, using the restoration techniques. So it looks like a porcelain hairdo that has always been there. But it hasn’t. And it’s got a little syringe coming out of her arm as well. But it’s nothing horrible. It’s a tribute. I think she’s amazing. But broken!”

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Anthony Haden-Guest writes a weekly column on art collecting for the Financial Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Times (London), and many other publications. He is the author of several books, including True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World. He lives in New York and London.