Madonna's Manhattan apartment

Photography by Steven Meisel

Madonna for Vogue Italia, 1991

I love to look at people's houses and how they put things together. I have a huge collection of World of Interiors, House and Garden and Elle Decoration. I love any books on interiors and seeing great design from any period, but I especially adore antiques. I think they made things with a quality you rarely see these days.

It would be fantastic to see inside Madonna's houses, especially the ones in Beverly Hills and London.  My friend has been to Madonna's London house.  I was trying to get a description from her but she's not into interiors the way I am so she couldn't describe it very well.  She did say it was amazing though. 

The Blue Scarf, 1930 by Tamara de Lempicka

Madonna and I have very similar tastes in art.  Two artists I've always loved are Tamara de Lempicka and Frida Kahlo.  I have been slowly putting together posts on both artists which I shall put up soon.

My favourite periods for furniture are Victorian, Twenties and Thirties.  I like older furniture too but I can't afford it.  I love Art Deco but prefer the elegant 1920's Queen Anne style deco to the classic simple curves of the Thirties.  My favourite wood is walnut or ebony and I have a thing for armchairs and tub chairs, particularly in velvet with buttoning. 

I found this feature in Architectural Digest on Madonna's New York apartment from 1991.  I really like some of the older pieces, the specialist carpets and the art is great.  Some of the furniture, especially in the sitting room is a bit too classic deco for my taste.

Photography by Steven Meisel, 1991

Madonna's Upper West Side Apartment

From Architectural Digest 1991 by Deborah Gimelson

"What I wanted most was just to love my environment," says Madonna of her apartment in an unassuming brick building in Manhattan's Upper West Side.  Conceived and executed by the creative hand of Christopher Ciccone, her younger brother and most trusted confidant, the apartment is a low-key yet glamorous sanctuary, a place that allows her, once inside, a temporary escape.

Madonna entrusted her brother with the design of her Los Angeles house (she gave him ten days to do it) and never thought of having anyone else envision and execute the New York space.  "Who could I have more in common with than someone I grew up with?" Madonna says of her choice of designer.  "We like the same things, from music to what we eat."  Although Ciccone has no formal training, he designed the stage sets for the Blonde Ambition tour, which was the setting for the documentary Truth or Dare, and he is an artist in his own right.  But he is wholly self-taught in the area of interior design.

Photography by Durston Saylor

Christopher Ciccone in the dining room with one of Madonna's Tamara de Lempicka paintings, Nue a la Colombe, 1930

Ciccone knew early on what he wanted to do.  "I wanted to create a New York apartment.  In Los Angeles the living spaces are big and wide open.  There are loft-like attributes to them, and also the feeling of living in a penthouse. In New York I wanted to make a space for her that was elegant without being weak, peaceful without being boring.  She prefers New York to Los Angeles because when she's here she can relax.  There's a city here - you feel you are with people, living with the rest of the world, not confined to an car.  But it still had to be a place she could feel safe in.  Even though there's a view of Central Park, you don't feel exposed to anything."

Photography by Christopher Ciccone

Madonna, 1991

The apartment, he explains had originally been three separate units. "Madonna and Sean (Penn) bought the first apartment - the living room, dining room, a much much smaller kitchen and two small bedrooms - maybe five or six years ago," he says.  "A second one was purchased after their divorce a couple of years ago, and a third - which constitutes the back sitting room and bathroom - was acquired six months later when the place had been gutted, which of course made it necessary to change the plans."

Ciccone made virtually all the major design decisions, talking with Madonna once a week, while architect Stephen Wang, a partner of the New York firm Procter and Wang, carried them out.  The style that emerged is a classic early Art Deco look.  Ciccone kept as many original details of the 1915 building as possible, such as mouldings and fireplaces, and paid attention to all new minutiae, including the doorknobs and the colour of the screws.  "I wanted to stay away from American Deco and late Deco," he says, because I felt this style was easier to live with and would age well."

Photography by Durston Saylor

In the entrance is a 1930 Fresson print titled Nude by French phtotographer Laure Albin-Guillot and a Pompeian-style klismos chair from the late 19th century.

Photography by Durston Saylor

The vestibule has the original 1915 leaded-glass doors, a second klismos chair and a circa 1790 Irish cobalt-blue-and-white mirror.  The circa 1924 gilt-bronze Süe et Mare chandelier has a bowl signed by Daum.  Rug by Edward Fields.

"The main problem was to make the three apartments feel as though they had always been one.  Working with Stephen Wang, Ciccone got the effect he wanted, especially the hallway, a long barrel-vaulted space that runs from the living and dining rooms down to Madonna's bedroom and dressing room at the end of the apartment.  "A hallway is a very important part of a New York apartment," says Ciccone.  "If you've got one, it means you have lots of room. It's something grand and should be given a certain amount of elegance.  A castle is not a castle without a moat.  A New York apartment should have a great hallway."  There were problems installing the central air conditioning (which Madonna never uses anyway because she prefers open windows) and the lighting, but in this instance Ciccone decided it had to be his way.

Photography by Durston Saylor

Along the hallway are numerous vintage prints including Nude, 1929 by George Platt Lynes and some of a series of nude distortions by André Kertész.

Photography © André Kertész

Distortion number Seventy, 1933.

Prints available to buy from the Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

The spaces are breezily cosy rather than sweeping or grand and the colours subdued, even in the vestibule where a Picasso inspired rug is complemented by a Sue et Mare chandelier and an 18th Century Irish oval mirror.  The living room, where Ciccone left the original moulding, is a comfortable amalgam of dark blues, deep purples and some mossy greens.  Madonna owns four paintings by Tamara de Lempicka, in which female figures are refracted against deep-coloured geometric patterns, and the room reflects that angled elegance.  The sofa was made from photos of Coco Chanel's studio; Mondrian inspired bookshelves, designed by Ciccone when the first apartment was purchased, flank a fireplace; and alabaster sconces cast a soft glow over a Steinway baby grand piano.

Photography by Durston Saylor

In the sitting room Les Deux Bicyclettes, 1944 by Fernand Léger hangs over the living room mantel.  Le Coeur Voilé, 1932 by Dali is framed by Mondrian style bookshelves designed by Ciccone.  The Art Deco pieces - a macassar ebony low table by Jean Pascaud by the sofa, the armchairs at left by Eugéne Printz, two walnut bergeres en gondole, foreground, by Armand Albert Rateau and the circular laquered table by Dominique.

Madonna's art collection, however, is the key to the apartment.  Vintage photographs, mostly of female nudes, including works by André Kertész, look more like a series of abstract shapes than human figures. A Salvador Dali painting depicts a veiled red heart, somehow fitting for this comfortable yet completely stylised environment.  "I get strength from my art - all the paintings I own are powerful," says Madonna.  "As an artist myself, I know what it's like to put your heart and soul into something.  You can feel the presence of another person."

Photography by Durston Saylor

A circa 1930 sideboard by Eugéne Printz features one of his signature design motifs of accordion-folded doors.  Andromeda, 1929 by Tamara de Lempicka and a pair of late Thirties American club chairs are grouped in the living room.

Darlene Lutz, who for five years has advised Madonna on her art collection (which includes two Frida Kahlo paintings that hang in her house in California) and helped shop for many of her furnishings and objects from Paris to Los Angeles, takes it one step further.  "It's no secret that Madonna is an appropriator of images" say Lutz.  "Everything she does tells a story.  She takes the narrative out of the art and puts it into her work. When she was collecting Lempicka, for instance you could see those forms in her videos, as in the one for Express Yourself.  A recent series of portraits of her by Steven Meisel was much like the photographic work of Brassai."

Photography by Steven Meisel

Madonna for Rolling Stone, 1991

Photography by Steven Meisel

Debi Mazar and Madonna in Flesh and Fantasy for Rolling Stone, 1991

Lutz adds "Madonna's collecting is a learning process.  "She's not big on three dimensional work, but sometimes I still show it to her.  We go constantly to exhibitions and to see collections, and that gives me the opportunity to see how she is looking at things, which changes all the tie.  I've never gone out with a checklist of artwork from a certain period.  That has never been my, or Madonna's focus.

The same intimacy is true of the dining room across the vestibule.  The highly burnished Art Deco table was one of the first pieces bought by Penn and Madonna.  The kitchen was even smaller then, so they ate breakfast there, not wanting to eat standing over the stove.

Christopher Ciccone designed a built-in mahogany buffet to complement the circa 1930 dining table and chairs by Jean Pascaud.  On the wall is Nana de Herrera, 1930 by Lempicka.  Chair and silk moiré curtain fabrics by André Bon.

Nana de Herrera, 1929 by Tamara de Lempicka

This painting now hangs in the hall of Madonna's London home

Off the hallway is a guest bedroom, with a central square of recessed lighting almost tracing the perimeter of the bed, and Madonna's office, where Ciccone devised Indian rosewood shelving and a multi-faceted desk that folds open and closed.

Photography by Durston Saylor

"I love the office because I can use my fax machine and look at my Picasso at the same time," says Madonna.

Taking centre stage in Madonna's bedroom is a king-size bed with Ciccone's version of Eugene Printz's accordion folding head and footboards, in front of a series of tied-back curtains.  "The bed is theatrical but subdued, very appropriate to my client" says Ciccone laughing.  "And she wanted yellow in the room, but I didn't exactly want to put lemon on the walls.  I wanted something that glowed in a serene way."  What he found was a shade of yellowish beige that every piece of fabric and every object in the room picks up and reflects.  He devised an oval ceiling light fixutre, also inspired by a Printz design, which lights indirectly, softening the rooms edges.  

Photography by Durston Saylor

The six-sided dressing room ("This is where she hides," says Ciccone), which continues the same colours and has the same oval ceiling lighting.  It features a small vanity table flanked by two closets and built-in drawers.  Over the fireplace is The Young King of the Black Isles, 1906 by Maxfield Parrish, an Art Deco armchair is attributed to Michel Dufet and the dressing table to Paul Follot.  The 1920's rug is by P. Lanconte and the carpet is Edward Fields.

Photography by Durston Sayler

"I didn't want to do an Art Deco kitchen" says Ciccone.  "Stainless steel works better.  There is a huge Sub Zero fridge and the only reason there's a microwave is that Madonna likes to make popcorn."

The kitchen is in direct contrast to the main living areas, a combination of white tile and stainless steel.  Although the majority of the apartment was designed by Ciccone, he says the kitchen was the most "collaborative effort."  One specific request from Madonna; a breakfast nook that was made to resemble a booth in a 1950's diner.  Over this booth, instead of a jukebox, is a 1927 photograph by Jacques-Henri Lartigue of two women called The Rowe Twins.  

Photography by Jacques Henri Lartigue

The Rowe Twins, 1929

The space is useful but small, made for intimate gatherings.  "I don't like rooms you never use or that are wasted space," says Madonna "but I also like a sparseness and a cleanness."  But Ciccone adds, "Madonna doesn't cook much.  I think she has a couple of cookbooks, and now and then she makes Rice Krispies treats, but I wanted to give her the option if she wanted to," he jokes.

Photography by Durston Sayler

One of the most striking rooms is the bathroom, where a series of repeated pointed Moorish arches - an appropriated Casbah of sorts - echoes the vaulted hallway.  One arched doorway separates the front part of the room where the bath is located from the marble-lined steam shower with a marble seat ("I think everyone connected with the apartment has tried the shower," says Ciccone).  The windows which open with white tassel pulls, are also arched.  Everything is covered in white Italian marble with a hint of rose vein except in the shower where the vein is grey.

Like his sister he is constantly changing, rearranging, adjusting, reinventing.  "I don't think you every truly finish a job like this.  People's tastes continue to evolve and change.  I would be surprised if Madonna was content with this for the next ten years.  Madonna of course knows her own mind about these things.  "We call Christopher The Pope because everything has to get his seal of approval.  But I wouldn't say the apartment is a hundred percent finished`.  I like to change.  A new lamp, a piece of art can tranform a room and I reserve the right to do that." says Madonna.

I hear that Madonna has made up with Christopher over his 2008 tell-all book.  Apparently she got over it after her divorce from Guy Ritchie, deciding her brother had been much more scathing about Guy than her.  I ordered used hardback copy last night from Amazon for £3.00.  I can't believe I've never read it!  To order a copy click HERE.

Photography by Steven Meisel, 1991

"I am my own experiment.  I am my own work of art"

Madonna

(b. 1958)