Zeppelin Studio

…the term ‘studio’ derives from a verb as well as a noun. Studiolo denoted the scholar’s study or cabinet, but there was also studiare, linked to a certain kind of diligent or pleasurable work, which could take place anywhere. The word ‘studio’ was not used to describe the workplace of an artist until the late 17th century in Italy, and in Britain only from the 19th century, by which time the studio was already breaking out of its familiar four walls and beginning to move (quite literally, if we think of Charles-François Daubigny’s floating workspace on the river). Some studios, like Moreau’s, sloughed off any pretence of domesticity and achieved cavernous proportions. At the 1937 Paris World Fair, where the European dictatorships faced off against one another in monumental combat, Nazi Germany’s pavilion was guarded by a trio of bronze beefcakes (one female) sculpted by Josef Thorak. At once camp and creepy, and standing 22 feet tall, Comradeship was produced in Thorak’s atelier near Munich, designed by Albert Speer. The world’s largest studio, it could accommodate a Zeppelin.

WE DEMAND CLOISTERS, Tom Stammers