“I’m serious about living in the moment,” says Markus Hennes. “I enjoy it, and I do it.” It’s a philosophy he abides by not only personally but also professionally, steering his career in fashion toward his current role, as Citizens of Humanity’s European sales director.
Hennes didn’t start his career in fashion but seemed destined for it nonetheless. At 17, the Cologne native trained to become a dental technician, but he quit after two years to try his hand at fashion after being inspired by friends who owned a clothing boutique. “It wasn’t as much a profession as it was a community,” he says, recalling fond memories of accompanying his mother, also a boutique owner, on buying appointments as a young child. Hennes soon landed a job at a well-known German fashion agency in Cologne and never looked back at the dental drill again.
It was the early ’80s and “fashion wasn’t something you studied back then,” says Hennes. “It was more about intuition.” At first, Hennes saw his foray into fashion as a way to meet new, interesting people, but he quickly graduated to producing an in-house clothing line for a German store with his girlfriend. His own fashion agency soon followed. At the time, international brands didn’t have much of a presence in Germany, so Hennes and his new company quickly became a go-to for labels looking to get a foot in the door and develop relationships in the local market.
But just as his mother’s line of work had planted a seed for Hennes, so too had his father’s with the restaurant business. “I always liked to host people in my home,” says Hennes, who was ready for a new challenge. So he opened up a traditional German restaurant with a contemporary twist in his hometown on the outskirts of the city. Yet in his heart he missed the fashion industry and the relationships he had developed, so almost three years later, in 2007, he jumped at the opportunity to move back to Cologne, eventually settling into his present position.
What Hennes loved about his job when he first started in fashion is what he still appreciates about it today. “The product—a product I like that focuses on quality and innovation. That makes it super enjoyable,” he explains. “Since I was a child, fashion has felt very organic to me.” So it’s no surprise that he’s cultivated his own denim uniform of sorts over the years. “When I touch something I like, I want five of the same style, and I wear them nonstop,” he says of his latest obsession with raw denim.
And though Hennes gave up a career as a restaurateur, he still held on to what he loved most about that world: cooking for friends. “Food was always very important in my family, and lunch and dinner were always spent around the table together. It’s still important to me,” says Hennes, who enjoys hosting dinner parties at home on the rare weekend that he’s in town.
Every year, Hennes spends between 180 and 220 days on the road, traveling to markets across Europe. Some days he might wake up in London, others in Paris or Vienna, a city he loves for its rich blend of history and modernity.
“I love traveling, seeing new things, making the time to have breakfast on a terrace, watching people,” he says. “It’s part of my job, and I love it. It helps me to understand markets, it teaches me about people. There is no typical day in my job. Every day is a new challenge, and that’s what I’m honestly enjoying the most.”
There’s just under one minute left in the first round of the 1999 K-1 Grand Prix Final. Ernesto Hoost goes after his opponent, Andy Hug, viciously, putting him in the corner of the ring, throwing punch after punch—a jab, then a hook, and another hook; then he hits his torso before grabbing him and hitting him with knee strike after vicious knee strike. The crowd at the Tokyo Dome in Japan roars with excitement. Hoost goes on to win and capture the K-1 Grand Prix title.
Hoost was one of the scariest fighters to ever step foot inside the ring, like a lion stalking his prey. “I feel at home here; I feel like I have to be in this place,” says the Dutch kickboxer when asked how he feels during a fight. “I would describe it as determined—determined to beat my opponent.”
In Japan, where K-1—a fighting platform that takes its name from kickboxing, karate, kempo, kung-fu and kyokushin—is everything, Hoost was a national hero. He couldn’t go out in public without being recognized—so much so that he wouldn’t go out at all before fights. “We were on TV all the time. We would be on all kinds of different TV programs, so different from what it was like at home in Holland. I couldn’t even go out in the streets before a fight. It was surreal,” he recalls.
Despite holding four K-1 world titles, Hoost’s path to becoming one of kickboxing’s most decorated fighters was one full of obstacles and hurdles. Just a year before his 1999 victory, Hoost, whose success in the ring earned him the nickname Mr. Perfect, was diagnosed with a medical condition that left him unable to fight with the vigor and stamina to which he was accustomed. He fell out of the 1998 K-1 Grand Prix Finals. “I thought that I could still handle everything and I couldn’t,” admits Hoost, speaking from Hoorn, his hometown in the Netherlands.
Hoost didn’t take his defeat in vain. “That made me focus more. Even I myself thought I was finished, but it gave me so much strength,” says Hoost, who credits his comeback in 1999 in part to his daughter’s birth that year. “It woke me up. I think having a child will do that. It gives you purpose; it gave me strength.”
The champion fighter almost missed out on finding his calling in life. After Hoost first discovered kickboxing at age 13, his father would not allow him to pursue the sport. Two years later he got his chance, when kickboxing arrived in his hometown and his father agreed to let him try. The 15-year-old Hoost, who was an active football (soccer) player, immediately signed up. Hoost felt as if he had found his calling after the first three lessons. “It felt really good,” he says. “It felt like I was born for it or something.”
It would be another four years before Hoost would get his first fight, but the wait paid off. Hoost says that the time in between his first lesson and first fight gave him the opportunity to hone his technique. He remembers that first fight in Amsterdam and realizing that his opponent was actually going to try to hurt him. “That made me sharp, and I knocked him out in the second round. I loved the energy of it—it was for me,” says Hoost.
He waited for years before entering the world of professional kickboxing. There was no money in the sport in the ’80s, so after studying economics in school, Hoost took a job as a fitness instructor to young offenders. The job allowed him to train in his spare time, and after eight years he finally made the decision that would turn him into one of the sport’s most legendary champions. “I had to make a decision, either to keep on working or try to be a full professional, and I had to give myself the chance,” he says.
There’s something to be said about the effect of Hoost’s family on his performance. Just as Hoost won a championship after his daughter’s birth, he won another following his son’s. When Hoost was a regular on the fighting circuit, his life consisted of two things: being at home with his family and kickboxing. These days, aside from the regular training seminars he gives, Hoost’s main focus is his two children, whom he recently took to Florida on vacation, where they visited Walt Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center. “I enjoy seeing my children, being happy,” he says. “If they are happy, I’m happy.”
Hoost credits his success and his ability to persevere to discipline. “The most important thing I learned is discipline,” says Hoost. “If you have discipline you can reach a lot—discipline and determination.”
I will never forget the first time I heard the name Paul Schimmel. I had moved from Berkeley to Dallas for my first university appointment and the buzz was all about an art exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston called American Narrative/ Story Art. The freewheeling museum director of CAMH, James Harithas, had entrusted this groundbreaking exhibition to a completely untested 22-year-old curator who had just graduated from college. Paul Schimmel’s first exhibition single-handedly caused a reassessment of contemporary art, finally bringing forward those artists whose works did not fit into the narrow confines of modernist abstraction, pop and minimalism.
Years later, Paul became chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. As a Los Angeles art dealer, I worked closely with Paul on several museum exhibitions, notably Helter Skelter. This show, possibly the single most important exhibition in the city’s history, presented art in Los Angeles in the 1990s and put the city back on the map as one of the key places in the world where cutting-edge art was being produced. Interestingly, it was this groundbreaking exhibition that first brought Paul’s future partner, Iwan Wirth, to Los Angeles, and the roots of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel are grounded in his curatorial achievement at MOCA.
How does it happen that someone comes into his own with such a clear sense of direction and purpose, and at such a young age? Part of the answer will always remain a mystery. But some part is simply being in the right place at the right time. For Paul Schimmel, his “aha moment” occurred in the 11th grade, when, as he puts it, “I was researching the collection of Gertrude Stein when she resided at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. I was studying the collection piece by piece based on archival photographs in the library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Seeing my interest, the librarian arranged for me to go into the basement of the museum and see firsthand several of the works that I had identified as in MOMA’s collection. Seeing those works and several others firsthand made me realize I wanted to be with art like a curator.”
As MOCA’s chief curator, Paul became recognized for his historical and thematic exhibitions, including Willem de Kooning: Tracing the Figure, Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the ’90s, Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979 and Under the Big Black Sun: California Art, 1974-1981, as well as for his exhibitions of the work of leading contemporary artists, including Charles Ray, Robert Gober and Laura Owens. During his tenure the museum acquired significant works by Diane Arbus, John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Mike Kelley, Charles Ray, Nancy Rubins, Jason Rhoades, Bruce Nauman and many others. When Paul left MOCA in 2012, he did so as possibly the single most important and influential curator in the world.
In reflecting on his future, Paul quickly recognized that whatever he did next needed to convey a strong sense of “place.” Having been presented with several interesting options from various foundations, galleries and museums, he knew he wanted to not only continue presenting the work of both historical and leading contemporary artists, but that it was imperative to be a part of a program that stimulated and declared the energy of a community. In joining the London-Zurich-New York juggernaut Hauser & Wirth, and thanks to the truly visionary reach of Iwan Wirth, Paul knew that his new role would not only allow him to continue to fulfill his identity as a curator but would enable him to blend his skills into the creation of a venue that would participate in and enhance the vitality of a burgeoning social, cultural and economic community in the city he has called home for the past 30 years.
So what makes Paul Schimmel tick? And why has he been able to distinguish himself from so many other curators? First, he has a keen sense of the history of art, recognizing key turning points as well as individual figures. Paul is a modernist; he is confident in his assessment of how a contemporary artist has reflected on the past while pushing forward today’s boundaries. And once he has developed an idea for a thematic exhibition, there is no one more ingenious in its marketing. What other curator would have thought to title an exhibition on L.A. artists Helter Skelter? Equally important, he is a true connoisseur, recognizing quality and able to pick out truly exceptional works of art. There are many people functioning today as curators. Many are very intelligent, loaded with critical theory and a strong point of view, but very few have the instincts of Paul Schimmel.
In commenting on his plans for the future, Paul noted that the beauty of this new facility is the possibility of presenting museum-like shows as well as multiple exhibitions at the same time. A challenging feat it is to seamlessly blend the institutional with the commercial and the historic with the current, but the job is in no better hands than those of my friend, Paul Schimmel.
In 1979, on one of his first trips to Afghanistan, Steve McCurry photographed a scowling young boy who had a gun on his right shoulder and wore a frayed vest over a plaid shirt. The boy looks right at the photographer, his scowl unwavering but his eyes communicating more curiosity than hostility. It’s impossible to know from a picture, of course, what this boy is thinking, and McCurry never claims to know himself what goes on his subjects’ minds, only to feel a fleeting connection with them. This is what makes his portraits especially identifiable: deep eye contact that invites viewers to experience the intense gaze of someone they’ve never met.
“How do I explain what it was about working in Afghanistan?” he says by phone from the New York office he’s maintained since the 1980s, even though his work often takes him abroad. A Philadelphia native, he was a young graduate of Pennsylvania State’s College of Arts and Architecture with two years of local journalism experience when he decided to travel to India and photograph freelance. It was a way to experience a region new to him and have a job while doing it. “Let me photograph, as opposed to just being there,” he recalls thinking.
Late in the 1970s, around the time the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, he dressed in Afghan garb and made his way, illegally, across the border. As soon as he arrived in a country he would return to for the rest of his life, he saw bombed-out houses and schools. Later, after an attack on Kabul, he would duck for safety into a hospital for the mentally ill, discovering civilian and soldier residents psychologically scarred by war. There were no doctors or nurses, no electricity and no running water. “I never had been involved in an area of conflict,” he recalls. “This was a traumatic situation. There was incredible human trauma and the backdrop of war everywhere. It was the great game, where you’d have all these foreign powers interfering. And then there were these wonderful people.” The contrast between the people he met and the deadly political circumstances controlling the region struck him. “You see what mankind is capable of.” He adds, “I was never a war photographer. I was interested in the people caught in the middle.”
He is preparing to release a book of his Afghanistan pictures, which, he clarifies, is in no way a history of the country. Instead it will give a glimpse into his 37 years of experiences and encounters there. It will include images like Teeth Maker, of a bearded man crafting false teeth in a makeshift shop, or his 1992 photograph of Afghan women cloaked in blue, orange and green fabric shopping in an outdoor Kabul shoe store with sneakers hanging all around them. It will likely also include the photograph that remains his most famous, the 1985 Afghan Girl, an image of a girl in a red cloak whose piercing green eyes stared out from the cover of National Geographic that year.
McCurry has been a freelancer his whole career—“You need to have control over your work,” he says—and he has tried not to let assignments or other outside agendas sway him from his interest in the moment. “It’s instinctual,” he says of his images. “I am not seeking these things out. I go in and see for myself.” Yet he does have larger pursuits that help to determine where he ends up. Over the years he has become most associated with India, Afghanistan and South Asia. “In a lot of ways,” he reflects, “I was drawn to places where so much continuity between ancient traditions and the modern world exists.” He recalls trekking out to Preah Khan, a ruined temple in Angkor, Cambodia, 25 years ago. “It’s really an incredible place,” he says. “You feel like you’re hacking your way through the jungle.” He acknowledges, though, that things might have changed in the years since, as the area has revived its reputation as a tourist destination. But when he visited the temple, the surrounding foliage cast a green light that looked like glowing neon shining through the windows. He captured the shadowing figures of children playing in the ruins, in a photograph that conjures science fictions.
His own interest in Buddhism propelled him through Tibet and Nepal, and occasionally he would hear unusual stories, like that of Buddhist monks at the Shaolin Temple in China’s Henan Province. They practice martial arts, training for a large portion of their days. “There is still this connection with their Buddhist origins,” he says. “But how much is still Buddhist?” He visited in 2004 and photographed a monk, dressed in a flowing orange robe and sneakers, running sideways along a wall above the heads of young robed trainees.
“Wherever you happen to be, I think people are pretty friendly, accepting,” he says, noting that he rarely faces resistance when he arrives in a new community. “That part’s not really difficult.” What can be difficult are the time limits, and the pace at which he occasionally moves from one place to the next.
In 2013 McCurry collaborated with journalist Karen Emmons to document violent treatment of female domestic workers in Asia. “Women had been cheated and robbed and beaten. Some people forced them to work long hours,” he says. He and Emmons would often spend just enough time with their subjects to hear their stories but not long enough to form ongoing bonds. The images he took for No one should work this way are among the most graphic in his oeuvre, showing scars from burns or beatings.
“The world is such a mess that I think everyone has to take some role,” he says. He and his sister co-founded Imagine Asia, a nonprofit based in Afghanistan that, among other things, helps Afghan women learn photography. The project keeps him going back, but he’s also contemplating spending more time in the United States. A few weeks ago he traveled to Ohio and visited a small community fair. “I could have been in Borneo,” he says, describing the people he met and the events he observed. “It just felt as strange to be there, in a way, as being in Calcutta.” He continues, “Being a little bit uncomfortable, feeling a little bit uneasy—that’s good.”
Some of his most memorable images have come out of unexpected encounters, though it’s his ability to be fully present in the moment that makes all the difference. A portrait he took through a taxi window on a rainy day in Bombay shows a woman with a child on her hip, who came up to the car and peered at him through the glass. Despite the raindrops, McCurry was able to hold her gaze. “To show a person, the only way to actually do it is to look into their eyes,” he says. “I feel the connection, the chemistry between me and my subjects. I get very enthusiastic and very passionate about that particular moment. Somehow, my subjects sense that and something develops between us.”
“I used to liken it to being a caveman. You wake up each morning and you go out and you never know if you’re going to bring home a saber-tooth tiger or if you’re going to go hungry,” says Lee Kaplan. The prey in question? Books, of which Kaplan has amassed more than 100,000 since the 1984 debut of Arcana: Books on the Arts, a veritable shrine to print brimming with new, rare and out-of-print books and catalogues dedicated to 20th and 21st century visual arts, design, photography, fashion, music and more.
For Kaplan, the thrill of hunting down an elusive Marcel Duchamp catalogue evaporated as quickly as the Internet arrived. But his commitment to curating an unrivaled selection of titles to keep the independent-bookstore dream alive has not.
More than 30 years of experience has taught Kaplan that everyone has their own idealized concept of the specialty bookstore. “Some people want funky old wooden shelves. Some people want to go to a bookstore where there’s a cat,” he says without a hint of sarcasm, dressed in his signature black ensemble. “But as long as there’s shit on the shelves that warrants my jaw dropping, that’s the kind of store that I want to go to.”
That’s where Kaplan and his sweeping knowledge of everything from Joseph Kosuth books to Jeff Koons catalogues comes in. The L.A. native’s addiction to books started at an early age, when his grandfather paid him to catalogue his extensive home library on cards one summer. By age 12 he began honing his curatorial eye, stocking inventory at Campbell’s Books and later at Vogue Records in Westwood Village, close to his childhood home. “I would work for free stuff and would take home all these books and records that nobody had much access to,” says Kaplan, who continued to feed his obsession for the obscure with a six-year stint at the iconic Rhino Records, starting in 1975.
Around the time he left Rhino, Kaplan began frequenting used bookstores with his then-girlfriend. The more time he spent browsing the stacks, the more apparent Kaplan’s talent for identifying undervalued items became. Says Kaplan, “I realized I could do with books what I knew how to do with records.”
To further educate himself, Kaplan carefully studied the prices at Art Catalogues on Santa Monica Boulevard, the only existing L.A. bookstore dedicated to art books and exhibition catalogues. Before long, Kaplan began sourcing books for proprietor Dagny Corcoran. “I’d find books that I could buy elsewhere to take to her, because I knew what she liked and what she would sell them for,” says Kaplan. “That became a good proving ground for me.”
Three years later, Arcana: Books on the Arts opened its doors in Westwood, before settling in on the Santa Monica Promenade, which would become its home for the next 25 years. In 2012, Arcana put down roots in a customized space in Culver City’s Helms Bakery complex. Light streams in through UV-tinted windows on three sides of the building, where neighbors run the gamut from a high-end furniture store to galleries and production companies. “We’re a destination,” explains Kaplan.
In the early days of Arcana (read: pre-Internet), Kaplan’s time was split between running the store and sourcing books from estate and garage sales, from Santa Barbara to San Diego. He refers to the era as a time when “people had to use their brains” to price and source books. “I could go into a general bookstore and see all the things that I could sell for more in my business, because I knew what they were and I had clients who valued them more highly,” says Kaplan. “Now everyone looks everything up on the Internet and thinks they’re an expert.”
But no amount of Googling can come close to the breadth of knowledge and experience Kaplan has retained during more than 30 years of bookstore ownership and curation. “I’ve had incredible objects pass through my hands time and time again, and there’s something about it that’s really amazing,” he muses. His own prized acquisitions include an inscribed 1963 limited-edition copy of American pop artist Ed Ruscha’s first artist book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, in a presentation slipcase (“one of the three most significant postwar photography books of the 20th century”), and a signed Ed Kienholz catalogue bound in galvanized sheet metal (“his trademark for when he was fabricating works in the ’80s”).
And while the pleasure of discovering a forgotten book gem is largely a thing of the past, Kaplan has found other ways of getting his bookstore kicks. “One of the things that I still enjoy is putting the right thing in the right person’s hands,” he says. “When somebody comes in looking for a specific book or they’re working on a project and they’re at a loss and you show them something that inspires them, there’s a joy in that. I still feel it.”
