HTSI editor’s letter: the art of intimacy

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This autumn arts special – The Art of Intimacy – is all about interior monologues and the genesis of the creative process. The theme was first sparked during Frieze in London last October, where I noticed a huge number of paintings and portraits depicting rumpled linens or figures dozing in their beds.

It’s no secret that many great artists were set upon their creative journeys via convalescence, or following a period in which they spent huge chunks of time alone. The Brontë sisters, Frida Kahlo, Katherine Mansfield, George Orwell and Marcel Proust were all confined to bed or remote locations, often for spells during childhood, and it has been argued that this shaped the unique way in which they saw the world. Claudia Donaldson was bedbound for nine weeks last year when she broke her leg: she writes about the ways in which the experience fed, sometimes nurtured and sometimes nagged her thoughts. Her view from the bed helps set the tone of this meditative issue, for which we have asked different artists where their inspiration can be found.

Rebecca Hall in her studio at home in upstate New York — Rebecca Hall in her studio at home in New York © Ryan Pfluger

Rebecca Hall will be known to many for her career as both an actor and director. Her range is such that she can move between Shakespeare and independent movies and big blockbusters such as Godzilla x Kong, her latest hit this year. Her paintings have been the product of a more private passion; they are also an articulation of her desire to be alone. In an exclusive first look at her studio, she tells Jill Krasny about the “freedom” she finds there and how painting satisfies a completely different longing to acting. “I don’t do well unless I’m quiet and in my head and creative in some capacity for a chunk of the day,” she explains.

Arooj Aftab photographed in London for HTSI © Toby Coulson

Like many, I discovered Arooj Aftab via her 2021 album Vulture Prince: it helped her become the first Pakistani artist to receive a Grammy. Her follow-up Night Reign was released earlier this year. Aftab’s sound is haunting, gorgeous, multi-layered and deeply evocative. She cautions against it being described as “world music”: she is merely singing contemporary music in “a different language”, and her latest album conjures a rich melodic kingdom of which she is the queen. David Honigmann spoke to her following her Glastonbury appearance – she’s currently undertaking a world tour that will see her return to the UK later on this year. In our shoot styled by Benjamin Canares and shot by Toby Coulson, she looks customarily bad-ass. I highly recommend you listen to her album and dive into her nocturnal universe.

Alice and Alba Rohrwacher at the Hotel Locarno, Rome © Jacopo Paglione

Sisters Alba and Alice Rohrwacher’s powerful kinship developed as children growing up in rural Italy. The two quickly identified themselves as being outsiders, and their subsequent output is drawn from a well of self-awareness: Alice, a director who continues to live in the same region, has since made films that conjure a strange, dreamlike world. Her older sister and sometime collaborator Alba was recently in Venice with Angelina Jolie promoting the biopic Maria, and has also just returned as the quixotic Elena Greco in the television adaptation of My Brilliant Friend. Interviewed by Maria Shollenbarger in Rome this summer, they speak of their shared, secret sororal language. As Alba says: she has a “very privileged access code” to her sister’s world “because I recognise the dreams that she tints it with”.

Louis Fratino in his studio in Brooklyn © Alex Lockett

There are other quiet journeys here. Louis Fratino talks about the historic references that help inform his intimate – and increasingly valuable – canvases portraying queer life. Alex Russell Flint guides us around the house in Poitou-Charentes that he has converted from a derelict schoolhouse into a salon worthy of his great-grandfather, the famous watercolourist William Russell Flint. And nine creatives show us the favourite mug in which they have their first drink of the day. In every case, their stories are particular and highly personal – an exclusive peek into what remains a private creative world.

@jellison22