Latinos In America

By LENNOX MORRISON

In 1637, when Rembrandt heard that a female Asian elephant called Hansken had arrived in Amsterdam to perform at a fair, he gathered up black chalk and charcoal and rushed off excitedly to sketch her. Until the late 18th century, zoos were privately owned by kings and prelates and only a select few Europeans—such as the artist Raphael, whom Pope Leo X invited to visit his menagerie in the Vatican gardens—ever had the opportunity to see such exotic creatures.

An affecting sense of discovery, therefore, radiates from Rembrandt’s drawing “An Elephant” (1637), one of about 120 works brought together for the first time by the French national museums service in an unusual art-meets-science exhibition depicting animals, almost entirely without human presence, from the Renaissance onward. Entitled “Animal Beauty,” the show, which opened Wednesday at the Grand Palais in Paris runs until July 16.

From Dürer’s celebrated engraving of a rhinoceros clad in a suit of armor in 1515 to Jeff Koon’s fashionably primped and painted wooden poodle in 1991, the exhibition charts our changing attitudes toward the animal kingdom, including the recent adoption of the polar bear as a symbol of climate change.

“The purpose is not to offer a history of animal art but to confront different representations and to show that some representations can change,” curator Emmanuelle Héran says. “But there are others that remain the same through the ages. For instance, tigers are always depicted as pure marvels. You cannot tell the difference between a tiger painted at the end of the 18th century and a tiger painted recently. But with other animals a change can be seen.

“For instance, cats are for us among the most beautiful animals. There are now more cats than dogs in France, before it was the other way round. But before the 18th- to mid-19th century, cats were seen as devils, the animal of witches.”

For this show, Ms. Héran spurned images of animals in supporting roles, such as in nativity scenes, or placed within a still life, as with dead game birds. Nor did she select the mythical beasts so important in the Middle Ages.

Instead, she chose images where a real, living animal is given a naturalistic treatment, such as Théodore Géricault’s arresting close-up in oils of the head of a white horse “Tête de cheval blanc” (before 1816-17).

“Géricault was himself a very talented horseman and had access to the stables of the Napoleonic army at Versailles, where they had the most beautiful horses of the day,” says Ms. Héran. “His portraits of animals, just limited to the head, were totally new at the time. They are real psychological portraits in which he tries to show the individual personality of each animal.”

Around three centuries earlier, however, Dürer was already applying his artist’s inquiring gaze to producing minutely observed portraits of a single creature. He named this kind of study Tierstück (literally, animal piece), an approach that was picked up to illustrate works of zoology. An example from this exhibition is an anonymous engraving of a turkey in a volume published in Zurich in 1560. Back then the turkey was, in European eyes, a “discovery” from the New World, along with parakeets.

Ironically, despite the wide-ranging influence of his “Rhinoceros” engraving from 1515, Dürer never set eyes on Ulysses, the Indian rhino on which the work is based. Shipped into Lisbon as a gift to King Manuel 1st of Portugal, Ulysses was the first of his species to be seen on the continent since Roman times. Put to fight against an elephant, Ulysses won.

Intrigued by the rhino that all of Europe was talking about, Dürer used notes and sketches from a friend, plus his own readings of classical author Pliny the Elder, to make his engraving. He also employed his imagination. “At the time,” says Ms. Héran, “there was some confusion between rhinos and unicorns, which is why Dürer added a twisted horn on the back of the rhinoceros.”

Preconceptions about which creatures we find appealing and those we deem repulsive are challenged in, for instance, a work by Jan van Kessel the Elder, also known as “the insect artist.” In his “Insects, Butterflies and Shells” (1659), beetles and flies and other creepy-crawlies are given the same sensual colors and delicate treatment, applying oil on copper, as the other, more conventionally pretty, elements of the title.

The way in which we view the animal world has been greatly colored, says Ms. Héran, by the late 18th-century French naturalist Count de Buffon, whose classifications pigeonholed some creatures as more noble than others.

“Buffon was an aristocrat and he wanted a society of animals that was the same as the society of mankind with kings, nobles and vassals,” Ms. Héran says. “He despised Réaumur [a fellow naturalist] because he was fond of insects and he said to him, ‘How can you have a fly in your mind? A fly is not noble. You have to think of great mammals!’”

Buffon’s influence is demonstrated strikingly in this exhibition in Antoine Louis Barye’s “Lion and Serpent” (1835), a depiction in bronze of the king of the jungle overcoming a serpent. Notes Ms. Héran: “In Barye’s works, the winner of the ‘struggle for life’ is always the stronger, the more powerful animal.”

By JULIET CHUNG

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.

$1.05 million

A 3,700-square-foot home, with three bedrooms and three baths, on 0.75 acre looking over the 18th hole of a private golf course

DETAILS: This single-story, Southwest contemporary-style home, built in 1991, has a U-shaped floor plan, beamed ceilings and a two-way fireplace dividing the kitchen from the family room. There’s a pool and mountain views.

FORE!: Troon Country Club has a 50,000-square-foot clubhouse with spa and exercise facilities, as well as a pool and tennis courts

REFUELING: The Quail’s Nest and Lounge, in the clubhouse, offers free hors d’oeuvres, including oysters on the half-shell and sliders, after a round of golf.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Partly cloudy, high 86 degrees

SOURCE:
Margy Senna, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, 602-622-1388, margy@azgolfproperties.com

BOCA RATON, Fla.

$1.05 million

An almost 2,600-square-foot contemporary with three bedrooms and three baths, on 0.25 acre, overlooking the 15th tee

DETAILS: The home, renovated in 2007, comes furnished and features a double-height great room and dining room, glass walls overlooking a pool and garden and his-and-hers baths in the master suite.

FORE!: The Polo Club of Boca Raton, a gated country-club community, has two private 18-hole golf courses, a 145,000-square-foot clubhouse, a tennis complex and a 40,000-square-foot spa-fitness center.

REFUELING: The Polo Pub, in the clubhouse, offers post-golf dining and complimentary postgame hors d’oeuvres, including wings and hot dogs.

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Chance of showers, high 79 degrees

SOURCE:
Thomas Walsh, Premier Estate Properties, a Christie’s Great Estates affiliate, 561-573-2226, thomaswalsh@bellsouth.net

LAS VEGAS

$1.1 million

A 4,200-square-foot Mediterranean-style home with four bedrooms and four baths on 0.25 acre, with views of three fairways

DETAILS: This single-story, 2002 home has several fireplaces and a great room with ceilings of more than 20 feet. A patio overlooks one of the two golf courses. The master bath has a black granite shower.

FORE!: Red Rock Country Club has two Arnold Palmer-designed golf courses—one private, one public (the home overlooks the public course). A roughly 10,000-square-foot sports club features gym, pool, tennis and spa facilities. There’s also a 44,000-square-foot main clubhouse.

REFUELING: The Oasis Grill, on site, serves a shrimp-and-crab BLT with avocado ($14).

FRIDAY’S FORECAST: Partly cloudy, high 82 degrees

SOURCE:
Pawel Szott, Realty Executives, 702-349-2131, szott@cox.net; Realtor.com

Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

SHARE AND SHARE DISLIKE | The new Audi A3, above, is part of VW’s ‘toolbox’ platform initiative, along with the Bentley SUV concept. The company’s Porsche Carrera S Cabriolet will stand alone. Also at Geneva was the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta.

Having spent a few hours wandering around the 82nd Geneva Motor Show, ending March 18, I have many nutritious and entertaining things to say about the global car business, the titanic forces of the industry consolidation, dazzling leaps in powertrain efficiency, diversifying products and alliances, and so on.

But can we talk about how frightening the Bentley SUV concept is?

Oof. Wow. Woof. The EXP 9F—which wags dubbed the Bentley PCP on account of whoever approved it being on drugs—is a graceless, nay cynical, nay terrible attempt to translate Bentley’s sleek styling vocabulary onto a vehicle with Range Rover size and proportions. Somewhere in France there’s a bell tower missing its hunchback.

Any one of the roughly 5,000 schlubs who showed up for press days this week could have written the product brief: Bentley, the highborn British vassal of VW Group, needs a sport-utility to compete against Range Rover and other ultraluxury brands such as Maserati and Lamborghini, both of which will be launching SUVs in the next three years. Such vehicles are particularly vital in eastern markets, from Russia to China, where the allure of European luxury brands is practically mystical.

Indeed, there is an undeniable Russianness to the Bentley. The fog lamps appear to be chandeliers from the Catherine Palace.

The grotty Bentley does bring us to a more pressing point: Bentley and Lambo, two of 11 brands under the VW Group umbrella, will actually share the group’s SUV vehicle architecture. Within a few years VW Group will build all its cars using only four modular baukasten, or “toolboxes,” one for small city cars, one for midsize cars, one for midengine sports cars and one for large vehicles such as the Bentley SUV, Audi A8 the Porsche Panamera.

Eleven brands, and scores of different models, from tiny to enormo, from slow to desperately fast. Four vehicle toolboxes.

The only exception, said Ulrich Hackenberg, board member in charge of VW Brand development, will be vehicles that are defined by their peculiar architecture. “We would never make a [rear-engine Porsche] 911 anything but what it is,” said Hackenberg. For everything else VW Group makes, the product pipeline is now a funnel.

Take the new Audi A3, which debuted in Geneva on Tuesday. This is the first vehicle built with the so-called MQB, which stands for Modularer Querbaukasten, or “modular transverse toolbox,” for small to midsize, front-drive, transverse-engine cars.

The A3 three-door hatchback unveiled here (the U.S. will get a four-door sedan version before 2014) will offer a slew of different engines, both gas and diesel, as well as automatic and manual transmissions. The MQB platform will also serve under the VW Polo/Golf/Passat/Tiguan, as well as the Seat Leon and Skoda Octavia. Mr. Hackenberg said up to 44 separate vehicles will be built on the MQB, resulting in materials savings of 20% and savings on tooling and facilities of up to 30%.

“VW Group’s cars will share four ‘toolboxes’—and the Bentley SUV shows everything wrong with that.”

Mr. Hackenberg also noted that vehicles built in the modular system allow production to be similarly modularized. VW Group will be able to rapidly shift vehicle production from one factory to another to anticipate regional demand and capacity.

In all this consolidation, the compression of the product development process, what are the risks? Well, if all you’ve got in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Inevitably, good ideas, innovation and style will be lost to the homogenizing imperatives of the toolbox. The Bentley concept illustrates better than words what happens when shared-platform imperatives—so-called hard points such as the size of an engine or height of a seat or dimensions of a gas tank—are the primary drivers of design. Once all the modular constraints had been accommodated, the Bentley’s stylists were left with a fat, boring cube of a truck.

They couldn’t make it look like a Bentley, so they dressed it like a pachinko machine.

If VW Group leads in the degree of cross-brand integration, it is by no means alone in the effort. In fact, the overarching narrative of this year’s Geneva show is the increasingly frantic search for strategic auto-making alliances among European car makers, who are currently getting hammered by sales declines on the continent. Two weeks ago, General Motors announced it was taking a 7% interest in PSA Peugeot Citroën. When I saw GM’s design chief, Ed Welburn, at the show, he seemed delighted with the prospect, even relieved. “Jean-Pierre [Ploue, director of design for PSA] and I had a great first meeting talking about ways we could collaborate and find synergies between us,” Mr. Welburn said.

Meanwhile, Fiat-Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne was still looking for his swim buddy. “We are open to anything,” Mr. Marchionne said. His reign at Fiat-Chrysler began with a sprawling plan to integrate the two companies on a fundamental level, a plan that includes building Maserati SUVs in Detroit on a shared Jeep Grand Cherokee platform. Now, held down by the European market and by the offstage threat of a collapse of the euro, Mr. Marchionne is again courting partners.

The prevailing wisdom among auto makers is that successful companies will have to reach a critical mass—the range of six million to eight million vehicles per year—in order to achieve necessary economies of scale, most-favored status among suppliers and to avoid potentially fatal exposure in any one global market. GM, again the world’s largest car maker, had sales volume of 9.03 million vehicles in 2011.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe, still practicing a style of car building that would not have been out of place in the Geneva show of 1930, is Horatio Pagani. Pagani’s Huayra hypercar—all 700 horsepower and $1.5 million of it—is comprised of 4,700 custom-designed and fabricated parts, so that the car does not share a switch, light bulb or horn with any other car on the planet. Only the bare engine block, built by Mercedes-Benz AMG, is shared with any other car. “We want to be like Ettore Bugatti,” Mr. Pagani said, “where every piece of the car is a work of art. That is our brand, that is our luxury.”

Mr. Pagani, thanks for not sharing.

—Email Dan at rumbleseat@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared Mar. 10, 2012, on page D9 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: At Geneva, the Promise and Perils of Sharing.