CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/3/2022

Ardent collecting and a life well-lived in 'Selection: Art, Architecture and Design from the Collection of Ronnie Sassoon'

Featured image, of collector Ronnie Sassoon’s Los Angeles home, aka the Levit House, designed in 1961 by Richard Neutra, is reproduced from August Editions’ hot new release, Selection: Art, Architecture and Design from the Collection of Ronnie Sassoon. Presenting Sassoon’s world-renowned art and design collections housed in three architectural landmarks—the Neutra house, a Soho loft previously owned by Dean & Deluca founders Jack Ceglic and Joel Dean, and the Litchfield, Connecticut, Stillman II House by Marcel Breuer—the book is an ode to passionate selection. “The great architect Marcel Breuer once announced that ‘if I should say what is the most important task of our time, I would say it is to select,’” Sassoon writes. “Selection is everything. It is how we define ourselves. How we choose to live, with what and whom, how we decorate our homes, the items in our closet or refrigerator, our friends, our signature cocktail, or the brand of coffee we choose to drink, how we make love, our handwriting, how we wear our hair, what we choose to cook, how we place food on a plate. There are a million choices in life if one is lucky and it is what we select from those choices that define us as individuals and for the purpose of this book, our style. Great design and architecture results when all the components converge in harmony: materials, texture, shape and context, how that building or object sits in its surroundings. Ultimately, its perfect when it moves or inspires immediately. I always go with first impressions.”