The Brilliance of Ancient Pixels

Few of the standard materials of art or architecture would seem more retrograde to the interests and the appetites of contemporary New York than mosaics. But the convergence of no fewer than four events suggests that the fortunes of this ancient craft may be changing for the better.

In recent months, two stunning retailers of mosaics have opened or have fundamentally revised their showrooms in SoHo. In addition, the Bowery Hotel is finally up and running, exposing to the world a lobby whose floors are teeming with all manner of mosaics. But the phenomenon that will make most people sit up and pay heed is the splendid implementation of the material in the new Greek and Roman wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What a pleasure it is to walk over the black and white historiated pavement of the galleries' courtyard. Surely it is not for nothing that these tesserae (the tiny, usually square glass or stone fragments that make up a mosaic) are among the few elements of the original space to have been preserved intact. But the real glory begins when you enter the diminutive chambers for the frescoes of Boscoreale and Boscotrecase. Today, mosaics tend to be associated with swimming pools and bathrooms. Throughout the ancient and medieval world, however, they were perhaps the most sumptuous adornment a building could have. As you walk over these newly laid floors, sparkling in the hieratic glow of the galleries' tracklights, you may understand just how luxuriant an experience it can be to tread upon a mosaic surface.

As it happens, two of the world's most reputable mosaic firms stand within a block of each other in So-Ho: Bisazza at 43 Greene St. and Sicis at Greene and Broome. Both are Italian firms, and the Italians, though not exactly the inventors of the art, have always been its acknowledged masters. Bisazza and Sicis seem to be on a mission, convinced as they are that mosaics can and should regain their former status as high art. At Bisazza's stunning, one-story showroom, visitors are confronted by a veritable labyrinth of enchanted chambers, curving and looping into and around one another. It is the visitor's aesthetic duty to realize that a mosaic space can be every bit as opulent, as "respectable" as wainscoting, curtain walls, marble, or any other of the more privileged claddings of our built environment. To be surrounded by them is to feel giddy excitement as well as a consoling comfort. There is something almost uncanny in the ability of these tesserae, attached to a silicon grid and set into a wall, to transform an area into something that seems to belong to another world.

But Bisazza and Sicis are at pains to inform you that these delightful environments are not your ancient forebear's mosaics. Their patterns, whether geometric or biomorphic, invoke the mood and formal vocabulary of contemporary art. At times they depict images of the Caesars and Michelangelo's David, in computer-generated simulacra. As for that, mosaics may just be the world's first digital art form, insofar as they consist of tiny, infinitely replicable pixels. That is not to deny, however, that there is a strong element of craft and materiality to the work of a skilled mosaicist, even a personalized touch that differs from hand to hand.

The Sicis firm is based in Ravenna, the greatest city in the world for mosaics. Its New York showroom takes up three floors, with a fourth in preparation. Like Bisazza, the firm specializes in creating environments, but it also customizes a whole array of quotidian objects. It has branched out into light fixtures and chandeliers, as well as a platinum bathtub with a subtle cartouche bearing, in antique letters, the name Sicis. Most spectacular are the rounded tesserae that make up the surface of the ground floor and that are lit from below. The art nouveau feeling of this work may explain why the firm was engaged to do extensive work on the interiors of the reconstituted Plaza Hotel.

Although the opening of the Plaza and its residences is still at least a year away, the Bowery Hotel is now fully operational. The lobby of this massive boutique hotel is dominated by a strident black and white mosaic floor, crawling with leafy, vinelike patterns. These wind and swerve around the elevator banks into the old-fashioned bathrooms. The owners and designers, Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson, have replicated a New York hotel interior from 1900. As you enter, you are aware of an antique light fixture arising amid redolent oak wainscotings enlivened with Tudor motifs. Once inside, beyond the tasseled keys of the conciergerie, you notice, as your eyes adjust to the darkness, a map of New Amsterdam, a limestone fireplace (with a real fire going), Persian rugs, bookcases, and mounted deer heads. (In a nod to contemporary taste, these are fakes). Such deft touches, combined with the mosaic pavement, qualify the lobby and public area of the Bowery Hotel as a true masterpiece of inspired pastiche.

jgardner@nysun.com