Elein Fleiss, co-founder of Purple magazine in its early form back in 1992, now lives in Lisbon and is working on setting up her own publishing house as well as her magazine Les Cahiers Purple, which she describes as a personal project that is very different and separate from today’s Purple Fashion Magazine. The name Purple has taken many forms since its creation, and Olivier Zahm and Elein Fleiss have taken different routes in their creative careers since then. Elein speaks about then and now, and reveals some exclusive interior photographs from her personal collection.
Hello Elein. How would you describe the magazine you are currently working on, Les Cahiers Purple?
It’s a strange magazine… I’m not even sure the name magazine applies to it, maybe more like a book-magazine, with different chapters.
What else are you working on?
I’m working on a book of my interior photographs. I’m working on pieces (texts and/or photos) for some Japanese magazines (Brutus, Here & There, Ecocolo) and I’m starting a publishing house, visual pocket books sold by internet. Debut in 2011.
How do you spend your days?
At the moment I’m taking care of my little girl, full time, and I enjoy it a lot.
Do you prefer to curate, write or take photographs?
I prefer to write and at the same time it’s the most difficult one of these activities.
Where did you grow up?
In Paris, a bourgeois neighborhood.
What is your creative background?
Being born in a family of art dealers and having been around artists since childhood. Man Ray took a family picture of me and my parents when I was 3 years old. I used to go to his studio every Saturday with my father. I’ve always felt good surrounded by artists, even as a child. Other than that, I didn’t do any art studies.
When and why did you become interested in magazines?
When I met Olivier Zahm and I realized it was possible to make a magazine with nearly no money (we had none when we started) and that it would be a space to express our take on art.
Did any one existing magazine at that time in particular influence you?
Not really.
How did you Olivier (Zahm) meet?
In 1989, I was looking for an art critic to write a manifesto against a journalist from a daily newspaper who was writing insanities about contemporary art. A friend advised I should ask Olivier. We met on the day I contacted him and that same day was also the beginning of our love story, which lasted several years.
How would you describe yourself at 24 years old, when you created Purple? Have you changed?
Very enthusiastic, passionate, ignorant, spontaneous, light. I’ve changed a lot but I’m still spontaneous even though I’m a much darker person.
What does the year 1992 mean for you?
It’s one of the only dates I remember and that refers to an event in my life, along with 1968 (my birth date) and 1994 (L’Hiver de l’amour, Musée d’art Moderne, Paris, an exhibition I co-curated). Otherwise I have to make an effort to find out in what date I did things, I forgot all the dates.
What does Purple mean for you?
It’s my story and I’ve decided to continue it, meaning keep the name somehow, rather than abandon it. I don’t love this name anymore.
Why did you choose that name?
At the time, I was influenced by the work of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and she was working around colour linked with biographies, making installations with coloured rooms. I was looking for a title with a colour.
Tell us about the beginning of Purple..
Olivier and I were going to NYC a lot, 2-3 times a year, also to Koln Artfair each year. It was a few years after the 1989 economical crash. Money was not in the way, nobody had money and it was not part of the landscape. We started to be interested in fashion through Margiela. Before that we didn’t know anything about fashion and didn’t care. We were involved in the art world as critic/curators and most of our friends were artists. Music (Mystical Shit, Sonic Youth, Tom Verlaine) and cinema (Lynch, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsai Ming Liang) were also important. Literature (Gombrowicz, Brautigan, Duras) and some philosophy (Deleuze, Guattari) too. I’m naming only a few as they come to my mind. We never thought about our careers, we were not that kind of people.
There were very serious editorial meetings for each issue. That lasted till about Purple Prose 12 I think. Then, no meeting. Olivier and I would eventually talk with different people, more like when you talk with your friends and the content was being built that way. There was no separation between work-life-friends. There were never any holidays or thoughts about the future.
What did you bring to Purple?
I am very good at encounters, linking people together and my intuition is not bad either.
What was the reaction to Purple in 1992 when it was first published? How did this change?
In 1992, not much happened, except for the small world around us, the people involved in the first issues, mainly in Paris and New York. But it quickly had “followers” internationally. And then, starting from 1995, more and more. In the beginning there were aggressive reactions from the art world in France. I would say that is where we’ve been the least well received, and that was where we were coming from. There was always suspicion about us. The fact that we talked about other things than art and mixing. The worst for them being we dared featuring fashion. Some years later it was all different.
I have read that you hate success, preferring achievement and accomplishment.
How do you make sure you achieve and not just succeed?
At some point we became too successful for my taste, around 1998, meaning too many people thought what we were doing was great, many compliments, many articles in the press. I think the quality decreased. All that “noise” kept us from experimenting more. I think in general, success, compliments, kill you. I mean in the arts in general. Still I never had a feeling of achievement. That must be really rare.
How does the Purple family work?
I am not involved in Purple Fashion. It’s all separated, but very much like a separated couple who have two children and each kept one, meaning somehow it’s still family but obviously, you just need to look at the magazine we each do, Olivier and I, to see it doesn’t have much to do with each other.
Tell us about your photographs…
I began around 1998. They’re simple, completely non-spectacular. I’m mostly interested in the relationship of light/shadow and disappearing beauty.
What do you like about cats?
Everything and it’s only banal things to say, like their independence, elegance…
What do you like about interiors?
The relationship with the exterior, light coming in. Interiors with a soul, personal stories. I think I cannot photograph a place that’s completely new.
For you, what must a room have in it?
A window.
Which is your favourite room in a house?
I don’t have one.
Your favourite place?
Japan.
Which book would you most recommend to TOURIST?
That’s hard, only one book… And I’m more a person of authors, rather than precise books – Marguerite Duras, Marina Tsvetaeva, Joseph Brodsky, Mario Rigoni Stern, Erri de Luca… But if you want one book: Tolstoy, War & Peace.
Which painting?
I’ve realized with age that painting was not my medium. I don’t react to it. For me, it’s literature, cinema, music.
What is Lisbon like?
Beautiful and fantomatic. There aren’t many people living in Lisbon, sometimes it can be scary, it is so empty. It’s a European capital that’s not been too much destroyed by Neo-Capitalism, even though it’s on its way.
What could you not live without?
Books, asiatic restaurants… If you speak about material things. Or some kind of beauty.
Do you read magazines today? If so, which ones?
Here and There, which is done by my friend Nakako Hayashi. If I could read Japanese I’d read Kurachi No Techo, a magazine that was created after world war two and that talks about life on a practical level and very differently from what we call a lifestyle magazine, plus it’s beautiful.
What makes a good magazine?
Style and content I suppose.
What advice could you/would you give to new magazines being set up now?
Stay small and propose something completely personal.
If you were to create a new magazine today, unrelated to Purple, what would you call it and what would it be about?
It would take me too much time to answer the first part of this question because I’d need to find a title, which is never easy. It would be about exactly what Les Cahiers Purple is about, because it is not “Purple” that defines the contents but myself, my life, my evolution, my encounters.
Elein Fleiss was interviewed by Seren Adams
Tourist Magazine
