David Leventi: Perchance to Dream: Royal and Noble Bedchambers

Rick Wester Fine Art is excited to present architectural and editorial photographer David Leventi’s long awaited exhibition of photographs of rarely viewed personal sleeping quarters of kings, queens and titled rulers, Perchance to Dream: Royal and Noble Bedchambers.

At a time when the United States is in an identity crisis – are we a democracy or a country with monarchical aspirations? - little has been said that, despite our recent 250th birthday, we are youngsters among the world’s nation states. By the time our independence was claimed in 1776, France had already passed its quincentenary. Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, had been the longest reigning monarch ever with a realm of 72 years - and he died in 1715. In contemporary terms, it would be as if Dwight Eisenhower was reigning in the White House in 2026. Much has been made in the press and among its pundits of the current administration’s leanings towards a self-proclaimed monarchy with all its trappings of gilded statues, triumphal arches and decorative gold filagree used as indiscriminately as confetti on New Year’s Eve. But what of the weight of history and culture behind the centuries that gave rise to the aesthetics of royalty? How does one reconcile a future vision like this without the past establishing it? How do we compare the abundance of wealth of the Baroque that led to its accompanied aesthetic realizations to our post-modern times? To appreciate the genesis of the European decorative arts, architecture, painting and fashion in the 17th – 18th centuries, look to the enormous wealth and power that led to the rise of Versailles, for example. Of course, the overindulgence of Louis XIV and his heirs eventually led to their downfall and the rise of the democratic state, making this conflict a very contemporary mirror.

David Leventi’s photographs on display at RWFA are a foil to today’s overarching efforts to establish a monolithic regime. They provide evidential snippets of what generations of historical monarchs and titled royalty built to proclaim their ruling authority. The backbone of this body of work, and David Leventi’s resume, is an epic typology of opera house interiors, ranging from Death Valley to Saint Petersburg and beyond, the results of which can be found in his monograph, David Leventi: Opera (Damiani, 2015). For the past ten years however, he has explored other well-appointed and more personal and intimate rooms, created for the most private of human performances where power, influence, sex and money vied for attention. In photographing the bedchambers of royals and nobles in the United Kingdom and Europe, Leventi employs the same photographic precision which transformed vast open performing spaces, to document the lush and luxurious sleeping quarters of the extremely powerful and wealthy, whose ties to classicism went back centuries. Leventi’s photographs are so rich and detailed they are the velvety equivalents of the brocade curtains, silk damask drapes, satin and taffeta bedspreads, skirts and throws that dominate these extraordinarily opulent quarters.

Included in the exhibition are images from Queen Marie-Antoinette's infamous, once hidden and secret bedchambers in Versailles as well as the heavily brocade curtained sleeping chamber of the King. Photography historian and curator Marvin Heiferman in writing in Scala Regia, vol. 10 (Spring 2024) states: While it’s luxurious detailing that make these images pleasurable, the omnipresence of curtaining gives them an unexpected edge by suggesting things unseen, lending a Shakespearean scope and depth of mystery to these interior details. As in Hamlet, Leventi’s photographs from these dwellings of kings and queens also share the stage with ghosts of leaders past, where the dead influence the actions of the present.