Well Played

Much is said about mononyms, the coterie of first-name so-and-sos who have purloined the scene, the set, the stage with their mere existence. As their captive audience, we familiarize them as our own while lionizing them into someone—something—else entirely. What then, in this culture of tossing our roses to the flames, do we make of the upper echelons of those already prominent? The abbreviated omni-achievers who can and will lap mere-normal notables over in the seconds of syllables saved? Do we chalk their luster up to nature, or is it the product of a craft learned and mastered—a strategy that, maybe, if we pay close enough attention, we too can emulate? That is, after all, the allure of starpower, that golden dream of a self fully realized that we are all striving toward. Someone has to reach it, right?

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Gwyneth Paltrow, 52, is one such untouchable. A goddess cast down to Earth, enshrouded between the winding hills of Montecito, California and the austere soundscapes of Paris Fashion Week. A life, no matter the time nor place, of forever intrigue. She is the archetype of such a phenomenon, the ironic inversion that occurs as one’s profile swells larger the shorter their name reads: from Gwyneth Paltrow, the daughter of Hollywood royalty Bruce Paltrow and Blythe Danner, to a sole Gwyneth, the stunning starlet of ’90s romantic period dramas and steamy noirs. Gwyneth, the European-designer-clad, red-carpet fixture to GP, the exemplar for health, wealth, and stealth for millenials and the founder of her namesake brand, which touts the same bookends but with two extra O’s.

White hot, Klaus Biesenbach, 58, has eclipsed the formal salutation, too. His pedigree is a laundry list of leading, influential art institutions spanning New York, where he worked as a chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art and director of MoMa PS1; Los Angeles, where he was the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art; and Berlin, where he mostly resides today, serving as director of the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Berlin Modern, currently under construction. Driving him is a Warholian-level addiction to the contemporary: He considers it, compresses it, even assimilates it to the point that he’s become part of the very culture with which he’s fascinated.

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It’s with all the makings of a trustworthy narrator that Biesenbach converses with his friend of more than 20 years. Familiar but enchanted, informed yet eager to know more. Who could blame him? Welcomingly disparate, their relationship has predated the existence of Netflix, Instagram, and “conscious uncoupling.” If their journeys have taught them anything, it’s that all the befores eventually slip into afters—as the world’s possibilities narrow into one sacred timeline.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Do you know what one of my favorite memories is of you? It was when you first moved to LA to start your job at the Museum of Contemporary Art and we had that lovely welcome cocktail party. It was so nice to see everybody show up for you with so much excitement, and you brought such cool artists into my house.

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Klaus Biesenbach: Another highlight in our more-than-20-year friendship was cooking together in London. I don't know whose house it was, but it was beautiful and had a lovely garden. Your kids were there. So was Michael Stipe and Thomas [Dozol], and Sam and Aaron [Taylor-Johnson]. That was back when Sam and Aaron were newishly together. I am a stranger to any and every kitchen, but I remember assisting you cutting the carrots. It was such a magical day. Do you remember that?

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GP: Of course I do. That was my house.

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KB: It was your house! You see, I didn't even know. It was so long ago. You’re still that girl from then, you know? I think that's the weirdest thing, that you don't age.

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GP: Clean living, Klaus. Clean living.

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KB: Clean living. I'm also a clean liver. Is that an interesting Freudian slip, a clean liver? You know, you are one of the greatest actresses ever, and everyone around you is an artist: your father, your mother, your brother, and your sister-in-law, Taryn Simon. When I first met you, your partner at the time was a great musician [Chris Martin]. I always considered you to be an artist, too, and then, surprise: You became an uber-successful businesswoman. I was like, Jeez, how did she pull that off? It was the most creative thing I can imagine.

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GP: I do think that there's a very shared spirit between the two, so it never surprises me when artists want to do something entrepreneurial and express themselves with more immediacy and autonomy. When you're an actor, you're waiting around for someone to tell you what to do, to give you a script that you might like. Maybe it’s a yes, maybe—usually—it’s a no. When you're creating something, you can realize your vision quite quickly. I've really enjoyed my own journey. As incredibly difficult as it has been, it’s very fulfilling.

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KB: Perhaps 10 years after we met, I was fortunate I could cofound the Department of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art. That's part of my legacy of which I’m very proud. As is cofounding the Environmental Council at MOCA. You've had a very public life—much more than mine. What do you see as your legacy?

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GP: I think I’ve had a bit of a metamorphosis over the years. If I had to find one through line, though, it’s that I’ve always wanted to light a path for women to feel that they have permission to be their full selves, to feel that they can fully express themselves in a way that's very true and sometimes even risky. I think back to some of my art and my performances of the ’90s—the ways I've been both a guinea pig and a spokesperson for this kind of agency around freedom of thought and wellness—and I really do believe that every person deserves to explore their truth. Even when society, or our families, or our jobs push back on us, it's our God-given right to explore the very nature of who we are.

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KB: I hear you. Do you remember that when I moved to New York, I lived in an apartment that was absolutely empty?
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GP: Oh yeah, you always live in empty apartments. I don't know what's with you. You have an absolute aversion to furniture.

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KB: Actually, what I told The New York Times was that living in a completely empty white apartment with no furniture but a great view was the ultimate luxury. I thought it was a notorious thing to say, especially in New York.

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GP: You know I like things: paintings, sofas, beds.

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KB: What about you—what is your greatest luxury?

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GP: As cheesy as it sounds, honestly, it would be time. Time to relax my nervous system, to be with my family, to cook, to lie in the sun and read a book. I feel like I have so little time lately, and it’s worn me down. Part of that, or most of that, is my fault for giving myself so much responsibility, so I would like to figure out a way to take some responsibility off my plate and give myself time back to just daydream and luxuriate a little bit. Time to do nothing like we used to do before every millisecond was crammed full of something.

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KB: It's absolutely not cheesy, and my luxury of having a pure, pictureless apartment from 20 years ago is not my luxury anymore. My luxury is time now, too. Actually, I just returned from my little hut in the rainforest of Puerto Rico. It’s empty, of course.

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GP: Of course.

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KB: But it has a view. It has no electricity, and I sleep on the floor. It's the greatest luxury there, not because it’s empty but because you’re able to reach the moment in which you forget about time. Especially after a day or two of not being reached by anybody. It's also tropical there, 12 hours light and 12 hours dark. At some point, you nearly get bored. Can you remember that feeling of boredom, Gwyneth? I think you haven’t had it for the last 40 years.

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GP: It's been a minute.

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KB: Eventually you forget. You forget about time, and that is the moment. I went to Puerto Rico to catch that. Where do you go to forget about time?

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GP: We have a small, little house in Italy, on a hill in the middle of nowhere. When we're there, we are really cut off from the world. I'll spend whole mornings not thinking about the things that I'm tethered to in my normal life. I’ll go for long walks and swim in the lake. That is where, for me, time loses its framework.

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KB: The interesting thing about forgetting time—and now I'm going to be the cheesy one—is that it is a notion of peace, because it means you have found peace with yourself. I don't know if that's too cheesy, I'm sorry, I should maybe retract that. Take it off the record!

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GP: No, don't retract that. It's true, absolutely. Peace is hard to come by right now. We live in a barrage of life and news and fears and capitalism. It’s been a lot.

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KB: You and I always wanted to go hiking in LA, but we never found the time. Years ago, I did go on a hike with a friend, who is much more sane than I am, and he did something really beautiful, a bit like when Marina Abramović sat at MoMA for 100 days. Do you remember that? She sat at the museum, for like, eight to 10 hours a day and would not do anything, just stayed there still while the audience waited and sat with her. So, the guy I was hiking with said, “Why don't we sit here?” He timed my clock for 10 minutes, and we just sat there still looking at the view, the world. It was such a little twist that made us present. The time belonged to us.

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GP: We forget that our time is ours. It doesn't always have to be inputs, you know. We need to be fastidious about keeping some of it for ourselves.

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KB: As a curator, I always look for that moment where I see a new work of art and it completely has me present. Similarly, being in the presence of it, I forget about everything else.

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GP: When's the last time you felt that way?

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KB: There are two last times, and strangely enough they both happened in Paris. The first was when I went to the Centre Pompidou to see the [Constantin] Brâncuși exhibition. There were the birds of Brâncuși, and they were presented in front of the skyline of Paris as a glass wall. I asked the curator, who I knew, if I could return in the evening right before closing. I stood there as a kind of Brâncuși-stalker as the sun set. It was an incredible moment. Similarly incredible was the musician Caroline Polachek, who I invited to the Musée de l’Orangerie to sing in front of [Claude] Monet’s “Water Lilies,” 1897–1926. It was just so oceanic and beautiful as if she was singing in the water lilies with time suspended.

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GP: Wow. I would love to see.

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KB: What was the last moment when you were in the presence of this kind of beauty?

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GP: In 2023, also in Paris, I went to see the Mark Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. My father was a fine art major. There were a couple of artists that he really admired, and he inculcated the love and awe for these people onto me. Richard Diebenkorn was one and so was Rothko, who I too loved since going to the Rothko Chapel when I was very young. There was one room in Paris that was just the gray-and-black paintings—did you see it?

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KB: Yes, it was on the top floor.

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GP: I had one of those moments where you feel like you're living the artist's intention, where everything that you are is being gently reflected back to you. I couldn't believe how all of those canvases and their uniformity made me feel. It was very profound.

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KB: When was the last time you did something really, really crazy, Gwyneth?

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GP: I've gotten so risk-averse since Covid. What have I done that's really crazy? I don’t know. It's not really crazy, but I did do a film [Marty Supreme with Timothée Chalamet] this past fall for the first time in a long time, which was very outside of my focus. I've been so entrenched in my life at Goop, with my kids, and in LA, and when this film came along I thought, Fuck it. It felt okay to be a bit mad, to change my migratory pattern and leave home for half a year. It was really fun and pretty, but it also felt really crazy for who I am right now.

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KB: Do you miss filming? Do you miss acting?

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GP: No, not at all.
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KB: Would you ever direct?

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GP: Never. Zero interest.

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KB: When I started my career as a curator, people would always ask me if I was also an artist. It always felt so odd. Why would I be an artist? I'm not an artist because I'm a curator. But then for actors, many do cross to the other side and direct.

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GP: I have no natural pull to work any other job in film whatsoever. I just don't think I would be good at it. I would be more likely to do something completely different.

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KB: When digital cameras first came out, I was lost in New York over Easter and did not know where to go. Spike Jonze was also in New York at the time, and we ended up going somewhere upstate as Easter orphans. He had his first little digital camera. We kind of joked around with it the whole weekend, making a silly movie, but eventually he somehow lost it. It was fortunate, actually, because it would be detrimental to us both if any of these pictures ever come out. After we went home, I wrote to him: “Hey Spike, I really enjoyed the weekend doing that little movie. Can I be your assistant?” I wanted to give up curating and assist him in whatever it was he was doing. The next morning, I realized the email hadn't been sent. The dial-up didn’t work, so I never asked for the job.

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GP: What a shame.

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KB: If you weren't doing the things that you are very successful at right now, who else could you imagine being if you were, like me, sending this little dial-up email?

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GP: I could really see myself dedicating all my time to doing a house, doing something unusual and really pushing the boundaries of interiors. I'm an Enneagram Type 1, which means I'm very inspired by visuals and beauty. This is why your dream of a white house with no furniture is not what I would want to do.

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KB: That's the reason we have been such great friends for such a long time.

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GP: Because we are so different?

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KB: Different but complementary. And we’re both super curious… We also share risk-taking. We’re not afraid to go into new territories.

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GP: Definitely not. Never.

Hair stylist LUCAS WILSON at DAYONE using ORIBE.
Makeup artist SAMANTHA LAU at A-FRAME AGENCY using GOOP BEAUTY.
Manicurist HONEY at EXPOSURE NY.
Set designer LAUREN NIKROOZ at 11TH HOUSE AGENCY.
Photo assistants IVORY SERRA and HECTOR DE JESUS.
Fashion assistant KATEY KABU-KUBI.
Set assistant KADEEM WALTERS.
Production PENNY PROJECTS.
Executive production KALENA YIAUEKI.
Production coordinators JANSAN PIERRE and ZARA PEARSON.
Production assistants SAM GRUMET and RICO ABDOU.
Retouching OCTOBER.
Special thanks REP LTD.