The Epic VISION of BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD

With a MONUMENTAL new EXHIBITION in Paris, the Americanborn ARTIST looks back on a CREATIVE LIFE spent thinking BIG

- SORAYA NADIA MCDONALD

Tuxedo, GIORGIO ARMANI. Choker, GABRIEL & CO. Top and other jewelry, Chase-Riboud's own.

When Philadelphia-born Barbara Chase-Riboud left the United States on her own for the first time in 1957, it was aboard the ocean liner Flandre. The ship, bound for Europe, departed from New York Harbor. As Flandre steamed east, it left behind perhaps the best gift ever given by a best friend: the 151-foot-tall Statue of Liberty, generously bestowed by our close ally France in honor of the U.S. centennial and a constant reminder to America of its most superlative self-greeting tired, poor, huddled masses of newcomers seeking safety, fortune, hope, and freedom.

With this journey, Chase-Riboud embarked on an extraordinary life as a sculptor, poet, and novelist. Since 1961, she has made her home in Paris, where she has fashioned a singular body of work that has been informed as much by her American-ness as it has been by the kind of perspective that seeing America from afar has afforded her-a notion that occurred to her shortly after arriving in Europe on a fellowship to the American Academy in Rome.

Coat, SCHIAPARELLI. Moccasins, JACQUEMUS. Jewelry, Chase-Riboud's own.

"I was in school at the academy when I discovered that the U.S. was not the center of the world," Chase-Riboud tells me in mid-October. "And I finally realized that I was not the center of the world either," she says. "Once you decide that not only are you not the center of the world but the U.S. isn't the center of the world and America is what it is with all its hidden histories and tragedies and contradictions... your attitude about yourself changes."