In the entry of Martha Otero Gallery in West Hollywood is an impressively large oil painting depicting three giant screens showing epic films with scores of theater seats facing in five directions. This massive undertaking is…
Continue Reading…
First look at the new book by Roman and Williams, showcasing a decade of interior design
Even if you’re unfamiliar with interior design powerhouse Roman and Williams, there’s a good chance you know their work. The Standard Hotel, The Breslin, The Ace Hotel, The Standard Grill, Stumptown Coffee, The Dutch, The Boom Boom Room—countless iconic NYC locales bear the mark of Roman and Williams’ protean…
Continue Reading…
A visual narrative of the art and design that spawned a cultural movement and DIY generation
Born in dungy London basements and matured in equally grimy streets, the punk counter culture of the mid 1970’s and 80’s defined an unrelenting angst felt by youth the world around. While many books have surfaced over the years to document its documenters, Punk: An Aesthetic wraps over 350…
Continue Reading…
High art in a revelatory New England field guide by William Wegman
Best known for his photographs of his beloved Weimaraners, William Wegman is an American artist with a talent for the unexpected. The recent release of his book “Hello Nature” coincides with an exhibition at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, both serving to demonstrate the artist’s intrinsic connection to nature and the New England wilderness. In the spirit of childhood—Wegman spent his summers in Maine’s Rangeley Lakes region—the compendium takes the form of a mock survival guide complete with recipes, advice and helpful anecdotes.
Wegman writes that he wished to create “a fiendish nature guide. Something that would combine the New England transcendentalism with a lifelong interest in hiking, fishing, canoeing, and birch bark. Have you ever made tea from birch bark?” For fans of his dog portraits, the woodsy art will shed light on the Wegman’s relationship to creatures. Beneath a crude drawing of a woodland critter, Wegman sums up this connection by writing, “Life wood bee boaring without animals as pets. Without pets life wood bee unbearable.”
Organizationally, Wegman’s own writings and art are broken up with a duo of essays by curators Kevin Salatino and Diana Tuite as well as a piece of short fiction by author Padgett Powell. These written works focus on Wegman’s life, his work, and the role of the environment in both. From the artist, we get a recipe for cinnamon teal duck cake, advice on birdwatching and handwritten treatises on environmental reform.
The layout of “Hello Nature” is curious. Curious in the sense that much of the writing is barely legible, the organization sporadic and the effect emotive. Curious, too, in the sense that this is not the Wegman we think we know. Weimaraners are present, but many of Wegman’s best-known works are left out. The result is that his work is given context outside of the celebrity buzz that dressed-up dogs have earned him. In short, the book is an honest look at the artist and the naturalist.
“Hello Nature” is available for purchase from The Bowdoin Store and on Amazon. The accompanying exhibition of over 100 works is on view at Bowdoin College Museum of Art through 21 October 2012.
An exhibition pays tribute to the human aspect of the influential school
Beginning tomorrow, London’s Barbican Art Gallery will kick off a several-month-long Bauhaus-themed exhibit—the UK’s largest in four decades—in Bauhaus: Art as Life. The 400-piece show will cover a wide swathe of topics, from art (paintings, ceramics) to society (photographs of social events), featuring major Bauhaus contributors such as Josef Albers, Paul Klee and Marianne Brandt. To make the show even more dynamic and interactive, extensive programming will supplement the show. We asked Barbican Centre’s art curator Catherine Ince to give us more insight into the new exhibit.
It’s been such a long time since there was a survey of this school in this country. At this particular moment of time in terms of art education, there are some interesting changes going on—there’s a lot of debate about art schools. It felt right to be looking at Bauhaus as a historical subject but also show it still has relevance.
Tuition fees keep going up and up. It makes studying art a difficult decision to make because people are backed into a corner more and more about where they put their money for their education. There’s a strong tradition in this country of experimental art schools that are free, liberal places, and you sometimes see that dwindling a bit in the corporatization of education.
The visual, aesthetic influence is still very prevalent. People are interested in the modernist social project and revisiting some of those slightly utopian aspects… There was a lot of tension in Bauhaus; it wasn’t always this happy community that all did the same [thing] together. There was energy and change and people working together or working against each other. It’s a socially oriented attitude that I think still has a lot of relevance for people. A lot of the imagery we’ve drawn out in the show is trying to shine a light on some of those human aspects of Bauhaus as well.
Theirs was a very comprehensive historical survey. We’ve taken a similar chronological narrative but tried to draw out key themes that are interesting to us; particular turning points in time or the people—their intimate personal relationships—and some of that zany stuff. The human dimension.
We selected a number of works made as gifts between students and masters, and they’ve been particularly wonderful to come across. Some of those works are pretty powerful—they’ve got a really interesting narrative behind them. For me, it’s been fun to bring textiles into the show. We’ve particularly tried to foreground the work of women at the school. They’ve always made up a high percentage of the student body but generally were pushed into the weaving workshop. There were few women who stepped outside of that and managed to forge a different territory. We’ve got some incredible weavings.
We had one private collector who recently discovered a Marianne Brandt teapot that has never been seen before, so that will be the first time it’ll be on public display here [in the UK].
It’s about drawing out some of the themes from the show that we want to expand on or thinking from the Bauhaus that still has relevance. Because we’re a cross-arts center, we wanted to reflect on some of that.
We have a film week. Film wasn’t really embraced as part of the Bauhaus, but there were a few students who were particularly interested in the potential of film.
We’ve got several descendants of Bauhaus artists coming to talk, such as Peter Fischli. Fischli’s father Hans was from the Bauhaus, and Peter will be talking about growing up in the Bauhaus environment and how it’s affected his own art practice. We [also] have Gunta Stölzl’s daughter, who’s going to give a history of her [mother’s] life and work she did in Switzerland after she left the Bauhaus.
We’re having a big party on June 23. There was a lot of partying and carnival that happened at the Bauhaus, so in the afternoon you can come and make kites because annually they had a kite festival.
“Bauhaus: Art as Life” will be on display at the Barbican Gallery from 3 May through 12 August 2012.
Barbican Art Gallery
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London, UK
EC2Y 8DS
A mini-retrospective of typographer Viktor Koen’s object alphabets
Viktor Koen takes pictures of renaissance rapiers in museum corridors. He hordes images of salmon steaks, microscopes, beheaded dolls and nautilus shells. From the thousands of archived shots, the Greek typographical artist composes unique alphabets from layers of objects. The recently opened show “Metamorphabets” at The Type Director’s Club looks back on five alphabets, numerous commissioned works and other pieces that compose the artist’s production from 1998 to present. Koen’s alphabets show a creativity, an obsession with type and a talent for finding language in the silence of objects.
“Metamorphabets is a fascination with welding and squeezing images into letters and then coming up with a very illustrative version of an alphabet,” says Koen. Setting out to build a new set, Koen often has a social or political angle to which he’s trying to draw attention—”Warphabet” is a collection created entirely from arms, and his series “Toyphabet” plays with the notion of lost childhood, which he feels has been exacerbated by technology. “It’s a schematic and typographical way to put issues in front of people in way that they might not expect,” Koen explains.
Working from a wealth of individual images, Koen is able to crop, cut and color correct his materials into representational letters with a common aesthetic. His obsessive technique takes months to create a single alphabet, during which Koen reserves the early part of the morning to work through the technical details of letter creation and the afternoons for creative pursuits.
Drawing from Greek, Hebrew and English alphabetic traditions, Koen’s approach is understandably unique. His vision has earned him notable contracts, including the cover of The New York Times Book Review titled “The Politics of Science”. His work for the cover earned him the monicker “Photoshop scribe” from Steven Heller, author of the Book Review’s “Visuals” column.
Metamorphabets is on display at TDC through 30 April 2012.
The Type Director’s Club
347 West 36th Street
Suite 603
New York, NY 10018
The acclaimed artist offers us a rare glimpse inside his Brooklyn studio ahead of his upcoming mini retrospective
While we all like to tap into an artist’s brain, find out exactly what goes on in their mind to make them create what they do, sometimes there isn’t really more behind a work of art than simply a vision that a person is unable to explain through words. The different approaches to making art—from pragmatic to utterly emotional—is part of what keeps the field perpetually intriguing.
A reticent painter originally from Côte d’Ivoire, Ouattara Watts recently opened up his studio to Cool Hunting for a preview of the newly formed works comprising his forthcoming exhibition. The large, garage-like space is located in an industrial part of Brooklyn between Williamsburg and Bushwick that’s home to numerous emerging artists. With both the Whitney Museum and Venice biennials on his résumé, the veteran painter may hold more clout than his neighbors, but his artistic spirit seems unaffected by his widespread success.
Organized by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Watts’ upcoming NYC exhibition—which Roitfeld says is more like a small retrospective—will feature 18 new paintings alongside a few existing pieces. Watts completed all of these large-scale works in a matter of about six months, explaining that with the way the world is right now, he has a lot to say. At the moment, he is mostly preoccupied by the population of mistreated children in the world, a concern that presumably evolved since the birth of his own child, a life-changing moment for him.
Bursting with color and layered in fabrics and objects picked up from his global travels, Watts’ paintings are still entrenched in his own style of Neo-Expressionism. Cryptic serial numbers abound, alluding to a secret code that only he knows about, but one that could potentially be worked out through clever deciphering or a deep understanding of West African cosmology. The mysticism that prevails reflects a coalescent spirituality, his beliefs not tied to one religion or another, but that together are very much a part of his enduring creative passion.
The mix of media Watts uses is also symbolic of his constant exploration, and the people he encounters along the way. For example, the massive piece, “Vertigo #4” is covered in a denim remnant given to him by the shop owner of a fabric store near his Midtown apartment. Glued to this is an Ikea-like dish cloth embroidered with the initials “JL”—who they belong to Watts claims not to know. These found objects and recycled fabrics likely speak to the movement against using expensive materials, a notion developed in the 1970s by fellow Ivorian painter Mathilde Moraeau which she called Vohou-Vohou. The mix also undoubtedly marks a more natural way for Watts to express himself, free of monetary limitations or a prescribed aesthetic.
Although known in his own right, it’s difficult not to associate Watts with the legendary artist Jean-Michael Basquiat. The two met in Paris while Watts was studying at the renowned L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and while their friendship was short-lived due to Basquiat’s death, Watts considers him almost like a soulmate. Basquiat convinced him to move to NYC, where Watts gave rise to African art with prominent shows at the Gagosian and Vrej Baghoomian galleries.
The exhibition opens 7 February and runs through 19 February 2012 at the cavernous space known simply as 560 Washington Street.
All images by BHP, see more in the slideshow below.
A retrospective on the life and work of Dada’s Mama
Beatrice Wood’s “Career Woman” exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art celebrates more than her prolific ouevre of gorgeous ceramics, whimsical drawings and colorful paintings. As part of Pacific Standard Time, the show tells the story of Wood’s intimate friendships with Marcel Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roche, the discovery of her love of clay, her exploration of complicated relationships between men and women and her search for spirituality.
I came to know the “mama of Dada” during my time in Ojai, California with the Virginia Avenue Project (VAP) after-school program, whose artistic director, Leigh Curran, was lifelong friends with Wood. I met the artist on weekly studio trips with the VAP students, and began visiting the artist several times throughout the year toward the end of her life. Now, when I am asked to describe Wood, the first words that come to mind are beautiful and mischievous. From her artwork to her personality, she was feminine, strong-willed, talented and colorful. Her eyes literally sparkled, and she attributed her longevity to chocolate and young men.
I particularly treasure a note Wood sent to thank me for sending a copy of “The Last Flower” by James Thurber, with a picture of the VAP children, that sums up her pacifist views. “I am glad to have the photograph of you and some of your project girls,” she wrote. “The children look intelligent and happy. The book about the bomb and the general is much in time with what is going on in the world. I recently read that the military has thousands of aeroplanes, I mean thousands of tankers, shells, bandages, thermometers to kill and to heal the wounded that they do not know what to do with all the surplus stuff. I hope all of us that feel about bombing the way we do with make some impact on this crazy world. Love to you and the children, Beatrice.”
Recently I reread her memoir I Shock Myself that chronicles her posh childhood, bohemian coming of age, affairs with Pierre Roche and Marcel Duchamp, and unique journey to find herself living in Ojai, CA.
The details of her life transcend the typical: artistic successes and passionate affairs, her strange loyalty to two complicated men in unconsummated marriages and a new career at the age of 40, when she discovered ceramics at Hollywood High School. She had enrolled in the class to learn how to make a teapot to go with luster plates, and went on to create within the genre for more than 60 years.
Beatrice lived to the age of 105. Her adventurous story reminds us all that living can be messy, complicated, beautiful and joyful. Much like her quickly drawn stick figure thumbing his nose at the world—that Duchamp later put on the cover of his Blindman’s Ball poster—Wood lived by her own rules and lived to the fullest.
Curated by Elsa Longhauser and Lisa Melandri with exhibition design by Adam Silverman of Heath Ceramics, “Beatrice Wood: Career Woman—Drawings, Painting, Vessels, and Objects” is on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through 25 February 2012. A 144-page illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition documenting her contributions to the canon of 20th century art.
All images courtesy of the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Wood photographed in her studio and with tiger by Bill Dow; Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Beatrice Wood, photographed in 1917.
A new body of work by artist Paula Scher takes a subjective look at topography
by Maj Hartov
Graphic design heavyweight Paula Scher‘s new book Maps covers her cartographic artwork since the late 1990s. She calls her large-scale paintings “distortions of reality,” as they comment on our world of information overload in a deeply personal way. When she was a child, Scher’s father—who wrote an introductory essay for the book—invented a device called Stereo Templates that helps correct the naturally occurring deviations in aerial photos used for creating maps. As a result, the artist grew up understanding that all maps contain distortions and used that riff on reality to guide her own interpretations. When Scher started painting her maps, she wanted to create them through her own altered lens, understanding that such inconsistencies were all around her as part of her everyday life—through her own work and the work of others.
Scher’s book of colorful, multilayered paintings present familiar geography in vibrant, thoughtful new ways. Besides being visually stunning, on closer look each map is crammed with geographical information. One titled “International Air Routes” includes airline hubs, flight routes, names of airlines and time zones, while another called “World Trade” outlines ports, trade routes and currencies. The book also features several pages of zoomed-in slices of each painting for closer examination of every angle of the maps.
With the book, Scher takes the reader on a virtual world tour with a twist and her “paintings of distortions” compel us to take a look at the idea of truth within our own reality in the process.
“Maps” is available from Amazon for $30.
A young graphic designer’s first monograph is full of color and motion
A lot of artists might think twice about issuing a retrospective before they
reach 30. But the young Canadian graphic designer Julien Vallée—
whom we covered earlier this year—already had a considerable
body of work from which to choose. Vallée’s art is distinctive for its daring combination of traditional handcrafts and
digital manipulation, and his painstaking combinations of cut paper and stop-motion
animation are by turns whimsical, dazzling and baffling. People leap through screens
and turn into shreds of paper, while smoke, light and glass mingle in seemingly impossible
combinations.
“Working on this book was an amazing opportunity to take a look at the
work [I’ve] produced in the last few years. I never really had time to do it before,” said
Vallée. “There was a lot of behind-the-scenes material, and it was hard to cut it out without losing details behind the process.”
In Rock, Paper, Scissors, Vallée pulled together a selection of his commissioned work for clients as diverse as The New York Times, MTV and AOL, as well as a few of his
personal projects. In keeping with Vallé’s multimedia approach, the reader can also access exclusive videos—both of the projects and behind-the-scenes work—through
Gestalten’s website.
The monograph took seven months to compile with the aid of several friends and
collaborators. The text was written with Montreal-based artists Eve Duhamel and
Mike Canty. “For the design, I started myself but realized soon I was still too close to my work. I found out it was better to have someone that was not involved in the projects,
looking at them with fresh eyes,” said Vallée, who turned to Montreal-based design studio Feed and a friend, Matthias Hübner, at Gestalten for help.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors” will be available for purchase in
the United States through Gestalten’s website by the end of October. For a closer look at Vallée’s work, check out his website here.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
