Hasta La Ideas

The internet was suddenly abuzz late last week, just before the weekend, when everyone’s favorite French designer Philippe Starck told a newspaper that he was working with Apple on a revolutionary product that would be out in the next few months. That certainly would be exciting, given that the internet nearly implodes when there’s even a hint of something Apple related in the works, and due to Starck’s long legacy in product design. Unfortunately, Starck also sometimes seems to mangle his words a touch, or exclaim lofty ambitions that maybe aren’t so grounded in reality. Over the weekend, Apple released a statement saying that no, they weren’t working with Starck on anything. Shortly thereafter, the Wall Street Journal reports that the designer laid everything out a bit more clearly, explaining that he’s working with Steve Jobs’ family on building a yacht. All of this, of course, makes much more sense, given that Apple generally keeps their product design very in-house (and certainly away from chatterboxes) and Starck now has something of a history building eco-friendly mega-yachts. We liked these couple of sentences the WSJ put together, summing up this recent there-and-gone story:

This episode has proved two things. Anything said about Apple provokes a huge buzz among the company’s followers. And Mr. Starck, who has waved his minimalist magic wand over everything from a toothbrush to a lemon squeezer to a mineral water bottle to penknives to hotels, likes to talk about himself.

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You may have considered either 2010 or 2011 to have been the year(s) that popular street artist Banksy possibly hit his career high, becoming a near-household name with his documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop and then, later, its Oscar nomination. However, with the 2012 Olympics soon arriving in his native England, some are speculating that this could be Banksy’s most prolific year. As such, spotters are on the lookout and they have recently found perhaps the first piece by the artist this year. Though it’s certainly difficult to verify such things, given that the artist is keen to maintain his mysterious recluse mystique, most it seems are considering this to be the first real deal of the year. Here are some details:

It appears to have all of the hallmarks of a real painting by the artist and would be the first new year offering by Banksy. 2012 the Olympic year is expected to be a big year for the artist as all eyes are now focused on the capital.. The stencil turned up on the corner of an office building on Oval Street in Kentish Town (near Camden Town) and many followers of the street artist have already identified the painting as a Banksy. It possesses all of the his irreverent stencil features including a distinctly political statement.

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If it feels like coming back to the daily grind after a long, relaxing holiday weekend has destroyed all forms of hope and joy, then we have just the remedy for you: the vaguely possible news that fashion design legend Karl Lagerfeld has collaborated with the rapper Snoop Dogg. Unfortunately, to what that degree of collaboration was, if any at all, is still unknown. Late last week, Women’s Wear Daily reported that the designer was in Saint-Tropez, directing a music video for nightclub owner-turned-musician Jean-Roch. Very quickly, WWD mentioned that “The track also features Snoop Dogg.” Whether or not Messrs. Lagerfeld and Dogg were in the same room together, or even in the same city, was not revealed. However, that didn’t stop the internet from exploding over the weekend with headlines like “Karl Lagerfeld and Snoop Dogg Are Working on a Music Video” and “The Collaboration We’ve Been Waiting For: Karl Lagerfeld and Snoop Dogg,” writing as though it were a sure thing. As far as we’re concerned, given that WWD was the only outlet to have the story and simply reported, again, that “The track also features Snoop Dogg,” we’re going to hold off believing that they’ve gotten together to make magic. If it does wind up being true, we’ll expect the finished product, judging from Lagerfeld’s previous film work, to either be bizarre and plotless or meandering with just a hint of plot. If it doesn’t wind up being true, that will mean that we can continue to pull for for our preferred design-based collaboration for the rapper: Droog and Dogg, together at last.

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With the American Institute of Architects‘ Architecture Billings Index still sinking into the red, if you thought the era of starchitects seeing their buildings getting canceled well before any ground had been broken, think again. The good folks at Curbed LA are reporting that the land underneath a planned Daniel Libeskind-designed tower near Los Angeles’ convention center has just appeared in this commercial real estate listing. While said listing makes mention that one could “Utilize this lot to build based on existing plans for a 43 story luxury high-rise mixed-use condominium,” with “plans [and] renderings have been completed by world famous architect Daniel Libeskind” at the ready for a buyer to take a crack at, it also mentions another option: “or collect current steady revenue from the event parking lot until commencement of development.” Curbed believes it’s time to “get out your coffin nails” as it’s never a good sign when a former developer is suddenly selling off the plot of land they were once eager to start building a tower designed by a “world famous architect” on.

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In a bizarre turn of events, it feels like we’ve suddenly been thrust into a world where the situation with John Galliano, who heads to court next month in Paris for his racial slurs and claims to love Adolph Hitler, never happened. First, and making the rounds like wildfire this week, was director Lars von Trier at Cannes, who didn’t seem to be able to control his babbling as he stumbled through an awkward few minutes of a press conference, wherein he said things like, “[Hitler] is not what you would call a good guy, but, yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit” and ended with a what-have-I-done, “Ok, I am a Nazi.” He was flanked by actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kirsten Dunst, who both appear in his latest film, both of whom seemed understandably uncomfortable (here’s video of the scene and for more careful review, a great page full of animated gifs of Dunst’s reactions as the horror show played out). Second, the organizers behind the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia are catching some heat this week after rolling out a new campaign featuring illustrations that critics have described as “neo-Hitlerite” and “like something from a Leni Riefenstahl film” due to its use of “an Aryan-looking snowboarder and an ice-skater gazing into the middle distance.” While certainly one could argue that old fascist and communist era iconography has long been used to ironic effect (see: Shepard Fairey, the multi-million dollar industry of Che Guevara merchandise, etc.), the Guardian reports this particular instance is a bit different, in that the design firm behind the campaign, the St. Petersburg-based Doping-Pong, has used swastikas and Nazi flags in some of their work, and have frequently collaborated with the artist Katya Zashtopik, “who is known for her sympathies with the ultra-right” and who recently wished Hitler a happy birthday on her blog. The firm is now playing defense, claiming they had no intention to support Nazism through the ads, nor did they work with Zashtopik on them. They’ve also claimed that the press is itching to read more into this than is there (and upon seeing their site and the context for which things are used, particularly the Guardian‘s aforementioned, seemingly very devious claim that they’ve used “a swastika as one of its online ‘banners’” we’re inclined to agree with their defense to some extent, because once you see what they’ve done, it makes more sense than just that one, evil-sounding sentence). But in the end, it’s all up for you to decide: Did von Trier just get tongue tied or did he spill a bit more than he should have? And is this campaign a nod to Nazism or just the media trying to dig a story out that might not really be there?

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