Hasta La Ideas

Artist and graphic novelist David Sandlin is among the newly announced class of fellows at the the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He is joined by literary luminaries including David Bezmozgis, Mary Gaitskill, and Wells Tower; New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar; and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed. The 14 fellows—a mix of creative writers, scholars, and academics—will be in residence at the Cullman Center from September 2010 through May 2011, pursuing a range of book projects that will make extensive use of the library’s holdings. Belfast-born Sandlin, who is on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts, will use his fellowship to work on a graphic novel called Belfaust, the culmination of his eight-volume artist’s book series, “A Sinner’s Progress.” The series was born from Sandlin’s interest in exploring American puritanism, he notes on his website, and follows the adventures of Bill Grimm, an ‘on the go and on the make’ salesman of Christian novelty items. Many of Sandlin’s characters are modeled after people he knows. “My work is often allegorical,” he says, “and using models with personal connections to me helped me create sympathy for what otherwise might appear to be two-dimensional mythological characters.”

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Party at the New Museum! True to our prediction of last week, SANAA partners Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa have been chosen as the 2010 Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, bestowed annually upon a living architect (and sometimes two of them). The jury praised them for “architecture that is simultaneously delicate and powerful, precise and fluid, ingenious but overly or overtly clever” and highlighted their work in the United States—the glass pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art and the New Museum in New York City—as well as the Ogasawara Museum in Nagano, Japan and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. Sejima and Nishizawa will receive their bronze medallions and $100,000 grant on May 17 at a ceremony on New York’s Ellis Island.

In announcing the jury’s choice yesterday, Hyatt Foundation chairman Thomas Pritzker appeased fans of ESPN-style statistics. “This marks the third time in the history of the prize that two architects have been named in the same year,” said Pritzker, referring to the two-for-one wins of Oscar Niemeyer and Gordon Bunshaft in 1988 and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in 2001. “Japanese architects have been chosen three times in the thirty-year history of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.” Sejima and Nishizawa join past laureates Kenzo Tange (1987), Fumihiko Maki (1993), and Tadao Ando (1995).

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The UnBeigemobile didn’t make it down to Austin earlier this month for South by Southwest (SXSW), but we’re happy to report that design is becoming more prominent at the burgeoning music, film, and interactive event. This year, SWSW heeded the suggestion of Austin-based designer David Horridge and bestowed its inaugural award for excellence in title design. The international competition was open to all title sequences created as part of a film completed since 2009. Finalists were judged by a panel of industry experts that included Susan Bradley (Pixar), Karin Fong (Imaginary Forces), and Remco Vlaanderen (Submarine Channel’s Forget the Film, Watch the Titles). The big winner? Designer Ben Conrad‘s titles for Zombieland, the Zombie comedy directed by Ruben Fleischer (who just inked a deal with DreamWorks). Crop artist Stan Herd earned both runner-up honors and the audience award for his titles for earthwork, a movie based on his life.

Like us, SXSW also loves a good movie poster (another initiative of Horridge, an AIGA Austin board member). The film festival handed out its second annual award for excellence in poster design to Joseph Ernst for Feeder, his vomit-inducing experimental short that was filmed entirely inside someone’s mouth. Free of characters, location, or dialogue, Feeder tells “a simple story of excess over the course of a single day.” Watch the trailer here, but only if you’re OK with skipping lunch. Brussels-based designer and animator Gilles Vranckx was chosen as runner-up for his retro poster for Amer, a neo-giallo crowd-pleaser. The poster design award category was judged by Craig Crutchfield (Chaos Concept Mfg.), Craig Denham (Sanders/Wingo), David Frost (AllCity), Marc English (Marc English Design), and Tim League (Alamo Drafthouse).

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Here at UnBeige, we’ve been known to select dining establishments based on their chairs and menu typefaces, so when the James Beard Foundation announces its annual slate of award nominees, we head straight for the design and graphics categories. New Orleans’ Palace Cafe was the setting for this morning’s announcement of the 2010 contenders, selected by committees of industry professionals in each of the categories.

Duking it out for the James Beard Award in outstanding restaurant design are Evan Douglis Studio for Choice Market in Brooklyn; Project M’s John Bielenberg for PieLab, a pie shop-cum-community design center in Greensboro, Alabama; and Andre Kikoski Architect for The Wright, the swooping, Liam Gillick-accented eatery on the ground floor of New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The restaurant graphics category again pits Korn Design, who won last year for its work for Denver’s The Corner Office and this year makes the list for Catalan-inspired Mercat a la Planxa in Chicago, against Steven Solomon, who is nominated for the second consecutive year for Terroir in New York City. The new face in the crowd is that of Pandiscio Co., whose pub-gone-whimsical look for New York’s Standard Grill is going to be tough to beat. Here’s hoping that the nominating committee makes it to Casa Lever to check out Mucca Design’s graphical achievements before next year’s shortlist is announced. Winners of the 2010 James Beard Foundation Awards will be announced on May 3 at a Lincoln Center ceremony hoted by gastronomic celebrity-entrepreneurs Alton Brown, Lidia Bastianich, and Wolfgang Puck. Wear your fanciest clogs!

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Rouse yourself from your iPad-coveting daydreams and check out the just-released list of finalists for the National Magazine Awards, bestowed annually by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). Below we’ve listed the finalists in the design and photo categories, including a nod for Platon‘s extraordinary “Portaits of Power” portfolio, published in the December 7 issue of The New Yorker, and Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin‘s work in the October issue of W. Meanwhile, after winning two consecutive National Magazine Awards for general excellence in its circulation category (under 100,000), Print was not nominated this year, but another design book—Architect, edited by Ned Cramer—snuck in to the group, where it will compete against Aperture, Military History, The Paris Review, and San Francisco. We’ve denoted last year’s category winners (all have been nominated again) with an asterisk. The 2010 winners will be announced and presented with Alexander Calder-designed “Elephant” trophies at a ceremony on April 22 in New York.

DESIGN (print): The award honors the effectiveness of design, typography and artwork in support of the editorial mission of the magazine.
Esquire | GQ | Martha Stewart Living | New York | Wired*

PHOTOGRAPHY (print): The award honors the effectiveness of photography, photojournalism, and photo-illustration in support of the editorial mission of the magazine.
GQ* | National Geographic | The New York Times Magazine | Vanity Fair | Vogue

PHOTOJOURNALISM: This category recognizes the informative photographic documentation of an event or subject.
Foreign Policy | National Geographic* (2) | New York | Virginia Quarterly Review

PHOTO PORTFOLIO: This category honors creative photography and photo illustration, including portraiture.
National Geographic | New York | The New Yorker* | Out | W

Click here for the complete list of finalists.

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