Hasta La Ideas

The art world has been operating like a Dallas cliffhanger this week with the publication of Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith‘s book, Van Gogh, The Life, which has left people wondering, “Who really shot Van Gogh?” The book posits that the shot that ultimately killed him was delivered by the hands of two teenage boys, not from a suicide attempt by the artist himself as has long been presumed (helped along because that’s what Van Gogh told everyone before his death). The authors have stirred up something of a controversy by introducing this new theory, claiming that the shooting was either an accident or an intentional act and that the artist simply didn’t want to see the boys punished. Given Van Gogh’s posthumous legacy, with his name now synonymous with “great art” and his paintings now selling in the millions, it’s just the sort of theory that commands attention and helps to sell books. Case in point, 60 Minutes even dedicated a whole feature to it this past Sunday. However, the organization who perhaps knows the artist best, the Amsterdam-based Van Gogh Museum, isn’t quite ready to update all of their information just yet. In a post on the museum’s site, they agree that the book poses an interesting theory, but raising a few issues they have with the theory, state that “plenty of questions remain unanswered” and that “it would be premature to rule out suicide as the cause of death.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Competition: we’re giving away five copies of the brand-new Dezeen Book of Ideas signed by Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs. 

Published by Spotlight Press, the 208 page paperback contains 116 examples of design genius, all written in accessible, jargon-free English and lavishly illustrated with full-colour photographs.

Covering architecture, interiors and design, this unique book is stuffed full of amazing concepts and revolutionary products, all chosen by the team behind the world’s most influential online architecture and design magazine.

From mobile phones powered by fizzy drinks to cars made of fabric to houses with slides instead of staircases, Dezeen Book of Ideas represents a refreshing new approach to design publishing.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Dezeen Book of Ideas” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers.

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Competition closes 1 November 2011. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the bottom of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

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About the book

Dezeen Book of Ideas is the first print publication by Dezeen. It is published by Spotlight Press. You can buy the Dezeen Book of Ideas online or pick one up in person at Dezeen Space, 54 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3QN until 16 October.

www.dezeenbookofideas.com

About the editor

Marcus Fairs is founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen and is one of the world’s most respected architecture and design journalists. Marcus was founding editor of Icon magazine and is author of two previous books, Twenty-First Century Design (2006) and Green Design (2009), both published by Carlton Books.

About Dezeen

Dezeen is the world’s most influential architecture and design website, attracting one million visitors each month from around the world. Established in November 2006, Dezeen pioneered a new, accessible form of design journalism and criticism based on the then-new blog format.

Over the past five years Dezeen has expanded its brand to now include Dezeen Jobs, one of the world’s leading online design recruitment sites; Dezeen Screen, the leading design video resource, and Dezeen Watch Store, the world’s first design-led online watch store.

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Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch’s immersive video installations captured in their first monograph

“A glorious mess;” “manic and often overwhelming;” a “tumult of video, furniture, music, extreme makeup and insistent jabberwocky”—reading reviews of Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin’s touring show “Any Ever” might make the printed page seem like an impossible format (if not totally antithetical) for showcasing their work. While there’s nothing quite like watching the spastic films unfold as you sit in a room decorated with the excesses of suburban culture, through a feat of design, the new book manages to capture the essence of the emerging art stars’ aesthetic.

Using a variety of layouts and experimenting with text, the experience of thumbing through the monograph’s pages evokes a similar sense of today’s information chaos, as equally fraught with aggressive optimism as with streaks of dark humor. Playing with fonts and punctuation makes the publication look more conversational, accomplishing the tricky feat of giving a sense of which imaginative character is saying what, and the characteristically Trecartin way in which they say it.

A heavy use of black backgrounds similarly evokes what it’s like to see the frenetic scenes unfold onscreen. As a supplement to seeing the show, the book nicely functions as if you’ve hit pause, recording some of the best dialog—”i totally cry’real tears, ijust haven’t Designed them YET:” and “Watching the Gift Economy tie Strings, 2my NECK!”—for those who didn’t take notes.

The clever design, coupled with commentary by some of Trecartin’s supporters (including Rhizome director Lauren Cornell and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s Jeffrey Deitch) as well as an interview with Cindy Sherman, helps position the young artist and his work at the forefront of the contemporary art scene—not that the upstart is having any trouble.

“Any Ever” opens at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris on 18 October 2011 and runs through 8 January 2011. If you can’t make it, Trecartin’s Vimeo page has Any Ever in its entirety, along with the genius piece that put him on the map, “A Family Finds Entertainment.”

Pick up Any Ever from Amazon or Rizzoli.

Installation image from the P.S.1 show by Matthew Septimus