Hasta La Ideas

Dave Eggers’ clever new book of drawings

Dave Eggers, author and founder of the indie publishing house McSweeney’s recently unveiled yet another creative talent: the knack for drawing. His oversized “It Is Right to Draw Their Fur: Animal Renderings” arrives in McSweeney’s book release club members’ mailboxes this week and his first collection of drawings.

Packaged in a delightful cardboard portfolio, it consists of 26 posters on heavy and regular stock in three sizes of animals Eggers drew with China marker in the late hours of the evening at the end of 2009 into this year. Most are accompanied by nonsensical sayings as imagined by him, an attempt to put words to the animals’ staid-to-confused expressions.

Eggers explains in the enclosed booklet that his drawing background stretches back to his childhood days, when he aspired to become a painter after his hero Manet. He later made extra money through his illustrations. The pictures he’s drawn of animals are simplistic, but the detail lies in the fur. Strokes upon strokes create a coat that you can almost feel with your eyes.

For non-subscribers, “It Is Right to Draw Their Fur’s” official release date is 1 October 2010, but it’s already available from McSweeney’s online store or from Amazon.

A primer on the pioneering lifestyle store that introduced good design to the people

Before Crate & Barrel and Design Within Reach, there was Design Research, the retail concept widely credited with reinventing furniture shopping by pioneering a lifestyle approach that changed the look of bedrooms and stores from coast to coast.

The brainchild of architect Ben Thompson, he founded a new way of decorating and living when he opened his first Design Research store in 1953 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a story chronicled in the new book “Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes.” Through photos, press clippings and other ephemera, the Pentagram-designed primer outlines his philosophy and the impact of breaking away from mass-produced furniture sold through dominant mega-department stores. His widow Jane Thompson, founder of I.D. magazine, architect and urban planner, weighs in too, documenting how her husband not only introduced “lifestyle” under one retail shopping roof, but popularized the idea that good design should be accessible to everyone in postwar America.

Design Research became an influential modernist mini-chain that mixed design objects from Charles and Ray Eames, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen with French rustic pottery, no-name Bolivian sweaters and $1 Mexican drinking glasses. For fashion in the late 50s, just when women sought equality in society, Design Research became the first representative for Marimekko’s loose, colorful and graphic shifts. Fashion had gone from tight waists, pointy bosoms and round hips to the tent-like chemise. American women embraced the untraditional, “high casual” style that gave them permission to move freely in comfort.

For Ben, modernism didn’t mean minimalism, oversimplification or monochrome. He believed that people should be encouraged to imagine for themselves what their homes could be inside. All they needed was a forum of the best available national and international goods to pick from. He built a retail store that was a department store without the departments, hence creating “lifestyle.”

Design Research went on to have stores in New York and San Francisco, among other cities, through the late ’60s, inspiring budding retailer entrepreneurs like Gordon Segal, co-founder of Crate & Barrel, and Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach. Segal was directly influenced by DR in 1965 when he realized a store’s environment, visual display and music were integral to how it made a customer feel. As a teenager in 1968, Forbes fell under the spell of modern design, when he saw a friend’s home outfitted with DR goods.

Pick up “Design Research” directly from the publisher, Chronicle Books or get it from Amazon.

A cinema legend’s left-behind photos make up an enticing new book

Known for his impressive film career that spanned four decades and included prolific pictures like “The Ten Commandments,” “The King and I” and “The Magnificent Seven,” Russian-born actor Yul Brynner has most recently been in the public eye for his beautifully fascinating photos of fellow stars captured at unguarded moments.

Put together by the late actor’s daughter Victoria Brynner, publisher Edition 7L released a four-volume anthology of these images called Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey earlier this month. Each volume is dedicated to a different portion of Brynner’s life.

Volume 1—Life Style—depicts images from his friends, with photos like Frank Sinatra getting out of his private helicopter with a whiskey glass in hand and Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin horsing around at the Hollywood Bowl. Volume 2—Life On Set—shows the behind-the-scenes photos of the films he starred in, while Volume 3—dubbed 1956—highlights the busiest year of his career and includes a foreword from the esteemed Martin Scorsese. For the full picture, Volume 4—Man Of Style—shows the man himself with images that “illustrate his love of photography, individuality, family, friends, and, quite simply, the art of living.”

The photos from the book have also been on display at NYC’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery. Exhibiting 70 works (those chosen by Victoria Brynner from the 8,000 her father left behind), the show is a sensational portrayal of a time without paparazzi documenting every celebrity’s move.

“Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey” is on view through 25 September 2010 in NYC before moving to Paris in October 2010. The book of the same name is available for pre-order from Amazon and will sell at stores like Colette, Steidlville and Book Soup.

Luminous sculpture in David Batchelor’s color-centric Rio de Janiero show

Though not quite as spectacular of a juxtapoistion as Murakami’s current show at Versailles, London-based artist and writer David Batchelor’s current exhibition Chromophilia positions his colorful sculptures in the context of the historic Paco Imperial in Rio de Janeiro this month. Once the residence to Portuguese royalty, Paco Imperial now serves as a cultural center showcasing the art work of contemporary artists.

Chromophilia, which refers to the love of color, is a large-scale exhibit based on Batchelor’s 2006 book Chromophobia, a cultural anthology on the use of color over the past 150 years. The acclaimed art writer posits color as being a readymade art form that accessorizes, adorns and conceals objects.

Work from Cromophilia was previously showcased in prominent exhibits such as MoMA’s Color Chart: Reinventing Color in New York. The exhibit in Rio features bright, luminous colors displayed through ensembles of stacks, string cascades, empty containers and 99-cent store offerings.

Chromophilia is currently up at the Paco Imperial through 30 October 2010. Check out more information on the artist, including an extensive bio here.

Noah Scalin over at ALR Design is looking for submissions for The Design Activist’s Handbook a book that he is working on with writer Michelle Taute and is being published by HOW Books next year. Here’s what their looking for:

Artwork and interviews: Socially conscious design projects, both self-initiated and client projects, with good stories to go with them. We’d like to hear about failures and successes:
• Your first efforts at socially conscious design.
• Projects/situations where you struggled with ethics.
• How you manage to pursue socially conscious design and still pay the bills.
• What socially conscious design means to you.
• Situations/projects that helped you discover your power as a designer.

Referrals: Know someone else we should talk to? Or something you’d really like to see in the book? Please let us know! We’re especially interested in talking with in-house and agency designers who are working to affect change at their companies from the bottom up.

For more info submissions and referrals go here. All entries must be sent by July 16th of next week.