Hasta La Ideas

Takashi Murakami in front of his painting, “New day DOB’s Acrobatic Spectacular: Society” (2011), expected to bring between $350,000 and $450,000 at tomorrow’s sale. Below, he is joined by Yoshitomo Nara and KAWS. (Photos: Stephanie Murg)

On March 11, 2011, Takashi Murakami was in his Tokyo studio, busy with preparations for the biannual GESAI art fair that was scheduled to open in a couple of days. Then everything changed. “It was a total shock,” he said the other day at Gagosian Gallery in New York, recounting his experience of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that triggered a tsunami and nuclear accidents. “In the days immediately following the earthquake, there was panic and hysteria, but eventually we started to think how we could do something, with artists.” That something was “New Day,” which began as a blog-based version of GESAI (the fair was cancelled in the wake of the disaster) and evolved into a range of activities, including the sale of merchandise and special installations at art fairs, with all proceeds donated to organizations helping with recovery efforts. Now the initiative is primed for its biggest event yet, an auction of 21 works donated by artists including Murakami and members of his Kaikai Kiki stable (Mr., Aya Takano) as well as the likes of Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Yoshitomo Nara. The sale takes place tomorrow morning at Christie’s in New York and is expected to bring in between $3.5 million and $5 million to fund relief efforts in Japan by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Global Giving, and International Medical Corps.

“The earthquake happened around three in the afternoon,” said Murakami, standing before a self-portrait in which even his goatee is contorted in grief. “At five o’clock, [Christie’s owner] Francois Pinault sent me an e-mail asking ‘Are you OK? Is there anything I can do to help?’ And that e-mail was really the starting point of this project.” As he walked a scrum of journalists around Gagosian’s fifth-floor space on Madison Avenue, Murakami gestured to the eye-popping line-up of works donated by artist-friends he had recruited to participate. “The artists gave us supernice pieces,” he said, gesturing to a quartet of photos from Sherman’s 1976 “Bus Riders” series and a maquette of a pink balloon poodle, then still being silkscreened onto stainless steel at Koons’ studio (the finished product is expected to bring $600,000 to $800,000 tomorrow). “Initially I was thinking of more gloomy images,” said Mr., speaking through a translator about his “Okay!!” (2011), in which an anime-style schoolgirl pumps her fist and flings off a hot pink mary jane. “But I decided it was better to paint pictures that are more encouraging, as a way to convey ‘let’s get going.’”
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After an absolute blast at Hot One Inch Action’s summer show at Hand-Eye Supply, we couldn’t be more pleased to announce their return to our Portland store on December 1st. What’s more, they are accepting submissions now until Nov. 16th, so submit your tiny art work for the show at their website.

For those of you who missed it the first time—Conceived by Jim Hoehnle and Chris Bentzen in 2004, Hot One Inch Action is the original, one-night only show of button art and social interaction from Vancouver, BC.

Hot One Inch Action reproduces the tiny art of 50 local artists on one inch buttons. At the show, we sell mixed packs of 5 buttons for $5. If you want a specific button, you’ll either have to take a chance and buy more mixed packs of random buttons OR trade with the other people at the event.

With none of the pretentiousness of a regular art show, everyone interacts out of necessity—”I want that button!”—and the evening becomes a relaxed and fun event for people of all-ages.

Hot One Inch Action is now accepting artist submissions for all of its 2011 shows (Seattle, WA, Vancouver, BC, and Portland, OR). It’s free to submit and chosen artists receive 20 free copies of their button. Each show highlights and showcases local artists from their respective cities, all Portland artists, designers, photographers and button enthusiasts are encouraged to submit! The submission deadline for the Portland show is Wednesday November 16 at 12pm (noon).

Thursday, Dec. 1st
Admission is free. Mixed packs of 5 buttons are $5.
6PM – 9PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209
RSVP on Facebook

(more…)

We’re not sure how this one slipped by us—the trailer has been online for nearly two weeks now—but with the (limited) release less than three weeks away, the trailer for Eames: The Architect and the Painter is sure to generate a bit of buzz for “the first film to be made about Charles and Ray since their deaths.”

The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life—from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age—has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.

Filmmakers Jason Cohn & Bill Jersey tapped a never-before-seen “cache of archival material, visually-stunning films, love letters, photographs and artifacts” from over 40 years of work and collaboration to present “a definitive and unprecedented cinematic foray into the private world of Charles and Ray Eames’ [studio].” In any case, it’s as good as reason as any to listen to the dulcet tones of James Franco’s baritone narration for just under an hour and a half.

Eames: The Architect and the Painter premieres in New York, L.A., and a handful of other cities on November 18, with over a dozen additional one-off or limited runs in other locations throughout the U.S. both before and after the official release date. See the full schedule of screenings here. (Kottke also notes that the DVD is already available for pre-order on Amazon, just in time for the holidays.)

Charles and Ray Eames posing on a Velocette motorcycle, 1948, as seen in James Cohn & Bill Jersey’s documentary Eames: The Painter and the Architect, ©2011 Eames Office, LLC.

(more…)

Get out your fancy pens and draw an elaborate box around November 4-13. That’s Illustration Week, an event bonanza featuring exhibitions, talks, panel discussions, and parties that will draw out a crowd of people who don’t blink when faced with questions such as “Prismacolors or Copics?” The fun begins next Friday, November 4, as Parsons the New School for Design plays hosts to the third annual Pictoplasma Conference, which invites designers, illustrators, fimmakers and producers, artists, and character connoisseurs to discourse freely about the world of character-driven art and design. The two-day event features lectures by global superstars such as Siggi Eggertsson, Wooster Collective, Jon Burgerman (whose work is pictured above), and French-Swiss Technicolor enfants terribles Ben & Julia. The Society of Illustrators follows up that character-building bunch with a presentation on the history of illustration by Murray Tinkelman, an Illustrators Sketch Night featuring the musical stylings of the Half-Tones (illustrators Barry Blitt, Joe Ciardiello, and Michael Sloan, joined by guest guitarist Kenny Wessel), and an evening with children’s book icons and illustrators including Ted and Betsy Lewin and Jerry Pinkney. Check out the full schedule of events here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The School of Visual Art’s Design Criticism department is at it again: they’re offering champagne, donuts and—most importantly—information about their esteemed MFA program to prospective students this Saturday, October 22. As in years past, they’ve lined up a stellar group of speakers, from current students and recent grads to faculty and guest speaker Massimo Vignelli.

You are invited to join the chair, faculty members, and students of the SVA MFA in Design Criticism for an afternoon of presentations and informal discussion about this exciting two-year graduate program. Current students will talk about their experiences so far, such as what it’s like to produce a podcast for Kurt Andersen, to get behind-the-scenes access at the Brooklyn Navy Yards with architecture critic Karrie Jacobs, to lift up the hood and study the mechanics of industrial design history with Russell Flinchum, or to create their own blogs with New York Observer editor-in-chief Elizabeth Spiers. Faculty members Andrea Codrington Lippke, Steven Heller, and Karen Stein will share some highlights from their classes—Criticism Lab, Researching Design, and The Design Book Workshop, respectively. D-Crit chair Alice Twemlow will give an overview of the program, which trains students to research, analyze, and evaluate design and its social and environmental implications, to develop their writerly voices, and to explore a range of media for reaching their publics.

A selection of recent graduates of the program will talk about how they landed plum jobs and how they are deploying skills learned at D-Crit in their daily work as design writers, editors, educators, researchers, curators, and managers. And designer Massimo Vignelli will reflect on what has been achieved since he wrote the essay “Call for Criticism” in 1983, and what are the priorities for today’s emerging design critics.

See more details & register here. Videos from past open houses:

(more…)