Hasta La Ideas

Print may be dying, but paper endures, whether cut, burned, shredded, scribbled on, or sculpted into elaborate art installations. The Museum of Arts & Design tears into the topic with “Slash: Paper Under the Knife,” the third exhibition in its Materials and Process series. On view through April 4 of next year, the exhibition explores the creative possibilities of paper through the works of paper-loving artists such as Olafur Eliasson, who in 2006 reproduced a cross-section of his house (at a scale of 85:1) on 900 sheets of laser-cut paper in painstaking paper cut-outs explore themes of race, gender, and the shadier side of American history.

(Photos: Stefan Bagnoli)

Occupying one corner of the gallery is Pietro Ruffo‘s “the work of Sangeeta Sandrasegar, whose cut-outs insert war imagery into the distinctive shapes of iconic chairs designed by the likes of Marcel Breuer and Charles and Ray Eames. “The chair and image provoke constructs of looking/seeing: as bystander, spectator, onlooker, observer, and as such the range of power/powerlessness these positions convey,” writes Sandrasegar on his blog. “Additionally, between the depicted image of war and the chair template lie other gulfs of of contrast: between first and third worlds, the safe worlds in which designer furniture exists, and the unsafe worlds in which bombs and raids exist, creation and destruction, wealth and poverty.”

Previously on UnBeige:

Presenting design objects from:
– Per Emanuelsson & Bastian Schoff S– Frank Plant USA
– Zeitgeist Toys D for KPM– Iukb..

“In any other country, Milton Glaser would have been knighted by now,” says Steven Heller (himself deserving of a life peerage). The School of Visual Arts is doing the next best thing—at least until Queen Elizabeth wises up—and mounting a retrospective of nearly 100 works created by Glaser for the College, where he has been on the faculty since 1960 and currently serves as acting chairman. Opening August 31, “Milton Glaser’s SVA: A Legacy of Graphic Design” is curated by Heller and Mirko Ilić. The dynamic duo, along with archivist Beth Kleber, have scoured SVA’s Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives to assemble works ranging from the original artwork for the iconic posters created for SVA’s ongoing subway campaign to rare printed pieces such as the 1963 announcement for the course Glaser taught at SVA with the late Henry Wolf. And look sharp for the new poster Glaser has produced for this exhibition that was inspired by his recent foray into designing textiles for the soon-to-be completed SVA Theatre. “I believe the work I’ve done for the School is more adventuresome than anything else I’ve done, primarily because of the audience,” Glaser has said. The retrospective will be on view at the Visual Arts Gallery through September 26.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While everyone seemed positively aglow over the finally-together Burnham pavilions here in Chicago just last Friday, it appears that things aren’t going as hot as they should have. Zaha Hadid‘s pavilion was rolled out six weeks late early last week, but now its partner, Ben van Berkel and UNStudio‘s pavilion, is being removed for a few days while it gets patched up after weeks of people crawling all over it. What’s worse, less than a week old and already Hadid’s pavilion looks as though it’s been trampled on too, with many visitors stepping all over its cloth exterior. So who is to blame? According to this piece by Blair Kamin, it’s sort of a mix of everyone. Van Berkel and Hadid should have known to build sturdier structures, the city should have shared more concerns with their hired strarchitects, and the American people in general, for being louts (we should note that these aren’t Kamin’s words — and we decided to use “louts” as shorthand for what’s written in the piece because it’s fun to be mean and use the word “louts”). In the end, it seems like the whole thing is a good learning experience for 2109, for Burnham’s 200th anniversary celebration.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Were we to give an award for the world’s most UnBeige museum, The Wolfsonian would be the easy winner. The wonderfully eclectic Miami institution, a division of Florida International University, didn’t have to look far for the inspiration behind its new summer exhibitions, both of which center around the beach (just a few blocks away). Curated by The Wolfsonian’s Marianne Lamonaca, “Beauty on the Beach: A Centennial Celebration of Swimwear” is a swimwear design retrospective, while “Sun Stroke Stimulus” examines “contemporary bathing culture” through the photographs of Miles Ladin. Both shows are on view through October 11.

(Photos: Miles Ladin)

While the topless number designed in 1964 by Rudi Gernreich is currently raising eyebrows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the full measure of swimsuit history is at The Wolfsonian, where “Beauty on the Beach” explores swimwear design and marketing, and how they shape and reflect popular ideas about fitness, beauty, and glamour. A look at the swimwear industry’s use of new materials (Lastex, anyone?) comes just in time for the current debate about performance-enhancing suits.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.