Hasta La Ideas

Abstract City – Red Eye is a visual diary documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London).

Hipsters don’t merely congregate in East London. No, siree. They can be found, usually in cities, all around the world and, truth be told, they tend to look exactly the same as they do here in London – as this following series of Australian Honda ads demonstrates rather neatly – if not a little scarily.

Note the plaid shirts, cardigans, facial hair, knitting needles, old school technologies and, but of course, the fixed gear bike. And then note the Australian accents – as the ads all beg the question: How much hipster can you pack in a Jazz? Whether the Honda Jazz will take over as the hipsters main mode of transport here in London seems dubious. However, we shall train our eyes on the streets and public byways of Shoreditch, Hoxton and London Fields, and wait to see what happens…

OK, some new music vids… First up is Colonel Blimp director Carl Burgess’ new video for Drugs by Ratatat. It features several actors (none that you’d recognise) displaying a range of not particularly believable emotions to camera. Some post production trickery adds just the right amount of weirdness to leave you thinking “what the heck was that all about?”

Director: Carl Burgess / MoreSoon
Production company: Colonel Blimp
Commissioner: Ratatat
Label: XL Recordings

And here (above) is the directorial debut of graphic design studio Non-Format – in the form of the video for track Even Your Friend by The Chap…

Photo imagery by Non-Format and Bigstock.com

Directed by Non-Format


Label: Lo Recordings

Belgian artist Carsten Höller has created a set of tableware for Porcelain manufacturer Nymphenburg, depicting the iconic Flying City project by the late Russian architect Georgy Krutikov.

Called Flying City Tableware, the collection also features the design from 19th Century invention the Benham Top, a spinning top painted in a black and white design that causes the viewer to perceive colours while it’s spinning.

The collection is on display in Rotterdam as part of a mechanical installation that turns the plates.

The collection comprises three plates, a tea cup and saucer.

Here’s some more information from Nymphenburg:

FLYING CITY TABLEWARE

Carsten Höller for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg

Artist Carsten Höller has devised an edition for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg. He has established the starting point for a series of editions that will continue in the near future, with artists such as Tobias Rehberger, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and Joep van Lieshout.

At the core of his work, which Carsten Höller has presented hitherto at the Tate Modern, London, at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, and in the Guggenheim Museum, New York, amongst others, is the perpetual question of the conventions that govern the way we lead our lives and whether indeed it is possible to imagine things in a fundamentally different way. In developing the FLYING CITY TABLEWARE (2010) for the Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, Carsten Höller has devised an edition that takes up this theme in a new way.

The tableware comprises a combination of a service plate, a dinner plate, a side plate, and a teacup and saucer, each decorated with a design relating to two fundamentally different sources: on the one hand, Georgy Krutikov’s design for a FLYING CITY (1928) and, on the other, the rotating Benham top or disc (1894-95), eponymously named after its inventor, Charles Benham. Höller chose Wolfgang von Wersin’s LOTOS Service (1932) upon which to present the motif – tableware that belongs to the classical Nymphenburg services of the New Sobriety and reflects, in its elegant simplicity, the functional aesthetics of the avant-garde period.

Carsten Höller has already used both motifs in earlier works: the Benhamesque stripes in MASONWHEEL (2001) and latterly Krutikow’s visualworlds in THE DOUBLE CLUB (2008-09) in London. He brings bothmotifs together for the first time in the FLYING CITY TABLE WARE.

The FLYING CITY TABLEWARE is produced in two different versions. The wall installation – a unique specimen that Höller will be presenting until 25 April 2010 in Rotterdam – comprises eight hand-painted plates, each mounted on a rotating mechanism and connected to one another by a leather transmission belt. The plates can be rotated at a maximum of 600 revolutions per minute, by means of a manual crank. From about 300 revolutions, the effect discovered by Benham, whereby the black and white graphic design is perceived in colour, starts to emerge. In the installation, the dynamisation inherent in the motifs is achieved through actual mechanical motion.

At the same time, the tableware is intended for use: service plate, dinner plate, side plate, and teacup and saucer are also available in a limited edition of twenty five signed services, each designed for two people. A table centrifuge for the rotation of the Benhamesque plates also forms part of this edition.

See also:

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Essentials II by Patrik Muff for Nymphenburg	Commedia Dell’Arte figures by Nymphenburg	More design stories

Renowned architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s astute look at how abstract art influenced modern architecture

One of the greatest historians of American architecture, Henry-Russell Hitchcock helped shape the way we consider the medium today. An advocate of architecture as art over absolute function, Hitchcock wrote numerous books on the subject of architectural style. We recently happened upon the 1948 edition of “Painting Toward Architecture,” a Bradbury Thompson designed book that intelligently deciphers the influences of abstract art on modern architecture with an in-depth look at the direct relationship between the two.

One of the best examples is Cincinnati’s Terrace-Plaza Hotel, which Hitchcock explains is “doubtless the most ambitious attempt yet made in this country to utilize the work of a prominent abstract painter in a building of modern design.” Designed in 1945 by NYC firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the hotel incorporated works by Saul Steinberg, Alexander Caulder and Joan Miro, whose 30-foot mural suspends between the floor and roof of the penthouse restaurant.

A more palpable example is by Dutch architect J.J.P. Oud, who integrated Piet Mondrian‘s “Composition” on the facade of Rotterdam’s Cafe de Unie.

Other references to famous abstract paintings highlighted in the 118-page book include Stuart Davis’ “Composition”, Theo van Doesburg’s “Space-Time Construction No.3” and Georgia O’Keefe’s “New York Night.”

While in limited supply, “Painting Toward Architecture” can still be found and purchased online through Alibris or from Barnes & Noble for various prices.