Art + Architecture + Design
Archive for January, 2007
The Obsession of Thought
Jan 30th
"Thought has nowhere to go but its own isolated, endless fragmented repetition. Without the obsession of thought we are the recognition and the expression of the energy of consciousness and space in which we and others coexist in such profound contact that there is nothing that definitively divides us." – Steven Harrison
via Whiskey river
Live! Nude! Deerhoof
Jan 30th
Strange how things get tangled-up in this weird.www.2.0; We just added some new Deerhoof to the Hank’s Hi-Fi playlist, then just posted about some author’s affinity for nudiness, and here we have a collision of the two via Rolling Stone; quelle bizarre!
If you’re a good little Rolling Stone reader, you’ll know all about Deerhoof by now. After all, we featured them as a “Breaking” band in the issue of the magazine on stands now. But just in case you need further reassurance of their awesomeness, take a look at this exclusive clip, which features the lovable indie-rockers performing “+80? live during their set at NYC’s Irving Plaza last Friday.
Comments 
play.movJim Harrison v. the Naked Bourgeoisie
Jan 30th
| While I am working up an appropriate response to Jim Harrison’s article in the NYT today: Feed The Poets – Books – Review – New York Times. I’m enjoying this little ditty via Neatorama: | |
 |
When Victor Hugo [wiki], the famous author of great tomes such as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, ran into a writer’s block, he concocted a unique scheme to force himself to write: he had his servant take all of his clothes away for the day and leave his own nude self with only pen and paper, so he’d have nothing to do but sit down and write. |
 |
Ernest Hemingway [wiki] did not only write A Farewell to Arms, he also said farewell to clothes! The inside dirt is that Hemingway wrote nude, standing up, with his typewriter about waist level. Indeed, there might be a nudist streak in the Hemingway genes: Ernest’s cousin Edward Hemingway opened Britain’s oldest nudist colony, a nine-bedroom chateau called Metherell Towers, back in the 1930s! |
 |
Perhaps it’s not so surprising that D.H. Lawrence [wiki], who wrote the controversial (and censored) erotic book Lady Chatterley’s Lover, liked to climb mulberry trees, in the nude, before he came down and wrote. |
 |
James Whitcomb Riley [wiki], America’s "Hoosier Poet," had his friends lock him up in a hotel room to write, naked, so he wouldn’t be tempted to go down to the bar for a drink. |
 |
French poet and author Edmond Rostand [wiki], who is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac, was sick of being interrupted by his friends that he took up working naked in his bathtub. |
 |
Apparently Rostand wasn’t the only one with this bright idea – Benjamin Franklin [wiki] also liked to take baths. In fact, he liked to take "air baths," where he sit around naked in a cold room for an hour or so while he wrote. |
 |
Mystery writer Agatha Christie [wiki], whose books have been translated in 40 languages and outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, liked to write anywhere, including in the bathtub! Sources: A Blank Page by Sam Elmore, In The Nude by So Many Books, Literary Life and Other Curiosities by Robert Hendrickson, Dressing to Write by Bibi’s Beat. |
Kenneth Anger loves Claes Oldenburg’s Geometric Mouse
Jan 30th
Go where the love is. Props to Anger:
On Friday, the Film/Video staff hosted Kenneth Anger for lunch in the Walker’s Gallery 8 Café. Having been long fascinated by Mickey Mouse (the subject of Anger’s Mouse Heaven, on view in the Lecture Room though tomorrow), Dr. Anger was quite taken BY Claes Oldenburg’s Geometric Mouse sculpture out on the terrace. He asked if it might be possible to have his photograph taken with the piece. Our crack photographer Gene Pittman was thankfully available and dropped everything to come up and shoot some pictures in the cold.
via Walker Art Center
Jim Flora’s new Site
Jan 30th
:
The website dedicated to the great illustrator Jim Flora has undergone a significant overhaul to commemorate the publication of The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, which is even better than than the previous book of his work, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. (Shown here: cover of Computer Design magazine, 1970)
Link (Many more Flora links here)
via boing boing
On The Fence w/ Jon Rose
Jan 30th
For over 20 years, violinist Jon Rose has been travelling the world, creating music on some of the world’s most (and least) important fences with nothing more than his violin bow.
* A video of Rose coaxing some unearthly and occasionally melodic sounds out of the great fences of Australia.
* Previously in the Proceedings: Massive aeolian harps, the Stalacpipe Organ, and the Zadar Sea Organ.
via Athanasius Kircher Society
The 2010 Imperative; URGENT!
Jan 29th
This morning, BLDGBLG has a great interview with Ed Mazria, the founder of Architecture 2030,
"architecture – or the building sector, more generally – is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, worldwide."
From the interview:
BLDGBLOG: When you say that the building sector is responsible for half of all greenhouse gas emissions, though, do you mean that in a direct or an indirect sense? Because surely houses aren’t just sitting there emitting carbon dioxide all day – it’s the power plants that those houses are connected to.
Mazria: It’s direct. The number is actually 48% of total US energy consumption that can be attributed to the building sector, most of which – 40% of total consumption – can be attributed just to building operations. That’s heating, lighting, cooling, and hot water. There are others – running pumps and things like that. But 40% of total US energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed just to building operations."
link http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/architecture-and-climate-change.html
Nuri Bilge Ceylan photographs: Turkey Cinemascope
Jan 26th
[Image: Sultanahmet square in winter (2004) and Stormy weather on the Galata bridge (2004), both by Nuri Bilge Ceylan].
In a recent post by bldgblg, we found these fantastic photographs by filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan
"His latest project, Turkey Cinemascope, is particularly striking; although most of the images are really a kind of richly contextualized human portraiture, there are at least a dozen urban and landscape shots worth seeing: wide-screen horizons; city streets bending round themselves in the snow; hill villages; rainy coasts.
Needless to say, these are infinitely more impressive when viewed in a larger format.
According to the Guardian, these photos "take as their subject the Turkish landscape, transformed into eerie, dream-like frescoes which one critic compared to the work of Pieter Brueghel."
The format appeals to that west-coast mentality; big sky country and all that, don’t you think?
[Images: Curved street in winter, Istanbul (2004); Pigeons in winter, Istanbul (2004); Football players near Mount Agri (Ararat) (2004); and Road by the lake (2004) – all by Nuri Bilge Ceylan].
Buy Ceylan’s photographs here.
(Spotted via Artkrush)
Stingel @ MCA, Chicago Jan. 27
Jan 26th
There seems to be something in the air this winter; another visit to the possibilities of painting in the post-conceptual/post-minimalist/post-post-modern world.
Again?
Interested? In Chicago? Check this out:
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, opens the new year with Rudolf Stingel, the first major museum exhibition in the United States of renowned international artist Rudolf Stingel, on view from January 27 to May 27, 2007. This twenty-year retrospective takes a comprehensive look at this influential contemporary artist whose work seeks to demystify the artist, the artistic process, and the art object. Celebrated for his explorations of the process of painting and the “idea” of art, Stingel combines minimalist, conceptual, and performative practices to create unexpected spaces.
Lisa Solomon @ The Beholder Dot Com
Jan 26th
We love Lisa Solomon’s work. Check out these new pieces at The Beholder dot com.
And if you are a new fan, read the interview at :http://what-you-make-it.com/
Nice work Lisa.
Your Comments