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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Still Evergreen
Posted by Steve
This past Sunday morning I heard an NPR interview with Barney Rosset, the former publisher and founder of Grove Press and Evergreen Review magazine (cover above by Paul Davis), who aggressively challenged the puritanical mores of 1960s America.
As Chip McGrath in the New York Times wrote:
"In its heyday during the 1960s, Grove Press was famous for publishing books nobody else would touch. The Grove list included writers like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X (his autobiography), and the books, with their distinctive black and white covers, were reliably ahead of their time and often fascinated by sex.
The same was, and is, true of Grove’s maverick publisher, Barney
Rosset, who loved highbrow literature but also brought out a very
profitable line of Victorian spanking porn."
When I was 16 years old, I did everything imaginable to get my drawings printed in Evergreen Review, which already published Robert Grossman, Brad Holland, Tomi Ungerer, Edward Sorel,
and others. By the time I was 19, I was briefly its art director (the
cover of one of my issues--the one with the lion--is below). I met with
Rosset a few times during my tenure, and once was when he told me he
lost all the mechanicals for a book I designed for him about the film Last Tango in Paris. Fortunately I made photostats of all the layouts and we printed from that (needless to say, the typography was a mess).
Tomorrow Mr. Rosset will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation to honor his groundbreaking legal battles to defy the censors and publish uncensored versions of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, among other important literary events. He is also the subject of a documentary titled Obscene.
Mr. Rosset is still editing Evergreen Review, this time online.
Books | Daily Heller Vaults | Illustration | Magazines
11/18/2008 2:07:57 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Monday, November 17, 2008
Glaser is Drawing
Posted by steve
When Milton Glaser draws he thinks. This is the concept behind his elegant new book Milton Glaser: Drawing is Thinking,
his most personal book to date. It is a symphony of drawing themes and
styles juxtaposed in unique pairings to impart the emotional
aspirations of Glaser's art rather than the client-driven function of
his illustration. From representation to abstraction, from portraits to
still lifes, this is a book about the joy of creating images on paper,
free from the strictures of the marketplace. "In Drawing is Thinking," says the publisher,
"the drawings depicted are meant to be experienced sequentially, so that
the reader or viewer not only follows Glaser through these pages, but
comes to inhabit his mind. The drawings represent. . . the author's commitment to the fundamental idea
that drawing is not simply a way to represent reality, but, as the
title suggests, a way to understand and experience the world."
Books | Illustration
11/17/2008 1:42:58 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Friday, November 14, 2008
Putting the Picture in Politics
Posted by Steve
Tomorrow--Saturday, November 15--the Parsons Illustration Department is hosting Picturing Politics (organized by Nora Krug) at the New School Tishman Auditorium from 1 to 5:30 pm. Admission is free. (Image above by Guy Billout.) The event is described thus: Illustrative responses to world events, large scale and small, have an
effect both visceral and intimate. PICTURING POLITICS explores the
current state of political and social visual commentary. The
Illustration Program of Parsons The New School for Design and the
Department of Politics of The New School for Social Research jointly
present an afternoon of reflections on the intersection of art and
politics.
Also on view in conjunction with the symposium is a reception for an exhibition of illustrated covers for Der Spiegel magazine that opens on November 14th, 6pm, at Parsons, 2 W 13th street, 8th floor. The exhibit will be on view until November 30th. If you are in Santa Monica this weekend, check out Robbie Conal's exhibit of political commentaries at Track 16 Gallery. Or if you simply want to curl up with some reading (and viewing) matter on political and apolitical illustration, check out the following: Varoom magazine, edited by Adrian Shaughnessy; 3x3 magazine (image below by Polly Becker), edited by Charles Hively; All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn't): Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page, by Jerelle Kraus; or Illustration: A Visual History, by me and Seymour Chwast.
Events | Exhibitions | Illustration | Magazines
11/14/2008 10:08:39 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
Get Home Delivery
Posted by steve
If you missed the Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling exhibition (and the incredible examples of pre-fab houses in the gallery and outside) that recently closed at MoMA, you can still get the exceptional catalog edited by Barry Bergdoll and Peter Christensen. This well-designed document (see here) profiles the leaders in prefabrication from Charles and Ray Eames to Buckminster Fuller and many more from the 1920s to the present, including the Lustron house (above), which never needed to be painted. For those who like playing trivia guessing games, the book is filled with facts, including the answer to the riddle, "Who designed the Lincoln Logs toy?" Okay, I won't keep you guessing ... John Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
Design | Exhibitions
11/13/2008 8:41:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Macabre but Fascinating
Posted by Steve
Guess whose face (above) this is? If you said Abe Lincoln, you'd be correct, and it's one of 60 life and death masks in the collection of Laurence Hutton, the literary editor of Harper's magazine from 1886 to 1898, and donated to the Princeton University Libraries. "Hutton traveled around the world to collect these plaster casts,
looking in obscure curiosity shops and major museums, where many
curators granted Hutton permission to have copies made from their masks," explains the museum blog. "The collection began almost by accident while shopping in New York
City. Hutton was interrupted by a ragged boy trying to sell a cast of a
human face, unquestionably that of Benjamin Franklin (below). He purchased it
for two shillings and offered another quarter if the boy showed him
where he found it. In a couple of ash-barrels on Second Street were
dozens of casts of Washington, Sheridan, Cromwell, and many others,
which Hutton carted home." The rest, including the death mask of Sir Issac Newton (bottom), can be seen here. And while somewhat macabre, they are indeed quite fascinating.  
Museums | Obit
11/12/2008 8:02:26 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008
A River Runs Through It
Posted by Steve
The Esopus River is in upstate New York. But Esopus magazine is available here and here
on newsstands. The Fall 2008 issue of the magazine features a wealth of
exciting art and literary content and special printing effects, not to
mention its regular music CD (this one, devoted to "Advice").
Ever since Esopus began in Fall 2003, the bi-annual magazine edited and designed
by Tod Lippy has attracted experimental magazine lovers. Each issue is
more than a good read (or look), it is a kinetic experience, full of unusual content and exemplary special effects. For my money, it just may be
the most innovative print magazine of the 21st century. For back issues,
go here.
Magazines
11/11/2008 5:24:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Monday, November 10, 2008
Who Designed the Obama O?
Posted by Steve
Who designed the Obama O? John Maas on bnet.com has the answer: The Obama logo was created early in 2007, through a
collaboration between Chicago firms Sender LLC and MO/DE. Chief Obama
strategist David Axelrod gave the agencies a mandate: design a logo that would
evoke "a new sense of hope," as he told the Chicago
Business Journal. After working feverishly, the design was introduced on February 10, 2007.
Sol Sender discusses the "brand development" of the most memorable political logo in the past 50 years here. And MO/DE addresses its contributions to the campaign here with a video here. Bravo to both creators for breaking the conventional mold. Speaking
of molds, Hilary Ross and Jim Lennox of Shickshinny, Pa., painted the
Obama Hope poster (100 by 70 foot) on their rural field (below). "When
we were on the ground applying the colors, we couldn't tell how
beautiful this mix of color fields was," Hilary told me. "Only when we
climbed the tree did we know what we had done."
Branding | Design | Politics
11/10/2008 9:25:50 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Thursday, November 06, 2008
He's Spreading Disease
Posted by Steve
Smartly designed, sometimes comic posters warning against syphilis, gonorrhea, malaria, and tuberculosis were once as common as all of the above. In An Iconography of Contagion: An Exhibition of 20th Century Health Posters at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington (through December 19), these and more recent posters about AIDS show how the advertising industry and public health officials have long fought battles against ignorance in the war against contagious disease. For more on the exhibit, read Amanda Schaffer's New York Times article or download the catalog. And for information on William Helfand's 2003 exhibit To Your Health: An Exhibition of Posters for Contemporary Public Health Issues at the National Library of Medicine, go here.
Advertising | Exhibitions | Posters | Science
11/6/2008 8:10:34 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Tuesday in the Park with Zaha
Posted by Steve
The other day, the School of Visual Arts Designer as Author students visited the Zaha Hadid-designed Chanel Mobile Art display in Central Park's Rumsey Playfield. It was a gorgeous fall morning, leaves falling from trees painted with oranges, reds, siennas, and fading greens. The 7,500 square foot orb is filled with installations inspired by the quilted Chanel bag (bottom) and perfume pervades the air. A personal tour is narrated by the deep yet dulcet tones of Jeanne Moreau "discussing everything from sex and love to the secrets at the bottom of a woman's handbag," writes The New York Times. However, with everyone listening to their own prompts (i.e. "now walk with me to the stairs, and turn left") on individualized MP3 devices, visitors became willing zombies, walking slowly, mindlessly to Moreau's resolute commands. Some of the artworks were clever (a series of cardboard boxes, below, with witty videos projected from above showing naked people frolicking and assaulting one another with Chanel bags) and some were more tritely surreal. There was also a hint of the 1964 New York World's Fair to be found in the space-age orb that seemed to be plunked down from the heavens in the anomalous surround. The students left with mixed feelings. The morning was blissful and beautiful enough, but this monument to high-end commercialism (guarded by Chanel-clad docents) at such a critical period of economic distress seemed a tad out of touch with reality. But maybe that's the point.
Design | Exhibitions | Shopping
11/5/2008 8:18:13 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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What Comes After C? TD!
Posted by Steve
Just when I got used to the clunky and bulky red "C" logo for Commerce
Bank (above), they pulled a bait and switch on me. This past weekend, the
red and blue turned into the green of TD (below),
which bought Commerce for $7 billion earlier this year. In the snap of a finger (or a switch of a light), all the branches
in Manhattan changed the logo and color scheme to dollar green. But in
case you were worried how this would affect the celebrity spokespeople,
Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa, they are being kept on, just like free
coin counting machines.
Branding | Logos | Signage
11/5/2008 6:28:42 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Election Day Memories
Posted by steve
It's hard to believe that Election Day 2008 is finally upon us. The logos below, including candidates who were once shoo-ins, others
who were might-have-beens, and still others who never-have-been-nor-will-be
(who in tarnation is Duncan Hunter?) serve as a reminder of all the
hub and hubbub of the past 18 months. It is
sobering to note that from the first category, the
once-apparent-shoo-in Hillary Clinton was not the first almost-was
woman candidate for president of the United States. Belva Ann Lockwood
(above) ran for the highest office in 1884 and 1888 (before women even
had the right to vote). Lockwood was a follower of women's rights
activist Susan B. Anthony of silver dollar fame and the second woman, after Victoria Woodhull,
to run on the National Equal Rights Party ticket. Although she received
a number of votes, they were never counted. Supporters had seen ballots
destroyed and called upon Congress to investigate voter fraud. Lockwood lost
the elections but successfully practiced law for 43 years.
Election | Homage
11/4/2008 4:44:45 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Monday, November 03, 2008
Fins and Chrome, Ooh La La
Posted by steve
"To call Art Fitzpatrick an automobile illustrator," writes Dave Caldwell in The New York Times, "is to leave half of the canvas blank." Mr. Fitzpatrick is the man behind the chrome when it comes to selling cars in dreamlike illustrations "pitching a carefree lifestyle." His luminescent ads for Life, Look,
and the Saturday Evening Post for Pontiac Bonnevilles and
Catalinas created the aura for American behemoth automobiles (and
influenced Bruce McCall's parodies (bottom) in " The Last Dream-O-Rama.")
The Times refers to him as "the Michelangelo of the Muscle Car," but
more than that, he is the chronicler of the American Dream. See his
recent set of Fins and Chrome U.S. stamps below.
Advertising | Illustration
11/3/2008 5:50:03 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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