Inhabiting a Piece of Art: It’s Not Always So Pretty


click here for the NYTimes article

"From there, the film transforms into a kind of mechanical ballet. Once again the platform rises slowly, this time carrying an empty chair and desk. As it clicks into place, its rails drop down until they are flush with the floor. Somewhere else a porthole window pops open, then bounces rhythmically up and down. Two burned pieces of toast pop out of a toaster. (In case you don’t get the point, a clip from one of Jacques Tati’s comic sendups of rumpled middle-aged Frenchmen unable to cope with modern life flickers across a television screen.)

The most charming sequence in the film, it goes to the heart of the filmmakers’ point: to demonstrate that architecture’s real meaning exists in small details, in the little victories and defeats that make up everyday life. In the process, they humanize the work itself. Reduced to a series of mechanical operations, the building is nonetheless as alive as the people inside it, with whom it is locked in an awkward dance."

Art Portfolio for Eric Testroete-Papercraft Self Portrait


click here or here to get more information and images

A friend of mine sent me this link months ago- I'm still thinking about it, Even though it was just a halloween costume. There's something about the hyper realism and how we view the faceting contrasted with distorted proportions- disturbing and beautiful, reminds me of a russian icon painting.

Wave Effect: Jeanne Gang and architecture's anti-divas


From The New Yorker

" For all its visual power, Aqua is mostly free of conceit. In an age in which so much architectural form—even, sometimes, the best architectural form—has no real rationale beyond the fact that it is what the architect felt like doing, there is something admirable about the tower’s lack of arbitrariness. It reclaims the notion that thrilling and beautiful form can still emerge out of the realm of the practical"

"Female architects like these share a high interest in modern design combined with a low interest in ideology. They approach design less as an opportunity to demonstrate a set of ideas than as a way of answering a series of questions about the nature of a place, a client, or a function. "


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/skyline/2010/02/01/100201crsk_skyline_goldberger#ixzz0dojuHucp

More Ron Nagle

More Ron Nagle
The first half of this video is about Ceramics- then they talk about his music career- Richard Shaw makes an appearance.

Making Art Out of an Encounter


An interesting article about objectless art from the NYTimes magazine.

“Sehgal makes art that does not require the transformation of any materials. He refuses to add objects to a society that he says is overly encumbered with them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17seghal-t.html?ref=design&pagewantedl

Video for Monday 1/25



Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000 Video (VHS/DVD). Produced in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's exhibition of the same name, this lively program explores the evolution of late-20th-century ceramics. Using interviews and myriad examples of their works, leading figures in the field, including Ruth Duckworth, Wayne Higby, John Mason, Ron Nagle, Otto Natzler, Richard Shaw, and Peter Voulkos, discuss such major themes as Abstract Expressionism, Funk, vessels, form and function, and the debate over the decorative arts versus the fine arts. (51 minutes.) Art and Design, Art and Photography 2000