Julius Shulman, photograph of Case Study House #21 (Pierre Koenig, architect)
Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury—opening May 17 at the Oakland Museum of California—looks at the painting, architecture, furniture design, decorative and graphic arts, film, and music that launched mid-century modernism in the United States, and established Los Angeles as a major American cultural center. The exhibition continues through August 17, 2008.
Birth of the Cool is accompanied by a 300-page illustrated book (published with Prestel Publishers, 2007), which provides a thorough reassessment of the era.
Design Studio/ gallery Wonderful Union have an upcoming exhibition of work from brothers Don and Ryan Clark (better known as Invisible Creature).
The Exhibition is entitled Haven: An Exploration of Domestic Life and opens on Saturday, April 12th, 2008. The art work highlights the tension between modernism’s smiley-faced rejection of things past and their own coming of age domesticity from an autodidactic, punk ethos point of view.
Details:
Saturday, April 12th, 2008, 6-10 PM
The Wonderful Union Gallery
2221 NW 56th St. Suite 201, Seattle WA 98107
Giant Golden Book of Biology - An Introduction to the Science of Life c1961
Text by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler - Illustrated by Charley Harper
It doesn’t get much better then this. This is Charley in his prime.
“In a style he called “minimal realism”, Charley Harper captured the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements. When asked to describe his unique visual style, Charley responded:
When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.[cite this quote]
He contrasted his nature-oriented artwork with the realism of John James Audubon, drawing influence from Cubism, Minimalism, Einsteinian physics and countless other developments in Modern art and science. His style distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects, yet they are often arranged in a complex fashion. On the subject of his simplified forms, Harper noted:
I don’t think there was much resistance to the way I simplified things. I think everybody understood that. Some people liked it and others didn’t care for it. There’s some who want to count all the feathers in the wings and then others who never think about counting the feathers, like me.”
My first introduction to Wink was four or five years ago when their packaging for Sunmilk was making the rounds in the design magazines and annuals. Since then, I’ve tried to keep an eye on their work. What has impressed me the most about Wink has been their ability to consistently produce top notch work.
I love when people send me packages, especially when they contain cool design work. Comic artist and designer Jonathan Bennett recently sent me a fat package of goodies including not one, but TWO Gocco prints! In addition, he included several magazines that feature his cartoons. I enjoyed his work, I just wish he had a website so I could see more.
MOME Winter 2006 features one of Jon’s cartoons. You can pick up a copy at Fantagraphics Books.
While I was researching information on the Hotel Infante Santo, I came across the mural seen above. It is entitled Paredao da Avenida Santo and was completed in 1958. It took artist Maria Keil two years to complete this piece and boy was it worth it. I’m not sure why, but the way she painted the main figure slightly reminds me of the work of Doze Green.
If you like experimental typography, art, Moby Dick, and the letter ‘E’ this is the exhibit for you. Hailing from the midwest, Justin Quinn makes fascinating typographic compositions based on Herman Melville’s epic. Using only the letter ‘E’ and graphite, Quinn recounts entire chapters from Moby Dick. For example, the above piece is entitled “Moby Dick Chapter 55 or 9200 times E.” That’s a lot of E’s. If you’re in the mood for more typography a la concrete poetry, please see Justin’s work at MM Galeries.
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