Schwarz
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motel postcards of williamsburg
nested in the heart of colonial wiliamsburg is an interesting enigma. some where along the way the williamsburg inn built a modern annex. it appears to date from the late 50's early 60's. a smart looking late international style two story block of painted white brick apartments with flat roofs, sliding glass doors and handsome little squared off balconies and terraces overlooking the tennis courts. there seams to be no mention of them on line at all. a latter day embarrisment i assume. my relative who lives near by hates them and apologised for them. i assume most of the locals hate them as well. i loved 'em. the white painted brick has been allowed to peal in places giving them a terrific old south patina. i am aware that the rockafeller family has been involved with the CW project since the time of its original restoration. perhaps they recommended someone. i can find nothing on the identity of the architect of this annex. photo follows on 1st comment page of this post.
You know that David Bowie song on Diamond Dogs where he talks about, “Fleas the size of rats suck on rats the size of cats”? Well, most people think he was talking about some imaginary, post-apocalyptic future; but, in actual fact, he’d just spent a few nights sleeping at my flat in the early seventies. We lived by the law of the jungle, man — eat, or be eaten!
There are some who will perceive a confounding desire to gloss over the apocalyptic anxieties that grip the American consciousness, from ground zero to the Gulf Coast. But the show's focus on formal aesthetics does plant it firmly within the Modern's tradition. When Philip Johnson, the founder of the museum's department of architecture, first introduced the International Style to an American audience in the 1930's, he famously stripped the movement of its social and political meanings.
That agenda continued through the cold-war era, when critics charged, with some justification, that the museum's support of abstraction fit neatly within a broader government agenda to project a progressive image to the world.
But in some ways, the show also brings to mind the bent-plywood furniture of Charles and Ray Eames, which became alluring emblems of the postwar American dream. "Safe" seems to be shaped by the innocent belief that good, clever designs can lead to a more enlightened world.
Today, that notion seems naïve. It's hard to remember a time in American history when the unnerving effect of world politics on daily life has been more palpable. A sign in the subway alerting passengers that the police are checking bags and knapsacks triggers a sequence of emotions: fear, repression and, finally, denial. That sign - mounted on a cheap board, with simple lettering - is more likely to leave a lasting imprint than the most beautiful objects in this show.
Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington
An Oral History of American Music
Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve
The first opportunity to read—and hear—interviews with and about great American composers and musicians of the early twentieth century
The first decades of the twentieth century were a fertile and fascinating period in American musical history. This book and the two CDs that accompany it present an exceptional collection of interviews with and about the most significant musical figures of the era. Tapping the unparalleled materials contained in the Oral History American Music archive at Yale University, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington is a unique account of what it was like for musicians and composers to live and work in those years. It is also the story of the making of the archive, as told by Vivian Perlis, who personally conducted many of the interviews.
Music aficionados can now hear Eubie Blake describe the birth of ragtime or listen to a firsthand account of how Ira Gershwin came to write those famous lines in “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” In-depth interviews with such figures as Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, and Duke Ellington are included in the book, which also features chapter introductions and fascinating sidebars, illustrations, and anecdotes throughout. Two CDs complete the set, enabling today’s listener to enjoy the remarkablen experience of hearing the actual voices and the music of American composers of the early twentieth century.
beyondthebeatgeneration
mc5 concert posters
NEW ORLEANS - Optimism is in short supply here. And as people begin to sift through the wreckage left by Hurricane Katrina, there is a creeping sense that the final blow has yet to be struck - one that will irrevocably blot out the city's past.
The first premonition arose when Mayor C. Ray Nagin announced that the model for rebirth would be a pseudo-suburban development in the Lower Garden District called River Garden. The very suggestion alarmed preservationists, who pictured the remaking of historic neighborhoods into soulless subdivisions served by big-box stores.
More recently, Mr. Nagin contemplated suspending the city's historic preservation laws to make New Orleans more inviting to developers - evoking the possibility of architectural havoc and untrammeled greed.
But politicians and developers are not the only culprits here. For decades now, the architectural mainstream has accepted the premise that cities can exist in a fixed point in historical time. What results is a fairy tale version of history, and the consequences could be particularly harsh for New Orleans, which was well on its way to becoming a picture-postcard vision of the past before the hurricane struck.
As attention shifts from rescue to reconstruction in New Orleans, we must answer the question of how, and in what form, the rebuilding will happen. If we get the answer wrong, Katrina and Rita could turn out to be among the greatest cultural disasters the nation has ever experienced.
On a recent visit to New Orleans, I saw first-hand that the French Quarter and the Garden District are largely intact. That's good news, certainly, because these areas, with their imposing white columns and lacy cast-iron galleries, constitute the world-renowned public face of New Orleans. But the down-home heart of the city beats in lesser-known neighborhoods such as Holy Cross, Treme, Broadmoor and Mid-City, where officially designated historic districts showcase the modest Creole cottages, corner stores and shotgun houses (long, narrow houses, usually only one room wide with no hallway) that are essential ingredients in the rich architectural mix that is New Orleans. These are the buildings that we saw in those haunting images of battered rooftops dotting a toxic sea, and they are the buildings most at risk. Saving as many of them as possible is essential--and I came away convinced that the vast majority of them can be saved.
schwarz is going on vacation tomorrow - family visit to monticello and colonial williamsburg - will take pics...
The culpability compounds with each set of hands that touched this property.
Bunshaft could have put covenants on it before willing it to MoMA, but didn't, possibly on the assumption that the Museum would, by the nature of its mission, take steps to preserve this important design.
MoMA could have put restrictions on the house when it sold it to Stewart but didn't. MoMA's not in the house business, so the idea that MoMA woulda shoulda kept it is naive at best. As is any idea that Bunshaft could've intended for MoMA to do anything but benefit from the gift of the house.
But still, the operating principles here were fiduciary, not curatorial or conservationist; and yet the "understanding" with Stewart and the publicity around it at the time, points to a perceived responsibility beyond merely maximizing the museum's return from a donation. Q: Did the Museum set aside the proceeds from the sale for future acquisitions? "Art-for-art," as befits a deaccession? I highly doubt it. If not, however the sale was presented--or spun-- in the press, on the museum's ledger, the house was a financial asset, not a work of art.
Stewart could have left the house as is, but didn't. Can anyone be surprised by that? Martha Stewart is a hack. The queen of hacks. It was her penury and negligence that let the house deteriorate. She's lucky that an over-inflated sense of your own aesthetic superiority leading to the decimation of a modernist landmark isn't a crime, or she'd still be in jail.
Ever since the sale, MoMA said it had a "good faith agreement" with Stewart to preserve the house, which was a stripped, weed-covered shell when her lawsuits with the house's next door neighbor were finally settled.
Pawson's a frickin' hack, but he coulda--no, he was just Stewart's hack.
Alexis... this was a wealth transfer mechanism, nothing more.
Maharam's a hack, and a spineless hack at that. He could have restored the house if he cared to, instead he hides behind the excuse that it was beyond help. The incremental expense of doing so is approximately zero compared to the price of the land. And it's not like he can build anything else; wetlands zoning restricts him to Bunshaft's original footprints (and whatever Stewart/Pawson managed to get approved.)
Did someone mention approvals? That'd be the East Hampton town board who sat by while one of the few interesting feats of architecture in the whole place was modified and destroyed. But then, why should important modernist design get any better treatment in the potato fields of the Hamptons than they do on the corner of Central Park?
So what do I find in a number of blogs? Yep, advertising via BlogAds. Not only that, the majority of the ads are on sites that are part of the Liberal Network.
So here I am, trying to make a living through blogging and they think it's cute to have bloggers like me basically advertise their project for free.
Well, here's the deal people : You have crossed the line. It is not viral marketing on my blog when you pay for advertisment to other bloggers. When you do that, you have an ad campaign in place. Asking me to do it for free is in labor-talk, "explotation".
vintage motorcycle jackets
"The real challenge," Stockhausen wrote to me, "is to find seven stage directors and stage designers, seven conductors, five orchestras, one children's orchestra, nine professional choirs, two children's choirs, one girls' choir, seven sound projectionists, seven sound technicians, many soloists. This is all possible if one can engage the ensembles and soloists who have already performed parts of Light quasi-scenically in concerts and rehearse in seven auditoriums daily for about six months."
BG-105
the soul artists of zoo york
via record brother whos posting the crazy shitz on the regular
terry riley le secret de la via (1975) / no man's land (1985) mp3s
via kenny g fmu blog
GRAV, the Nouveaux Réalistes, BMPT and Support-Surface propounded all manner of theories on the ends and means of art and the destiny and political role of the avant-gardes. The Marxist synthesis of structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis did much to shape the deliberately speculative nature of these attempts at self-definition and positioning. The extent and importance of this critical activity during the 1970s is evidenced by the existence of such reviews as Cahiers théoriques, Macula and Documents sur. This linking of art and the human sciences, which still obtains today in somewhat abated form, became the defining characteristic of contemporary art in France. Among its innumerable consequences was the strangely tortuous procedures that artists had to take to express their subjectivity.
Much has been written about the parallels between the critical intuitions of Frank Stella and those of GRAV, and about the different conclusions drawn on each side. The heritage of Duchampian kinetics had a decisive influence on François Morellet, Julio Le Parc and Jesus-Rafael Soto, (although this reading of it has been totally neglected since), as did the Zurich Concrete Artists (including Max Bill and Richard P. Lohse), Auguste Herbin, Jean Dewasne and Victor Vasarely. These figures constituted a unifying matrix for the work of artists from a wide variety of backgrounds.[27] The interest in movement, which was expressed most literally in the work of Jean Tinguely and Pol Bury, moved many artists to translate it into pictorial form, to attempt the simultaneous use of illusionistic and interactive procedures. With its abstract anamorphoses, its ever-more sophisticated apparatus, its games with parallaxes and mirrors, the work of the GRAV group was aimed at the widest-possible public. As they proclaimed in their Manifesto (1963), “We Want to interest the spectator, to remove his inhibitions, to get him to relax.”
Much of the intense work and the sparks that flew between Kahn and Noguchi during the five years of their collaboration (1961-66) found their way into the design of Moerenuma Park in Japan.
A testament to what can be achieved when public officials, artists and the general public work together, the park was completed after Noguchi's death under the guidance of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, architects Shoji Sadao and Junichi Kawamura (longtime Noguchi collaborators), Kitaba Landscape Planning, Park Director Hitoshi Yamamoto and city officials working with the support of the citizens of Sapporo.
Their achievement is phenomenal and incorporates a full range of Noguchi's work in stone, concrete, wood, metal and fiberglass. More importantly, it showcases his talent for using the sun, sky, Earth and the horizon as his true materials.
Gulf Coast: A Vision to Revive, Not Repeat
By ROBIN POGREBIN for nyt
Published: October 13, 2005
BILOXI, Miss., Oct. 12 - The work facing architects and urban planners who convened here today at a battered resort is visible right outside the window. A beach strewn with uprooted trees and the detritus of ravaged buildings. Deserted streets lined by flooded empty houses. Hulking casino hotels gone dark.
Over the next several days, this group of some 200 professionals from around the country will struggle to come up with a comprehensive regional plan to rebuild the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It's a design challenge on a grand scale, covering 11 communities in 3 Mississippi counties damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
paul rudolph tracey towers up in the bronx
black betty table
leanon coat rack
brackets included steel shelf
cloud meeting room