Schwarz
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In the '50s Kurtzman's MAD magazine was Lenny Bruce for kids. As a comic book it was the comics inside out, all id, and going too fast for kids to catch, especially around the edges of the panels. Nine- and twelve-year-olds picking their way through the 1954 Dragnet parody "Dragged Net" weren't going to connect the question that Sgt. Joe Friday continually asked his partner Ed Saturday—"How's your mom, Ed?"—with Oedipus, and there was no Oedipus Rex payoff. That wasn't the point.
The point was "How's your mom, Ed?" as absolute non sequitur. What in the world did it mean? The phrase turned every already-crowded, hysterical page into a mystery, put a hole in it. There was the suggestion that there was more going on in the comics you read and the TV shows you watched than you would ever know.
Someone has stolen one of my buildings! That was the panicked reaction of Beverly Moss Spatt, then the chairwoman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, after the cast-iron facades of a building by James Bogardus were spirited away from a downtown lot in 1974. The 1849 facades, supposedly protected by official landmark status, had been disassembled and stored for eventual relocation at another site. But thieves broke into the lot and sold most of them off as scrap metal.
Three decades later, Ms. Spatt, now retired, is one of the people fighting to save 2 Columbus Circle, a 1965 building by Edward Durell Stone, in one of the biggest preservation uproars in a generation. But this time it is the commission itself that seems to have been hijacked.
Once considered the most powerful agency of its kind, the commission has lost the confidence of many mainstream preservationists by repeatedly refusing to hold a public hearing on the building's fate. At the urging of those preservation advocates, a city councilman, Bill Perkins, has introduced a bill that could force the commission to hold public hearings on potential landmarks. The implication is that the commission cannot always be trusted to protect the public interest.
One of the Crescent City's most notable New Urbanism proponents is Pres Kabacoff, chief operating officer of Historic Restoration Inc., a development company principally known for converting unused industrial dinosaurs, such as the American Can Co. and the Federal Fiber Mills buildings, into apartment hives, with coffee shops, restaurants, dry cleaners, wine shops, workout centers, swimming pools and other on-site yuppie amenities -- a sort of old urban/New Urban synthesis.times-picayune
But Kabacoff's post-Katrina vision includes more than inner-city conversions. His dreams run to a series of 10-acre, freshly built, densely populated New Urban enclaves between downtown New Orleans and Armstrong airport -- each of them a bit like one of his more controversial accomplishments: the conversion of the old St. Thomas public housing site into River Garden apartments, a mixed-income development replete with its own Wal-Mart Supercenter and, one day, a nursing home.
cargo culture
the jazz church at citicorp is the kind of multi/non denominational sacred space that i would envision for the ground zero memorial. no propaganda. just a place to pray and no one telling you what to play.
The new St. Peter's church building is shaped abstractly like two hands held together in prayer, with large vertical windows offering passersby glimpses into its interior and the Erol Beker Chapel that contains a large sculptural wall by Louise Nevelson. The church was well known for its jazz programs under the Rev. Ralph E. Peterson, and those programs have continued after its rebuilding.
Frank Gehry's forthcoming performing arts center at the World Trade Center site, already indefinitely delayed, looks like it may get Freedom Center'd (née Drawing Center'd). David Dunlap reports in the Times that at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board meeting yesterday, he got the inkling that—since construction costs are rising—the performing arts center might have to duke it out with the memorial for funds.TBTM poll: which would you choose?
If given a choice between building a "cultural arts center" OR building the 9/11 Memorial and 9/11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site, which would you choose?
BETHLEHEM, Pa. A full decade after the shuttering of Bethlehem Steel’s flagship plant, officials are rolling out their latest proposal to transform and resurrect the nation’s largest abandoned industrial site: an arts complex called “SteelStax.”
The 17-story blast furnaces that have dominated the city’s skyline for a century would tower over new performance spaces for music, dance and theater.
big D MCMs
bravia super-ball ad
via zoller
sofa thread
the silver paintings
This is a dangerous moment for an architect. The cultists who have followed her for so long have a habit of getting nervous once the public come to enjoy what was once their private preserve. In some quarters, Daniel Libeskind's critical reputation has never recovered since he made the egregious mistake of becoming popular. Will Zaha Hadid suffer the same fate?
At Christie's on Tuesday night, a photograph by Richard Prince broke two records: for his works at auction, and for any photograph at auction. Last night's sale featured three works by the artist, all from Mr. Mugrabi. "Untitled (Cowboys)," from 1993, one of Mr. Prince's images of the Marlboro Man, was expected to sell for $600,000 to $800,000. What a difference four years - and 24 hours - can make. While an an 1989 cowboy photograph set the records at Christie's, selling for $1.2 mllion, there was no bid in sight for last night's cowboys. A 1980 fashion photograph also failed to sell.
Mr. Prince fared better with one of his paintings of naughty nurses. Aby Rosen, the real estate developer, bought "Mountain Nurse" (2003) for $744,000, in the middle of its $600,00 to $800,000 estimate.
her noise
oh my god
via vz
Atlanta — The Italian architect Renzo Piano is in the process of rewriting the book on American museum architecture. Well, it might be more accurate to say he's rewriting the book on museum expansions: His firm, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, has additions in the works at a remarkable number of the most prominent museums in the country, including the Whitney in New York, the Gardner in Boston and the Art Institute of Chicago. And, of course, there's his reconfiguration of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and its muddled collection of buildings along Wilshire Boulevard, the first phase of which will open in 2007.
Planners from around the country have already descended on the Gulf Coast region, beginning a series of charrettes to shape the future of land use and community development in the devastated region. Yet are the local residents -- especially those who need the most help -- ready to make plans? Leonardo Vazquez argues that more careful, long-term planning is needed to ensure that current residents and refugees alike are given the stake and voice they need in the rebuilding efforts.
The only Prairie-style house Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built in Ohio opened its doors to the public for the first time on Oct. 15 after undergoing a $5.8 million restoration.
Francie Rehwald wanted her mountainside house to be environmentally friendly and to be "feminine," to have curves. "I'm a gal," says the 60-year-old retiree.
Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch.
Rebuilding any city is a complicated business. As soon as the flood waters began to subside in New Orleans, suggestions for what to do with a devastated city started coming from everywhere. Two local citizens suggest twenty points of entry.via metropolis
speaking of scams. some may know that schwarz was born in new orleans way back in 1955. my dad told me about the the "I bet i know where you got dem shoes" routine, so i was prepared when i was walking down the bowery one day and this guy came up and said "I bet i know where you got dem shoes."
you never know whats in a factory sealed box. i know of several people who bought a factory wrapped brick in a sony box off the street here in nyc in the 80's. im sure that scam is still around and what they really bought was an invaluable life lesson for one hundred dollars which is cheep if you dont do it twice. buyer beware. check out this nasty factory wrapped shit from a new orleans metro blogger.