Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
rago has two modern design auctions a year. last fall we saw a frail but spirited Philip Lloyd Powell in the auction room looking very elfin. sadly he has passed on since then. here are some shots of my brothers small PLP side table that came from a little east village thrift shop called "garage sale" which was located on 1st avenue and second street back in the 80's.
back from the rago auction showroom with (up-skirt) images of george nakashima splayed and tapered table legs.
Toward an Architecture is the most influential book on architecture of the modern era. Perhaps only Vitruvius can match it for influence from any age. So let's make that the most influential book on architecture for about 2,000 years.
Emerging from the era of manifestos, it is a radical, hectoring, brilliant book. It blends the eye-catching absurdity of Dada, the strange juxtapositions of surrealism and the technophilic cutaway drawings of a boys' magazine with text that is incisive, sometimes funny and occasionally wholly convincing.
Written in 1923, when Le Corbusier, a Swiss-born architect living in France, had built only a couple of houses, it has survived as the manifesto of modern architecture. It is a paean to the unselfconscious, functional beauty of engineering - an appeal to architects and patrons to abandon outmoded traditional modes of construction and look to the power and clarity of industrial buildings, aeroplanes and machines. And that is how the book is largely remembered, along with its call for the house to be ''a machine for living in'', perhaps the most quoted phrase in architecture. It is also an ode to architectural ambition - grandeur, proportion, elegance and meaning.
nyc canon
square america
by way of reference library
To the north and south of my plebeian ranch-style home here, my neighbors are transforming their pads into midcentury modern showplaces. At one time all you needed to accomplish this was some orange paint and concrete blocks; nowadays the makeover involves a lot of chopping.
One neighbor ripped out the fig and lemon trees planted there 40 years before by the original owner. To the north, modernistas tore out a jungle of honeysuckle vines and asparagus ferns weaving in and out of an old fence.
All around my neighborhood, new owners are hacking off the blond skirts of the Washingtonia filifera palms and amputating tendrils of black dates. In the latest development, they are even shaving the rough bark of the palms, leaving a shiny blood-like surface.
The skinned palm look is very sleek, very atomic -- it goes back to the early days of modernism in the '40s. But it leaves nowhere for a collared lizard, roadrunner, orange oriole or barn owl to hide. It's not even good for the tree.
As I walk around the neighborhood, it's beginning to look like some modernists are intent on annihilating habitat and banishing nature. More yards -- some had resembled gardens in Pasadena with a loose, shady ambience and alcoves of privacy -- sport a minimalist look, with soldierly rows of tufted grasses, or lone agave spikes in seas of gravel or lawn.
the unisim of wadyslaw strzeminski and katarzyna korbo
abandoned roller coaster
via vz
Plans to save a unique section of Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport have stalled on the runway.
MINUS SPACE is pleased to announce an upcoming solo exhibition by New York artist Mark Dagley. Dagley will present four shaped paintings -- two monochromes and two with checkerboard patterns -- which were originally produced in 1987. Dagley made the works in William S. Burrough's Bunker space on the Bowery in NYC, exhibited them later that year at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Soho, and subsequently put them into storage. Dagley's exhibition at MINUS SPACE will mark the first time the works will be shown publicly in more than twenty years.
Mark Dagley (b. 1957, Washington, DC) has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include McKenzie Fine Art (NYC), Sydney Non Objective (Australia), NyeHaus (NYC), San Antonio Museum of Art (TX), Up & Co (NYC, London), Riflemaker Gallery (London), Jersey City Museum (NJ), Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences (NJ), The Shore Institute of Contemporary Art (NJ), Axel Raben Gallery (NYC), and Galeria Leyendecker (Tenerife, Spain).
He is a member of American Abstract Artists and his work has been reviewed in publications, such as ARTFORUM, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, and the New York Sun. His work is included in the collections of The Broad Art Foundation, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Swiss Credit Union, Foundation Prini, Hoffman/LaRoche, Henkel Gmbh., and EMI, among others.
Mark Dagley also co- founded and directs Abaton Garage, a project room in Jersey City, NJ, and Abaton Book Company, specializing in artist editions, book projects, cds and videos.
A color catalog accompanies the exhibition, with texts by Matthew Deleget & Nora Griffin, and a comprehensive interview by Don Voisine.
construction site images currently on ebay
rip ralph rapson
your personal theramin
via zoller
i ran in to this shit trying to drag an ebay photo image to my desktop today
end of an era
RENOWNED French designer Philippe Starck says he is fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years.
"I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact," Mr Starck told German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
"Everything I designed was unnecessary.
"I will definitely give up in two years' time. I want to do something else, but I don't know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself ... design is a dreadful form of expression."
Starck, who is known for his interior design of hotels and Eurostar trains and mass consumption objects ranging from chairs to tooth brushes and lemon juice squeezers, went on to say that he believed that design on the whole was dead.
"In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant," he said.
Mr Starck said the only objects that he still felt attached to were "a pillow perhaps and a good mattress".
But the thing one needs most, he added, was the "ability to love".
5 years death toll sweater
beijing 2008
submitted by lisa
ye olde trip to jerusalem
They introduce the ale connor, who would test the purity of the beer by pouring a bit onto a bench and then sitting on it; low-quality beer would be sugary and would glue the connor's leather breeches to the bench.
Questions for Alexandre Nucinovitski
The Times’s longtime architecture critic breaks his silence and reveals what compelled him to come forward with his allegations, how high up the conspiracy goes, and what (or who) is the “Bilbao-12.”
Some have suggested that your dismissal from the paper was imminent and that your recent indictment of your peers is nothing more than a marketing ploy to promote your upcoming book.
I came close to jumping ship several years ago—right after Architectonica opened its new hotel in Times Square—but they threw us a bone and let us go to town on it, sensing that the public would become overly suspicious if we showered it with praise. Then, two years ago, I was all set to break ranks again, following the universal praise for the Morphosis student dormitory in Toronto, but they preempted me by awarding Mayne the Pritzker, thereby making any attack open to attack. My tipping point came following the opening of the addition to the Denver Art Museum. At first they tried to appease me by granting me a paragraph to vent my frustrations—as long as it was limited to something trivial, like its functionality—but the night before I was to send in my review, I had a nightmare that I was trapped in a maze of Serra sculptures while thousands of people looked down from their office windows and laughed at me.
In your letter of resignation/suicide note you make numerous references to the “Bilbao-12.” Can you ex-plain what this was?
The Bilbao-12 was an “informal” meeting of twelve of the top architecture critics that took place just prior to the opening of the Guggenheim. Due to pending legal actions, I’m unable to reveal any names except to say that the meeting was also attended by a high-ranking deputy from the World Bank, an economic adviser from the UN, and a Washington lobbyist from the aluminum and titanium industries. The case was made for using architecture to revitalize the economies of postindustrial cities by establishing a brotherhood of “superstar” architects who would generate spectacles bolstered by our reviews, creating “archi tourism,” or what has become known today as the “Bilbao Effect.” I should mention that we were also handed a list of complex words and terminologies that we were encouraged to use in our writings in the hope that they would find their way into the architectural vernacular, thereby confusing the public and allowing the acrobats to pass through board hearings with minimal opposition.
sure youd like to live there
via zoller
"Yubi" Kirindongo started working as an artist in 1978. Since then he has participated in several international events, like the biennials of Havana (Cuba), of Johannesburg (South Africa) and of Sao Paulo (Brazil). In his own country he was given special recognition through the awarding of the prestigious Cola Debrotprize by the government of Curaçao. Kirindingo works with materials and metals, which when put together with his choice of subjects and the often rough textures of his work, a special energy is brought to what were once lifeless scraps.You can see his 'gallery-home-museum' on the western road from the city leading to the airport, only by appointment.
rago arts spring '08 modernist furniture auctions april 12th and 13th online catalogs
Phillip Lloyd Powell, a self-taught furniture designer who, working largely out of the public eye, produced elegant, sculptural pieces that are today highly prized by collectors, died on Sunday in Langhorne, Pa. He was 88 and lived in New Hope, Pa.images
Mr. Powell’s work has been shown at America House in New York. Mr. Powell died after a fall, said George Gilpin, a friend and business associate. No immediate family members survive.
Though Mr. Powell’s work is often described as midcentury modern, it routinely transcended the cool, clean lines associated with that style. His sinuous, textural furniture, which he painstakingly hand-carved from gleaming woods, often recalled forms from the natural world. A series of large walnut screens begun in the 1960s, for instance, features twining openwork that suggests a modern twist on Art Nouveau tendrils.