Image of the Day

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very much so

Image from The Royal Tenenbaums via the excellent animated GIF collection at If We Don't, Remember Me (click to see more, you will not be sorry).

(via Wall of Sound)

Confidential to Emily

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Original video for The Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play" from their second single, 1967, and then the compilation LP Relics (Starline, 1971).

Basic Space

I love the minimal/sculptural styling in this shot – Heather Marks photographed by Tina Chang and styled by Katharine Erwin.

(via Fashion Gone Rogue)

Dirty Thirty

Clips and ads from the very first issue of BOMB magazine, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this coming Spring.

BOMB became a fixture in the No Wave scene when it began publishing in 1981, and has continued to evolve as a vital outlet for artists and writers in the decades since.

I always find it interesting to see who advertises in early issues of a magazine – sometimes it reflects the scene as much as the editorial content. The Mudd Club and The Odeon were kind of the epicenter at that time. (The Odeon is still very good – Emily and I used to go there sometimes after parties.)





See the whole first issue here and infinitely more from BOMB at bombsite.com.

Incidentally, while we're at it: you can save 50% on gift subscriptions to BOMB through the end of the year (enter the code Gift2010) or get a BOMB t-shirt and subscription for only $30. I don't get paid for this stuff or anything, I'm just saying, those are good deals.

Image of the Day

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Photographer's studio over a boat house, Stoney Lake, Ontario, designed by gh3 architects (Pat Hanson and Diana Gerrard). Click here for info and many more photos.

(via Wallpaper* magazine)

Variety

. Filmmaker Blake Edwards, who died last night at the age of 88, directed a ton of movies – some classic and some fairly forgettable, but all (at least all that I've seen) redeeming in some way. Here's the trailer for one of the best:


Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

And here's the final clip from S.O.B., a less-classic but nonetheless enjoyable and funny Edwards film starring his wife Julie Andrews, along with a bunch of other recognizable people (including – fashion trivia alert! – Marisa Berenson).


S.O.B. (1981)

I think a Blake Edwards film festival is definitely in order.

Click here to read film critic A.O. Scott's remembrance at The New York Times.

Best Foot Forward

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Haider Ackermann Tobacco Runway Boot,
$1,337 at Mona Moore

Design Literacy

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A 1968 issue of The New York Free Press, art directed by Steven Heller when he
was 17 years-old (image via an article on Heller by Paula Scher for AIGA)

Steven Heller has written 135 books on design. He founded the Design Criticism program at SVA and currently acts as co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department. Among other jobs, he writes the "Visuals" column for the New York Times Book Review, which I generally tear out and read twice when it runs. Heller was an art director at the Times for 33 years, following various stints such as art director and designer of U&lc, Screw, and Interview. I'm not sure there is anyone else out there who can tie so many references together – high and low and everything in between – in the pursuit of understanding design. As far as I'm concerned, the dude is a national treasure.

In a new audio interview with Debbie Milman at Design Observer, Heller discusses "his new book, Pop: How Graphic Design Shapes Popular Culture, blogging from the bathroom, Christmas in New York, working with Patti Smith, Screw magazine, Paul Rand's tombstone, creating graduate programs and, of course, writing."

Click here to listen and visit hellerbooks.com for more.

Image of the Day

Tony Smith: Asteriskos, 1968 (Cast bronze, black patina, 16.5" x 16.5" x 16.5"). Tony Smith: Bronze is on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York through December 23. More images and info here.

Image of the Day

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A cool-looking structure/monument to the Oregon Trail we saw on our way to Boise, Idaho, to Emily's brother's house, over Thanksgiving.

Bonus pics!

Early Oregonians: not known for their hospitality.

Hal's Hamburgers in Pendleton.

Road through the Blue Mountains.

Places and Spaces

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A week ago yesterday, this year's Turner Prize winner was announced from among the four finalists: sound installation artist Susan Philipsz.

I'm inexplicably happy that this was the selection. I love the way Philipsz' work seems intent on allowing us to experience our material surroundings in a way that is sharpened and transformed, creating moments of beauty and transcendence in unexpected settings. I feel like the world could use a little more of that right about now.

Philipsz' winning entry, Lowlands, consisted of a voice recording of the artist singing a 16th-century lament for a drowned lover, originally played beneath three bridges over the River Clyde in Glasgow. A rough cut of the video that was submitted to the Turner Prize Committee is below.



Here is part of what The Guardian's Adrian Searle has to say about Philipsz:

[T]he way Philipsz sites recordings of her voice is as much to do with place as sound. She has haunted the Clyde and filled her box-like Turner installation with the ballad Lowlands; she has called across a lake in Germany and had her voice swept away by the wind on a Folkestone headland.

Her current Artangel project, Surround Me, insinuates itself down alleys and courtyards in the City of London, her voice like an Elizabethan ghost, singing melancholy works by John Dowland and other 16th and 17th century composers. I have stood in shadowy old courtyards and between gleaming office blocks, weeping as I listen. And how many artists can you say that about?

Her sense of place, and space, memory and presence reminds me, weirdly, of the sculptor Richard Serra at his best. Her art makes you think of your place in the world, and opens you up to your feelings.

And Everything is Going Fine

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Trailer for And Everything Is Going Fine, a new documentary on Spalding Gray by Steven Soderbergh, using excerpts from Gray's monologues to piece together his life story. (Read reviews at NPR and the New York Times.)

I remember my dad taking my brother and me to see Swimming to Cambodia in the theater when it came out. Not a normal thing for teenage boys but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Many years later I was on a photoshoot in Sag Harbor for Martha Stewart Living magazine. I was the editorial assistant of the crafts department and I was driving the van. I went to the grocery store to buy some stuff for lunch and Spalding Gray was there. I don't get that jazzed up over celebrity sightings but I vividly remember sharing a produce department with Spalding Gray.

Words and Verbs

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A discerning audience ... an audience with a high level of connoisseurship, is as important to the culture as artists. It's exactly as important.

--Fran Lebowitz in Public Speaking.

Image of the Day

. Robert Rauschenberg: Palladian Xmas (Spread), 1980 (Solvent transfer, acrylic, fabric and collage on wood panel, 74.25 x 133.75 x 7.5 inches).

Still great, still surprising when you look closely.

Through January 15 at Gagosian.
More images here / Holland Cotter's review here.

Harmony Club

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More jealous-making home photos from Thursday's New York Times: In 2000, industrial designer David Hurlbut bought the 20,000 square-foot Harmony Club – an abandoned Selma, Alabama social club built by Jewish businessmen in 1909, boarded up and abandoned since 1960 – for just under $100,000.

"'For 40 years,'" Hurlbut says, "'this place was a glorious pigeon coop and rat motel.'" Ten years, a ton of work, and around $150k later, it's his glorious and gigantic home.

Read about it, see a slideshow, and dream big here.

Photos Robert Rausch for The New York Times