Robe poéme no. 1328, 1923 (Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper)
Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay is up at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum through June 5th. Check out the exhibition website here.
Also:
Petra Timmer, design scholar and Delaunay expert, moderates a discussion between Matteo de Monti and Elaine Lustig Cohen. Matteo de Monti is the grandson of the director of Metz and Co, the Dutch department store that had a long standing collaboration with Delaunay. Elaine Lustig Cohen is a graphic designer and author of The New Art of Color: The Writings of Robert and Sonia Delaunay.
.Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott: Kate Moss in Valentino couture, styled by Emmanuelle Alt for the May 2011 issue of Vogue Paris. More images from the same shoot here.
. Barack Obama in Hawaii with his grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, from an expansive articleabout the President's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham,by Janny Scott for this weekend's The New York Times Magazine.
(I'm pretty sure that's Donald Trump in the background.)
. This is definitely the summer of the wedge - so many good choices. (Those of us in the PNW just have to be optimists and believe that we still get that season here.)
This week Wayne at MDX posted a good interview with Ezra Petronio, creative director and co-founder – with his wife Suzanne Koller – of Petronio Associates and Self Service magazine. Here's the introduction:
The idea of fashion today is the idea of the still image as seen in glossy magazine pages and big city billboards and posters. The fashion photographers of our moment, in trying to continue the tradition of the modern masters of the trade (Penn, Avedon and Newton ) have been sustaining this art of creating a decisive fashion moment, around the movement of a model in a photo-shoot, where ideas of hair, make-up, styling, lighting have all aligned to create the single frame ideal of fashion. But that was the 20th century. As it becomes clear that the 21st century is digitally driven, how will an entire culture of editors, photographers and advertisers adapt to an audience that grew up with the amplified imagery of music videos and video-games who now view all media through a computer screen?
Hilary Rhoda and Irina Lazareanu photographed by Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin,Self Service issue n°24. Styling by Suzanne Koller.
Petronio:
While there are certain restrictions and adaptations that need to be made with digital design, they are not all that different than the restrictions that exist within traditional formats. Each type media provides an opportunity. It’s important to work with the media and not against it. Each format is best at displaying certain types of content and should be used as such – an iPad is not a TV, a web page is not a book or magazine. Something beautiful can be created for any media without compromise. ... The tactile quality of objects will become more and more objects of luxury, possibly enhancing their value and quality of the content we put on them. As things become more internet-oriented a printed edition of Self Service magazine will become something more collectible and precious, as people collect objects and value them.
A nice mix of quiet songs strung together by our friend Joe Newton (happily I can tell from certain pops and scratches that a couple of my digitized vinyls made it in there too).
I never knew the Gillian Welch song "I Dream a Highway" but it's especially great.
Sad and sentimental... perfect for working late nights.
Photographs by Carlo Van de Roer from The Portrait Machine Project at M+B in Los Angeles.
Sara Rossein, 2009
The New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based photographer created these images with a Polaroid aura camera developed in the 1970s.
Miranda July, 2009
"Designed to capture a subject’s aura in the same manner as a psychic might perceive it, the camera translates biofeedback into near-fluorescent colors that engulf the subject in the resulting Polaroid, as well as a computerized print-out analysis which interprets the subject’s potential, present emotional state and future possibilities."
Martynka Wawrzyniak 2, 2008 (All images: Chromogenic print, 50" x 40" editions of 5, and 24" x 19" editions of 7)
Visit M+B for more (and larger) images from the show, which runs through May 14.
. Derek Erdman moving to Seattle was one of the better things the city experienced in 2010. Tonight the Crocodile celebrates the 2nd anniversary of its re-opening with a new exhibition of his paintings and a party from 6–9PM. Go here for info and then go spend some quality time here.
Julianna Barwick "The Magic Place" from the album of the same name (2011, Asthmatic Kitty). Video by Jacob Corbin, with footage from a 1983 film by Dorothy Fadiman called Celebration: I Am All of These – watch the original at the Internet Archive.
An odd little profile of Franceline Prat, the legendary former editor of Paris Vogue. Carine and Emanuelle get the attention these days, and deservedly so, but there are giants who came before them who deserve attention too. Even when their English is almost impossible to understand. Just watch it. Look at her jewelry.
Let's all make an effort to keep it chic this week.
. Ralph Rashid: J Dilla, Los Angeles, 2005 – from the book Behind the Beat: Hip Hop Home Studios. The book is out of print and tough to find, but a poster of this image is available from Stones Throw or Turntable Lab.
Pacific Standard issue no.1 covers: top, Abby Brothers by Michael Donovan; bottom, Alexis Schuster by Charlie Schuck. Select image above for more information.
Sonia Delaunay in her studio, Paris, 1925
Sonia Delaunay: Design 1044, 1930-31 (Printed cotton georgette)
Variation on Design 1355, 1934 (Gouache on paper)
Robe poéme no. 1328, 1923 (Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper)
