Read The Book That Wrote Itself

Last Thursday afternoon, my brother and I had a chance to cruise around the galleries in Chelsea for a couple hours.

My favorite show of the day, at Pace Wildenstein, was by Jim Dine (born 6/16/1935 in Cincinnati, moved to New York in 1957).

Hot Dream (52 Books) represents the content and ideas contained within a collection of books Dine put together, one for every week of the year.

To say the exhibition is densely layered would be to understate it a bit. I could have happily walked around in there for a day or more.

The actual books, all 52 of them, were published by Steidl in an edition of 500, and are available from the gallery for $480 (postage paid).

I opted instead for the smaller exhibition catalog – here are some spreads, click to enlarge:







More about Dine and the exhibition here and here.

Hot Dream (52 Books) is up at Pace Wildenstein (534 West 25th Street, NYC) through February 7th.
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President Obama

Emily and our friend Casey (visiting from Boston) and I celebrated Inauguration Day at Spitfire for the Seattle Weekly party. More party pics by the hostess with the mostest over at the bonks. It was a fun morning.

The speech was perfectly measured: pragmatism meets possibility. Everyone looked stunning and it felt like a great, momentous event in our history. My friend Jason was there in D.C. – I'm looking forward to hearing about it when he gets back.

Side note: I'm obsessed with trying to photograph the closed captioning at just the right moment so it becomes a description of what's depicted. It's always a little off but I find it hilarious.

Oh, indeed.

Time Brings On A Change

In celebration of both Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and tomorrow's history-making Inauguration Day, one of my favorite cuts of all time:
Leroy Hutson
Time Brings On A Change mp3 from Love Oh Love
(Curtom Records, 1973) buy here

More info on Curtis Mayfield protégé Leroy Hutson here.

And

I've just returned from a few days in ice-cold NYC for some client meetings, so most of this week's posts will be on the stuff I ran across during that brief whirlwind. Here are some photos to kick it off…

Marlene Dumas from her current show Measuring Your Own Grave at MoMA

Swoon in Chelsea

Birds in Bryant Park that reminded me of Littlejeans, both because they look like him, and because he used to stare at this particular fun-size species out the window and think murderous thoughts.

A little garbage rabbit, 22nd Street, Chelsea

53rd Street, Midtown

27th Street, Chelsea

People on 10th Avenue watching news of the crash landing in the Hudson.

My brother outside of Jones, where we had brunch before I left. They were playing the Cave Singers and Dead Moon as we sipped bloody marias and ate our sausage, eggs and grits at the counter. Seemed like a good way to end the trip.

…and here's what I came back to:


I will love and miss New York forever, but I'll be back a lot.
And Seattle? When it's sunny out? Absolutely stunning.

John Baldessari, Goya Series: And, 1997,
from Artist's Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus at MoMA

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

What's the Point?

Oops, I meant to post this last month as something I wanted for Christmas, but then I realized it was out of print. After that, the whole "what I want for Christmas" series got back-burnered (along with most of the other so-called "series," or "serieses," that I said I'd start).

In any case – I'm going to start looking around for an old VHS copy of Michelangelo Antonioni's beautiful and strange story of disaffected youth, Zabriskie Point. Check it:



I picked up the soundtrack at a flea market several years ago. Here's a sample:
Pink Floyd Heart Beat, Pig Meat mp3

Running, Jumping, Standing Still

Martin Munkacsi Peignoir in a light breeze, 1936

One of several shows opening January 16th at the International Center of Photography draws from a newly discovered cache of Hungarian photographer Martin Munkacsi's negatives. There was another exhibition of his work at ICP a few years ago and it was truly stunning. Munkacsi (my Hungarian friend tells me it's pronounced kind of like "Moon-Kashi") was one of the most famous photographers in the world in his day, influencing greats such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon with his unique take on photo-journalism – and, later, on fashion photography through his work with Carmel Snow at Harper's Bazaar.

Left, Martin Munkacsi, 1933 / Right, Richard Avedon, 1969

Here are some of my favorite Munkacsi images:

Martin Munkacsi, Berlin vs. Budapest, ca. 1928

Martin Munkacsi, Greta Garbo on vacation, ca. 1932

Martin Munkacsi, Lucile Brokaw on the Long Island Beach, 1933

Munkacsi's Lost Archive runs January 16–May 3 at ICP. If you can't make it or want more images/info, Steidl released a great book on Munkacsi's life and work in 2006:


All images © Joan Munkacsi

Closed for Construction

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Emily and I are FINALLY moving into our condo on Capitol Hill (I'm sure I have mentioned this 800 times – we bought it back in October 2007 and have been renting it out) so posting is going to be light this week. I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to end four months of living out of bags and boxes! So excited that I used an exclamation point.

Above, Detail from Word Map of Seattle, 1971 via Seattle Municipal Archives

When He Offers His Hand

Wallace Berman Untitled (Single Verifax #44). 1964–1976.

More Wallace Berman, in case you find yourself in Paris between this evening and March 10th.

Wallace Berman: Verifax Collages
Galerie Frank Elbaz (click for more images)
7, rue Saint Claude
75003 Paris
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am–7pm
Opening party tonight, 5pm–9pm

Objects of My Affection

Objectified is a new film from Gary Hustwit, who was responsible for Helvetica, the excellent documentary on the ubiquitous typeface of the same name. This time out, through interviews with Hella Jongerius, Marc Newson, Jonathan Ive, and others, Hustwit explores the wide world of industrial design, taking a look at the creative processes responsible for mass-produced material objects, and at how those objects impact our lives and identities. Objectified premiers in March (go to the website for updates).

(side note, this logo strikes me as the anti-helvetica. clever though.)

AND… In celebration of refined materialism, here are three brilliantly designed objects at the top of my want list. They have been there for a long time and I still don't have them. Maybe I never will but it makes me happy to know they are out there somewhere.

1. Olivetti Valentine portable typewriter, by Ettore Sottsass (1969)

2. Tie! A Land Rover (above) and a Boston Whaler.

In this 1961 Life magazine photo, Richard T. Fisher, the guy who designed the hull of the Boston Whaler, smugly demonstrates that his boat is totally unsinkable, even if some crazed logger sneaks underwater and attempts to saw it in half. Beautiful utilitarianism.

3. Pretty much anything designed by Dieter Rams.

I also want this new gigantic Samsung TV – it's only an inch thick and it consumes 40% less energy than other HDTVs. It's not on the top three though because you're not supposed to get excited about a TV.
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Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

Architecture in Idaho

Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig strikes again with a beautiful house in the middle of nowhere. There are a ton of things I like about it, the most significant being the way it blends and interacts with the landscape.

More here.

Malpractice?

Hmmm. Not sure about this yet. Some definite funny moments.
Will have to watch the rest and decide.

(Note, an ad that plays at the beginning of the video, and then you have to hit play.)

More episodes of Rob Corddry's Children's Hospital here.
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Smoke Like Ribbons

You may have already heard about Coco Avant Chanel, the forthcoming Chanel biopic, which stars Audrey Tatou as the great Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.

Chanel has been portrayed on film at least a few times previously:

Marie-France Pisier in Chanel Solitaire (1981)

Shirley MacLaine in Coco Chanel (2008).

…and live on stage: Katherine Hepburn in Coco (1969).

When I think of Coco Chanel, I think of this classic 1935 Horst image…

…crossed with this 1961 photo of her adjusting a model's dress with a grandma-sized cherry at the end of her ever-present cigarette.
An interesting, multi-dimensional personality, to be sure.

Audrey Tatou seems like a fairly solid casting choice to me, and with Karl Lagerfeld's design direction, I think Coco Avant Chanel shows a lot of promise. More images here.
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Back to Basics

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I've run across a couple of interesting articles in the past few days on designing during tough economic times. No question it's rough out there, but I have to say that I find it inspiring to think about design becoming more resourceful, more practical, smarter. At Design Observer, Michael Bierut weighs in with an insightful, inspiring post on designing through the recession; in Sunday's Week in Review section of the Times, Michael Cannell takes it a step further, saying design loves a depression:

The pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two — and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process. That was the case during the Great Depression, when an early wave of modernism flourished in the United States, partly because it efficiently addressed the middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings.

“American designers took the Depression as a call to arms,” said Kristina Wilson, author of “Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design During the Great Depression” and an assistant professor of art history at Clark University. “It was a chance to make good on the Modernist promise to make affordable, intelligent design for a broad audience.”

Click here for the rest of it.

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UPDATE: Murray Moss completely disagrees.
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Above, a 1930s Lester Beall poster for the Rural Electrification Administration.

I thought we were traveling together.

Last night when we got back from Whidbey Island we watched The Go-Getter, directed by Martin Hynes and starring Lou Taylor Pucci, Zooey Deschanel, Jena Malone, Yaphet Kotto, and Maura Tierney. It's a good movie, really beautifully filmed, great music, and I recommend checking it out at your earliest convenience.

If you really want to hear about it

Today is JD Salinger's 90th birthday.

Happy new year, sir, wherever you are.

From Eudora Welty's review of Nine Stories, published in April, 1953, in The New York Times:

They all pertain to the lack of something in the world, and it might be said that what Mr. Salinger has written about so far is the absence of love. Owing to that absence comes the spoilation of innocence, or else the triumph in death of innocence over the outrage and corruption that lie in wait for it.

The feeling may arise from these warm, uneven stories (no writer worth his salt is even, or can be) that Mr. Salinger has never, here, directly touched upon what he has the most to say about: love. Love averts itself in pity, laughter, or a gesture or vision of finality possibly too easy or simple in stories that are neither easy nor simple in any degree.

Mr. Salinger is a very serious artist, and it is likely that what he has to say will find many forms as time goes by – interesting forms, too. His novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," was good and extremely moving, although – for this reader – all its virtues can be had in a short story by the same author, where they are somehow more at home.

What this reader loves about Mr. Salinger's stories is that they honor what is unique and precious in each person on earth. Their author has the courage – it is more like the earned right and privilege – to experiment at the risk of not being understood. Best of all, he has a loving heart.

More here.

Today is also the birthday of bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius.
Portrait of Tracy (mp3) seems like a nice quiet song for New Year's morning…happy 2009.