Category Archives: Art

Museum-quality Design Talkin’

Last night I went to a lecture by Paola Antonelli, the Museum of Modern Art᾿s Curator in their Department of Architecture and Design. The event was part of the AIGA New York’s long-running series of “Small Talks,” which features various luminaries of design speaking in relatively intimate venues — a really great program, by the way.

Antonelli is responsible for a series of acclaimed design exhibitions at MoMA over the past decade or so: “Humble Masterpieces,” which examined objects modest in size and price that also happen to be indispensable design accomplishments; “Workspheres,” which examined the evolving ideas behind the spaces in which we work; and a comprehensive retrospective of the legendary designer Achille Castiligioni, among others. They’re all original and impressive curatorial visions, but they also all focus on design in three-dimensions; architecture and industrial design have benefitted the most from the museum’s surveys of the design arts, while graphic design has suffered the most by neglect. In fact, the museum’s own permanent graphic design collection is somewhat narrow, devoted almost exclusively to twentieth century posters, which doesn’t exactly make for comprehensiveness.

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The Illustrated Man’s Blog

From time to time, I’ve been known to complain that the craft of illustration is largely missing in action on the Web. It’s not that there’s no illustration out there, because some truly talented illustrators have embraced the Internet and done very well establishing themselves. It᾿s just that the art form isn᾿t nearly as prevalent as it should be; the practitioners of the craft that have come online are, by and large, promoting their services for other media. Work that’s been commissioned and produced exclusively for the Web is few and far between.

I should talk, right? There’s practically zero illustration anywhere on Subtraction.com. Even if you count the oversize image of Mister President at the top of the home page as a photographic illustration (which is stretching it), it would still be less than what could be there. I originally designed that marquee area to be a showcase for my drawings, but I quickly realized that my ability to create pictures by hand is in a state of arrested development — it’s been far too long since I’ve done it seriously enough to be able to produce anything satisfactory when I sit down with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. That’s something that I need to resolve, but not today.

Instead, I have another solution: with this post, I’m introducing illustrations for each of the past six months of my archives created by an esteemed colleague, and going forward, I’ll be posting a new illustration after the close of each month. It’s a little showcase I’ve been calling “Illustrate Me.” You can see it right now by starting at last month’s archive page and working your way backwards to November 2005.

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The Illustrated Man’s Blog

From time to time, I’ve been known to complain that the craft of illustration is largely missing in action on the Web. It’s not that there’s no illustration out there, because some truly talented illustrators have embraced the Internet and done very well establishing themselves. It᾿s just that the art form isn᾿t nearly as prevalent as it should be; the practitioners of the craft that have come online are, by and large, promoting their services for other media. Work that’s been commissioned and produced exclusively for the Web is few and far between.

I should talk, right? There’s practically zero illustration anywhere on Subtraction.com. Even if you count the oversize image of Mister President at the top of the home page as a photographic illustration (which is stretching it), it would still be less than what could be there. I originally designed that marquee area to be a showcase for my drawings, but I quickly realized that my ability to create pictures by hand is in a state of arrested development — it’s been far too long since I’ve done it seriously enough to be able to produce anything satisfactory when I sit down with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. That’s something that I need to resolve, but not today.

Instead, I have another solution: with this post, I’m introducing illustrations for each of the past six months of my archives created by an esteemed colleague, and going forward, I’ll be posting a new illustration after the close of each month. It’s a little showcase I’ve been calling “Illustrate Me.” You can see it right now by starting at last month’s archive page and working your way backwards to November 2005.

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Seen Any Good Designs Lately?

Along with a few other design figures — each of whom have much, much more impressive reputations than myself — I’ve been been invited by one of New York’s major art museums to help select pieces for inclusion in their permanent design collection. For now, I’m going to be a bit cagey about this and refrain from revealing the name of this museum. But suffice it to say that, to be selected for inclusion in this institution’s collection is a pretty prestigious affair, and I’m more than a little stunned that I was asked for my opinion.

That said, part of my responsibility in this matter is to submit a few possible candidates by, like, a few days ago. I’m late. I’ve been sitting on this for a good time now, and though I have some ideas I’m definitely a little stumped, so I thought I would open it up to my loyal readership.

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Hidden Agendas in Writing and Design

David MilchThe New Yorker’s 14 Feb double-issue features a profile of David Milch, co-creator of “NYPD Blue” and the man responsible for the riveting, foul-mouthed and thoroughly excellent HBO series “Deadwood,” an intensely brutal Western set in a real South Dakota boom town in the late 19th century. As is the New Yorker’s wont, the article is unavailable online — or if it was at one time, I was, as always, too late in catching up on my issues to be inspired to go seek out the online version.

If you can find a copy in your therapist’s waiting room, you could do worse than read this article on Milch; I’m not much of a fan of the magazine’s pieces on entertainment personalities because they seem lightweight and shallow compared to some of the genuinely interesting stuff the magazine continues to turn out even in its old age, but this one happens to be about an interesting fellow. Or, at least, Milch has some interesting things to say about how he writes.

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Barbarians at The Gates

The GatesChristo and Jeanne-Claude’s Central Park installation “The Gates” is terrific. I saw the work this morning in clear February sunlight, and understood instantly why they chose to erect this spectacle in bright orange (or saffron, if you must): the long, winding sequence of gates makes for a brilliant, fire-like trail snaking through the leafless trees and gray paths of Frederick Law Olmstead’s naturalist vision in mid-winter. It’s not the kind of art that makes you reconsider much of anything, superficially, except perhaps for how feasible it is after all to have a crowd of thousands converge in the cold to enjoy something that does not involve alcohol, advertising, big media or a sports championship. Which is to say in terms of challenges of attendance, at least, it’s a triumph.

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Painted into an East Village Corner

Howl!The epicenter of the second annual Howl! Festival of East Village Arts is directly across the street from my apartment building on East Ninth Street, in Tompkins Square Park. Along the west and south fences on the park perimerter, the festival organizers have hung a series of makeshift canvases, which, starting yesterday, have been hand-painted and decorated by locals. It’s a democratic idea, but it yields perhaps the most clichéd artwork imaginable — a plethora of artistic bombast and political rants, few of them executed with all that much in the way of imagination.

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Old Drawings of New York

This Is New YorkI found a copy of M. Sasek’s wonderful, recently reissued book “This Is New York” while browsing for holiday gifts in the children’s section at Barnes & Noble. Its pages exude an immediately gratifying warmth as soon as they’re opened; the illustrations, completed over forty years ago, are evocative of the urban, sophisticated-primitive style of drawing that dominated commercial art in the late 1950s, and which owed more than just a passing debt to the work of Ben Shahn. Though Sasek’s drawings depict a New York nearly a century out of date and are rounded out with more than a heaping teaspoon of naivete, they still communicate the precise pitch and tone of Manhattan᾿s noisy, cantankerous character. There’s no mistaking the sense of limitless possibility in these drawings for any other city, which makes this reprint seem remarkably current.

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Serially Folks

Serializer.netSerliazer.net, which I stumbled onto while poking around Ethan Persoff’s Web site, is a vibrant experiment in online comics. A subscription goes for the almost ridiculously affordable price of US$2.95 per month and gives you access to hundreds of pages from 25-30 regularly updated strips. I bought a subscription last night and so far one of my favorites is the beautifully drawn “Pup” by Drew Weing.

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