Stephen Holden (he of the puzzling Basquiat movie review) redeems himself to this reader. The following spot-on sentence from his review of Jennifer Aniston’s new movie The Switch just about killed me at breakfast:
“Ms. Aniston relies on her wholesome appeal as a walking vanilla milkshake to emerge from the movie relatively unscathed.”
Zing!
Andy Warhol poses with Basquiat. Image copyright Raphael Thomas
Like most of us, I usually check out the reviews before I hit the movie theater, but this time I missed reading up before I saw Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis. When I came across the New York Times’s review of the film by critic Stephen Holden a day later, I felt he and I had seen two completely different movies. It’s true that in general I tend to agree with the Times’s A.O.Scott, and not so much with Holden, but this time I was entirely baffled by his assessment.
Image via AP
I really wish I could see this artwork in person: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, rendered in gemstones, Chelsea’s wedding gift from the country of Vietnam. (Maybe I should start checking Katonah yard sales this fall.) This has to be even better up close than the U.N. portrait rugs.
Renewing New York State license plates online gives drivers a clear visual of their options for the appearance of the new plates. Keep the old number and blue and white plate ($130), opt for the new gold plates with a new number (add $25) or go for the gold but keep your old alpha-numeric string (add $45). I like the gold plates; the stark simplicity is more appealing than the fussy landscape trying to add some interest at the top of the former design. The “new” look is a throwback to NYS tags from the 1970’s, when I learned to drive, though the first license plate with a gold background debuted in 1962. My dad always held on to one plate for his collection hanging on the garage wall, and told the DMV he lost the other when it was time to exchange old plates for new.
I was surprised that I was willing to pay a little more for nostalgia, because mostly I agree with Diana Vreeland: I loathe nostalgia. In that case, why not keep the old plate number while I’m at it? Hardly a momentous decision but it was past midnight and I was already tired of thinking about the whole thing so I flipped a coin and allowed random chance to make the decision. It came down heavily on the side of nostalgia: gold plate, old number.
I finalized the transaction, then savored the Dept. of Motor Vehicle’s automatically-generated email response, below. Why should email be any different than actually going to the DMV, where you also will not receive a response? Some experiences generate no nostalgia at all.
At the Hallmark store, June reliably means dads, grads, and weddings. In my case that’s two out of three (I did get married one June, and I just graduated from an MFA program this month; but my dad isn’t around anymore to present with an unlovely tie). To the short list of June’s notable events I propose one that deserves its own celebratory greeting card: the arrival of sour cherries. There is no year-round availability for these ruby beauties; they have a brief early-summer season and once it’s over? Look in the freezer case, or wait till next year. When I spy them at the greenmarket piled high in paperboard pints with tiny green leaves fetchingly peeking out, as if under a spell I automatically say, “Pie,” and buy two and a half pounds. Where there’s cherries, there’s pits, and here’s where the gadgets come in.
Photo: KCIvey, http://bit.ly/d2y1F6
At the Hallmark store, June reliably means dads, grads, and weddings. In my case that’s two out of three (I did get married one June, and I just graduated from an MFA program, but my dad isn’t around anymore to present with an unlovely tie). To the short list of June’s notable events I propose one that deserves its own celebratory greeting card: the arrival of sour cherries. There is no year-round availability for these ruby beauties; they have a heartbreakingly brief season. By early July you can find them only in the freezer case. When I spy sour cherries at the greenmarket, as if under a spell I mumble, “Pie,” and automatically buy two and a half pounds. And where there’s cherries, there’s pits. Here’s where the design gadgets come in. Read the rest of this entry »
Artists began using photographs as reference for painted portraits or sculptures almost immediately upon the discovery of the photographic process in the 19th century. However, it takes skill to translate the reference image into another medium so that it looks “real”—in other words, not like a reproduction of a reproduction, but like the person it was meant to represent. Tricky stuff.
When I first moved to New York in 1984, I fancied myself street-smart. Wrong. The city was a darker, scarier, and more raw place than it is today, and it turned out I knew nothing about how things worked. Or perhaps I was just very young. In either case (and friends back me up on this) New York was a lot more perilous then, with fewer cops around, and trash pretty much every where you looked—some of it fascinating, and some of it on fire. I didn’t know why I felt compelled to pick up ripped passports, trampled photographs, blurred notes scrawled in Bic pen on the back of Marlboro and Parliament packages—but I did.
I really don’t have a good reason for posting this except that it popped up on Google image search (I was researching the previous entry about seed package art) and I found it pretty great, in that 60’s moptop kind of way.
How many bands and album covers from this era relied on art direction along the lines of: take confused/stoned band to location, shoot, done? Concept pretty spare. “OK lads. This time, in a greenhouse. Things are growing. Look meaningful.”
Or: “OK lads, by the water. Look meaningful.”
Or: “OK lads, just look meaningful. Don’t worry about the dead leaves…”
Image via http://www.thelabelman.com/
It’s been a long time since my last post and I hope I still have some readers left…maybe three or four? Excuses, excuses: I finished my thesis and graduated from the Design Criticism master’s degree program at the School of Visual Arts on May 14, and now that I’ve caught up on sleep and regenerated some brain cells (maybe three or four) I plan to post on a more regular basis in the weeks to come. You’ve been warned.
Anyway, I did manage to write this last week for the excellent idsgn.org. It was an idea proposed for an assignment given by Michael Bierut at DCrit, but somehow I ended up writing about album art instead for his class. The notion to write about seed package art stayed with me, though, and here it is just in time for spring.
Photo via L. Eckstein, All My Eyes
When I stumbled across this great blog All My Eyes today and spotted a post about gorgeous Argentinean bus tickets, naturally I had to keep reading. I wasn’t disappointed.
I have a personal interest in tickets; my great-grandfather Ruben Harry Helsel invented more than 45 different ticket dispensing machines between 1917 and 1958.
Photo by Angela Riechers
His Takacheck (above) is still a familiar sight anywhere people need a civilized way to take a number and wait their turn. (I wrote about my great-grandfather for a design research class taught by Steve Heller as part of SVA’s DCrit MFA program; you can see the finished book here.)