Picasso painting La Lecture fetches £25m at auction

 

Picasso kept his relationship with Marie-Therese Walter secret for many years

A portrait of the muse who transformed painter Pablo Picasso’s life has sold for £25.2m ($40.7m) at Sotheby’s auction house in London.

La Lecture went to an anonymous phone buyer after six minutes of bidding.

The masterpiece depicts Picasso’s secret lover, Marie-Therese Walter, who was 17 when Picasso, then 45, met her in Paris for the first time.

Their relationship was kept secret for many years because of her age and because Picasso was married.

Ms Walter later said she had never heard of the artist when he first approached her saying: “I am Picasso – you and I are going to do great things together.”

Until La Lecture was painted, Ms Walter had only appeared in Picasso’s works in code with her features often embedded in the background of his paintings.

It was when the picture was exhibited at a Picasso retrospective that the artist’s wife, Olga Khokhlova, realised there was another woman in his life and their marriage subsequently broke up.

Ms Walter later had a daughter, Maya, with Picasso.

Ms Walter inspired a number of works including La Reve as well as Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, both painted in 1932.

Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12400465

Courtesy : BBC News

Inception and Social Network win Writers Guild awards

Christopher Nolan called his award ‘an incredible honour’

Sci-fi thriller Inception and Facebook movie The Social Network have won the main prizes at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) awards.

Inception, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, won best original screenplay, while The Social Network was named best adapted screenplay.

The King’s Speech, which is nominated for 12 Oscars, was ineligible for the awards and did not make the shortlist.

Winners were announced at simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles.

British-born film-maker Christopher Nolan, who wrote, produced and directed Inception, called the award an “incredible honour”.

He said the prize would have been more significant if “certain other screenplays” had been nominated, without naming The King’s Speech.

The Royal drama is in the running for the best original screenplay Oscar, against Nolan’s Inception.

It was ruled out of contention for the WGA awards because it was not produced under contractual guidance issued by the union.

Nolan added that he had been “heartbroken” when the script for Memento had fallen outside WGA guidelines nine years ago.

Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin said: “I wrote a good screenplay, but [director] David Fincher made a great movie.”

The writers of Mad Men were honoured for best television drama, with Boardwalk Empire collecting the award for outstanding new TV drama.

British screenwriter Peter Morgan, whose previous credits include The Queen and Frost/Nixon, was awarded for his work on small screen drama The Special Relationship.

The WGAs are seen as a good indicator of which films will win writing plaudits at the Oscars, because many of its members also belong to the Academy.

Reference Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12376227

Courtesy : BBC News

Google offers Street View art gallery tours (Update)

By Sam Reeves

 

A woman poses in front of “The Cholmondeley Ladies” while looking at the digital version of the image on the new “Google Art Project” website at the Tate Britain in London. Art lovers will be able to stroll through some of the world’s most acclaimed galleries at the click of a mouse, after Google launched a website using Street View technology to put the museums online.

 

Art lovers will be able to stroll through some of the world’s most famous galleries at the click of a mouse after Google put the venues online Tuesday using Street View technology.

In a collaboration with 17 leading galleries in nine countries, the US Internet giant has taken equipment from the cars it used to map cities and recorded the galleries so they can be enjoyed by anyone with web access.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York, London’s National Gallery and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid are three of the galleries that art aficionados will be able to explore by logging on to http://www.googlea … project.com.

Art by Vincent van Gogh, James McNeill Whistler and Sandro Botticelli are among more than 1,000 works that have been photographed and “hung” in the virtual galleries.

Visitors will be able to look around more than 350 gallery rooms containing work by more than 450 artists.

While many big galleries have already put their work online, Google claims its Art Project takes the experience to a new level.

As well as the Street View-style tours, the site offers an application to build up a virtual private art collection, and super high-resolution pictures which allow enthusiasts to look at works in minute detail.

The project represents “a major step forward in how a lot of people are going to interact with these beautiful treasures,” said Nelson Mattos, vice president of engineering at Google.

“We hope it will inspire ever more people, wherever they live, to access and explore art,” he told journalists at a launch event in the Tate Britain gallery in London, one of the venues involved in the project.

For the website, Google used cameras from their Street View cars and took them inside for the first time, filming with specially designed trolleys in the galleries to create the 360-degree virtual tours.

Each of the 17 galleries photographed one super high-resolution image — each image contains around seven billion pixels and took between four and eight hours to capture.

This means visitors can see details in pictures that were previously impossible to view with the naked eye, such as the tiny Latin Couplet in “The Merchant Georg Gisze” by Hans Holbein the Younger, in the Gemaeldegalerie, Berlin.

Other works to get the super high-resolution treatment include Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”, which is in the Museum of Modern Art, and “In the Conservatory” by Edouard Manet from the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

The project organisers played down concerns that putting art works online would slash the number of visitors to the museums, and instead said they expected the site to boost attendance.

“In our experience, people — once they get a glimpse — want to see the real thing,” said Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate.

He also laughed off a suggestion that putting detailed pictures of the galleries online could provide information for potential art thieves.

“If you’re really thinking of stealing a painting, coming to the museum is probably the best way to check the security system,” he said.

More information: http://www.googlea … project.com/

(c) 2011 AFP

 

Reference Link : http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-world-museums-online-google-street.html

Courtesy : PHYSORG

 

"Architecture must go back to being more honest and more direct"

The Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich is rethinking sustainable architecture: the intention in future is to focus on CO2 emissions during construction and operation rather than exclusively on energy consumption. Marc Angélil explains in an interview why the time is ripe for a paradigm shift in architecture.

Marc Angélil, Head of the Department of Architecture, breaks with conventional sustainability standards in construction and lobbies for less consumption of materials and reduced CO2 emissions. (Photo: Hannes Huebner)

Professor Angélil, on Friday your department will present the basic principles of “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” to experts in construction and architecture. This means that the professors are unanimously demanding a shift away from focusing on energy consumption and thick insulation as advocated by standards such as “Minergy”. Why should emissions become the new target parameter in architecture?
The building stock generates around half of today’s total energy expenditure and CO₂ emissions nationwide. With “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” we are striving towards the ideal of the 1-ton-CO₂ society, as anchored in the ETH Zurich energy strategy. Everyone should reduce their annual per capita CO₂ emissions to one ton; the amount of energy they consume in doing so is not significant. There is no point in saving energy ad absurdum without taking total emissions into account at the same time. Contributions from all sides, including from architecture, are needed to realise the aims of the 1-ton-CO₂society.

In the past many architects have deplored the stylistic constraint of sustainability standards. Doesn’t your initiative primarily strike a blow for greater design freedom?
Of course, because it is our fight-back against one-sided standards. The architect is in a straitjacket if all buildings must be wrapped up in an outer shell 50 centimetres thick. With thinner walls, based on more intelligent heat flows, we will regain greater freedom in design.

What does low-emission construction actually look like in practice?
With “Towards Zero-Emission”, we also need less material. I can give you an example: I am currently planning to build 60 apartments in Esslingen. A central cluster of ground probes 300 metres deep will be used to air-condition the entire residential development. We store surplus heat in the ground during the summer, and we re-use it for heating in winter. This means the building will produce a heat surplus and we no longer need any thick insulation. Thus we can reduce the wall thicknesses from 50 centimetres, as is usual for the “Minergy” standard, to 30 centimetres. As a result we save 340 square metres of area and 1000 cubic metres of materials across the entire housing development. The construction therefore already entails less grey energy due to transport and material production.

How does the more economical use of materials affect the design?
Optimised material flows call for a change in attitude, a new aesthetic form and a different way of handling materials. We are returning to the basic structure; architecture must go back to being more honest and more direct. As I understand it, this also involves doing without multiple layers; we do not need immaculate claddings and coverings everywhere. It is more important for each component to have multiple uses. A concrete slab can also be a heat store, while at the same time performing fire safety and acoustic functions in the building.

In addition to reduced material flows during the manufacturing and waste disposal processes, the strategy also envisages emission-free running of the building. Where is the energy for this supposed to come from?
There is more than enough emission-free energy, we just need to use it intelligently. For that we must properly understand the energy context of a building and tap into all the emission-free sources. The temperature of human excrement, for example, is approximately 37°C, but we only need 18°C for heating. So it would make good sense to utilise this waste heat – initial test installations for heat recovery are already in operation. The same is true for the heat constantly emitted by our body.

But you cannot heat a ten-storey commercial building with that alone.
No, but a surplus of solar energy is also available, and the technologies at our disposal today to use and store this are much better than those of 15 years ago. We also need an “orchestration of technical systems”. There must be better networking of heat pumps, ventilation and heating systems, and sensors distributed throughout the whole building must ensure that equipment only runs when it is really needed. Nowadays we have small decentralised systems instead of enormous ventilation systems in the basement. The ventilation in a room, for example, does not start up until a carbon dioxide sensor detects that someone has entered it.

That all sounds very high-tech.
No, high tech is used only where it makes sense. A simple sun-shade on the façade is preferable to an elaborate control system indoors. Above all, using ground probes to store heat in the earth and re-using it later via heat pumps requires good networking, not high-tech equipment.

Technical control systems and heat pumps need additional electricity. Although representatives from the world of politics and economics warn of an electricity shortfall, the strategy also expressly excludes nuclear energy as well as fossil energy sources. Why?
The problem of waste from nuclear fission is still unsolved. Waste is a pollutant emission. Atomic energy is therefore incompatible with emission-free architecture.

Don’t you see any contradiction in the fact that nuclear energy research is also taking place at ETH Zurich?
No, there is room for different opinions at our University.

Don’t the demands of “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” stretch far beyond the expertise of an architect?
At ETH Zurich we always imagine architecture in an urban development context as well. Power structures, conflicts of interest, cash flows and the participation of the residents play a decisive role in this. In this respect, every new building is also a political statement. Thus the part played by “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture” clearly extends into the political and economic spheres as well.

To what extent is your initiative integrated in a larger international trend?
Our strategy is unique and “very Swiss”. Architecture at ETH Zurich, in contrast to many American universities, has never lost its relationship with practice. Our research and education are highly oriented towards practical considerations. Moreover, a university of applied sciences like ETH Zurich has a huge amount of technical expertise available in-house, which is necessary for sustainability in the construction field. The engineers collaborate closely with architects and town planners. It is also a fact that the discussions about sustainability are already much more advanced here in Switzerland than in other places.

This raises the question: even if politicians and architects here in Switzerland support “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture”, wouldn’t that be just a drop in the ocean from a global perspective?
Every year we bid farewell to around 250 students whose education doesn’t mention oil-fired heating systems at all. Many of these students subsequently move to other countries where they put our ideas into practice and integrate them into new contexts. This also creates an understanding of sustainable building in Latin America or Africa from the bottom up in the long term.

Towards Zero-Emission Architecture

In a position paper, the professors in the Department of Architecture unanimously call for a paradigm shift in architecture: away from saving energy and towards freedom from emissions. Zero-emission architecture relates to a building’s entire life cycle – from construction through operation to disposal. The basic principles are just as applicable to new buildings as they are to the redevelopment of the existing building stock. A heat storage system in the form of ground probes, solar technology and heat pumps is an important component in this. Considerable savings are possible compared to conventional building methods as a result of the significantly reduced use of materials and the utilisation of self-produced heat. A large part of the “Science City” campus is being built and redeveloped in accordance with the rules of “Towards Zero-Emission Architecture”. A new building for the Institute of Technology on the “Science City” campus and a new building in the “Future Cities Laboratory” in Singapore are also planned according to the same basic principles.

Reference Link
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/101118_Interview_Zeroemission_Angelil/index_EN

Courtesy
ETH Zurich

Japanese printer syncs pictures with smells

An ambitious idea from the Keio University in Tokyo could see your ink-jet printer not only print out a photo of a freshly mown lawn, but also provide an appropriate waft of summer grass scent.

Presenting their work at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Multimedia conference in Florence next week, Kenichi Okada and other researchers at the university have modified a Canon printer and replaced the typical ink cartridges with vials of four different aromas.

An ink or bubble jet printer works by firing up tiny resistors to create heat. These high temperatures vapourise the ink stored in cartridges, making a bubble, which then expands and creates a droplet. That drip of ink is fired out the print head’s nozzle, and lands on the paper.

Okada’s hacked aroma-printer works in much the same way, but sends out a droplet of scent instead of colour. The tiny, picolitre of smell can make perceivable and recognisable aromas of lemon, vanilla, lavender, apple, cinnamon, grapefruit and mint, which dissipate in seconds. After a couple of sniffs, it’s gone, ready for a new smell.

But while the printer’s success marks a large step towards completing the technology, other hurdles remain. Synthesising smell isn’t quite as easy as creating colours. You can’t mix strawberry and banana to make Brighton Beach sea salt. So whereas a normal printer holds just cyan, magenta and yellow to mix the colours on the fly, this device would be a gigantic monstrosity filled with hundreds of vials for different smells.

Plus, on the software side, the researchers are having to work out how to make the printer automatically recognise elements of an image and release the appropriate aroma.

Previously, “Smell-O-Vision” was an interesting gimmick to fill cinema seats. Unfortunately, the technique was a colossal failure, and rendered the only movie it was used in, 1960’s Scent of Mystery, a laughing stock.

The film pumped containers filled with smells into pipes under the audience’s seats. But it cost theaters upwards of $1 million to install the system, the fans were noisy, and audience members had to smell so hard to pick up the faints scents that their loud sniffing distracted other viewers. Almost makes 3D seem like a good idea.

Reference Link
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/26/japan-smelly-printer

Courtesy
CondéNetUK Limited

India Art fair in bigger avatar next year

The Hindu A visitor seen at the India Art Summit in New Delhi last year. File Photo: S. Subramanium

The India Art Summit is set to get bigger in its third year with more countries expected to participate and the number of exhibiting galleries doubling from previous year in the event scheduled to be held here in January 2011.

Held annually in August since 2008, the third edition of the art fair would take place in the national capital from January 21-23 next year. This, organisers say was done to enable India find a permanent slot on the global art fair map.

With 84 galleries shortlisted out of 150 for the edition, and the inclusion of 34 leading international galleries (double the number that participated in 2009), India’s importance as an emerging global centre for art is further confirmed, organisers said in a statement.

Top galleries from around the world will include Lisson Gallery (UK), Sundaram Tagore Gallery (Hong Kong), Galerie Kashya Hildebrand (Switzerland), Aicon Gallery (US) Grosvenor Gallery (UK), Thomas Erben Gallery (US), Galerie Frank Elbaz (France), Die Galerie (Germany), The Drawing Room (The Philippines), Greenaway Gallery (Australia), and others.

“We are thrilled to be back at this exciting event and privileged to play a role in the internationalisation of the Indian art world,” says Michelle D’Souza, Director, Lisson Gallery which is returning for the third time.

At the last fair there were over 40,000 visitors and a total sales of Rs 260 million according to estimates given by the organisers.

The total area of the art fair has increased almost two-fold to approximately 8000 sq metre of exhibition space, and the total number of galleries has increased by 55 per cent from the previous edition.

“We’re very pleased with the quality of galleries that have been selected and the breadth of Modern and Contemporary Art that will be presented at the upcoming fair” says Neha Kirpal, Director, India Art Summit.

“India has never seen this selection of art and galleries come together from around the world, I’m very excited to see that our country’s art fair is shaping up to be of a truly international standard,” says Shireen Gandhy, Gallery Director, Mumbai.

The third edition would see a greater curatorial focus in the gallery booth plans with strong group shows in the general exhibition section, and individual artist displays in the new solo projects section of the art fair.

Further, an extended sculpture park surrounding the entire art fair venue at the Pragati Maidan here and the dedicated spaces for video and performance art is expected to give galleries a much wider stage to present an array of art practices and mediums.

Reference Link
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/art/article529894.ece?homepage=true

Courtesy
The Hindu

Writing for cinema, yet another profession, says Jayamohan

Jayamohan

He wrote some of the finest novels and short stories in Tamil. He has made seminal contribution to literary criticism. A prolific writer, who has posted almost all his writings on the net, whose views on many subjects have stirred up a lot of controversy, but, two films-Naan Kadavul and Angadi Theru have placed Jayamohan on a different trajectory. He discusses his journey in the film world with B. Kolappan

The applause and whistles in theatres in response to the matter-of-fact dialogues reiterate the need of involving a writer in film making. But Mr. Jayamohan is humble about his role. “Cinema, unlike the creative writing, is a collective effort. The writer serves the director like other artists,” he says. Explaining why the role of a director was paramount, he said if a film became a hit all those who were involved in the movie claimed for credit, while the director would be left alone to take the responsibility if it was a flop.

He, however, pointed out that a writer could effortlessly pen the dialogues while it might take months for a director to finish the task.

“The role of the writer is to tell the story and it is left to the director to visualise it. Of course there are writer-directors,” he said Throughout his conversation Mr. Jayamohan stressed the role of the writer and director without trespassing into each other’s areas. “A film is a compromise between a writer and director, pointed out this writer from Kanyakumari, whose mother tongue is Malayalam.

According to Mr. Jayamohan, Tamil cinema was yet to acknowledge the role of writers. “It is an accepted phenomenon world wide. Only in Tamil cinema we think we can manage without writers,” he said.

Before Naan Kadavul and Angadi Theru he played a limited role in the film Kasthurimaan. “I never had any aversion for popular cinema. In fact I madly followed Malayalam cinema. I have friends in the cinema industry. But I could enter the industry only after I was called,” he said, explaining his foray into the tinsel world. On converting novels into films, he felt that the idea could have suited the films in the past. “Modern cinema is in a hurry and it needs only short stories and short novels. Thriller novels may suit the medium, but not a novel with multi-layer stories,” he said.

Mr. Jayamohan said writing for cinema was yet another profession. “But it should be honourable and creative for a writer like me,” he said.

“But I must tell that entry into the film world has suddenly relieved me of all the burdens of a head of a family. Had I not come to this industry, I would have been running from pillar to post to organise money for my son’s higher-education,” said the writer, who recently resigned his job in BSNL.

Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/11/stories/2010071161900200.htm

Courtesy
The Hindu

Still Dancing, Her Way, From the Soul

Alicia Alonso, the longtime director of the National Ballet of Cuba, no longer dances with her feet, which, on Monday afternoon at a hotel near Lincoln Center, were daintily crossed at the ankle in a pair of ladylike slingbacks. She is also virtually blind. But when she talks about ballet, her hands, coppery and weathered, flutter near her face as slender fingers, flashing rings and pale pink nails spin and leap through delicate choreographic feats.

“We were creating the future of the ballet in the United States,” Alicia Alonso said about the early days of American Ballet Theater. “It was such a dream.”

Alicia Alonso, with American Ballet Theater in 1955. She gave her final performance in 1995, when she was 75.

“I dance with the hands,” she agreed, quietly smiling. “I do. I dance with my heart actually more. So it comes through my body. I can’t help it.”

On Thursday night Ms. Alonso will celebrate her 90th birthday in a special program performed by American Ballet Theater, for which she was an instrumental dancer in its early days. (She was quick to point out, though, that she is still 89; her actual birthday is not until Dec. 21.) The evening will feature a film retrospective of Ms. Alonso’s career as well as a performance of “Don Quixote” with three principal casts.

Ms. Alonso is at once reviled and adored. Some see her as a political tool of Fidel Castro as well as someone who has remained too long in her job and who prevents certain dancers from working abroad. In 2005 Rolando Sarabia, then one of the Cuban company’s leading dancers, defected, followed later that year by Octavio Martín, a principal dancer, and his wife, Yahima Franco, also a company member. Mr. Sarabia and Mr. Martín said separately at the time that Ms. Alonso had turned down their requests to dance abroad as other Cubans did, notably Carlos Acosta.

But Ms. Alonso is also adored by balletomanes who cherish memories of her Giselle and her longevity onstage. She gave her final performance in 1995 when she danced “The Butterfly,” a piece she choreographed. She was 75.

“A young lady,” she said before surrendering to girlish giggles. “That’s fantastic, no? Two years before, I danced ‘Giselle.’ ”

Ms. Alonso is either a sly fox of the highest degree or an endearing old lady who wears a scarf — ears covered — with the élan of Little Edie in “Grey Gardens.” In all likelihood she’s both; her demeanor can turn on a dime. She firmly refused to answer any questions related to politics.

“I came here because they are giving me a wonderful reception, a wonderful feeling of coming back,” Ms. Alonso said. “I will talk to you about memories and things like that, and I think we should keep it like that. Don’t you think so?”

Well, not really. But it doesn’t work to force Ms. Alonso to do anything she doesn’t want to do. “I mean there’s nothing I can talk about,” she said. “I’m still a Cuban, I have a ballet company that represents my country, and I’m proud of it. Very.”

Ms. Alonso’s return to Ballet Theater evokes emotions that she said were difficult to put into words. “It reminds me of all the years of my working here, my friends, the times we toured during the war and of performing. It’s a whole life. We were creating the future of the ballet in the United States. It was such a dream.”

Ms. Alonso joined Ballet Theater in 1940, but an eye operation sent her back to Cuba, and she rejoined the company in 1943. She was in the original casts of Antony Tudor’s “Undertow” (1945), Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend” (1948) and George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” (1947).

For that devilishly difficult ballet, in which she was partnered by Igor Youskevitch, Balanchine took advantage of Ms. Alonso’s technical prowess, challenging her every move. “I remember Mr. B., he looked at me,” she began, before imitating his famous sniff, “and said, ‘Can you do this step?’ I say, ‘I try, Mr. Balanchine.’ Boom.” Then he asked her to try an entrechat six, a leap straight in the air with rapid leg crossings. “ ‘Are you scared?’ ” Ms. Alonso sniffed again. “ ‘No, no. I try, Mr. Balanchine.’ ”

Ms. Alonso’s favorite part of the story occurred after Balanchine heard Youskevitch talking about how easy his variation was and decided to complicate matters. “He almost killed him. After he finished the variation, Mr. Balanchine said, ‘Do you like it?’ and Igor said, ‘No. I’m dead.’ ”

Throughout the years, as her eyesight worsened, Ms. Alonso continued to dance. While others ran offstage quickly, Ms. Alonso, so as not to crash into the scenery, opted for a slower exit. “They put very strong lights so I could see where is center,” she said. She recalled her partner Anton Dolin telling her: “My baby, it’s O.K. It looks very well. You just go and float away.”

But as helpless as some might imagine her to be, Ms. Alonso is quite sharp with what seems to be a selective understanding of English depending on the question. It took three attempts, for instance, to find out whether she was grooming a successor for her company. After sensing that the line “I don’t understand” wasn’t going to get her off the hook, she finally blurted: “No. I think they’re good all by themselves. They are very capable people, I’m sure. I hope.” (Merrily, she crossed her fingers.)

As for her legacy, she said: “I don’t want to be remembered. I just don’t want to be forgotten.”

Ms. Alonso’s mantra clearly has much to do with being young at heart. If she should ever step down as director of the Cuban company, she might find work as a life coach.

“If a person keeps thinking, ‘How old am I going to be?’ and thinking about the age” — she raised her voice — “that’s the worst thing you can do. You don’t have to think about how old you are. You have to think about how many things you want to do and how to do it and keep on doing it.”

She clapped her hands and added: “Otherwise, you know what I think? I am going to live to be 200 years old. So I hope all of you do have the same fortune. I would hate to be alone.”

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/arts/dance/03alonso.html

Courtesy
The New York Times Company

The Way We Design Now

It’s strange to think that just a few years ago, it felt as if design schools and studios nationwide must have been holding special screenings of “The Graduate.” Down the aisles of Target, in the pages of Dwell and the showrooms of SoHo, there was nary a natural material in sight: the future was plastic.

‘Garbino’ trashcan for Umbra.

“Plastic was the material that I naively knew was the material of our contemporary world, even at the age of 10,” the designer Karim Rashid said in a 2006 interview. Rashid has certainly been plastic’s most high-profile ambassador, using it for everything from dish-soap containers to the (then) ubiquitous $7 “Garbino” trashcans that made him famous. Many other designers were similarly enamored with the way plastic could become any color or shape, and though products made from the material were offered at all price ranges, plastic delivered on the popular premise of good design for all because it could be used to create on the cheap.

Though our connected culture would be lost without it, plastic assumes a radically different role in the design world: its most high-profile usage of late comes not in throwaway consumer goods but rather in the form of the 12,500 plastic bottles (that’s about the same number consumed every 8.3 seconds in the United States) used to build the Plastiki, a wind-blown, solar-powered boat currently sailing from San Francisco to Australia, stopping at environmental hot spots like the roughly Texas-sized North Pacific Garbage Patch or Pacific Gyre along the way. The goal of the Plastiki voyage is to encourage people to re-think waste: according to Project Aware, 15 billion pounds of plastic are produced in the U.S. every year, for example, but only 1 billion pounds are recycled.

Courtesy Plastiki Crew, top; Adventure Ecology The Plastiki solar-powered boat, made from 12,500 plastic bottles.

It would be overstating things to say that Plastiki is helping chart a new course for design, but the vessel and the voyage do provide a nice departure point for discussing the place the discipline finds itself today. Though the expedition leader, David de Rothschild, has in many ways been the face of Plastiki, the project as a whole speaks to the reality of collaboration versus individual creation. The Plastiki site acknowledges a team including diver, documentarian, boat builder and solar array designer. Designers like Philippe Starck may have turned their attention to things like wind turbines now, but most design efforts these days, whether for iPods or affordable apartments, seem to be very much the product of teams. Coming off an era where designers assumed the role of artist/auteur, that’s a big shift.

Plastiki, in engaging with a host of environmental technologies and issues, also mirrors a broad cultural shift in design’s focus. Design now exists less to shape objects than to produce solutions. Instead of creating a desire and designing an object to fulfill it, a designer spotlights a problem or need and solves it. The latter has not completely displaced the former, but it has become the prevailing discourse. So it’s fitting that the newest edition of the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial questions the purpose — and future — of the discipline with an exhibit called “Why Design Now?”

Weil Ausstellungssystem GmbH Kraftplex, a 100 percent biodegradable alternative to plastic.

The Triennial, which opened in mid-May, assuages any fears surrounding the capabilities of natural materials. In fact, inventiveness around unremarkable stuff from sunflowers to banana stems has resulted in numerous greener alternatives to plastic on display here, including Bananaplac, an alternative to hardwood and Formica, produced from banana fibers extracted when the fruit is harvested; AgriPlast, made from field grass and polystyrene; Kraftplex, a 100 percent biodegradable fiberboard made from sustainably harvested soft wood fibers, water, pressure and heat; and Flax, a natural fiber typically used to make linen but transformed by designer Francois Azambourg into high-performing recyclable furniture like the Lin94 Chair. But new materials are always being introduced, and their inclusion here is just a small part of a much larger story.

“Why Design Now?” is an important show because design is in a strange place. One always hears talk about the need to not reinvent the wheel; well, the design community — some of it, anyway — has realized the need to stop reinventing the chair. This is not to suggest that design should fully move away from making things — and indeed, the Cooper Hewitt show is chock full of smartly conceived, necessary objects like the AdSpecs, low-cost corrective eyeglasses with lenses the user can adjust to his or her own individual prescriptions; the Modular Prosthetic Limb System, created by a multi-disciplinary team culled from more than 30 American, Canadian and European organizations, and the Zon hearing aid by Stuart Karten Design, a minimalist accessory rendered so elegantly as to erase any need for self-consciousness on the part of the wearer. There are thoughtful, beautiful ones as well, like Karinelvy Design’s blown glass Gripp glasses, so graceful one might not even notice they were designed to function for anyone, even people with limited hand function, and Alabama Chanin’s hand-sewn garments that favor local commerce over overseas production.

Oxford Centre for Vision in the Developing World, left; Starkey Laboratories, Inc., center; Karin Eriksson, right. From left: Self-adjustable prescriptive eyewear created by Joshua Silver; minimalist hearing aid designed by Stuart Karten; universal-design glassware by Karinlevy Design.

The show actively engages with the question designers both emerging and established must ask today: If not objects, what? It’s a dilemma closely mirroring that of the larger American economy, which has been shifting steadily from manufacturing to service. In response, design schools are scrambling to offer curricula that moves away from what Jon Kolko describes as “the Bauhaus, form-giving stuff.” Kolko, founder of the Austin Center for Design, a newly formed educational institution that “exists to transform society through design and design education,” believes that our recession-weary era is absolutely ready for this sort of work to thrive. “All the travesty and direness is making all the right things happen,” he says. “Kids today don’t care about the big house, the big salary. At the heart of their value system is ‘I want to make a difference.’”

With an eye to contributing to the greater good, practitioners might design a game, a process, procedure or experience. For example, Emily Pilloton founded the non-profit design collective Project H (the “h” stands for humanity, habitats, health and happiness) after a demoralizing stint designing doorknobs. The 28-year-old now designs projects like the Learning Landscape, which takes a creative approach to math education by installing a public sculpture-like grid of half-submerged tires as a setting for math games. Another example might be Participle, which bills itself as a public service design firm, and has developed and prototyped new services to help combat social isolation and loneliness among the elderly.

Project H Design Adaptable to any setting, Project H’s Learning Landscape uses reclaimed tires, sand, lumber and chalk to create a setting for math games.

In showcasing the work of Pilloton and many of her peers, this year’s version of the Triennial feels very much of a piece with another Cooper Hewitt exhibit presented in 2007, “Design for the Other 90%” (now on view at the National Geographic Society Museum, Washington, D.C., through September). The low-cost innovations in health, shelter, energy and transport for the 5.8 billion people globally with little or no access not only to most products and services but also to food, shelter or clean water have become the sort of things young designers want to engage with today. (Though creating smart business models for this work may be the most challenging of design projects they could undertake.) “Why Design Now?” might well have been called “What Should Designers Do Now?”

Reference Link
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/the-way-we-design-now/

Courtesy
The New York Times Compan y

The Crew Behind a One-Woman Show

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

WORKING VERSION Marilyn Minter with her crew of assistants.

YOU were the child of glamorous but emotionally absent narcissists; your own credo is “Never take advantage of anyone.” You were drunk or high for much of the 1980s; you got sober when you realized that no matter what quantities of drugs and alcohol you consumed they no longer had an effect. You were an art-critical flop who spent decades in the professional wilderness; you were then so suddenly taken up by the establishment that collectors now stand in line for your work. Your pictures sell for $400,000; you insist that you will never give up teaching, so what if it pays two cents?

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Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

THE SPOT Marilyn Minter’s loft as studio. Her manager calls it “the closest thing there is to a Renaissance workshop.”

You are Marilyn Minter, a 61-year-old painter with galleries in New York and Los Angeles, a newly published monograph (Marilyn Minter, Gregory R. Miller & Co., $60), a museum show opening Friday in Cleveland and another one-woman show in preparation. Your work, which critics have alternately praised or condemned for the attention it pays to the luster of fashion and pathology of glamour, has seldom been more desirable. And so, on a given Friday — last week, let’s say — six assistants arranged around the perimeter of your Mercer Street loft are helping to make your new work.

“I think we probably have the closest thing there is to a Renaissance workshop,” said Johan Olander, Ms. Minter’s studio manager, meaning that no person can be considered the sole author of any work bearing Ms. Minter’s name.

And, as if to confirm this, Natalia Yovane, Ms. Minter’s “blocker,” was filling in what looked like a paint-by-number schema devised either to blind a person or drive her onto a ledge. With mindless mechanical delicacy, Jenny Morgan and David Mramor were applying “second coats” to another image, smearing wet enamel on a pair of enormous lips that looked like a pointillist abstraction up close. Chris Oh and Agata Bebecka, the so-called “finishers,” dabbed paint onto a nearly finished picture, patting each stroke with an index finger to create a lustrous sheen.

It was only when a viewer stood away from the paintings that a mouth, or an elegantly shod foot splashing through silvery liquid came into focus. “We used cake decoration, that silver powder they use to decorate fancy cakes, suspended in vodka,” Ms. Minter said, referring to the liquid depicted in one painting. “Water wasn’t viscous enough.”

Tall, pale-complexioned and with sharply blue eyes, Ms. Minter has a disarmingly candid manner, a ready laugh and a painting style that defies easy characterization. Some consider her work photo-realism; she prefers to call herself a “photo-replacer.” Shooting the staged images for her paintings with analog film, she then subjects them to 80 or more rounds of PhotoShop manipulation before transferring the results to aluminum panels and handing them over to Team Minter, her crew.

“At this point, my primary job is as a generator of imagery,” Ms. Minter said. “If I did this alone, it would take me a year and a half to finish one piece.” And that would doubtless trouble her passionate collectors, among them Madonna and Tom Ford.

It is no secret that artists rely on armies of assistants to facilitate their output. Jeff Koons, for instance, employs scores of fabricators, conservators and technicians. By contrast, Ms. Minter’s production amounts to a cottage industry. Like the owner of a mom and pop deli, she lives above the store, or rather, behind it, her domestic life wedged into the perimeter of a loft she has occupied since the bicentennial. “I’m a late bloomer in the art world,” the artist said as she laid out paper plates and cloth napkins for lunch.

It was 2 p.m., time for the weekly Friday pizza delivery. “I was basically in a coma for 15 years, and then spent the next 10 being told I had nothing to offer,” Ms. Minter added. “So by the time so-called success came along, I had the tools to stay right-sized.”

Asked what exactly that meant, Ms. Minter said: “I can still hear it when someone says something’s a stupid idea.”

This does occur.

“Remember when you made that horrid wet drip on her chin?” Mr. Olander asked, referring to a painting Ms. Minter created from a photograph of Pamela Anderson with some unidentifiable liquid running from her open mouth.

“The water didn’t look like water,” Ms. Morgan said. What it looked like was … well, never mind.

“They were fighting me constantly and kept adding more and more wetness” to the image, Ms. Minter added, until finally the water looked less suggestive. Thus Ms. Minter managed to skirt any unwanted associations with the hard-core pornographic imagery she deployed early on in her career — to the distaste of collectors and general feminist scorn.

“The most debased imagery around is pornography and fashion,” said Ms. Minter, who has probably done as much as any painter to exploit the distinct visual vocabulary of commercially stimulated desire. “The problem was, in the beginning I was touching on things that were way too loaded and it almost killed my career.”

In the case of the Pamela Anderson picture, shot from a portrait commissioned to celebrate a marriage that never took place, Ms. Minter decided in the end that her assistants were right. The drip was all wrong.

“Everybody around here has an opinion,” Mr. Olander said.

“But,” Ms. Minter said, “I have the final say.”

That goes for pizza as well, since Ms. Minter, who is as good at abstinence as she is at succumbing to pleasure, quit eating meat at about the same time she stopped doing drugs. There were three pies for lunch on Friday and not a pepperoni in sight. As the painters put down their brushes and plastic palettes and came to the table, Ms. Minter conveyed the impression, unusual in the atelier of a successful artist, of being equal parts den mother and benevolent despot.

“I choose people to work for me based on integrity and good energy,” she said. “Also,” she said brightly, “everyone in here had a painful background.”

“Not really,” Ms. Bebecka, the finisher, demurred.

“What do you mean?” Ms. Minter said. “You were abandoned by your parents in high school.”

“I wasn’t abandoned and I was in college,” Ms. Bebecka said, shrugging off Ms. Minter’s dramatic reimagining of her Polish girlhood.

“Pay no attention to her, she’s in total denial,” Ms. Minter said amiably.

At that Ms. Bebecka shot Ms. Minter a look of affectionate indulgence, with an expression that said: “Love that nutty broad.”

Still, as the clichés suggest and Ms. Minter insisted, it may be the setbacks, the childhood dysfunction, the battle for sobriety and critical approval that forge the spirit of an artist. At any rate, hardship does tend to winnow out the committed from those seeking art careers because they’d like a job where you get to work in a T-shirt and sweats.

“I really never had any money until recently, and I’m still not sure I have it,” the artist said, pouring herself a Diet Coke. “For years my income from art was $16,000 a year, so believe me I don’t take any of this for granted. But I’ve been around long enough to understand the role of artists in our culture, who we are and what job we perform.”

And what is that, a visitor inquired?

“We’re the elite of the servant class,” Ms. Minter said. “I know my place.”

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/fashion/03Gimlet.html

Courtesy
The New York Times Company