Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics

Why Cats Paint presents a cogently argued theory based on recent evidence which clearly supports the view that some cats' marks are aesthetically motivated and should be regarded as genuine works on non-primate art." - L.A. Art Times.

This book is genius... a must for not only cat lovers, but art enthusiasts of abstract expressionism. A chapter dedicated to the "widespread domestic use of upholstered furniture" in feline art is a mind-blowing revaluation of what motivates cats' to scratch our sofas and chairs.

-S

Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics

Why Cats Paint presents a cogently argued theory based on recent evidence which clearly supports the view that some cats' marks are aesthetically motivated and should be regarded as genuine works on non-primate art." - L.A. Art Times.

This book is genius... a must for not only cat lovers, but art enthusiasts of abstract expressionism. A chapter dedicated to the "widespread domestic use of upholstered furniture" in feline art is a mind-blowing revaluation of what motivates cats' to scratch our sofas and chairs.

-S

From the Spoon to the City @ LACMA

Last night, JessyG and I had the pleasure of attending a private tour of the new exhibit, "From the Spoon to the City": Objects by Architects from LACMA's Collection. Thanks to Oliver Furth, Chairman of the Decorative Arts & Design Council (DADC), for the special invitation.

"From the Spoon to the City": Objects by Architects from LACMA's Collection (August 6, 2009–January 24, 2010)
When Italian architect Ernesto Rogers famously declared that he wanted to design everything from "a spoon to a city," he articulated the desire of many architects to design both buildings and their contents. In some cases, this meant design for specific commissions, such as Rudolf Schindler's furniture for the Shep family. In others, objects allowed the realization of ideas on a smaller, more viable scale, or were a part of a multifaceted career that spanned all realms of design, as in the case of Frank Gehry. The products of such efforts can function as miniature buildings, conveying the architect's ideals in a compact form. Or as Charles Eames put it when asked why he made furniture, "so [I] can design a piece of architecture that you can hold in your hand."

These new acquisitions were purchased with funds from the DADC. The Decorative Arts and Design Department has no endowment, and relies solely on donations, and membership dues to expand its collection. Curators have been spending wisely, and lately, they've been focusing on 20th Century pieces inpreparation for a big exhibition on California Modernism, which opens in the fall of 2011.

-S

PS to all you design enthusiast in L.A.- consider DADC!
The purpose of the DADC is twofold - to promote scholarship and interest in design, through an engaging series of lectures and events, and to raise acquisition funds for the museum's collection. Members enjoy a stellar series of lectures, tours, trips, and parties, scheduled throughout the year. This fall, DADC will tour Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, The Hollyhock House. The Decorative Arts curators have 7 lectures planned, October through April, including "A Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today", and "British and Continental Gold and Silver in the Ashmolean Museum".

From the Spoon to the City @ LACMA

Last night, JessyG and I had the pleasure of attending a private tour of the new exhibit, "From the Spoon to the City": Objects by Architects from LACMA's Collection. Thanks to Oliver Furth, Chairman of the Decorative Arts & Design Council (DADC), for the special invitation.

"From the Spoon to the City": Objects by Architects from LACMA's Collection (August 6, 2009–January 24, 2010)
When Italian architect Ernesto Rogers famously declared that he wanted to design everything from "a spoon to a city," he articulated the desire of many architects to design both buildings and their contents. In some cases, this meant design for specific commissions, such as Rudolf Schindler's furniture for the Shep family. In others, objects allowed the realization of ideas on a smaller, more viable scale, or were a part of a multifaceted career that spanned all realms of design, as in the case of Frank Gehry. The products of such efforts can function as miniature buildings, conveying the architect's ideals in a compact form. Or as Charles Eames put it when asked why he made furniture, "so [I] can design a piece of architecture that you can hold in your hand."

These new acquisitions were purchased with funds from the DADC. The Decorative Arts and Design Department has no endowment, and relies solely on donations, and membership dues to expand its collection. Curators have been spending wisely, and lately, they've been focusing on 20th Century pieces inpreparation for a big exhibition on California Modernism, which opens in the fall of 2011.

-S

PS to all you design enthusiast in L.A.- consider DADC!
The purpose of the DADC is twofold - to promote scholarship and interest in design, through an engaging series of lectures and events, and to raise acquisition funds for the museum's collection. Members enjoy a stellar series of lectures, tours, trips, and parties, scheduled throughout the year. This fall, DADC will tour Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, The Hollyhock House. The Decorative Arts curators have 7 lectures planned, October through April, including "A Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today", and "British and Continental Gold and Silver in the Ashmolean Museum".

I love a Good Build-Up

Revenge, 2009
Short by Lernert Engelberts & Sander Plug (www.weloveourwork.com)

...I love a good build-up.

-S

I love a Good Build-Up

Revenge, 2009
Short by Lernert Engelberts & Sander Plug (www.weloveourwork.com)

...I love a good build-up.

-S

Read Books Online

BooksOnLine is an experimental free access library that Pierre Hourquet started in 2006 to promote artists work. The first books were made with his friends, then after a few books, he decided to contact artist he likes. Just a FYI, Pierre's still looking for new contributors.

"100C" by Jesper Ulvelius is one of my favorite books in the catalogue.

Take a look at www.booksonline.fr

-S

Read Books Online

BooksOnLine is an experimental free access library that Pierre Hourquet started in 2006 to promote artists work. The first books were made with his friends, then after a few books, he decided to contact artist he likes. Just a FYI, Pierre's still looking for new contributors.

"100C" by Jesper Ulvelius is one of my favorite books in the catalogue.

Take a look at www.booksonline.fr

-S

The Institute of Social Hypocrisy

Mission Statement

The Institute of Social Hypocrisy is an artist led project
operating over a two-year period. The concept of social hypocrisy will
provide the thread of continuity for the various art projects that will take
place at the institution throughout its existence.

A series of artists and curators will be invited to develop events in
order to allow free, apolitical discussion and debate.
The program will be open to diverse art practices including
installation, talks, and performance.

Two in-house magazines will be published each year that will contain
text and images connected with the work produced as part of the program.
Art practitioners will also contribute to book projects to be defined
during the lifespan of the institution.

The institute is the vision of the artist Victor Boullet who has, for a
number of years, been producing work associated with the idea that
people conduct themselves in a certain manner in order to
be accepted, evenwhen this may be contradictory to their true beliefs.
He wanted to find a platform that would allow others to come and
explore their own ideas that could be linked to these notions of falsehood.

The Institute of Social Hypocrisy

Mission Statement

The Institute of Social Hypocrisy is an artist led project
operating over a two-year period. The concept of social hypocrisy will
provide the thread of continuity for the various art projects that will take
place at the institution throughout its existence.

A series of artists and curators will be invited to develop events in
order to allow free, apolitical discussion and debate.
The program will be open to diverse art practices including
installation, talks, and performance.

Two in-house magazines will be published each year that will contain
text and images connected with the work produced as part of the program.
Art practitioners will also contribute to book projects to be defined
during the lifespan of the institution.

The institute is the vision of the artist Victor Boullet who has, for a
number of years, been producing work associated with the idea that
people conduct themselves in a certain manner in order to
be accepted, evenwhen this may be contradictory to their true beliefs.
He wanted to find a platform that would allow others to come and
explore their own ideas that could be linked to these notions of falsehood.

Before Photoshop - Barbara Kruger

In the old days before digital photography and Photoshop were able to transform everybody and anything in something else (i.e. -Shepard Fairey's "Obey" or "Hope" posters,") art directors would have legions of staffers doing nothing but things called paste-ups: actual physically manipulated cut and pasted images they would then photograph until they got it right.

Barbara Kruger has been in our faces for years, and her graphic imagery has become a default for the commercial advertising industry (she was once a Mademoiselle magazine art director). Her exhibition of "smalls" done the old-fashioned way: forty four images, all but two black and white, none larger than 11 X 14, framed simply in black at the Skarstedt Gallery has been called Pre-digital only because they feared nobody would know what a paste up even was anymore.

Much of Barbara Kruger's graphic work consists of black-and-white photographs with overlaid captions set in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique. The phrases included in her work are usually declarative, and make common use of such pronouns as "you", "I", "we", and "they". The juxtaposition of Kruger's imagery with text containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is a recurring motif in the work. The text in her work of the 1980s includes such phrases as "Your comfort is my silence" (1981), "you invest in the divinity of the masterpiece" (1982), and "I shop therefore I am" (1987). She has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t." Enveloping the viewer with the seductions of direct address, her work is consistently about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another.

She layers found photographs from existing sources with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to. In their trademark black letters against a slash of red background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground." Much of her text questions the viewer about feminism, classicism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing.


-S

Before Photoshop - Barbara Kruger

In the old days before digital photography and Photoshop were able to transform everybody and anything in something else (i.e. -Shepard Fairey's "Obey" or "Hope" posters,") art directors would have legions of staffers doing nothing but things called paste-ups: actual physically manipulated cut and pasted images they would then photograph until they got it right.

Barbara Kruger has been in our faces for years, and her graphic imagery has become a default for the commercial advertising industry (she was once a Mademoiselle magazine art director). Her exhibition of "smalls" done the old-fashioned way: forty four images, all but two black and white, none larger than 11 X 14, framed simply in black at the Skarstedt Gallery has been called Pre-digital only because they feared nobody would know what a paste up even was anymore.

Much of Barbara Kruger's graphic work consists of black-and-white photographs with overlaid captions set in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique. The phrases included in her work are usually declarative, and make common use of such pronouns as "you", "I", "we", and "they". The juxtaposition of Kruger's imagery with text containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is a recurring motif in the work. The text in her work of the 1980s includes such phrases as "Your comfort is my silence" (1981), "you invest in the divinity of the masterpiece" (1982), and "I shop therefore I am" (1987). She has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t." Enveloping the viewer with the seductions of direct address, her work is consistently about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another.

She layers found photographs from existing sources with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to. In their trademark black letters against a slash of red background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground." Much of her text questions the viewer about feminism, classicism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing.


-S

Power In Buildings

I picked up an amazing book over the weekend called "Power In Buildings", and it got me interested in the author, Hugh Ferriss. The book is Ferriss's personal odyssey through the modern architecture of America from 1929 to 1953...Dams, bridge anchorages, grain elevators, skyscraper projects, and viaducts are delineated in Ferriss's rich work, and it's all pretty inspiring when you realize how influential his drawings have been on architecture, movies, and pop culture in general.

Hugh Ferriss (1889 – 1962) was an American delineator (one who creates perspective drawings of buildings) and architect. According to Daniel Okrent, Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said he ‘influenced my generation of architects’ more than any other man. Ferriss also influenced popular culture, for example Gotham City (the setting for Batman) and Kerry Conran’s “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”. “Just Imagine” (movie from 1930), strongly influenced by Hugh Ferriss’s book, Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929), takes the archetype vision of the future city as defined by a Manhattan-like skyline, and portrays it in all its beauty and majesty.

Hugh Ferriss Flickr Page

Power In Buildings

I picked up an amazing book over the weekend called "Power In Buildings", and it got me interested in the author, Hugh Ferriss. The book is Ferriss's personal odyssey through the modern architecture of America from 1929 to 1953...Dams, bridge anchorages, grain elevators, skyscraper projects, and viaducts are delineated in Ferriss's rich work, and it's all pretty inspiring when you realize how influential his drawings have been on architecture, movies, and pop culture in general.

Hugh Ferriss (1889 – 1962) was an American delineator (one who creates perspective drawings of buildings) and architect. According to Daniel Okrent, Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said he ‘influenced my generation of architects’ more than any other man. Ferriss also influenced popular culture, for example Gotham City (the setting for Batman) and Kerry Conran’s “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”. “Just Imagine” (movie from 1930), strongly influenced by Hugh Ferriss’s book, Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929), takes the archetype vision of the future city as defined by a Manhattan-like skyline, and portrays it in all its beauty and majesty.

Hugh Ferriss Flickr Page

Kenneth Josephson

Kenneth Josephson's B&W photographs of "pictures within pictures" laid the groundwork for conceptual photography, bringing into question our notions of illusion and reality. - Rosalia Bermudez

Kenneth Josephson

Kenneth Josephson's B&W photographs of "pictures within pictures" laid the groundwork for conceptual photography, bringing into question our notions of illusion and reality. - Rosalia Bermudez

Paul Mathieu for Ralph Pucci

French designer, Paul Mathieu, exhibits his signature style in his Aria collection for Ralph Pucci International. I saw this chaise in the Pucci Showroom at the PDC last month, and it looks even better live! It's polished bronze with a gold finish, ethereal and yet sophisticated, and at $62,400 it's truly a living room sculpture. I don't know if this is a stretch, but I find the shape and the open back of the chair to resemble a human form... it reminds me of a woman wearing a backless dress... provocative to say the least.

Wonder if I can get a recession special?

-S

Paul Mathieu for Ralph Pucci

French designer, Paul Mathieu, exhibits his signature style in his Aria collection for Ralph Pucci International. I saw this chaise in the Pucci Showroom at the PDC last month, and it looks even better live! It's polished bronze with a gold finish, ethereal and yet sophisticated, and at $62,400 it's truly a living room sculpture. I don't know if this is a stretch, but I find the shape and the open back of the chair to resemble a human form... it reminds me of a woman wearing a backless dress... provocative to say the least.

Wonder if I can get a recession special?

-S

Jonathan Horowitz: And/Or

Jonathan Horowitz: And/Or
On view February 22, 2009 - September 14, 2009

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents Jonathan Horowitz: And/Or, the first solo exhibition of the New York-based artist at a New York museum. Working in video, sculpture, sound installation, and photography, Horowitz critically examines the cultures of politics, celebrity, cinema, war, and consumerism. The exhibition will include works ranging from the early 1990s to the present, on view in the 1st Floor Main Galleries, with an additional work concurrently on view at The Museum of Modern Art in the 2nd Floor Café.

From found footage, Horowitz visually and spatially juxtaposes elements from film, television, and the media to reveal connections and breakdowns between these overlapping modes of communication. In many works, these concerns are couched in the language of technology. In his video projection Maxell (1990), the image of the well-known videocassette brand logo plays from a tape copied many times over; the word deteriorates into a blur of static as the information on the tape erodes. Horowitz also notes the value systems inherent in media by establishing a sculptural presence for his video works, where VHS tapes and television monitors are positioned as objects on metal stands.

Jonathan Horowitz

-S

Jonathan Horowitz: And/Or

Jonathan Horowitz: And/Or
On view February 22, 2009 - September 14, 2009

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents Jonathan Horowitz: And/Or, the first solo exhibition of the New York-based artist at a New York museum. Working in video, sculpture, sound installation, and photography, Horowitz critically examines the cultures of politics, celebrity, cinema, war, and consumerism. The exhibition will include works ranging from the early 1990s to the present, on view in the 1st Floor Main Galleries, with an additional work concurrently on view at The Museum of Modern Art in the 2nd Floor Café.

From found footage, Horowitz visually and spatially juxtaposes elements from film, television, and the media to reveal connections and breakdowns between these overlapping modes of communication. In many works, these concerns are couched in the language of technology. In his video projection Maxell (1990), the image of the well-known videocassette brand logo plays from a tape copied many times over; the word deteriorates into a blur of static as the information on the tape erodes. Horowitz also notes the value systems inherent in media by establishing a sculptural presence for his video works, where VHS tapes and television monitors are positioned as objects on metal stands.

Jonathan Horowitz

-S