An exquisite, one-eyed goblin character from The Goblin Spider, a Japanese fairy tale of 1899, printed from woodblock with characteristic colour gradient backgrounds. The translated version by Lafcadio Hearn. See the complete book at the New York Public Library's site.
Karin Ruggaber's Relief 67 (2008). Materials: plaster and pigment. Via Greengrassi.
Tightly-fitting network of catametric elements (1961–62).School: Ulm. Student: Klaus Schmitt. Tutor: Tomás Maldonado. Via Ulm Archive.
Eduardo Paolozzi's Kardinal Syn (1964). Materials: plaster and twine. Via Tate.
Thomas Houseago's Large Striding Figure (2007). Materials: Tuf-Cal,hemp, iron, graphite and wood. Via David Kordansky.
Cy Twombly's Untitled (1976). Materials: cardboard tubes, cloth, house paint, paper tape.
'Gypsum is a crystalline mineral of hydrated calcium sulphate (chemical formula CaSO4 • 2H2O). Gypsum is colorless or white, is not highly water-soluble and is not at all hard. A mixture of gypsum and water can be poured; the gypsum hardens as the water evaporates. In art gypsum is mainly used in the partly dehydrated form of plaster of Paris (2CaSO4 • H2O) to make casts of objects or works of art in sculpture (moulds). The process entails making a negative form, of a sculpture, for istance, which is then coated with plaster of Paris. Plaster of Paris models of sculpture were widespread in antiquity and the practie was revived in the Renaissance. From the late 17th century plaster of Paris casts were made for art academy study and model collections (plaster cast collections), which were taken up by museums and art historical and other institutes in the 19th century.' Via Kettererkunst.
Anna and Bernhard Blume(via pablosanz). New to me but found through looking again at the 'file notes' to Camden Arts Centre's early 2008 show Strange Events Permit Themselves the Luxury of Occurring. Sometimes I miss a show I should have seen and this one still haunts. It's such an interesting premise and choice of people. 'A peculiar kind of... Modernism'.
Thinking quite a bit about the figure 'disappearing into the fabric of the building'. Somebody said this revelatory thing at a strange, arid conference in a Holiday Inn and it woke me up. Also abstract movement in, and delineation of, spaces like kitchens and workshops.
Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Linking to the Blumes in its use of domestic but really as a concrete, generic yet claustrophobic space in the way she uses corners, stairs, doorways. And the rhythm struck up by the edit and the beautiful score by Teiji Ito.
Marie O'Connor has sent me this, of an astonishing garment by Arthur Bispo do Rosário. From 1938, in Rio's psychiatric hospital Pedro II, he created a 'minature universe' of works to be presented at Judgement Day. The thread used was unpicked from his inmate uniform.
There is an unintentional visual tally, on the top left of the garment as seen, with the Admiral logo so chunkily applied to c.1975 football kits. Most spectacularly, Coventry City, Wales, Leeds United.
Also reminiscent of Scouting/Guiding 'camp blankets' (via Earth Water Fire Ice), traditionally a record of camping, 'jamboree', hike.
I've started up another blog for a project called 'Fact', set to my Camberwell Illustration group. It's thinking about the imaging of scientific ideas. Trying to move beyond the literal. Here's my favourite thing so far, showing eye discolouration (as seen on the amazing BibliOdyssey) by Majimaganryonozu, from a collection of C18th and C19th Japanese medical books archived online by Kyushu University.
Dermatological conditions by Hosonozu. See more here and note the intertwined image, calligraphic text and the use of flatness and abstraction for organ-forms.
This poster is one from a series I'm exhibiting in an upcoming show at Melbourne Museum. The exhibition, 'New Views', is an open conversation about graphic design today. This poster is talking about the possible connection between a wilfully local-limited-language of available materials, idiosyncratic stories and a universal vocabulary allied to hand craft skills as taught by the Bauhaus. Something about a Local Universe. Everything within your walking distance and arms-reach-periphery.
I was citing this Max Bill poster (via Walker Art Center), with an RGB version of the primary triangle circle square. For me he struck an amazing balance, mentioned in an earlier post, of a machine-aesthetic and hand-craft-method.
The other source was this late Ming dynasty (c.1600) work by Ni Yuanlu, 'Cloud Water Stone'. It is describing the essence of qi, the active energy force that runs through and binds animate and inanimate things. I like the idea of something nebulous being 'konkrete'. Reminiscent too of Alexander Cozen's studies of clouds, which in turn influenced John Constable.
24/10/2008
Created this logotype for a new blog launched today, with postings by Tim Parsons, myself and soon by other tutors on the design undergrad. courses at Camberwell College of Arts spanning 3D, Graphic Design and Illustration. The content is feeding monthly symposia, each on a Design 'Key Idea'. The first event discusses Process.
A chair recently completed, a marker for further projects with Sally. Source a chair (or other), source a fabric, source some content, establish a treatment. In this case the text was a lyric-poem written a while ago by one of our girls, Sadie.
I drew the text by hand then re-worked but not over-worked some components on-screen and transferred for Sally to stitch. She then applied the panels having already taken the chair back to the frame for a full re-upholstery with correct materials.
Furniture carries a narrative always. In this case it's tattooed onto the surface. In Bright Ideas, Beautiful Minds, Jürgen Bey says,'The language of products is a language that we give them so that they can communicate with users. Sometimes they have an interpreter in the form of a written set of instructions, sometimes through tattoos on their body. It is a functional language that tells us what they can do, where they come from and what they are for'.
Been working on type that functions as an extension of my hand. I draw on-and-off-screen and there is always a kind of basic geometry either way so this is a way of trying to formalise something that is a natural inclination. It's heavily limited by a 2.5mm grid and by monospacing which fosters glitches and inconsistencies in the optical spaces between characters.
Howard Kettler's Courier (in which this text is set) has beautiful innovation in the way the slab-serif-lengths vary. My grid forces something dumber to happen in the attempt to achieve even greyness. Some characters have no serif, some serifs invert; sometimes counterforms are filled. Also, through hand-drawing, wanted to allow each character to exponentially grow variants, so the form develops 'growths' that take them towards C19th ornament, late 1960s OCR, etc. But always retaining geo-awkwardness.
This is Herbert Bayer's 1959 'fonetik alfabet' a development of the 1925 Universal. Been etched on the retina since discovering it in Herbert Spencer's 1968 book, The Visible Word, a product of his RCA-based Legibility Unit. The ligatures are beautiful, especially when linked to phonemes.So the Make-Do-Modernism (virtues of constraint) of my type grew from some interest here in Bayer's slightly awkward geometries (see letter 's') and the use of just one case (although I use upper- and lower-).
There are generic solutions using a limited radius and grid and I'm conscious of many people coming to the same results on this route but maybe the idiosyncrasy comes in the mixing and mutation of variants that pull it somewhere more vernacular. These forms were lasercut from acrylic sheet last week so I could play with them. The aim is to cut them at double-size and mount to type-height (+/- 23mm) for use on letterpress.
Another inspiration is Max Bill. This is, amazingly, a lino-cut poster from 1944. I've seen one of this series in the flesh and the cut lino impression gives enriched surface-object-quality.
Pine hand-made cobbler's bench, as seen on Just Folk. Been thinking a lot about custom working spaces with a kind of shed ergonomic. Evolving by use, with the trace of use.
Reminiscent of Andrea Zittel's 'Living Units' (via Kettle's Yard), (first seen at the no-longer-Anthony D'Offay Gallery). Also the crate houses of an all-time-hero Allan Wexler. More on him another time.
Feel a little guilty for looking at flying-killing-machines but hard not to when it's the Fokker DVII (seen at RAF Hendon). The quasi-harlequin pattern is perhaps inspired by exfoliating Sycamore bark. The beautiful white stencilling is early DIN type I think, although will have to check. It has the DIN formalism but also has an ornamental attitude to the mix of small caps, pictographic arrows, curved baselines.
But I liked especially this cover of 'Das Ist Norm'. Just read through H's entry and it appears DIN for the transport system, etc. was designed in 1932; so post-Fokker DVII. OSP are re-drawing DIN using open-source software, for the public domain (for whom it was intended).
Here's another stencilling example from the under-wing-wheel-well of a Messerschmidt Bf109. Rounded stems/terminals, nice open 'c', very nice Eszett.
First encountered Umetaro Azechi's woodcuts at the British Museum. Stopped me in my tracks. His themes were consistent; mountain men and animals, landscapes. But within this, in a way like Giorgio Morandi, he found everything he needed to say. Then it's just about the language and economy; especially the way he solves the junction between forehead and nose or the abstraction of the body.
This image is distilled to a greater degree, with no doubt that the figure is one and the same as his habitat. The landscapes hold more variety and invention in their composition, even though some are very small.
Posts
