Some of the highlighted films and documentaries include:

Micmacs / Micmacs à tire-larigot (France)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Mr. Nice (United Kingdom)

Director and Screenwriter: Bernard Rose

BARRY MUNDAY

Director and Screenwriter: Chris D’Arienzo

Greenlit

Director: Miranda Bailey

The People vs. George Lucas

Director: Alexandre O. Philippe

SATURDAY NIGHT

Director: James Franco

The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights

Director: Emmett Malloy

Beijing Taxi

Director: Miao Wang

Dirty Pictures

Director: Etienne Sauret

NY Export: Opus Jazz

Director: Henry Joost and Jody Lee Lipes

And Everything Is Going Fine

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Director: Tamra Davis

        

The leading auction house for contemporary art and culture, Phillips de Pury & Company has established a reputation for producing auction catalogues that become collector’s items in their own right. CRYSTALLIZED™ Ways To Say Black, a hardbound book filled with inspirational photography by Scheltens & Abbenes and Mark Pillai, participates in that tradition. Featuring the original dresses of Giorgio Armani Privé, Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, Lanvin by Alber Elbaz, Sonia Rykiel, Vivienne Westwood, and more, the book is a bold and elegant exploration of the possibilities of black.

Under the creative direction of Stephen Todd, Director of Branding and Communication, the book is art directed by Josh Hight (10 magazine) and Hector Castro, a renowned stylist who has worked for 10, Italian Vogue, Agent Provocateur and Louis Vuitton. Edited by Alexandra Marshall, a frequent contributor to Elle magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine and a contributing editor at Travel & Leisure, CRYSTALLIZED™ Ways To Say Black also features an introductory essay by Pamela Golbin, the curator-in-chief of the Fashion and Textile Collection at the Louvre Museum’s Les Arts Décoratifs.

Published by Éditions Dilecta, the noted art publishing house, CRYSTALLIZED™ Ways To Say Black will be available in Paris at the Galeries Lafayettes, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Centre Pompidou, Artazart Design Bookstore, Librairie de la Mode, Publicis Drugstore, Librairie La Hune and more, at a retail price of 30,00 Euros (Swarovski donates all profits from the book sale to charity). Internationally, the publication will be available on various Amazon country websites and at select outlets in the United States and Beijing. For a full list of distribution outlets, please visit www.crystallized.com/black.

Apparently, we couldn’t pick just a couple of images to show the collection! We love it!

        

A story of contrasts, in:

Volume

Conformity

Utility

Sensibility

Preciousness

Allure

Layers

Rich ‘Day’ with a hint of Dada.

Floral print silk duchesse hand painted in Italy by artisans in sweeping free brush strokes

Playful mixes

The attitude of “sweats” brought to more formal dressing.

The values of sartorial menswear meld with the sensibility fit and craft of women’s couture.

        

Nobuyoshi Araki is Japan’s most notable & controversial photographer. Based primarily in Tokyo, Araki documents what he sees in the streets, exploring the various themes that exist in the city. With over 450 photography books to his name, Araki has explored a wide variety of topics, most notably the love of his wife, Yoko in his most recognizable series, “Yoko, My Love.” This raw and intimate work features his wife in prolific and compromising positions. Araki has also done commercial work, recently photographing music sensation Lady Gaga for Vogue Hommes Japan, in his signature “bondage style” poses. On his technique, Araki explains, “what’s important in my work is always the relationship between me and the object – - it’s a kind of love story. I don’t concern myself with why a relationship starts or where it goes. The most important thing is just the relationship between the two of us at that moment. This world becomes our world.”

Nobuyoshi Araki’s works will be on display from March 6th – May 9th at Prism , 8746 West Sunset Boulevard

West Hollywood, CA 90069

        

Do you consider yourself a pop artist?

Yes and no. I would like to say that I’m a super flat artist, because ‘pop’ is the title [for] American and British art.

Your use of color is always interesting to me, especially in how vibrant it is. I’ve always wanted to ask you: what is your favorite color? Does it change? Do you gravitate toward certain colors?

My favorite colors are green and pink.  In particular, I like really shocking pink.

Has that changed over time?

No. I’ve been experimenting for a long time, but these colors are my favorite. One day I noticed that whenever my eyes followed a lady I saw in public, the lady would always be wearing green—it would always be a green dress or a green shirt or green something—and suddenly I realized, ‘Wow, I’m responding to the green.’

That is the first. And second, pink: when I’m making a painting, anytime I finally add [a last color] in—it’s the pink color. So these two colors are my favorite.

Your art and message seem to meander back and forth between adulthood and childhood. Do you approach it that way or does it seem to be the message that’s perceived?

Basically yes, because I love to see animation; I’m very transformed by Star Wars or Steven Spielberg stuff. [These movies] are always interesting, in childhood and adulthood.

What did you think of the new Star Wars animation piece? Did you catch that movie?

I haven’t seen it. I feel like it will shatter my dreams. It’s strange but the live action Star Wars movies are always very fantasy-like, but the animations have a weird realism that makes me not want to watch them. Episodes I [to] III [are] very high quality.  I love that.

What is your most motivating factor in starting a piece of art? What is the initial process or inspiration?

I don’t know…Daily life. One day I’m feeling very sad, so I try to make a small drawing like the face of a sad dog or something. If this drawing fits with [my emotions], it gets bigger and bigger and then I make a sketch of it. But the next day this may not fit [my emotions], so I stop work on it and make the laughing, smiling, flower image.

Daily moods, daily inspiration?

Yes.

Do you feel your art is a political statement in any way? From a cultural standpoint, do you ever get influenced by what’s going on in the world—the war, the economy?

I couldn’t say [specifically] what political statements [there are in my art]. But basically I’m a very angry man. When I’m watching TV, my general reaction is [whispers], ‘What the ****.’ But I have no [specific] subject or political statement [in my work].

Superflat is very exciting to me. But I look at it in a different way, almost like the jowls that Disney used to have—you know, the flapping jowls that made the animation. It seems to be the balance between simple and complex. There’s always something going back and forth—almost like the confusion is the beauty. Is that your intention with your art? Or are you just doing what you feel and it’s just perceived this way?

So, I didn’t see Pixar’s new movie, WALL-E, but I did see the trailer. That really piqued my feeling. That image is very simple and beautiful, but the process is very complex. And the message is very simple and also very complex.

That sort of movie is [an example of] a very successful movie for children. Pixar’s successful animations always have that sort of message. It’s really very complicated but they make it seem simple. So if I can send out some [similar] message from the art world [that is] visually really simple and happy-face, [then] the children, when [they] see my piece, can get to touch a very complex message [behind the image]. That’s kind of my goal.

What sort of projects do you see yourself doing in the future? What would you like to work on, or is there a person you’d like to work with? What are you excited about?

Well, two or three years ago, I would have said my next project is a movie.  But now we’ve already got the studio and we’re starting on it. So…my next stuff is [focused on] how can I mix fine art and film and fashion and jewelry and design? And how to combine everything? That’s what I’m interested in, and I want to think about it in a concrete way.

And how do I present this to the public [and maintain] this feeling? So that one day, I can have a conversation with a jewelry designer, and I’ll have an idea which can quickly move through my brain, and at the same time, the next day [it can have an influence on] an animation storyboard. I’d like to present that sort of feeling to the public. When I make one painting that will be good, my next step is then how to take the idea that worked so well in that painting and apply it to other mediums. But I don’t know a good method yet.

How to tie in everything you do?

Yes, like the Big Flowerball is one of the kind of success projects. It looks like a sculpture, but the children, they can say: ‘This is the stuff I like.’  For me, I understand the background, that this is a really complex project. The Flowerball is expressed in many different forms, from a design object like the one exhibited at Design Miami/, to an artistic sculpture, or a painting. Essentially, there is one big concept, one big idea, and although its form changes, everything is always connected. We never know when we started with this project [how it might turn out], but something like that process is really appealing to my feelings now.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Interview: Emin Kadi

Words: Anna Carnick

Artwork ©2008 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights
Reserved

        

Job Smeets and his partner Nynke Tynagel seem to delight in the physical potential and malleability of the various materials they incorporate into their designs. Beautifully crafted and finely finished, they create highly ornamented pieces, which often contain dark and satirical content through their brave confrontation with the current attitudes and condition of the modern world.

Each work in the Industry series uses traditional and contemporary iconography and has been stripped down to its elements. The silhouettes stand bold with the white bird’s eye maple inlaid within the Indian rosewood setting. Animals and insects mingle with industrial buildings, warfare weaponry and other such products of capital. Featuring hummingbirds, seahorses, dragonflies, skeletal figures, and butterflies alongside tanks, helicopters, pylons, smoke, grenades, fighter planes and gasmasks, the viewer is forced to recognise the dichotomy between the natural or organic, and the manmade or destructive. Presented as if fossilised, there is an overwhelming sense that both will have their downfall and eventually become imbedded within history.

Perhaps the irony comes not simply from their opposition but also from the fact that the natural and the artificial are very much cohabitants in the twenty first century. The Industry series offers a poignant commentary on such an environment, each piece being highly evocative in its own right.

The finish of each Industry piece references the seventeenth-century marquetry methods of André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), and whilst Studio Job cut the veneers using contemporary laser technology, the positioning of each piece of the veneer is undoubtedly still an intensely handcrafted process. The strict symmetry in each piece, and most notably the Dressoir, maintains the integrity of the aesthetic, and given the simple, clean lines of the furniture, produces a powerfully balanced work, whilst also encouraging a contemplation of the notion of repetition; the phenomenon of cloning in the natural world and of mass production in the industrial sector. Each design piece in the series has been employed by Studio Job as a ‘canvas’ on which to construct a modern memento mori; a plethora of visual metaphors that act as signifiers either of bucolic nature or of mass-destruction as associated with industrialism.

To compliment the five Industry pieces, Carpenters Workshop Gallery has specially commissioned Studio Job to create two new spectacular light-works entitled Wrecking Ball Lamp and Crane Lamp, with which they have further developed the dialogue that began with the original works.

Living and working together, Studio Job suggests:

“Maybe sometimes we are designers and maybe sometimes we are architects. Sometimes man and wife, sometimes just artists.”

The exhibition starts 18 March – 8 May 2010

Brunch Opening / Saturday 20 March / 11 am – 3 pm

        

During TEFAF Maatricht 2010, the AXA Art Lounge will be devoted to profiling unconventional collectibles. The visual presentation will serve as part of a proactive drive to create awareness about the inherent fragile nature of art and collectibles and the importance of protecting collected cultural artifacts.  AXA Art will also make available information on practical measures to support collectors in keeping their prized possessions in the best possible condition.

From pioneering lecture programs to launching a design section in 2009 and Works on Paper this year, TEFAF is a prime example of an art fair that continually finds new and creative ways to expand its offerings, in order to engage and inform discerning collectors.  This year, the company launches a new “Works on Paper” section.

        

“Hands On” includes several works based on Atelier Remy & Veenhuizen’s public and private commissions over the past decade, among them: a picnic table and two benches, inspired by the “Leaf Furniture” originally created for a children’s health care institution; a large tubular bench made from tennis balls based on a series made for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam; and, a geometrically irregular slat wood “Reef Bench” derived from a series created for a secondary school. The exhibition will also feature two “Accidental Carpets” made from recycled blankets, chairs constructed from wide bamboo slats (two of only six made), and a prototype from a new series of poured concrete furniture.

Remy & Veenhuizen prefer hands on experimentation and avoid designing with computer assistance. In their large, one‐room, light‐filled studio just outside the historic core of Utrecht, they bend, fuse, glue, and manipulate fabric, glass, wood, cement and other materials, creating, testing and fabricating new designs.

“When all the things with which we surround ourselves on a daily basis are seen as materials with which to build on further,” says Remy, “the world becomes one great toolbox.”

“Tejo and René continue to generate some of the today’s most inventive and talked about design work,” said Industry Gallery owner Craig Appelbaum. “They are endlessly experimental and their work continues to expand the vocabulary of contemporary design in provocative ways.”

“Hands On” will open March 20, 2010, 6pm-8pm at Industry Gallery in Washington, DC. Visit www.industrygallerydc.com

        

ABOUT THE ARMORY SHOW:

The Armory Show is America’s leading fine art fair devoted to the most important art of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its twelve years, the fair has become an international institution. Every March, artists, galleries, collectors, critics and curators from all over the world make New York their destination during Armory Arts Week.

SHOW DATES:
VIP Preview: Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Public Hours: Thursday, March 4 through Sunday, March 7
SHOW LOCATION:
Piers 92 and 94, Twelfth Avenue at 55th Street, New York City

Images courtesy of The Armory Show and its represented galleries