Dinosaurs and Robots

Houses on Rings

2010-03-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

I want mine to come with a fancy monocle for peering inside too, please.

Phillipe Tournaire's Dream Houses on Rings

Oh Yes: Herzog & de Meuron Edition/Model On eBay

2010-03-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

The collapse of New York City's luxury starchitect condo market has a Lucite lining:

"This box contains a numbered, limited edition interactive model of Herzog & de Meuron’s 56 Leonard Street, designed to be taken apart and reassembled as a means of exploring the tower’s radically innovative design. The building will contain 145 residences, each with its own unique floor plan and private outdoor space, in a veritable cascade of houses stacked in the sky, blending indoors and outdoors seamlessly together."

The 20-inch model is numbered, 37/300. It includes a scale model of the Anish Kapoor sculpture that would have graced the building's entrance. The whole thing, including a pair of white gloves, mint-in-mint-box, is on eBay right now. $605 with a day and a half to go. Assuming the base is around 4" square, that comes out to around $5400/sf, just above the pre-construction price of never-gonna-be-built original.

56 Leonard St. Building Model (Herzog & de Meuron), auction ends Mar. 17 [ebay via curbed.com]

Some Guy Bought This Thing On The Moon

2010-03-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

In 1970 and 1973, nearly thirty years before the US's Mars rovers, the Soviet Union landed two robotic explorers, Lunokhod 1 and 2, on the moon. They were equipped with panoramic television cameras and some other instruments. The hinged top was full of solar cells and opened up like a clamshell. They ran for months; Lunokhod 2 still holds the distance record [37+km] for extraterrestrial surface travel.

Contact with Lunokhod 1 [pictured above, but they look basically the same] was lost in the 1970s, but using laser ranging, they've sited Lunokhod 2 and its landing vehicle, Luna 21 with sub-meter accuracy. It's around the Le Monnier crater.

Which may be why the contractor, Luvochkin, felt comfortable putting title to Lunokhod 2 and Luna 21 up for auction at Sotheby's in 1993. Together they sold for $68,500, delivery not included.

The buyer was Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, the guy who started Ultima. His dad was an astronaut on Skylab and the Space Shuttle. He also owns a Sputnik. This is the craziest thing I've heard all weekend, and it has even been one of those weekends.

Lunokhod Programme [wikipedia]

Art Desserts at the SFMOMA

2010-03-10T04:30:00.000-08:00

This afternoon at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I came across a series of clever artist-themed desserts offered at the SFMOMA's Rooftop Coffee Bar. There were many on offer, but these three were my favorites: Mondrian Cake, Richard Serra Cookies, and Jeff Koons White Hot Chocolate. Delicious and brilliant!

Hell Yeah, Brittania!

2010-03-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

Sure, in Canada a Chesterfield IS a sofa, but in England, a Chesterfield is a sofa with a gigantic Union Jack on it.

Lot 389: MAHOGANY 'CHESTERFIELD' TYPE SOFA, Est. £600 - £1,000, Mar. 24, 2010, Christie's South Kensington, London [christies.com]

Venini Drop Light, c. 1930

2010-03-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

Oh, hello, beautiful flying saucer/Olafur Eliasson/Frisbee-like Venini drop light! Why don't you drop your reserve price and come hang out at my place for a while?

Lot 218: VENINI DROP LIGHT, CIRCA 1930, est. £2,500 - £3,500, March 24, 2010, Christie's South Kensington, London [christies.com]

Hardware Sorting Box

2010-03-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

Ingenuous drop box to take care of the rudimentary sorting of miscellaneous hardware. Very clever and a handsome solution.

Self-sorting Hardware Box on Craftster (Thanks, Rigel!)

Resurrection City: Shackitects Against Poverty

2010-03-06T17:54:00.000-08:00

In 1968, Washington, DC architect John Wiebenson was asked to design an instant, temporary city for thousands of protestors organizing as part of Martin Luther King, Jr's Poor Peoples' Campaign.

Originally conceived as the City of Hope, Resurrection City was built on the National Mall in May, just weeks after King's assassination. Around 3,000 impoverished protestors built and lived in modular, triangular plywood shacks for six weeks.

Wiebenson and his students at the University of Maryland designed two types of shacks: a family unit and a dormitory unit. In 2009, while on a research grant to the Library of Congress, British conceptual artist Matthew Thompson tracked down and exhibited the original drawings, plus the Wiebenson family's photos of the construction of Resurrection City, at DC's Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library [which was designed by Mies van der Rohe]. Thompson also built a full-scale Resurrection City dorm shack, which he furnished with a Mies chair and the library's bust of King.

The top photo is from the nice little photoset of the exhibition the library posted on flickr. [flickr]
Here's a video podcast the library did with Thompson, chock full of vintage photos. [libsyn.com]

Mandala I (1972), by John McCracken

2010-03-05T18:07:00.000-08:00

California-based artist John McCracken is best known for his glossy, hard, monolith-like sculptures leaned against the wall. But in the early 1970s, he also made a series of hard-edge, concentric mandala paintings, including this rainbow one, Mandala I, which first belonged to his New York dealer Robert Elkon.

It's for sale next week at Sotheby's, with an estimate of $30-40,000. Which sounds great, except that the seller bought it for $78,000 in 2006, nearly 10x Christie's original estimate. Last September, another Mandala sold at a North Carolina auction for just $17,000. I'm sure this reveals something deeply meaningful about the contemporary art market, but I can't imagine what.

Lot 248: Mandala I (to Anne), 1972, John McCracken [sothebys.com]

Photos from Bankrupt Polaroid Collection at Auction

2010-03-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

Andy Warhol "Farrah Fawcett"

From New York Times:

In the 1960s about half of all American households owned a Polaroid camera, according to the company’s own estimates. And while the instant thrill of having a tangible record of first birthdays, prom nights, vacations and Christmas dinners was the driving force behind the company’s success, its revolutionary product also changed forever the way many artists worked. Ansel Adams captured some fabled images of Yosemite National Park using a Polaroid; Andy Warhol and Chuck Close took Polaroid portraits — of themselves, friends and celebrities — and William Wegman used a Polaroid to shoot his beloved Weimaraners.

Now some of those works, as well as conventional prints that Polaroid’s founder, Edwin H. Land, brought together in one of the most storied collections in photography — a visual diary of 20th-century culture — are going on the auction block.

Polaroid Corporate Collection at Auction

Robert Rauschenberg "North Carolina from the Bleacher Series"

Ultraman Art

2010-03-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

Diamond Series: Ultraman
奥特曼
by Tibetan artist Gade
2008
Mixed media on canvas

Mimeograph Machine

2010-03-03T14:13:00.001-08:00

In grade school, I was in charge of the school site council newsletter. The site council was a group of grade school stakeholders - teachers, parents and two students - that made limited decisions on how to spend a small, arbitrary school improvement budget. The newsletter was the mechanism of communicating our decisions to the rest of the students, teachers and parents. As a student representative, I communicated that my constituents requested basketball nets for the bare hoops but it was never done. In fact, I don't think we ever spent a dime, we just discussed endless possibilities. Politically, it was frustrating, but I sure loved that mimeograph machine. I can still smell it.

$9 Mimeograph Machine in eBay
Mimeograph on Wiki

Old School BMX Photo Set

2010-03-03T13:58:00.001-08:00

A wonderful set of old BMX photos captures what will make you nostalgic for BMX bikes, Polaroids or both.

BMX Photoset (via Coudal)

MoMA's Franklin Gothic

2010-03-03T13:10:00.000-08:00

An exhibition announcement for Corot-Daumier, The Museum of Modern Art, 1930

From MoMA:

The Franklin Gothic typeface is the primary influence for nearly all MoMA materials; it’s the basis of our logo (see the top of your screen) and our official font “MoMA Gothic,” which were both created by Matthew Carter. We were happy to see that MoMA used a version of Franklin Gothic as long ago as the 1930s. We found these printed materials in our archives while doing some research on our current identity.

We understand not all people are totally crazy typographic aficionados like us, but more often these days, casual observers are able to recognize subtle differences in typefaces that were once thought to be the domain of only the obsessed. Can you spot Franklin Gothic on the walls of MoMA, in our subway advertisements, or anywhere else? Look for the “two story” lowercase “g” with a unique “ear” to be certain!

MoMA From the Archives 3: A Brief Homage to Franklin Gothic (via c-monster)

Merry Christmas 1967, From The Robert Kennedy Family

2010-03-01T17:36:00.001-08:00

Good googly-moogly, am I to believe that if not for Sirhan Sirhan, America would have elected as president the man who'd just sent out this awesome, psychedelic Christmas card??

It was an even more tragic loss than I'd ever known. Also, the card just sold for only $115.

see the rest: Robert F. Kennedy's Last Family Christmas Card [anonymousworks]

Olafur Eliasson Is Your New Bicycle

2010-02-24T19:54:00.001-08:00

This beautiful, confounding, and utterly unrideable bicycle by Olafur Eliasson is just around the corner from the artist's equally unrideable ripples-in-a-mercury-pond skate deck.

Even when it's not installed in Kanazawa's spectacular 21st Century Museum, Olafur's work is some of the most photogenic contemporary art in the world. The bicycle turns up somewhere around #55 in the slideshow on his website. The exhibition itself runs through March 22.

Olafur Eliasson: Your chance encounter 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa 21 November 2009 - 22 March 2010 [olafureliasson.net]

Tactile Inuit Coastline Carvings

2010-02-24T18:10:00.000-08:00

These are so fantastic. And by "these," so far, I just mean the three tactile maps of the Greenland coastline carved by kayaking Inuits that keep propagating across the "Hey cool!" section of the web. This particularly clear image of the map in the Greenland National Museum is from spacecollective.org:

Three-dimensional maps of coastlines were carved of wood as long as three hundred years ago. These Inuit charts were usually carved from driftwood and are made to be felt rather than looked at. The Inuit hold this map under their mittens and feel the contours with their fingers to discern patterns in the coastline. The land is very abstract. It is limited to “edges” that can be felt on a dark night in a kayak.

At the always-awesome BLDGBLOG, Geoff embraced the idea of tactile maps, and then promptly paddled out into the open speculative waters he prefers.

Me, I'd love to see some more Eskimo maps. Even if it's from the fake Inuit market where the cruise ships dock. Besides, I'm on kind of a mapping X abstraction kick at the moment.

Inuit Wood Maps (on a Greenland stamp!) [spacecollective.org]
Tactile Maps of Coastlines [bldgblog]

Mini Cinder Blocks And Blackboard Tables

2010-02-17T20:39:00.000-08:00

Holy moley, if I could marry a virtual antique store, I'd marry Joshua Lowenfels, Works Of Art right here and now. And then I'd rifle through its file cabinets while it was in the shower, see who bought the c.1950s manufacturer's sample mini-cinderblocks and the c. 1960, 5-sided, nesting blackboard cube tables, and then go get them back for myself. Then I'd hightail it to California or Virginia or one of those other marriage-banning states, when I got there, I'd call and say the whole thing was an awful mistake, no hard feelings. Of course, I'd keep the loot.

Joshua Lowenfels, Works of Art - Archive (Sold) [joshualowenfels.com via accidentalmysteries]

Hotel Art

2010-02-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

I wish I knew the name of this artist. The painting is in our hotel room in 21C, a pretty amazing "museum/hotel" in Louisville, KY.

Incidentally, my wife, who's from Louisville, said there's a Holy Spirit school in town. Of course... they always win!

Editor's Note: Monica wrote us from 21C to let us know the name of the artist is Laura Parker. Thanks, Monica!

RIP Fredrick Morrison, Inventor of the Frisbee

2010-02-13T09:14:00.001-08:00

Fredrick Morrison, the man who invented the iconic Frisbee flying disc, has died at age 90. Morrison's disc, which he originally called the "Pluto Platter," was later renamed the Frisbee by Wham-O, the company that bought the rights to his invention in 1957. As Morrison's New York Times obituary explains:

Wham-O changed the name to Frisbee in 1958, influenced by the Frisbie Pie Company in Connecticut, whose tins Yale students hurled for sport. A Westerner whose plainspoken ways could be mistaken for gruffness, Mr. Morrison deplored the change.
“I thought the name was a horror,” he told The Press Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2007. “Terrible.” (Before perfecting the Pluto Platter in 1955, Mr. Morrison had called earlier incarnations of his disc the Flyin’ Cake Pan, the Whirlo-Way and the Flyin-Saucer.)
But as his royalties mounted — he would realize millions of dollars over the years — Mr. Morrison revised his position on “Frisbee.”

Vintage Streetcar Looks Like a "Rolling Howard Johnson's"

2010-02-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

This turquoise-and-orange PCC streetcar is one of the most recent additions to San Francisco's vintage streetcar fleet, and I've heard several locals say it's already one of their favorites. Painted in the 1950s livery of Washington DC Transit, one wag described it as looking like "a rolling Howard Johnson's." Hard to dispute that!

Crimes Against Cocktails (Retail Edition)

2010-02-11T00:14:00.000-08:00

The good news that in 2010, we are enjoying a new enthusiasm for fine cocktail craftsmanship -- a trend which I welcome whole-heartedly.

The bad news is that the dark forces of Reaction and Homogenization remain a constant menace.

These two products illustrate the latter point: The first are prefab flavored martinis, sold in plastic martini glasses. The second is single-serving shots of booze, sold in wee plastic packets.

Both are fascinating and horrible, each in their own way.

Gee's Bend Quilt Prints

2010-02-09T04:46:00.000-08:00

Tbe master printers of Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley have been working with some of the master quilters of Gee's Bend in Gee's Bend to create remarkable little spitbite aquatint etchings of quilts.

To begin, the quilters--so far, it is quilters of the younger generation of Gee's Benders such as Louisiana Bendolph, Loretta Bennett, and Loretta Pettway--create original, little sampler-size quilts. For the spitbite process, a layer of wax is applied to the printing stone, and the design is transferred by etching it in with acid.

If you're trying this at home, you'll note there is an interim step, the transfer from quilt to stone, that goes undetailed in the publicity literature. Since interviews with Ms. Pettway show her to be a woman of strong Christian faith, I assume that no diabolical magick was involved. Maybe a scanner or camera.

Loretta Pettway's Gee's Bend prints by Paulson Bott Press [paulsonpress.com via andy]
Louisiana Bendolph's and Loretta Bennett's quilt prints are available at Greg Kucera Gallery [gregkucera.com]

Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner)

2010-02-08T17:46:00.003-08:00

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was one of my first favorite contemporary artists. From the late 1980s until his death from AIDS-related illness in 1996, he imbued minimalist form and incredibly humble materials with powerful emotional and personal content.

Among his most well-known works are his pour pieces, where an "ideal" weight--usually around 180 lbs, the weight of Felix's partner Ross--of wrapped candy, free for the taking, is piled in a corner or spread across the floor. The pours upset the museum's typical hands-off! norms and turn into a living memorial as the candy gets taken and replenished.

At least that's how it eventually worked out. Felix's first pour piece, made in 1990, was actually Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner), and it consists of around 10,000 unwrapped fortune cookies. Which end up getting broken and stale. And kind of gnarly, to the point that, unless you're there the first day of the show, you wouldn't really want to eat one. Plus, they attract bugs and stuff.

So art history-wise: very significant. Actually showing or owning it: kind of a pain.

Which may be why the piece failed to sell at auction in 2003, even at the seemingly conservative estimate of $600-800,000. Someone eventually bought it, though, because it's now at the Felix Gonzalez-Torres retrospective at WIELS in Brussels. The artblog 16miles.com has awesome photos.

photos of Felix Gonzalez-Torres retrospective at WIELS, Brussels, BE [16miles.com]

Robert Irwin Acrylic Column, 1970-1

2010-02-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

The uniquely Californian flavor of Minimalism is on revelatory view until tomorrow at David Zwirner Gallery in the provincial little burg that thought it invented Minimalism, New York City.

Robert Irwin's prismatic acrylic column, from 1970-71, is one of my favorite works in the show. This stuff looks like the art of the future.

"Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970" [davidzwirner.com]