The Art Prowler's Guide

2022-07-28T08:21:00.010-07:00

While searching for something this morning in my emails I came across an email "update" I sent to a group of my friends about a year after we'd graduated university, and even after all these years it still gave me a laugh. I edited it slightly for brevity, and to remove some (unecessary?) profanity:

How is everyone doing?

I have enjoyed everyone's occasional updates so much, and I would like to encourage more of them. In order to do my part I shall provide you with a wee update of my own.

I am living in Jersey City and working in Manhattan. During the day I work for an architectural firm where I sit from 9-6 at a quiet desk, spending most of my time writing long-winded emails to friends about absolutely nothing or daydreaming about Mia Maniscalco. Often, on slower days, I find myself lost in moments of the deepest nostalgia as I remember back on all of those nights when I would get off of work and race to 73 Barnes to join you all in the revelrous creation of happy memories. Friends and faderade: the true ingredients of halcyon days. What more could we have asked for?

Right... anyways... since after reading this email you are obviously envious of my life... you should come to visit me! I am only a 10 minute subway ride from lower manhattan and I have a guest room. If during your stay you should cross paths with my landlady who lives in the building: do not be alarmed. Is she as crazy as she looks? Yes! But it's that harmless kind of crazy that one finds so frequently in New York; always cursing out loud for no apparent reason or mumbling insanely to herself about her catastrophically wretched existence. And I should warn you that she doesn't throw anything away. The other night I was in the basement to do my laundry and as I was navigating my way amidst the hoarder's paradise she's created down there I notice an impressive series of large jars, without lids, each chock full of old toothbrushes! USED, toothbrushes, guys! I just stopped and stared, in total disbelief. There must have been 50 or 60 toothbrushes collecting dust. A recent conversation between us went something like this:

(Enter Tom, holding a hookah coal with a strange utensil which he has pulled off of some shelf in the kitchen. Lorraine, the landlady, is present but Tom is unaware of this unfortunate fact and he proceeds to light the coal on the gas stove, holding the coal carefully using this awkward kitchen utensil.)

Landlady: "What the fuck are you doing!? You're setting things on fire!"

Tom: "Oh, ah, didn't see you there. It's a coal, for, um..."

Landlady: "For what? A joint? There's no smoking!"

Tom (still holding the coal on the flame): "How, what? No. How could this be for a joint? It's a coal for a hookah."

Landlady (in utter shock and disbelief): "A what? OH my GOD! That's my antique potato masher! YOU'RE PUTTING MY ANTIQUE POTATO MASHER IN THE FIRE!"

Tom (removing it immediately from the flames, now also in disbelief): "This bent fork thingy? With a dirty wooden handle? Oh come on! This thing has to be worthless! Although it's kind of perfect for holding this coal..."

Landlady: "OH my GOD! You're ruining it! Do you have any idea how rare those are!?"

Tom: "Rare? That's because everyone else threw theirs away! This thing couldn't have cost more than $2 thirty years ago. I bet it's lost value every day since! I'll give it back - I'll give it back - just hold on - okay?"

That spot of dialogue took me about 40 minutes to write... yikes. But you get the idea. I miss you all so much.

I hope that we can organize some group trips, or reunions of any sort this winter. Alas, oh great Fortuna. We have been dispersed from coast to coast. I'm being silly now, that is my cue to stop.

Love you all,

Your working boy,

Daryl

Julian Stanczak

2012-03-03T07:47:00.010-08:00

I went to see Julian Stanczak speak about his life and work at RISD, in 2003. Out of all the lectures I saw there, Julian's stuck with me the most.

Julian spent most of the lecture talking about color. He explained briefly about his methods and their origins, how the careful geometry was a result of him having only his left-hand (his entire right arm was permanently paralyzed in a concentration camp at age 10); any precision required tape to create guides before the paint was applied.

He mentioned color so many times, at one point my friend Katie leaned over and said jokingly, "I wonder what his favorite color is." I laughed, partly because it was a good joke but also because Julian was so serious and solemn- he hadn't smiled once or made a single joke the entire talk.

When Julian finished his talk, the audience began asking terrible questions. It was a huge auditorium, with hundreds of people, and after this wonderful lecture, the first question someone asked was "do you drive a green volvo?" Julian squinted at the man who asked the question and didn't even bother to respond. The man clarified, "I thought I saw you earlier driving down such-and-such street" to which Julian quickly replied, "No."

A few more dumb questions, and then silence. It was hard to believe that with an audience filled with artsy people, no one had any decent questions to ask.

Way up near the back, I raised my hand, and Julian pointed to me. "What is your favorite color?" I asked. The audience laughed, another stupid question perhaps, but at least it was a funny one.

But Julian didn't laugh; he didn't even smile. He looked at me for a moment, and then, completely straight-faced, he asked me, "How can you ask that?"

"I love color itself," he continued, "and you can not single out colors on their own- any color will look, feel and act differently depending on the colors which surround it. The way that colors interact with each other, I love that. And there is an infinite spectrum. Someone says 'blue is my favorite color' - what blue? there are an infinite number of colors, all within the spectrum we categorize as blue..."

He continued on this theme for some time, brilliant and mesmerizing, and I'll never forget it.

Julian was born in Poland in 1928. When he was still a young boy his family was taken from their home and forced into concentration camps. He was separated from his family and sent to a labor camp in Siberia where, from starvation and excessive labor, he lost the use of his entire right arm, which he never regained (he was right-handed).

Amazingly, he not only escaped but made it all the way to Persia, where he joined a small resistance army "because they had food." Eventually he made his way to a refugee camp in Uganda, and finally, at age 21, he made it to the USA.

Julian explained that ever since he'd been a boy, he'd wanted to go to America. All the time he spent as a refugee, he built up this idea of the "American Dream" even though he didn't know what it was.

When he finally arrived in New York, this skeletal, handicapped boy named Julian was taken into a shelter where they brought him food, and as he ate, they kept bringing him more soup and bread, and he kept eating it, until finally he couldn't eat anymore. He didn't understand what was happening, because he had never been full before. He had never once in his life had more food than he could eat, and that's when he realized what the American Dream meant to him- this feeling of being full.

Il Profilo Continuo (Testa di Mussolini)

2012-02-24T20:41:00.003-08:00

This is a fascinating piece. I took this photo in the Guggenheim (NY), and while there were many interesting pieces on display at the exhibit, this one stuck with me the most. It's from 1933, by Renato Giuseppe Bertelli, and it's a bust of Mussolini.

I think it was intended to represent Mussolini as some sort of omniscient god. And to represent Mussolini's passion for speed, for power and for machines. And it does all of these things.

But it also shows a spinning Mussolini. The opposite of those creepy sculptures with glass eyes that follow you around the room, this sculpture is always looking in some other direction.

I love Italy, and it's upsetting to think that they could end up on the wrong side of WWII, of all wars. To send innocent people off to concentration camps, to invade the islands of Greece... it was a nation confused, spinning out of control.

On top of it all, this sculpture really does look like Mussolini..

The Bugattis

2012-02-24T18:00:00.017-08:00

When I mentioned Carlo Bugatti in a design meeting earlier this week, I was met with blank stares. This is usually the case, so I thought I'd post a little about the Bugatti family.

Most people are familiar with the Bugatti family, but only for their luxury car designs, which began with Ettore Bugatti (born 1881).

The Bugatti car company is still around, producing not-so-shabby rides.

But it's Ettore's father, Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940) that I care about here. He designed some of the wildest furniture I've ever seen.

His father Giovanni was a prominent Milanese interior designer, so I imagine Carlo grew up surrounded by exotic objects (hence the unique influence from asian and islamic art)

But what's really fascinating is how perfectly some of his work encompasses both the flowing organic forms and intricacy of Art Nouveau, and the radial forms and simple geometry of Art Deco. It's all there.

Most designers from this period fall into one camp or the other- their work is either Art Nouveau or it's Deco. Carlo marched to his own beat.

And anyways, I hate categorizing people's work, and you especially can't categorize Carlo. His stuff is out there. The interior I show below was for a design pavilion, and was intended to raise eyebrows, but still...

Carlo's other son Rembrandt (brother of Ettore the car designer) was a sculptor. Here's a few examples of his work:

Rembrandt committed suicide in 1916, at age 31. Carlo, who had been very active up to this point, pretty much stopped working after this. I mean, he stopped building furniture. He kept busy on other things I'm sure (fish gotta swim, designers with this kind of talent gotta design). I read that he moved in with Ettore's family and spent his time painting, but I've never seen any of his paintings. I'll keep an eye out for them... I'm sure they are amazing.

The Art of Bookbinding

2012-02-24T14:07:00.015-08:00

As an artist and a writer, and as a lover of books and craftsmanship, it was probably only a matter of time before I got into the art of book making.

I try not to judge books by their covers, but I've always had an appreciation for books that are beautifully bound. Good stories are treasures, and is there anything greater, anything more sacred than knowledge?

(think of the ancient hadith, that "the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr")

(These tasteful F. Scott Books pictured above are by C. B. Smith: www.cb-smith.com )

(The books above that are classic Art Deco pieces, by Adler and Rose.)

Not only can you get into the design of the cover, but there are so many fascinating ways to bind the books themselves. For my own books, I've been using a form of Japanese stab binding for my own books... so simple and elegant...

and open it up:

But there are so many other ways, I'll have to keep experimenting:

And then you can even design boxes that the books will fit in... pretty slick. These are designed by (and created for) Santiago Calatrava's firm:

And then of course, you can get creative with the contents of the book itself, and how they are presented. Love this:

Sohan Qadri

2010-10-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

I discovered him a few years ago when the Sundaram Tagore Gallery did a big show of his work.

The pieces grab your attention immediately and draw you in, until your nose is right up against the paper. And they hold you there, mesmorized by the color and texture as you try to figure out how exactly they were made. The better pieces sell almost instantly, despite the very high price tags (some of them are selling for $30,000-50,000 each). But they're beautifully composed, and the colors are very well selected. He's got a good eye for color and composition.

He makes incisions and holes in thick watercolor paper with a large nail, sprays the paper with water, and then brushes on dyes of different colors, letting some soak in, pushing others around. The result: some stunning, very colorful artwork.

He knows what he's doing, beyond just the making of his art. He markets himself as a yogi artist-monk-poet and painter, a sort of modern day Rumi; he claims that he doesn't think while he paints, that his paintings "result from states of deep meditation, and are informed by the colors of India" since apparently he clears his mind completely of all thoughts before beginning each piece.

But I've seen pictures of his sketchbook, filled with beautiful sketches articulating in great detail the composition and colors for his future pieces. So he knows how to play the art game. And he should- he's been in the art world for a long time, and his success is relatively recent, considering that he will be 78 this November. Although he lives in Canada now, he moved to Europe in the 1960s, and lived there as a struggling artist for about 30 years before hitting it big, so to speak, despite surprisingly strong connections to the European art world. So more power to him. I picked up a book of his stuff from Sundaram Tagore, and I found that his art hasn't changed very much in all that time- he switched gradually from oils on canvas to dyes on paper; the compositions are a little simpler, a little more geometric- but the way he markets himself has seen significant change. But that's beside the point: even in his younger days, he had a knack for composition and color. Here are some of his older works, in oil:

Karl Blossfeldt: Urformen der Kunst

2010-03-01T18:09:00.000-08:00

When I was working as a designer in New York, a friend of mine introduced me to 'Urformen der Kunst'. It's a collection of photographs by Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932), and it influenced me a great deal. Her copy was one of the original prints, which is beautiful and extremely rare, but you can order a paperback reproduction online for almost nothing- just do a search of Karl Blossfeldt on Amazon and you'll find several books for around $10 that contain the entire collection.

Flowers, stems, leaves, buds, tendrils, seed pods; all meticulously arranged to show the intricate, elegant structure of their natural forms. Whenever I was having trouble designing something, and I mean anything, I would take some time to flip through this book. And not for direct inspiration of forms, I might be designing something sleek and modern, without curves. It didn't matter; somehow looking at these always helped.

Maybe it's because looking through them makes me think about what it is that makes something beautiful. I mean, why do we find some forms to be more beautiful than others? When I'm teaching art, one of the most difficult things is trying to explain why certain photographs or drawings are more beautifully composed. There are rules for avoiding bad composition but frankly, composition and beauty in form are entirely subjective things, innately impossible to explain with rules or laws. What makes certain forms more pleasing to our eyes than others? How and why?

Somewhere in the evolution of mankind, we developed a strong sensitivity to form, to shapes, to curves, and to compositions of light and dark. And when I look through these photos, at the beauty of the natural forms, it seems almost obvious that our sensitivity to form, our desire for ornament, for art, came in the millions of years we were surrounded by nothing but nature. Then again, maybe not. I'm fairly certain that humans were around for a long time before art. But the beauty of these images seems so fundamental, so basic, that the root of our aesthetic sensitivities must have come from the forms of nature. It is usually at this point in my sloth-like thought process that I realize the title of collection is "Urformen der Kunst", which translates to "Origin of Art". Good to know that Karl and I agree on something.

Takashi Murakami - Tan Tan Bo

2007-11-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

Takashi Murakami. A talented artist and a talented businessman.

He started an art factory with over a hundred artists with locations in Japan and the US, called KaiKai Kiki LLC. I think he founded it at the ripe age of 34. So I've still got time. Can you tell that I'm competitive? And envious? Well I am. I'm burning with admiration. But honestly, I'd rather own one of these pieces than have a 100+ person art factory.

For the past few years, I've told people that this was his masterpiece:

But after checking out his current exhibit at the Brooklyn Art Museum, I'm not sure anymore. There are several very impressive pieces. I'm still trying to figure out how some of the pieces were made. The sculptures and movies, although not always dull, weren't anything to write home about unless your parents like Japanimation. But the large scale paintings like "727" pictured below are wild. You have to see them for yourself to understand. This painting is over 4 meters wide, and I wish I could show you the subtle details and textures.