Art Craft and Design
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By Michael Kimmelman Published: June 14, 2012 ROME — On the steps of the Basilica di Sant’Agostino, a stone’s throw from Piazza Navona and the famous Caravaggios in San Luigi dei Francesi, four men waited for handouts on a summery afternoon last week. Only a priest and a few tourists passed by. Inside, soft scrims of white cloth scaffolding fluttered high over the marbled nave.
Interactive: In Rome, Caravaggio Still Beckons Hoi Polloi - Interactive Feature
T he Map and the Territory , the latest novel by the mordant French satirist Michel Houellebecq, opens with a description of a painting titled Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market . Koons is portrayed throwing his arms wide. Hirst is slumped on a white leather sofa, drinking a beer. For Houllebecq's fictional artist, "Hirst was basically easy to capture: you could make him brutal, cynical in an 'I shit on you from the top of my pile of cash' kind of way; you could also make him a rebel artist (but rich all the same) pursuing an anguished work on death ; finally, there was in his face, something ruddy and heavy, typically English, which made him look like a rank-and-file Arsenal supporter."
Damien Hirst and the great art market heist | Art and design
The Bedlam of Beefy
on my mind these days and yet, for the first time I can recall, I don't feel frenetic. There seems to be a calm and collected sensibility that has settled in and I'm most grateful for however long it chooses to visit. On a very personal note, I am facing the failing health of my mother who is experiencing increasing moments of memory loss. That alone is difficult to face for a whole host of reasons that you can likely imagine, but she also refuses any attempts to get her to seek proper medical attention which has my family facing some seriously difficult decisions. However, in spite of these painful realizations, I'm finding myself much more willing to savour the present over stressing over the future.
by Maria Popova Visual hyper-distillation of iconic storytelling. As a lover of children’s books , especially classic ones with timeless wisdom for grown-ups, and an admirer of minimalist posters that distill complex stories or ideas in clean graphic elements, I am infinitely delighted by these hyper-minimalist takes on beloved children’s classics by designer Christian Jackson .
From Rapunzel to The Little Red Riding Hood, Beloved Children's Classics as Minimalist Posters
Beautiful bikes from the past by O. Ray Courtney
Posted by hipstomp | 13 Aug 2010 | Comments (4) Henderson is a defunct brand of U.S.-made motorcycle that went bust around the time of the Great Depression. In 1936 designer O. Ray Courtney took a 1930 Henderson and modified it into the streamlined style you see here: [photo credit: knucklebusterinc.com ]
How Iconic Album Cover Illustrator Robert Crumb Brought Comics to Music
by Maria Popova What Janis Joplin has to do with rediscovering yesteryear’s forgotten masters. Alex Steinweiss may be the father of the modern album cover, but Robert Crumb is its favorite weird uncle. Though best-known as a pioneer of the underground comix movement, the subversive artist had long been fascinated with the music of the 1920s and 1930s — jazz, big band, swing, blues, cajun — so when, in 1968, Janis Joplin asked him to design the cover for her album Cheap Thrills , it was the beginning of R.