Saturday, June 29, 2013

Crashing





Grace Cossington Smith, Sea Wave (1931)



Edvard Munch, The Wave (1921)



Ando Hiroshige, Whirlpools and Wave at Naruto (1797-1858)



Emil Nolde, Tall Breaker (1948)




Thursday, June 27, 2013

Hand in Hancock







Chicago and the John Hancock building






Paintings by Roger Brown 










Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Lovely Japan





G. wore ballet flats with fluorescent orange tips, her finger nails were painted sky blue, her lipstick was a deep yet cheerful red. She's always loved bright colors, mixing them playfully. When it comes to wearing color, I'm mostly shy. But I love to see intense color used in painting and illustration.













Paintings by Izutsu Hiroyuki



Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Infographics





From a series of 28 posters for the Library School Course in Teaching the Use of the Library, at the George Peabody College for Teachers. Circa 1930s.










Sunday, June 23, 2013

Step ladder







Saturday, June 22, 2013

Poise, elegance and grace




...and a great figure!






Coca-cola bottle through time



Friday, June 21, 2013

In the palm of my hands





Herbert Bayer, Good night Marie (1932)




From Guillermo del Toro's film, Pan's Labyrinth (2006)



Thursday, June 20, 2013

Flying high







Once upon a time, the N-X-211 aircraft was as recognized as the fictional starship Enterprise NCC-1701. Otherwise known as the Spirit of St. Louis, the custom-built, single seat, single engine monoplane was flown solo, non-stop from New York to Paris, France by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. By 1929, the plane was depicted in an inspirational poster distributed to elementary schools, promoting imagination.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Visions of Paris






Plan de Paris (1927) by Ilonka Karasz

It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a café au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. I was writing about up in Michigan and since it was a wild, cold, blowing day it was that sort of day in the story. I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things. But in the story the boys were drinking and this made me thirsty and I ordered a rum St. James. This tasted wonderful on the cold day and I kept on writing, feeling very well and feeling the good Martinique rum warm me all through my body and my spirit.

A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.


 A Moveable Feast: Chapter One By Ernest Hemingway

Friday, June 14, 2013

Typewriter chart









This chart is marked, "LC Smith & Corona Typewriters Inc. Syracuse NY School Department' and likely designed for use in front of a typing classroom as a reference for students (so they didn't look at their fingers as they typed!)

Vibrant colors with great modern appeal, it is stamped on the bottom '1940'.  This is an especially interesting historical relic considering in 1942, the Smith-Corona company and its factory was called upon by the US Government to produce rifles for WWII. 

LC Smith & Corona became known as Smith-Corona in 1946, and re-named Smith-Corona Inc. in 1953.


Thursday, June 13, 2013

This is your captain speaking...





Oliver Jeffers Disaster series











Oil paint and collage on found landscapes and postcards





Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Outside the lines


Photos by William Klein




I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.



Sometimes, I'd take shots without aiming, just to see what happened. I'd rush into crowds - bang! Bang! I liked the idea of luck and taking a chance, other times I'd frame a composition I saw and plant myself somewhere, longing for some accident to happen.



If you look carefully at life, you see blur. Shake your hand. Blur is part of life.


I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In Vogue, girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton.





Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Windows








Monday, June 10, 2013

Key Co-star






You can't be passive with a typewriter. That carriage will move only when your fingers hit those keys. Maybe you'll get distracted. Maybe you'll get up and make yourself a sandwich. But your eyes won't wander to the latest tweet,YouTube video or TMZ 'news' flash.






 John Turturro, Barton Fink (1991)

 Emma Thompson, Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

 Paul Dano, Ruby Sparks (2012)

 James McAvoy, Atonement (2007)

 Ewan McGregor, Moulin Rouge (2001)

 Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary (2011)

 James Franco, Howl (2010)

 Jack Nicholson, The Shining (1980)

 Viggo Mortensen, Good (2008)

Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday (1940)