War art

I read a fascinating article on the BBC, it's about the painter Christopher Nevinson. What's interesting is the way this artist's view of war changed the longer he was there. The writer ties it to his own experiences as a war correspondent, which is also fascinating. War changes people there is no doubt, but this is such a visual representation of that change.

This picture was done in 1915. All sharp angles and energy. It's modern and clean. It's true one of the soldiers is dead, but he's not the focus and the angles oddly dehumanise.

Compare the above to this, faceless, nameless real men lying cast aside in a muddy wasteland. There is nothing that suggests hope or energy or even a reason for the deaths that the viewer.  

 I strongly recommend reading the article. 

People with books

Some very fun pictures. They might sound simple but in some ways they capture the joy of books.
New York Bookstore manager, Ellen Pullen, has collated an ongoing photo essay on books & the bodies that love them. The images show her and her colleagues posing with the books with which they work. Here is a small sample, see more here.

  

the image of music

Have you ever wanted to see music? Or wondered if Daft Punk's music looks any different from Bach? That's right, see/looks, visual words not auditory ones. 

An incredible art exhibition asks the question - what does music look like? Not only that but it finds a way to answer that question. 'Sonic' is the latest project by German photographer Martin Klimas. Paint is put on top of a speaker and then music is played at full volume – creating explosions of colour. 

Bach, Toccata & Fugue in D Minor

Richard Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries 

Charlie Parker, Ornithology

Kraftwerk, Transistor 

 Daft Punk, Around the World

 Martin Klimas, working on Sonic

Food Art Death

No, you didn't read that wrong. Food, art & death - what could they all have in common. Food & art - sure, any great chef will tell you food is art. Food & death - sure, any great poisoner will tell you food can lead to death. Come to think of it, a lot of doctors will tell you the same thing. But all three together...

Tasha Marks, a food historian makes edible art. The piece that caught my attention was a chocolate skull. There you have it, food, art & death.

Not that she limits herself to death, she makes marzipan bees and frankincense sweets, ambergris lozenge and...  well you get the idea. Ms Marks runs a boutique food company called Animal Vegetable Mineral.

She talks about using food as art as combining the silly with the cerebral. To see more about her food adventure check out the BBC interview with her.

The Evolution of Type

We had one artist last week, this week I thought I would look at another: Andreas Scheiger. Artist Andreas Scheiger has created a wonderful exhibition in honour of type/lettering (call it what you will), the medium through which so many have communicated their ideas through the years. That allows us to preserve our history and separates from our pre-literate ancestors.

From his Exhibition:
"Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous. Letters, like men, have now an ancestry, and the ancestry of words, as of men, is often a very noble possession, making them capable of great things. indeed, it has been said that the invention of writing is more important than all the victories ever won or constitutions devised by man. The history of writing is, in a way, the history of the human race, since in it are bound up, severally and together, the development of thought, of expression, of art, of intercommunication, and of mechanical invention.(...) A letter should possess an esthetic quality that is organic, an essential of the form itself and not the result of mere additions to its fundamental form nor to meaningless variations of it."

When my eyes crossed this excerpt of famous type designer Frederic W. Goudy´s "The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering" (1918) suddenly letters full of life showed in my mind´s eye. Letters are organisms and typefaces are the species, all classified similar to biological taxonomy! I drafted this cognition in a chart for print and in order to prove my finding to the interested audience I took one step further. I surgically opened the letters S, Z, S, A, W and how contented I was to discover muscles, veins, tendons and bone just like the ones shared by so many living creatures.

Below are some of his wonderful sculptures that give a visceral evolution to letters.
You can see more here.

Book Art

Books are a wonderful. They are a place to escape to, a place to learn, and an outlet for creativity. Sometimes however that outlet is not just for the author - sometimes it's for sculptors. It's true this use of books is not the conventional one, and it's not one of which everyone approves (involving as it does the destruction of the book in its current form).

While I could never use one of my books quite like this, I can't help but admire the creativity of these sculptures. These particular specimens were left anonymously around Edinburgh.

  

For more + closeups go here

Making crazy books

I had a lot of questions about last week's post so here's a little fun with crazy and unusual books. That's right, it's time to go behind the scenes and look at the making of.

The making of Design Criminals. Made of sugar, with wafer sheets printed with vegetable ink for the pages. The consumable book was an exhibition catalogue. Book designer: Andreas Pohancenik.

And Snoop Dog's smokable book. Not so much a making of and more of a look inside. Hemp cover, rolling paper pages (with his song lyrics), and the spine can be used to strike a match.

The head of a pencil

Last week we had a post about time consuming art, but that ain't nothing on this.

Pencil stubs left over, planning to throw them in the rubbish, not  Dalton Ghetti. I was only going to add a few pictures but they're so great I struggled to stop. However you can see even more at the link.

Body art

I decided on a video today, a body painting time lapse video. This is pretty fascinating.

The attention to detail, the time it takes. What's going through her head while she gets sprayed? 

How does she explain to potential boyfriends what she does for a living - for that matter how does he explain?

Okay - I admit this feels like great story materiel. 

 

[Warning: nudity]

Nail crazy

Okay, I'll admit upfront, I'm not much of a girly-girl. If I have to choose between reading and doing my nails, or shopping, or getting my hair done, or talking endlessly on the phone or..... (you get the idea), Then reading is going to win every time. Nonetheless, even I was fascinated by a gallery exhibition dedicated to nail art.

Here's a few for your own viewing pleasure...

Very fun, though I think if you actually wore them, not so fun.

Unless of course you were making a power statement.



Statment: I'm so powerful, people do everything for me (because with nails like these I can't do anything for myself).