The Physicality Phenomenon

Steven Heller has a nice prediction in the NYT Magazine here. He argues, "Hand lettering is seen as a means to distinguish expressive from non-expressive messages," later continuing, "The hand offers a more human dimension and individual personality. Of course, this will inevitably change. A popular design trope will be copied until it is overused and we’re sick to death of it."

I see it as being less of an inevitable design trend/ flash-in-the-pan phenomenon, because humans are always going to be playing around with how letter forms look in their own handwriting. Yeah, sure, maybe hand lettering on book covers and film opening sequences will become less exciting at some point, but just in the same way that Helvetica will always be around for function and clean lines, so, too will hand lettering continue to serve a purpose for expression, intimacy, silliness, and distinctiveness.

The connection can (and should) be made to the rise of handmade and hand-crafted works throughout our culture in the past five years or so. Hand lettering is intimately linked to other forms of creative expression manifested in a uniquely physical form, like letterpress printmaking, DIY, and Etsy. I also have been arguing for a while now that farming, vegetarian cooking, and organics are all linked to this social phenomenon of physicality as well. (NYT article about more and more college students seeking out organic farming summer internships).

Designboom has a great article/ compilation of the "decidedly low-tech" trend here.

Heller's blog for Print magazine is here. John Gray, who is a really cool graphic designer (book covers, oooh!) did the cover for Extremely Loud, Everything is Illuminated, and many others you'll probably recognize. His website, Gray318, is here.

I also like to peruse Oatmeal & Cinnamon's blog about hand-lettering.

Asterios Polyp

I occasionally get emails from Pantheon Books, the graphic literature division of Random House, and this new graphic novel from David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp, looks amazing. It comes out July 7th, 2009.

I also get a huge kick out of the Pantheon website design (the image above is a screen capture from the site).

Paul Gravett, who is an incredible London-based critic/ curator/ writer/ scholar of all-things-comics, has an early review of Asterios Polyp, including images from the book on his website here.

Dana Schutz

DANA SCHUTZ
Thinker, 2008
Oil and acrylic on canvas
95.25 x 76 inches
241.9 x 193 cm

It's funny, I had mysteriously forgotten about one of my favorite contemporary/ young painters, Dana Schutz, and I caught her name in an art review I was perusing this morning.

Her new 2009 work is pretty funny: seen here at the Zach Feuer Gallery.

I'm really digging the patterns she's working into these paintings. The blue doodles in the background of this painting, Thinker (2008), are beautiful, and a handful of the other works have lovely repetitive motions and stripes worked into the canvas. Schutz is an incredibly talented and skilled artist, and I truly appreciate her composition, subject matter, and unabashed use of vivid color, but I think my favorite thing about her is that she has a sense of humor.

I first saw her work at the MOCA in Cleveland in 2006 (was it really that long ago?). It was a collection of her paintings from 2000-2006. There was a lot of self-referentialism (did I just make that word up? 'cuz I like it) and cannibalism, playing around with making the grotesque even more grotesque. Schutz's new works seem to come from a different part of her brain. They are more layered and nuanced paintings. The paint (although it's hard to really know this from online images) seems to lie flatter on the canvas, the features in her faces blend together more subtly (somehow this is even creepier?), and the twisting of the features starts to look a lot like Francis Bacon's faces.

DANA SCHUTZ
Guitar Girl, 2009
Oil and acrylic on canvas with black velvet
60.25 x 48.25 inches
153 x 122.6 cm

But, like I said, most importantly for me, her work makes me laugh. She is drawing on traditions within painting in terms of subject matter, and blatantly poking fun at those traditions as well as herself as a painter. Those neon greens drive me nuts because I don't want to look at them, I don't want a technicolor assault on canvas, but I appreciate the neon simply because it balances everything else.

Ode to Renzo

This NYT Architecture review of the new Art Institute Modern Wing is practically a love poem.

I like that the connection to Mies van der Rohe and the Arts Club of Chicago was made-- I noticed it too, so I'm glad I wasn't just making it up.

I want to go back soon and see that Twombly exhibit again, I can't stop thinking about it.

Both works are Cy Twombly, Untitled (2001)

Update: The Twombly exhibit is called Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works, 2000-2007. The Art Institute's site/ associated images for the show can be found here.

I want to go to there

This is the approximately 2,000 mile road trip I want to take this summer/ fall. Having never been on a road trip before of my own design, I think it's high time for some adventuring.

Another milepost, another mile!

This is water, this is water.

I just read this essay/ speech written by David Foster Wallace for Kenyon College's 2005 graduation, and reprinted in the Wall Street Journal: here. It's a really strong piece, and maybe it speaks to me a lot just because I've been thinking about how it's been a year since I graduated and I'm really and truly an adult doing adult things in the real live world now, but I also think it has a good number of human truths that are easy to forget about. I recommend a perusal highly.

I've been getting this poem by Frank O'Hara, "Animals" (1950), stuck in my head these days. It's a good one.

ANIMALS
              
              
      Have you forgotten what we were like then
      when we were still first rate
      and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
    
      it's no use worrying about Time
      but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
      and turned some sharp corners
    
      the whole pasture looked like our meal
      we didn't need speedometers
      we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
    
      I wouldn't want to be faster
      or greener than now if you were with me O you
      were the best of all my days