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Art Fan Friday: El Anatsui

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Throwback Thursday: Les Graphiquants

Cuir à Paris 

Spring/Summer 2015

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For this week’s Women We Love Wednesday, we highlight Fanny Eaton

Fanny Eaton was a black Victorian Londoner and, for some time, painter’s model. Born in Jamaica in 1835, Eaton was the daughter of an ex-slave and, it is suspected, a white slave owner. She came to London in the 1840s and began modelling in her twenties. It has been discovered that she was working as a regular portrait model at the Royal Academy, which is potentially where she caught the attention of the many renowned painters of the era she sat for. - AnOther Magazine

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Art Fan Friday: Paula Crown

Bearings Down

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For this week’s Man Crush Monday, ESP PR highlights Matt Mignanelli, 

Using acrylic and enamel paints, artist Matt Mignanelli freehandedly creates graphic, abstract paintings that transform upon every glance. Physically moving around a black-on-black painting of a cubic grid will reveal layers of optical illusions, while simply blinking when standing in front of a canvas covered in a complex navy-and-white pattern tricks the eye into seeing an oscillating, three-dimensional piece of art. Each piece of Mignanelli's work depicts polygons of various shapes and sizes (with only the slightest occasional curve), yet they also always finds their roots in reality—most frequently architecture and light. -- Interview Magazine

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This week’s Man Crush Monday,  ESP PR highlights László Moholy-Nagy,

László Moholy-Nagy, born in 1895 in Borsód, Austria-Hungary, believed in the potential of art as a vehicle for social transformation, working hand in hand with technology for the betterment of humanity. A multifaceted artist, educator, and prolific writer, Moholy-Nagy experimented across mediums, moving fluidly between the fine and applied arts, pursuing his quest to illuminate the interrelatedness of life, art, and technology. Among his radical innovations were his experiments with cameraless photographs (which he dubbed “photograms”); unconventional use of industrial materials in painting and sculpture; experiments with light, transparency, space, and motion across mediums; and his work at the forefront of abstraction. -- Guggenheim

‘Non-Objective Painting’ is currently on vie at the Guggenheim until July 10, 2016.  

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Art Fan Friday: Brutalist Sculpture and Architecture 

"I became increasingly fascinated by the visionary buildings and bold housing estates that grew out of the bombed remnants of London’s east end. Not always a comfortable fit in their postwar Victorian surroundings, these new concrete buildings and social-housing developments looked, at times, as though they had descended from another planet to colonize Earth" -- Peter Chadwick

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Throwback Thursday: Lygia Clark

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This week’s Man Crush Monday, ESP PR highlights Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan emerged as one of the founders and major proponents of the avant-garde Mono-ha ("School of Things") group in the late 1960s. Mono-ha was Japan’s first internationally recognized contemporary art movement, rejecting Western notions of representation and emphasizing materials and perception and interrelationships between space and matter. Lee creates his sculptural works using only two materials: steel and stone.

“The highest level of expression is not to create something from nothing, but rather to nudge something that already exists so that the world shows up more vividly.” 

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Art Fan Friday Joseph Moise Agbodjelou

'Untitled', 1960, Gelatin silver print from original negative, edition of 15 + 2 A. P, 30 x 41 cm, Courtesy of Jack Bell Gallery 

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To celebrate Women to Love Wednesday, ESP highlights Njideka Akunyili Crosby. 

Informed by art historical and literary sources, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s complex, multi-layered works reflect contemporary transcultural identity. Inspired by her memories and experiences, Akunyili Crosby combines drawing, painting and collage on paper to create her large-scale figurative compositions. These compositions use the visual language and inherited traditions of classical academic western painting, particularly the portrait and still life. Akunyili Crosby’s characters and scenes, however, occupy the liminal, in-between zone that post-colonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha refers to as ‘the third space’, a point of overlap, conflation and mixing of cultural influences specific to diaspora communities.

Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize, 2014

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Textile Tuesday Mika Tajima

Negative Atrophy (Kim Reddick Jacquard Card Cutter, Pink, double). 2015. Cotton, polyester, rayon, wood, wool acoustic baffling felt

Mika Tajima is showcasing this series in her latest group exhibition, We Are Not Things at Invisible Exports, on view until February 14.

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This week’s Man Crush Monday goes to the late prolific, multifaceted artist, Joan Miró. 

Joan Miró rejected the constraints of traditional painting, creating works “conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness,” as he once said. Widely considered one of the leading Surrealist, Miró made a large majority of work with the wandering linear style of Automatism, a method of “random” drawing that attempted to express the inner workings of the human psyche. He aimed to use color and form in a symbolic rather than literal manner, combining abstract elements with recurring motifs like birds, eyes, and the moon. 

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music,” he said. 

Learn More about Joan Miró’s latest international exhibition here. 

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Art Fan Friday Yuri Fukuda

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IMPRINT: In Conversation with Pilar Viladas

Image Credit: Marvin Orellana

IMPRINT begins with Pilar Viladas because my very complex career path started in interior design in the late nineties at Studio Sofield. I began working with Pilar close to a decade ago when I decided to become a publicist after giving up the financial markets, contracts and bean counting. At that time she was design editor at The New York Times design. It was our internet-rules-all, fast everything lifestyle, when a singular voice could set the prevailing tone of an industry and determine who was relevant and who wasn't. The time where features demanded 3,000 words and many pages of precious print.

Although, the industry has changed dramatically and CTRs (click through rate) now rule, Pilar, who is currently Town & Country magazine design editor, continues to be one of the most respected voices in interior and industrial design.

IMPRINT, gives us a peek into the lives of the quietly powerful people behind the poetic words and inspired images fueling art and culture today.

- Tiana Webb Evans

Where did you grow up? I was born in New York, but grew up mostly in the suburbs, except for four years in Los Angeles. I’d say it was a typical suburban upbringing, but I had really good English and art teachers, who were a huge influence on me. Where and what did you study? I went to Harvard, where I studied art history. I chose it because I loved the subject; I had no idea at the time that it would end up being an excellent preparation for writing about design. We were taught to LOOK at things, and look critically. What lead you to become a design writer? When I got out of school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I spent a few months at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, an influential nonprofit that no longer exists, where they were starting an architecture newspaper. I worked on the first two or three issues, which was enough to know that I wanted to write about contemporary architecture and design.

Image: The Los Angeles home of Hutton and Ruth Wilkinson, for which Hutton did both the architecture and interiors. Photo by Max Vadukul. Courtesy of Town and Country Magazine.

What would you consider your big break? I don’t think I had just one–it was a series of breaks, with one job leading fairly organically into the next. After my brief stint at the IAUS, I was looking for a full-time job, and one of the media-world people I had met there was Beverly Russell, an editor at House & Garden. Some months after we met, she told me she was going to be the editor of Interiors, a commercial design magazine with a great history, and was looking for “a young person.” At first, I did everything from answering Beverly’s phone and typing her correspondence to researching and writing stories, which was the best training I could have had. My next break came a couple of years later, when I became the interiors editor of Progressive Architecture magazine, at the time the most forward-thinking of the architecture magazines in the U.S. (Like Interiors, it no longer exists.) I wrote not just about architecture, interiors, and furniture, but about the connections between art and design (writing about Donald Judd in Marfa was an unforgettable experience), and covered a fair amount of the 1980s Los Angeles architecture scene–a very exciting time.

After seven years at P/A, I moved out of “the trades” and into the consumer magazine world, when I went to House & Garden–then in its HG incarnation. In addition to writing about architecture by people like Frank Gehry, I wrote about the apartment of the director Billy Wilder, one of my idols, as well as about the great Hollywood decorator William Haines. Getting to write about houses and people made design that much richer for me. After HG closed in 1993, I wrote for Architectural Digest for three and a half years. Then came The New York Times. Holly Brubach, who was the style editor of the Sunday magazine, approached me about the design editor’s job, and I started there in 1997. I had a lot of freedom at the Times, and got to cover people and places that might have been a bit too eccentric for the mainstream shelter magazines.

Image: Stephen Burks with his Light Frame lamp for David Design. Photo Credit Henry Leutwyler for The New York Times.

How many years were you design critic and editor at the NYT? I was at the Times for almost 17 years, but I was never a critic there. I was hired to be the design editor of The New York Times Magazine (the Sunday magazine) and the editor of the Home Design issues, which eventually became T Design. The Sunday magazine eliminated their style pages in mid-2009, so from then on I was just the design editor of T.

During your tenure do you think there was a golden time or period? Who were the key designers during that time? Seminal moments or exhibitions? I don’t think there was a golden era for me. I worked under several different editors, each of whom had a distinct vision, but they were all extremely intelligent, opinionated people who wanted to be on the cutting edge, which was great for me. I got to cover everyone from Albert Hadley to the Bouroullec Brothers. There was no “party line”; we were just interested in what was new and what was good.

What was your most exciting/interesting interview? Maybe someone you wanted to interview but it took forever?

One of my greatest assignments was to write about the house in Houston that was designed by Philip Johnson in the late 1940s for two of the great art collectors of the 20th century, John and Dominique de Menil. They lived in a Modernist glass box, but they hired Charles James to decorate it. Their sensibility was quirky and unpretentious, but their collective eye was flawless. My only regret was that they were no longer around to interview. Who was your most challenging subject? If by challenging you mean difficult, I can’t think of one, I’m afraid. How does your role at Town & Country differ from your past experiences? I’m still covering contemporary architecture and design, but I’m also writing about wonderful old houses, too, which is fascinating. Of course, great design and personal style are what unites these two currents, and I’ve always been adamant that you can’t look at contemporary design in a vacuum; you have to see it in the context of design history.

Image: London Design Festival 2014. Courtesy London Design Festival.

After chronicling so much of contemporary design history, what excites you? I love design, period, and it doesn’t matter to me whether it’s from the 18th century or 18 days ago. I love going to the Milan furniture fair or the London Design festival and seeing what young designers are up to, but I also love the period rooms at the Met or the Louvre. What are the essential elements of a good feature? You need an interesting subject, a point of view, and a great photographer.

Is there a movement or designer that you love that you would like to see return to prominence? I’ve been seeing a lot of stories about Brutalist architecture lately, some depressing, like those about the uncertain fate of Paul Rudolph’s Orange County, NY administration building. Brutalism isn’t cuddly, but it can be compelling, like the Rudolph building, or Marcel Breuer’s wonderful Whitney Museum, and it’s important to the history of architecture, whether we “like” it or not.

What city would you recommend a design lover to add to their bucket list? There are too many cities that are full of great design, and too many that I’ve yet to visit. What’s your favorite book? I don’t have a favorite book on architecture or design. Given the choice, I gravitate toward fiction, and I couldn’t possibly name just one favorite; I have dozens.

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With a special focus called Conversations, PULSE Miami Beach presents a new platform for discovery, with 25 galleries presenting two artists each, creating a dialogue between the artists’ practices. Check out the exclusive via artnet.

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