MATTHEW CARTER, a type designer and the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, was recently approached in the street near his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A woman greeted him by name. “Have we met?” Mr Carter asked. No, she said, her daughter had pointed him out when they were driving down the street a few days before. “Is your daughter a graphic designer?” he inquired. “She’s in sixth grade,” came the reply.
Mr Carter sits near the pinnacle of an elite profession. No more than several thousand type designers ply the trade worldwide, only a few hundred earn their keep by it, and only several dozens–most of them dead–have their names on the lips of discerning aficionados. Then, there is Mr Carter. He has never sought recognition, but it found him, and his underappreciated craft, in part thanks to a “New Yorker” profile in 2005. Now, even schoolchildren (albeit discerning ones) seem to know who he is and what he does. However, the reason is probably not so much the beauty and utility of his faces, both of which are almost universally acknowledged. Rather, it is Georgia and Verdana. Mr Carter conjured up both fonts in the 1990s for Microsoft, which released them with its Internet Explorer in the late 1990s and bundled them into Windows, before disseminating them as a free download.
Category: Art
Primary Flight
Primary Flight is Miami’s original open air museum and street level mural installation that takes place annually throughout the Wynwood Arts District and the Miami Design District. Primary Flight is arguably the world’s largest event of its kind, having featured over 250 world class artists from around the globe since its inception, the majority of whom travel to Miami during Art Basel. Artists from all walks of contemporary art headline our annual event, collaborating on high profile walls throughout Miami’s urban landscape. Maps outlining the installation are circulated, providing patrons with an opportunity to view the works in progress.
On Sugar Plums
The world of dance is very much about the unrelenting and occasionally cruel quest for perfection. I’ve worked with many dancers, and have made what I naively thought to be a worthwhile or even beautiful photograph, only to have the perfectionist inside the dancer rise up and shred it. “Ooh, no. You can’t use that, look at the position of my ring finger on my left hand!” I am only being midly facetious here. Ballet demands perfection, which of course is unattainable. Any dancer who sticks with it has heard the call to be perfect, in their head, and perhaps in their dreams. I would speculate many a little girl, as they take their first stumbles in toe shoes, has drifted to sleep with visions of being lifted into the lights before adoring thousands, and then drowning delightfully in a sea of tossed roses from a rapturously applauding audience.
More often, though, the call to perfection is more of a bark, harsh and unforgiving, from a dance master or mistress, or a choreographer, who, understandably driven by their own sense of discipline and vision, pushes the dancer to that point where the laws of gravity simply fall away. As Balanchine once said, “Dance is music made visible.” That’s hard to do. I was blessed to work briefly for ABT and made this picture of the magnificent Marcelo Gomes and Julie Kent, who together and apart, are the epitome of grace and elegant lines. As they took this position, I was stupefied at the exacting nature of the choreographer, and the giving nature of the dancers, striving to bend their bodies to his will.
Bond deal puts San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum on brink
The great and the good who sit on the board of San Francisco’s prestigious Asian Art Museum are grappling with problems that run deeper than reviving recession-hit visitor numbers or repairing a dented endowment fund.
A financial derivative gone bad is threatening to become the last straw that tips the museum into bankruptcy – unless a stand-off involving the city and two prominent US financial institutions can be resolved within the next two weeks.
The museum’s problems have touched off a war of words in recent days. Dennis Herrera, San Francisco’s city attorney, fired off letters last week to JPMorgan Chase and bond insurer MBIA, accusing them of taking millions of dollars in fees from the city while washing their hands of the problems to which they have contributed.
“The city’s involvement is not just for the city attorney to write a letter and say it’s everyone else’s problem,” retorted Mitchell Sonkin, chief portfolio officer at MBIA. The city itself had short-changed the museum in recent years, forcing it to draw more heavily on its endowment, and should take part in a rescue.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Disney Animation is closing the book on fairy tales
Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller,
Once upon a time, there was a studio in Burbank that spun classic fairy tales into silver-screen gold.
But now the curtain is falling on “princess movies,” which have been a part of Disney Animation’s heritage since the 1937 debut of its first feature film, “Snow White.” The studio’s Wednesday release of “Tangled,” a contemporary retelling of the Rapunzel story, will be the last fairy tale produced by Disney’s animation group for the foreseeable future.
“Films and genres do run a course,” said Pixar Animation Studios chief Ed Catmull, who along with director John Lasseter oversees Disney Animation. “They may come back later because someone has a fresh take on it … but we don’t have any other musicals or fairy tales lined up.” Indeed, Catmull and Lasseter killed two other fairy tale movies that had been in development, “The Snow Queen” and “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
To appreciate what a sea change this is for the company, consider that a fairy tale castle is a landmark at Disney theme parks around the world and is embedded in the Walt Disney Pictures logo. Fairy tale characters from Disney’s movies populate the parks, drive sales of merchandise and serve as the inspiration for Broadway musicals.
Alas, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Jasmine and the other Disney royals were all born in the 20th century. Now, different kinds of Disney characters are elbowing their way into the megaplexes and toy aisles, including Pixar’s “Toy Story” buddies Buzz Lightyear and Woody, Capt. Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of the Caribbean” and a platoon of superheroes from the recent acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.
Stanley Kubrick Fotografo 1945-1950, Venice
When I was in Venice a couple of weeks ago I caught the Stanley Kubrick Fotografo 1945-1950 show at the Istituto Veneto di Science.
Kubrick started his career, not with moving images but with stills
He started shooting when he was just 17 years old for ‘Look’ magazine
It is an interesting exhibition for many reasons, with some very beautiful images
Even in his very early work you can see the visual language of his great movies
You get to see the very ‘seeds’ of his work, they are movies in still form
With a few notable exceptions, you don’t see photojournalism ‘per se’ at work.
What you do see is beautifully directed still images and in my opinion is all the more interesting for that.
Carl Bloch Paintings Panorama
The Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art in Utah US opens on November 12 an exhibition with paintings by the 19th century Danish painter Carl Heinrich Bloch. The exhibition will run until May 7
Carl Bloch became famous as religous painter after he was commisioned to paint 23 new paintings from the bible in the Kings Oratory (Kongens Bedekammer) at Frederiksborg Castle. The original paintings had been destroyed in the big fire in1859 which destroyed large areas of the castle.
I was commissioned by the Brigham Young museum to photograph panoramas from all the Danish and Swedish churches where Carl Bloch’s altar paintings are found.
Some of these original paintings have been lend to the exhibition in US.
However the most important panorama was the panorama from the Kings Oratory. These paintings are his main religous work which his church altar paintings are based on.
Lunch with Phoebe Philo
Phoebe Philo, the 37-year-old creative director of Céline, is surprisingly frail for someone who a year ago accomplished the Herculean feat of turning the river of trend and washing fashion’s Augean stables clean of decorative bling. A 2010 nominee as British Designer of the Year, she was also behind one of the most heralded collections at last week’s women’s wear shows in Paris.
Medium height, with wispy brown hair and prominent cheekbones, her thin frame swamped by a black leather jacket and a long, man’s shirt over slouchy black trousers, she can seem almost fragile. On the other hand, she has chosen St John, a restaurant in Clerkenwell, London, known for its “nose to tail” menu of offal and other meaty innards, so clearly she has a carnivorous, protein-packing side.
“Well, it’s run by a friend,” she says when she arrives in the stripped-down white space and sits at the paper-covered table. “And it has a straightforwardness that I quite like. It’s very to-the-point.”
To wit: there are “peas in the pod” on the menu. Literally. Undressed, unshelled, peas in the pod, like the kind you get in the market. Or, as Philo says, like the kind that might have “come right from the garden”. She orders some of those with fresh lemonade – the kind they make in America, with just lemon juice, water, and sugar – plus a green salad, some cured mackerel and a roast beef sandwich, because she “rather fancies some white bread”. I opt for lemonade, some cauliflower and lentils, a green salad and a cheese plate. Philo looks at me appraisingly.
The Rural South
For one weekend every year since 2003, tiny Concord, Georgia, population 336, becomes a photography mecca. “Slow Exposures” lures photographers, curators, and editors to look at pictures from the South, to discuss and debate them, and to exchange experiences, all thanks to the wonderful Chris Curry and Nancy McCrary, with the help of a staff of cheerful volunteers. Southern conviviality and hospitality create an ambiance that is most of all creative and communicative.
Chris and Nancy created the festival as a photographic center representing the rural South. It is a non-profit organization, with proceeds going toward the preservation and restoration of historic buildings and land in Pike County, and attracts devotees and newcomers for a full slate of photographic events: a juried photography show, an all-day portfolio review, and exhibitions, all in beautifully restored local buildings. This year, John Bennette, a curator, collector, and champion of artists, conceived the wonderful exhibition “Southern Memories: Part I” for the festival, on view in the restored Whiskey Bonding Bar, in Molena. The show is John’s subjective vision of the South, shaped by his memories—he grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and now lives in New York. Asking himself what is important in the South, he came up with four categories: the land, God, school, and Southern history; he believes that history—i.e., the Civil War—still drives Southern culture today. His show avoids the extremes of rich and poor and stays away from clichés. Many of the artists he included were discovered in earlier “Slow Exposure” shows, and were surprises to me.