Speak to your dad day

Mel asked us to bring in an article from the media that we found interesting and that we could explain why we found it of interest. I chose this article from the guardian about Monica Pigeons contribution to architectural editorials and her avant-garde approach towards a male dominated environment.

Obituaries - Monica Pigeon 29/09/1913-17/09/2009

Monica Pidgeon, who has died aged 95, was a pivotal figure in the world of postwar modern architecture. She edited the Bloomsbury-based international journal Architectural Design (AD) from 1946 until 1975, publishing and championing the work of major modernist figures such asLe Corbusier, Josep Lluís Sert, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Richard Buckminster Fuller and Alison and Peter Smithson.

She was born Monica Lehmann in Chile, the daughter of an anglophile Frenchman and a manse-bred Scotswoman. Her father was the chairman of a copper-mining company and had promised his wife that the children should complete their education in England so, in 1929, the family set sail.

In London, Monica attended St Martins-in-the-Fields school, Dulwich, and then took a two-year course in interior design at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, where her contemporaries included Hugh Casson, Richard Seifert and a young student called Raymond Pidgeon. Monica and Raymond married in 1936, but were divorced 10 years later. They had a daughter, Annabel, and a son, Carl, who later became a distinguished physicist.

Monica joined Architectural Design in 1941

Monica joined Architectural Design in 1941 to assist the then editor, Tony Towndrow, and was promoted to editor in 1946, when Towndrow emigrated to Australia. The owners did not like the idea of a female editor and insisted that male architects' names (including Ernö Goldfinger and Denys Lasdun) were placed on the masthead as "consultants" to reassure readers and advertisers. In those early years, Monica attended the founding of the Union International des Architectes (UIA), the first postwar meetings of CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne) and was an active member of the MARS (Modern Architectural Research) Group.

In the early 1950s, Theo Crosby became AD's technical editor. While working at the magazine, Crosby curated the influential This Is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery in 1956, bringing together the work of artists and architects such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, Colin St John Wilson and the Smithsons.

Monica was a member of the organising committee of the UIA conference in London in 1961. It was there that she met the US architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller, who launched his World Design Science Decade that year. The WDSD was a far-sighted programme to control the depletion of the world's resources. AD subsequently published many articles on Fuller's work.

The architectural writer Ken Frampton was AD's technical editor from 1962 to 1964 and the historian Robin Middleton succeeded Frampton in 1964.

"star" architects, were offered a three-legged, Jacobsen chair

At the AD editorial office in Blooms- bury Way, all work and meetings were carried out around one large wooden table; visitors, including "star" architects, were offered a three-legged, Jacobsen chair; as they leant forward to show Monica their work they would frequently tip unceremoniously under the table. It was an effective way of cutting the sometimes arrogant contributors down to size.

Monica believed that if a building was no good, it was better not to publish it at all than to write a critical piece. In addition to promoting the work of Fuller, AD in the 1960s was an advocate of the theories of Team Ten, which had replaced CIAM as the voice of radical young architects and urbanists, and in particular the work of Aldo van Eyck and the Smithsons.

Another powerful influence was John Turner, whom Monica met when revisiting South America in 1962. He showed her the barriadas – shanty towns built by the homeless. This convinced Monica that if public housing was ever to blossom its future occupants must be involved in the design process.

her salient characteristics were warmth and a passion for architecture

Though Monica could frighten strong men and reduce typists to tears, her salient characteristics were warmth and a passion for architecture. She built up a substantial network of international contributors and could find a warm welcome in any major city in the world.

The economic and oil crisis in the early 1970s destroyed advertising revenue and AD's owner, Standard Catalogue Company, threatened to close the magazine. Monica convinced them to keep it running on a "book" economy, covering all costs from copy sales. Costs were cut to the bone and AD became more like the alternative magazinesblossoming at the time – cheap web printing and hand-pasted lithography, in stark contrast to earlier years. With Peter Murray as technical editor, its focus moved away from buildings to alternative energy and lifestyles, studying many issues that surfaced in the green movement 30 years later.

Survival was tough and by 1975 Monica had had enough. She finally accepted an invitation from the then president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Eric Lyons, to edit the RIBA journal and AD was sold.

She continued to add to the recordings until her late 80s

While working at the RIBA she came across a recording that gave her an idea for her "retirement". On her extensive travels, she had noticed that people longed to meet the personalities behind current thinking in architecture. She started Pidgeon Audio Visual (PAV) with the Radio 3 producer Leonie Cohn and they published slides and tapes of architects and designers talking about their work. When Monica retired in 1979, PAV was launched at the RIBA with speeches by the Smithsons and Sir John Summerson, whose voices had been recorded for posterity. She continued to add to the recordings until her late 80s.

In 2006 work started on the digitisation of the Pidgeon archive, which can now be accessed at www.pidgeondigital.com. The list of contributors includes Serge Chermayeff, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehry, Cesar Pelli, Conrad Wachsman, Norman Foster, Cedric Price, Renzo Piano, Will Alsop and hundreds of others.

Monica was made an honorary fellow of the RIBA in 1970, of the Architectural Association in 1979, and of the American Institute of Architects, for her work on PAV, in 1987.

Ideas Generation

We have been given 3 words Father, Communication and Difficult. We are required to think of as many words as possible associated with this word that we can think of. Here are my results;

We have now been asked by Mel to produce

scamps of ideas we have for a "Speak to your

dad day Nov 30th 2009." Here are my ideas;

The intention is to develop these ideas further once it becomes clear which one are relevant and work. My most appropriate in the pictures above this text. I intend on uising photography to compliment the simple and impacting text. I have been looking for places that seem isolated and lonely here is an example.

Parks can be lonely places when shown from

A certain perspective this is what i have intended

to visualize in these black and white images.

Before and After

Find something that needs cleaning take a photo of it on white paper. Clean it perfectly take a second photo of it on white paper present the two photos side by side. I chose to use the grass collection box on the back of my lawn mower for the purpose of this exercise. I used a pressure hose to clean the grass basket from my lawn mower. I dont think that the grass box was this clean when i bought it.

A Designer of my choice.

Jonathan Ive - Contemporary designer.

Jonathan Paul Ive, CBE is a British designer and the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple. He is internationally renowned as the principal designer of the iMac, and all of the aluminum and titanium Apple products.

Jonathan was born in Chingford, Essex in February 1967. He was raised by his teacher father and attended Chingford Foundation School. He then studied Industrial Design at Northumbria University

Probably most famous contemporary designer in recent times

Probably the most famous contemporary designer in recent times. Jonathan Ive, is a product designer, rather than a graphic designer, but you cannot exclude the work of such an influential creative, from this area..

After a short time at the London design agency Tangerine, he moved to the United States in 1992 to pursue his career at Apple. He gained his current job title upon the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, and since then has headed the Industrial Design team responsible for most of the company's significant hardware products.

The candy colour on the first iMac model is called Bondi Blue, a reference to the color of the water at Sydney's Bondi Beach.

The Bondi blue iMac was replaced with five fruit colours in Blueberry, Grape, Tangerine, Lime, and Strawberry. Two of these, Tangerine and Blueberry, became the first colours for the iBook. Blueberry was also the colour for the Blue and White Power Mac G3 and its displays.

2001 was a very important time as Apples design direction lead by Ives switched away from its plastic translucent multi colour, to a more minimalist approach with the motif appearing in industrial grade metal, Titanium and Aluminum. The minimalist consumer design debuted with the ibook G3, and featured glossy white colouring and opaque finishes. Gone were the soft bulging shapes as the move towards streamlined minimalism was gathering momentum.

The designs appear to have been heavily influenced by German industrial designer Dieter Rams.

The designs appear to have been heavily influenced by German industrial designer Dieter Rams. with a clear example being the iPhone calculator application, which appears to have been directly influenced by Dieter Rams' 1978 Braun Control ET44 calculator.

The iPod continued the look of the consumer line, featuring an opaque, white front. The success and wide embrace of Apple's iPod appeared to have had an effect on Ive and his design team, and some noted the striking similarity of the iPod's design with the subsequent iMac G5 and Mac Mini designs. Apple even promoted the release of the iMac G5 as coming "from the creators of iPod," and, in the accompanying promotional photographs, both products were shown next to each other in profile, highlighting the similarities in their design.. The more recent designs have continued this trend toward a simple rounded-rectangle styling.

The most recent designs move away from white plastics, replacing them with glass and aluminum. This new design phase showed Apple's strive towards extreme minimalism, its aluminum products possess cleaner,

yet softer and more tapered edges than those of their predecessors, and remove anything that does not need to be there. I find that this style is linked to the Swiss style of graphic design that was developed between 1920-1965.

The Daily Telegraph rated him as the most influential Briton in America

Apples most recent designs are milled out of one piece of aluminum, this reduces size, number of parts required and rigidity although i am not convinced about the size issue as my Macbook Pro is huge.

The Sunday Times named Ive as one of Britain's most influential expatriates on 27 November 2005. "Ive may not be the richest or the most senior figure on the list, but he has certainly been one of the most influential... The man who designed the iPod and many more of Apple's most iconic products has shaken up both the music and the electronics industry." Ive was number three on a list of 25.

Ive was also listed in the 2006 New Years Honours List list, receiving a CBE, for services to the design industry. The British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II was revealed as being an iPod owner in June 2005.

It has been suggested that when Steve Jobs steps down that Ives would be a popular candidate for the position of CEO at Apple.

Ives received the 2007 National Design Award in the product design category for his work on the iphone. The Daily Telegraph rated him as the most influential Briton in America in January 2008. In May 2009, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the Rhode Island school of Design. He is married to his wife Heather and lives in San Francisco with their twin sons.

Characteristics of Postmodernism

As part of this contemporary study i am required to research the double coding, revivalism, radical eclecticism, pastiche and parody associated with Postmodernism. We have been asked to find an artist from our path way that we can relate their work to these various characteristics.

For this exercise i have choosen the artist Milton Glazer for reasons i will define. Here are some examples of his work that i have researched.

milton glaser

I Heart Iraq

While the New York Times generally doesn’t publish pictures of U.S. casualties in its own reporting, it can publish them when the photos themselves are the story (particularly on a Saturday.) The commander of the U.S. Marines in Iraq is seeking to bar photographer Zoriah Miller from all U.S. military facilities around the world for publishing photos on his web site of U.S. Marines (oh, and Iraqi civilians) killed in a June 26, 2008 suicide attack in Garma, Iraq. “Disembedding” journalists and otherwise “managing” them for publishing unfavorable coverage is nothing new. The Committee to Protect Journalists has chronicled ongoing harassment and deaths of journalists in Iraq and BAGnewsNotes has done an excellent job of unpacking the photographs that do make it out.

Looking into Miller’s own portfolio site this image caught my attention:

It has a Banksy-like irony to it

It has a Banksy-like irony to it: juxtaposing tools of authoritarian force with the values they are rhetorically professed to deliver — and with a faint whiff of commercialism. The vehicle above is a Iraqi Soviet-model MT-LB multi-purpose armored personnel carrier, most likely tagged, I suspect, by a U.S. soldier. But paint that slogan on an U.S. Abrams, and it makes a good stencil idea. ref (www.backspace.com)

Milton Glazer was born 26.6.1929 in new york.
he studied (1948–51)at the cooper union art school and
(1952–53), as a fulbright scholar, attended the academy of
fine arts, bologna, italy under giorgio morandi.

from 1954 to 1974 glaser was the founder and president
of the ‘push pin’ studio (with semour chwast, reynold ruffins
and edward sorel) in new york and from 1955 to 1974 the editor
and co-art director of the ‘push pin graphic’ magazine.
in an era dominated by swiss rationalism, this eclectic

and eccentric style of the passé past
while it introduced a distinctly contemporary design vocabulary,
with a wide range of work that included record sleeves, books,
posters, logos, font design and magazine formats.

while it introduced a distinctly contemporary design vocabulary

in 1968, glaser and clay felker founded ‘new york magazine’.
glaser was president and design director until 1977
(as well as its ‘underground gourmet’ - writing about good,
cheap restaurants in N Y). publication design had become
a big interest.

since founding milton glaser, inc. in 1974, milton glaser, inc.,
the work produced at his manhattan studio has encompassed
a wide range of design disciplines - print graphics:
identity programs for corporate and institutional marketing purposes,
logos (among them the ‘I love new york’ logo for the new york state
department of commerce, that became the most frequently
imitated logo design in human history).

I love new york’ logo for the new york state
department of commerce

he has designed and illustrated more than 300 posters
(remember his bob dylan poster for CBS records?);
environmental and interior design: exhibitions, interiors and
exteriors of restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels,
and other retail and commercial environments.
from 1975 to 1977 milton glaser was the design director of
‘village voice’ magazine.

in 1983 he founded the company WBMG, a studio dedicated to
magazine and newspaper design work, with walter bernard
(former art director of ‘time’). since its inception, they have
designed more than 50 magazines, newspapers and periodicals
around the world : among them ‘la vanguardia’ in barcelona,
‘o globo’ in rio de janeiro, l’espresso in rome ‘the washington post’,
‘money’, the french ‘the nation’, ‘paris match’, ‘l´express’, ‘esquire’,
‘jardin des modes’, and ‘business tokyo’ in japan.

from the start of his career, milton glaser has been an active
member of both the design and education communities:
he taught design at the school of visual arts in new york
in one of america’s most respected programs.

milton glaser has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the
centre georges pompidou, paris; the lincoln center gallery, new york;
the houghton gallery at the cooper union, new york;
the AIGA gallery in new york; the philadelphia museum of art,...
his work is included in the permanent collections of many
international art museums. smithsonian's cooper-hewitt
national design museum has chosen milton glaser to receive the
2004 national design award. ref (www.designboom.com)

Franz Ferdinand music band

I have a particular interest in the Russian avant-garde

and constructivision. This cover was a good example of a rivival

of its style using the face of lilya brick.

Alexandra Rodchenkos 1924 original.

The name of the band was originally inspired by a racehorse called Archduke Ferdinand. After seeing the horse win the Northumberland Plate in 2001, the band began to discuss Archduke Franz Ferdinand and thought it would be a good band name because of the alliteration of the name and the implications of the Archduke's death (his assassination was a significant factor in the lead up to World War I).

"Mainly we just liked the way it sounded," says Bob. "We liked the alliteration." "He was an incredible figure as well," continues Alex. "His life, or at least the ending of it, was the catalyst for the complete transformation of the world ... he was a pivot for history. But I don't want to over-intellectualize the name thing. Basically a name should just sound good ... like music." Paul has a more cynical notion. "I like the idea that, if we become popular, maybe the words Franz Ferdinand will make people think of the band instead of the historical figure."

The song "Take Me Out", on the band's first album, was the second single to be released by the band. The single release of "Take Me Out" came with the B-side, "All for You Sophia", based on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, whose name was Sophie, not Sophia. The band chose the name Sophia rather than Sophie to give the song a better ring. The song mentions the assassin Gavrilo Princip, the Black Hand, the location of the Apple Quay and "Urban" (Franz Urban), the name often mistakenly given to Leopold Lojka, the driver of the car.

In addition to this, in 2004 the band played a number of "secret" gigs under the pseudonym "The Black Hands", alluding to the secret society that was held responsible for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

The cover to "You Could have had it so much better"

The band is notable for its use of Russian avant-garde imagery in album and single covers. Examples include: "You Could Have It So Much Better", which references a 1924 portrait of Lilya Brik by Alexander Rodchenko; "Take Me Out", which references One-Sixth Part of the World, also by Alexander Rodchenko; "This Fire" which references Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge by El Lissitzky; and "Michael", with single art based on A Proun by Lissitzky. The song "Love and Destroy" was inspired by the scene of disorder made by Margarita, a character of Michael Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", in the apartment of the literature critic Latunzky.

Also, in "Outsiders", the lyrics "In seventeen years will you still be Camille, Lee Miller, Gala or whatever" are a reference to the lovers of the artists Auguste Rodin, Man Ray and Salvador Dalí.

Minimalism

A twentieth century art movement and style stressing the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colours, values, shapes, lines and textures. No attempt is made to represent or symbolize any other object or experience. It is sometimes called ABC art, minimal art, reductivism, and rejective art.

Precursors to Minimalism include the Russian Suprematists, such as Kasimir Malevich (Russian, 1878-1935).

Penny Slinger- I Hear What You Say

Penny Slinger first discovered her artistic identity in Surrealism. She graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 1969 with a First Class Honors degree in Fine Art. She wrote her thesis on the work of Surrealist artist Max Ernst, in particular his surreal collages of engravings, namely ‘La Femme Sans Tete’ and ‘Une Semaine de Bonte’. She was fascinated by the seamless creation of mythological anthropomorphic figures in urban settings where the forces of nature disrupted the status quo.

The work which composed Penny’s graduation exhibit at Chelsea set the trend for her art of the next several years. Although her desire to use many different media had been a challenge to the different departments of the College, her final exhibit was heralded as a ‘celebration’. Life casts of herself and her models were featured as sculpture, but also broke through from her canvases provocatively and defiantly. She blended painting with printmaking and photography, assemblage and construction with life casts and multi media. Penny wanted to use the tools of surrealism to probe the feminine psyche. To this end her theme was often one of self examination and reflection, and she often used herself as her own model. She hand bound a copy of her first book of photographic collage‘50% The Visible Woman’ as part of her diploma exhibit.

The fruits of her surrealist period were shown in a series of exhibitions and in the publication of books of photographic collage. During this period she also worked in theatre and in film, being part of the all-woman theatre group ‘Holocaust’. She performed in and art directed their film ‘The Other Side of the Underneath’.

Penny’s blend of innovation and provocation made quite a stir on the London art scene in the 1970s. The support of such distinguished figures as Sir Roland Penrose, then head of the Institute of Contemporary Art and her patron during these years, made her art difficult to dismiss, even for those it disturbed.

Penny Slinger is a surrealist artist and author who has produced fine art in many media including paintings, drawings, collage, installations,etc. From 1980 to 1994, she lived in the Carribbean and was deeply influenced by and influenced the local culture... ancient and modern. She did extensive work on paintings of the extinct Arawak people- the original inhabitants of the Caribbean.www.arawakart.com