Daniel Arsham’s work at this year’s Armory Art Fair caught my eye. In his mid 20s this artist, based in New York, creates works that explore the effects of nature on the built environment. The new realities these create are novel and futuristic. Where once the built environment was encroaching on the natural world Arsham’s works show a reversal of this with the natural world ‘biting back’. His images play with this by way of nature reclaiming monumental architecture; birds biting nibbles in white walls; humans landing in the ceilings of white cubed rooms; a bow that has been made by drawing the surface of two walls at a corner.

Have we lost reality? Have we lost nature? And in so doing where does wisdom sit? Wisdom in the shape of a large snowy owl, hovering over the desolation and perhaps seeking to return simplicity and reality to what is a world of concocted human ideals.

Arsham’s work will be showing in a solo exhibition, opening at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris on 20th March, 2010.

It’s heartwarming to see such a public space, a stately place, being utilised in such a relaxed manner. In some ways I found the forecourt behaving in a very un-Parisian way. Somehow it was being allowed to ‘relax’ and was alarmingly unaware of itself, even daring to be ‘low at heel’. The carousel was covered in shambley rope netting. There were sections of scaffolding piled around. There were children learning to ice-skate.

Who exactly is responsible for this uncharacteristic languor I don’t know, but it certainly was about égalité. Even so this could never be completely the case with architecture like that looking on.

MoMA’s homage to the animator and film-maker is literally jam-packed with all manner of scraps and scribbles of character ideas. In fact it’s the jammed nature of the displays that is the only detraction here from a large body of drawings and a unique career. The Times have a good write-up. It’s a testament to the value of such scribbles on such scraps that they have the potential to grow into large productions that reach millions. The quality of communicating characterisation is raw and direct as is the humor within characters. The distortion of bodies, eyeballs falling out, large appendages and sharp teeth proliferate and elicit emotion.

Is it art or is it design? MoMA does cross this divide in it’s alternate collections showing design icons of the modern era along side the work of painters, sculptors and photographers. In some ways it shouldn’t be a surprise that this work is included within the mix. If any criticism can be drawn it would be for the curation, which failed to fully capture the profound conceptual ideas Burton plays with in his work, rather than just make it a circus amusement that felt like it was aimed at a Disney audience.

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image ©RJ 

Growing up in an environment where beauty in it’s natural form was everywhere this sort of concrete-jungle-grime is not something I was accustomed to on first arrival. I was used to the fairly clean city of Sydney, where up the street were beaches of turquoise ocean with golden sand. There the salty air streamed over native vegetation, up to the clean terracotta tiles of hilly street pavements, to whitewashed fish and chips shops and cafes. Around one’s corner were eucalyptus bush-lands filled with laughing kookaburras who presided over the rolling fields of green and grassy neighborhood parks. Ok, Bondi had it’s needle stories, but somehow it was all pretty clean, and that for a major inner city beach.

However it perhaps is a testament to some inherent goodness in the human spirit that amongst it’s grime we long for connection and seek for the best in things. I find myself finding beauty in the grime. I confess even the dark grey snow on sidewalks has become aesthetically curious to me. I realise those little carbuncles are filled with the unthinkable; microbes and chemicals. However it is fascinating to see the different coloured greys as they melt into white snow and crystallise into little black rocks. It is interesting to see the shapes and tones left by a vacant billboard space in the subway, or the different shades of paper and glue that leave curious abstract patterns on the wall. There is beauty in the imperfection of it all.

Perhaps I have winter-madness, or I’m getting that city-syndrome where one finds oneself bound to reach to the out-doors, whatever shape it comes in. Maybe not. Can there be beauty in these things or should we label it some alternate, but appreciative word?

London milliner Philip Treacy speaks briefly about his collaborations with McQueen. The working relationship between the two was long-standing. The number of headpieces was vast in every collection, and like McQueen’s inspirations they were many and varied in theme. It is interesting to look back and see just how much McQueen drew on these collaborations, but also how skillfully he orchestrated their inclusion, and directed the theatrical productions.

Here’s a Lace manufacturer’s sample book, one of many in the vaults. Some of their vast collection is also online here.

His collections were usually controversial, but that term goes nowhere to describing the immense skill and intellect behind a man who is responsible for the consistent and unyielding elevation of his fashion into the realm of art. He influenced a generation, and not just in his homeland of Britain, but in the minds of designers and those who followed his work from the far reaches of the world.

He will be greatly missed, and has left a magnificent legacy. His final collection has an ironic bitter-sweet and eerily poignant emphasis; the beauty of the butterfly. images from style.com. Below is a clip of his Paris fall 2006 collection with Kate Moss in hologram.

To say that Irma Boom [irmaboom.nl] is known for her book design would be perhaps an understatement. Her work has been acclaimed as some of the most beautiful book design ever created; specifically the work ‘Weaving as Metaphor’ which expounds on the creations of weaving artist Sheila Hicks. There is a worthy discussion of the book on bookofjoe.com and book-by-its-cover.com.

The light-boxes touch on an interesting dialogue between art and literature and the streaming of the two into a techno-cratic sustainability-conscious and commercially viable climate. Robert Norton’s dreamlike and synthesized harmonies twinkle in the midst of it all.

To mythologize this would be to call it a prototype for a super-’Kindle’ version of the the art world; a designer’s workmanship supplying up to the minute data that perveys the artist’s work, in some semblance of absorbable matter, immediately to your eyes? Is this the contemporary version of Impressionist Art? Are contemporary commercial designers today’s version of Impressionists?

Here’s a bit more from Louise Campbell herself on inspiration, the work of her studio, and her work for Royal Copenhagen. I love her studio’s 3 firm rules: Always start from scratch; be sure there’s a good reason for every decision made; and dare to be different!