(Aren’t gifts always free?)

This is by no means a stab at digital technology, because I definitely benefit from it way too much to even try to imagine daily life without a computer.

BUT (and this is a big “but”), I never, ever lose sight of the fact that all the work that inspires me most has been created manually. So it is hardly a coincidence that my own work is manual (click here to see how I channel my own manual OCD-impulses), and that I embrace imperfection in my own work and in that of others.
Sure, it was cute-slash-interesting to learn that David Hockney is embracing the wonders of the Adobe Creative Suite (see NYT 10-18-2008), but the man is a wise and experienced artist, and can do nothing wrong at this point. And I completely understand how convenient it all is, and how it can speed up the sketching phase, or a lay-out, and I know first hand how using photoshop can prevent wasting days of trying stuff by hand. And that’s great…

But having said all that, there is nothing like the human touch, revealing the human mind at work. Would you be able to stare at, and meditate on a small Ellsworth Kelly or a Myron Stout for an hour if it had been made in photoshop and was spit out by a printer? No? Exactly, I didn’t think so. When the hand executes a decision that was wordlessly made by the creative brain, magic can happen. When it is executed by a computer program, not so much.

So consider this my manifesto for 2010: More silk screens made by hand, photo shoots with laughably low production values (if any), face to face interviews, more glue, exacto knifes, torn paper, 50 collages gone wrong that need to be tossed, in order to have 3 good ones.

An on that note, made by hand, and pure as freshly fallen January snow, please find examples of what I’m talking about:

A 1957 plaster showcase of Clarendon, by Elaine Lustig, (yes, I’m beginning to sound like one of those Lustig-fanatics I wrote about here). I could look at this for hours, which probably reveals too much about A) my mental health and B) my productivity level.

A 1959 paper cut piece by Ernst Röttger, all you’re looking at is an idea, oh excuse me, I mean “concept”, a piece of white paper and the work of two hands and an exacto knife.

And finally, two 1965 pieces by Giovanni Pintori, the genius behind Olivetti’s identity. I love how the curve to the left on the J brings it a little too close to the I too fast. That is the kind of imperfection that gets me off. And if you can achieve that on the computer, congratulations!

Some morning, a while ago, I was walking my dog and minding my own business in the West Village. It was garbage day. When my dog stopped me in my tracks, because something urgently needed sniffing at, I noticed a neat pile of old magazines, with a string around it, present-style. And a gift it was; it turned out to be a pile of L’oeil magazines from 1959-1960, in great condition.
I couldn’t get over the beauty: the uncoated paper, the sophisticated covers, the full color lithos inside, the ads for Balmain (him again), Knoll, and the Daniel Cordier Gallery on the back covers, every font, every subject…flawless.

Flash forward to recently: I was once again getting lost in a serious book-vortex in my partner’s vast library of highly covetable and rare books on design, interiors and art—which, by the way, I spend way too much time doing, but how can one resist?— Anyway, I noticed that two books of his that I love, European Decoration and The Best In European Decoration (1963), both published by Reynal & Co., turned out to be collections of interiors featured in L’oeil.
Each project in the books gets its own type treatment (don’t you love it when designers felt free to be all non-commercial and weird in their approach?), and the European interiors range from super pop villas to medieval castles. Very much like World of Interiors is doing so nicely today.

The takeway of this story: if you’re a font dork and a 1960’s interiors nerd, and you can get your hands on either the magazine or the books, buy them.

In what feels like 600 years ago, but really was the early 00’s, Simon Doonan virtually gave me carte blanche to create window- and in-store installations at the Beverly Hills location of Barneys New York.
This was after I followed in the amazing footsteps of Jean Philippe Delhomme and Liselotte Watkins (Hi Liselotte!), and had done several newsprint ad campaigns for Barneys, collateral for the cosmetics department, and their first ever website illustrations. The weirdest thing I ever did for Barneys New York was create a custom gift voucher for Herb Ritts’ mom, worth an amount I will not disclose.

Anyway, for the window I used old dress forms and pieces from a beautiful Yohji Yamamoto collection of burlap and linen.
I crammed the window with big canvases and framed works on paper (by moi, duh), and extended the situation directly on the glass.
Because there’s nothing like a garish splash of color to attract the attention of drivers at night (at that location you don’t really consider pedestrian window shoppers), I went for a bright green and lilac combo. Now I’d probably go for more of a Wonder Bread palette, but that may just be a current fixation.

The images leave a lot to be desired, but you get the idea…

For the men’s floor I created an installation meant to look like art gallery visitors looking at floating framed works on paper. Additionally I suspended large unframed works on paper along a length of 15 or 20 feet, with more mannequin gallery people contemplating the work. This “room divider” separated the Helmut Lang area from the Jean Paul Gaultier section. Or the Costume Nationale mini-boutique from the Margiela racks. Or something from something. My memory fails me here, but again, you get the idea. Sadly no images of that part.

There are some serious Elaine Lustig Cohen freaks out there, who try to collect every Meridian cover she did. Which I won’t do, but I totally understand the inclination. Lustig Cohen (b. 1927) designed truly beautiful covers for the house, whose publisher, Arthur A. Cohen, she married in the fifties.

I won’t get in to any bio details, because Ellen Lupton wrote a great profile, which you can read here. (Though Lupton does state something I strongly have to disagree with: she says that Lustig’s covers “bring to mind the recent work of Chip Kidd”. I have yet to see anything by Chip Kidd that I like, and his overwrought 90’s style is the last thing I think of when I look at Lustig’s joyful minimalism.)
More delicious Lustig-ness:

I may not have any of the above, but I do have “Sign Language” from 1961. This hardcover about signage “for buildings and landscape”, was designed inside and out by Lustig, and it is so nice to see her modernist mind at work in the interior lay-outs.
I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

Even though this style has had some moments over the last decade, and probably needs slip into an induced coma before it gets spoiled forever, I couldn’t resist this one. It’s an ad for a boutique in Century City, by Frazier/Hauge & Associates, 1967.

The copy (in all caps) is kind of hilarious:
THERE IS A SPECIAL KIND OF FEMALE…SHE IS A CONSTANT CHANGE…FROM PUSSY CAT TO PANTHER…SHE IS ALWAYS NOTICED BECAUSE OF HER OWN SPECIAL KIND OF CHIC…ALWAYS A FEW STEPS AHEAD OF HER CONTEMPORARIES…SHE IS DARING, SUPER AND WONDERFUL…SHE HAS FASHION ARROGANCE…SHE KNOCKS ABOUT IN RUDI GERNREICH, ANNE KLEIN, GEIST & GEIST…THE “WHO’S WHO” OF AVANT-GARDE FASHIONS…COUNTRY CLUB FASHIONS IS HER STORE.

I was doing some research on monochromatic still life images (don’t ask) and came across this GT&E campaign from better looking times, AKA the early 60’s. The copy almost whispers, and the photography doesn’t exactly yell at you either. In other words, it’s a campaign designed for adults. What a novel concept that would be today.

I threw in an ad for Bell and one for AT&T from the same period, both equally smart.

This may actually be my favorite: even though it’s a cat-lady. Or maybe because it is a cat-lady.

1964 +
Jane Fonda +
Alain Delon +
costumes by Balmain +
jazz score by Lalo Schifrin=
genius/authentic/must-see

René Clément’s Les Félins (after Joy House by American writer Day Keene) came to mind after I watched Tom Ford’s A Single Man.

Of course Ford’s movie looks great; he knows about taste (ads notwithstanding), and one wouldn’t expect anything less. Interiors straight out of Slim Aarons and Horst photos; I can just picture the mood boards. Set Decorator Amy Wells, of Mad Men, did a beautiful job: droolworthy studio pottery, decorative art and furniture just so. And of course nice costumes by Arianne Philips. But besides the visuals, and a great performance by, and character for Julianne Moore, A Single Man, alas, is not the cat’s meow.

Les Félins, however, is. If you want to see rich, editorial-worthy interiors, draped with Giacomettis and floor-to-ceiling Picassos, in a secluded Riviera mansion, inhabited by the most beautiful girl on Earth, scheming dark plots wearing nothing but Balmain, then do yourself a favor and get it.

As if just watching the chemistry between a young Jane Fonda and Alain Delon isn’t enough to make any movie from the 60’s work, all the elements of the Les Félins creative team add up to more than just a sum of the parts.
The score by Lalo Schifrin (Mission Impossible, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Bullit, etc) is jazzy, cocktaily and sounds like pure sixties.
Production Designer Jean Andre also did Et Dieu Creé La Femme, but more importantly, he designed Roger Vadim’s surreal 1968 “Metzengerstein” segment in Histoires Extraordinaires (see the Jane Fonda connection?), a movie so great and weird it’s worth its own post some day.
Balmain did tons of movie costumes throughout the 50’s and 60’s, but seeing Fonda all dressed up with nowhere to go in his pleated chiffon cocktail dress, is something else.

The story by Keene is a sexy thriller with twists and turns, in which every character has ulterior motives and feigns trust to everyone else in their claustrophobic, gorgeous little world. So why am I comparing A Single Man with Les Félins?
Because while Ford tries to recreate the glamour of the early 60’s, I couldn’t help feeling like I was looking at an expensive editorial set for W. Despite gathering the best talent around him, it’s not…I don’t know…real. Maybe also because the editing is pretentious. . Les Félins can’t help being anything but authentic. You can’t beat the real thing.

In the mid-sixties, when Dutch artist Marte Röling was in her mid-twenties, she was commissioned to create a series of album covers for Fontana Records, a subsidiary of Philips Records.
Röling’s illustrated covers are some of the best illustrated album art I can think of. Especially as a series they withstood the test of time, and still feel relevant and beautiful.

Informed more by British Pop Art than by its American sister, the series of covers combines portraits with a Robert Indiana-esque (American Pop, yes, I know) stencil font. Röling’s signature heavy black lines, shadowed with colored lines, peppered with a sprinkle of various cultural references incorporated in the portraits (from fashion illustration to Egyptian art to Oceanic facial tattoos), are so distinct, that it’s weird that I never saw them as award winners in any old Graphis Annuals. But come to think of it, in the sixties, professional recognition was all about the dudes, so misogyny may have just a little bit to do with it.

Röling did some more graphic work throughout the seventies, and stuck with the clean line drawing/stencil type combo. Her Red Cross stamps are a good example. I love the one that just has the red cross with type. If that isn’t timeless, please tell me what is.

She moved on to become the grand dame of commissioned public sculptures and monumental installations in the Netherlands. It’s the older graphic stuff however, that I’m digging.