Poster for the Brooklyn Exhibition
Alphonse Mucha
1920
“A retrospective featuring the first five canvases of the Slav Epic and a large selection of works by Mucha opened in January 1921 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The exhibition had already proved a resounding success in Chicago where it had attracted around 600,000 visitors, and it was met with equal enthusiasm by critics and members of the public.
The poster features a girl with Slav features and an abundance of undulating hair. She holds a circle of thorns and stars as a symbol of the past and future of the Slav people.
The poster captures his signature style and the patriotic subject matter of his later work. ”
Mucha Foundation
My mother had this beautiful little book of Alphonse Mucha’s work when I was a kid, it was among the first of the books that I stole from her to form my own collection. From an early age I’ve been into Art Nouveau and what was formally known as the decorative arts. I like when information is delivered artfully, that the artwork was intended for the message. I know that some of these iconic images such as “Le Chat Noir” or various french posters for bicycles or soap have saturated the poster market in the last 20 years… I don’t care, I like ‘em.
What is it about Alphonse Mucha’s work that makes me swoon? Lemme tell ya… I’m a sucker for flowing line work and elaborate subject matter. I like pretty ladies, and jewels and flowers. I love ornament and his choice of colour. There is an unspoken narrative: Where are these women, why are they dressed like that, and why is it that they seem to express that they know the secret to life with their look.
I like this particular image due to it’s flatness and colour palette, Do we feel a little Russian Constructivist aesthetic going on? I think it would be brilliant if artists were more engaged in creating their own promotional or intentional work for their exhibitions. This one is particularly interesting due to the nature of the local history.
Mucha often frames his work in an architectural fashion using columns, half circles and crescents. I tend to cringe at Art Nouveau type faces, but in the context of this image, it works. I like the simplicity of the line work used in the facial features in contrast with the the elaborate articulation of the hair. I feel that Mucha’s representation of Women is akin to Waterhouse’s women of mythical inspiration:
I missed the boat when the joy of typography hit my undergraduate design department a few years ago. I had graphic design fatigue and took a sabbatical from pixel pushing in favour of clay jammin’. All I knew was that Comic Sans was bad and Helvetica was the new old thing. I would like to think that I got into the groove of using Times New Roman before all the hipsters did… but really I am no font connaisseur.
I did however, fall in love with a particular font a few years ago and it became part of my visual identity. À la Nage is a font created by parisian graphic design studio, SWIMMING POULP in 2007. I’ve been using this font consistently since 2009 (except that year where everything I did was chartreuse and my website was in TNR.
I like A la Nage because it reminiscent of the distinctive french cursive handwriting I had to practice in my cahiers d’écriture in elementary school. I don’t know about kids these days buts I remember the impending fear of not passing the second grade if you didn’t pass the “Lettres attachées” test. French cursive is very distinctive, you can see in the vernacular of hand written café signs:
My love for this font is located in my appreciation of french camp and it’s role in my identity. I’m half-french and I see the value in hamming that up once in a while. Formally speaking, it is voluptuous and loopy, and full of delightful ligatures. It does require a lot of tweaking in terms of kerning and line weight to really make it work, you can see it in use on my website & food blog.
A la nage is very similar to the Vespertine font developed for Björk’s book, which is something else I treasure. I’ll stop now before I go on about how much I adore all things that have to do with Björk.
Fascinating Fascinator! - Making Class
Modeled by the charming and divine Carson
Entirely hand-sewn with the intervention of hot glue. Composed of feathers, pretty things of delight and a recuperated electroluminescent wires.
I made a thing that looks like a chandelier!
Picasso had a blue period, I’m having a yellow one.
laser cut acrylic
The state of things. Welcome to the land of craft and ridiculousity. Photo bombing courtesy of Willy Chan.
This happened. This is a scan of a human head. (X 300%) Laser-cut in foam core.
Soon it will be covered in fruit.
Stay tuned.
I am going to cover this “thing” with a million mellon balls for saturday. True Story.
Look, I made a tutorial on how to sew tricky stuff. It was recently featured on Instructables, check it out!
RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.
RULE TWO: General duties of a student - pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher - pull everything out of your students.
RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.
RULE FIVE: be self-disciplined - this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.
RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.
RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)
HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything - it might come in handy later.
- Via John Cage Via Sister Corita Kent
New York, I kind of like you.
Pregnant men? It could happen, and in a sense, it has…
