Month: July 2018

Chet Holmes: “The Five Things You’d Better Know About Shaving”

Photographer Unknown, (A Copious Amount of Cream)

“If your product is shaving cream, you can use the headline, “The five things you’d better know about shaving and how many different ways it affects your body.” Plus, you can include tips on how to shave, the best ways to shave, and what every kid should know when it’s time to shave. Cover topics such as the structure of various shaving creams and the impact that shaving has on your skin. You could even give the history of shaving. When did it start? How did it start? Who started it?”
― Chet Holmes, Ultimate Sales Machine

Owen Davey

Owen Davey, “The Hundred-Eyed Giant Argus Panoplies”, 2016, Cover Illustration for the Directory of Illustration #33

Owen Davey is an award-winning illustrator living and working in Leicester, England. He graduated with a BA degree in illustration from Falmouth University. Davey was the illustrator of the iPad App of the Year 2015 game, “The Robot Factory”.

Davey created the artworks for the cover, endpapers, title page and contents page of the Directory of Illustration #33. The book is an annual of work by professional illustrators which is sent out to Art Directors and the year’s theme was centred around the idea of ‘Made You Look’. He decided to approach the images with a loose narrative idea around the Ancient Greek story of Argus, a hundred-eyed monster…

Zeus began an affair with a beautiful nymph named Io but when his wife Hera returned home, Zeus turned Io into a white heifer to hide her. Not deceived, Hera demanded the cow as a gift and sent Io to a hundred-eyed giant called Argus Panoplies to guard her. Furious, Zeus sent Hermes to slay Argus. Hermes attempted to lull the giant to sleep but then stabbed him with his sword. Hera honoured Argus by placing all but two of his hundred eyes into the tail of her favourite bird, the Peacock. Io eventually returned to her original form.

Calendar: July 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of July

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

July 22, 1947 was the birthdate of actor, comedian and producer Albert Brooks.

Albert Brooks led a new generation of self-reflective comics appearing on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”. His onstage persona was  that of an egotistical, narcissistic, nervous comic, one who tore himself down before an audience by disassembling his mastery of comedic routine. He once performed a humorless, five-minute stand up comedy routine on “The Tonight Show” in 1962 that didn’t produce a single laugh until the punchline – when he explained to the audience that he had been working as a stand up comic for five years and had run out of material. Johnny Carson swore the hilarity which followed this set-up lasted a full minute.

Brooks appeared in 1976 in his first mainstream movie role as Tom in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” , where Scorsese allowed him to improvise much of his dialogue. Brooks directed his first feature film, “Real Life”, in 1979, playing the lead role as a man obnoxiously filming a typical suburban family in an attempt to win an Oscar as well as a Nobel Prize. His film, “Lost in America”, released in 1985, was one of his best-received productions. It featured Brooks and Julie Hagerty as a couple of yuppies who drop out and travel in a motor home, meeting obstacles and disappointments in their dream.

Albert Brooks received good reviews for his films in the 1990s, showing his off-beat style and his seamless successions of shots in his filming. His “Defending Your Life” comedy with Meryl Streep portrayed an after-life trial of Brooks to determine his cosmic fate. Brooks received positive reviews for “Mother” in 1996 as a middle-aged writer moving back home to his mother, played by Debbie Reynolds. His 1999 film “The Muse” featured him as a Hollywood screenwriter who lost his edge and finds an authentic muse, played by Sharon Stone, to give him inspiration.

Brooks played an insecure, supremely ethical network television reporter in James L. Brooks’ hit “Broadcast News”. For this role he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also appeared as the vicious gangster Bernie Rose, the main antagonist in the motion picture “Drive”, a role given much critical praise and positive reviews.

Albert Brooks did voiceover work in the Pixar film “Finding Nemo” in 2003, voicing the character of Marlin, one of the film’s protagonists. He reprised the role of Marlin in the 2016 sequel “Finding Dory”. Brooks also appeared as a guest voice on “The Simpsons” five times during its run, always under the name of A. Brooks, and is particularly known for his role as super-villain Hank Scorpio in the episode “You Only Move Twice”. He later also voiced the character of Russ Cargill, the central antagonist of “The Simpsons Movie”.

Hermann Hesse: “He Who Travels Far Will Often See Things”

Photographers Unknown, Parva Scaena (Brief Scenes): Set Five

“He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe
What they do not see and distinctly feel.
Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song.”

―Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

Michael Pajon

The Collage Artwork of Michael Pajon

Michael Pajon, born in 1979 in Chicago, currently lives and works in New Orleans. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 2003 with a focus in printmaking. Eventually gravitating to the graphic nature of the medium that closely resembled the comics he loved, Pajon worked closely as an assistant/studio manager to renowned artist Tony Fitzpatrick.

During this time, Pajon started making assemblages of the bits and pieces he had accumulated from alleys, junkshops, and thrift stores, slicing up old children’s book covers and rearranging their innards into disjointed tales of Americana. Pajon’s work has been exhibited in various venues worldwide, including the Illinois State Museum; Chicago Cultural Center; Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York; Nau-haus Art Space, Houston, and Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans.

“These maps, postcards, children’s book illustrations, matchbooks, sheet music, and calling cards are the guts and gristle of common things people collected over a life, spared the fate of being buried in the rubble and shadows of once prosperous towns. This group of work contemplates the most humble of human remains: old matchbooks from junk shops, antique postcards and books, sheet music, cracker jack toys, and other objects once treasured, lost and resurrected. By collaging these elements amidst drawings and other media, I create small relationships to arrive at a whole image. Like delicate strands of DNA, these tiny pieces in combination hold the key to unique identity – the common as well as the fantastic.” – Michael Pajon

Calendar: July 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of July

Gathering Apples on High

July 21, 1920 was the birthdate of Constant A. Nieuwenhuys, a painter turned architect and one of the founders of the Situationist International.

Constant Nieuwenhuys was a Dutch artist born in Amsterdam and one of the founding members of the Situationist International formed in 1957. He is also known for his utopian project, New Babylon, on which he worked for nearly twenty years starting in 1956. Constant was one of the theoretical drivers behind the Situationists alongside Guy Debord. It was a widening gulf between their two positions that eventually led Constatnt Nieuwenhuys to leave the group in 1960.

The Situationists were an overtly political group whose critique of the alienation of capitalist society has had a lasting effect on contemporary culture. They saw modern society as a series of spectacles, discrete moments in time, where the possibility of active participation in the production and experience of lived reality were eluded.

The rift between Constant and Debord focused on the structuralist tendencies of Constant. Through his exploration of “unitary urbanism”, Constant focused not only on the atmosphere and social interactions of the Situationis city, but also on the actual production of the city as a built space. His project New Babylon is today considered and exemplary expression of a Situationist city.

Designed around the abolition of work, New Babylon was a city based on total automation and the collective ownership of land. With no more work, citizens were free to move around; New Babylon being designed to facilitate a nomadic lifestyle. Divided into a series of interconnected sectors, the city operated on a network of collective services and transportation.

Through a large number of models, drawings and collages, Constant explored the various sectors, floating above ground on stilts, interconnected with bridges and pathways. Traffic flowed above and below; while the inhabitants traveled by foot from section to section. The degree to which the details of the city had been worked out and Constant’s own discourse showed that he viewed this as a concrete proposal for a future city rather than just a polemical project.

Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon focused on the social construction of space with every aspect of the city controllable by its citizens in order that they could construct new atmospheres and situations within the given infrastructure. It was a dynamic environment that could easily be adapted and changed, allowing inhabitants to explore their creativity through play and interaction. Constant, ultimately, did not see New Babylon as a city, but rather as a design of a new culture.

Rex Clawson

Paintings by Rex Clawson

Rex Clawson was born in 1929 in Dallas Texas. As a child his favorite artist was Jon Witcomb, an illustrator for the womens’ magazines his mother subscribed to. In his teens he read “Lust for Life” and discovered Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionists. All of his early paintings reflect these artists.

In the late 1940’s, Clawson won the “Texas Fellowship to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.” There he became acquainted with modern art. Picasso and Braque were his greatest influences, along with Walt Kuhn, whose paintings were displayed at the art center. From there he traveled to Mexico to study and paint for a year at Morallia, and the art and culture of Mexico were a great influence on him. Rufino Tamayo was his favorite artist.

He returned to Texas and in 1951 won first prize at the annual exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. In 1952 he was exhibited at the Knoedler Gallery NYC, in a show of Texas Artists. Thus encouraged, he moved to New York where he began to show regularly at the galleries. He had his first one man show at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in 1955.

In 1963 the Royal Athena Gallery exhibited a Clawson painting entitled  “ Nude in a Rocking Chair”. Immediately the press announced it as a nude of President Kennedy and it got worldwide publicity. Finally, two U.S. Treasury agents entered the Gallery and acquired the painting, along with all photographs and negatives of it. The painting was never seen or heard of again.

The Man in the White Suit

The Man in the White Suit, Film Gif, Computer Graphics

The 1951 film “The Man in the White Suit” is a satirical comedy film made by Ealing Studios in London. The film was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starred Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, and Cecil Parker.

The plot of the film involves a brilliant research chemist who has an obsession with creating an everlasting fabric which repels dirt and never wears out. Lauded for his efforts at the success of the fabric’s creation, Sidney Stratton, played by Alec Guinness, is chased, at the climax of the movie, through the streets when the textile industry realizes this creation marks the inevitable decline of the industry.

“The Man in the White Suit” opened at the Marble Arch Odeon cinema in London on the 10th of August in 1951. It became one of the most popular films of the year in Britain. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay Writing.

 

Guy Billout

The Illustrations of Guy Billout

French artist Guy Billout’s universe of ironic illustrations has a tendency to magnify one’s anxieties, whilst offering humor and a look into a bizarro version of society. His work is overall minimal, but the subject in each piece offers scenarios that makes you think of countless outcomes and possibilities.

His work has been featured in numerous magazine publications such as Yhe New Yorker, and most recently, The Atlantic. He also writes and illustrates childrens books.