Bill Wyman, formerly the arts editor of NPR and Salon.com, these days writes a blog called Hitsville. The other day he made a post that traced Annie Leibovitz’s trajectory from artist-journalist to celebrity suck-up, and basically says — after setting Leibovitz’s personal losses aside and emphasizing that he’s only talking about her epic financial problems — “cry me a river.” But how accurate is this reading of Leibovitz’s career? (more…)
It was a beautiful day in the Mission, and mostly I took this picture to try out a nice camera that a friend is letting me borrow, on a long-term basis, specifically for this blog. (Thanks, man!) This is the first photo I took, and it comes straight from the camera with no further adjustment besides resizing. Pretty nice color saturation!
So this mural is on 23rd near Shotwell (I think). It’s the work of one Joel Berger. Hopefully I can return to the neighborhood before long and get a straight-on shot from the middle of the street, and maybe some details. Weather permitting.
Shortly after I posted a story about <a href=”http://therumpus.net/2009/07/an-authors-experience-of-cover-design/”>an author’s experience of book design</a>, I accidentally opened my copy of <a href=”http://www.mcsweeneys.net/subscribe/issue4.html”>McSweeney’s 4</a>, which consisted of a box of pamphlets, and I found that one pamphlet comprised an essay by Paul Maliszewski, called “Paperback Nabokov”, about <em>Vladimir Nabokov’s</em> experience of paperback cover design. (This subject just keeps getting more recursive, and I apologize for that.) It seems that Nabokov had a positive experience with Milton Glaser, who had been assigned to draw a cover for <em>Pnin</em>, mostly because Glaser took him seriously.<!–more–> <blockquote>Glaser recalled it was an extraordinary experience for him, chiefly because Nabokov had such a precise idea of what his character looked like. [Nabokov had included, in a letter to Glaser, pictures of Russian men for Glaser to refer to as he worked.] With his pictures of the Pnin-like Russians, Nabokov introduced Glaser to the faces of Baykov, Pavlov, and Maslov, Obrastov, and Yegorov. They showed “Russian men in public life — soldiers, diplomats, etc.,” Glaser recalled. “My memory,” he said, “which is faulty at best, recalls that most of these clippings were from Russian newspapers and periodicals and that Cyrillic characters were visible.” [Glaser and Nabokov referred to these Russians by last names only, and their] identities very likely included among their number one cosmonaut, a prominent economist, the Marshall of the Soviet Air Force, and one master puppeteer (who apparently wrote a widely translated autobiography called <em>My Profession</em>, about puppetry), a poet regarded as Pushkin’s most notable precursor in Russian verse, and the Pavlov of conditioned reflex fame. But none of this can be known for sure, really, without the photographs, and they’re gone. Glaser said there was less than a remote chance he had the photographs anymore. “They weren’t something you’d keep,” he said. Later he wrote, adding, “I fear the photographs themselves have vanished into the dark pool of history.”</blockquote> One of Nabokov’s instructions was that Timofey Pnin should be depicted holding a book whose cover read: <p style=”text-align: center;”><strong>ПНИН В.НАБОКОВ</strong> </p><p style=”text-align: left;”>So maybe I shouldn’t really apologize for the recursive aspects of this post after all.</p>
The Believer this month has a really good interview with designer / painter / comic arts legend Gary Panter — best known as the guy who did the sets for Pee-wee’s Playhouse, somewhat less well-known for his Jimbo comics, and notorious (among the smallest circle of these three) for practically living on chocolate milk. The interview made a half-hour wait at the DMV last week pass much more quickly; either that, or the infamous ink fumes from The Believer just got me high. Maybe both. Anyway: I’ve put a few of my favorite quotes after the jump. (more…)
New York Magazine has an interesting article about the artist Swoon and her latest project, The Swimming Cities of Serenissima: a fleet of boats made from New York City trash, which they have (by now) sailed from Slovenia and navigated into the canals of Venice.
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Harvey Pekar, one of the only famous comic-book creators who isn’t an artist himself, last month released a graphic adaptation of Studs Terkel’s Working with The New Press. Dave Gilson summarizes it on Mother Jones as not “the most far-fetched attempt to repackage” the classic 1974 collection of interviews with blue-collar workers — “that would be the 1978 Broadway musical of the same name.” (more…)
There’s a fantastic article on Life Without Buildings, Jimmy Stamp’s blog about architecture out of context, on how Gotham City came to have the look we know from the Tim Burton films (within the Batman universe, that is) and includes a touch of literary criticism along with some great images, not least of which is a comparison of Hugh Ferriss’s renderings with Anton Furst’s finished design sketches on the first Burton film.
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[Image by *eddie.]
San Francisco Street Art is the second book out this year from photographer Steve Rotman — the first was Bay Area Graffiti — a tireless guy who has spent the past five years all but entirely dedicated to documenting our scene.
A couple of months ago Violet Blue published a nice overview of the book in an article for SF Appeal:
Nothing compares to the rich history of San Francisco street art; there’s something so unique about the San Francisco scene that it’s defied description for decades. It spans generations, it breaks the rules and morphs other street art standards to fit The City’s talent pool, politics and landscape. [...] But most of all, our street art scene has evolved on its own to create visuals unlike any you’ll see in any other major city. And our artists not only create and perfect style, but you’ll see a variety of disciplines, and they overlap to create something on the side of a building that’ll make you want to stop and take a picture. And in most cases you should. Because whatever you’re ogling in the alley or doorway — or even drain cover — might be gone soon.
Check out her full article, which features a video clip and several photos.
But for even more about the book and the photographer, I highly recommend you check out two interviews in particular: this one over on Laughing Squid, conducted by What I’m Seeing, and this one over on SF Weekly’s I Heart Street Art, conducted by Allan Hough of Mission Mission.
Another cell-phone pic. Spotted this double-headed genie one on my way to a party the other night, behind that bus shelter at the corner of Fillmore and Duboce.
There is so much great graffiti in the Lower Haight. My theory is that FIFTY24SF and Upper Playground up the street attract a talented and creative lot, who proceed to leave their mark, and then the artworks get left in place because the area’s still gritty and hasn’t been infected with a suburban mindset, the way certain other parts of town have. I’m just hoping that the Lower Haight stays that way long enough for me to photograph everything that’s cool around there.
I dream of a world in which lame tags get painted over swiftly, but good graffiti art always gets left alone to be seen until the weather wears it off. But who’s to say what’s good and what isn’t? Maybe what our cities need are officially-appointed Street Curators, empowered in some way to keep the good stuff up until nature takes it down.
Spotted this guy while I was sitting on a T-Third on Tuesday afternoon, as we waited to be let back underground. Hence the cruddy cell-phone picture. This particular Bart is way cooler than Bart Simpson, so is he trying to say that BART is cooler than Muni? Okay, it’s just a drawing.
I have a pretty good idea what the tag says, but I’m not totally certain. If you’re in the know, spell it out in a comment!
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