a visual collective outlet of inspiration
looks like they studied their comme references. no pun intended. by tnt
books
Purienne Zen Book: antwerp artist caroline helsen limited edition book
antwerp artist caroline helsen limited edition book: zen
zen saved this underwear
and this… saved the world!
antwerp artist caroline helsen book zen is feast to enjoy. printed in a limited edition of 1000 and priced at $175 it is indeed not for everyone. quiet, soft, and pretty the photography is almost nostalgic mix of 70s lui magazine paired with hippy “i don’t really give a damn” vibes. copies are available at dover street market or online at idea.ltd. if you decide to drop 175 just be sure to note:
“the book is packaged in a removable tracing paper dust wrapper, which can show wrinkles and creases, plus plastic shrink wrap, to protect the minimal design during transport. the materials used for this book include hand-selected, sustainable and 100% recycled paper. due to the combination of different waste paper fibers, the materials are characterized by varying natural inclusions, depending on which recycled paper pulp is used. an energy-intensive bleaching process is intentionally avoided, and the results can at times include what seems like irregularities, spots or marks – but should be seen as wabi-sabi design traits.”
softcover. 30 x 22cm. 280 pages in a limited edition of 1000. happy xmas shopping. we should do a 2025 xmas perfect gift list… should we? by xy
Italian graphic design of the 60s: Studio Boggeri 1933-1973
studio boggeri was founded in 1933 by antonio boggeri in milan
they are considered “studio boggeri is a masterpiece in the history of graphic design, one of the best and most important design studio in the world” easy now tiger! i would take that with grain of salt on my pasta!
“…it connected italian and swiss graphics like no one did before bringing modern principles to graphic design”
studio boggeris outstanding group of talented designers included: albe steiner, aldo calabresi, antonio boggeri himself, armando milani, bob noorda, bruno monguzzi, bruno munari, carlo vivarelli, enzo mari, erberto carboni, ezio bonini, fortunato depero, franco grignani, imre reiner, marcello nizzoli, max huber, remo muratore, rené martinelli, roberto sambonet, walter ballmer, xanti schawinsky, and many others.
benito mussolini poster – hopefully this was a warning poster!
available… but unreachable… at abe books
what a beautiful and rare book on studio boggeri 1933-1973 the italian bureau of design responsible for so many of the olivetti campaigns. taschen can you please reprint so us poor designers can grab one? by uh
what do i know? maybe ask Albert Einstein
what would albert einstein say if he was here today
reference from letters of note.
“on april 9th, 1948, a month before israel declared independence, just over one hundred residents of deir yassin were massacred by members of two militant zionist groups – lehi and irgun – as part of an effort to cleanse the area of its arab population. the next day, albert einstein wrote the following passionate letter” pictured above:
“…i’m not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people” letter from einstein to american friends of the fighters for the freedom of israel. reference from letters of note.
albert einstein was german of jewish decent and staunchly opposed to the policies of the nazi government. he renounced his german citizenship and permanently relocated to the united states, becoming an american citizen in 1940. though he held a generally positive view of his newly adopted country’s culture and values, he frequently objected to the systematic mistreatment of black people.
albert einstein had a complex relationship with israel and zionism. while he believed in the early stages of socialist zionism he rejected the establishments of jewish state in palestine and exclusion of its arab residents.
in 1952 einstein was offered the presidency of israel but declined. einstein supported the idea of a jewish homeland where jews could live in peace, and a way to resettle jews from the mistreatment of europeans, in the middle east. but einstein opposed the creation of “a jewish state” flagging concerns with its arab residents. he was opposed to the idea of a jewish state “with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power”. he was against nationalism, and felt that the creation of “a jewish state” went against his values.
he testified before the “anglo-american inquiry commission on palestine” and he supported a bi-national status in palestine with free immigration. einstein condemned the massacre at deir yassin and called, the zionist leader and founder of likud party, menachim begin (who later became the 6th prime minister of israel serving form 1977-1983) a fascist. in large einstein favoured the principles of socialism, asserting that it was an ideological system that fixed what he perceived as the inherent societal shortcomings of capitalism.” lot to digest more sources to read. by xy
Albert Einstein: on god
“Dear Mr. Berkowitz;
My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.
I’m sending you under separate cover two books of mine containing occasional writings where you will find more about this subject.
Sincerely yours,
Albert Einstein.” by xy
when the going was good: memoirs of graydon carter
graydon carters recently published memoirs “when the going was good”
the man behind, vanity fair magazines best years, the spy magazine launch, as well producer to the documentary “the kid stays in the picture”. he was the reason vanity fair was worth the paper it was printed on… because lets face it… without graydon vanity fair was nothing but a celeb pop magazine like the rest of the garbage out there. he made it cool, funny, fun, and viciously political with a bourgeois left-tilt that was fit to cover the dinner check.
the last golden age of magazine publishing
LA times writes: “extreme expense-account creativity was looked upon with the same sort of reverence as writing a particularly fine story,” carter writes of his days at time, where he arrived in 1978 as a canadian pup looking to break into the american journalism business. he writes of a colleague who tried to beg out of covering a visit from the pope by inventing some conflicting family vacation plans. his editor suggested he send the family on said vacation and expense it. so the enterprising reporter had some phony letterheads printed up and was promptly reimbursed for the vacation nobody took.
robert evans (note watch) with george weezer
it’s a funny story. it’s also emblematic of a time when magazines had money to burn and muscle to flex. there was no internet, and readers who wanted to be in the know went to these things called newsstands. at time, carter worked with such future stars as a-list biographer walter isaacson and pulitzer-winning book critic michiko kakutani (“michi” to her pals). he ate and drank well, often for free. but he didn’t fit the time mold. “i wasn’t ivy league — a credential the magazine put great store in — and i wasn’t as buttoned-down as some of my peers,” he writes. he was booted over to the still-barely-relevant life, where he plotted the escape that would shake up magazines and new york.
robert evans “the kid stays in the picture” book. the rights to the book were purchased by graydon carter and he subsequently produced the documentary with the same name. a great film and worth a watch.
carter wasn’t just non-ivy league; he never even graduated from college. there’s nothing to-the-manor-born about him; one of the book’s liveliest chapters chronicles his time working on a canadian railroad line, sweating elbow-to-elbow with ex-convicts and other misfits with whom he developed camaraderie and a hellacious work ethic. even when he drops names — and you don’t last 25 years as the editor of vanity fair without dropping names — you get the sense that he still can’t believe this is his life. you might not think of humility as a defining graydon carter trait, but that’s part of what comes across here.
clips form the documentary “the kid stays in the picture”
he’s a sort of outsider’s insider, not unlike another canadian who climbed quickly and made his bones in the new york spotlight, “saturday night live” creator (and carter confidant) lorne michaels. a new york native celebrity schmoozer probably wouldn’t have come up with the idea for spy, the satirical monthly that carter created with kurt andersen and tom phillips in 1986.
there was nothing like spy, a deeply reported new york gossip magazine with a literary soul and a bottomless sense of mischief. carter and his often underpaid staff came up with devilish nicknames for their primary targets. donald trump, then a bullying real estate player, was “the short-fingered vulgarian.”
spy magazine donald trump cover
they cultivated inside sources eager to deliver dish on the wealthy and powerful. “we wanted to be outsiders on the ramparts picking off the big shots,” carter writes. “we wanted to champion the underdog and bite the ankle of the overdog.” the only thing worse than landing in spy was not landing in spy.
spy magazine donald trump cover
oh the good old times – before he “grew up”
“when the going was good” is at its best when carter is the underdog biting at ankles, or a don quixote who learns to tilt at the right windmills. spy, for all its buzz, didn’t really translate to monetary reward. carter’s detailed account of the overhead and rigorous scheduling that go into running a magazine is eye-opening, and makes it pretty easy to see why so many glossies didn’t survive the digital transition. even when he started at vanity fair in 1992, carter faced a mighty task, inheriting a staff loyal to his predecessor, tina brown (an insider’s insider). it didn’t help that he had ruthlessly skewered the magazine in the pages of spy. “new editors generally mean changes, and changes can mean unemployment,” carter writes. “when the new editor has spent the past half decade ridiculing the magazine, its senior staff, its contributors, and its house style of over-oxygenated writing, well, that did nothing to lighten the mood. i would have hated me if i was in their place.” and so on… you can read the rest here and pay your dues to the author. thank you chris vognar. by pp
Dashwood books: Whatever You Say, Say Nothing & Telex Iran by Gilles Peress
gilles peress’s seminal publication documents life under the iranian regime during the late 1970s including the american embassy hostage crisis. telex iran is an extraordinarily personal document of a public event. the photographs peress took over a five-week period during 1979-1980 focus on the seizure of the american embassy and a number of hostages in tehran by student proxy groups of the new iranian regime. however, the book forms neither a study nor an analysis of that singular event. peress’ photographs do not purport to tell the story – any story – but are the nearly seismographic record of the photojournalist’s perceptions, encounters, and not least, his emotions as he moves through the city and the countryside of a nation in upheaval. involved one day, alienated the next; insightful in tabriz, at sea in qom; attracted to one subject, repelled by another, telex iran beats out the raw rhythms of iran’s dislocations, both historical and individual. first published in 1984, this exceptionally designed book established gilles peress’ reputation as a documentary photographer. originally published by aperture and contrejour in 1984. this is the scalo edition from 1997 published in the same trim size but in hardcover. price $1,250 signed at dashwood books. by ar
Jim Marshall exhibit and new book : photographs of the Peace Movement in the 1960s
peace: photographs by jim marshall
“the peace symbol as we know it today was designed in 1958 by gerald holto”
haight street san francisco 1967 (© jim marshall photography)
a new exhibit with previously unseen photographs by jim marshall at the san francisco art exchange (SFAE).
almost 60 years after the creation of the CND peace symbol, marshall’s body of “peace” photographs is a “beautiful and thoughtful reflection from one of the most celebrated photographers of the twentieth century,”
no on the travel ban oakland 1965
the exhibit is in celebration of the release of marshall’s new book jim marshall: peace, released by reel art press, according to a press release. the forward is written by street artist shepard fairey, the book’s text is written by peter doggett… and joan baez, provides the book’s afterword
peace walk for nuclear disarmament golden gate park 1962
free speech rally telegraph ave. berkeley 1968
marshall was one of the most recognized photographs in the history of music. he also explored the changing times of the 1960s, photographing the creativity and celebrity. he started documenting the CND peace symbol and peace rallies as a personal project, reel art press writes. the photographs had remained in his archives until now. the photographs were taken between 1961 and 1968 across america.
new york city photographed at newport folk festival in 1963
jim marshall 1936-2010
the CND peace symbol was designed in 1958 by gerald holtom for the british campaign for nuclear disarmament, reports reel art press. the symbol then spread from the uk to the us. marshall’s photographs document the symbol’s different meanings over time, starting as a symbol for “ban the bomb”-specific protests, and ending up as an international sign for peace. by xy
go read your books: you know what they say?
war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength… and also… don’t believe anything you read… not sure where that leaves us now!? – george orwell
Guibert | Satrapi | Tardi | Grandes Planches et Petites Planches
last year it was announced that emmanuel guibert had received the prestigious position of head of drawing and etching at the académie des beaux arts. two years prior another cartoonist was also elected to the same post. these two position elections mark the first time in the school’s history that artists from the world of bande-dessinée earned academic leadership positions.
guibert himself behaves rather atypically for a cartoonist, such that his work extends often off of the drafting table, and at times is not present in the bound product. his work is first and foremost reportage. reintroduction and rearragment of historical documents, biographical passages, and journalistic endeavors, to the greater public.
tooling with mark-marking then becomes a gesture in time-appreciation and time-depreciation, as the main bodies of the work (foreground, middle-ground, background, character) each behave with different autonomies. a beachy bank is not substitutable to the soldier warring along it. In the same way that the soldier to his enemy. and yet they are kindred in kind, just like the bank and the soldier are kindred in matter. the problem of representation and depiction in historical/biographical bd is taken head on by guibert in a rhythmic, systematic (bordering just so in an aesthetic) manner.
the relationships between the bodies goes beyond form alone. it all coexists, and yet is appreciable only when it is acknowledged as belonging to different planes.
marjane satrapi opens up the conversation in a wider manner with her seminal work persepolis.
autobiographical, belonging to her child-self, returning to far-away and long-away. the line in satrapi’s work is her hand, it is not representative in that sense – it depicts events. in that way then she is able to go wherever she wishes. she has flattened the dimension of time and space such that they are her’s to recover and pry into freely.
not much more needs to be said here about her work itself. it would be a disservice to the already extensive conversation that has surrounded the comic.
finally we get to tardi. who reaches past guibert’s body of work and satrapi’s persepolis. his work, if we are to continue holding these three together in our arms, neighbors satrapi’s later broderies. As both communicate with the deep past (the past not lived by the author) in an emotional capacity. both authors are trying to assess the past. such that the factual nature of either of their works is structure not content. it braces the emotive potential, the oniric potential of polemical and anecdotal issues, of their works.
tardi, son and grandson of soldiers, bears little resemblance to the patriot of today. for he knows it is person that makes country. it is then country that severs, massacres person. country is not an identity, it is a set of behaviors imposed on person. war happens upon person, not country.
tardi’s line is exquisite in its trustworthiness, it is free to wander with surgical accuracy the depth of human expression. he builds (seemingly from day one) a robust vocabulary of line that continues to serve him throughout his career – changing only to improve and clarify, not to reinvent. in that steadfast manner, tardi opens himself up in a way that an american might understand lynchian routine. do the same thing, eat the same food, appreciate the same landscapes, everyday – dream then, whole and free. ultimately tardi is the progenitor of sturdy lines out which limits seldom cross the reader’s mind.
each of these artists, i want to make clear here, operate with comparable sturdiness. the matter does not change between either. they are cut from the same cloth and it is a wonder that their sensibilities are so closely tender, for as reader it is the great gift of opening any of their books.
they are cut from the same cloth and it is a wonder that their sensibilities are so closely tender, for as reader it is the great gift of opening any of their books. by lsd
Sakamoto | Borges | Basile | seek further into the intra-place
we lost ryuichi sakamoto this year. he left us with 12, a wrestled arragment of piano pieces that extend into the ultimate vision of his late-career desire – to make music outside of time. the pieces are grounded in the earth, they rustle sound and speak at a geological pace that might fulfill his desire. though his time is the time of all humans. nonhumans, like rocks and tables, behave differently. albums like 12 exist among them. it is with hope that we conclude our thoughts on the work of this brilliant musician.
i wish to return then to a profoundly human time scale. a song, in an otherwise largely instrumental lp, that is so sensitive and intimate it has to be spoken in a handful of languages. a song then for humans, not humanity. ‘fullmoon’ is first and foremost a poem (like all work where capital b beauty is the chief concern) repeated by various speakers in their mother tongues. here goes :
because we don’t know when we will die
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well
yet everything happens only a certain number of times
and a very small number, really
how many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood
some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive your life without it?
perhaps four or five times more
perhaps not even that
how many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
perhaps twenty, and yet it all seems limitless
a heartwrenching admittance by a composer yearning to extend the realm of his consciousness by conceiving outside of mortality. sound then as prolongation. sound not as wave but as matter itself. here though we have a complete recroquevillement into the human stratum. the poem operates like a laurie anderson poem, or a björk lyric. it is plainly apparent – the joke is that there is none. the gift is that it is all yours. it is all yours. and if you listen closely you’ll note that each reading gives, by the various language structures, entirely different tones. begging then to forever wonder how well can one text hope to keep its integrity? who’s to say? and yet, ryuichi sakamoto is clear. it is memory that lasts, not our ability to maintain its sanctity. i hope he was well aware of how much reached out to his listener, and how warmly his listener embraced his music. how solid his grasp was on matters of the heart.
continue the journey into intra-place with a link to an actualized, albeit digital, library of babel. here, the inconceivable magnitude of borges’ celebrated thought experiment is contained to within the maddening pace of a single screen at a time. in jonathan basile’s ever so thoughtful digital rendition find also the exploratory purpose that the edifice of the story itself corrupts in the human soul. you are not alarmed, you are here. find firm ground in totality by reducing the effect of the accomplishment. it is not geological scale that dictates this monument, it is the atomic scale. you are here and will never get there. rest within yourself the pride that drives you to peruse the stacks that populate the shelves.
surf the website by clicking here
only then can you wonder truly past situations and phenomena. to affix your gaze toward significance and its healing abilities. by lsd
Salcedo | Genet | Luke | Incision as a two-way street
there are moments in notre-dame des fleurs that reverbate. they shake the terrain, and the words become buzzing entities. as gesture turns to caress and exchanges pronounce lullabies genet pierces his way in and out of the novel and the novel being told. i refuse to attempt a reading of his work beyond these observations. i refuse to remember the work through anyone else’s eyes and to accentuate other’s lives into the novel. knowing genet’s novel is simply to have read it an innumberable amount of times and to find in it the same tin soldier, the same procession, the same bed, and the same river bank. in that way the novel remains the same as genet wrote it. it is his to traverse and to tangle/untangle. this is his. i cannot wish more from it, as it expresses wholly the desire of his entrapment. willfully pressed against the most unsavory walls.
“oh luke, you wild, beautiful thing. you crazy handful of nothin’.”
“hell, he’s a natural-born world-shaker.”
compare to cool hand luke the condition of captivity. The softness of both genet and luke’s abject desires. in them both i find myself not wanting to go further, neither past the boundaries of what they provide nor into the grating dithering of peoples’ opinion.
salcedo anchors into the seed of this thought reassurance. that as she herself shares of her own work the status of secondary witness to violence. by way of building upon and reconfiguration she pierces the nature of the objects under her gaze, into testaments. their claims to violence solidified by the intervention she musters. enclosed or gouged, the object is preserved – so then is maintained its potential for ongoing intrusion.
pressing into the comet, trailing such as it is by lsd
