I have always had an affinity to minimalism. I personally feel that my best work is typicall minimal in appearance and simple in concept. Without distractions, the structure is obvious, the intent is obvious and the essence is pure:

“Frank Stella, born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, has been considered a major American artist for almost fifty years, becoming, in 1970, the youngest artist ever to have a career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is best known for the monochromatic pinstriped paintings that first brought him to prominence, which when seen in person have a very moving, vulnerable quality, and (a few years later) for his color-field paintings on irregularly shaped canvases. He helped legitimize printmaking as an artform in the late 1960s, and his work in the 1980s included paintings in high relief on objects such as freestanding metal pieces that contrasted with his early, minimalist works.” (Believer)

“The systematic quality of Stella’s Black Paintings decisively departed from the ideas of inspired action associated with Abstract Expressionism, the art of the preceding generation, and anticipated the machine-made Minimal art of the 1960s. But many of them… are subtly personal: Stella worked freehand, and irregularities in the lines of the stripes reveal the slight waverings of his brush. His enamel, too, suggests a bow to the Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, who had also used that paint.” (MoMA)

“Grand Central Terminal officially opened to great fanfare at 12:01 am on Sunday, February 2, 1913, and more than 150,000 people visited the new terminal on its opening day. Although construction was not yet entirely complete, Grand Central Terminal had arrived and New York City would never be the same again.

With Grand Central acting as an anchor, development around the terminal took off. Between 1913 and 1917, the Biltmore Hotel, the Yale Club, and two office buildings were constructed on railroad property across Vanderbilt Avenue. During the 1920’s, as hotels and apartment buildings began to rise on the “air rights” tracts of Park Avenue, skyscrapers simultaneously sprang up along East 42nd Street. Warehouses gave way to the 56-story Chanin Building, the 54-story Lincoln Building and the 77-story Chrysler Building. On Lexington Avenue, the Hotel Commodore opened in 1919, and the Eastern Offices Building - better known as the Graybar Building - was completed in 1927, each with a passageway connection to Grand Central’s Main Concourse.

As the neighborhood prospered, so did Grand Central. Grand Central Terminal, at various times, housed an art gallery, an art school, a newsreel movie theater, a rail history museum, and innumerable temporary exhibitions. All the while, it remained the busiest train station in the country, with a bustling Suburban Concourse on the lower level and famous long-distance trains like the Fast Mail, the Water-Level Limited, the Wolverine, and the Twentieth Century Limited departing from its Main Concourse. In 1947, over 65 million people - the equivalent of 40% of the population of the United States - traveled the rails via Grand Central Terminal.” (History of Grand Central Terminal)

Wonderful poster for the annual HKU SPACE Graphic Design graduation show - called “Space Odyssey”. The work this year is all centred around the rather specific theme “16 Visual Vibrations”, representing 16 different views about 16 social issues:

“The Lens Paintings are a new development for Sigmar Polke - an artist whose career is characterized by over 40 years of radical invention in painting. The conceptual framework of the Lens Paintings is grounded in theories set forth by Johann Zahn in his 1685 book, Oculus artificialis teledioptricus, sive telescopium (The Teledioptric Artificial Eye, or Telescope). Zahn, a monk in the Premonstrate Order, was an important figure in the development of the camera obscura, and his “teledioptric artificial eye”, a forerunner of the telephoto lens. According to Zahn, every luminous object in the universe varies in appearance depending on the viewer’s position.”

“Polke’s interest in this idea was first manifest in the artist’s commission for the reopening of the Reichstag in Berlin, for which he created a series of large, three-dimensional lightboxes. Lighted from behind, images seen through the grooved surfaces of these lightboxes change as the viewer moves past them. This led Polke to devise a system in his studio allowing him to create, in paint, a corrugated refractive surface that mimics an industrially manufactured lenticular lens. This painted “lens” generates a variety of distortions, mutations and spatial illusions when seen from different viewpoints.”

There are nearly 30 pieces in this collection, all to be shown in Michael Werner Gallery until mid June.

Text and image sourced from Michael Werner Gallery.

Apart from an irrational fear of cancer, I have other more realistic and common fears. For many of these fears, I just try to block it out of my thoughts. While they do not consume me, I know I would have a great deal of trouble coming to terms with them should any one of them ever materialise in my life. One of these fears is the loss of sight. It goes without saying that loss of vision would instantaneously end my career as a designer, but how does one even begin to learn to live in perpetual darkness?

This brings me to the photo essay titled ‘Oscuridad Habitada’ by Marco Antonio Cruz, exploring blindness in Mexico. This series recently earned him the top spot in Grange Prize:

“Marco Antonio Cruz has justly earned a prominent place in Mexican photojournalism. Current image editor of the lead independent magazine published in Mexico, and a photographer well acquainted with the urgencies of the daily press but who also authors long-range projects – Cruz understands documentary photography as the exercise of a point of view that is ethically and politically engaged, yet aspires to an aesthetic clarity. Witness to routines, events and neglects in a country marked by social injustice, Cruz has shaped a visual memory that reveals the complexities of the time in Mexico, while expanding the boundaries of our understanding of human dignity.” (Grange Prize)

“Marco Antonio Cruz studied painting in Puebla and later worked in Mexico City as Héctor García’s assistant. As he learned more about photography, Cruz was also heavily influenced by the work of Nacho Lopez. Since 1979, Cruz has been published as a photographer in major Mexican newspapers, such as La Jornada, and in magazines – most notably LIFE, which featured one of his well known images from the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. In 1984, Cruz and a group of colleagues created the photographic agency Imagenlatina. Cruz has participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Mexico and the United States. He has published two books: Cafetaleros (Coffe Workers) (Imagenlatina, 1996), documenting the exploitation of coffee workers in Guatemala; and Contra la Pared (Against the Wall) (Grupo Desea, 1993).” (Grange Prize: Artist’s Bio)

American National Bank Building in Richmond, Virginia, circa 1900:

Sourced from Virginia Commonwealth University Library Digital Collection.

I came across this fantastic molded plywood chair, called ‘404′, at Design Prima that was designed by Stefan Diez for THONET:

If you understand Italian, here is a description sourced from AT Casa:

“Un’interpretazione moderna dell’eredità costruttiva del legno curvato e sagomato, unita ad un nuovo e pratico sistema di assemblaggio. Questa è l’idea alla base della collezione di sedie 404, sviluppato per Thonet dal designer bavarese Stefan Diez. Di grande personalità, la sedia 404 appare semplice sia dal punto di vista materiale che pratico, e richiama i modelli storici in legno curvato di Thonet. Ispirata alla storica sedia Thonet in legno curvato 214 del 1859, ne conserva la linea asciutta e ne ripropone le modalità di lavorazione tradizionale. Tre le caratteristiche principali: il sedile dalla superficie sottile, le gambe leggermente svasate e il collegamento a “nodo” sotto il sedile, dove si inserisce anche lo schienale. L’elevata flessibilità delle sottili superfici in compensato di faggio assicura resistenza e notevole comfort di seduta. Proposta con o senza braccioli, in diverse finiture e colori.”

I remember the first time I ever went on a plane very well: I was seated at the window (of course!) aboard a Qantas plane headed to Sydney. Excited with glee, I remember being told to suck on my mint to counter the effects changing altitude pressure. I also remember the courtesy peanuts and safety instruction manual. But most of all, I remember the scenery outside. Houses scaling down to resemble toy houses not unlike the ones in my Monopoly set, wide expanses of land becoming square-ish patches of greenery not unlike my Lego boards, and finally, neighbourhoods becoming grids not unlike my collection of maps. I will never forget that sublime birds-eye-view of the city - the true reflection of gentrification and urbanisation, of the magnificent scale of mankind’s achievements - especially when viewed from afar.

Seeing Andreas Gursky’s work reminds me - every single time - of that sense of awe I experienced so many years ago:

“Born in 1955, Gursky grew up in Düsseldorf, the only child of a successful commercial photographer, learning the tricks of that trade before he had finished high school. In the late 1970s, he spent two years in nearby Essen at the Folkwangschule (Folkwang School), which Otto Steinert had established as West Germany’s leading training ground for professional photographers, especially photojournalists. At Essen, Gursky encountered photography’s documentary tradition, a sophisticated art of unembellished observation, whose earnest outlook was remote from the artificial enticements of commercial work. Finally, in the early 1980s, he studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Art Academy) in Düsseldorf, which thanks to artists such as Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter had become the hotbed of Germany’s vibrant postwar avant-garde. There Gursky learned the ropes of the art world and mastered the rigorous method of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs had achieved prominence within the Conceptual and Minimal art movements.” (MoMa)

“His photographs—big, bold, rich in color and detail—constitute one of the most original achievements of the past decade and, for all the panache of his signature style, one of the most complex… [In the 90's], Gursky expanded his scope of operations from Düsseldorf and its environs to an international itinerary that has taken him to Hong Kong, Cairo, New York, Brasília, Tokyo, Stockholm, Chicago, Athens, Singapore, Paris, and Los Angeles, among other places. His early themes of Sunday leisure and local tourism gave way to enormous industrial plants, apartment buildings, hotels, office buildings, and warehouses. Gursky’s world of the 1990s is big, high-tech, fast-paced, expensive, and global. Within it, the anonymous individual is but one among many.” (MoMa)

Niccolò Paganini died on this day in 1840.

I do not play the violin, yet Paganini has, without a doubt, shaped my musical education. His most important work - Caprice in A Minor, Op. 1 No. 24 - has served as inspiration for other prominent composers, from Lizst to Brahms to Rachmaninoff, resulting in numerous transcriptions for the piano. It is through these piano works that I eventually learnt of Paganini himself. A little research later, I found myself appreciating the limitless depth that a lone string instrument possesses, especially when wielded by a masterful and virtuosic legends like Heifetz and Milstein.

“The writing of violin music was also dramatically changed through Paganini. Even in his youth, he was able to imitate other sounds such as horns, flutes, and birds with his violin. Though highly colorful and technically imaginative, Paganini’s composition was not considered truly polyphonic. Eugène Ysaÿe criticized Paganini’s accompaniment for lacking in any character of polyphonism. Nevertheless, he expanded the timbre of the instrument to levels previously unknown… In performance Paganini enjoyed playing tricks, like tuning one of his strings a semitone high (scordatura), or playing the majority of a piece on one string after breaking the other three. He astounded audiences with techniques that included harmonics, double stops, pizzicato with the left as well as the right hand, and near-impossible fingerings and bowings.” (Niccolò Paganini)

Flight Sergeant Pilot G.R. Webber waits on “readiness duty” at an RCAF station in northwestern Alaska during World War II. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) had five squadrons in Alaska between 1942 and 1943 to assist with the United States North Pacific defence. Between 1939 and 1945, the Royal Canadian Air Force enlisted approximately 232 000 men and almost 17 000 women including some 260 women from Newfoundland, and operated 86 squadrons, including 48 overseas. 26 997 Canadian airmen including ground crew perished during the war. By the end of the war, the RCAF was the fourth largest air force in the world.

Picture and text sourced from Canada Air Force.