Archive for the ‘Publishing’ Category
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson
The writer, Alain De Botton, famous for his musings on Proust and the nature of happiness, has always had an interest in the way humans are impacted by architectural spaces. De Botton has explored transitional places and the way they affect human emotions – and he has lived in an airport continuously for a week for research on his book A Week At the Airport. But, for his latest project, De Botton has been inspired to create an edifice for atheists to counter the millions of monuments that exist for gods.
For the scores of glorious cathedrals and mosques built by architects there appears to be none that had been built for atheists. Places of worship have been built for Jesus, Mary and for the Buddha, but temples can also be built for love, friendship and calmness…
Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson
De Botton intends to build his tower in London at a symbolic height that reflects a scale of 300 million years of life on earth. He explained in the Guardian, “Each centimeter of the tapering tower’s interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet.” De Botton’s idea is to encourage contemplation. He also added, “the exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.”
Read more on Alain De Botton’s temple
Tags: Alain De Botton, Architecture, Christopher Hitchens, Living Architecture, London, Peter Zumthor, Proust, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Sculpture
Posted in Architecture, Design, Environment, Publishing, Sculpture | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Book of Sanskrit Animal Fables (Panchatantra) India, Rajasthan Dated Samvat 1811/1754-5 AD Sanskrit manuscript on paper
There is a vast history of animal folklore in literature, and the Pancha Tantra is one of the most ancient. Here are some images from the original book, and Walton Ford’s anecdotal stories that relate to some of his drawings from his collection that takes after the ancient tome of the same name.
Read more on animal fables
Tags: Pancha Tantra, Walton Ford
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Friday, September 23rd, 2011
Richard Dadd, Contradiction: Oberon and Titania (1854 -58)
Richard Dadd, Portrait of the artist
Richard Dadd was an English faery painter whose promising career got derailed when he had a mental breakdown after a visit to the Holy Land in 1843. The Victorian papers must have had a field day when Dadd killed his dad – murdering his father in a park with a throat razor. He fled to France, but after attempting to kill others he was put away in an asylum where he began work on a series of influential masterpieces, painted from his imagination with an obsession towards detail. Paintings such as The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke 1855-64 and Oberon and Titania (1854 -58) have inspired such artists as Octavio Paz and Sigmar Polke, and even Freddie Mercury with their fantastic, magical scenarios.
A new book Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum by Nicholas Tromans explores 18th century asylums, the impact on artists’ creativity, and the remedies prescribed at Bethlem (from where the word bedlam comes).
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Tags: Adolf Wolfli, Freddie Mercury, Nicholas Tromans, Octavio Paz, Richard Dadd, Sigmar Polke
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Monday, May 16th, 2011
By Kiša Lala
Moby photographed in his studio by Justin Hollar
Moby – Destroyed, lausanne a sea of people. i particularly like how the form of the crowd reflects the topography.
Pathways connect cities, direct travelers through them. In between lies fallow earth, empty lots, desert plains. Moby’s new book captures the density of space as it expands and condenses around city centres and rarefies to the ether above. His gaze falls outside of things into places never looked at, empty sky over urban sprawls, arid lands, the foam-flecked seas, the spaces between cities where forests grow. Estranged in a metal tube afloat in space Moby’s vision seems to hover, then plummet through city ports past tunnels, terminals and paths into arenas of convulsing crowds.
A big part of the artist’s life is based on touring and he launches into another soon for his new album and book entitled Destroyed – inspired by, and created during touring (The title comes from the LED display that reads “Unattended Luggage Will be Destroyed,” which Moby snapped as it flashed up in a deserted hallway at NY’s La Guardia airport).
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Tags: Interview, Kisa Lala, Los Angeles, Moby, new york, Photography
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Friday, February 11th, 2011
By Kiša Lala
Cave, 2010, Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea © Kahn & Selesnick, Courtesy of the Artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery
I found Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick at their New York gallery Yancey Richardson, looking over their human-length book of the Circular River project. The book which Kahn bound is a beautifully aged tome containing the account of a fictional odyssey through Siberia with panoramic shots of a desolate landscape annotated with tales of remote viewing, shamanism and mystical adventures woven into fables with accompanying faux-artifacts.
Richard Selesnick next to his book, Circular River - Photo: Kisa Lala, 2011 - "... The R.E.C. Siberian Expedition of 1945-46' continued the story of the R.E.C to its post-war conclusion. A seven-foot wide leather bound book held the 60 long sepia panoramas and 100 pages of text."
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Tags: Interview, Kisa Lala, new york, Nicholas Kahn, Richard Selesnick, Yancey Richardson
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Saturday, January 15th, 2011
By Kiša Lala
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, Adams Theater, Detroit
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre met online in 2002, drawn by their love of contemporary ruins. Meffre was only aged 15 when he met Marchand, and they began visiting ruins in the suburbs of Paris to capture the lost grandeur of old movie theaters and document architecture in decline. In the beginning they took images separately, but after investing in a large format 4×5, they began their collaboration. They spoke to me recently from Paris about their photographic project, “Detroit in Ruins,” published by Steidl in 2010.
Their visions of Detroit are the record of a fallen empire. What makes the duo’s work different from Robert Polidori’s photographs of post-deluge New Orleans and Chernobyl is that their focus is not a record of the aftermath of a natural disaster but of slow decay, caused by neglect. The photographs reveal the exotic in the ordinary and observe what is overlooked: dilapidated habitations, the hidden backs of dwellings, obsolete machinery, utilities in disrepair, the absurdity of once hi-tech systems, the extravagance of architecture devoid of function. The simple poignancy of a disused dentist’s chair seems to reflect on the collective failure of a civilization to rise. But Detroit is only one of many world cities, and these images are universal in their depiction of the fragility of human empire-building.
© Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, Detroit in Ruins, Ticket Lobby Michigan Central Station
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Tags: Architecture, Detroit, Detroit in Ruins, History, Kisa Lala, Los Angeles, new york, Paris, Photographs, Romain Meffre, Steidl, theater, Urban Development, Yves Marchand
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Carsten Höller's Soma exhibit in Berlin
By Kiša Lala
Carsten Höller’s new exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, ‘Soma’ examines the mythic traditions of this Vedic elixir. Though the recipe and ingredients for it have been lost, ethnomycologists and artists alike have been interpreting its origin through ancient manuscripts – from such sources as the verses of the Rigveda, an ancient North Indian text from the 2nd millennium BCE: ‘We have drunk of the soma; we have become immortal, we have seen the light; we have found the Gods.’
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Tags: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Amanita muscaria, Berlin, Carsten Höller, fly agaric, fly Amanita, Hamburger Bahnhof, Kisa Lala, mushroom, mycology, Prada, Soma, vedas
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Friday, September 10th, 2010
By Kiša Lala
YUL BRYNNER The King and I, Self-Portrait, 1956 color print, 30 x 40" (paper) - Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY
Victoria Brynner, daughter of the late Yul Brynner has published a four-volume book of photographs, excerpts from which, Lehmann Maupin gallery is exhibiting, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the actor’s death.
Brynner who is known for his roles in such films as The King and I, Westworld, and The Ten Commandments, took candid images of friends, family, and many of his Hollywood co-workers, on and off the film sets.
YUL BRYNNER, Salvador Dali painting Amanda Lear, Spain, 1971, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY
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Tags: Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Kisa Lala, new york, Salvador Dali, The King and I, Victoria Brynner, Westworld, Yul Brynner
Posted in Books, Film, Photography, Publishing | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
By Kiša Lala
Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, 2010. Portrait by Brigitte Cornand
Before her death recently at the age of 98, Louise Bourgeois had just finished work on a series of prints with Tracey Emin, which they had collaborated on during the last two years of the artist’s life. Bourgeois had composed a series of 16 profiled torsos in gouache and Emin had ‘responded’ by adding drawings over them with text and ink.
Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, "Looking For The Mother"
Their work together began when Ms. Bourgeois had agreed to meet Ms. Emin at her request. Despite Ms. Bourgeois’ reputation of being a formidable woman, according to Emin, they had got along well and had agreed to take part in a drawing project. Ms.Bourgeois had always been surrounded by young people, and in spite of the age difference they found their work had many themes in common.
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Tags: Caroline Nitsch, Interview, Kisa Lala, Louise Bourgeois, tracey emin
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Monday, August 16th, 2010
Nick Knight, Self Portrait (2006)
By Kiša Lala
For its 30th anniversary this August, the now venerable, i-D magazine, has just released three birthday editions shot by photographer Nick Knight. The collectible issues with staggered release dates are titled Then (Pre-Fall), Now (Fall) and Next (Winter) with Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lady Gaga as cover stars.
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Tags: Andreas Kronthaler, i-D Magazine, Kate Moss, Kisa Lala, Lady Gaga, Naomi Campbell, Nick Knight, ShowStudio, Simon Foxton, Vivienne Westwood
Posted in Art, Fashion, Photography, Publishing | No Comments »
