Vitro Nasu

Photo by Armstrong Jones / Lord Snowdon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Quant

https://www.vogue.com/article/1960s-it-girl-model-pattie-boyd-on-mary-quant

Audrey Hepburn in “Two for the Road” 1967 publicity shot wearing dress by Paco Rabanne.

Iconic Fashion Designer Paco Rabanne dead at 88

Fashion designer Paco Rabanne, famous for his Space Age metal mesh looks worn by celebrities including Jane Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, died Friday at the age of 88 at his home in Portsall, France.
His death was confirmed by Spanish group Puig, which owns Rabanne’s fashion and fragrance businesses.
“Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic. Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women to clamor for dresses made of plastic and metal,” said Jose Manuel Albesa, president of Puig’s beauty and fashion division, in a statement.
“That radical, rebellious spirit set him apart: There is only one Rabanne.”

(Paco Rabanne with Salvador Dali )
Paco Rabanne Fashion Biographies.

During the sixties Rabanne’s oversized earrings, sunglasses made of fur and other accessories became a huge media and commercial success. His material of choice, rhodoid, could create infinite combinations of colours and form which mirrored the effects produced by Op Art.
Desiring to make his fashion more accessible, Rabanne launched a series of paper dresses in 1967. The soft, lightweight fabric was a cheaper alternative which Rabanne used with coloured adhesive tape to bind it together.
In 1969 Rabanne introduced fragrances to his company. This marked the beginning of the label revolutionising the perfume industry and becoming a long lasting success in the market.
Rabanne continued to work with unusual materials for his trimmings and fabrics. 1968 saw a beaten metal aluminium jersey and 1970 saw dresses made out of linked buttons. In 1972 Rabanne used ostrich feathers attached with Velcro. 1982 saw dresses made with glass reflectors and in 1984 Rabanne used chainmail.

(Joshua Tree) ‘

Dezeen.com

Arata Isozaki Himalayas Center Zendai

In Pictures. gallery

Vivien Westwood & Greta Thunberg

Vivienne Westwood says Greta Thunberg should run the world

‘If Greta was world controller it would be great’

Michael Heizer the City to open following half century wait

The City, a colossal sculpture by Michael Heizer on which the Land artist has labored for more than fifty years in the Nevada Desert, will welcome visitors September 2.

Visit New York times (Spectacular)

New Yorker

Michael Heizer – Gagosian

When Heizer was twelve years old, his parents permitted him to take a year off school to accompany his father, a renowned field archeologist, on a dig in Mexico. As his father researched the rock sources of ancient monuments, Heizer made site drawings, an exercise that he has continued to expand upon throughout his career. In the mid-1960s he left his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute and headed to New York, where he supported himself by painting apartments, including the loft of Walter De Maria, with whom he developed a close, lasting friendship. During this time Heizer began to work on shaped canvases that he called “negative paintings.”
In the winter of 1967 Heizer made a trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he dug two large pits in the woods, lining one with plywood and the other with sheet metal. He declared this work to be “ultra-modern art,” and it was a turning point in his practice. Heizer further manipulated the landscape in Double Negative (1969), a pair of cuts fifty feet deep in facing cliff edges of Mormon Mesa in Nevada, made by removing 240,000 tons of sandstone and rhyolite.

Wim Wenders homepage

„THE TOKYO TOILET“ Art Project with Wim Wenders, Koji Yakusho, Tadao Ando et al.
Wim Wenders announces a new art project which includes a short film about high-end public toilets in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Japan’s leading international actor, Kōji Yakusho (Memoirs of a Geisha / Babel etc.) will play the lead role.
The spaces featured in THE TOKYO TOILET (TTT) were designed by world-renowned architects like Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban,and designers like NIGO, with the idea that a pleasant public restroom could counter the common expectation of a dark, dirty and dangerous place.

“My first reaction was: What? Toilets? Chotto mattete,” said Wim Wenders during the press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, using the Japanese expression for “wait a minute”.

For Wim Wenders, the project has high social value and he could immediately see the potential and story behind these stylish Tokyo toilets. „Because a toilet is a place where everybody is the same. There’s no rich and poor, no old and young, everybody’s part of humanity“, he said.

The film shooting will take place in Tokyo in October 2022.

(Ai Weiwei’s Arch Installation Opens in Central Stockholm)

Archdaily

Fadmagazine

The artwork was last seen in 2017 in New York, under the arch of the Washington Square Monument, as part of the Good Fences Make Good Neighbors installation. According to the artist, when the piece was first shown, it was about racism and the global refugee crisis caused by regional insecurity. Since then, the artwork has taken on new meanings, just as more crises and conflicts unfurl, like the collective isolation and vulnerability experienced during the pandemic, and more recently, the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Interview via Inews UK Rwanda Asylum Policy Racism

Books that inspire Ai-Wei-Wei
Existentialism Is a Humanism – Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)
The Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx (1848)
The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (c. 11th – 7th Centuries BC)
Salt Seller: The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (1973)
The Classic of Mountains and Seas (c. 4th Century BC)
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism – Vladimir Lenin (1917)
Gypsy Romance – Federico Garcia Lorca (1928)
Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain (1883)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) – Andy Warhol (1975)
Permanent Record – Edward Snowden (2019)
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman (1855)
The Trial – Franz Kafka (1925)
Tao Te Ching – Laozi (c. 4th Century BC)
Philosophical Investigations – Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953)
A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking (1988)
Heavenly Questions – Qu Yuan (c. 475 – 221 BC)

Art News – Philadelphia Museum, Siah Armajani Floor

Siah Armajani wiki

Siah Armaani The Crime of Hospitality

Siah Armajani – Glass front porch for Walter Benjamin

(Read about Walter Benjamin’s tragic life from previous post)

Siah Armajani at The Met Breuer press preview of Siah Armajani: Follow This Line February 19, 2019.
Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Prayer

NYtimes

Fraught and Fabulous: Art That Shows a Passion for Democracy

(House in Bordeaux)

Vassal
(and Lacaton)

Lacaton & Vassal receive the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize

The 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest honor, has been granted to Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, founders of Lacaton & Vassal, the French duo renowned for their multiple sustainable housing projects and for the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art gallery in Paris. In their three decades of work, Lacaton & Vassal always prioritized the “enrichment of human life”, benefiting the individual and supporting the evolution of the city.

Lacaton-Vassal com

Hiroko Matsumoto
Hiroko Matsumoto, more than just a model, muse.
BBC Obit

Pierre Cardin homepage

Pierre Cardin’s life in pictures

Jeanne M.
Moreau with Pierre Cardin.
She had a long affair with designer Pierre Cardin.. and a short marriage to Friedkin (director of The French Connection).
Moreau lost a friendship with Coco Chanel after she started living with Pierre Cardin..

J. Moreau
(This dress is designed by Pierre Cardin, from Losey’s film Eva. )

Jeanne Moreau with Pierre Cardin

Pierre Cardin

He will be remembered for his futuristic designs – some were inspired by the space age, some were even impossible to wear.
He carved his own way through the fashion industry. Parisian haute couture had always been exclusive – its high priests believed it should be high-end, individually tailored and eye-wateringly expensive.
Cardin broke the mould. He launched “ready-to-wear” collections, bringing high fashion to the middle classes. His designer peers were aghast, and threw him out of their club.
In the 1950s, men wore traditional suits which made the young look like their fathers. Cardin threw out the boxy jackets and stiff white shirts, creating a revolutionary look for a new, progressive generation.
Gone were the bulky details; collars, lapels, tails and cuffs. Trousers were tapered and hung loosely on the hips.

Beauty and the Beast

Pierre Cardin showed up at Paquin, one of France’s leading fashion houses, met the legendary film director, Jean Cocteau and began working on his costumes for Beauty and the Beast. Impressed, Cocteau introduced him to Christian Dior.

Siah Arnahani – Glass front porch for Walter Benjamin

(Read about Walter Benjamin’s tragic life from previous post)

Artforum obit

Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani, whose work across media bridged architecture, democracy, mathematics, and the commons, has died of heart failure in Minneapolis.

Art News obit

Siah Armajani, Ceaselessly Imaginative Artist with a Belief in the Power of Public Art, Is Dead at 81

Siah Armajani at The Met Breuer press preview of Siah Armajani: Follow This Line February 19, 2019.
Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Prayer

NYtimes

Fraught and Fabulous: Art That Shows a Passion for Democracy

The Tyranny of Chair Design

Most chairs aren’t designed to serve human bodies – but a better seat is possible. By Sara Hendren

Tony Cragg <>

Tom Friedman
– his school chair, drilled into skeletal oblivion.

Chorus of Chairs

See a Dragon Chair sold for 28 Millions by Eileen Gray.

The unique and remarkable ‘Dragons’ armchair was acquired from Miss Gray by Suzanne Talbot, the first patron to provide her with an opportunity to create a complete environment. The exotic, symbolist character of the piece situates it conceptually within the first phase of Miss Gray’s creative cycle.
The Mad Tea Party (previous post)

Two chair design by Scott Burton

Elephant Chairs collection

Lugar Column 2016
Artists from Brazil

My photos of New Mexico Las Vegas Hotel Lobby –

(Ikea – photo by Fung Lin Hall)
Weather and Warehouse

John Cage sitting on a silent chair

The Repetition – Retribution

Bowie collaborator Kansai Yamamoto dies aged 76

(David Bowie and Kansai Yamamoto)

Kansai Yamamoto debut Vogue Shoot 1971