Color My World

Best and worst lists were a dime a dozen at the end of 2012, but here’s one accolade that caught my eye: “Color of the Year.” It’s an annual designation that serves as a forecast decreed by Pantone, the venerable provider of color standards for the printing, design, and publishing industries, and which is well-known for its color wheel and Pantone Matching System (PMS).

Pantone’s “Color of the Year” for 2013: PMS #17-5641

For 2013, Pantone has chosen Emerald (or more specifically, PMS #17-5641) as the color to watch, for its influence on trends, tastes, and moods, and its expected impact on everything from home décor to fashion. Last year, the company tapped #17-1463, or “Tangerine Tango,” as its star, because it “provided the energy boost we needed to recharge and move forward.” (Quiz here about previous “Color of the Year” winners.)

Though not everyone is on board with this year’s selection (“For many people, it’s a flashback to your parents’ living room and big green couch,” says one interior professional), Pantone claims that Emerald is “the color of growth, renewal, and prosperity – no other color conveys regeneration more than green.”

(I decided to check out the PMS chart to identify the shade I’ve been most drawn to lately. Turns out it’s #315, which I guess is sort of a mix of teal and peacock blue. Somewhere in my subconscious, I remember it as the color of my favorite ink for the fountain pens we used in grade school. Maybe the fact that I went into the writing profession wasn’t a coincidence.)

But back to our hue du jour. Even Downton Abbey has been brought into the conversation, with some seeing the emerald color’s associations with luxury as a perfect complement to the American audience’s fascination with the opulent English miniseries. A bit of a stretch, of course, but no harm in a little (colorful) hyperbole…

Green permeates an interior from the series “Downton Abbey”

Dreaming in Dalí

A step inside the surrealistic face-like installation designed by Salvador Dalí (known as the “Rita Mae West Room”), at a preview of the largest retrospective of the eccentric Spanish artist’s work in decades, at Paris’ Pompidou Centre. The creation, from 1934, showcases Dalí’s characteristically audacious imagination, with elements of Pop art that were way ahead of their time. The exhibition — which includes many of Dalí’s signature masterpieces, including The Persistence of Memory (melted clocks and all) — is on view in the French capital until March 25; it moves to Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum from April through September of next year.

(Photo: Benoit Tessier / Reuters)

Illustration/left: © en-masse

Watching a Window

An image that many Malaysian Catholics believe resembles the Virgin Mary appears in a seventh-floor window at a hospital near Kuala Lumpur, in a photograph taken on November 11, 2012. The onlookers in front of the clinic in the city of Subang Jaya grew large enough to potentially interfere with essential medical services, prompting officials to announce that the panel would be moved to a church to be evaluated by religious authorities. (Adding to the mystery, some claimed that the figure could not be detected from inside the hospital walls, but could only be seen from outside the facility.) The glass was transported to the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in the nearby town of Klang over the weekend.

(Photo: Reuters)

Tangled Up In Blue

Step onto the campus at the University of Florida these days and it’s likely you’ll soon be singing the “blues” — but not of the musical kind. “Blue Trees,” a public-art project conceived by Konstantin Dimopoulos, has awareness of the critical importance of trees in the environmental landscape as its primary goal, bringing attention to the troubling issue of deforestation that is taking place on a global scale.

The Australia-based artist, who describes the undertaking as a “social art action,” has previously dressed up arboreal settings (the trees are colored with harmless pigments that degrade naturally) in such cities as Vancouver and Seattle. “In order for me to get people to see the forest, I had to get the trees visible,” he says. “Trees are largely invisible in our daily lives, and it’s not until it’s too late that we realize how important they are to us both aesthetically and environmentally.” As for the offbeat choice of color, Dimopoulos explains that, “The fact that blue is a color that is not naturally identified with trees suggests to the viewer that something unusual, something out of the ordinary has happened. It becomes a magical transformation.”

Depending on the weather, the “transformation” in Gainesville is expected to last through this May, while the woody perennials of Houston are scheduled for their own splash of color later in 2013.

Let It Rain

Not that England needs much more of it, but the “Rain Room” (above), a digitally engineered installation that just debuted at London’s Barbican Centre, is well worth the drench. Even though visitors don’t get in the least bit wet.

An opportunity to get to feel much like a certain biblical character did when he parted the waters, “Rain Room” is a 100-square-meter space of cascading showers (falling at 1,000 liters per minute), where sensors identify visitors as they navigate inside the room, setting off magnetic signals that allow them to remain high and dry as they wander through the deluge. Stepping into the darkened corridor that anchors the installation, “the rain closes around you, enveloping each silhouetted figure in a perfect cylindrical void,” wrote the The Guardian earlier this week. “It is a startlingly surreal experience.”

Interest in the exhibition, which runs through March 3, has been noteworthy, with extended “queue” times being reported after its launch on October 4.

“Audience” (2008)

Conceived by a group called Random International, founded in 2005 by a trio of Royal College of Design graduates, it’s the latest venture by a collaborative that unites groundbreaking interactive technologies with artistic purpose in creative settings, while employing cognitive research that analyzes why people behave as they do under unexpected circumstances. They came to attention with a 2008 project called “Audience,” which consisted of a series of digitized mirrors that tracked individual visitors after detecting their presence, subsequently following their every move like a bunch of curious eyes — blurring the lines between viewer and participant.

With “Rain Room,” one of the artist/founders of Random, Hannes Koch, said he hoped the experience would give people a sense of “playful empowerment.” To be a master of the natural universe, if even for a few minutes.

(Photo / top: Christopher Pledger)

A Taste of Gold

As the international gastronomic community gathers for the quadrennial event known as the “Culinary Olympics,” which get underway this weekend in Erfurt, Germany, I recall the same occasion as being the serendipitous springboard for what would become the most extraordinary dinner of my life. And it took place far away from Europe.

It began with a dare. My maternal grandmother (and yes, I know, everyone brags about their grandmother’s cooking) was truly legendary for her talents in the kitchen. There is no one, and I mean no one, who tasted her wizardry who did not remain indelibly dazzled by the experience. (Desserts, especially, included.)

And so one night in 1992, in a year that also featured an installment of the famous culinary competition, my family and I were at a restaurant that we frequented often, eponymously  named for its chef, Mark Militello, one of the celebrated founders of what was known as the “Mango Gang,” a group that led the charge in the New American Cuisine category which became so cutting edge and popular in that era.

As we raved about our meals as usual, I deliberately (and mischievously) asked my grandmother if she could match the amazing creativity that was so typical of Mark’s fare. As expected, her facial expression signaled subtle offense, with the implication, “…and beyond!” (Though in her mid-70s at the time, there was nothing dated about her approach to cooking — or life, for that matter. No tired rehashing of old recipes with her; she managed to surprise even more as the years went by.)

So I told her, OK – carte blanche. We would stage our own intimate evening in that year of the “Culinary Olympics,” with just one prerequisite: imagination. Wherever your genius takes you. I wanted this “Picassa” of the kitchen to let loose with free rein. My grandfather (a discriminating oenophile) and myself would follow her food choices for the wines.

From Bauhaus to Bruce’s House

The name itself was enough to pique my interest: “Bruce High Quality.” I came across it in an article in Sunday’s New York Times Arts section, on the subject of public art installations that have recently appeared in Manhattan. Spurred by curiosity, further investigation led to the fascinating story of a NYC-based arts collective whose mission statement is to… “foster an alternative to everything,” as well as “invest the experience of public space with wonder.”

“The New Colossus,” on view at New York City’s Lever House

Its moniker as intriguing as only fiction can be, the Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQF) is named for an apocryphal “social sculptor” who “died” in the 9/11 attacks. Made up of a revolving group of several young and fiercely anonymous artists, mostly postgraduates of the Cooper Union college community, BHQF has been drawing attention since its inception in 2004 and in a few short years was already ranked among the most important art entities in ArtReview’s “Power 100,” in 2010.

The “Bruces,” as they’re known (who also include women), specialize in smart, iconoclastic creations that serve as critiques of the establishment art world – a “curious mash-up of sober scholarship and juvenile pranksterism,” and a “brand of performance art that could be called the art stunt” wrote the Times in 2010 – and that, no matter how they’re described, have definitely caught on with audiences.

Case in point is the group’s latest project (which can be seen through September 28 at the Lever House in New York City), a monolithic bronze called “The New Colossus” (or for most of us, “The Giant Rat.” Ain’t art grand?) Part of a three-part installation entitled Art History With Labor, “Colossus” is a play not only on the name of the famous Statue of Liberty poem, but on the massive inflatable rodents (“Scabby the Rat”) often engaged by union groups in their protests with management. Previous undertakings have included the sculptures (shown above right) from Happy Endings, a series of “portable museums” that explored a number of themes at 2009’s Art Basel in South Beach, where it was definitely cool to be a Bruce.

The collective (whose members keep themselves out of the public eye “not out of a distrust in celebrity, which proves useful, but out of a distrust in biography, which is not”), also stages its own “Brucennial” — an event they call “The single most important art exhibition in the history of the world. Ever.” — that coincides with the Whitney Museum’s celebrated Biennial every two years.

It’s the kind of tongue-in-cheek hyperbole that’s come to be expected from this provocative group of irreverently edgy artists.

Hues of Holi

A celebration that encompasses a tumultuous spectrum of colored powder, scented water, and sheer exhilaration, the “Holi” festival, shown here in an image that looks more like a painting than a photo, taken in Heidelberg, Germany on August 12, 2012, is one of many that have crossed over in time and place to Europe (and around the world) from their homelands in South Asia. An ancient commemoration that usually welcomes the beginning of spring for those of the Hindu faith, Holi has been embraced in several German cities, where revelers immerse themselves — and each other — in a prismatic array of pigments as part of events that have come to be known as “Festivals of Color.” (The largest in the western hemisphere takes place in Spanish Fork, Utah, where this year’s festivities drew over 80,000 in March.)

(Photo: Fredrik von Erichsen /AFP/ Getty Images)

Pop Culture Musings for a Monday 7/2/12

Bring on the Cute: …and the calories. July is National Ice Cream Month. Designated in 1984 by then-President Ronald Reagan, its original proclamation (and National Ice Cream Day on July 15), called for Americans to observe related events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.” Our favorite flavors? Vanilla, chocolate, cookies ‘n’ cream, strawberry, and chocolate-chip mint, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. So go ahead and indulge (it’s practically a patriotic duty).

And the Best Actor Award Goes To: I have no idea who the actor is at far left in this commercial for Ally Bank, but I have to say I like his style. The scene is a grocery store, where he graciously allows another customer (right) to cut in front of him in the line, thereby losing out on the windfall that would have been rightfully his for being the establishment’s “one-millionth customer.” But no typical sour-grapes reaction here; it’s the subtleties of his facial expressions that are priceless. In case you’ve missed it, it’s worth a watch (link above).

Marriage Impossible: News of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes break-up hit the entertainment world like a tsunami on Friday, and as the gossips and show-biz pundits speculate about the possible reasons for the split, my first thought was how seriously unhappy this woman looked whenever I ran across a photo of her. And the pictures seemed to get progressively worse. Perhaps her independence from what looked to be a highly draining situation will bring the lilt back to those mournful eyes.

[Update: 8/3/12: Happy Katie! ]

Rolling Stone

Pop-music allusions are inevitable when referring to Levitated Mass, the “rock star” boulder that finally made its debut as a work of art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) over the weekend.

Three hundred and forty tons of granite, suspended over a concrete channel carved out of parkland adjacent to the museum, the massive “sculpture” had already created quite a bit of a sensation in March, when it was transported across 22 cities en route to the Big Orange. Street parties erupted at stops along the way of the traveling monolith’s 11-day, 100-mile journey. (In a nice marketing move, residents of the zip codes along the four-county route have free admission to the site through the end of this week.)

The seeds for the project were sown over 40 years ago, but it was in 2005 that artist Michael Heizer finally found the stone he envisioned, when it was created out of a routine blast at the Stone Valley Quarry in California’s Riverside County. The reclusive Heizer – the L.A. Times calls him the “Thomas Pynchon of the contemporary art world” –  is well-known for his so-called Land (or Earth) Art, already come to life in a mysterious mile-and-a-half-long undertaking called City, in the Nevada desert near his home.

Visitors will experience something “like a walk-in version of an alien landscape painting by Surrealist Yves Tanguy,” says Christopher Knight in his review for the Times, which is borne out by the view from underneath the giant rock, shown below. The critic addresses the serious artistic underpinnings of the installation, funded by $10 million in private donations, when he notes: “The brooding sculptural ensemble marks time both cultural and geological…Unavoidably, it calls for contemplation of our transient place in the larger scheme of things.”

Almost like a touch of Stonehenge –  in the sunny City of Angels.

          (Photos/ top and above: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

The Pencil and the Brush

This year’s bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, who defined the era he lived in much as William Shakespeare did in his time, is being universally celebrated with a host of special events, exhibitions, performances, and festivals that highlight the novelist’s deep influence on the society and culture of the Victorian age. His impact on the visual arts was also significant, and is examined in a UK exhibition titled Dickens and the Artists, which runs through October at the Watts Gallery in Guildford, Surrey.

No less than Vincent van Gogh is credited with having said, in 1883, “There is no writer, in my opinion, who is so much a painter and a black-and-white artist as Dickens.” And his own daughter, herself an artist, commented that her father’s novels could only have been produced by “a writer with an innate feeling for artistic effect.”

Though not household names to us now, painters like William Powell Frith uniquely interpreted the richly textured world of Dickens’ imagination in tableaus inspired by the writer’s depictions of life on the streets of London. Frith’s Crossing Sweeper (1893), below right, is at immediate glance a microcosm of the Dickensian scenes we are all familiar with; other Frith works, like Night Haymarket (1862) are likewise awash in the moods, colors, and subtle pandemonium that so memorably permeate the Dickens oeuvre.

Dickens himself had a reputation as a savvy art critic, often outlining his thoughts in the magazine he edited, Household Words, and commenting on his interest in both contemporary artists, as well as the Old Masters, on his many tours of Europe. His passion for the theatre is often overlooked in light of his literary success.

In reality, Dickens was perhaps the quintessential Renaissance man, reborn in 19th-Century England. A newspaper article from 1892 noted:

“It has been confidently asserted that when Charles Dickens adopted literature as a profession, the stage lost one whose dramatic instinct would have made him a brilliant luminary in the theatrical world; and physiologists might assuredly contend that had his natural gift for art been specially cultivated and duly developed, he would probably have made an equally prominent name for himself as a wielder of the pencil and the brush.”

Little wonder his genius continues to resonate –  200 years on.

(Illustration/ top: Red Nose Studio)

March On

Program cover for the landmark suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.,1913

With its designation as Women’s History Month, March is awash in celebration of women’s innumerable contributions to society. Today marks International Women’s Day, an observance that saw its inception in the early 1900s and which is now an official holiday in many countries, with over 1,000 events scheduled to take place in some form or another around the world.

In Washington, D.C., plans are currently underway for a physical location for the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM), presently online in cyberspace, waiting for a legislative march through Congress to provide the site with a permanent venue in the nation’s capital.

A high-profile supporter should help in making that a reality. Freshly re-minted Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, left, who’s already donated $1 million to the project – as well as her salary from The Iron Lady – is something of the fairy godmother for a dream that is close to her heart. “There are museums in Washington, D.C. for everything from postage stamps to poetry to spies,” Streep ironically notes, while also stating that the project is vitally important “because our history was written by the other team.“ The facility would be located on the Washington Mall, alongside the National Air & Space Museum and the Grant Memorial, with plans for a design by a female architect, making it the first repository on the Mall to be fashioned by a woman. It’s expected to be funded with private donations.

Already in place and marking 25 years since its opening in D.C. in 1987 is the National Museum of Women in the Arts, an assemblage of women’s creative legacies through the centuries. Among the artists in the collection, Georgia O’Keeffe, below, who summed up the frustrations of many pioneers when she mused in 1923:

“One day seven years ago, I found myself saying to myself: I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to … I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.”

It’s that very same spirit that we celebrate today.

Pop Culture Musing for a Monday 2/13/12

Grammy Snapshots

Missing Whitney: Thought the attention was measured and appropriate. Jennifer Hudson — who received her first Grammy from her idol at the awards a few years ago –  delivered a next-best rendition (which is high praise) of “I Will Always Love You,” in an emotional moment.

Adele Ascendant: Back from throat surgery, relaxed, in command, and looking gorgeous, she swept the Grammys – and charmed with her down-to-earthiness.

No Reprieve: Chris Brown was all over the place and won for best R&B album, but men who hit women shouldn’t be so easily forgiven.

Taylor Off-Key: Is it just me, or is Swift always out of tune when she sings live? Even she seemed surprised at the applause at the end of “Mean.”

Full Throttle: Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters, performing outside the Staples Center, were one of the most electric displays of the night (they later garnered Best Rock Performance).

Picasso in English

Fifty-two years ago, an exhibition at London’s Tate Gallery created such a sensation that it coined the term, the “art blockbuster.” The largest-scale retrospective of the work of Pablo Picasso at the time, it drew more than half-a-million visitors, breaking all records (still the artist’s most attended show), and coincided with the height of “Picasso-mania.” It’s also considered the moment when Modernism conquered stodginess in the British art imagination, and was finally embraced after long resistance.

Picasso’s “Vase of Flowers” (1908) …

Fast-forward to 2012 and the opening next week at the Tate of Picasso and Modern British Art – and things come full circle. An overview of Picasso’s profound influence after his initial introduction to English audiences in 1910, the exhibit will feature over 150 pieces, including 60 Picassos, spotlighting an Anglo-Spanish alliance that spanned decades.

At first derided by the establishment  — “Apart from a few heroic collectors, very few people were ready to take Picasso on,” says Tate curator Chris Stephens – Picasso’s impact on the avant-garde artists of the time and to come was wide and deep. Henry Moore, Duncan Grant, Francis Bacon, and David Hockney (who’s said to have seen the 1960 Tate show eight times) were just a few among them.

… Duncan Grant’s “The Tub” (1913)

One need look no further than Grant and Bacon to witness Picasso’s sway on two seminal British artists. Grant’s The Tub (1913) evokes Picasso’s Vase of Flowers (1908) in color, shape, and shades of primitivism; likewise, Bacon’s Crucifixion (1933) followed one of Picasso’s Bathers by a handful of years, and clearly derives from the Andalusian master’s Cubist-tinged creation of 1929.

Picasso the provocateur was the subject of many heated discussions about the merits of his art that took place in Britain in the 1940s. “Señor Picasso’s painting cannot be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilized masters,” wrote the novelist Evelyn Waugh in 1945. “He can only be treated as crooners are treated by their devotees.” (Picasso’s joint exhibition with Henri Matisse at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1945 was similarly met with rancor.)

But time — or in this case, the art world’s first-ever “blockbuster” — healed all. An association that encompassed both disdain and acclaim, Picasso and Modern British Art (which runs February 15–July 15), is another chapter in the towering artistic journey of the most celebrated painter of the 20th Century.

The Marvelous Meryl

With the start of the award-season accolades for Meryl Streep, which began Sunday night at the Golden Globes (this time for The Iron Lady), I’m reminded of how often this crown jewel amongst American actresses has been passed over for performances that her peers could only dream of aspiring to. The 2010 Academy Awards were the lowest case in point, when Sandra Bullock bested Streep and her flawless interpretation of Julia Child in Julie & Julia. Could anyone else, much less Bullock, have crafted such a memorable take on that idiosyncratic icon of the American kitchen? (Bullock’s role in The Blind Side could have been played by a younger Streep in her sleep.)

Likewise, it wasn’t until last month that the Kennedy Center finally made Streep an honoree at its year-end gala, despite previously bestowing it on others less obviously deserving (Steve Martin and Dolly Parton, to name but two).

And in another example of “overlooking the Streep,” one remembers that despite a record 17 nominations, 2012 will mark almost 30 years since Streep’s last Best-Actress Oscar (for 1982′s Sophie’s Choice) and that, incredibly, Hilary Swank (and Jodie Foster and Sally Field, for that matter) actually hold more Best-Actress statuettes (two) than their far more luminous colleague.

And while I’m on a roll, let’s not forget just a few of the films for which Streep did not win the Oscar (regretful trivia): Silkwood, Out of Africa, The Bridges of Madison County, and more recently, Doubt and The Devil Wears Prada.

Totally Abstract

In a sort of crisscross of creative convergence, two luminaries who were at the forefront of the revolution in American art that was to be known as Abstract Expressionism are again connected in time.

Frankenthaler’s “Mountains and Sea” (1952)

Helen Frankenthaler, whose soak-stained technique later developed into what was called the “Color Field” movement, passed away at age 83 in late December — and this month marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Jackson Pollock, he of the much-imitated “drip-style,” and of whom Frankenthaler was a disciple.

You can guess I’m taken by the work of these two innovators, whose “painting from above” approach may seem quaint now, but which qualified as a quantum leap in art at the mid-20th century.

Frankenthaler’s method of dropping paint (diluted with turpentine) directly unto unprimed canvas, literally allowing the colors to “soak” unto the surface, seems simple enough, but the results were anything but. Her first major work, Mountains and Sea, is reminiscent of a watercolor, though actually created in oil. Her colleague, Morris Louis, once described Frankenthaler as “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible.” As critics assemble a final assessment of her legacy, one is left with her own words: “There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”

Pollock’s “Number 1, 1950″ (Lavender Mist)

If Frankenthaler embodied the lyrical aspects of Abstract Expressionism, Pollock exemplified its explosive side. “Jack the Dripper,” as he was dubbed by Time magazine, defied painterly convention in the extreme, with works that remain spellbindingly labyrinthical, as complex as any I can think of.

A fascinating article published last year in Physics Today talks about how Pollock employed elements of fluid dynamics in his pieces, long before analysis by physicists — though a hint could be taken from the artist himself when he declared, “I can control the flow of paint; there is no accident.” (Art and science combine once more.)

The 2012 Pollock centennial will be commemorated with retrospectives around the country and abroad (Japan will feature Pollock in a major exhibition for the first time). And no doubt that Frankenthaler’s passing will generate renewed interest in her work.

Apropos attention for two titans at the heart and soul of modern American art.

Painting from on high: Frankenthaler, above, and Pollock, below, in the ’50s.

What’s in a Name?

The recent opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art spurs some thoughts about a pervasive practice involving philanthropy and the arts, and how (thankfully) there can still be an exception to the rule.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, AK

Created with a $800-million-dollar donation spearheaded by Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, Crystal Bridges is situated in a lovely locale surrounded by streams and woods in Bentonville, Arkansas. It’s unique not only in that its unassuming location belies the magnitude and scope of its collection, but the fact that its name is refreshingly devoid of its benefactor, in contrast to the long history of the rich bequeathing millions in exchange for immortality. (Among the more notable: the Whitney, Guggenheim, and Morgan museums in New York City, the Gardner in Boston, the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C.– and the list goes on.)