April 14, 2014 Look Where They Create By Dan Piepenbring Pause Play Play Prev | Next If you’ve seen the photos of last week’s Spring Revel, you might be under the impression that life at The Paris Review is a ceaseless parade of Bellinis and photo ops, full of mirth and joie de vivre and toast after graceful toast, all elegantly lit and impeccably groomed. And don’t get us wrong—it’s all of those things. But we cannot lie. Every once in a while, it’s quieter around here. Last month, Paul Barbera—who curates Where They Create, a site that chronicles the studios and work spaces of artists and writers—photographed our office on behalf of Svbscription, “a new service that delivers luxury, hand-selected products, and experiences to your door.” Paul’s excellent photos capture an average day on 544 West Twenty-Seventh Street; we’re happy to present a selection of them on the Daily. (Note that the desk of a certain Web editor—cluttered with books and papers, and looking not unlike the carrel of a wayward theologian who’s just discovered the threshold to hell—is very judiciously not pictured.) You can see the rest of Paul’s Paris Review photos here, and read Svbscription’s interview with Lorin Stein here.
April 10, 2014 Look In Extremis By Dan Piepenbring Pause Play Play Prev | Next Alfred Kubin was an Austrian artist and, to hazard a guess, a fairly tortured soul. Today is his birthday, and as a peg it’ll have to suffice, though I don’t imagine he was the type to put on a party hat. He was known to live in a small castle in Zwickledt, and his biography includes a nervous breakdown and a suicide attempt—the latter on his mother’s grave. His early drawings, shown here, often feature monsters, deformities, disfigurements, human bodies in decay—a grim phantasmagoria of the bleak, the macabre, and the merely unsettling, with a palette that tends toward soot. What keeps me looking at it is some element of detachment in his style, as if a savage disembowelment by a fantastical creature were no big thing; we’re not accustomed to seeing the brutal without the lurid. As Christopher Brockhaus notes, “these drawings revealed Kubin’s abiding interest in the macabre. Thematically they were related to Symbolism, as shown by the ink drawing The Spider (c. 1900–01; Vienna, Albertina), which depicts a grotesque woman-spider at the center of a web in which copulating couples are ensnared. This reflects the common Symbolist notion of the woman as temptress and destroyer.” Not surprisingly, Kubin admired Schopenhauer. Read More
April 8, 2014 Look The Disappearing Face of New York By Dan Piepenbring What was once Optimo Cigars is now a boutique cupcake shoppe. Photo: James and Karla Murray, via Facebook Smithsonian Magazine, Beautiful Decay, and others have recently featured photographs from Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, published in 2008 by James and Karla Murray. In 2004, the couple “began a project to capture New York City’s iconic storefronts—the city’s unique, mom-and-pop restaurants, shops, and bars—before they disappeared.” Now, ten years later, they’ve revisited the storefronts to find that most of shops have, in fact, disappeared: Many traditional “mom and pop” neighborhood storefronts that had prevailed in some cases for over a century were disappearing in the face of modernization and conformity, and the once unique appearance and character of New York’s colorful streets were suffering in the process … We noticed very early on while photographing the original stores that if the owner did not own the entire building, their business was already in jeopardy of closing. The owners themselves frequently acknowledged that they were at the mercy of their landlords and the ever-increasing rents they charged … When the original 2nd Avenue Deli location in the East Village closed in 2006 after the rent was increased from $24,000 a month to $33,000 a month, and a Chase Bank took over the space, we knew the contrast of before and after was severe. More of the photos can be seen on James and Karla’s Facebook page. They’re especially sobering given the sad fate of Rizzoli Bookstore, which will shutter its beautiful, historic Fifty-Seventh Street location on April 11.
April 4, 2014 Listen, Look Andrew Pekler, Cover Versions By Dan Piepenbring Pause Play Play Prev | Next Andrew Pekler is an electronic musician based in Berlin; Resident Advisor has described his music as the “cold alien groove of a midnight jazz café reemerging in the world of clicks and bleeps.” I came to him by way of a video, “Composition No. 1 for Electronic Toothbrush, Voice, and Synthesizer,” in which he plays a Philips Sonicare toothbrush—with his mouth, in the usual way—to harmonize with a Moog Prodigy synthesizer. It’s an entrancing wash of beautiful, dentally hygienic sound. Pekler works primarily from found materials. His latest album, Cover Versions, draws from the music and imagery of postwar exotica records—those kitschy aural forays to faraway lands, rife with congas, vibraphones, and theremins. With an eye toward a certain aesthetic, Pekler bought dozens of secondhand records and appropriated their music and their covers for his own work. Cover Versions was printed in a limited run of three hundred (all of them, alas, long since spoken for), each with its own individually designed cover; featured here are thirty of Pekler’s favorites. He explains his process: Read More
April 3, 2014 Look The Uncommon Birds of George Edwards By Dan Piepenbring Pause Play Play Prev | Next George Edwards, born today in 1694, is known as “the father of British ornithology”—as fine a paternal legacy as a guy can hope for. Today, his reputation as a naturalist endures in no small part because of his excellent drawings, which introduced English readers to scores of exotic creatures: first and foremost, birds. His greatest work is the four-volume Natural History of Uncommon Birds, whose full august title deserves to be seen in toto: A Natural History of Uncommon Birds: And of Some Other Rare and Undescribed Animals, Quadrupeds, Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, &c., Exhibited in Two Hundred and Ten Copper-plates, from Designs Copied Immediately from Nature, and Curiously Coloured After Life, with a Full and Accurate Description of Each Figure, to which is Added A Brief and General Idea of Drawing and Painting in Water-colours; with Instructions for Etching on Copper with Aqua Fortis; Likewise Some Thoughts on the Passage of Birds; and Additions to Many Subjects Described in this Work. These drawings are taken from that work, which you can read here. Of particular note is his illustration of the dodo, which was, even then, extraordinarily rare and facing extinction. As for the man: According to The Aurelian Legacy: British Butterflies and Their Collectors, a contemporary of Edwards’s “described him as of medium stature, inclined to plumpness and of a cheerful, kindly nature ‘associated with a charming diffidence.’”
March 28, 2014 Look Emancipation Carbonation By Dan Piepenbring The typo of the day, from a story in the Atlanta Business Chronicle— Just one month after Diet Coke rolled out the first frozen carbonated beverage in the brand’s 31-year history, the product—Diet Coke FROST Cherry Slurpee—has been removed from stores because it did not free properly. Lesson learned: brain freeze does not bring deliverance, even when it comes from a refreshing Diet Coke.