November 14, 2012 Look In Dalí’s Surreal Home By Sadie Stein In January, Open Culture ran this terrific tour of Salvador Dalí’s house on the Costa Brava, where he lived from 1930 to 1970 and hosted much of the modern world. As author Joseph Pla described it, The decoration of the house is surprising, extraordinary. Perhaps the most exact adjective would be: never-before-seen. I do not believe that there is anything like it, in this country or in any other…. Dalí’s house is completely unexpected…. It contains nothing more than memories, obsessions. The fixed ideas of its owners. There is nothing traditional, nor inherited, nor repeated, nor copied here. All is indecipherable personal mythology…. There are art works (by the painter), Russian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed animals, staircases of geological walls going up and down, books (strange for such people), the commonplace and the refined, etc.
November 13, 2012 Look The Dream Life of Grete Stern By Sadie Stein Today, Whitney Otto, author of Eight Girls Taking Pictures, has a slideshow on the Huffington Post drawing our attention to inspirational female photographers the viewer may not know. We were delighted to see Grete Stern featured. As Otto explains, Grete Stern was born in Germany to a Jewish family, and in Weimar Berlin, she and Ellen Auerbach had a photography studio called ringl + pit that specialized in advertising. She emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1935. From 1948 to 1950, Stern was hired by a womens’ magazine to “illustrate” the dreams that readers of the magazine (mostly Argentine housewives) submitted. She made 150 photomontages, called Suenos (dreams), that comprise perhaps the most brilliant and telling psychological document ever made of the inner lives of women of that era. The following images are from LesGouExposiciones. Pause Play Play Prev | Next See more here.
November 7, 2012 Look Election Night, in Sketches By Sadie Stein Artist Wendy MacNaughton’s election-night sketch liveblog was terrific. Check out the whole chronicle; below are just a few highlights. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
November 5, 2012 Look A Letter from Van Gogh By Sadie Stein We would frankly have been delighted to received correspondence from any of these luminaries, time-travel permitting. But for sheer beauty, Vincent Van Gogh’s letter deserves special mention. Via Divine Hours
October 5, 2012 Look But What Is He Reading? By Sadie Stein Something method, obviously. Via The Nifty Fifties [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
August 6, 2012 Look Benjamin Franklin’s Clippings, Circa 1730 By Jason Novak An illustrated series of short news items written by Benjamin Franklin for The Pennsylvania Gazette. News at that time was fueled by hearsay and favored brief, outlandish anecdote. Where Franklin was running his paper in a wilderness devoid of information, we now operate in a wilderness so granite-packed with information that perhaps we now feel just as isolated, just as in the dark. These represent the dawn of American journalism, but I think in the present climate we’re moving back in that direction. Pause Play Play Prev | Next Jason Novak works at a grocery store in Berkeley, California, and changes diapers in his spare time. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]