Photos By Gail
Designing couple Charles and Ray Eames’s interest in design for children extended to many different kinds of playroom objects, including this hanging rack made from colorful wooden balls. The Hang-It-All Clothes Hanger (1953) remains in production to this day, and you can find an inexpensive version at any Flying Tiger Shop.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Hang-It-All Clothes Hanger By Charles Eames
Photo by Gail
After 1952, dripping and pouring paint were no longer the primary means of expression for Jackson Pollock. The totemic forms at the left and right in Easter and The Totem (1953) reflect his renewed interest in using a brush to paint quasi-figurative images. The bright colors and expansive spaces anchored by large swaths of black suggest the influence of Henri Matisse, who was the subject of a large retrospective that Pollack would have seen at MoMA the previous year. The push and pull between abstraction and figuration is a thread that weaves through Pollock’s entire career. As he said in the last year of his life, “I am very representational some of the time and a little al of the time.”
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
To Stuart Davis (1892 – 1964), the French word Semé (Sown), the title of this 1953 painting, connotes lots of things strewn about. The composition presents a lively jumble of variously sized and colored shapes that collide and overlap, creating juxtapositions enhanced by the work’s punchy, discordant palette.
The word “any” evokes equality among all the elements in the picture; “Eydeas” is a fusion of the words “eye” and “ideas.” Davis’s flat, graphic style of painting and the incorporation of text suggest his appreciation of commercial advertising and, thus, his deliberate fusion of “high” and “low” art.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum on Art in NYC.
Robin, Bun E, Tom and Rick Circa 1979
Robin Zander, lead singer for Cheap Trick was born on this day, January 23rd in 1953! In just a couple of days I’ll be seeing Cheap Trick play live here in NYC with opening band, Jellyfish! Yay! Happy Birthday Robin!