Florence Henri, Bauhaus photographer

Florence Henri, Composition, c. 1930-35 (source: cavetocanvas)

I love the informality of this picture, and the inversion of what one might think is the subject, or at least the focal point, of the composition.

"The Invisible Mother"

More here, at Retronaut

Brian Ulrich: Dark Stores

Brian Ulrich's series of photographs of shopping malls after-hours reveals one of the truest aspects of consumerism and capitalism: the essentially anti-humanistic, or anti-humane, mechanisms that one nevertheless is compelled toward. Some of these scenes look like they are pulled from a sci-fi flick.

It may be of relevance that I come from New Jersey, one of the capitols of the Mega Mall, and have an incredibly love/hate relationship with the things...mostly hate. I suppose I have a visceral, familiar reaction to these in that respect.

Please look at more of Ulrich's work at his website: http://notifbutwhen.com/

Simen Johan

Simen Johan's photography brings romanticism back to depictions of nature. Some of these seem to be taken, expertly, at the original source- i.e., going into the wild and taking images of these animals as he sees them, while many others are taxidermic displays that he sets up like stage and performers. In either case, they are perfect portraits of nature, like Audubon's birds and other such work.

Currency

I was thinking about money symbols a while back, and the purpose of the strikethrough that seems to be the signifier of currency. What was its original meaning? Is it still compulsory to have this appendage? For it seems to me that it has gone the way of the vermiform appendix: a vestigial thing that no longer serves a function but is nevertheless just there.


Researching the origin and meaning of these strikes, I came across this article, "Evolution of Currency"
(What Ever Happened to the Double Strike on Currency Symbols?)

Refinement for the small screen during the 80′s saw the double strike vanish from the pound sterling mark, the dollar mark, the yen and also more recently the euro. This is understandable, as pixel density on screen fonts was vastly limited in the days of the computerised financial revolution. A maximum of 7 lines in height were available to build a font. It’s not say that all fonts now have removed the double strike, in fact most fonts have double strike for yen and euro, for pound and dollar it’s a different story however.
If you go back 20 or 30 years, there is no trace of the single strike on the pound and dollar. Even greengrocers, in their worst handwriting would strike twice. It’s a form, not a style. Two strikes denotes currency. A design language if you will. With the switch to DTP, the quest for new fonts began. The majority of early computer fonts were designed to be read at 7 lines high, which in turn lead to the single strike in publishing fonts, shop displays and other forms of currency denotation. All of these fonts are born from screen readable fonts, for the most part, and need to work well at 7 lines just as they do at 7 meters high.

This is the new Ruble character.
It keeps the all important double strike, which is the un-official form of world currency, but it kinda looks like a railway company logo don’t you think? I could imagine network rail rolling this one out for 2008.
Even though this symbol is championing the staple of the double strike ethic, they have taken an unimaginative leap to use the R (which stands for Ruble, as Y does Yen, E does Euro).

The Latin alphabet doesn’t really lend it’s self too well for augmentation. Take the dollar the pound symbols for example. These marks have nothing to do with the currency in a literal sense. The “S” with it’s two strike through’s in the dollar comes from the Spanish coat of arms, the two Pillars of Hercules and was passed to the U.S.A from Spanish-Mexican traders in the 1770′s.
The “L” in the pound on the other hand simply comes from the Italian Lira, with two strike throughs to differentiate. (other UK currency symbols come from Roman words, “d” for example comes from “denarius“, or penny.)
So one form came from abstraction, another from literal intent. Both ended up with the same design doctrine. As screens become denser in clarity, shouldn’t this international design form be kept? It seems a shame to drop the two instigators of this pattern from history, when new symbols try to inherit their form.

Fascinating! I had been thinking there was some semiotic significance that perhaps harkened back to earlier means of trade between different countries with different currencies, but it could have just begun as a practical, or aesthetic, means of making the mark disctinct. And what a beautifully simple method.



Speaking of beautiful, the fairly recently designed symbol for the Indian Rupee is, in my opinion, gorgeous. And, like the Yen symbol, also represents a visualcultural aspect of the country's culture (it is partly designed after the Hindi consonant "Ra":  र ).

Well, now I'm feeling positively capitalistic. But I'm sure I am in good company in my love of currencies of the world...

Deconstructed Bodies

Paintings by  João Figueiredo

 

These paintings have a quality of Moholy Nagy collages (see below). Really shows the artistic and moreover technical process in art-making, of which I am always a huge fan! These are beautiful, and interesting from a postmodern perspective, examining the "inner" workings and measurements of classic paintings, but instead of being ironic or trite, they pay homage to those works while creating something new.

The Human Camera: Stephen Wiltshire

I watched a television documentary in the library today, when I was feeling too ill to do much else. It was entitled simply "The Human Camera", which of course immediately caught my attention.

As it turned out, it was not about some experimental interior photographic art, but a man named Stephen Wiltshire, who is an autistic savant with the incredible gift of not only being able to study and memorize scenes-architecture specifically, but then render them almost photographically accurately.

However, it is not this gift alone that I found so awe inspiring. It is the fact that art, and the passion he had for making art from the age of 4-5 has given him a life that is full, fulfilling, and dynamic, and it has transformed who he is. This is the beautiful thing about art: it not only gives one opportunities to express oneself, it truly has the ability to be therapeutic, to rehabilitate, to bring us back into the wider world when we may have been locked in our own. It may be strange to think about it that way right now in art school, where it seems like everyone is necessarily in their own little world, at work, most of the time.
But when we do step back and then engage with others, how open it is! One's moments of intense introspection give way to a flood of new ideas once in discussion or collaboration with others.

Anyway, I can't think of much more to say on the program, other than that it made me cry. Human perseverance and the healing power of art, what more can I say?

Stephen Wiltshire has a gallery in London, and his website is HERE.