Arts & Architecture was a great arts/architecture/music/culture magazine published in the United States from 1945-1967. The magazine always had a great cover that reflected the art and design aesthetics fo the era, and now you can see images of all the covers together on the Arts & Architecture website. Here is a taste:
But that’s not all. You can click on every cover and download a PDF with excerpts from each issue.
Thanks to Grain Edit, a cool blog devoted to art and design from the same era as these magazines, for steering me to them.
The Flog is a great art blog published by a French artist named Fette that covers the L.A. art scene in extensive, photographic detail. Says the site:
Fette is a french visual artist who currently lives in Los Angeles. She started The Flog in April 2005 as a way to connect with the city’s flourishing art scene and to promote the work of the artists working here. Since then, the site has been featured in the LA Times, Artkrush, ArtReview, Flavorpill, K10K, The Art Dump, Art Forum and is regularly linked by galleries and artists. In October 2006, she opened fette’s gallery, an independent space for contemporary art here in Los Angeles. Through exhibitions, film projections and performances, this new laboratory for the arts generates new dialogues between artists working outside of the city, and artists working in the realm of california.
Pardon my rusty Portuguese (ok, my non-existent Portuguese, which is even rustier), but I just discovered a great art blog, Gramatologia, published by the Brazilian artist Amir Brito Cadôr. Amir’s work and the work of other artists he features is predominantly text-based in many different languages, and the site is mostly visual, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t read Portuguese. Check it out.
Amir’s work is often caligraphic, and plays with type and alphabets. Here is a self-serving example of three randomly chosen pieces from his Livro dos Seres Imaginários (Book of the Imaginary Beings) that just happen to spell my name when combined in just the right way:
I’ve discovered a lot of interesting artists and work on Gramatologia that I had never heard of before, such as Jan Olof Mallander, whose work (another “J”..hmm… is this a pattern with me?) is at right. Here is a good bio on the Finnish artist, which leads off with this bit of inspiration:
In the winter of 1972-73, the Cheap Thrills Gallery , founded by Jan-Olof Mallander, was converted into a macrobiotic restaurant. For a few weeks, the gallery served the public vegetarian cuisine instead of art. The experiment was the forerunner of the first vegetarian restaurant in Finland. When Mallander, a macrobiotic himself, was some time later seen in a restaurant cutting up a juicy steak, he merely said: ” Know your enemy ..”
I was about to show more examples, but there is so much good work on Gramatologia, I’d be here all day, so just go check it out for yourself.
