Tag: design
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Shakespeare Gentleman Illustrator
The first Shakespeare Penguin titles appeared in 1940. They were designed by the steadfast classicist Jan Tschichold. By the late 1960s the series was looking dated. Penguin was trying to be less literal and more cerebral, and designer Germano Facetti had the answer. In revamping the Bard’s work, Facetti commissioned David Gentleman to create an illustration…
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When Text is Enough
When the time came for Paul Auster’s Penguin books to be redesigned, he asked the art director to consider using a typographical rather than image based approach. Good idea Mr Auster. Designer Greg Mollica came up with this elegant solution.
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Atmospheric Content
When Germano Facetti began working for Penguin in 1961, the company had grown so much that the books were looking a bit all over the place. His job was to transform the new titles and reissues into something contemporary while retaining continuity. Facetti’s directive was that, “The pictorial idea, be it drawing, collage or photograph,…
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50 Shades of White
I’m noticing a trend in book design. Many shades of white. I bought these books recently. The covers jumped right out at me. Design as Art is a reprint of a 1970s Bruno Munari classic about all things design and art. Deyan Sudjic’s The Language of Things is also a reprint. The initial cover was very…
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Middlemarch Winter
“Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. I enjoy the art of all sorts here immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to pieces I should find it made up…
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Spooky Spirit
This scary little fellow is a piece of sancai ware pottery from China. Sancai ware is a type of glazing whereby three colours are used to create this delicate effect. Tang sancai wares were sometimes referred to as egg-and-spinach by dealers. The hoofed figurine sits outside the tomb to stop dead people coming out of their graves to made…
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Alfred and Uma
Most of the fabulousness of the National Gallery of Victoria can be attributed to Mr Alfred Felton.
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Grains for the Dead
If the spirit of the ancestor is happy and peaceful then they will look after the living. So best to feed them lots of grain.
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South Yarra Colours
| Julia Ritson, South Yarra, Raw Umber, 2012 | | Julia Ritson, South Yarra, Cadmium Yellow, 2012 | | Julia Ritson, South Yarra, Dusty Pink, 2012 |
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Ellsworth Kelly’s Facade
Ellsworth Kelly, close to 90 years old, recently completed a striking sculpture for Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles. He placed this huge structure onto the building facade. | Ellsworth Kelly Sculpture, 2012, Matthew Marks Gallery, Image: Joshua White/Matthew Marks Gallery, 2012 | Ellsworth Kelly continually re-works his ideas and this sculpture was inspired by one…
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Activating Surfaces
As a young man, Ellsworth Kelly was a bird watcher and then a camouflage artist with the US Army. Looking and hiding. In this work Kelly uses chance to create a collage. | Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance II, 1951 | Not dissimilar to the choppy marks of Cézanne, representing a new way of seeing.…
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Cézanne and Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly said ‘The most pleasurable thing in the world for me is to see something and then translate how I see it.’ Similarly Cézanne’s paintings were made after periods of looking long and hard. Both artists start with a concentrated response to nature that is then transmogrified into form and colour. Katherine Sachs talks about the link…
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Cézanne Seeing
As I’m painting away, I often reflect on youthful influences. Paul Cézanne popped up last week when I was looking at Godfrey Miller’s work. And then along came Ellsworth Kelly. Coincidentally, I came across a beautiful catalogue for a 2009 exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ‘Cezanne and Beyond,’ linking contemporary paintings with Cézanne’s works. One…
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Godfrey Miller’s Counterspace
| Godfrey Miller, Still Life, Fruit and Flower, 1957-61 | John Henshaw, a close friend and former student of Miller’s, wrote about this painting in his 1965 book on Godfrey Miller. ‘Innumerable pencil sketches from objects which lay about on the kitchen table, fruit, comports, vases, flowers, fill notebooks. They furnished a world, sometimes in…
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Anchorite Godfrey Miller
I remember trying to paint like Godfrey Miller in the 1970s. Not very successfully. | Godfrey Miller at 54 Young Street Sydney, 1949, photo by Kerry Dundas | Miller’s experience of lying wounded for many hours on the battlefield of Gallipoli was to change him forever. From a vigorous, athletic boy to a reclusive painter.…
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Iona House Green
Iona House was surrounded by our busy dairy and potato farm. Along with raising seven children, the garden was to become a very big part of my mother Hayden’s life. And constant maintenance of the house. When the time came to re-paint the house, green and yellow tones were chosen. | Iona House , c1968…
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Iona House Red and Blue
Iona House in all its glorious Kodak Instamatic colour. There’s the old bank/playhouse on the left. Looks like we had visitors that day. | Iona House, 2066 Main Drain Road, c1960s | The architect of the Iona House, John Davidson said “Your parents were looking for a contemporary statement, not an imitation heritage, or pseudo…
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Iona House Features
In the black and white days of the Iona House at 2066 Main Drain Road, Iona, family and possessions were falling gently into place. A whole new world of light filled, curtain free spaces and a plan for a really big garden. | Iona House c1960 | The stairway up to the more formal lounge room…
