My friend Steve passed along this video of the L'Œuf électrique ("electric egg") concept car from 1942, designed by Paul Arzens in France during the Nazi occupation. I'm sure everyone is in agreement that they should have stopped making any other kind of car after this little electric runabout was invented 77 years ago.

From Car Design News:

The whole ensemble was amazingly lightweight. The body was only 60 kilograms, weight increasing to 90 kilograms with the electric motor. With batteries added, the whole car weighed only 350 kilograms – about the same as a pre-war cycle car.The interior was minimalist in the extreme – a simple bench seat over a wicker frame, a steering wheel, and no gauges or instrument panel. All other interior fittings were also omitted to save weight.Only an engineer like Arzens could have scrounged the materials for the Egg during the privations of wartime Paris. However, the value and scarcity of aluminum and Plexiglas meant that only one prototype could be built. Nonetheless, Arzens received quite a bit of attention for the Egg, which he claimed could travel some 100 km at 70 km/hr, or at 60 km/hr with two people in the car.

By Andrew Eland - Cité de l'Automobile, MulhouseUploaded by Edelseider, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link Read the rest

Fritz Kahn was a German physician and writer. In 1926 he created Der Mensch als Industriepalast ("Man as Industrial Palace"), an iconic illustration of the human body as a kind of industrial chemical plant.  German animator Henning M Lederer did a fantastic job turning Kahn's illustration into a 3-minute animated video (with slightly gross sound effects).

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James Verdesoto is the movie poster designer responsible for some of the more memorable posters of recent decades, including Pulp Fiction, Girl, Interrupted, and Training Day. In this short video, he gives a terrific presentation about the design aesthetics of movie posters from the 1930s to present day. I learned a lot from this; it was 10 minutes well-spent.

Image: Movie Poster Remakes vs. Originals, Explained | Vanity Fair YouTube video Read the rest

You may have heard that artist Anish Kapoor has an exclusive license to produce art using Vantablack, a pigment made from carbon nanotubes that absorbs up to 99.96% of visible light. Covering an object with Vantablack makes it look like the object, and everything behind it, has been removed from the universe.

Artists who are not Anish Kapoor are understandably upset that Kapoor has a lock on Vantablack. Many people have tried to create pigments as dark as Vantablack, and the person with the most success so far is Stuart Semple. He created Black 2.0 a few years ago, and now he is Kickstarted a new formulation, Black 3.0, which absorbs between 98 and 99% of visible light.

The Kickstarter includes the following caution: "By backing this project you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not backing this on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor."

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The Digital Comics Museum has over 15,000 Golden Age comic books (all in the public domain). It's a treasure trove of clip art and inspiration for designers and artists.

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These old Japanese fireworks catalog scans from the Yokohama City Library are a treat for design lovers.

[via Present and Correct] Read the rest

Artist Noah Deledda uses sandpaper to remove the paint from aluminum cans and then uses his hands to bend and shape pleasing patterns into them.

Via Oddity Central:

In an interview with WEDU Arts Plus, the artist said that the most common response to his art is people saying that they have never seen anything like it before. He considers it ironic, because of course they have; people see crushed aluminum cans all the time, just not this way. Deledda sees his art as proof that a generally destructive force such as crushing can actually be creative and presented as art.

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Hanging around #artstudio #sculpture 📷 @zkrstofr

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Dent...photograph...repeat. #stopmotion #sculpture #artbasel #yborcity

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Future Punk says: "I created retro-style animated intros for today's modern Internet companies inspired by the great work of Sullivan & Marks, Robert Abel and Associates, Computer Image Corporation and various other early CG/Scanimate companies."

Here are demo reels of the production companies mentioned above by Future Punk:

Computer Image Corporation (1975):

Sullivan & Marks (1978):

Robert Abel and Associates (1984):

Scanimate:

[via] Read the rest

Stop-motion-animation wizard Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) is widely regarded as the master of old-school special effects. Harryhausen called his method of animating small models of monsters and superimposing them into live action scenes “Dynamation,” and it was used to great effect in such movies as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Today’s crop of special effects animators are split on which of two famous Harryhausen scenes had a stronger effect on their decision to enter the field: the rousing and meticulously choreographed skeleton fight in Jason, in which a team of seven undead creatures spawned from a hydra’s teeth are acrobatically knocked, flipped, and stabbed out of commission by Jason and his cohorts, or the gray-skinned, 20-foot-tall Cyclops who gets seriously pissed off when Sinbad and his crew impale him with spears.

Here's a gallery of movie posters from Richard Holliss's new book, Harryhausen: The Movie Posters:

From the press release:

Harryhausen: The Movie Posters offers a celebration of his unique vision in a truly international collection from all of Ray Harryhausen’s extensive movie catalogue. Author Richard Holliss has worked closely with the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation – a charitable foundation started by Ray in 1986 to protect his body of work – to collect together a lavish array of full-colour posters and promotional material from the Foundation’s own archive, as well as private collections from around the world.

Beautifully presented as a hardcover coffee table art book, Harryhausen: The Movie Posters features an introduction from director John Landis and offers a comprehensive guide to Ray Harryhausen’s legacy that will delight film buffs everywhere.

If you are in LA later this month through September, I recommend checking out "The New Romantics" group show at Corey Helford Gallery opening July 28. There's a great line up of artists.

Over a year in the making, Corey Helford Gallery is premiering "The New Romantics" group show on July 28, its largest exhibition of 2018 so far. Curated by Caro Buermann, the show will celebrate the new romantic visions of over 30 artists from around the world, including Camilla d'Errico, Adrian Cox, Relm, Pruch SintunavaI and Marie Larkin.

“There are many shows that celebrate beautiful imagery, but there aren’t many shows that tackle the implications of neo-romance and our growing attraction to the paradisiacal, the beautiful, and the magic that these images inspire," says Caro. "In today’s world, we are instantaneously exposed to a flood of bad news and images of terror which makes people long for safe places and redemptive perspectives.”

The Neo-Romanticism movement, which inspired The New Romantics, is not a new concept. Just as Early Romantic masters’ work was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, as well as glorification of all the past and nature, this new generation of romantics reflect on the current state of their world. “They are artists who are sensitive to the current state of things and reinterpret the world through their figures, characters, or landscapes,” says Caro. “Not necessarily as it objectively exists, but rather as they are seeing and feeling it.”

Above: Marie Larkin

Above: Relm

Above: Iva Troj

Above: Joanne Nam

OPENING RECEPTION July 28, 2018 | 7pm - 11pm

ON VIEW July 28 - September 1, 2018

COREY HELFORD GALLERY 571 S. Read the rest

The story is that Marcel Duchamp invented modern art in 1917 when he signed the name "R. Mutt" to a porcelain urinal and submitted it to the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists at The Grand Central Palace in New York. The work, known as Fountain, was rejected and the original was lost, but today it is one of the most famous works of art in history.

But according to a new article in the magazine See All This, the work was actually created by a New York dada artist named Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, who was friends with Duchamp.

In 1982 a letter written by Duchamp came to light. Dated 11 April 1917, it was written just a few days after that fateful exhibit. It contains one sentence that should have sent shockwaves through the world of modern art: it reveals the true creator behind Fountain – but it was not Duchamp. Instead he wrote that a female friend using a male alias had sent it in for the New York exhibition.

To attribute Fountain to a woman and not a man has obvious, far-reaching consequences: the history of modern art has to be rewritten. Modern art did not start with a patriarch, but with a matriarch. What power structure in the world of modern art prohibits this truth to become more widely known and generally accepted? Ultimately this is one of the larger questions looming behind the authorship of Fountain. It sheds light on the place and role of the female artist in the world of modern art.

I enjoyed watching Steve Schoger make changes to a poorly designed website, explaining why he made the changes as he made them.

Before:

After:

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While it sure is a sight to behold, there’s much more to this magazine than meets the eye. I met Steve and Tanya, the duo at the top of the Singapore counterculture scene best known for curating Kult, the top local alternative art magazine and galley, and learned more about EYEYAH!

Their new initiative aims to leverage their global network of 1000 plus artists to produce engaging multimedia content, events, and social campaigns to “inspire children, changing perceptions and provoking new points of view”.

Their flagship creation, EYEYAH! Magazine, was launched this January. The first issue brings together interactive artwork, launches a social campaign for kids to contribute their own pieces, and comes with six visceral stickers. It kicks off with the below invitation where the authors rightly proclaim the magazine to be the “Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Wild Wild Web” and overall does a kickass job of teaching kids about the Internet.

Though they just launched the first issue in January, selected pages are already being distributed to local schools in a black and white zine format, spicing up education about the Internet in participating local schools. While the magazine and curriculum are currently only available in Singapore, there are plans for a global launch later this year (which I am helping their team with). For now, you can check out their website to learn more about the magazines, prints, and tees they have to offer.

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"I INHABIT IMAGES" is the Instagram bio chosen by David Henry Nobody Jr., the playful yet apt moniker of New York artist David Henry Brown Jr. Nobody's artwork often involves being totally engulfed by food, pigments, advertisement cutouts, or household items, sometimes to the point where he is only recognizable by a glaring eye or wide smile. While this project has been documented on Instagram and ongoing for three years, David Henry Nobody Jr. has always been fascinated with ideas of representation and identity.

In 1999 Nobody, disguised as a fan, made it his mission to follow and meet Donald Trump as many times as possible over the course of a year. He totaled six interactions but decided to stick with the theme of impersonation for a new project in 2000 where he adopted the identity of Alex von Fürstenberg, VIP son of the fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg. During this time, "Alex" was documented at numerous celebrity parties among figures like Puff Daddy and Bill Clinton.

Nobody's current Resemblagè art, from the terms "resemble" and "collage", is a series of images and videos posted to Instagram that record performances of the artist covering and immersing his face in foods, paints, magazine cutouts, toys, and other objects. His inexhaustible creativity keeps the posts new and exciting by exploring new objects and textures, or ways to affix and camouflage himself with his art. These Resemblagès reflect the landscape of social media itself and toy with conceptions of self image, intimacy, and reality while also highlighting its far-reaching and immediate influence. Read the rest

I met science illustrator Paul Mirocha through a personal Discord server I set up and when Paul started posting his illustrations in the "Show your creations" channel, I was blown away. His style reminds me of the old Giant Golden science books, which I love. Paul's illustrations celebrate both the diversity and the surprising strangeness of nature. He lives in the Sonoran desert in Tucson, Arizona.

I asked him to tell me a bit about his work:

Some projects call for a high level of realism, like food, botanical art, animals, or a city skyline. Yet, despite how well-researched, super-real, or detailed an image is, it may still lack something in the viewer’s mind, something hard to define. Appeal? Sparkle? I call it romance. It’s what makes a viewer understand, want to know more, buy, or maybe begin to salivate. That’s my formula: accurate plus lyrical equals a motivating image. One more thing–my work is digital, using all the expanded possibilities contained in that medium, yet I want it to still look like a traditional painting. That’s what makes it emotional and engaging.

Don’t forget about scientific illustrators, a dying breed in this brave new digital world! Armed with only a Mac Mini, an extra large trackpad, a stylus, photoshop, and a passport, I travel, observe, sketch, and digitally paint. The natural world is crammed with surprises, and rather than merely create images, I try to show the spirit within, shining out.

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If you upload an image to this experimental Google website, it will return art with similar color combinations. Read the rest

I know very little about this webcomic, called "Синие Зубы городская легенда" (Google translation: "Blue Teeth Urban Legend"). The beautifully-rendered panels (many of which are animated) look like they were made on a circa-1985 Macintosh. The comic is quite NSFW, so be warned.

Update: artist is Uno Moralez. Here's a 2012 interview with him.

[via The World's Best Ever] Read the rest