Mexican Ramblings

A colleague sent me this link to a video showing Mexican men dancing in really pointy shoes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEiMA3QtYWc.

It is so fascinating to watch their surroundings, creativity, innovation, perspectives and use of technology. How interesting, the way they talk and the social strata they make up in that particular part of Mexico. This video brought back memories because my niece used to talk about the Mexican boys and their pointy shoes who used to hit on her in high school.

If you go into most any Mexican “border town,” you’ll get the chance to see the cheap and cheezy artwork for the tourists. They also have some pretty fabulous artwork but it’s going to cost you!

Contemplating on Mexico’s high end, high art, I consider my favorite Mexican Master to be Rufino Arellanes Tamayo, (Oaxaca, Mexico, 1899–1991). How ironic, some of his work ended up as trash in New York! http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Rufino_Tamayo-Tres-Personajes.html. Trust me, his works are anything but trash!!

I’ve had the opportunity to travel into the interior of Mexico and have viewed some of the exotic artworks of Mexico’s indigenous people like the Tarahumara, Olmec, Aztec and Maya. Rufino Tamayo is Zapotec and from Oaxaca. I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting but, someday, I will. I wonder if his ancestors spoke Mayan since that culture extended from the north of Mexico’s peninsula, Yucatan, to Guatemala? I have family in Yucatan. They speak Mayan and told me Mayan is being taught in schools there, and in Guatemala also, since it is part of their heritage and they don’t want the language to die. I love that the legends down there are always in Spanish, Mayan and English.

Why am I drawn to Rufino Tayayo’s work so much more than, say, Diego Rivera’s. I think, this explains it. “Although his (Rufino Tamayo’s) work is embedded with distinctly Mexican roots, both in color and in subject, Tamayo’s art is ultimately a response to universal and not temporal matters.” http://www.mexonline.com/history-tamayo.htm.

Need to make it to Oaxaca, badly!!

Reference listings:
http://ask.lc.mwh.reference.com/related/Rufino+Tamayo?o=10601&qsrc=2892&l=dir

Art & Money & What It Looks Like

Beautiful Losers, the movie, documents artists and their work from the street scene of the early ’90s. I really enjoyed watching these young artists and was impressed by their courage to live the way they did. Sometimes they slept in sleeping bags at the same studios and galleries to produce and show their creations. It all seemed so very “grungy.” This movie made me think about my educational and intellectual pursuits in graphic design. If my education had been completed through an art academy, I wonder if I would have ended up living in some loft in New York, immersed in a life someway involved with art. The cliche goes that artists live outside of society’s mainstream so they may get an “objective” viewpoint. I wonder if it would have been a very lonely and rather deprived life.

The young artists in Beautiful Losers like Shepard Fairey, Ed Templeton, Margaret Kilgallen (deceased), are now quite famous, successful and, as a collective, influenced fashion, music, art, design, and film. If you link to the sites and view their work, you’ll notice something about it looks familiar although you may not know their names.

On the flip side, take a look at super rich, successful and wealthy artists. Yes they do exist. Just off hand Brice Marden, Anish Kapoor, Takashi Murakami. Ok, Brice Marden actually accumulated most of his wealth in conjunction with his art dealer and through real estate holdings in New York. Still, it was his art that got him started. If you’ve ever gone to Chicago, you’ve enjoyed Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. I think it’s definitely an icon of that city. Takashi Murakami ultimately created an “art factory” called Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. with studios in Tokyo and Long Island City — a major money making machine.

What financial perspective does one get from looking at these artists? Some look homeless and others end-up looking extravagantly wealthy. Ultimately, it’s a universal enigma, right?

Beautiful Losers

http://www.movie666.com/who-are-the-beautiful-losers

http://www.beautifullosers.com

http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2009/01/beautiful-losers-boxed-catalog-of.html

Wealthy artists:

http://www.artinfo.com/news/photos/2077/19840/

Shepard Fairey

http://www.studionumber-one.com/about/

Anish Kapoor 

http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/kapoor/

Margaret Kilgallen 

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/kilgallen/

Brice Marden

http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/brice-marden/

Takashi Murakami

http://www.artnet.com/artists/takashi-murakami/

Ed Templeton

http://www.toymachine.com/

Typopgraphic Intentions

Don’t you wish you knew everything there is to know about typography? Typographic “Bibles” I’ve read and tried to memorize are the following:

• Robert Bringhurst — The Elements of Typographic Style

• Lewis Blackwell — 20th-Century Type

• Roger Fawcett-Tang — New Typographic Design

• Rob Carter, Ben Day and Philip Meggs — Typographic Design:
            Form Communication, Second Edition

• Allen Haley — Typographic Milestones

• Edward R. Tufte — The Visual Display of
            Quantitative Information
    These authors are typographic masters because of their in-depth study and research on the subject. From these books I know: { } are braces, [ ] are square brackets, < > are angle brackets, § is a section mark, ® is a register mark that is always superscript when used in text, & is an ampersand, SM is a service mark, etc. Now I must embarrassingly confess, I haven’t read and studied all books by Jan Tschichold — but I will do so, I promise.

    Contemporary Web Design requires typographic measurement based on the pixel. In August, 2009, SMASHING MAGAZINE presented the article Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices by Michael Martin. This article covers 13 issues related to font usage in Web Design: popularity of serif & san-serif, usage of type size, interline spacing, characters per line length, etc. Also, it contains links to media now applying the digital typographic elements discussed — this is, after all, the Digital Age.
    I have produced work in measurements of picas and points, inches and hundredths of an inch, centimeters and millimeters and, now, in pixels. Michael Martin does emphasize the article is not a “scientific” study and should be referred to only as a rough guideline. In my opinion, this study suggests using too many characters per line length since, in print, if the line length is too long, readers loose the visual leap from one line to the next. No matter, read this article, it’s a “Digital Typographic Bible.”

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/20/typographic-design-survey-best-practices-from-the-best-blogs/

Show Your Work Now

A colleague told me he was thinking about making a Web Site to display his portfolio. I suggested he create his portfolio using Flickr since using their Web Site is easy and very inexpensive. Still, he’d rather wait and learn to build his Web Site. So, I wonder, what have famous people in the Arts industry done to promote themselves?

In Picasso: Art Genius … Marketing Genius? Something in Between?, Ryan MacRay Jones says Picasso “Understood key luxury marketing fundamentals like:

• Exclusive distribution (only via Gallery Kahnweiler)

• Differentiation (leveraged the use of African art styles)

• Smart Cultivation of critics “in the know” (he did portraits of collectors and “taste makers” of the day), and

• Strong emotional affiliation.”

Jerry Chautin writes in Salvador Dali: Virtuoso Artist or Clever Marketer?, “Dali managed to stay in the press with stories in periodicals and striking photographs, including features in Life magazine; six times in one 12-month period. He appeared on numerous TV shows such as What’s My Line and spontaneously created a shaving-cream drawing for his ostentatious entrance on I’ve Got a Secret.

Obvisouly, I’m suggesting use every trick “social media” now has to offer. Use Behance, Flicker, Facebook, Tweeter, LinkedIn, Blogger, etc., now! Show your work any and everywhere for as many people to view as possible. Don’t wait until you think you’ve mastered Web Page building. Even “journalism experts” are losing out. The New York Times insists on charging for subscriptions. On the other hand, the readership of The Huffington Post is exploding. They make their money by the advertising on their site. Meanwhile, nobody has mentioned that The New York Times has been bailed out and has almost hit bankruptcy several times.

Arianna Huffington states in On Change, Disruptive Innovation, and the Problem With Paywalls, “We definitely won’t be erecting any paywalls at HuffPost. Yes, the media business is in a state of transition, and there are plenty of challenges, but this is why it’s all the more important to take advantage of the incredible array of tools for innovation that are cropping up almost daily. The exact wrong response to this transition is to wall yourself off from new possibilities.”

Note to commercial/graphic designers Get Your Work Out There & Don’t Wall Yourself Off!

Avatars of Love

In my quick research from the Internet for this Blog, I tried to look up famous muses throughout history. Of course, I didn’t take into account how many there have been. But, I am using this tool to describe my great nephews who, I believe, inspire me. After all, when I’m with them I really don’t worry about the rest of the world and humanity’s problems, I just enjoy my life. 

Three examples of muses for reflection sake —

From Madison Magazine: Masters and heir Muses

“Perhaps the relationship between French couturier Hubert de Givenchy and his muse Audrey Hepburn would become the most productive (and famous) designer/muse relationship in history. Hepburn, who met Givenchy in 1954 as they were both starting out, wore the designer’s creations both on and off the screen for almost 40 years, becoming almost as intrinsic to the brand as Hubert himself. (Remember that black dress she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?)”

http://www.madisonmag.com.au/news/feature-masters-and-their-muses.htm

POSTED 08.10.2010 @ 15:53 • Retrieved March 27, 2011.

From ArtQuotes.net: Salvador Dali Biography – Famous Spanish Artist  

“In 1929 Salvador Dali met his wife Helena Diakonova, a Russian immigrant that was already married and was more than 10 years older than him. Know as “Gala” she became Dali’s muse, lover, supporter and business manager. The couple were married in 1934 and she remained a major part of Dali’s life up until his death.”

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/salvador-dali/biography.htm

Retrieved March 27, 2011.

From Da Vinci’s Muse: A Lifestyle of Creative Purpose and Worth

It is difficult to cover Leonardo’s muses because the history of this great Renaissance genius is not fully documented and known. It’s also very controversial since some believe he may have used a male lover as the model for the Mona Lisa. I absolutely love his paintings and I’m upset that he didn’t finish all of them for us to enjoy. So watch and see Leonardo for yourself. Make him your muse. As a side note, my Art History professor hated when people referred to Leonardo as “Leonardo da Vinci” because she said “da Vinci” was not his last name, it is where he was from — remember that!

http://www.davincismuse.com/quotes-from-leonardo-da-vinci

Retrieved March 27, 2011.

These are my great nephews that truly inspire me with their innocence and beauty! True Angel, Jose Angel, and Ezra Angel.

Energy — What To Do? click on post for 100% view

To Japan with Love

I’ve never had the opportunity and/or time to study Asian Art or Asian Art History. Hasn’t just about everyone been exposed to some of it in one way or another. I believe it influenced Art Nouveau and the Impressionists? Don’t remember too well, it’s been 15 years since I took my Art History courses. I grew up in San Diego and, from my memories, I know Californians are greatly aware and influenced by Asian Art, languages and culture. I believe during the 80s and 90s, studying Japanese was really big in California. Maybe that had to do with the huge Japanese companies setting foot in the United States in their effort to find cheap labor (at least cheaper than theirs). With this March, 2011 earthquake and its catastrophic ensuing tsunami along the Japanese coastline, it would be most respectful to honor the Japanese with a small, tiny glimpse at their great artistic lineage — hopefully, paying homage in some small way …

Searching the Web this totally cheesy commercial Web Site packed a punch, at least for me:
http://www.asianartmall.com/woodblockarticle.htm
Retrieved 2011, Copyright Atlantic PC, Inc.

A small excerpt:
During the 19th century, some of the most exhibited and represented artists of Japanese Woodblock Prints are Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769-1825), Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), Utamaro Kitagawa (1750-1806), and Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858).
I’ve included these names in case you’d like to look them up.

Ok, that was “Old Time” Japan. Feast your eyes on some contemporary Japanese Graphic Design!
Check this Web Site out (now it asks for a donation for disaster relief).
http://gurafiku.tumblr.com/tagged/2010s

Hageman, Ryan. Retrieved March 13, 2011. A collection of visual research that encompasses the history of Japanese graphic design.
Listed in Mr. Hageman’s Web Site Page, to die for work from:
Tadanori Yokoo | Shigeo Fukuda | Yusaku Kamekura | Ikko Tanaka | Kazumasa Nagai | Keiichi Tanaami | Kiyoshi Awazu | Keisuke Nagatomo | Kazuo Umezu.Mr. Ryan Hageman I hope I referenced your Web Site correctly (please don’t sue me!!)

God, now I remember their exquisite calligraphy and unbelievably rich and gorgeous history of “packaging design.” Confidentially, I will confess, I’ve even seen light porno where people “package themselves.” Please don’t freak, we’re talking artistry. It’s a culture thing! See the The Pillow Book, directed Peter Greenaway; written by Sei Shonagon (book), Michael C. Berch; starring Vivian Wu, Ewan McGregor and Yoshi Oida. I dare ’ya, I double dare ’ya!