Top Ten "Ugly" Buildings to Visit

Ontario College of Art's Sharp Centre for Design. Image via Wikimedia Commons

It's always nice when Toronto makes a top ten list....even this one!

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At the United Nations, Updating a Modernist Icon

United Nations General Assembly Hall. Image via Wikimedia Commons

At the tall iron gates of the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Marian Miszkiel, a Canadian engineer who has previously rebuilt bombed-out buildings in Kosovo, hands me a hard hat and leads me through security and toward the entrance of the General Assembly building. We haul open the heavy silver and nickel front doors, designed by the formidable Canadian modernist Ernest Cormier, into an airy lobby with balconies curved like massive white bones. Boomerang-shaped, the five-storey Assembly is a marvel of mid-century design, a mostly unsung hero of 1950s architecture conceived during that fragile postwar era by a prestigious board of design consultants nominated by member governments, including the legendary architects Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier, the project’s chief architect, Wallace K. Harrison, and Cormier.

Read more here.

Erik Nitsche: The Reluctant Modernist

The life and work of the quietly pivotal Swiss modern design Erik Nitsche, who's clients ranged from the MOMA to RCA in a career that spanned the 20th century.

Eric Nitsche may not be as well known today as his contemporaries, Lester Beall, Paul Rand, or Saul Bass, but he is their equal. Almost 90 years old, this Swiss born graphic designer is arguably one of the last surviving Modern design pioneers. Although he never claimed to be either a progenitor or follower of any dogma, philosophy, or style other than his own intuition, the work that earned him induction last year into the New York Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame, including the total identity for General Dynamics Corporation from 1955 to 1965 and the series of scientific, music, and world history illustrated books, which he designed and packaged during the 1960s and 1970s, fits squarely into the Modernist tradition.

Yet Nitsche’s approach was not a cookie-cutter Modern formula that so many designers blindly followed at that time. It was a personal fusion of early influences (classical and otherwise) and contemporary aesthetics based on fast pacing and dramatic juxtapositions. Rather than adherence to Modernist orthodoxy, Nitsche insists that the methodology that most closely resembles a Modern manner, clean, systematic, and ordered, developed because of his restlessness at doing mostly illustrative work during the early part of his career.

Although he might not own up to the fact that he had played a formidable role in the Modernist legacy, Nitsche does not deny that he was as good - certainly as prolific, if not more so - than any other designer of his age. He also speculates that had it not been for his asocial tendencies ("I preferred to do the work, not talk about it") and a few poor business decisions along the way (he says he turned down a job at IBM that later went to Paul Rand), he might be as well known today as any of the other acknowledged pioneers. In fact, he worked for many of the same clients, including Orbachs, Bloomingdale’s, Decca Records, RCA Records, Filene’s, 20th Century Fox, The Museum of Modern Art, Container Corporation of America, the New York Transit Authority, Revlon, and more. Judging from the sheer volume of work bearing his signature or type credit, there are few others who can make this claim.

Read more and view samples of Nitsche's work, click here.

Video: Bauhaus - Graphic Design Art Craft Painting Drawing Drawings Sculpture

Marks & Spencer launch retro lingerie for Queen's Jubilee

This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Marks and Spencer has released a collection of 1950s-inspired lingerie to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The collection features a "stunning regal purple" bra and knicker set alongside a conical bra and retro teddy to emulate the glamour of the 50s, the retailer said.

Materials include vintage-inspired silk and lace and combinations of satin and mesh.

M&S lingerie designers delved into the company archives to take inspiration from original 1950s designs, where they came across the the conical bra and "big knicker" shapes.

The designs, which include corsetry, have been transformed into "more wearable" items for today's consumers.

Read more at The Belfast Telegraph. Click here.

Art Gallery of Alberta Celebrates 50 Years of Alex Janvier

Morning Star by Alex Janvier. (Creative Commons Share-Alike).

EDMONTON - Aboriginal history is rife with references to the four directions; Alex Janvier’s compass is more complex, like any good hunter’s.

“It’s a lifelong quest,” Janvier says over the phone. “I’m alive, I’m above ground. As long as I’m capable of handling that brush, I’ll be doing something.”

In the coming months we’ll be able to experience the artist’s impact with unprecedented perspective. The Art Gallery of Alberta’s show title Alex Janvier is perfectly chosen. The new show, which opens to the general public on Friday, is a survey, though that’s like saying Elk Island Park is a checklist of wildlife.

Mapping a truly significant lifetime of experimentation, we’ll see Janvier’s childhood oils on Masonite recontextualizing Catholic iconography; the gorgeous early development of his signature style in black and white — his name signed with his treaty number, 287; colourful movement to his famous white backgrounds; work mirroring his masterpiece dome in the National Gallery; map-based protests to land abuse; impressionistic portraits of the Bill Reid and the so-called Indian Group of Seven. Like an ancient summit, the show gathers more than 90 pieces from private and gallery collections continentwide, and includes never-before-displayed early experiments bursting with aggressive colour, borrowed from the artist’s collection.

“The importance of Alex historically,” AGA curator Catherine Crowston explains as the paintings are being hung, “is that he is one of those artists who moved aboriginal art out of the margin — out of the idea of being a decorative, craft-based tradition — moving aboriginal art into the art mainstream culture.”

Read more at The Edmonton Journal. Click here.

Own and build Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye modernist house in cardboard

Wikimedia commons image by Andreas Praefcke

Fancy owning an iconic modernist home? Well, if you are prepared to put in a bit of work, you can pick up Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye modernist house for a fraction of the price of the original.

Of course, there's a catch. This one is the iconic 1930s house in miniature and in cardboard. You also have to put it together yourself. But on the plus side, you'll not have to travel to Poissy, on the outskirts of France, to enjoy this version. It will just be there, sat in your home or office.

A company called Paper Landmarks sells kits of various iconic builds, all of which are made out of a stiff cardboard. You just buy the pre-cut or printed sets (the latter requiring cutting) and follow the instructions to create it. If you want one, you can secure one online for $25 / $39. Alternatively, the Barbican Art Gallery and Bookends in London are listed as retailers. See the site for retailers in other locations.

Read more at Retro To Go. Click here.

Like These Lovely Links!

From HuffPo's George Hobica, Touring America's Iconic Modernist Homes.

An Edmonton prize that once belonged to Wayne Gretzy is the subject of 60s Gem a Labour of Love by Scott McKeen in The Edmonton Journal.

The almost-inexplicable surge in demand for modern art continues unabated as this article, Record Night At Christie's For Calders Amid Post-War Art Mania confirms.

You can't miss these amazing photos from the BBC: In Pictures: Modernist Delhi.

Sad, but true. Demolition Derby for Tel Aviv's Modernist Buildings.

In Pictures: Modernist Delhi

Beautiful images. You must click here!