Meet Ellen Rubin (aka The Popuplady) and Her Collection of 9,000 Pop-Up Books

in Art, Books, Design, History | August 2nd, 2018

It’s unusu­al to encounter a pop-up book for sale in a thrift store.

Their enthu­si­as­tic child own­ers tend to work them so hard, that even­tu­al­ly even sen­ti­men­tal val­ue is trashed.

Stuck slid­er bars and torn flaps scotch the ele­ment of sur­prise.

Scenes that once sprang to crisp atten­tion can bare­ly man­age a flac­cid 45° angle.

One good yank and Cinderella’s coach gives way for­ev­er, leav­ing an unsight­ly crust of dried glue.

Their nat­ur­al ten­den­cy toward obso­les­cence only serves to make author Ellen G. K. Rubin’s inter­na­tion­al col­lec­tion of more than 9000 pop-up and move­able books all the more aston­ish­ing.

The Popuplady—an hon­orif­ic she sports with pride—would like to cor­rect three com­mon­ly held beliefs about the objects of her high­ly spe­cial­ized exper­tise:

  1. They are not a recent phe­nom­e­non. One item in her col­lec­tion dates back to 1547.
  2. They were not orig­i­nal­ly designed for use by chil­dren (as a 1933 flip book with pho­to illus­tra­tions on how women can become bet­ter sex­u­al part­ners would seem to indi­cate.)
  3. They were once con­ceived of as excel­lent edu­ca­tion­al tools in such weighty sub­jects as math­e­mat­ics, astron­o­my, med­i­cine… and, as men­tioned above, the boudoir.

A Yale trained physician’s assis­tant, she found that her hob­by gen­er­at­ed much warmer inter­est at social events than her dai­ly toil in the area of bone mar­row trans­plants.

And while paper engi­neer­ing may not be not brain surgery, it does require high lev­els of artistry and tech­ni­cal prowess. It galls Rubin that until recent­ly, paper engi­neers went uncred­it­ed on the books they had ani­mat­ed:

Paper engi­neers are the artists who take the illus­tra­tions and make them move. They are pup­pet­mas­ters, but they hand the strings to us, the read­er.

As seen in Atlas Obscu­ra’s video, above, Rubin’s col­lec­tion includes a mov­ing postage stamp, a num­ber of wheel-shaped volvelles, and a one-of-a-kind ele­phant-themed mini-book her friend, paper engi­neer, Edward H. Hutchins, cre­at­ed from ele­phant dung paper she found on safari.

She has curat­ed or served as con­sul­tant for a num­ber of pop-up exhi­bi­tions at venues includ­ing the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library, the Biennes Cen­ter of the Lit­er­ary Arts and the Smithsonian’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry. See a few more exam­ples from her col­lec­tion, which were dis­played as part of the latter’s Paper Engi­neer­ing: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn exhi­bi­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Super­nat­ur­al Poem to 3D Paper Life

French Book­store Blends Real People’s Faces with Book Cov­er Art

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Van Gogh’s Art Now Adorns Vans Shoes

in Art, Fashion | August 2nd, 2018

While muse­ums remain free for the most part in Europe and still so pop­u­lar that they are loved bet­ter than lux­u­ry brands (accord­ing to this one arti­cle), fund­ing is not what it used to be. As you might have seen with our posts on Hierony­mus Bosch on (Dr. Marten’s) Boots, wear­able clas­sic art is kind of a thing now.

The Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam announced a series of lim­it­ed-edi­tion Vans (Van Gogh, Vans shoes, get it?!) fea­tur­ing pat­terns based on his paint­ings: “Skull” (1887), “Almond Blos­som” (1890), “Sun­flow­ers” (1889) and van Gogh’s “Self-Por­trait as a Painter” (1887–1888). There’s even a shoe that uses writ­ing from one of his let­ters, includ­ing stamp and address, as a pat­tern.

Would ol’ Vin­cent been hap­py with this, see­ing the pub­lic want to wear his work? He was cer­tain­ly hap­py in that Doc­tor Who episode where he trav­eled for­ward in time to know he hadn’t suf­fered in vain. But would he have liked to see his art wrapped around fans’ bod­ies?

Because the Vans line doesn’t stop at shoes, it fea­tures base­ball hats, t‑shirts, hood­ies, and back­packs. There is undoubt­ed­ly a lot of detail put into them. These aren’t quick knock offs made for a tourist stall. The shoe inte­ri­ors con­tain addi­tion designs, and each prod­uct comes with infor­ma­tion about the work.

And it’s all for a good cause: a por­tion of each sale goes back to the Van Gogh Muse­um to help with fund­ing and preser­va­tion.

That’s a sight bet­ter than 2017’s Van Gogh bags designed by artist/cultural appro­pri­a­tor Jeff Koons for Louis Vuit­ton, for which he slapped some mas­ter­pieces on a $5,000 hand­bag and hung “VAN GOGH” in blocky fake-gold let­ters on the front. (If it makes you feel bet­ter, Louis Vuit­ton burns all its left­over prod­uct lest it fall into the hands of the poors.)

The Vans Van Gogh col­lec­tion store opens August 3, so we can’t even tell you how much these shoes might be. But if the Doc Marten’s are any­thing to go by, they will sell out quick.

Cool way to help fund a muse­um, or just pure com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion? Let us know below.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Trail­er for a “Ful­ly Paint­ed” Van Gogh Film: Fea­tures 12 Oil Paint­ings Per Sec­ond by 100+ Painters

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Discover Hilma af Klint: Pioneering Mystical Painter and Perhaps the First Abstract Artist

in Art | July 31st, 2018

In a post last year, Col­in Mar­shall wrote of the Swedish abstract painter Hilma af Klint, who “devel­oped abstract imagery,” notes Sweden’s Mod­er­na Museet, “sev­er­al years before” con­tem­po­raries like Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Piet Mon­dri­an, and Kaz­imir Male­vich. Much like Kandin­sky, who artic­u­lat­ed his the­o­ries in the trea­tise Con­cern­ing the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, af Klint “assumed that there was a spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion to life and aimed at visu­al­iz­ing con­text beyond what the eye can see.” Influ­enced by spir­i­tu­al­ism and theos­o­phy, she “sought to under­stand and com­mu­ni­cate the var­i­ous dimen­sions of human exis­tence.”

Born in 1862 and raised in the Swedish coun­try­side, af Klint began her stud­ies at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stock­holm after her fam­i­ly relo­cat­ed to the city. “After grad­u­at­ing and until 1908,” Mod­er­na Museet writes, “she had a stu­dio at Kungsträdgår­den in cen­tral Stock­holm.

She paint­ed and exhib­it­ed por­traits and land­scapes in a nat­u­ral­ist style.” But as a result of her expe­ri­ences in séances in the late 1870s, af Klint became inter­est­ed in “invis­i­ble phe­nom­e­na.”

In 1896, Hilma af Klint and four oth­er women formed the group “De Fem” [The Five]. They made con­tact with “high mas­ters” from anoth­er dimen­sion, and made metic­u­lous notes on their séances. This led to a def­i­nite change in Hilma af Klint’s art. She began prac­tis­ing auto­mat­ic writ­ing, which involves writ­ing with­out con­scious­ly guid­ing the move­ment of the pen on the paper. She devel­oped a form of auto­mat­ic draw­ing, pre­dat­ing the sur­re­al­ists by decades. Grad­u­al­ly, she eschewed her nat­u­ral­ist imagery, in an effort to free her­self from her aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing. She embarked on an inward jour­ney, into a world that is hid­den from most peo­ple.

Dur­ing one such séance, in 1904, af Klint report­ed that she had “received a ‘com­mis­sion,’” Kate Kell­away writes at The Guardian, “from an enti­ty named Amaliel who told her to paint on ‘an astral plane’ and rep­re­sent the ‘immor­tal aspects of man.’” From 1906 to 1915, she pro­duced 193 paint­ings, “an aston­ish­ing out­pour­ing,” which she called “Paint­ings for the Tem­ple.”

Hers is a strange sto­ry. Even in a time when many famous con­tem­po­raries, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pro­fessed sim­i­lar beliefs and spir­i­tu­al prac­tices, not many claimed to be tak­ing dic­ta­tion direct­ly from spir­its in their work. The ques­tion af Klint rais­es for art his­to­ri­ans is whether she was “a quirky out­sider” or “Europe’s first abstract painter, cen­tral to the his­to­ry of abstract art.” Her mys­ti­cal eccen­tric­i­ties con­sti­tute a large part of the rea­son she has remained obscure for so long. Rather than seek fame and acclaim for her orig­i­nal­i­ty, af Klint stip­u­lat­ed when she died in 1944 at age 81 that “her work—1,200 paint­ings, 100 texts and 26,000 pages of notes—should not be shown until 20 years after her death.”

Still, it took a fur­ther 22 years before her work was seen in pub­lic, at a 1986 Los Ange­les show called “The Spir­i­tu­al in Art.” While her peers devel­oped large fol­low­ings in their life­times and took part in influ­en­tial move­ments, af Klint cul­ti­vat­ed a pri­vate, insu­lar world all her own, not unlike that of William Blake, who also remained most­ly obscure dur­ing his life, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly by choice. Her choice to hide her work came out of an ear­ly encounter, Dan­ger­ous Minds notes, with Rudolf Stein­er, “who was sim­i­lar­ly fol­low­ing a path towards cre­at­ing a syn­the­sis between the sci­en­tif­ic and the spir­i­tu­al” and who told her “these paint­ings must not be seen for fifty years as no one would under­stand them.”

Now that af Klint’s work has been exhib­it­ed in full, most recent­ly by the Mod­er­na Museet, cura­tors like Iris Müller-West­er­mann believe, as Kellawy notes, “that art-his­tor­i­cal wran­gles should not get in the way of work that needs to be seen.” Although af Klint may not have played an inte­gral his­tor­i­cal role in the devel­op­ment of abstract paint­ing, her expan­sive body of work will like­ly inspire artists, schol­ars, and eso­teric seek­ers for cen­turies to come.

Learn more about af Klint’s work at Mod­er­na Museet, the Hilma af Klint Foun­da­tion web­site, The Art Sto­ry and Dan­ger­ous Minds.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Paint­ed the First Abstract Paint­ing?: Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky? Hilma af Klint? Or Anoth­er Con­tender?

The Icon­ic Uri­nal & Work of Art, “Foun­tain,” Wasn’t Cre­at­ed by Mar­cel Duchamp But by the Pio­neer­ing Dada Artist Elsa von Frey­tag-Lor­ing­hoven

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Jean Cocteau’s Short Film About the Elegant House He Painted/“Tattooed” on the French Riviera (1952)

in Art, Film | July 25th, 2018

“Vil­la San­to-Sospir belongs to Madame Alec Weisweiller,” says the nar­ra­tor. “It dom­i­nates Cape San­to Sospir, the last point on the map before arriv­ing on Cape Fer­rat. The vil­la is sit­u­at­ed on the road to the light­house and its rocks descend to the sea.” So far this could be any of the myr­i­ad pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion hous­es about big, expen­sive hous­es in exot­ic places. Then it turns per­son­al: “It looks out on Antibes, Cannes, Nice, and to the right, Ville­franche, where I have lived for a long time.” The nar­ra­tor is avant-garde writer, artist, and film­mak­er Jean Cocteau; the house is one he and oth­er artists spent twelve years “tat­too­ing.”

Weisweiller, writes Vogue’s Stephen Todd, was “a Parisian socialite and patron of Yves Saint Lau­rent,” and the cousin of Nicole Stéphane, Elis­a­beth in Cocteau’s Les Enfants Ter­ri­bles. “It was Stéphane who intro­duced the two dur­ing film­ing. It was un coup de foudre, the pair of eccentrics hit­ting it off right away.” Invit­ed in 1949 to stay at Weisweiller’s Riv­iera house for a week, Cocteau soon found him­self, as he put it, “tired of idle­ness,” and asked Weisweiller’s per­mis­sion to paint the head of the Greek god Apol­lo above the liv­ing-room fire­place. ”

So delight­ed were the new pals with the result that they decid­ed Cocteau should car­ry on,” writes Todd, quot­ing Cocteau: “I was impru­dent enough to dec­o­rate one wall and Matisse said to me, ‘If you dec­o­rate one wall of a room, you have to do them all.’”

Matisse con­tributed to the dec­o­ra­tion of the house, as did Picas­so and Cha­gall. You can see it in La vil­la San­to Sospir, the 40-minute film he made about the project in 1952, with more recent images avail­able at Atlas Obscu­ra. Most of the house­’s imagery comes from Greek mythol­o­gy, even the entry­way mosaics, one of which depicts the head of Orpheus. Eight years lat­er, Cocteau would return to both Orpheus and Vil­la San­to-Sospir to shoot his final film Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus. “We have tried to over­come the spir­it of destruc­tion that dom­i­nates the time; we dec­o­rat­ed the sur­faces that men dreamed to demol­ish,” says Cocteau in the ear­li­er film. “Per­haps, the love of our work will pro­tect them against bombs.” And even if Vil­la San­to-Sospir should fall, cin­e­ma has pre­served it for all time.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean Cocteau Deliv­ers a Speech to the Year 2000 in 1962: “I Hope You Have Not Become Robots”

Jean Cocteau’s Avante-Garde Film From 1930, The Blood of a Poet

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Rare Photos of Frida Kahlo, Age 13–23

in Art, History, Photography | July 23rd, 2018

“Before they were famous” pho­tos are a click­bait sta­ple, espe­cial­ly if they reveal a hereto­fore unseen side of some­one whose image is tight­ly con­trolled:

The smol­der­ing activist-actress-direc­tor as a gawky, open-faced sopho­more, her hair moussed to the very lim­its of her mod­el­ing school test shots?

The ris­ing polit­i­cal star, pim­ple-faced and cen­ter-part­ed, pos­ing with the oth­er three mem­bers of his high school’s Dun­geons and Drag­ons Club?

What about ever­green art star Fri­da Kahlo?

Though her hus­band, mural­ist Diego Rivera, was the one who urged her to adopt the tra­di­tion­al Tehua­na dress of their native Mex­i­co as a uni­form of sorts, Fri­da engi­neered her image by plac­ing her­self cen­ter stage in dozens of alle­gor­i­cal, inti­mate self-por­traits.

Much of her work alludes to the hor­rif­ic acci­dent she suf­fered at 18, and the tor­tu­ous treat­ments and surg­eries she under­went as a result for the rest of her life.

It shaped the way she saw her­self, and, in turn, the way we see her. Her endur­ing appeal is such that even those who aren’t over­ly famil­iar with her work feel they have a pret­ty good han­dle on her, thanks to her ubiq­ui­ty on tote­bags, appar­el, and var­i­ous gift relat­ed items—even Fri­da Kahlo action fig­ures and paper dolls.

We know this lady, right?

What a plea­sure to get to know her bet­ter. A col­lec­tion of pho­tos that has recent­ly come to light intro­duces us to a younger, more can­did Frida—both before and after the acci­dent, when she returned to her stud­ies at Nation­al Prepara­to­ry School.

Tak­en togeth­er with the por­traits made by her pho­tog­ra­ph­er father, they show ear­ly evi­dence of the force­ful per­son­al­i­ty that would dom­i­nate and define her pub­lic image, Mary Jane-style pumps with socks, a mid­dy blouse, and a vari­ety of blunt bobs aside.

Some of the lat­er pho­tos in this batch speak to her increas­ing inter­est in dis­tin­guish­ing her­self from her female peers. Her exper­i­ments in cross dress­ing ensured she would stand out in every group pho­to, a dash­ing fig­ure in suit, tie, and slicked back hair.

Though this peri­od of her life is less a mat­ter of pub­lic record, it gets its due in the 2017 graph­ic nov­el Fri­da: The Sto­ry of Her Life by Van­na Vin­ci. Some of the oth­ers in these pho­tos, includ­ing her sis­ters and her first boyfriend, Ale­jan­dro Gómez Arias, appear as char­ac­ters, as does Death in the form of print­mak­er José Guadalupe Posada’s La Calav­era Cat­ri­na—per­haps the only image for­mi­da­ble enough to hold its own against the fab­u­lous Fri­da.

Fri­da Kahlo The Sto­ry of Her Life p. 22–23

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

The Fri­da Kahlo Action Fig­ure

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Paint Like Kandinsky, Picasso, Warhol & More: A Video Series from the Tate

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Museums | July 20th, 2018

Learn How to Print like Warhol… in five min­utes?

That sounds like fun! My Saturday’s pret­ty open…

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, The Tate’s How To series is a bit of a mis­nomer. This is not the any­one-can-do-it approach of PBS leg­end Bob Ross and his Hap­py Lit­tle Trees…

Yes, the short video demon­stra­tions come with sup­ply lists and step-by-step instruc­tions, but with­out an exist­ing fine arts back­ground, you may feel more than a lit­tle bit daunt­ed, pin­ing for the sort of kid-friend­ly mod­i­fi­ca­tions that help sec­ond graders mim­ic famous artists with such aplomb.

Rather than rel­e­gate your fresh­ly-pur­chased screens, roll of acetate, and econ­o­my-sized con­tain­er of pho­to-emul­sion to the same clos­et where your cross coun­try skis, for­eign lan­guage cas­settes, and beer-mak­ing kit are cur­rent­ly spend­ing eter­ni­ty, we sug­gest that you not buy them at all.

Instead, appre­ci­ate the way these videos bridge “the gap between Art His­to­ry and Art Cre­ation,” in the words of one view­er.

So THAT’S how Warhol and untold thou­sands of oth­er artists, includ­ing this segment’s guide Mar­i­anne Keat­ing, make their prints! A lot of equip­ment! A lot of pre­cise steps. Maybe some day you’ll take a stab at it.

’Til then… Keat­ing picked for­mer Jamaican Prime Min­is­ter Michael Man­ley as her sub­ject. Who would you choose?

Artist Sui Kim’s seg­ment on Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s approach to paint­ing inspires a semi-abstract scene from her South Kore­an child­hood, using the same col­or palette as Kandinsky’s Cos­sacks.

What would you paint?

Though before blithe­ly slap­ping a sec­ond-grad­er rain­bow on your vision and assum­ing you now know how to paint like Kandin­sky (whether or not you know how to paint), check out the Tate’s descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal:

Paint­ed between 1910 and 1911, Cos­sacks is an expres­sion of Kandinsky’s belief in the pow­er of art “to awak­en this capac­i­ty for expe­ri­enc­ing the spir­i­tu­al in mate­r­i­al and in abstract phe­nom­e­na.” The dynam­ic ten­sion between abstract form and con­crete con­tent may be read as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the wider con­flict between the forces of polit­i­cal oppres­sion – Kandin­sky had been deeply moved by the strikes and upheavals in Odessa a few years ear­li­er – and the hunger for spir­i­tu­al reju­ve­na­tion con­se­quent upon the rise of soul­less moder­ni­ty. Like his con­tem­po­raries Piet Mon­dri­an and Hen­ri Matisse, Kandin­sky saw paint­ing as an exten­sion of reli­gion, capa­ble, as he wrote in his Rem­i­nis­cences (1913), of reveal­ing ‘new per­spec­tives and true truths’ in ‘moments of sud­den illu­mi­na­tion, resem­bling a flash of light­ning.’ The echo of the Ancient Greek writer Longinus’s notion of sub­lime speech, which sim­i­lar­ly strikes like a bolt of light­ning, is car­ried over into Kandinsky’s descrip­tion of the spir­i­tu­al mis­sion of the mod­ern artist. In his 1911 essay On the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, he com­pares the life of the spir­it to ‘a large, acute-angled tri­an­gle,’ at the apex of which stands the soli­tary artis­tic genius dis­pens­ing spir­i­tu­al food to the mul­ti­tudes below.

Pret­ty com­plex stuff!

Per­haps Picas­so is a more straight­for­ward propo­si­tion.

Reck­on you could rope a friend into mod­el­ing for a Cubist por­trait a la Bust of a Woman (1909)? If so, which friend, and what might you do for them in return?

Oth­er artists in the Tate’s How To series include J.M.W. Turn­er and sculp­tor Rachel Whiteread. Watch them all here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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French Bookstore Blends Real People’s Faces with Book Cover Art

in Art, Books, Literature, Photography, Travel | July 13th, 2018

You can lead the I‑generation to a book­store, but can you make them read?

Per­haps, espe­cial­ly if the vol­ume has an eye-catch­ing cov­er image that bleeds off the edge.

If noth­ing else, they can be enlist­ed to pro­vide some stun­ning free pub­lic­i­ty for the titles that appeal to their high­ly visu­al sense of cre­ative play. (An author’s dream!)

France’s first indie book­store, Bordeaux’s Librairie Mol­lat, is reel­ing ‘em in with Book Face, an irre­sistible self­ie chal­lenge that harkens back to DJ Carl Mor­ris’ Sleeve­face project, in which one or more peo­ple are pho­tographed “obscur­ing or aug­ment­ing any part of their body or bod­ies with record sleeve(s), caus­ing an illu­sion.”

The results are pro­lif­er­at­ing on the store’s Insta­gram, as fetch­ing young things (and oth­ers) apply them­selves to find­ing the best angles and cos­tumes for their lit-based Trompe‑l’œil mas­ter­strokes.

…even the ones that don’t quite pass the forced per­spec­tive test have the capac­i­ty to charm.

…and not every shot requires intense pre-pro­duc­tion and pre­ci­sion place­ment.

Hope­ful­ly, we’ll see more kids get­ting into the act soon. In fact, if some young­sters of your acquain­tance are express­ing a bit of bore­dom with their vacances d’été, try turn­ing them loose in your local book­store to iden­ti­fy a like­ly can­di­date for a Book Face of their own.

(Remem­ber to sup­port the book­seller with a pur­chase!)

Back state­side, some librar­i­ans shared their pro tips for achiev­ing Book Face suc­cess in this 2015 New York Times arti­cle. The New York Pub­lic Library’s Mor­gan Holz­er also cites Sleeve­face as the inspi­ra­tion behind #Book­face­Fri­day, the hash­tag she coined in hopes that oth­er libraries would fol­low suit.

With over 50,000 tagged posts on Insta­gram, looks like it’s caught on!

See Librairie Mol­lat’s patrons’ gallery of Book Faces here.

Read­ers, if you’ve Book Faced any­where in the world, please share the link to your efforts in the com­ments sec­tion.

via This is Colos­sal/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

36 Abstract Cov­ers of Vin­tage Psy­chol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Art of Sci-Fi Book Cov­ers: From the Fan­tas­ti­cal 1920s to the Psy­che­del­ic 1960s & Beyond

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. In hon­or of her son’s 18th birth­day, she invites you to Book Face your baby using The Big Rum­pus, her first book, for which he served as cov­er mod­el. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How the Radical Buildings of the Bauhaus Revolutionized Architecture: A Short Introduction

in Architecture, Art, Design, History | July 13th, 2018

When Ger­many lost World War I, it also lost its monar­chy. The con­sti­tu­tion for the new post­war Ger­man state was writ­ten and adopt­ed in the city of Weimar, giv­ing it the unof­fi­cial name of the Weimar Repub­lic. Free of monar­chi­cal cen­sor­ship, the Weimar Repub­lic saw, among oth­er upheavals, the flood­gates open for artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion in all areas of life. One of the most influ­en­tial aes­thet­ic move­ments of the era began in Weimar, where the Great Big Sto­ry short above opens. As the city gave birth to the Weimar Repub­lic, it also gave birth to the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus, lit­er­al­ly “build­ing house,” was a school in two sens­es, both a move­ment and an actu­al insti­tu­tion. The style it advo­cat­ed, accord­ing to the video’s nar­ra­tor, “looked to strip build­ings from unnec­es­sary orna­ment and build the foun­da­tion of what is called mod­ern archi­tec­ture.” It was at Weimar Uni­ver­si­ty in 1919 that archi­tect Wal­ter Gropius found­ed the Bauhaus, and his office still stands there as a tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of “clean, sim­ple designs fit for the every­day life.” We also see the first offi­cial Bauhaus build­ing, Georg Muche’s Haus am Horn of 1923, and Gropius’ Bauhaus Dessau of 1925, which “amazed the world with its steel-frame con­struc­tion and asym­met­ri­cal plan.”

You can learn more about the Bauhaus’ prin­ci­ples in the video above, a chap­ter of an Open Uni­ver­si­ty series on design move­ments. As an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion, the Bauhaus “offered foun­da­tion train­ing in many art and design dis­ci­plines,” includ­ing mass pro­duc­tion, seek­ing to “devel­op stu­dents who could uni­fy art with craft while embrac­ing new tech­nol­o­gy.” Bauhaus thinkers believed that “good design required sim­plic­i­ty and geo­met­ric puri­ty,” which led to works of graph­ic design, fur­ni­ture, and espe­cial­ly archi­tec­ture that looked then like rad­i­cal, some­times hereti­cal depar­tures from tra­di­tion — but which to their cre­ators rep­re­sent­ed the future.

“Noth­ing dates faster than peo­ple’s fan­tasies about the future,” art crit­ic Robert Hugh­es once said, but some­how the fruits of the Bauhaus still look as mod­ern as they ever did. That holds true even now that the influ­ence of the Bauhaus man­i­fests in count­less ways in var­i­ous realms of art and design, though it had already made itself glob­al­ly felt when the school moved to Berlin in 1932. By that time, of course, Ger­many had anoth­er regime change com­ing, one that would denounce the Bauhaus as a branch of “degen­er­ate art” spread­ing the dis­ease of “cos­mopoli­tan mod­ernism.” The Gestapo shut it down in 1933, but thanks to the efforts of emi­grants like Gropius, Hannes Mey­er, and Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, each of whom once led the school, the Bauhaus would live on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Oral His­to­ry of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Inter­views (in Eng­lish) with Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe & More

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: Gropius, Klee, Kandin­sky, Moholy-Nagy & More

32,000+ Bauhaus Art Objects Made Avail­able Online by Har­vard Muse­um Web­site

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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