greg – Page 213

Nice Hustle, Dia, You Get Right On That.

Red-headed Dia director Philippe Vergne was dressed in optimism–the new armor under Obama–and spoke of his mission this week to save Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty from contamination by oil companies planning to drill into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. “We’re going to win,” he said. I believe him.

– quoted by Linda Yablonsky last week, nearly a year after the oil drilling permit issue arose, and several months after the collapse in oil prices decisively returned the thick, sticky, low-quality crude at Rozel Point to unprofitability. [artforum]

Refreshments

Of the three Mormon-raised artists I’ll be talking about at the Sunstone Symposium on January 31st, painter Wayne Thiebaud is probably the most recognizable and accessible. Thiebaud’s brightly lit paintings of cakes, pies, candy, and other American diner delights were shown along side Pop Art from the earliest days of the movement, particularly seminal Pop exhibitions in 1962 at Sidney Janis Gallery and the Walter Hopps-curated show at the Pasadena Museum, “New Paintings of Common Objects.”

You kind of half-think it’s a joke that Thiebaud’s subject matter–desserts–would have a link to his Mormon upbringing. Surely, I’m not making a serious point that Thiebaud is painting that most culturally Mormon of all foodstuffs–refreshments. Actually, I think he makes the point himself.
Compare the language in these passages from a 2001 interview Thiebaud gave for the Smithsonian Archive of American Art. The first is about growing up and the Church:

WAYNE THIEBAUD: My grandmother had, I think, eleven children. She lived to be 99. And my father, coming from another religion – Baptist, I think, if I remember – joined the Mormon Church, and was eventually an enthusiast, or was a- It’s a lay ministry, Mormonism, and he finally became a bishop. So I was a bishop’s son.
SUSAN LARSEN: Did the-
WAYNE THIEBAUD: But the Mormon community is very, very intersupportive. And- and so it was a very nourishing environment. I was what you’d call today, I think, a spoiled child.
SUSAN LARSEN: Mm-hm. Did you have a lot of people around you and people caring about you?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Lots of aunts and uncles, that large family, so that it was- it was a wonderful kind of way, I think, to grow up, psychologically. In terms of the intellectual tradition, Mormonism has a very strange association with that, so it’s… That division occurred later on, and I’m no longer involved very much at all with it.
…
SUSAN LARSEN: In your family circle, was there much interest in culture, either music or art or pop- popular culture?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, on a kind of- a kind of very basic, almost folk level. The Mormon Church sort of encourages all kinds of performances. People get up and talk, and we were often encouraged to do, like, what they call one minute talks or three minute talks.
SUSAN LARSEN: What were they about?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Mostly- well, mostly kind of hearty and humorous and religious or… little talks.
SUSAN LARSEN: Uh-huh, right.
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Lots of plays, dances. But very family oriented always.
SUSAN LARSEN: And so this was a- a factor in your weekly life, and things to look forward to and take part in? You took part in these?
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, oh yes, very much so.
SUSAN LARSEN: Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. It wasn’t just watching, but participating.
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, pretty much- pretty much centrally involved. Even if I were, for instance, to go in the – which I eventually did – become a scout, the scout troop was in the Mormon church. And if you went to a dance, it was at the Mormon statehouse [i.e., stakehouse. -ed.]– or church house. So it really was a- a community, a rather close knitted, intersupported environment.

Thiebaud then ties his paintings to the past–his past–in a couple of relevant ways:

SUSAN LARSEN:…The- the classic still life paintings that you’ve done often seem to feature comfort food or middle class kind of things that most people can access, that most people have access to, or have tasted or have…
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Right, and they’re available in almost every place in America. Same buffet spread in almost everywhere.
SUSAN LARSEN: Is that something that- that is important in the choosing of things to your, or was there…
WAYNE THIEBAUD: I think maybe part- certainly, part of it. But I start out with these very formalist problems. But certainly, toy counters and restaurants, which I’ve worked in, those experiences always, for me, have to have some footing in them, in that world that I, you know, I’ve lived in. And people will often ask, “Well, you never painted pizza, you never painted spaghetti.” And I’ll say, “Well, it’s not…” Yes, now everybody has pizzas everyplace, but my things have a lot to do, I suppose with nostalgia. I think Allan Kaprow once said that they’re very nostalgic paintings. They go, really, back to the thirties and forties. And the evolution of, let’s say, European influence on the decoration of pastries doesn’t really reach Medicine Bow, Wyoming; it’s just not the same. So there is that part, I think, which is crucial. Gumball machines, gambling machines, automobiles Even American cities and the juxtaposition of strange architectural differences, all the way from gothic to modern, and that the cities sort of grow up without plans, like Paris and so on. And even American agriculture, I think, was seemingly different in terms of its mechanization. But also, it’s sort of artfulness, in terms of how they make fences or design roads or…
…
SUSAN LARSEN: People seem to take enormous immediate pleasure in your paintings. (inaudible)
WAYNE THIEBAUD: Yes, that’s- I think that’s an inherent- can be an inherent danger, I’m supposed. But I’m delighted when people are able to smile at the work, and I- I hope it has a sense of humor and- and joyousness; that would be my- my hope.
SUSAN LARSEN: It seems because those things are in most of our common experience, I think there- there’s almost a kind of endearing welcome that- that the subject matter proposes to a lot of viewers. It’s- it’s as though you were there when they were a kid. You remember those tastes, those things. And there’s- those are moments of inexpensive pleasure that is available to most people. Very democratic, kind of. Better than showing something special and strange that only…
WAYNE THIEBAUD: It’s an interesting question, isn’t it, about how that comes about. I don’t think it can be faked. Like people who, say, try to fake… We were talking earlier about misery or- or inhumanity to man. That’s… I mean, if you’re raised in an atmosphere of continuing support and no troubles, then it’s very hard to make agony a real thing, or to affect primitivism or…Or in the case of even something like joyousness. If your life hasn’t been joyful, I don’t know how you’d ever get it into your paintings.

Joy, pleasure, comfort, nostalgia, continuing support, no troubles, these are the motivating feelings and evocations Thiebaud cites for his work.
The references and resonances between Thiebaud’s work and Edward Hopper’s are commonly recognized, as are his bigger picture interest in exploring consumerism and popular culture generally. But the idyllic past in Thiebaud’s memory is not just American, Western, or Californian; it’s Mormon.

“An Unannounced Preview At The Coronet” Of Pasolini’s Teorema

From Vincent Canby’s April 22, 1969 review in the New York Times:

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Teorema,” which opened yesterday at the Coronet, is the kind of movie that should be seen at least twice, but I’m afraid that a lot of people will have difficulty sitting through it even once. At least there were some who had that problem Friday night when the film was given an unannounced preview at the Coronet, supplementing the regular program, headed by “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”
It was a disastrous combination. “Baby Love” is a straightforward, skin-deep narrative movie that elicits conventional responses to familiar stimuli. “Teorema” (theorem) is a parable, a movie of realistic images photographed and arranged with a mathematical precision that drains them of comforting emotional meaning. For the moviegoer whose sensibilities have been preset to receive “Baby Love”–or just about any other movie now in first run here–“Teorema” is likely to be a calamitous and ridiculous experience.
…
There is very little dialogue in the movie–923 words, say the ads (but I’m not sure whether this refers to the Italian dialogue or the English subtitles). Even though Pasolini is a talented novelist and poet, the film is almost completely visual. The actors don’t act, but simply exist to be photographed. The movie itself is the message, a series of cool, beautiful, often enigmatic scenes that flow one into another with the rhythm of blank verse.
This rhythm–one of the legacies of the silent film, especially of silent film comedy–was impossible for the Coronet audience to accept. The seductions are ticked off one after the other with absolutely no thought of emotional continuity. So are the individual defeats, which are punctuated by recurring shots of a desolate, volcanic landscape swept by sulphurous mists.
There is also a kind of rhythm within the images. Someone seen in right profile is immediately repeated in left profile. An action that proceeds to the left across the screen may be switched 90 degrees, directly away from the camera, or into the camera. Early scenes are in black and white. Later scenes are so muted they almost look like the old Cinecolor process, only to go monochromatic again at the end.

Can you imagine a theater today showing an unannounced preview after the feature? Or showing Pasolini at all? I still have a raincheck ticket in my wallet from the Coronet [aka the Baronet Coronet, aka the Coronet I & II, which was demolished to make way for an Urban Outfitters] to go back and see Dancer In The Dark. I went to a noon showing, only to realize I was crazy and had a call at like 2pm, so I left before the trailers ended. Oh wait, I just pulled it out. The ticket was from the Cinema 1,2,3,4 up the street. Never mind. The Pasolini thing’s still crazy, though.
Theorem (1968) The Screen: A Parable by Pasolini: Teorema’ in Premiere at the Coronet Terence Stamp in Role of a Visiting God [nyt, via sal mineo’s ghost, thanks ready for the house]

Gregor Schneider’s Cube Venice At Sotheby’s

Buy this nice c-print study of Gregor Schneider’s unrealized Cube Venice at Sotheby’s next month, and they’ll throw in a fatwa for free!
Sale L09621, Feb 6, 2009, LOT 213: GREGOR SCHNEIDER, CUBE VENICE, 2005, numbered 2/6, 3,000–4,000 GBP [sothebys.com]

David Hammons On Not Liking To Show In Gallery Spaces That Much

On a visit to Alexandria, Egypt, artist David Hammons asked a curator to ask a local non-profit, Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, if he could do a project with them:

I had to explain that it wasn’t going to be in their gallery. They had hoped it would be–it’s a very nice space, a marvelous, beautiful restoration of an apartment. As beautiful as the space was, that was too easy to do. I don’t particularly care for galleries. I’d rather walk through the city and find my own spaces.
I do that a lot in New York. I’ll find something and call people up with the address and tell people to go look at it. It could be a stack of wood in the subway or something that looks like a Joseph Beuys or something lying around. [emphasis added]

Then there’s this. about works where he predicted rainbows over Paris and rain in Munster:

was watching a video on YouTube in which Ornette Coleman presents a tune called “Spring” in Germany; he tells the audience, “Follow the idea of the song, not the song itself.” He also said, “Follow the idea, not the sound.” I was impressed with that. Follow how my ideas are put together, as opposed to whether the rainbow appears or the rain comes. I use this logic a lot. It moves in the realm of poetry as opposed to the actuality that people are used to or expect.

[via artforum]

W-T-F-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

I’m a fan of Walt Disney. I used to work at Disney. Disney has a place in the history of art. But Paul Richards’ four-page curatorial fantasia in the Washington Post yesterday calling for more Walt Disney in Our Nation’s Museums is the height of obtuseness. Unfortunately, it’s all too of a piece with the facile counter-intuitive stuntwriting that passes for the Post’s coverage of cultural topics. [cf. Blake Gopnik’s review of the National Gallery’s gelato collection; watching Metro riders ignore violinist Josh Bell, insultingly uninformed reviews of fashion and John Cage concerts, &c., &c.]
Richards gives six reasons–unpersuasive, sure, but also so off-the-wall they’re unanswerable–that Disney “deserves more than the video store. He should be in the museums”:

Walt Disney made drawing move.

Disney put his art deep inside our minds.

Disney could hang with the surrealists.

Disney could hang with the animal artists.

Politeness says admit him.

Time is on his side.
Interestingly, he doesn’t mention what I suspect is the real reason he wants to curate Disney. Here’s the self-aggrandizing kicker of Richards’ 2005 reminiscence of Walter Hopps, the legendary curator and museum director who was as famous in art world circles for his erratic, irreverent behavior as for his prescient, influential exhibitions:

Hours, sometimes days, would pass before one heard his low, rich voice, often on the telephone in the middle of the night. It was always worth the wait. He was the best art talker I have ever heard. His speech was like a Jackson Pollock drip painting, swooping, swelling, doubling back. He mesmerized. He taught.
One night, I remember, at the headachy end of a noisy artists’ party, I asked him to conceive a show on the spot. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll call it ‘Seven Enormously Popular American Painters.’ Five supporting actors, and two stars. For the five, Walt Disney, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Rockwell Kent and Saul Steinberg. And for the two competing stars, Audubon and Warhol.”
The death of Walter Hopps makes the modern-art museum world feel somehow pale and tame.

Luckily for Hopps, he died without having to watch a fanboi/critic try to turn some offhand party chatter about the worst show ever into a mouse-eared museum manifesto.

“Topaz Carpenter”

I’d had the idea all worked out, and the script outline–or a draft of it, anyway–all ready for a couple of years, but my paternal grandfather Champ passed away before I was able to make the original documentary about him I’d envisioned.
In 2001, I rather impetuously set off to interview my grandmother Avis, his wife, about their life. Which is when I learned he’d been in a band. With outfits and everything. A dance hall country band that traveled the desert towns in Utah and thereabouts. It’s how he and my grandmother had met. I guess that made her a groupie.
As long as I’d known, he was only ever the gregarious, Center Street businessman, the guy who ran the dry cleaners where everyone took their Sunday clothes. But my childhood memories of him picking songs for me on his guitar changed as I imagined how, for him, playing music was also a reminder of the life he’d given up when he had a family.
I’d met my great uncle Wayne, Champ’s brother, twice. At Champ’s funeral, and then a little over a year ago at Avis’s. It occurred to me that I should talk to him, hear his stories, see his photos and mementos. Because he is only one of a few people left who can provide some sense of my grandfather as a young man.
And so over Christmas, I took a few hours to visit with him and his wife. And that’s when he told me in addition to a musician, my grandfather had been a hobo. In central Utah in the Depression [aka, the last Depression, -ed.], there wasn’t enough work in your tiny hometown, so you had to hit the road to find a job.

And in the Summer of 1942, after he and Avis married and had one, maybe even two kids, he left them and traveled to the desert town of Delta, where he got a job building the Topaz Internment Camp, where over 8,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned for up to three years.
Like most all the internment camps, Topaz Camp was built in a hurry, on a grid, using plans adapted from military barracks. Tarpaper-covered sheds were finished in sheetrock on the inside, and each block was divided up into apartments in a range of sizes–all too small–to accommodate different sizes of families. If they wanted any furnishings beyond the military cot provided, the internees had to build it out of the scrapwood the carpenters–including my grandfather–left behind.
Specifics of the camp’s buildings and design were collected by the National Park Service, which conducted a survey in 2005 of all the sites and artifacts associated with the imprisonment of Japanese Americans [pdf], in order to identify candidates for National Historic Landmark status. In their report, it says,

Local craftsmen were used, but the requirements were not always stringent; in Millard County, Utah, near the Topaz Relocation Center, “Topaz Carpenter” is still a derogatory term, since anyone who showed up at the site with a hammer would be hired.

And a damn good thing, too, I guess. It’s an odd feeling to suddenly find oneself–or one’s family–on the wrong side of history. On several wrong sides, actually, if the “Topaz Carpenter” dig were real. I don’t doubt that some people say/said it, but it so happens that my maternal grandmother grew up in Delta, and neither she nor her people seem to have ever heard the term.
Until I posted about it, the NPS survey was the only Google reference to Topaz Carpenters. It was someone’s insult generations ago in the middle of BF Utah, and it ended up in a government history survey, sounding pretty official. Part of me wants to defend my grandfather by disproving the term’s popularity, as if that would somehow change its accuracy. Because he really was a guy who showed up with a hammer, got hired, and who, in just a few weeks, built a prison camp for his fellow Americans.

After the camp was closed in 1945, the barracks were either torn down or sold to local farmers, who used them as barns, even a home or two. There was one left nearby–half of one, really, a 20 x 60 section, being used as a shed–which was donated and restored in 1991 to help create the Topaz Museum. [images: greatbasinheritage.org] Which is now on my list of places to visit next time I’m in Utah with a couple of days to spare.
Previously:
This [Japanese] American [Internment Camp] Life [greg.org, 2007]
Ansel Adams Japanese American concentration camp photos from Manzanar [greg.org, 2003]

Richard Prince Sued For–What Else?–Appropriating Photographs

Via Cityfile, we learn that Paris photographer Patrick Cariou has filed suit against Richard Prince, Gagosian [the man and the gallery], and Rizzoli for copyright infringement. Prince used photos from Cariou’s 2000 book Yes Rasta in the Canal Zone paintings he just showed at Gagosian NY last month [Rizzoli published a book of Prince’s works, too.]

In the suit [embedded pdf at cityfile], Cariou repeatedly calls Prince an “appropriation artist” [quotes included], who “boasts” of “copying” other peoples’ work. What’s different in this case, Cariou argues, is that instead of copying “anonymous commercial imagery, such as advertisements,” Prince has copied Cariou’s work. Which happens to be hard-won portraits of camera-shy Rastafarians, “approximately 100 strikingly original black-and-white photographs, mostly close-up portraits of stern, mystical-looking men within a distinctive tropical landscape.”
As fun as it might be to watch the bedlam if Cariou was granted the relief he seeks–namely, monetary damages for copyright infringment and conspiracy; having every painting, scrap, scan, page and byte of the infringing works turned over to him and destroyed; having Gagosian send out notices to the buyers of Prince’s paintings that it is illegal to display or sell their infringing works–I don’t see Prince or his people losing much sleep over this case.
First off, it’s not like the advertising imagery Prince has used before is either “anonymous” or the product of happenstance. When Prince’s versions of his Marlboro Man photos were shown at the Guggenheim in 2007, the NY Times interviewed well-known photographer Jim Krantz. He clearly had issues with the appropriation–rephotography in this case–and if he hadn’t assigned his copyright to Philip Morris, Krantz would probably be able to get a settlement from Prince, just like the rephotographed Brooke Shields photographer Garry Gross did.
Reading Cariou’s complaint, you’d almost think Prince was simply re-presenting Cariou’s images as his own. In fact, Prince’s process and his use of Cariou’s images are much more complex, and it will almost certainly be the basis for a judgment in Prince’s favor. As the Canal Zone press release explains, process is central to the works:

..[the paintings] are, literally, “put together,” like provisional magazine lay-outs. Some images, scanned from originals, are printed directly onto the base canvas; others are “dragged on,” using a primitive collage technique whereby printed figures are roughly cut out, then the backs of those figures painted and pasted directly onto the base canvas with a squeegee so that the excess paint squirts out on and around the image. On top of this are violently suggestive swipes and drips of livid paint and scribbles of oil-stick crayon which, together with the comic, abstract sign-features that mask each figure’s face, add to the powerful push-pull between degree and effect. This has become a completely new way for Prince to make a painting, where much of what shows up on the surface is incidental to the process.

Collaging and reworking and changes in format, size, medium and styles, they’re all transformative creative techniques that were directly addressed in the 2005-6 case, Blanch vs. Koons, where the same court [the US Southern District] found that Jeff Koons did not infringe Andrea Blanch’s copyright when he collaged a pair of legs from her photograph–published in a 2000 issue of Allure magazine–in a painting. Blanch lost on appeal, too.
Prince’s process means his works, like Koons’s, will almost certainly be declared transformative, not derivative works, and as such, they’re fair use, not infringing. But Cariou’s filing also sows the seeds of another fair use argument, that of criticism and commentary. Cariou waxes on about the Rastafarians,

…a spiritual society, living simply, independently, and in harmony with nature, apart from the industrialized world of environmental pollution and materialism which they reject and refer to as “Babylon.” Naturally, the Rastafarians do not trust outsiders, such as Plaintiff, and it was only after living with them for years that Plaintiff was finally permitted to photograph them.

Prince’s Canal Zone project is precisely a critique of this sort of European Caribbean romanticism:

Prince has transformed the former reality of his birthplace [i.e., the Panama Canal Zone] into a fictive space: “Canal Zone” provides an anarchic tropical scenario in which extreme emanations of the (white American male) id – fleshy female pin-ups, Rastafarians with massive dreadlocks, electric guitars, and virile black bodies – run riot.

And then he takes it further, critiquing utopias wherever they’re found [sic], including Thomas More’s original Utopia, an island “that possessed a seemingly perfect socio-political-legal system.” Sound familiar?
By roughly juxtaposing distinctly unclassy porn against Cariou’s photos, Prince calls bullshit on the myth of the White Man’s humble, harmonic embrace of and by the “simple,” “stern,” “mystical” Rastas. Cariou might as well sue Andy Samberg and NBC for defamation while he’s at it. He’d probably have a better case.

Richard Prince and Larry Gagosian slapped with suit [cityfile via afc]
Canal Zone, Nov 8 – Dec 20, 2008 [gagosian]
Is it even in print? Could the controversy lead to a new edition? LIMITED AVAILABILITY – Yes Rasta by Patrick Cariou [powerhousebooks.com]
If the Copy Is an Artwork, Then What’s the Original? [nyt, 2007]

Google StreetView Van Reflections

by Joe McKay. Awesome.
Now if someone’ll do Every Google StreetView Van Reflection On The Sunset Strip, we can close the loop. [via jmb’s best of the web @ afc]
Previously: every building on the sunset strip–and then some

A Favorite Kippenberger Made From A Favorite Richter

The Martin Kippenberger retrospective closed yesterday at MoCA, which means it’s just a few weeks away from opening at MoMA, which means I’ll finally be able to see one of my favorite-from-afar Kippenbergers in person.
The Happy Ending To Franz Kafka’s Amerika is always fun. And I love the Metro-Net subway stairs and vents for the trains that connect the world–the NY-style ventilation grate in the front lawn of LA’s Schindler House on Kings Rd still conflates those two cities for me.

“Haven’t you people ever heard of coasters??”
But the one I’ve been waiting to see is Modell Interconti. It’s a coffee table that Kippenberger made in 1987, and the top is made from a Gerhard Richter Grau painting. Kippenberger bought the painting as a Richter, then sold it as a Kippenberger, promptly destroying–or at least disappearing–a significant percentage of its market value.
Though I’m sure he didn’t take too big a hit. Richter’s grey paintings have never been as pricey as his less boring work: the blurred photo-based paintings, the gloppy aerial landscapes, the hard color grids, the squeegees. Which is part of why I like the grey paintings so much; they can be so successful at eliminating the extraneous elements and letting you focus purely on the paint, the surface, the object. And the range is anything but boring. Those giant grey glass paintings at Dia:Beacon create a space as seductive and perceptually disorienting as any Serra.
Ten years after Kippenberger made Modell Interconti, you could get a slightly smaller Richter grey painting at the Armory Show for around $10,000. Which was probably the price of a major Kippenberger by then, too. So within a decade, Kippenberger had caught up with Richter’s market. And now a major Kippenberger–like, say, Modell Interconti–is surely worth more than a small, demure Richter. At least it was pre-meltdown.

Modell Interconti, 1987, collection Gaby and WIlhelm Schürmann [image: swo.de, link broken (2016)]
The MoCA photo used by the LA Times is probably better. [latimes]
2016 update: Chin-Chin Yap’s case study of the moral rights associated with Modell Interconti, from July 2009 [artasiapacific]

Muji Village: “Green, Plain, Community”

Muji has teamed up with real estate developer Mitsubishi Chiso [Mitsubishi Estate] to create Muji Village, a three-building condominium complex in Chiba Prefecture, the New Jersey of Tokyo. Or maybe it’s the Westchester of Tokyo, and Saitama’s New Jersey, but still. [here’s a Google map of the site. It’s near Maebara and Tsudanuma stations, and it used to contain a six-building municipal housing complex from 1960.]
The concept for Muji Village boils down to three points: Green, Plain, and Community. Green means trees, not ecologically sustainable. Plain means “white, 100 year concrete” and design that won’t go out of fashion [sic], plus flexibility to remodel as your family configuration changes, and Community means common spaces like libraries and a couple of gardens.
Frankly, even though Muji is pervasive to the point of saturation in Japan, I’d still suspect that Muji Village is being built on the premise of a particularly brand-centric “feel good lifestyle,” and that it is intended to attract like-minded Muji aficionados–Mujillas in this case, not Mujillahs.

Last month at the flagship store in Yurakucho, Muji Atelier exhibited poster-sized Muji Village floorplans in a grid of stacks on the floor. They were meant for you to roll up and take home, so you could discuss them at your kitchen table and decide the layout you preferred best. Such presentation, such collaborative spirit, such freedom of choice! It’s as if Muji Village’s exclusive broker was Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
I can’t find any info on prices, or photos, or renderings. And yet the Muji Village website says they are currently looking, not for buyers, but for “members.”

update: Aha, here it is. 9 stories, 152 units, Sounds like Mitsubishi came with an existing project. Muji’s doing the exterior, unit interiors, and common areas, including the Community “living rooms.” Sales and model room debut in late January for Feb. 2010 occupancy. [via nikkei business preess, sept. 08, before the real estate development world ended]
Muji Village info page and exhibition [muji.net]
Muji Village website [muji-village.com]

Yet Another Muji House

While New Yorkers still can’t believe they finally have three Muji stores, Japan last year got its third model of Muji House.
Last spring, the company introduced Ki no Ie 3-kai-date, a vertically oriented, 3-story variation of their 2-story Wood House. [The other model is Mado no Ie, Window House.] The 3-story model home was unveiled in April 2008 in Toyonaka, the Osaka metro city where Kansai Airport is located.

Holy smokes, it’s tiny. Less than 100 sq. m inside, 130 sqm including the carport, porch and balconies. Still, the interior feels pretty spacious, if only because it is; the third floor bedroom opens onto the living/kitchen below. If you need a second bedroom, there’s an office/storeroom on the ground floor.

Muji Houses aren’t prefab; they’re manufactured, and assembled onsite. Ki no Ie is pretty spartan, and it uses a post & beam construction system of engineered wood which, as you can see, you can see. I couldn’t find price info for the 3-sty, but the 2-story Ki no Ie sells for about 108,000 yen/sq meter, or about $110/sf.
Muji Ie: Toyonaka Model House [muji.net/ie, in japanese. via mocoloco and jean snow]
Muji Ie – Muji House, main page [muji.net/ie, no mention of the 3-story model]
Muji House Blog – Toyonaka [ie.muji.net, their web presence is pretty damn complicated for such a pared down company]

The Fake Wedding Singer

Even he had to admit that this was as pleasant a concert setting as could be imagined. The stage was a flatbed trailer set up in front of a log cabin; it was a breezy summer afternoon, and people brought folding chairs and beach blankets. His mother was there, with a collection of aunts and uncles. Parsons, shirtless in swimming trunks and as skinny as advertised, sang some charming, shambling mountain songs with his band, and then there was a fake marriage ceremony, in case the neighbors were watching–they had been told that the gathering was for a wedding, on the theory that this would make them less likely to call the police. Then Oldham took the stage, with Parsons and the band surrounding him. He was wearing a maroon tank top, orange-and-pink pants, blue Crocs, and a pink Boston Red Sox cap, with “cam” and “odia” scrawled on either side of the “B.”

– Will Oldham transfigures American music, by Kelefah Sanneh [newyorker.com via southwillard]

Hey, MTA! Vik Muniz Called.

He wants his concept back.

Donate To ArtFagCity’s Year-End Pledge Drive

Paddy Johnson does great work at AFC. By contributing today–right now, in fact–you can help support the expansion online of art, its creation, exhibition, and its thoughtful interpretation. And thanks to her collaboration with Momenta Art to manage AFC’s fundraising and the appropriate, non-profit use of the proceeds, your contribution is tax-deductible.
details, discussion, and donation: The Art Fag City Year-End Fundraiser: the final stretch [artfagcity.com]