Orange Sweater, 1955 | oil on canvas

Elmer Bischoff                    1916 – 1991

Photograph from:               SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA May, 2010

Elmer Bischoff depicts two figures in what appears to be a public setting, both facing the viewer.  Figure one, more at the foreground (with the orange sweater) is sitting at a table, with arms folded and head lowered and appears to be focused on reading.  Figure two, more in the background to the viewer’s right, (and figure one’s left) is unclear whether the figure is sitting, or standing at a counter.

The two figure’s distance apart from one and the other, is where Bischoff shows the viewer proper perspective using relative size as figure one appears larger, more vivid and painted in more detail than figure two.  A partition to the viewer’s right, using parallel lines that appear to travel back to figure two, is one way Bischoff creates linear perspective and gives depth to the composition.  At the viewer’s left, a window is present with the appearances of greenery outside of the composition. The window’s panes add to the interposition illusion of a distinct inside and outside and the greenery being farther away.   Also, one use of light and shadow that Bischoff uses is (again) showing figure one (more in the foreground) painted brighter more vividly with more contrast and color, and thus the illusion is created that figure one is receiving more light than figure two.

Outside of the obvious monocular cues, Bischoff uses classically trained techniques to create more depth and illusion.  In what appears to be the backs of two chairs, facing away from the viewer at the lower left foreground corner; Bischoff paints only the top half.  This serves two purposes, one is to create the illusion that the chairs come off the canvas and into the viewer’s prescience and invites the viewer to come in and look into the composition. The other purpose is to form a boundary that seems to say; “stay where you are,” and to also say, “do not disturb.”

Bischoff’s use of cool greens surrounding the composition, and the almost warm yellow hues that are muted and filtered from drawn shades in the window, at the background the create an all around placid, harmonious and still environment.  The chairs are painted in a brown with darker green highlight, reflecting the greenery outside the window at the left background; this would suggest a warm earthy boundary between the viewer and the composition.

Bischoff paints the central figure in orange, complementary to the surroundings and being the first object the viewer will greet, but the central figure is not at the center of the composition, and not looking directly to the viewer.  The viewer’s direct line of sight travels to the shaded window in the background, thus going over the head of the central figure and adding to the spaciousness of the room.  Figure two in the background is facing the viewer also seems to offer an invitation to come closer and have a look.

Elmer Bischoff, an American Abstract Expressionist, later in his career turned again to the objective world and began painting figures into his compositions using expressionistic brush strokes and creating beautiful every day American scenes of the 1950’s through the 1960’s.  I am a big fan of Elmer Bischoff and always feel at home studying his paintings, although always knowing my proper place and to view with care.

Artist’s Website: Sandra Yagi Artist’s Blog: Beyond the Comfort Zone

Dear Diana,

I wanted to let you know that the bottle of Pernod I gave you is indeed absinthe.  The ingredients have been recently reintroduced.  I hope you enjoy.

Johnny

Or, I have seen the future and it looks like Bladerunner.

Increasing fragmentation of audiences, increasing costs, complexity of buying media and flat global economies force media buyers and planners to look to new horizons and see DOOH (digital other outdoor advertising) as the fastest growing new media.

Two recent posts on Media Buyer-Planner dot com report that digital billboards will “remain the fastest growing platform in the world in 2009” (1) and “DOOH spending will skyrocket in coming years.” (2) Although, with the promising new medium comes another challenge to media buyers, as there are many types of companies surrounding DOOH, adding more complexity to the buying and planning process than traditional OOH, which is supported by only a few companies. “DOOH must get easier to plan, buy, and measure in order to reach scale,” says Rick Ducey, CSO BIA/Kelsey. (3) “With consolidation, partnerships, and interoperable platforms, we see the buying process becoming more integrated, which will spur growth.”

Traditional OOH, billboards etc. are somewhat of a peripheral medium and offer simple messages, but with the new DOOH medium, media buyers and planners now get the added advantages of sight, sound, and movement as television with a greater reach.  Pedestrians cannot run to their kitchens for a snacks as easily and the messages are getting through.

(1) http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com//entry/46458/pq-media-dooh-growth-remains-strong-global-growth-outpaces-u.s

(2) http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com//entry/46333/digital-ooh-to-soar-13-through-2013

(3) The Kelsey Group, a division of BIA Advisory Services, LLC, is the leading provider of strategic research and analysis, data and competitive metrics on Yellow Pages, electronic directories, local search, SMB advertising and local media.

Clear Channel clearly needs to fix this.

Chevron teams up with The Economist Group and buys a full page ad this week in the Wall Street Journal and wants you to “put your ideas to work.”

Chevron is running a PR campaign using print and the web for a better understanding of our future energy challenges.  Their website; “willyoujoinus.com” is full of interactive features urging visitors to conserve energy and use their efficient ideas such as carpooling and not using the hairdryer everyday.  Visitors can share their visions by joining discussion groups, or sharing widgets on Facebook or personal blogs.

Synergy for energy, Chevron really wants visitors to play “Energyville,” a Flash game developed by The Economist Group that’s modeled after the Sims.  Visitors can play with nuclear reactors, wind farms and petroleum derricks to generate enough power for the Sim City, and then calculate the future economic and ecological ramifications. Using integrated marketing communication (IMC), Chevron gets to know it’s visitors better after the game has finished by asking for some demographics, such as; “what industry do you work in,” gender and country.

The full page ad in the Wall Street Journal is most impressive and “willyoujoinus.com” is a very well developed website.  Together they seem to transform public sentiment in belief that it’s not all about Chevron, it’s also about the humans.  (“Human Energy”, that’s Chevron!)

This is quintessential PR material, for Chevron’s reputation as a company that is worth more than Canada and Mexico combined, and could be very easily adapted to any company seeking public appeal.

Yellow Lampshade, 1969 | oil on canvas | 70 x 80 inches

Elmer Bischoff                    1916 – 1991

Photograph from:               de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA November, 2009

Elmer Bischoff mixes warm and rich expressionistic colors with two figures to create a beautiful and modern composition inside an American domestic scene.  He invites us to look out over a modern city skyline through three large panoramic windows from an apartment, and much more.

A man and a woman are present.  The man is standing in the left foreground, diagonally away from the woman and with his back to the viewer.  He stands at ease, with hands in pockets as he looks out through the main window.  His legs, cut off below the knees, bring him slightly into the viewer’s space creating a subtle boundary.

The woman is in the background to the right; her body faces the viewer, although her face is turned away as she looks out to the left window.  Her presence and position offers balance and contrast to the man’s presence, inviting us to come in a bit closer and view more.  At her right and just below a horizon line of the main window is a cabinet with a lit table lamp and yellow lampshade.  Her hand rests on the cabinet as the glow from the lamp illuminates and contrasts her against the darker background window plane.  This effect enhances her with more warmth and invitation.

At the center foreground, to the right of the man, Bischoff placed a large, comfortable looking armchair facing away from the viewer.  It too, like the man sinks down off the canvas, into the viewer’s space to make even more of a boundary, and narrows the path into the painting, and the window.  Slightly turned to the left, the chair’s position points the viewer a direct line of sight between the man and the woman, past the yellow lampshade, out the window, onto the avenues, along the tall buildings and finally reaching for the far horizon.

The window on the left comes in from off the canvas, creating depth and reaches out to meet the main window, as the window on the right cuts off the canvas, almost parallel to the left, ad infitum.  Curtains are drawn back on the right window, behind the man and painted with bright yellows catching some of the light from the yellow lampshade.  They appear to be tied, but also in motion.  More curtains painted in greens, behind the woman and in the right window, appear drawn, but seem to fly out the windows creating, light and airy motion with even more expansiveness.

Bischoff mixes strong oranges, rosy pinks and yellows, with busy brushstrokes, vividly lighting up the interior, and surrounding the man.  Absorbing the warmth, he also radiates the glowing essence back out into the apartment reflecting on woman’s face and arms.  As contrast, Bischoff uses light blue for the woman’s dress, (lighter blue because of the lamp light) corresponding to the view out the window and sky.   Dusk sets into the city as the sun dips below the high horizon and turns the tall buildings deeper blue, bringing in night and feminine essences through her.

Melancholy and verve, tension and ease, staying in and going out, masculine and feminine; contradictions galore are achieved by Bischoff’s obvious palette choices of primarily blues and oranges as complementary colors, but subtle use of small dabs of red painted behind the man’s back to the green curtains behind the woman add to the complications as well.

Bischoff resurrects figures, the human element; back from abstract American art of the 1940’s-1950’s (1) but they are not the same. They are modern, and surrounded by cosmopolitan brilliance, yet they are seemingly again, all alone and isolated as shown in the woman’s blank face.

The yellow lampshade, the brightest object and guiding beacon at the exact center of the composition is where everything meets.  Its presence could suggest to the viewer to relax and stay for the evening, or a cautionary tale of America in 1969 as the sun sets in the west, on the precipice of post-modernism, and an uncertain future invokes an empathetic response, and seems to ask; “will there be more?”

(1) WEBSITE: Elmer Bischoff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Bischoff

On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, the people in San Francisco City and County voted on Proposition D; a proposition that would create a new special district and allow general advertising signs in the Mid-Market Street area between 5^th and 7^th Streets.  Proceeds would go into funding youth arts and culture education, along with building and operating a ticket booth at Hallidie Plaza (Market and Powell Streets) for sale of tickets to art, entertainment and cultural venues.

The proposed special sign district would be more than a collection of billboards, but would be populated with spectaculars, including; roof signs, wind signs, wall signs, video signs, moving parts and rotating signs.  In addition, any illuminated sign would not be limited in any manner as the type of illumination and L.E.D message centers and Jumbotrons would be allowed.  There is mention inside the legal text of Proposition D, that;  “digital signs of the highest quality digital media should be encouraged“ and “signs that are part of a national campaign for products permitted to be advertised in the sign district should be encouraged before they are exhibited on signs elsewhere.”

Neon and spectaculars in Las Vegas, the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, and New York’s Times Square are often people’s first impressions of these cities and clearly capture the enormous amount of pedestrian traffic’s attention.  I voted against Proposition D, as I felt that San Francisco is of a different pedigree than other cities, and that adding the advertising before making over, and cleaning up Mid-Market Street is a flawed idea, i.e. people need something else to be drawn to as a destination other than lights and the Warfield and Market Street Cinema Theaters.

Anne, Viscountess, Afterwards Marchioness of Townsend, circa 1780 oil on canvas

Sir Joshua Reynolds, English, 1723 – 1792

95 x 58 (241.3 x 147.3 cm)

Neoclassical, Portrait and Grand Manner

Photograph from: The Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA September 2009

Joshua Reynolds, (1) a renowned English portrait painter uses the “Grand Manner” (2) portraiture style; a style which gives larger than life impressions of the portrayed and the style in which he helped develop.  The showing of idealized and elite status is done through invention, such as adding classical associations, altering body proportions and lowering horizon lines.  Anne Montgomery, a Viscountess, daughter of an Irish parliament member and 2^nd wife to George, the 4^th Viscount Townshend is portrayed.

The first impression is its size and presence, her size and presence.  Anne Montgomery is posing for her portrait, but she’s presented full length with nature as the background, not indoors.  To her right, she is leaning on a classical stone relief carving depicting the Judgment of Paris.  There are only two of the three goddesses present represented in the tale.  A dog sits at the feet of Paris and looks up at two Goddesses, and Paris extends his arm offering the golden apple.  All appear cordial and serene in this miniaturization of the Greek drama.

Anne’s body is also wrapped in a Greek-Roman classical style; a white flowing draped short-waisted, diaphanous gown.  Her body is strangely out of proportion, with tiny shoulders and small bust that connects to a smaller waistline and then expands into a much larger abdomen and even thicker, longer and wider thighs, suggesting sexuality and fertility.  Her right forearm, at the elbow as thick as her neck, showing strength and fortitude.

The Ermine mantle shows that she is a Viscountess, but it appears to be nonchalantly flung off her shoulders and over the stone relief shadowing the classical Greek scene.  The mantle then flows off the relief in a diagonal direction wrapping behind Anne’s buttocks and appearing again at her mid thigh and then falling to the ground.  The mantle draws the viewer’s eyes to her thighs and even more accentuates them clearly showing her wealth and privilege.

Again, she is outdoors in nature.  A large tree is behind her and the stone relief carving filling most of the background.   Dark storm clouds over her head cover most of the sky.  Darkness is behind her, but a small break of sunshine at the horizon illuminates Anne’s hips at her left.  (Again Reynolds wants us to look at her thighs.)  At the lower left of the painting is the landscape, slanting and rolling in from the horizon line to Anne’s feet, elevating her above the earthy plane.  Her natural beauty set in a natural setting.

Her skin is white and pale giving her the looks of a very well pedigreed lady, not someone who has seen much life outside of a well controlled and sheltered environment.  Her face however, Reynolds has added pinkish colored rouge on her cheeks, creating a vibrant and youthful glow.  Her head is leaning on her right hand with index finger pointing to her temple, and the pink rouge from her cheeks is reflected on her hand.  Her hands seem distorted, poorly depicted, weak, and rubbery.  They do not match the forearms, and this almost upsets the composition as a whole with everything else that has been carefully, adoringly crafted and staged.  If Reynolds is trying to depict her hands in motion, the illusion is missing.

As most of the background is muted and in earthy tones, Anne’s contrasted appearance at the center of everything is illuminating.  The only strong colors are the mantle in red and sash in blue. The blue sash draws the eye from the blue sky foreground to the bodyground, her waist.

The description placard at the Legion of Honor cited the “Grand Manner Style” Another style is Neoclassical  (because some of the elements presented; the Greek drama portrayal, classical calm expression on the model and her gown) Reynolds was a late Rococo painter that moved into a more natural style, albeit; very grand indeed.

Reference:

(1) WEBSITE: Joshua Reynolds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Reynolds

(2) WEBSITE: Grand Manner: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Manner

artist’s website: http://moritzreichelt.blogspot.com/

artist’s website: http://www.garypanter.com/

artist’s website: http://hu-ming.com/index.html

artist’s website: http://www.karlroeseler.com/

artist’s website: http://www.peterfranck.de/index.html

Artists Who Design Homes to Prolong Life Lost Their Life Savings; Undulating Floors

Arakawa and Madeline Gins’s quest to make human beings immortal is at risk of dying.

That’s because the couple lost their life savings with Bernard Madoff, the mastermind of a multibillion-dollar fraud.

Of all the dreams that were crushed by Mr. Madoff’s crime, perhaps none was more unusual than this duo’s of achieving everlasting life through architecture. Mr. Arakawa (he uses only his last name) and Ms. Gins design structures they say can enable inhabitants to “counteract the usual human destiny of having to die.”

Immortality Quest Hits Financial Snag

The income from their investments with Mr. Madoff helped fund their research and experimental work. Now, Mr. Arakawa, 72 years old, and Ms. Gins, 67, are strapped for cash. They closed their Manhattan office and laid off five employees.

The pair’s work, based loosely on a movement known as “transhumanism,” is premised on the idea that people degenerate and die in part because they live in spaces that are too comfortable. The artists’ solution: construct abodes that leave people disoriented, challenged and feeling anything but comfortable.

They build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor. Between rooms are sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and mind, thus prolonging life. “You become like a baby,” says Mr. Arakawa.

The couple met in 1962 as students at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. She was a native New Yorker; he was already a successful Japanese artist. They later married. In the 1960s and ’70s they played a role in the conceptual art movement, based on the philosophy that the artist’s idea or concept behind a piece of art is more important than the physical object itself. The Guggenheim Museum SoHo in Manhattan showcased 30 years of their work in 1997, including paintings and architectural models.

Of all the dreams that were crushed by Mr. Madoff’s alleged crimes, perhaps none was more ambitious–or unusual–than Arakawa and Madeline Gins’s quest to achieve everlasting life through architecture. Akiko Fujita reports from Tokyo.

“Their research is a milestone in the history of conceptual art,” says Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at the main Guggenheim Museum, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the couple’s work is currently on display. She says many of their supporters don’t literally accept the couple’s message on immortality but appreciate it in a “metaphorical” way.

To the artists, eternal life is a real possibility. “This is a great chance for the human race,” says Ms. Gins.

Things appeared to be going well for the couple before Mr. Madoff’s arrest in December. They completed a park, an office building and nine “reversible destiny” lofts in Japan. The lofts, finished in 2005, cost about $6 million to build. Five of the nine lofts, which rent for $1,700 to $2,300 a month, have tenants.

A typical apartment has three or four rooms in the shapes of either a cylinder, a cube, or a sphere. Rooms surround a kitchen-living room combination with bumpy, undulating floors and floor-to-ceiling ladders and poles. Dozens of colors, from school-bus yellow to sky blue, cover the walls, ceilings and other surfaces.

At least one tenant says he feels a little younger already. Nobutaka Yamaoka, who moved in with his wife and two children about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suffers from hay fever, though he isn’t sure whether it was cured by the loft.

There is no closet, and Mr. Yamaoka can’t buy furniture for the living room or kitchen because the floor is too uneven, but he relishes the lifestyle. “I feel a completely different kind of comfort here,” says the 43-year-old video director. His wife, however, complains that the apartment is too cold. Also, the window to the balcony is near the floor, and she keeps bumping her head against the frame when she crawls out to hang up laundry, he says. (“That’s one of the exercises,” says Ms. Gins.)

Last year, Mr. Arakawa and Ms. Gins’s first U.S. home, which resembles the Tokyo lofts, was completed in East Hampton, N.Y. It took $2 million and eight years to construct, and has a listing price of $5.5 million.

Many scientists see the couple’s work as part of a futile, age-old human aspiration to live forever. “Longevity salesman is the second-oldest profession,” says S. Jay Olshansky, a researcher on aging at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “This would be the worst possible house you could build for an older person,” he says. To prolong life, he recommends building spaces that “lower the probability of falls,” plus a healthy diet and exercise.

Some transhumanists dismiss the couple’s architectural solution. “Human life has enough challenges in terms of our work and daily lives that we don’t need to invent new physical challenges for our bodies,” says Ray Kurzweil, a leading transhumanist figure in the U.S. In the future, humans will have microscopic robots in their bodies which will be able to regenerate cells, he says.

The couple’s destiny intersected with the Madoffs’ in 1994, when Ms. Gins met Mr. Madoff’s wife, Ruth, at an art gallery. Ms. Gins recalls that she later met the Madoffs at one of her art shows, and Mr. Madoff said he could help her by investing the couple’s savings in his firm. Lawyers for Mr. and Mrs. Madoff declined to comment.

The couple initially invested less than $1 million with Mr. Madoff. Over time, they added deposits and had several million dollars in their investment account at the time of his arrest, Ms. Gins says. “We were grateful to him; he was making things possible for us,” she says.

Since Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme came to light, the couple have been trying to sell their seminal work, the “Mechanism of Meaning,” a series of 84 8-foot-tall panels that took them 10 years to complete, for about $17 million.

“Museums in the U.S. and Germany would be the best candidates,” says Lisa Dennison, an executive at Sotheby’s who is trying to line up a buyer. “It’s an amazing work, but there are not many possible customers for it.”

Barring a sell-off of their collection, the couple fear they won’t realize their dream of building a “reversible destiny” village with homes and parks that would combine their theories of life into one community.

“Here was someone we thought was a supporter of ours,” says Ms. Gins of Mr. Madoff, “and he pulled the rug out from under us.”

Printed in The Wall Street Journal

By AMIR EFRATI

Wall Street Journal

Architectural Body Research Foundation

—Miho Inada and Antonio Regalado contributed to this article.

July 4th 2009

Tim Lincecum strikes out nine over seven innings of work.

Pablo Sandoval gets tagged at home.

The Giants beat The Astros Saturday afternoon in a 9-0 loss.

Breaking up is hard to do, and few know this better than a lifelike sex doll owner who Shizuoka police have charged with illegal dumping.

On August 21, the 60-year-old unemployed resident of Izu (Shizuoka prefecture) wrapped his 1.7-meter tall, 50-kilogram silicone girlfriend in a sleeping bag, drove to a remote wooded area, and dumped her. A nice, clean break, he thought.

But nearly two weeks later, on September 1, a couple alerted police after discovering what appeared to be a corpse while walking their dog. The body had been wrapped in a bag and bound around the neck, waist and ankles. A head of black hair protruded from one end of the bag.

Police retrieved the body and immediately launched a criminal investigation. But several hours later, when forensic pathologists began to unwrap the “corpse” to perform the post-mortem, they realized it was actually a state-of-the-art sex doll. Seeing themselves as victims of a malicious prank, the authorities vowed to track down the perpetrator and charge him with interfering with police business.

The incident quickly captured the attention of the national (and international) press. After seeing the news reports, the culprit realized the trouble he had caused and contacted police on September 6.

According to investigators, the man had lived with the sophisticated doll for several years after his wife passed away, but decided to part with her after making plans to move in with one of his children. “It seems he grew attached to the doll over the years,” said the chief investigator. “He was confused about how to get rid of her. He thought it would be cruel to cut her up into pieces and throw her out with the trash, so he proceeded to dump her illegally.”

The man, who regrets his lifelike doll was mistaken for a corpse, now faces fines for violating Japan’s Waste Management Law.

[Source: ZAKZAK, Yomiuri, Pink Tentacle]

Tibet’s only female living Buddha, Samding Dorje Phagmo, who is also a top regional official, accused the Dalai Lama of violating Buddhist teachings, referring to the riots in Lhasa last month.

The twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo said Tibet’s incorporation into Communist China has transformed it from the backwards feudal society of largely illiterate serfs with little medical care.

“Old Tibet was dark and cruel, the serfs lived worse than horses and cattle,” she told the official Xinhua agency.

The 66-year old woman was chosen as the incarnation of the deity Vajravarahi. Head of the Samding monastery, she is also a vice-chairwoman of the standing committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional People’s Congress, or regional parliament.

“Watching on television a tiny number of unscrupulous people burning and smashing shops, schools and public property, brandishing knives and sticks to attack unfortunate passers-by I felt boundless surprise, deep heartache and indignant resentment,” she said.

China has accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, of plotting the riots and unrest that spread across many ethnic Tibetan parts of the country, in a bid to overshadow the Olympic Games and push for independence.

“The sins of the Dalai Lama and his followers seriously violate the basic teachings and precepts of Buddhism and seriously damage traditional Tibetan Buddhism’s normal order and good reputation,” the Samding Dorje Phagmo was quoted as saying.