>What can I say? Some quick thoughts.
MORE! i want a chuck grimes deep thought 22k post on art and politics and the web. seriously, i don't have a klew about art--theory-wise. i was talented as a kid, mom thought i should be an illustrator for science textbooks coz i could reproduce the detail of an amoeba or frog intestines like nobody's business. but, as you know chuck, art and working class.... well art isn't practical, right? and not only that, Art, Literature, Poetry, Cinema --it's for the elite, not for us. i mean, hell, even when i was grown, married, raising a family and returned to school, my mother *still* flipped [mildly] about the fact that i was majoring in philosophy as an undergrad and even to this day, though very proud of me and enjoys bragging to his buds at elks clube, dad likes to introduce me around as, essentially, an egghead. he thinks this is highly amusing. so, to study this stuff....let alone do it or read it....well. so learn me more, chuck.
>The reason I suggested typography was not just for its utility or
>functionality, but primarily its contrast to bitmap ubiquity.
don't recall that you suggested this. what is a bitmap anyway? i've made them before, but don't know--theoretically--what it is.
The
>trouble with any sort of graphic design is its own easy banality.
so, what would be considered 'banal'?
But
>let's talk eye candy. Take a look at this:
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>http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/branches/ccp/ccpjpg/heineck.jpg
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>Does it really work? No. Not really. The best I could come up with is,
>sure, I get it. Now look at this:
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>http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/branches/ccp/ccpjpg/dahlwolf.jpg
>
>That works.
what works? what was broken or inoperable, that's working now?
Why? I don't know, it just does. It is an icon that works
>as its own critique. Child-like, sexy, hard as nails. It is a Louise
>Dahl-Wolfe photo of Carson McCullers.
well i have NO klew what you're talking about. well, i do. you're suggesting, i assume, that there's more complexity in the carson mccullers photo. that it makes you work. but work at what exactly? and why would anyone necessarily see that photo and it would convey to them film noir. clearly, you have to learn what film noir is or, at least, what those who produce film noir [then and now; as well as it sproduction more generally beyond film] want you to think it is.
i teach soc of media and soc of culture. one fun thing i do is collect ad campaigns throughout the year --like the absolute vodka ads--from different kinds of mags and have my students "read" them.in the first place, . it really is interesting to note how they produce different kinds of for diff. kinds of audiences --the kinds of assumptions they make about what their audience knows and doesn't know, what they will notice or not. a time mag absolut ad will feature absolut citron and play on the citrus/lemon refs. a details ad will make the bottle appear to look like a lava lamp. a new yorker ad will feature a s&m theme so that the bottle looks like a corset. a harper's ad featured a bottle was made took look like a kind of collectible porcelin [can't recall the name of it].
the apple 'think different' campaign made similar moves. einstein for the masses. miles davis for the elite.
now,-thing is, most of my students don't always 'get' the refs in the way the producers of the ads think they will. of course, there's more of a chance that a student from an elite college will know who miles is or may have heard of or seen the porcelain. so there are clearly class differences that shape interpretation here. but take the absolute bottle that looks like a lava lamp. now, no matter what kind of student i teach --upper middle or working class--the lava lamp didn't play out in any uniform way at all. and you think it would given that everyone college bookstore i've been in voer the past two years has featured a display of retro stuff--lava lamps prominent.
>There is something about the high contrast of a gelatin silver print
>that just drips with sensuous, sentimental and violent cinema
>noir--the cigarette, the bangs, the heavy make-up--especially on a
>face that doesn't need it. Richard Avedon does something related to
>it, but as its brightly enameled opposition--stunning surface, huge
>format, wonderful--and totally commercialize--yet not quite.
>
>Isn't that the level you want to get at?
i guess.... but i need to learn more here so i'm counting on you to fill me in. richard avedon? i is an uncultcha'd gal, chuck. come on.
>Well, at any rate, for typography take a look at, _The Elements of
>Typographical Style_, Bringhurst, R, Hartley & Marks, Vancouver, 1992.
oh won't have time to do that soon. but if you've got a mo' --fill me in.
k
>Chuck Grimes
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