Otl Aicher - Munich 1972

Phaidon Daily Links 11.7.12

Today's news from around the web

Art

How to appreciate invisible art Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff is on great form in the LA Times explaining the thinking behind Invisible: Art About the Unseen 1957-2012. “I often go to museums and see people walking through galleries of great art in a drive-by manner," he said. "They might as well be on golf carts. You can’t do that with this kind of art. You have to engage with it. There’s no point photographing yourself next to a blank piece of paper.”  Read it here

Jeffrey Deitch teams up with LCD Sound Sytem LA's MOCA may not be well-endowed financially, but it’s getting ready to shake its booty nevertheless: An upcoming exhibition, Fire in the Disco, will examine the cultural impact of disco and will be co-curated by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. Read it here 

__BMW’s tyres deflated __ Jonathan Jones has a blast at big art world sponsors BMW in the Guardian over its Art Cars series. "The big problem with BMW art cars, as an artistic venture, is that BMW only invites renowned, A-list artists, and appears to see their cars as monumental works for the ages. The whole thing would look very different if more, younger, artists were invited and allowed to do what they want, including total destruction of the car. Read it here l

Chagall opens in Moscow Art Daily takes a look at a Chagall show in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery exhibiting Chagall’s little known drawings, watercolours and gouaches of the period from early Vitebsk sketches to the latest Paris collages, and also his etchings – the famous illustrations to the Holy Bible and to La Fontaine’s fables. See it here

Outsider artists The ever-enterprising Architectural Digest publishes a post called The Inquisitive Guest, for which it asked a variety of art types, like MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and artists Maurizio Cattelan, Marina Abramovic and George Condo, about their favourite places for viewing art outdoors. Which artist loves the Tuileries in Paris? Who considers Pompeii a sculpture garden? And who could do without art in nature altogether? Read it here

 

Design

Your chance to design an Eno cover John Bertram, LA architect and imaginative organiser of cover design competitions, has come up with a great idea. Bertram wants to receive cover proposals for Eno’s 1978 album Music for Films and is offering a cash prize to the winner. Read it here 

Lego apartment opens in Chelsea Yesterday we brought you the Lego bridge today Design Milk has a story on a Lego apartment in Chelsea, New york that has 20,000 LEGO bricks into it. It was created for a local artist and their child by I-Beam Design and licensed LEGO artist Sean Kenney. Read it here 

Otl Aicher's Olympic genius This year marks the 40th anniversary of Otl Aicher’s design work for the 1972 Munich Olympiad. An exhibition and symposium at UCA Canterbury commemorate these in a timely way, as the Olympic torch passes through Canterbury on July 19. The graphic design of the Munich Olympics is possibly Aicher’s most famous work. See it here 

Iconic Images Recreated With Star Wars figures Design Taxi has a charming story about Canada-based photographer David Eger who has recreated iconic photographs, movie posters and album covers using Star Wars figures.  In his project entitled ‘Cloned Photos’, clone troopers, Leia, Bobba Fatt, are the stars of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s The Kiss, Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Charles C Ebbets’ Lunchtime Atop a Skyscraper, Andy Warhol's’ The Marilyns and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Decisive Moment.  See them here

 

Photography

Stezaker's unteachable gift Adrian Searle is on good form on the The Deutsche Börse photography prize exhibition. "(John) Stezaker is by miles the best image-maker here He has that great unteachable gift: an eye and a sensibility." Read it here 

 

Pop art? Swiss photographer Fabian Oefner's series 'Iridescence' captures multi-coloured soap bubbles at the very point they burst. Oefner lit his bubbles from numerous angles to get the multicoloured refractions, and used high-speed flash units to snap the moment the bubble begins to break up. The project required 'a LOT of patience' he says. See it here

   

Architecture

RIBA research prize focuses on earthquake victims and bankers The Geography of the London Stock Exchange and the rebuilding of Haiti feature in the academic theses picked out for praise by the RIBA's President's Awards for Research. Read it here 

Living small in the Big Apple  Mayor Bloomberg announces contest to develop 300-square-foot apartments in Manhattan. The properties, developed to cater for the city’s growing population of singletons are larger than a jail cell but smaller than a mobile home, and will have special permission to ignore rules that require new apartments to exceed 400 square feet. Read it here

Can Japan's Tsunami cities become eco icons? A Japanese coastal town, leveled by 2011's wave is part of a government program to create one of the country's first ecocities, by building smaller, more self-sufficient urban environment, with an emphasis on clean energy. Read it here