Monthly Archives: September 2012

Design

Photography

Realities.

Jony Ive, the genius designer of all things Apple, keeps an Aston Martin DB9 in his San Francisco garage. It’s not that he drives it, you understand. It’s because it is right. By his own admission, when he seeks inspiration, he treks down to the garage and just stares at it. Because it is right.

Sir J’s non-ride.

This weekend is about Monza. The Italian Grand Prix. The home of Ferrari.

And win or lose, you know who I am rooting for. Because great design is obvious, whether it’s a toilet (where Sir Jony got his start) or a red bolide boasting seven hundred Italian horses.

The F12. Great design is obvious.

So, you ask, where’s yours? It’s not like you can’t afford it.

Well, the answer is simple. Take that other design masterpiece which it took me two years to save for as a kid. The Leica M3. Perhaps the most perfect marriage of form and function in the analog photography world. That one was a no brainer. I knew it would make me a better photographer and I knew I could make it sing.

The M3.

But put me in the F12 and two tragedies would result. My son an orphan and the Maranello masterpiece stuffed in the local redwood on Skyline Drive.

But I have only pleasant memories of the Leica and vicarious ones of the Ferrari.

Don’t take my word for it. Go to the medieval armor room in NY’s Met and you will see how nations think. German – lugubrious, heavy, brutal. English – practical, workmanlike, functional. Italian – beauty, subtlety, art.

Cindy Sherman

Photographers

An outstanding show at MOMA SF.

In a sweeping Retrospective show of her work (can you have a Prospective show?) at SF MOMA through October 8, 2012, Cindy Sherman shows why she is one of the most interesting contemporary photographers.

For some forty years now Sherman has been working with just one subject. Herself.

Sherman as the Duchess of Windsor, the much divorced Wallis Simpson who never got to be Queen.

Expert in make-up and prosthetics, Sherman has portrayed herself in dozens of styles. Flapper, floosie, whore, matron, aristocrat, bag lady, newly moneyed, and so on. The show is too big to take in at one pop, but two of the rooms stand out. In one a handful of large format pictures, maybe 3′ x 5′, show her portrayed against insanely lush backdrops, varying from Dynasty kitsch to landed gentry. The scheming Duchess of Windsor above, perfectly understood, is but one such example, though the out-of-focus masking is beyond crude. (She needs to learn Photoshop’s Magic Lasso tool). The viewer is simultaneously awed by the detail and technique and repelled by the excess on show, as Sherman treads a fine line between purportedly respectful rendering of the subject and her surroundings and disgust at the vast wealth on display. Evil is the root of all money here.

In another room are painterly renditions of characters from the Dutch and Italian Renaissance schools, and they are simply breathtaking. When you see Sherman as Caravaggio’s ‘Sick Bacchus’ your jaw will drop in amazement and admiration.

Sherman as Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus.

It’s hard not to be impressed, and puzzled. Here’s a woman making herself up in imitative styles and surroundings, making recreations of famous paintings. Is that bad taste or great art? Hard to call. But there’s no denying the woman’s work ethic and, well yes, her originality.