While studying abroad in Italy a few years ago, I made my way to the city of Siena on a day trip. One of the signature events the city is known for is Il Palio, a horse race held in the tight confines of the Piazza del Campo. Held twice a year, in July and August, the race divides the medieval walled city into seventeen rival neighborhoods or contrade, each of which are represented by a horse and rider. What caught my eye while I was there were the bold, graphic, colorful banners representing each city ward. These banners have definitely been a source of inspiration for me, and a little bit of that can be seen in an installation piece I did called Streetscape.

Il Palio. Image courtesy of news.com.au.

Each ward is named for an animal or a symbol of some sort—Aquila (Eagle), Chiocciola (Snail), Giraffa (Giraffe) Leocorno (Unicorn), Lupa (She-Wolf), and Onda (Wave) to name a few. The division of the city into these distinct zones is historically intertwined with religion and sometimes even socioeconomic class. Along with having distinct names, the different wards have patron saints and mottoes, all synthesized and represented through heraldic symbolism. What’s absolutely fascinating is how each contrade has its own particular “allies” and “enemies.” To think—all this in a city of just over fourty square miles! Talk about some serious neighborhood pride.

Flag waivers and drummers from the Contrada Capitana dellOnda (Wave), Siena. Image courtesy of LIFE.

So, I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite banners and an image that includes all of them. Check out the bold flat colors and and patterns that mix together with mythical creatures and delicate, baroque details here and there. Luckily I was able to bring back a few replicas of these banners with me and I still find them just as beautiful as I did when I first saw them.

Onda (Wave). This image and those that follow are from Wikipedia.

Chiocciola (Snail).

Tartuca (Tortoise).

Valdimontone (Valley of the Ram).

Bruco (Caterpillar).

Siena Contrade.

I’m going to transition from talking about crafting the past into discussing an artist whose work relies completely on the present moment. Last week, for the second week in a row, I found myself at a talk at SCAD Atlanta, this time given by one of the most influential artists of our time, Marina Abramović. Born in Yugoslavia, she was instrumental in helping raise the prominence of performance art, an often ill-understood medium of artistic expression. Her work tends to focus on body endurance and harnessing extreme self-awareness, all the while engaging the viewers in her presence during her performances. Her philosophy holds that art must “lift the human spirit,” but it also “has to be disturbing” in a way to actually resonate with an audience. Performance art depends heavily on how the artist interacts with live, physical space—it is most definitely ephemeral work.

Rest Energy, 1980.

Abramović devoted her lecture to discussing the work of numerous other performance artists, which was definitely a learning experience for me; however, I had hoped to hear more about her own work. Among the many videos and images she shared of other artists, she did include a few of her own pieces. In the mid 1970s, Abramović began working with a German artist singularly name Ulay. She shared a few of their performances at the talk, one of which was Rest Energy (1980), in which the two artists balanced themselves by holding a loaded bow and arrow. She described it as being the most tense four minutes of her life as she had no choice but to rely on absolute trust and innate mutual awareness with her partner.

Great Wall Walk, 1988.

While Rest Energy was a short performance, much of Abramović’s work involves extremely long durations of time. Another performance she shared was Great Wall Walk (1988). In this piece, she and Ulay marked the end of their relationship by starting at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and each walking more than 1,200 miles to meet in the middle.

The Artist Is Present, 2010. Image courtesy of Life

Abramović’s most recent notable performance was held over the course of several months at MoMa in New York as part of a major retrospective of her work. In The Artist Is Present, she spent every day, all day, quietly sitting in a chair. Across from her sat another chair, an open invitation to anybody visiting the museum to join her. This play on the “staring game” we’ve all played at some time or another created powerful experiences for the individuals joining her, as they became the viewed in a setting in which they are normally the viewer.

What really struck me was what Abramović said at the beginning of her talk. She asserted that there really isn’t a past or a future, that is always the present. We might remember the past and look forward to the future, but all we can do is experience the present.

For more about Marina Abramović, go to her feature page on the MoMA site.

As I discussed in my last post a few days ago, imagery and symbols play an important role in how we remember the past. Going along with that theme and applying it to institutions like governments and organizations, it’s a pretty common occurrence to see the use of imagery as a means to subtly project a level of legitimacy and to tell a preferred story of past events.

An amazing and quirky example comes to mind that I’d like to share: A month ago, I read an interesting article in the New York Times about British artist Andrew Vicari. This man somehow found himself on board a plane destined for oil-spewing Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, where he made a series of connections that landed him the role of court painter to the ruling House of Saud. On the unsteady political ground of the Arabian peninsula, the Saudi royal family looked to Vicari to provide them with large, gradiose paintings that told the story of their rise to power. Over the course of several decades, Vicari wined and dined with royal elite from all over Europe and the Middle East while reeling in obscene amounts of money for, quite frankly, nothing more than cliché-laden amateur work.

Palais a Djeddah, 1978.

At that particular time and place, the Saudis were more than willing to shell out lots of dough to decorate the walls of their palaces with Western-style art that celebrated their rise to power. The Saudi monarchs see his work as a means of somehow connecting themselves with the cultural and political influence of the West—an aspiration now shared by some members of the Chinese social elite, who have also apparently begun embracing Vicari’s paintings. Meanwhile, on the home front, art critics and collectors haven’t always been so keen on Vicari’s work. Case in point: one painting of his topped out at under $100 at auction in the UK.

The Rape of Kuwait, 1991-1992.

Vicari’s work garners completely different responses depending on what continent he’s in. In the end, the perception of art really does depend heavily on context. In the context of the Saudi court, Vicari’s work finds a captive audience, who themselves, hope to craft their own context for legitimate authority to rule. In the West and especially in the context of the contemporary art scene in London, his work finds no captive audience when compared to the highly conceptual work of oh, say Damien Hirst.

For more on Andrew Vicari, check out these articles about him in the New York Times and The Guardian, and have a look at more of his work here.

For a good while now, I have been fascinated with researching my family history. I think it all started with a project in the eighth grade, but it’s been ongoing ever since. I would guess that a reason that dabbling in geneaology is such a popular past time among Americans is because our history here is so new, at only a few hundred years old—wait, but what about the Native Americans?—that’s a sad story for another day. Nevertheless, odds are, the ancestors of most Americans came here in order to start new, perhaps even to forget their past in search of better opportunities. In the fast-paced contemporary world, we often find time to question where we’ve come from and want to find a connection with the past. We remember the past not only by thinking about specific events in our own lives, but we also “remember” where our families have come from by thinking of old stories and recounting old photos and relics left behind by those who’ve left us. I might not have actually witnessed  in person what my grandparents went through in the 1940s, but I still “remember” what happened through old photos and stories. In a way, this archive of imagery stored in our minds helps us craft memories of our past. Add to that the power of the internet and the ability to fill in the names of whole branches of your family tree with a few clicks, and we begin to form a notion of the past of which we might not have even conceived before.

So how much does all this relate to contemporary visual culture in terms of art and design? A great deal. The idea of crafting a sense of the past is something I find really interesting and I hope to make this a loose ongoing theme for the blog in the next few entries. I hope you’ll join me as I take a look at a few interesting examples, including: the modern-day version of a court painter in Saudi Arabia whose role is to help legitimize the rule of monarchy by making monumental artwork, the use of heraldry/crests/shields in modern brand identities, and the role that museums play in creating the past. This should hopefully be fascinating and revealing.

After the haircut. I love these captions! This one looks like it suffered from the shears of my grandmother.

If you’ve ever spent time watching anything on PBS, chances are you’ve seen a moving version of the image above accompanied by a signature electronic crescendo. This three-second end title sequence was the work of WGBH design director Chris Pullman in the 1970s and it still airs today.

Last night I was fortunate to hear Chris Pullman speak at an AIGA event at SCAD Atlanta. Pullman was VP of Design at WGBH Boston from 1973 to 2008, during which time the small local public television outfit grew into a producer of one-third of PBS’s total national content, responsible for such institutions as Julia Child’s cooking show, This Old House, NOVA, Masterpiece Theatre, Frontline, and children’s shows such as Arthur and Zoom. On-air projects made up only a small percentage of Pullman’s work there. His team was responsible for creating companion guides for programming, fundraising and outreach pieces, books, and eventually a slew of interactive work.

Chris Pullman in front of WGBH’s new building, which opened in 2007. He considers his contribution to the design of the building to be one of his most fulfilling design challenges. Image from the Boston Globe

Pullman’s lecture, “Some Things I’ve Learned” spoke directly to so many ideas and issues I’ve been thinking about recently. He described several crossroads he navigated in his design career. The first was his decision between pursuing an education grounded in the theoretical aspect of design as opposed to the more commercial route. He chose to focus on the former at Yale, where he got his MFA in the 1960s under the tutelage of such design greats as Paul Rand and Herbert Matter. As I’ve begun thinking more about the path I want to take, it would be amazing to be part of the theoretical setting at a place like Yale and to become an MFA candidate there.

Promotion for Vietnam: A Television History.

The second major decision in his career landed him at WGBH after spending a few years working with famed corporate design guru George Nelson, freelancing, and teaching at Yale. This relates to another big theme of Pullman’s, the importance of “doing work that matters.” He was fortunate to wind up at a place like WGBH, where his job allowed him to delve into creating content-rich, “pro-social” work that provoked intellectual curiosity while working toward the public good.

Cover design for a Julia Child cookbook.

Chris Pullman’s career is an inspiration to me and I would be happy for even a few chances to create work with as much depth and and wide reach as his. For more samples of Pullman’s work, check out his collection on the AIGA Design Archives. Some tidbits of inspiration from him can be found on Design Observer.

From This is New York

This is London was one of eighteen books by Sasek, published between the late 1950s and early 70s. The goal of the This Is series was to transport young readers to locations all over the globe, experiencing the culture of each place. Filling the pages of these books are lush, often humorous illustrations with bold color washes and textures in a style distinct to Sasek. These books certainly capture the feel of the 1960s, featuring figures dressed in slender mod clothing; however, stylistically the illustrations still don’t feel too out of place in the contemporary context.

From This is London

What’s so astounding about his work is that Sasek seemed to capture the most endearing parts of each city he chose to illustrate, even though he spent very little time in each place. Something else interesting to point out are the references to tobacco products and alcohol. Something tells me that probably wouldn’t be kosher for children’s books rolling off the presses today.

Piccadilly Circus at night from This is London

More information about Miroslav Sasek can be found here.

It’s been almost nine months since Furman University sent me packing from its beautiful campus with my big purple diploma into the daunting landscape of “the real world.” I must say, it’s true that an education rooted in the liberal arts seems to make you observe the world closely, to take nothing for granted, and to question everything. All of that certainly didn’t go away when I graduated; however, I seem to have lost a good outlet for expanding on everything I’ve been thinking about. So, finally, after a few ill-fated attempts in the past, I’m really leaping into the blogosphere.

As an artist and designer, it is my calling to transform the chaotic world into digestible, clear visual ideas. When contemplating the role of visual artists, the work they make, and the institutions in which their work is featured, it’s amazing to think how much their work affects everyday people. At its most basic level, my daily job as a graphic designer involves carefully combining words and pictures, a task that can be performed infinite ways, even for the simplest projects.  Images, colors, and words are powerful by themselves. When combined, they form tangible cultural objects that become part of the visual context of the world, capturing exact moments in time and place.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the similarities between graphic designers and art curators. They both have responsibilities to sift through the tangle of thousands of years of cultural artifacts to create narratives that effectively speak to the contemporary audience. It’s my goal to use this blog as a platform for gathering thoughts on the cultural landscape.