I am not sure if this was mentioned but when I was doing the CMS elective, one of the projects Mike Canning gave us was to investigate about eight journals in the library, under a number of headings; I had already glanced at them but this was a very good exercise and everyone agreed that it took the awe of these publications away and we all felt that they were far more accessible than anticipated.
Anyway, when checking out Artforum I came across an article reassessing the critics Robert Hughes and Hilton Kramer ,and the authors were less than complimentary in their view.
Hilton Kramer I did not know well but on checking him out I found that he was quite conservative; however, Robert Hughes I knew very well, having bought Time magazine for years(even though I intensely disliked its political stance -and you know the Americans think Time is left-wing?!) solely to read his art reviews. I had also seen The Shock of the New (and bought the book) and more recently bought and read Goya. I was, therefore aware that Hughes did not suffer fools gladly (or at all). During the course of the article the author mentioned appreciatively Hughes' essay collection - Nothing if not Critical, and i discovered it was in the library.
One riffle through it was enough to convince me that this was a book I wanted (really, are there any I don't want?)
Shorten the tale - I have been reading it every day going back and forth on the train and I feel it should be mandatory for all students - even though it was published in 1990. The Introduction alone is so relevant to exactly now as at that time there was a serious post-boom slump in western economics. Many of the reviews are a paradigm of concise analysis of a particular artist -and not all are complimentary.
This portrait from 2001 by Bill Leak has the same name as the book and was done shortly after Hughes had suffered a near-fatal car accident. To me it captures what I remember of the critic so well.
All of the foregoing was a rather long preamble to one particular review - Deco and Fins (p.196) - dealing with a show in the Brooklyn Museum on the late 20s and 30s in American design and art ( covering my favourite Precisionist art ). He mentions a couple of names which I noted and researched when I got home, but he one that really stands out is Norman Bel Geddes and I am going to show a number of his designs. It is hard for me to explain how much I am affected by these lost dreams of an ideal and madly optimistic future.
Everything was streamlined......
.....even things static.
It reminds me of the Eagle Comic and Dan Dare.
And how about this for a logo:
Compares quite well with Durer's from some time earlier:
After all that here is what I have been doing in the last couple of weeks:
These are all a combination of acetate prepared with tape and glued graphite, drypoint, and monoprint except for the last which is a reduction woodcut and this will undergo at least one more cut.
I think that's enough to be going on with.
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