Now THIS is what I call Street Art: Masterpieces For The Masses

I always felt that art should be for the masses. If you're lucky enough to live in England (or to be visiting), you can view the world's largest outdoor gallery. Thanks to The National Gallery of Art and Hewlett Packard, The Grand Tour is a brilliant project which places museum masterpieces (reproductions of course...) out in the streets of London for anyone and everyone to view and appreciate.



Over the next twelve weeks they've turned the West End into a giant gallery by lining the streets of Soho, Piccadilly, and Covent Garden with some of the world's most famous paintings.

The map below (which is actually interactive on the site) shows where the paintings hang around town.



If you're more of a free spirit, you can create your own tour by picking the paintings you want to see, and then calling the phone numbers listed at each painting site to get the who, the why, the what and the when*.

All the paintings on The Grand Tour™ are beautiful reproductions produced by our sponsors Hewlett Packard, but you can visit the real thing every day free of charge in the National Gallery collection.


Of course, you may not live in London-or be visiting within the next 12 weeks-- which is why I have pics for you here. The following pics were sent in via digital uploads from cell phones and cameras from various individuals. To see photo credits, as well as the names of these famous paintings, please go to the site.










Who was behind this?:

The Partners
Award-winning brand and design consultancy, The Partners, created the pioneering Grand Tour concept as part of their ongoing partnership with the National Gallery.

As one of Britain's leading brand and design consultancies, The Partners works with many of the world’s most successful organisations, including the BBC, Ford Motor Company, the Maybourne Hotel Group, Astra Zeneca and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Digit
Working alongside The Partners on the development of The Grand Tour, Digit created the interactive on-line presence for the project.

Digit is one of the longest established digital agencies globally. Working with some of the world’s leading brands, Digit creates award winning online environments and content, and more recently ground breaking physical interaction experiences.

Thanks to all these folks:
We would like to thank the dedicated team of professionals who have helped us to create and install the 'works of art' themselves.

Electronic Print Services (EPS)
EPS, produced all of the Grand Tour images on the excellent HP Designjet 10000s, and they mounted and stretched the larger prints onto sub frames, all meeting the exacting standards required for such a prestigious project.

Nielsen Bainbridge and Simon Robinson and Son
Spencer Negus from Nielsen Bainbridge, with Lester and Kevin from Simon Robinson and Son Framing, enjoyed working on this challenging project alongside the other contributors.

Icon Display
Icon Display were involved in the surveys of the picture sites and the installation of the pictures onto many varied surfaces, working through the night to complete the project on time.

Antenna Audio
Antenna Audio worked closely with the National Gallery Curators to produce all the audio recordings for the project.

Thank you to the tenants and owners of all of the premises that have kindly allowed us to hang a 'masterpiece' on their wall

Shaftesbury PLC
David Bieda
Boom Sound Studios
Caffe Nero
Centaur Media Plc
Clear Channel

Can't Afford To Spend 100 Million Bucks? How About $10,000? For The Love Of God Silkscreens by Damien Hirst.

A few weeks ago, Damian Hirst's latest creation graced the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine (as well as getting coverage on many a blog). The subject was his latest creation, the world's most expensive piece of art. A life sized platinum skull set with diamonds.

This article reprinted below by William Shaw accompanied the piece:

It’s particularly fitting that the title of Damien Hirst’s new headline-grabbing work came from an exasperated exclamation of his mother’s: “For the love of God, what are you going to do next?”

The answer, pictured here, is a life-size platinum skull set with 8,601 high-quality diamonds. If, as expected, it sells for around $100 million this month, it will become the single most expensive piece of contemporary art ever created. Or the most outrageous piece of bling.

At home in Devon, Hirst insists it’s absolutely the former. “I was very worried for a while, because if it looked like bling — tacky, garish and over the top — we would have failed. But I’m very pleased with the end result. I think it’s ethereal and timeless.”

For Hirst, famous pickler of sharks and bovine bisector, all his art is about death. This piece, which was cast from an 18th-century skull he bought in London, was influenced by Mexican skulls encrusted in turquoise. “I remember thinking it would be great to do a diamond one — but just prohibitively expensive,” he recalls. “Then I started to think — maybe that’s why it is a good thing to do. Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it.”

The dazzle of the diamonds might outshine any meaning Hirst attaches to it, and that could be a problem. Its value as jewelry alone is preposterous. Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.

“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”

The piece is not exactly the stuff of public art, but Hirst says he hopes that an institution like the British Museum might put it on display for a while before it disappears into a vault, never to be seen again. Whether the piece is seen or not, Hirst will likely go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most extravagant artist.

“I hadn’t thought about that!” he suddenly snorts with laughter. “I deal with that with all my work. The markup on paint and canvas is a hell of a lot more than on this diamond piece.”
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At the going rate of 100 million dollars, chances are you won't be buying it.

But now, a London gallery is selling limited edition prints of this piece, still pricey at 10,000+ USD, but a mere pittance compared to $100,000,000.00

In conjunction with Damien Hirst’s exhibition ‘Beyond Belief’, White Cube Gallery announce the release of eight new limited edition works.

These works include a series of silkscreens depicting Hirst’s extraordinary diamond skull ‘For the Love of God’, a life-size cast of a human skull in platinum, covered entirely by 8,601 VVS to flawless pavé-set diamonds. In addition to these silkscreens there are three works on canvas, each with paracetamol pills and syringes. These relate closely to the new series of ‘Fact’ and ‘Biopsy’ paintings which focus upon issues surrounding Western medicine, and continue Hirst’s long standing interest in the themes of life and death.




Want one of your own? Click here

A little about DAMIAN HIRST:
Damien Hirst was born in Bristol, England in 1965. While still a student at Goldsmith's College in 1988, he curated the now renowned student exhibition, Freeze, held in east London. In this exhibition, Hirst brought together a group of young artists who would come to define cutting-edge contemporary art in the 1990s. In 1991, he had his first solo exhibition at the Woodstock Street Gallery, entitled In and Out of Love, in which he filled the gallery with hundreds of live tropical butterflies, some of which were hatched from the monochrome canvases that hung the walls. In 1992, he was part of the ground breaking Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. In this show, he exhibited his now famous Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde. That same year he was nominated for the prestigious Tate Gallery Turner Prize, and later won that coveted award in 1995.

Hirst's best known works are his paintings, medicine cabinet sculptures, and glass tank installations. For the most part, his paintings have taken on two styles. One is an arrangement of color spots with titles that refer to pharmaceutical chemicals, known as Spot paintings. The second, his Spin paintings, are created by centrifugal force, when Hirst places his canvases on a spinner, and pours the paint as they spin. In the medicine cabinet pieces Hirst redefines sculpture with his arrangements of various drugs, surgical tools, and medical supplies. His tank pieces, which contain dead animals, that are preserved in formaldehyde, are another kind of sculpture and directly address the inevitable mortality of all living beings. All of Hirst's works contain his ironic wit, and question art's role in contemporary culture.

Hirst's first exhibition with Gagosian Gallery, entitled No Sense of Absolute Corruption, was in 1996 at the now-closed SoHo location in New York. Superstition is Damien Hirst's first show at the Beverly Hills space.

For the Official Damien Hirst Website, click here.

6 Great New Finds For Kids

Six great new finds for kids include (clockwise from top left)Did iDunphy's Naugahyde Indoor Skateboards, Boon's Faucet protector/deflector and bubble bath dispenser, the Mod Rocker by Iglooplay, faux leather Teddy Bear Bookends, DIY lamps and The Fresco, the new award winning modern tech highchair from Bloom.

To purchase, simply click on the image below

See more of my If it's hip, it's here. list at ThisNext.

Cuckoo for Cuckoo Clocks: Many Modern Versions Of The Traditional

What is a Cuckoo Clock?
A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum driven, that strikes the hours using small bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo in addition to striking a wire gong. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the eighteenth century and has remained almost without variation until the present.

This Christmas' Must Have Toy: Pleo

Wouldn't you like to be the coolest parent (or grandparent or Aunt or Uncle) this holiday season?

Then get on board with what will be the hottest purchase this holiday. It's Pleo, the adorable, computerized, 'smart' toy brought to you by the same creator of Furby. At $349.00 the price may actually go up if demand is like that for hot toys in the past. It isn't avialable until October in the US, but you can pre-order now.

You may laugh at my thinking about Christmas gifts in June, but I can assure you this one will be a nightmare to attempt to find once it's hit the market.

Read on and learn why it's an unusual, inventive, adorable toy.



Pleo, a one week-old dinosaur, is a robotic marvel and the newest member of your family! Pleo interacts with you – moving organically, expressing emotion, autonomously exploring and responding to the world around him. Each Pleo has a unique personality that develops based on Pleo’s life experiences with you.




On Pleoworld.com owners connect, find training tips and download new enhancements to Pleo. Pleo’s sophisticated sensory system has devices that enable him to hear, to see, to sense touch, and to detect objects: a color camera, sound sensors, two infrared sensors, 14 motors, over 100 gears, eight touch sensors, and an orientation sensor.




Every Pleo is unique. Yes, each one begins life as a newly-hatched baby Camarasaurus*, but that's where predictability ends and individuality begins. Pleo doesn't just do what he's told. He develops his own personality, moods, and habits—all shaped by the time he spends with you. In creating this Life Form, we merely set the wheels in motion. Making the magic is up to you and Pleo.



*What is a Camarasaurus?
Camarasaurus was a late-Jurassic North American herbivore, 60 feet long in adulthood, and just Pleo's size as a newborn.



What comes in the box:
Every Pleo life form Includes
Companion guide
Training leaf
Authenticity ID Card
NiMH replaceable, rechargeable battery pack
AC charger



Measurements
Pleo: 20.7" L x 6.0" W x 7.5" H. (3.5 lbs.)
Shipping Box: 24.0” x 10.0” x 8.0: (5.0lbs)








How Do They Do It?




Significant Processing Power
32-bit Microprocessors – central and image processing
8-bit Subprocessors – motor control

Highly Articulated Movement
14 Motors
Over 100 custom-designed gears

Complex Sensory Network
Camera-based vision system – light detection and navigation
Microphones – binaural hearing
Skin sensors – head, chin, shoulders, back, feet
Foot switches – surface detection
Force-feedback sensors – one per joint
Orientation tilt sensor – body position
Infrared mouth sensor – object detection

Multiple Data Ports
Mini USB™ port – online downloads
SD™ card slot – Pleo add-ons
Infrared transceiver – Pleo-to-Pleo communications

High-Quality Sound
2 Speakers – mouth and back

Power Source
Rechargeable and replaceable NiMH battery pack

To see him moving, click here.


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Not intended for children under the age of 8.

PLEO’s NiMH battery recharges in four hours, which provides approx. one hour of operation.

Pleo will be available in the United States in October 2007.

Available for purchase and pre-order now ($349.00 USD), click here.

Mapplethorpe Prices Rising

Above: Self-portrait in drag, approx $52,000. USD


Robert Mapplethorpe – Beauty and the devil are one and the same [Jun 07]

The work of Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) has something of a scandalous reputation, the photographer shocking puritanic Americans by putting sexuality at the heart of his artistic universe. He became a photographer in the 1970s, an era of sexual liberation soon to be brought to a halt by the rise of the AIDS epidemic. Mapplethorpe never ceased extolling the human body in meticulous compositions often evoking the cool and strict aesthetic of neoclassical painting.


Above: Another Self-portrait by Mapplethorpe

In addition to his photographs celebrating nudity, he took portraits of individuals in his circle, some of them anonymous and some celebrities (Andy Warhol, Richard Gere, Grace Jones, Patti Smith, etc), self portraits and photographs of flowers which assume an erotic dimension under his lens. The subject is often crude but the setting always ‘clean’, head-on, refined, even sterile. The artist favoured black and white and an aesthetic close to fashion photography, which is proving increasingly popular with collectors.


Above: Self-portrait with knife


Above: Mapplethorpe's portrait of Lisa Lyon with Snake

After a moribund period, Robert Mapplethorpe’s prices have risen by more than 102% since 2004, the year in which he achieved, for the first time, a price at auction in excess of $100,000. The work in question? A photograph of a Zantedeschia or arum lily measuring 61 x 50.8 cm, unique in this format, sold for $210,000 by Christie’s NY (title: Calla Lily, 15 Oct. 2004), making this flower portrait one of the most sought-after of the artist’s subjects. Sought after to the point that a Calla Lily print of a series of ten, made more attractive by the Margaret W. Weston provenance, exploded its estimated range of $40,000 - 60,000, selling for $140,000 on 25 April (1988, 48.7 x 49.1 cm, Sotheby’s NY)!


Above: One of Mapplethorpe's Most Famous Subjects; The Calla Lily


Above: Mapplethorpe's portrait of Warhol which sold at Christie's for $643,200.00 USD


This 2004 result was to be the first of a successful series: since then his photographs have seen 8 sales in excess of $100,000, including an outright record of more than $500,000 for a portrait of Andy Warhol! The auction of this monumental portrait of the King of Pop Art for $560,000 (106.7 x 106.7 cm, Christie’s NY) in October 2006 has contributed to firmer Mapplethorpe’s prices. Five months earlier in the same auction house, a large Warhol portrait in a 10-print series changed hands for only a tenth of this amount at $50,000 (103.5 x 103.5 cm).



Above chart from Art Price

The price of a work on the same subject varies according to the type of print (gelatin silver, dye-transfer, photo-engraving, etc), the date it was printed, its quality and size. Generally a work is printed in various numbered formats and the shorter the print series, the more auction prices are likely to rise given the rarity value. Certain formats are limited to one print and are thus all the more sought after. For example, the Leaf photograph, a very pure work, achieved its highest price at auction with a unique, large format print (94x78.5 cm) selling for $35,000 (€28,900) on 10 October 2005 at Christie's NY. During the same auction, the same subject in a smaller format, one of a 7-print series, sold for $5,000 less than its larger-scale version.


Above: One of Mapplethorpe's polaroids of Paul Mogensen

For a budget below $10,000, the market offers a wide range of works: nearly 70% of lots do not exceed this threshold. Numerous Polaroids and gelatin silver prints (more modestly priced than the Dye-transfers) are affordable at around $1,000 to $10,000. The Polaroids mark the origins of the Mapplethorpe photographic adventure before the acquisition of his first wide-angle camera during the 1970s. Despite the small dimensions (approximately 9.5 x 7 cm in most cases) the Polaroid has one quality which is sought after by collectors: it is a unique work. Mapplethorpe took numerous Polaroid self portraits during the 1970s for which you'll need between $2,000 and $4,000 on average such as the one sold on 8 September last at Christie’s NY for $2,800. As for larger-sized prints priced at less than $10,000, we could mention, for example, the Poppy photograph taken in 1982 (38.5 x 38.5 cm, Gelatin silver print) on which the hammer came down at £4,000 (under $8,000) on 31 May last at the Christie’s London auction. Another possible acquisition, the rare portfolios: on 26 April last, Season in Hell comprising 8 test-prints (each edited as a series of 40 prints) was sold for $6,500, an average acquisition cost of $812.5 per photograph (26 April 2007, Sotheby’s NY).

Can't afford a Mapplethorpe print? Perhaps some of the newer items on the market with his images will appeal to you.

Below: These limited edition plates & cups are available right now at Colette.





You can read more and see more Robert Mapplethorpe by clicking here.

The Amazing Lyre Bird - Take A Listen

Every once in awhile someone sends me something that may not have to do with art or design, furniture or marketing..but is worth sharing.
This David Attenborough video of the amazing mimic, the Lyre Bird, is just that.
Ironically, he actually imitates the very sound of the chainsaws destroying his home as well as the camera shutter clicks of birders..

Take a look/listen:

Six Fabulous New Finds

Below are six fabulous new Finds. Modern Alphabet flash cards for the designer kid, groovy compact umbrellas by Tray 6, The new Reveal wtach in orange or black, custom leather monogrammed or initialed Moleskine covers, a set of 6 beautiful bone china plates that feature London, and finally colored toilet paper in Orange, Red or Black.

Just click on the images below to purchase.

See more great items for the home here.

Jesus? Che Guevara? Nope, It's Designer Fabio Novembre

Above: The artist seated in his 's.o.s. sofa of solitude'

Below is A Chat with Fabio Novembre, Italian Architect, from Icon Magazine, peppered with images I found. “Ever since i was a kid I hated the fact that someone kicked us out of paradise, you know? I wanted to go and squat in the forbidden tree. I wanted to live with the serpent and eat apples every day. Nobody can kick me out of paradise.” Fabio Novembre is sitting cross-legged on a low chair in his almost-complete new studio-cum-house, which is plain and empty and damp from the incessant rain outside. 

It has the air of a chapel and the meeting feels like a private tutorial with some kind of paramilitary love priest. Novembre is wearing a guerrilla-chic jumper that resembles a bullet-proof vest, and an army cap with a red star. His discourse, which invokes Che Guevara, Jesus Christ, sex and transvestitism, is delivered with the fervent sensuality you’d expect of an Italian: “I really live through love,” he exclaims. ”It’s the only fuel in my engine.”

 

His rhetoric is intoxicating – it’s only weeks later, when transcribing the tape, that the monologue comes to seem faintly ridiculous. But such is the power of charisma. Novembre, 37, is a Milan-based architect whose work – mostly interiors for hotels, bars and nightclubs – features rich materials, such as gold and faux crocodile skin, and highly sensual forms. His style has been described as “narcissistic neo-baroque”.

He has designed some singular pieces of furniture including the spectacular, coil-shaped “And” sofa for Cappellini and until recently he was creative director for mosaic company Bisazza; Novembre uses mosaics with a three-dimensional exuberance not seen since Gaudí.


above: His interior for Bisazza

 He was brought up in Lecce in southern Italy and although, like any good nihilist, he despises labels, he admits that memories of his home town have pervaded his work. “Lecce is the capital of the baroque in Italy,” he says. “I don’t believe in architectonic DNA, but for sure I breathed that atmosphere for 17 years.”



 The studio-house, his latest project, is comparatively restrained, except for the first-floor living quarters, which are supported by a broad tree trunk. At the top of this column, a vivid green mosaic dotted with apples flows out across the soffit and up the walls. A huge serpent snakes amid the foliage, its mouth poised to snap shut on a fat red apple: Novembre’s new house is the forbidden tree of his childhood fantasies.

   
above: The studio house interior

 The tranquility of the space will be shattered in a few weeks when Fabio and his retinue move in. “The place where I am now, there’s no walls. My bed is on wheels. Everybody has the keys so people can arrive any time of the day, so it’s more like a squat than a studio or a house. This is going to be the same, but even bigger. I really believe in space to be used as the factory of the world, to cross, to intersect, to put things together. That’s really the way I live. There’s no difference for me between life and work. I don’t make any division; it’s impossible.”

A visit to his website (www.novembre.it) confirms this: photographs of Novembre in a variety of guises – and states of undress – enjoy equal billing with the images of his work. One photo has him made up like Jesus, complete with fibre-optic crown of thorns, and is accompanied by the slogan “Be your own messiah”. 

What’s that all about?



  “I wrote a little pamphlet called ‘Be your own messiah’,” he says, explaining that the project is a reaction against his staunchly Catholic upbringing. “The provocation was to pitch myself as Jesus Christ. I really like Jesus – I think he’s a good guy – but I hate all the bullshit around him. This is the big problem of our Judeo-Christian tradition: we’re all waiting for the fucking prophet!

As a kid I hated the image of the sheep and the shepherd. In church everybody used to say, ‘Ah, you are the sheep, and the shepherd is going to save you’. Fuck! I hate being a sheep. There are no shepherds. Be your own messiah.”

   


Over the years Novembre has turned up for photo shoots looking like a deranged kung-fu fighter, a muscle-bound mystic, a louche rock star or, today, a Cuban revolutionary. This stream of alter egos is perhaps a way of voicing his anti-establishment instincts without alienating himself, or revealing his vulnerability, in a deeply conformist country. It’s not me criticising the church, he seems to be saying, that’s just a character I was playing. “I like to think of heroes as the stars of our darkest nights,” he says. “There are moments when you feel so lonely and you have a lot of trouble, but when you think of people you adore like Federico Fellini, Carlo Moldino, Che Guevara, Jesus Christ as well; they had the same troubles, but look at them! They really did what they wanted to do.”

Novembre studied architecture because it offered him the broadest possible education: architecture schools in Italy teach students about philosophy, sociology, literature and art. “In Italy, you choose architecture just to open your mind, not to have a profession. It has never been oriented to how to build buildings. When I came out of there I couldn’t put one brick on top of another.”


Above: his interior for the Shu restaurant in Milan, 1999

Italian architects are uniquely disadvantaged since besides the peer pressure of working amid the world’s richest architectural heritage, it is difficult to build anything remotely adventurous in the country.


 above: Hotel Vittoria, Florence

 “Regulations here are so strict; they’re bullshit,” says Novembre. “The Hotel Vittoria in Florence, which opened late last year] I designed – I couldn’t touch the street frontage. I wanted to put something on the street to serve as a sign for the hotel. I fought and fought until the city architectural commission and I were almost kicking each other. But of course they cancelled it. In Italy, to build, is impossible. Im! Poss! I! Ble!” As if to stick two fingers up to Italian conservatism, Novembre filled the hotel’s interior with sweeping brocade-patterned mosaics and spiralling leather, Corian and lamé surfaces.

Many designers are using organic forms and floral patterns these days, but in Novembre’s hands, the specimens have been pumped with fertiliser and have taken over the greenhouse. Novembre’s work is often unashamedly physiological – his L’Origine du Monde nightclub in Milan featured huge murals depicting naked women, a pair of legs straddles the entrance to his Anna Molinari store in London and the ceiling of his Shu Café in Milan is held up by a pair of oversized arms. “My main inspiration is the body of women. All my architecture is very organic not because I decided to be organic but because to me, probably I still refer to my mother’s belly. Our first house is always our mother’s belly. In a way I’m still there; I look for things that are soft and comfortable and curvy and sensual.” Yet, unusually for an architect, he never draws: these voluptuous configurations are instead conveyed verbally. “I cannot draw at all; I am not gifted at all with my hands. I really am not able to transfer my vision in drawings. But I can talk about them and I can write; I am really gifted.”

For his early projects, he would submit proposals to clients as poetry and convey instructions to builders through gesticulation. “I used to call it action designing. I would be on site with the workers and I’d say, I want something like this over there, okay, and from there to there you go like this, drawing with my hands but without actually putting it on paper. Like an orchestra director.” Novembre has now built up a team of architects and designers, so the production process has become a little more conventional. “My staff have become my hands,” he says. “But still when I work with craftsmen, I go to where they are working and try to make them enter in the mood of what I’m trying to achieve.” Now, after around 15 years in practice, Novembre has his first new-build commission: a new headquarters for fashion house Meltin’ Pot in Apulia, southern Italy.

Novembre will build a conference centre and hotel alongside an 18th-century villa owned by the company. Many architects might see a project like this as their big break, but Novembre is surprisingly laid back about his career trajectory. “I don’t have ambitions,” he says languidly. “I don’t want to do too much. I just try to live the best way I can; try to make the best of each day. People always ask ‘what’s your dream project?’ and I say, ‘to get to the end of the day and to be proud!’ I don’t have these kinds of goals. I call it the Renzo Piano syndrome: when you start doing too many things. I’m very self-critical so I accept really few jobs. When I do a piece of design, it’s really a piece of my heart. It’s not just another chair. Otherwise I don’t do anything.”

Fabio Novembre