Thursday, August 30, 2012
Was Van Gogh Color Blind?
If there’s any artist who ever lived and knew
color in his soul, it was Vincent Van Gogh.
Almost mad with color, Van Gogh owned a box of different-colored yarn just so
he could tangibly handle color and literally weave them together to determine
how the combinations might look when put into paint. Walk through any Van Gogh
exhibition on Earth and you’ll come out the other side drunk on color. But a
Japanese medical scientist now contends that Vincent’s unique color palette was
literally a function of his vision—specifically, a kind of color blindness. According
to this researcher, Van Gogh’s unforgettable wheatfields and starry nights
stick in our minds because they lack a color component most of us can see in
nature. Is it possible that some of Van Gogh’s power to fascinate comes from a
visual disability, or is this researcher demonstrating a different kind of
blindness? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Was Van Gogh Color Blind?"
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
What’s Frank Lloyd Wright Doing at the Republican National Convention?
Now that Hurricane Isaac is off
to wreck havoc on New Orleans, the 2012
Republican National Convention can get down to business. The list of people
scheduled to parade across my television screen features the usual suspects (Mitt Romney,
Paul Ryan,
and Chris
Christie) and even some unusual suspects (Lynyrd
Skynyrd and Kid
Rock), but one unlisted and highly unusual name really caught my
eye—American architect Frank
Lloyd Wright. The backdrop of the speaker’s stage (shown above)—the eye of
the 4-day political hurricane—features interconnecting horizontal shapes and
bands of windows meant to pay homage to Wright’s “Prairie
style.” The designers hoped to convey the warmth, Midwestern flavor, and
quintessential Americanness of Wright’s vision, but the additional connotations
Wright brings may pose problems for Republicans or slyly send messages to
supporters—all depending on how you see Wright and the GOP. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What’s Frank Lloyd Wright Doing at theRepublican National Convention?"
Friday, August 24, 2012
Our Furniture—Ourselves?
While flipping through Modern Furniture: 150 Years of Design, I couldn't help but stop and smile at seeing the same monobloc chair sitting on my backyard deck sitting there on the pages of a proposed history of modern furniture design. When we think of modern furniture design, we too often think of wildly experimental and wildly expensive items found only in the homes of the rich and famous. However, as Andrea Mehlhose and Martin Wellner , founders of the design company Fremdkörper and editors of Modern Furniture, show, modern design is all around us in such a ubiquitous way that we barely notice. Recognizing the power of design to simplify and change our lives can help us recognize a great deal of our culture. Modern Furniture demonstrates that our furniture really tells us a lot about ourselves. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Our Furniture—Ourselves?"
[Image: 2008, Meltdown Chair PP Tube, Tom Price, © Christoph Bolton.]
[Many thanks to h.f. Ullmann for the image above and for a review copy of Modern Furniture: 150 Years of Design.]
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