Pillowcase Talk

Is it just me, or was anyone else loving those fabulous pillowcases covering the heads of Taliban terrorists on the front page of today's New York Times? I clicked and moused-over the image, but alas, no hyperlink to a retail venue.

Don't they read their own paper? In a November 8th story on the the "dismal ad climate" for magazine ad pages, they report that "InStyle’s pages were up 4.7 percent for the December issue versus a year ago."

Let's just say that there's more than one way to monetize all those freeloading readers ...

Money Counts

A friend brought back these rupee coins from India recently. Great example of "show don't tell." What's not so great is the reason--literacy rates in India. The rates vary tremendously between genders, classes and regions. Overall literacy for men is 76%, while the rate for women is 54%. Regionally, the rates vary from a high of 91% in Kerala to 47% in Bihar.

Auction-mates

These all came up in the same auction the other day. The randomness of this confluence struck me as some kind of mad-libs/haiku ...

Woolen waterfall
Tahitian flower smiling
Lenny Bruce for sale

Cold War Modern

Visit the V&A online to see how the Cold War shaped design from 1945-1970 on all fronts. Below, a sign from Berlin, late 1940s.

Consuming Communism

Here’s how the Berlin Wall has been faring on eBay …


Sold for $11.50--cool film noir graphic on this unopened boxed fragment.


Sold for $76.00--one of the more tasteful mountings.

Les Trois Musiciens: The Prequel

LES TROIS MUSICIENS, FERNAND LÉGER, 1932

I'll admit it. I'm in a yellow phase. Have been for well over a year now. I still love orange, and will not be giving up my mid-century orange fiberglass chairs or Heller plastic any time soon, but I've moved on to yellow. So when I saw this version of Les Trois Musiciens, which sold on Wednesday night at Sotheby's for $5,000,000, it just knocked my socks off. It could just be a matter of my current color bias, but the black and white treatment of the musicians with the solid yellow background is so fresh and contemporary. It's got that altered-b&w -photo look of Baldessari or an iPod ad. Check out the 1945 version of the painting at MoMA. It looks quaintly "modern" by comparison.

Gray Matters

Basements. All big buildings have them. Subterranean symphonies of meters, pipes, metal and concrete--and gray. Lots and lots of gray.


They all manage to be oddly familiar ...


and creepy at the same time.


In this particular basement, I couldn't help thinking about ...


Giorgio Morandi ...




Brice Marden ...




and Edwin Dickenson.


These three painters know a lot about color --


and a lot about gray.

Happy Halloween. Next!

Zabar's bakery-counter ticket.