Credit to the Credits: 20 Feet From Stardom

I was completely expecting to love “20 Feet From Stardom,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about backup singers. What I was not prepared for, however, was to be bowled over in the first 3 minutes of the film. They had me with the opening credits.

The title sequence takes vintage album covers, publicity shots, and concert stills, and obscures, Baldessari-style, the faces of the “stars,” with a large colored circles. This simple graphic device forces you to see only the backup singers, telegraphing visually, what the film delivers on in depth. And it’s all set to Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side (“and the colored girls sing …”). Very satisfying, indeed.
 
You can view the actual title footage on graphic designer Scott Grossman’s site. You can read more about director Morgan Neville’s homage to Baldessari in this New York Times piece.

The solid silhouetting used here, is another Baldessari device.

Selling Space

Tucked away in Duke University’s vast archive of outdoor advertising, is a small group of photos about the selling of outdoor ad space. In addition to the expected blank billboards and “your ad here” signs, are a handful of altered photographic prints, artifacts of the sales process. 

Easily believable as a John Baldessari series—swap out faces for buildings and apply rectangular rather than circular color patches--these photos from a Columbus Ohio real estate company, showed advertisers exactly where their ad would appear. As for the choice of using red (as opposed to the obvious white), there’s no way of knowing if it was inspired by the latest shade of nail polish, Russian Constructivism, or Dorothy’s ruby slippers.

It’s entirely possible, too, that the bright red color went beyond identifying the available space. It may have offered the subliminal suggestion that with an ad in that spot, your business could achieve a status of living color in the otherwise dreary black and white landscape of ordinary commerce.

John Baldessari, The Fallen Easel, detail, 1987

 Gustav Klutsis In Memory of Fallen Leaders, 1927 (via MoMA)

There's alway's an office wise-guy who has to be different!

It kind of makes me want to go out, buy billboard space, and actually paint it red. 

But wait ... It looks as if someone has done that already!

Wall space available in Trenton, c.1920.

Blank Highway Billboards

These road photos out-Hopper Hopper for stark, abstract loneliness.

Atlantic City Billboards

Whited-out billboards, above, from 1942 and below, 1951.

Cool “invasion arrow” is added to this 1926 day/night composite with crowds.

Separate day and night scenes from 1923.

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.