The street art of Buenos Aires is as exuberant as it is plentiful. The painting of murals on outside walls throughout the city is not only accepted, but encouraged and celebrated.

I wandered by the above mural of Argentine deity, Diego Maradona, during my visit to BA in 2009. It’s way more lighthearted and cartoonish than more recent soccer murals, which tend toward the heroic and reverential. A big supporter of the local street art scene is Buenos Aires Street Art. They organize and document projects, offer regular street-art tours and even aerosol classes. You can see soccer related murals they’ve posted here and here.

As all will be watching Lionel Messi’s “date with history,” in the World Cup final of Argentina v. Germany, I thought I’d finally post Maradona and some of the other painted walls I saw in BA. While I can’t give equal time here to Germany’s wall art, I’ve slipped in a mural from a visit to Berlin. I think you’ll figure out which one it is. (Hint: don’t be fooled by the Volkswagen)

 Also check out the NY Times infographic on Messi vs. Maradona.

Wasser, Gas

I was drawn to them right away—the curious primary-colored plaques affixed to the buildings in Berlin. Each was a deliberate, yet mysterious typographic composition of letters and numerals, with the occasional word “wasser” or “gas.” Was I unaware of a utilities signage project by Schwitters and Lissitzky?
International Dada Archive, Univ. of Iowa
Of course these found Merz poems actually mean something, and
Dr. Lee D. Han, a professor at the University of Tennessee, seems to have cracked the code.

Dr. Han recently visited Berlin to give a presentation about microscopic simulation and mass evacuation to a group of university transportation researchers. Scroll down to read about the puzzle he so proudly describes solving. He even provides a diagram!





From Professor Han's blog:

I’ll have to really sit down and write more about my short visit to Berlin. But one thing I want to report here is finally having time to solve this little puzzle. Basically, I had noticed these little placards on the side of the streets, on walls, and on poles with a “T” shaped marking typically in the center of the placard and with some numbers all around it. I’ve seen them in Vienna, Budapest, here in Berlin, and later in Sarajevo. I thought instinctively that they have something to do with pipelines, but never had the time to look closely. Well, this time I took the time and figured out that these are markers for the access “hole” for water, gas, hydrant, etc.

The word “Wasser” is water in German, which is not hard. But the “T” in the middle really means, I think, an access point to the water line 2.1 meters from this placard (perpendicular to the face of the placard) and 2.2 meters to the left of the placard. If the access point is to the right, the number would be written on the right side. If it is behind the placard, which is not uncommon, the number 2.1 would be negative.

I think this system must have been around for many a decade and widely employed in many European countries. As utility workers walk or even drive around, they can see these placards and easily identify the access points. There must also be a nice GIS-based asset management system with everyone of these access points inventoried, which is not hard as they are already clearly identified.

I’m sure the simple rules of these placards are common knowledge among utility workers. But it is still interesting to figure them out. As it turned out, everyone I asked along my trip acknowledged that not only they didn’t know what these placards are or how they work, but most of them never even noticed these little colorful markers. Perhaps somewhere on Wikipedia or a website in some other language all this is explained in detail. But this is where you read about it first. :)

Danke Herr Professor!

IN GRAPHICS Magazine

During my trip to Berlin in August, I visited with infographics specialist Jan Schwochow. Jan and his talented team at Golden Section Graphics had just recently published Volume 2 of his wildly ambitious, independently and beautifully produced magazine, IN GRAPHICS.

While the sections of the 90-page issue are completely familiar-- politics, technology, sports, entertainment, etc., IN GRAPHICS is no ordinary magazine. Instead of running text and occasional photos or illustration, the content is displayed entirely in the form of infographics. Text is in German and English.

The cover story of Volume 2 takes on the events and aftermath of 9/11. We are first presented with a spread of front–page coverage of over a hundred publications from around the world. The six spreads that follow use diagrams, illustration, timelines, and quantitative charts to digest data and information of the last ten years. They are all thoughtfully conceived, meticulously researched and exquisitely executed.

THE DAY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD


ATTACK ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER


3RD TARGET: THE PENTAGON! AND THE WHITE HOUSE?


TERROR TRACES
How the terrorists prepared themselves for the attacks in the USA


TERROR IN NUMBERS


CIVILIAN CASUATIES


THE NEW WORLD TRADE CENTER

In addition to his technical expertise and years of experience, Jan has a great knowledge and interest in information graphics history. His ability to incorporate design solutions from the past, with cutting edge visualization techniques, creates work that is rich and sophisticated with plenty of fresh visualization surprises.


Even the contents page is a visual display.

Both volumes of IN GRAPHICS are available for shipping throughout Europe from Amazon.de. For shipping to the U.S., you can order from the Golden Section online shop directly.

A handful of bookstores in Germany, Amsterdam, London and Vienna also sell the magazines. If you are traveling in Europe, I suggest you use this list as a general resource for the coolest bookstores there are.

Letters From Berlin

Had I seen this innocent "54" some place other than Berlin, would it still have struck me as Swastika-esque?

Otto Dix & Estee Lauder?

Given that cosmetics companies spend most of their efforts convincing women of 50 that they must look 25, it is thoroughly refreshing, that Estee Lauder is linking itself in a promotion with an upcoming exhibition at the Ronald S. Lauder Neue Galerie in New York of the German painter Otto Dix. In addition to his brutally harsh depictions of World War I and post-war Berlin, Dix was a scathing portraitist. His paintings, needless to say, are the complete antithesis of airbrushed glamour. How perfect that the piece being used to promote the exhibit is a portrait of the Weimar Republic’s most outrageous performer, “The Priestess of Depravity,” Anita Berber. Dix painted this portrait of her in 1925. She was 25 years old at the time, but looked not a day younger than 50. She died four years later, not even 30 years old.

The publisher of The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber, a biography by Mel Gordon describes her:

Anita Berber was the notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s.

In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber’s celebrations of “Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy” were condemned and censored.

And from Wikipedia:
Her performances broke boundaries with their androgyny and total nudity, but it was her public appearances that really challenged taboos. Berber's overt cocaine use and bisexuality were matters of public chatter.[2] She was allegedly the sexual slave of a woman and the woman's 15-year-old daughter. She could often be seen in Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos; she would walk around naked except for a sable fur, carrying a pet monkey and a silver brooch full of cocaine, while flaunting her lesbian lovers—removing the barrier between performance and normal life.

Otto Dix includes over 100 works by the artist and runs from March 11 to August 30, 2010. Available exclusively in the Neue Galerie gift shop is the lipstick, “Berlin Red” and an Art Deco inspired compact.

Read more of the salacious details of Anita Berber's performances here.
See more Otto Dix here.