Baseball season is well underway and April is National Kite Month! I came across these vintage baseball-player kites on eBay a while back along with some mid-century "baseball menko" cards.
eBay Eyes is an occasional presentation of found visual treats from that ever expanding , electronic mega-marketplate.
I was amazed to see pictorial elements of traditional Japanese prints in the three "bookmark" cards above.
European artists were smitten with the "new" aesthetic they encountered whenJapanese prints found their way to the continent in the later part of the 19th Century. The influence of ukiyo-e on the Impressionists, and everything from fashion to décor was profound.
These baseball cards confirm how culturally determined our sense of design really is. What struck the eyes of Western artists as “fresh” in Japanese prints—asymmetrical compositions, adventurous cropping, the flat indication of space—were elements of design native to the Japanese sensibility. So much so, as to show up in in their baseball cards!
The portrait cards, below, are formatted with traditional Western composition.
Yes, Ikebana may be described as Japanese flower arranging. But it's much more than that. It is also an art form, a philosophy, and a ritual dating back hundreds of years. Which all leads me to believe that there is probably more to Ikebana vases than what meets the eye. While I know nothing of what the specific guidelines or requisite qualities are for these presentation vessels, I do know that I keep finding myself attracted to their whimsical and even outrageous forms. As singular objects, they become miniature sculptures evoking styles from Henry Moore to Richard Serra. Come to think of it, if you combine them with bonsai trees, you could fashion a table-top sculpture park!
Another installment of “eBay Eyes,” where I present visual treats from that ever-expanding, electronic mega-marketplace. (link)
The first three, of these Architectural Forum issues were offered as one lot on eBay last week…
This next group of issues are available on eBay, from various sellers, right now …
The following are covers from a Frank Lloyd Wright archive at The Steiner Agency. You can go there and see many more wonderful covers of issues referencing Wright.
September 1956
January 1949
February 1961
May 1959
October 1970
December 1970
November 1957
September 1958
November 1959
Apologies for the lack of info on art direction/design/photo credits, etc., but I do not have access to the issues at this time. I hope you can just enjoy the candy for now ...
Awesome animated graphic of the rise and fall of world empires from 1800 by Pedro M. Cruz. I did a double take when I saw this because it looked so much like the "found palettes" I'd been collecting from eBay. It's a category I think of as "graphic cousins" or "visual homonymns"--they have visual similarities, but little in common beyond that. If there is a word for this phenomenon, I'm not aware of it.
I tried to come up with possibilities for what the word might be, and started googling. "Homograph" is already taken and refers to words that have the same spelling, but whose meaning can only be known from the context in which it is used. "Homoglyph" is also taken. It refers to two characters or sets of characters that appear very similar and can often appear identical. Examples are the numeral zero and the letter "O", or the letters rn and m. "HOMO pict" has somethig to do with chemical bonding. "Homopict" has to do with another kind of bonding.
When I tried working with “icon”, Greek for "image", I found out that "Homicon", is an annual convention for fans of Homicide: Life on the Street, while "Homocon" is short for “homosexual conservative” an oxymoronic political identity. Google assumed there was a space missing in "homoicon", so I was taken to an art essay in the Independent, Arrows of desire: How did St Sebastian become an enduring, homo-erotic icon? “Sebastian's appeal to gay men seems obvious. He was young, male, apparently unmarried and martyred by the establishment." "Homoiconic", however, is a word used in computer coding. According to Wikipedia, "Homoiconicity is a property of some programming languages, in which the primary representation of programs is also a data structure in a primitive type of the language itself, from homo meaning the same and icon meaning representation."
Alas, being at a loss for one word, has caused me to use many.
L. Eckstein is a NYC-based graphic designer and artist. When she had a job that came with an office, all matter of visual interest could be tacked up on her wall, or walked down the hall to be shared with a co-worker. Her job no longer comes with an office. This is now her wall—and her hall.
*All my eye and Betty Martin means that something is total and complete nonsense. It is found in British English from the eighteenth century on, but is hardly known today.--World Wide Words
