storytelling art…

CUPtopia’s staff was lucky enough to bump into Cy Twombly in his hometown of Lexington, Virginia.

The April 25, 2009 encounter with Mr. Twombly just happened to be his birthday.

Cy Twombly at the Menil Collection in Houston in 2005.

Lesson / Koan : Search for greatness.

In CUPtopia’s search for utopia, Mr. Twombly’s life & work reflect 83 years of demonstrating & depicting joy to others.

BTW,

The following quote from yesterday’s New York Times article by Roberta Smith describes his joy all so well.

“Cy Twombly’s paintings began to negotiate strange truces between art and literature, painting and drawing (or handwriting), and looking and deciphering — often with ravishingly beautiful results. He redefined painting as an essentially glyphic, storytelling art, in which spontaneous marks almost always did double duty as signs, symbols, letters and notations, and some sense of a narrative often hovered in the background, even if it was simply about the process of making the painting.“

NOTE :

One day is not enough time to pay tribute to Cy Twombly…CUPtopia is saddened by his death, but will be bumping into to him many times in the near future.

Raise a glass to Cy soon…and the utopia he gave all with his wonderful storytelling art.

sail away…

Considering some many utopias are islands or island like, the image below transcends known environments for all who remember the past.

Flooded Florence by Superstudio.

Lesson / Koan : Restore the future.

BTW,

Former Superstudio member Adolfo Natalini ridicules restoration practices by reviewing the surreal image of flooded Florence his gang created in 1972. “If you really want to restore the situation, why just restore to the 19th century? Why not restore the Renaissance situation?” Why not Medieval, Roman, or even Pleistocene situation? “In the Pleistocene situation, Florence was a lake!“

NOTE :

Has Historic Preservation become a type of utopian movement?

Please read article below…from yesterday’s New York Times for perspective on the lesson CUPtopia’s friend Rem Koolhaas did not learn and still forgets often from one of his heros Superstudio.

Death by Nostalgia By SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN

“Some of Mr. Koolhaas’s criticisms are on target  —  but his analysis is wildly off-base.“

Everything & Everyone has a life-span.

Mr. Koolhaas’s time is done, he is the only one who doesn’t realize it.

some extent…

“A lot of Don’s work assumes a utopia.“

An installation view of the Donald Judd exhibit at the David Zwirner gallery.

Lesson / Koan : Assume everything.

You always called your dad Don?
“Always. Don and Julie were the parents.”

BTW,

In our case our parents were to some extent the generation of ’68.

A lot of Donald Judd’s work assumes a utopia.

“Or, rightly so, assumes the ability to affect the world. Which got reinforced when he did things like help to stop the expressway through SoHo. The use of first names by my parents was a rejection of convention, of their parents. It wasn’t arbitrary. They made it normal that we call them by their first names.”

From left- Donald Judd, Flavin Judd and James Bruce Dearing, Donald’s assistant, in a photograph taken around 1970.

When Donald Judd died in 1994, he had a couple thousand dollars in the bank but was millions of dollars in debt. The task of sorting out his estate was left to his two children, Rainer and Flavin.

NOTE :

Donald Judd’s son is named Flavin Judd…after the artist & close friend of his father, Dan Flavin.
( Flavin’s father was a tough guy, and CUPtopia’s staff has been hyper critical of him in the past.  BUT, he liked Dan Flavin so much that he gave him an entire building on his Marfa, Texas compound. )

Also, to give Donald Judd credit, he taught his children well, and named them well too.

Asked & Answered | Flavin Judd

( New York Times – T magazine article, May 5, 2011. )

Your first-name-last-name combination makes you un-Google-able. 
“[Laughs]. Oh right, you get a bazillion exhibitions unrelated to me, so that’s perfect.“

big bad…

Steven Guarnaccia’s twists on “The Three Little Pigs” recast the fairy tales as only a design dork could.

Lesson / Koan : Some fairies live forever.

Illustrator and former New York Times Op-Ed art director Steven Guarnaccia reinvents a childhood classic with his recent architecture-inspired version of “The Three Little Pigs.”

BTW,

The Three Little Pigs are (above, from left) Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry and Frank Lloyd Wright.

The tale of The three little pigs is set by Steven Guarnaccia among houses by great architects of the XXth century. Corbusier, Gehry and Wright are in fact the main protagonists of this contemporary tale with other renowned architects in their houses of scraps, of glass and of stone and mortar.

In their famous buildings they live among objects designed by some of the most internationally representative architects and designers. But one day the wolf pays a visit to them…

And the house before which the Big Bad Wolf hopelessly huffs and puffs is none other than Fallingwater.

NOTE :

Pigs have always lived in Utopia…but, Architects depicted as pigs, guess Mr. Guarnaccia knows something more?

Steven Guarnaccia is an illustrator and a designer. He lives and works in New York. His works appear in many newspapers, such as The New York Times, where he worked for three years as art director of the Op-Ed page. He has worked with MoMA and has designed jewelry, watches, rugs and wall paintings for firms such as Acme, Swatch and Disney Cruise Lines. He has published many collections of illustrated palindromes, books for children and pop-up books. He has been a long-time collaborator with Abitare and publishes books with Edizioni Corraini. He is now in charge of the Illustration Department of Parsons The New School for Design.