I didn't really know much about Bea Feitler until I read this great article by Madeleine Morleyin the latest issue of Riposte. I mean, I knew her work because we've all seen it or seen its influence in magazines, book covers, album artwork but I didn't grasp just how brilliant she was.
Bea was a graphic designer and art director best known for her work in Harper's Bazaar, Ms., Rolling Stone and the premiere issue of the modern Vanity Fair.
'Throughout her life Feitler thought about rhythm; about the flow of pages, about the beat, layers and corners of a city. Whether she designed for Harper’s Bazaar, Ms., Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair she’d mix up the things she saw in whirring, non-stop New York—high art and fashion, pop and ballet, politics and print—symbolising how things were mixed up and connected already. The freedom she was given at these publications allowed Feitler to renegotiate commercial representations, using magazines as a mass vehicle to address social change.
Feitler often used classic lines to break up pages—the kind of lines she’d find underscoring the title pages of antique books. She used them to interrupt text, to geometrically puncture vibrant organic shapes, to impose rhythm, but mostly she used lines to emphasise. To make space. To make meaning. With lines she said: This is important. Look. At. This.'
'Feitler believed totally in graphic design, how the flow of images and visual energy give vital shape and form to information. She wanted modern culture to look like it was already classic—of the moment, but also apart from it. She saw designers not as invisible, functional guides, but as a singular blend of authors and artists. Documenting and decorating, explaining and exploring, creating the stage upon which everything performed. A dancing figure, a pop-art shoe, a political message, a woman kissing herself in the mirror; all reinforced by Feitler with a definitive line, a persuasive elegance and, ultimately, a love of life.'
I do love a good Instagram account and this one is my new favourite.
Scenic Simpsons is dedicated to showcasing the most beautiful scenes, colours, sets and abstract compositions from 'The Simpsons'. How wonderful it that? Almost too wonderful.
Harry Everett Smith, an artist, collected paper airplanes he found in the streets and buildings of New York. A selection of Smith’s planes feature in a new collection by J & L Books and the Anthology Film Archives.
Ever since I read the article in The New Yorker, I can't stop thinking about those paper planes and all the hands that made them. All the stories folded into the creases. Some made fast, some made slow. Crafted by tiny hands eager to watch their planes sink or soar. How those hands knew how to make the sharp folds to create the best wings. Running thumb and forefinger together along the creases to make them stay. They are all so beautiful. Made out of envelopes, receipts, letters, newspapers, library cards, junk mail and magazines. I imagine them cast from the top of staircases and angled out of windows. The fortunate ones, the ones that missed gaps in the grates and dark puddles of the sidewalks, were gathered by Harry Everett Smith, marked with the date and location of where they were found, flattened and kept in boxes. Imagine those boxes stuffed full of hundreds of paper airplanes, all imprinted with time and the hands that made them.
I'm glad Harry Everett Smith found the planes beautiful and important enough to save. And I'm glad I get to think about the "someone" who shot it.
My love of collage began back in 1998 in Leeds University bookshop while I was leaning against the shelves, waiting for someone to sort their life out. On those bookshelves I found Grete Stern's photomontages and I fell in love with the super-weird, women-focused worlds. Their weirdness, and their focus on women, was explained by the fact that were based on real women's dreams.
A lot of time passed and I eventually forgot about Grete and her beautiful dreamworlds but then I read about Beth Hoeckel in Booooooom and I was back in the game. Hoeckel conjures up her own magical worlds that take me back to recurring childhood dreams and memories I have never been able to shake. I fell in love.
I've not thought too deeply about why I love collage so much and I'm sure overthinking will kill that love. I suppose it's the combination of reality and the unreal - it's the otherworldliness.