Left: a ‘stela’ (stone slab bearing an inscription or design, often serving as a gravestone) near Stockholm, dated to the late Viking period (second half of A.D. 1000). This image depicts Thor, in a boat, wielding his magic hammer in battle against the cosmic serpent Midgard. Right: chalk drawing by Keith Haring, 1983.

These two images, made roughly a millennium apart, are almost identical in style. The simple line drawing (or engraving on the stela) and outlined figures are deceptively simple; the linework captures a great movement and vitality. Human figures are portrayed in a basic form that is iconic to our human language (think of the male/female icons on bathroom doors). However the style is distinctive; a friendly, expressive personality is expressed with a single line. In both cases, the bold, gyrating lines just seem to dance.

The first image was made by a badass Viking designer who was likely commemorating a fallen comrade with a gravestone depicting a God of thunder vanquishing a gruesome foe. The second was made by an eccentric New York City artist and Devo fan whose joyful subway drawings made him a pioneer in an 80′s street art movement. As much as those two people seem to differ in time, location, and lifestyle, their markmaking is remarkably similar. This reveals the common language of art and design, a shared heritage of visual storytelling. These two people both inherited a form of communication and expression which unites their work over a vast gulf of time and space.

I decided that I want to become the Joseph Campbell of graphic design. Campbell was a scholar of mythology who compared world cultures to reveal basic truths about human life. He was the man. But I also want to be the Jay-Z of design, so yeah. I’ll keep you posted.

The Mission is best known for its murals, which adorn nearly every block and transform alleyways like Balmy Alley into public art galleries (Balmy is lined with over 30 murals). Those murals have been well documented elsewhere, particularly by the Precita Eyes muralists, who are central to the community and have published a book on the subject. However, the neighborhood’s unsung hero is its hand-painted street signage: colorful restaurant façades, elaborate store windows, and charming, handmade business marquees all possess the welcoming tone of a handwritten note from a friend.

I interviewed a local mural artist and mural tour guide. I was kind of surprised by some of her statements; when I asked if there was a shared heritage between the murals and the painted storefronts, she seemed quizzical about the insinuation that there was any connection at all. Furthermore, when I asked about the use of typography in the Mission District, she seemed unfamiliar with the word ‘typography.’

What I gathered from that conversation was that she considered the murals to be ‘art’ but the public signage (like the text above and the painted watch on a jeweler’s window below) were considered mere informational graphics. Personally, I believe that both art forms come from the same artistic impulse: to use the neighborhood as a canvas on which to express cultural identity. Sure, mural art and graphic design are two different visual languages, but they both express the social voice of the local population. Besides, to say that the lines are blurred between the two would be an understatement; graffiti, signage, and murals appear side by side on dozens of walls, storefronts, and alleyways.

Regardless, it’s refreshing to spend time in an environment where art in the public space is a beloved extension of cultural identity. The Mission District proves that when public art is encouraged and fostered, it can be a beautiful sight for residents young and old. Even the exterior of a local McDonald’s has been decorated with images of butterflies and smiling faces painted by children (a charming sight at first, but surely that beautification has the adverse effect of endearing McDonald’s to potential fast food customers).

I’m always going on about the merits of DIY (do it yourself) artistic techniques, and the Mission District is the ultimate DIY neighborhood. The shoe repair sign on the left is one of my favorite images here. Walk down the street in almost any American neighborhood and nearly %100 of the graphics you see will have been mechanically produced. There’s something so friendly and disarming about the personal touch that these images endow the neighborhood with.

I was hoping to surf while I was in Bolinas but the water temperature was too frigid to enter without a wetsuit. The winding cliffs of the coastal drive and the intoxicating aroma of the Eucalyptus trees made for an ultra-relaxing environment and Ryan’s birthday party was a smash hit (the sheriff himself shut down the late-night dance party, but I’m pretty sure he’s the only employee of that tiny town’s police department anyway, so who else would they send?).

I took a billion pictures in San Francisco. More to come soon.

This project was great for my students because it offered a wide range of expression: students could draw or write, and those with no vision (my students have a wide range of visual impairments) could type in Braille. We typed Braille on sheets of transparent adhesive paper. This see-through paper could then be affixed directly into the zine – even over top of printed writing or a drawing!

I’d like to share a poem that is printed in Braille inside certain issues of the zines. This poem is titled ‘Oh Sweet Silver Lark’ and it’s written by a very talented high school student named Jasmine. I had students who read Braille read this poem aloud in several classes as it’s very moving and I thought everyone should hear it. A lark is a singing bird.

Oh Sweet Silver Lark
a poem by Jasmine

Oh sweet silver lark
Come sing me a song
But only on a day all people get along
Oh sweet silver lark
Come fly me away
But let my soul not be burned by the sun’s evil rays
Oh sweet silver lark
Who sits in my tree
Oh please, just for once
Can you listen to me?
I wish for a day that we all come to peace
Like a sweet baby bird in an evergreen wreath
Oh sweet silver lark
Come sing me a song
When all people get along.

People see the zine above and say, “The monkey’s upside down!” But clearly that’s the best part.

Inside the two zines above, you’ll find satirical ads for a women’s fragrance called ‘Wrinkly’ and a snack for zombies called ‘Zombie Grits’ (“Made with real human!”).

I always wanted to make a zine when I was in high school, but the kids that were into zine culture were badass punk rock kids (or so I thought at the time) so I always felt that I wasn’t allowed to make one because I didn’t have enough zine street cred or some similar absurd esoteric concept. So this project was a lot of fun for me as well as the kids. The one concept I repeated to them ad infinitum was DIY: do it yourself. We do not have the budget or production abilities of Rolling Stone but we can make a magazine that is cooler in many ways. Especially when you’re a kid, it’s important to understand that you have to make creative things happen yourself, no matter what the limitations are. That idea can be a liberation and a blessing.

The ‘Robozine’ has a multiple choice quiz in the center called ‘What kind of robot are you?’ Questions include “When you go to the beach what do you feel like doing?” [answer choices: (a) Cleaning up after people (b) Making the beach all dirty (c) Making food for people] At the end of the quiz, you find out whether you’re an Earthobot, an Eatobot, or a Destroyobot.

]]> http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/2010/lighthouse-zine-project/feed/ 0 http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/2010/true-beauty/ http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/2010/true-beauty/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:37:54 +0000 Dan Redding http://www.magneticstate.com/blogdept/?p=449 David Pearson designed a series of fiercely beautiful book covers for Cormac McCarthy novels. I’m a huge McCarthy fan, having recently worked my way through the vast majority of his work. These covers use inventive, lovingly crafted typography to express a violence and beauty that the novels contain. They are the best typographic work I’ve seen in quite some months, so I enjoyed reading about Pearson’s process here.

I haven’t been this crazy about a band since I was a Cobain-obsessed teenager. During the last month, my casual interest in early-80′s punk band The Misfits has mutated into a devilish craving. I’m a fiend.

At first, I had written The Misfits off as just another low-fi thrashing experience, but then a series of thrilling revelations occurred. I discovered the band’s taste for sci-fi and horror-themed songs (‘Teenagers from Mars,’ ‘Night of the Living Dead’). They have a song about a werewolf, a song about The Fly, songs about Jackie O. and Marilyn Monroe. I was stunned when I realized the power and range of diabolical Misfits mastermind and frontman Glenn Danzig, “a powerful vocalist who didn’t so much emulate Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison as embody their cocksure attitude and charisma,” according to the iTunes review of the band’s debut. This is a hardcore punk band, led by a melodic crooner styled after Elvis, singing songs about martians and vampires. It’s the strangest hybrid, a creepy Frankenstein creature of a rock band, and the whole thing is utterly hilarious. That’s how I became a Fiend (Danzig named his self-published Misfits fan club enterprise the ‘Fiend Club,’ signing some of his letters to friends and fans with “Stay Cool Ghoul”).

They want your skull.

As early as ’78, the band was already branded with a name, logo, hairstyle (the incomparably inconvenient ‘devilock,’ a lock of hair narrowed into a horn-like sheath that hangs between the eyes), and sound that all thoroughly embodied their signature campy horror style. I dug further and futher, and before I knew it, I was spending way too much time YouTube-ing vintage Misfits clips and Googling nerd-alert search terms like “Glenn Danzig biography” (watch him show off his book collection). After years without a serious new musical obsession, it was a real joy. I love Grizzly Bear but bands like that don’t encourage obsession. If part of your look is being casual and appearing not to try too hard, your fans will probably follow suit. An Interpol tattoo is surely a rarity.

The band’s most well-known song is ‘Where Eagles Dare’

The final revelation came when I started reading Misfits lyrics. Some of the band’s songs are so fast and raw that it was occasionally difficult to hear the lyrics properly, but I soon discovered a lyrical genius in the eccentric meathead-to-be Danzig. I thought I heard a rousing chorus of “I want your soul / I need your soul.” This struck me as a passable, somewhat generic love song. My jaw literally dropped when I learned that the song title was ‘Skulls,’ the chorus was actually “I want your skull / I need your skull,” and the lyrics told a gory tale about a demonic psycopath with a skull collection. Holy shit. If you can see the humor in it, and if you’re a fan of horror films (Danzig was raised on the creepy/silly horror classics from 50′s film production company Hammer Horror), it’s heaven.

Even if you don’t crave more two-minute-long songs about the undead, I recommend being youthful when you can this month. Pursue some of those unbridled passions that can shrink away amidst the stresses and obligations that come with adult things like age and career and time. It’s good for you. Sometimes it takes work to find bands that you adore – research and browsing and recommendations and sometimes years of listening to music you enjoy but don’t always fiend for. But it’s worth it, so find what you fiend for. And remember, as the Descendents once said, “Thou shalt not commit adulthood.”

This article is a compilation of artworks on a single theme: ‘The Temptation of St. Anthony,’ a narrative that has been imaginatively rendered by visual artists – from Bosch to Dalí – for centuries.

According to Time, “In the 3rd Century, Saint Anthony the Egyptian renounced all worldly joys, went off into the Arabian Desert to live the life of a hermit. He had a terrible time of it. Often he would glance up from his prayers to see Satan hovering before him in the gloom of his abandoned fort. And Satan was hard to recognize; usually he looked like the things Anthony missed most.”

In this narrative, St. Anthony’s faith triumphs over the temptations and horrors of sin and evil (of course, the paintings focus on the conflict, not the victory). This theme is common across Eastern and Western cultures. In Buddhist mythology, Siddhartha meditates under the Bodhi tree before attaining Enlightenment. During his meditation, he is tempted by the demon Mara and accompanying visions of evil and lust. Siddhartha’s spiritual peace is strong enough to withstand the temptations, and so he transforms into the enlightened Buddha. Same story! If you take scholar Joseph Campbell’s advice to view the cultures of the world with an “unprejudiced eye,” you will see that all cultures reveal the same truths about the human experience. Christ’s ascension provides the same spiritual symbolism as the Buddha’s Enlightenment, St. Anthony’s test was Siddhartha’s test, and so on.

This visual motifs of St. Anthony’s tale has inspired countless artists to draw their worst nightmares. They populated their paintings with the creepiest, crawliest creatures they could conjure. The Surrealists – namely Dalí and Ernst – specialized in nightmares and so they really sunk their teeth in. All artworks are titled The Temptation of St. Anthony. Enjoy.

Matthias Grünewald, 1512-16 (image detail)

Pieter Huys, 1547

Salvator Rosa, 1645

Martin Schongauer, 1470

“According to his biographer, the rigorous asceticism practised by St Anthony in the Egyptian desert allowed him to levitate in the air, where he was attacked by devils trying to beat him to the ground. The imaginative power with which Schongauer interpreted their assault made this engraving famous throughout Europe.” (quote from The British Museum)

Artist Unknown

Do you know the artist of the above painting? Leave a comment!

Max Ernst entered this piece into a competition on the theme. His competitors included 12 “apostles of Modern Art,” including Dali, but Ernst’s painting won. His prize was $3,000. (see Time magazine: ‘Temptations of St. Anthony’) Ernst’s painting shows St. Anthony’s orifices being invaded by creatures that have originated from a plant-animal metamorphosis (see the thorny arms and features like roots and prickly barbs). The temptations of the flesh derive from nature, not from the spirit. Of his depiction, Ernst said, “Shrieking for help and light across the stagnant water of his dark, sick mind, St. Antony receives as an answer the echo of his fears: the laughter of the monsters created by his visions.”

The temptations in Dalí’s painting arrive in the form of a nightmarish parade. Lust is represented by a nude woman balanced precariously on a teetering pedestal. The spider-legged elephants are topped with phallic towers and some sort of ornate sex palace. But it appears as though St. Anthony’s faith is about to topple them all.

This artwork, entitled VHS, stands over eight feet tall. It’s an enormous representation of a VHS copy of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. This sculpture was made by David Herbert in 2005. I felt gleeful when I saw first saw it.

Like all teens of my generation, my friends and I would often pop the 2001 tape into the VCR after one too many bong hits or swigs of pilfered vodka. Of course, this film is nearly impossible to comprehend when you’re sober, let alone intoxicated (although now I believe it’s about evolution – from monkeys to mankind to malicious machines). And the film offers a symbol for its unnerving unknowability in the form of an imposing black monolith that, um, floats around in space until it appears at the foot of your bed. Or something. Anyway, that monolith is the form that Herbert has emulated here, to terrifically amusing effect. The monolith in 2001 may represent something impenetrable, but the experience of watching a movie – and specifically this movie, on a tape – is just the opposite: nostalgic, mundane, and pleasantly familiar.

'The Scream,' 1893

Everyone knows Edvard Munch’s 1893 work The Scream (there are actually several versions of the piece), but did you know that an earlier title for it was The Scream of Nature? The image becomes twice as disturbing when you hear the artist’s inspiration.

Here is Munch’s description of the moment that inspired him: “I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”