bookofjoe

Garbage Bag Dress

Created by

Jutta Leger.

[via Toxel]

What is it?

Answer here this time tomorrow.

Hint: Not made in Prague.

Another?

Works in any orientation.

Gino De Dominicis

"An Italian artist who purposely shrouded himself in mystery and stood apart from popular artistic trends, De Dominicis (1947–1998) exhibited very little in North America."

According to his very brief entry in Wikipedia, "Even the news of his death was greeted with suspicion, for years earlier he had reported his own demise in the mock conclusion to a biographical essay."

From a 1990 New York Times review:

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He has something of Arte Povera's feeling for materials, something of Giorgio de Chirico's feeling for the Italian pictorial tradition of magical architecture. He has clearly been fascinated by the inventions and caricatures of Leonardo, whose enigmatic and androgynous ''St. John the Baptist'' haunts this show.

What most distinguishes Mr. De Dominicis is not his concern with death and myth, and it is certainly not his resistance to artistic conventions like titles, dates and categories. It is rather the fablelike quality of his work, and his determination to keep his abstract metaphysical speculations grounded in the kind of storytelling images to which children could respond.

Every recurring motif in this show could be part of a fairy tale. There are long noses and Cyclops eyes. The women are beautiful and enchanted. The men are ugly and have the power to enchant.

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Excerpts from Rachel Spence's rapturous June 2, 2010 Financial Times review of a show of De Dominicis' work currently up at Rome's new Maxxi contemporary art and architecture museum (through November 7, 2010) follow.

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That De Dominicis shines so brightly here is partly because his curator, Achille Bonito Oliva, has co-opted the two smallest galleries — one downstairs, one on the top floor — then further divided them with screens to create intimate spaces that are not so far from the orthodox white cube that is still most artists' favourite vitrine. Yet even if De Dominicis had been forced to take his chances in Hadid's cavernous corridors, one suspects he would have triumphed.

Born in 1947, the artist was part of a generation that demonised painting and sculpture as reactionary pursuits. As a young man, he also flirted with avant-garde practice. Early works on show here included the 1968-69 solitary red rubber ball allegedly caught "in the moment immediately preceding its rebounce"; and a still from the 1969 video in which he threw stones into a river in the hope of "forming squares instead of circles".

Even then, a rigorous purity of line prevailed. Whether he placed two blue opaline vases above and below a shelf ("Ubiquity", 1970), or drew a freehand oval ("Perfect Oval Executed Freehand", 1973) — a nod to Giotto's fabled capacity to draw a perfect circle — De Dominicis was incapable of making work that didn't show its debt to classical ideals of symmetry and proportion.

Unlike so many of his peers, De Dominicis's conceptual works were never quarrels with the practice of visual art itself. Instead, they were material accessories to an oeuvre that was predominantly defined by figurative studies. One key installation is "The Time, the Mistake, the Space", a skeleton wearing roller skates with a brass rod balanced on his finger next to the skeleton of a small dog, which was first exhibited in 1970. (This work was later re-elaborated, without the dog or the skates, in the vast "Cosmic Magnet" of 1989, which currently dominates Maxxi's piazza.)

The roller-skating skeleton's somewhat heavy-handed symbolism refers to De Dominicis's conviction that our desire for movement through space is a misguided attempt to ward off the march of time. Obsessed with a quest for immortality, he once called on scientists to halt all research and concentrate on finding a cure for death. Yet as he matured, he realised that everlasting life lay within the "material, immobile and mute" arts of sculpture, drawing and painting.

The latter two practices are at the core of this show. Calling on an iconographic repertoire that ranges from ancient Sumeria to the Renaissance and Picasso, De Dominicis spent the last 20 years of his life engaged in elaborations of what is essentially the same figure. Defined by a beak nose, half-closed eyes and three-quarter profile, this mystical, introspective soul has the still, hieratic power of an icon.

Yet what sets De Dominicis apart from his ancient predecessors — and also from other, more modern practitioners of aesthetic restraint such as Giacometti — is his masterly range of techniques. Although he denied any connection with avant-garde practice, he mixed his media with postmodern aplomb, adding plaster noses to paintings to create semi-sculptures and sometimes painting over a photographic base. He was equally comfortable with tempera, oil, acrylic, ink, pencil and gold leaf. Every work is radically different from its peers.

Take the "Gioconda" series executed in the late 1980s and 1990s. Named for the figures' resemblance to the enigmatic muses of Leonardo, it ranges from a pencil sketch drawn and shaded with academic precision to a fluid head conjured out of a handful of fierce black lines. Regardless of the medium, each possesses a silent, hermetic charisma that calls to mind not only the Renaissance master's models but also ancient tomb paintings, the archetypal forms of Brancusi and the line drawings of Matisse. They are a triumphant justification of De Dominicis's sense that art is timeless. Indeed, he declared that contemporary artists "coming after everything that has gone before . . . should know that they are the most ancient".

Most potent of all are a cycle completed just before he died. Painted in brilliant, pillar-box red, "Untitled" (1997-98), "Titled" (1998), and "Self-portrait (Red Heart)" (1998) show, respectively, a mythical city, a biomorphic figure and a featureless face. Yet what makes them compelling is the way the monochrome hue deepens and brightens across their surface in an endlessly shifting play of colour, as if the canvas was animated by a hidden energy within.

Little wonder that De Dominicis resisted photographing his work. Like Walter Benjamin, he knew reproduction would deprive it of the materiality at the heart of its aura. He saw his artworks as autonomous deities disconnected from time, space, author or spectator. "The object of visual art is a living object; the main reason behind its creation is not to be seen," he once wrote. "Being put in a museum to be looked at is a secondary fate for a true work of art."

Fortunately for Maxxi, the presence of this master makes it look like a true museum.

Road Popper

It's not what you think.

From the website:

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The Road Popper is a bike-mounted bottle opener that we developed for our own use and decided afterward to share.

We designed it to fasten discreetly to the rails on the underside of the saddle to help keep your bike looking crisp.

So far, it's worked on all the bottle caps we've tried it on.

Made from bronze-infused stainless steel.

Finish options are plain, matte gold, glossy gold, matte antique bronze, and glossy antique bronze.

The Road Popper is not intended for alcoholic beverages.

Chromoly does not condone cycling while under the influence of alcohol [clifyt, that means you].

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$40–$55.71, depending on finish.

slydial — "Create the illusion of communication"

They had me at "illusion." 

"slydial is a voice messaging service which connects you directly to someone's voicemail — without the recipient's phone ever ringing."

"It can be a clever tool to deal with life's awkward moments."

Q. How do you slydial?

A. It's as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Dial 267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425) from any mobile or landline phone.

2. At the voice prompt, enter the U.S. mobile phone number of the person you want to slydial.

3. You will be directly connected to their voicemail.

Pod à porter

Designed by Michiel Cornelissen, who wrote, "MP3 players got smaller until they practically had no controls on them anymore — especially in the case of the iPod shuffle."

"I thought that what you need is just the earbuds, and a simple shape to keep them on your body, much like glasses are nothing more than an elegant way to keep lenses near your body."

From the website:

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The easiest way to wear your music — no more wire-tangle, earphones dangling by your knees, or ripping buds from your ears when you take off your jacket.

Fits the iPod shuffle 3rd generation, leaving all controls accessible.

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Black, White, Magenta or Green.

$27.

Orloj

Prague's astronomical clock dates from 1410.

Vebo (vegetable boil/steam/strain)

It came from Australia.

From the website:

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Why is cooking vegetables such a pain?

All you want to do is create a healthy meal but all you end up doing is creating a mountain of dirty dishes.

Not anymore.

Vebo will boil, steam and strain your vegetables all in one unit — the handles pop into the air, making it easy to serve straight onto your plates.

Vebo is made from heat-resistant silicone so you can lift it straight out of the hot water and leave it on the sink to strain.

The unique wall design squashes down to fit any sized pot, keeping the pot lid on tightly to cut steaming and boiling time, and also saving storage space by fitting inside an empty pot when you're not using it.

No more worrying about dirtying a heap of bulky steamers, strainers and serving tools just to create one part of your meal.

Vebo will boil, steam and strain your vegetables and it's completely dishwasher safe.

• Cooking Capacity: 1.2 litres/1.3 quarts
• Diameter: 14.5cm/5.7"
• Total Height: 13cm/5.1"
• Weight: 0.14kg/0.3lb

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$24.95.