We humans seem to have a special attraction to things that are new, everything from new socks and shoes to brand new day.  The swell new day above was seen by Sara Gray (in Scotland we think) and her camera.  We saw it here.

People get quite excited when somebody does something NEW with something we already like, like movies for example.  The French figured out a way to make movies in a new way, which became a new wave, or a nouvelle vague, which is how they seemed to a lot of English speaking movie fans.  Above nifty posters for a recent NW film fest seen here.

And after we’ve seen a new movies, what could be better than to try out our new moves on the dance floor.  Imagine being able to follow a Merengue with a Hully Gully and then finish up with a Frog.  Party on.

People are still finding new ways to move around, in this case in a scene from a new 3D movie by director Wim Wenders about an innovative choreographer named Pina Bausch.   It’s got new written all over it, even though it apparently took 20 years to make.  Image found here.

But it isn’t just in the world of culture that people are working hard to find new things for us to experience, the dedicated folks who spend their days and nights thinking about how to bring a NEW experience to the world’s tourists are always launching new ideas.

In New Zealand for instance: “From Land to Water – Intercity Announces Plans to Launch a Revolutionary New Hydrobus”.  This was seen here, while still afloat.

Above is another new idea for scaring tourists: a travel concept floated by an American architect involving inflated globes that take you up where the clouds are.  Tiago Barros submitted his “Passing Cloud” project to a US competition on the future of high-speed railways.  Story is here.

Or, if you are the kind of tourist who prefers to drive you own car, the creators of NEW have not forgotten you.  Above is a new parking garage by the celebrated Swiss architecture team of Herzog & de Meuron.  It’s in Miami, photo by Iwan Baan, seen in Travel and Leisure.

You don’t have to travel to find newly hatched ideas, of course. Medical science is always working on something new you help you live better longer and more often than not, the new thing applies close to home.  If you were were, let’s say, a father of 2 who had no interest in becoming a father of 3 or 4 or….you’d maybe want to know about:

The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method for Men, as reported recently in that fountain of new, Wired magazine here.  What’s new about this “method” is the use of, um,  glue, apparently.
Sticking with science, in case you missed it:

the earth gave birth to a new island in December 2011.  It’s in the Red Sea, says the New Scientist here.

But hey, the new year is already showing signs of age, so we’ll wrap this up and let you get on with it.  If you need a calendar, here is one that is both old and right up to date.

It features The Brownies who are nifty little characters created  by Canadian illustrator and author Palmer Cox, back at the end of the 19th century.  More here.  They’ve been around a long time, but may be new to you as they were new to us just a while back.

It seems the only truly new thing we can be sure of is tomorrow.

Emperor penguins watching the first sunrise of the year on the island of South Georgia.  Image from the BBC Frozen Planet series seen here.

Happy New!

Still, it seemed that they should meet, so we introduce them to each other here.  This is their conversation.

Ivon Hitchens: b. 3 March 1893 – d. 29 August 1979  England

Pierre Soulages: b. 24 December 1919

Ivon Hitchens  Divided Oak Tree No. 2 1958

Pierre Soulages  19 Juin 1963

Ivon Hitchens poppies and buds

Soulages   26 Juin 1999

IH–oh my

PS  17 November  2008

Ivon H, An early post-war work, Drive Gates 1946

M Soulages, incroyable, makes you shake and re-think what anything else means

Mr Hitchens, Red Centre

Nice, M Soulages, very nice.

There’s a book about Ivon

There’s a book about Pierre.

This is painting.  These are painters.  They would know what to say to each other.  We think.

For many of us, it’s time to head back to school. This image from Shorpy here.  There’s lots to learn, of course, and lots of fun to be had outside the classroom.

There’s The Gym Club.

The Science Club

The Home Economics Club from 1929, when home economics was more important than nuclear physics.

The Senior Nature Club, 3 nature-loving young men and 25 young natural women.

Here’s a Pep Club. I feel better already.

The  Guys Who Know How to Line Up Club

The Thespian Club, not to be upstaged by Pep or Nature or Home Economics.

The W Club Service Group is just for being Wonderful, we think.

So play safe out there, learn a lot, have fun.  At school, it seems there’s always something for everybody.

The Trigonometry in Tutu’s club.

Here at the R of L, we like painters of old and we like painters of new, so long as, in both cases, they are the real thing.  But don’t ask us to explain that.  Lately we went looking for painters painting now, not sure what or who we’d find.  Well, it turns out there are lots of painters painting now in cities all over the place.  Here’s a few.

Above three paintings Markus Saile.  Go see more here

Whatever is going on here, it is true.  Nice work by Sabine Tress who has more here. 

Above two images are of work by Maria Chevska.  She knows a thing or two.  See more.

This nifty piece of painting is by Diane Delgado, from the USA.  She has a website.  

Thomas Helbig

Thomas Helbig, again.  The Saatchi Gallery knows about him, see here.

Canada has its share of painters doing the real thing, always has.  This one is Andy Dixon in Vancouver.  He has more on his website.

Well, the above three kept us gawking for quite some time.  The painter’s name is Stefan Kubler.  He’s seen in lots of places, including here .

Above is by Elisabeth Neel.

Also Elisabeth Neel, whose grandmother (Alice) was quite a a painter herself.  Good examples from the granddaughter here.  Also here

In the last few weeks, Cy Twombly and Lucian Freud, each pegged by people who should know as The Greatest Living Painter, left their studio for the last time.  It remains to be seen if the term will ever be used again.  What we do know, from the evidence above, is that painters are still with us, and painters are still painting, and some of them produce work that makes your brain buzz and your heart get hot and thumpy just like the greats of old, and not quite like anything else.  Lucky us.

A couple of places you’ll find lots of living painters are Two Coats of Paint and A Thousand Living Painters.

Look long.

Seemingly an innocent subject, we thought—-garments for hand protection/adornment.  How crazy could that get?

Well, Ms Claire Watson for one set out to prove otherwise it seems.   Found at the always reliable neatorama here

And so did Mr Daniel Storto, a remarkable glove maker, glove fancier, and glove artist.

Mr Storto has a website here, but he seems mostly busy at gloving not hanging around his site.

The above two images of the STORTO shop, outside and in, are included with an interview of Daniel Storto at a digital spot called full frontal fashion here

Just to go back a bit, gloves have been around for a long time, and the most beautiful ones have always been custom made and pricey, like these found here

Though undoubtedly well made of fine materials (these are “kid” gloves), when unattached to the hands they were made for, these just look mopey and a bit creepy.

Which brings us to GLOVE ART.

The decidedly catty gloves above (with red snakeskin nails) were designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, seen here. She was an artist of fashion if there ever was one, and fashionable artists sought her out for collaborative projects.

Here is another whimsical conundrum glove sculpture by Claire Watson.

And this furry set is by artist Meret Oppenheim (you may be familiar with her equally furry teacup and saucer)  Both above from Martina Volfi’s blog here.

These two above just seem quite swell.  You could wear one on each hand couldn’t you.  They were made in France it says here. 

High fashion hand candy from Givenchy, for well off biker chicks maybe.

Nothing like a gal wearing a bit of armour is there?  This one seen here 

And here is the wonderful, one-of-a-kind, all Canadian genius Mr Glenn Gould, who was sensitive to temperature (and almost everything else) most of the time.  So no surprise he’s got his hands nicely enclosed in big soft thick wool gloves.  This could be July.

There are dress golves, and it seems there are glove dresses. Dresses have been made entirely of gloves, yes they have.  This by Sebastian Errazuriz posted on Britannica.com (!) here.

And this by Susie MacMurray made of latex gloves and called  “A Mixture of Frailties” shown at The Museum of Arts & Design in New York City.   Found here

Well we could go on and on couldn’t we….

But let’s give the last hand to this embroidered glove said to belong to a man named Hastings and made for him in Kashmir 230 years ago when he was Governor of India, it says here.

Think of the millions of gloves that have been lost–most of us have lost a half dozen (usually just one of a pair) by the time we are old enough to care about gloves.  Where do they all end up?  Do birds and squirrels use them to make nests?  Well, if you are lucky enough to become Governor of India, they’ll end up in a museum.  And if you’re not, they’re just gone–though they could end up in an art project:

This is Las Hermanas Iglesias, Lost Glove 2009, Collection of 62 single gloves found in Paris (October 2008-April 2009) and gouache on paper, Curator: Jose Ruiz.  The artist has matched the single lost glove with a mate made of paper and paint.  And all is well again. See it here.

Here at the republic, we are BIG swooning fans of the art of our own time.  We love the wildness of it when it’s wild and we love the sweet plainness of it when it’s plain, and we love a lot of what is in between.  But every now and then,  you find yourself in front of a very very old picture made maybe 500 years ago, probably in a drafty stone room with lousy light, and you just turn into a wobbly raspberry.

How could anything so old, so freeeeking old, be so beautiful to us, we 21st century people who can see just about anything they want to see, at the speed of light, whenever they want to?  And we’d have to say that this is beautiful, not only by the standards of its time, but by our own standards, infused with photography, cinematography, celebrity, and attention deficit disorder.

How does something reach across 500 years and still have the capacity to to make your heart feel like it had a baby bird or two inside it?

There is no satisfying answer that we’ve seen anywhere.   Art, the real thing, keeps on doing what it does regardless of time and (sometimes) of place.  Apparently.  Maybe someone has explained all this and we missed it.  All we know is that these pictures make us stop and look and feel things inside our ribs, and afterwards, we can’t forget what we saw, and how we felt.

All of the above are painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio (b. 1449  d. 1494)  His frescos are in Florence, and you have to go there to see them because no one is going to bring them to you.  You have to go there.

Also in Florence, you can find paintings by Bronzino (1503 – 1572)

Looooooooook! This can just stop you in the middle of whatever you were doing, and might just forget your plans for the day.  When your brain kicks in, if it does, it could say:  look, isn’t this a particularly fine example of skill, a virtuoso performance by a fine hand, and excellent illustration. But surely not ART as we have learned to understand it?

To which the answer is simply:  ARE YOU INSANE?  If this is not art then why can’t you take your eyes off her, this 500 year old painted child?

Or this poised woman, perhaps the woman the child became.  Look at her.

And look at this woman, sadder, less confident, less pleased with things, but still holding your eyes.  What is she asking of us? What is she telling? who knows.  It probably wouldn’t help to ask Bronzino.

Farther north, painters of this time, and even earlier, were also producing lasting miracles.  This is by Rogier van der weyden (1399 – 1464)

And this.

And her, who now lives in Berlin and could have brought the wall down all by herself, we think.

OK, one more and we’ll stop:

The artist who painted this is Robert Campin, born 1375.  Just 636 years ago.  But there is nothing antique about this, nothing out of date, nothing old fashioned.  She is, to us at least, as fresh and stirring as anyone you’ll find in Vanity Fair or Vogue or up on the big screen at the VivaMax cineplex.

That it has survived at all is hard to believe.  That is has survived and still has the radiant energy to dazzle 21st century eyes is beyond explanation.

What have you seen lately that might have the same effect 500 years from now?

Genoa is very old and very new.  The layout of the city and the famous harbour are said to be fundamentally unchanged since Christopher Columbus was a boy here in the 1440′s.  But if you stop and look, you will see modern life at its best thriving, proudly, in Genoa today.  Above is the breakfast room at a hotel in Genoa called Palazzo Cicala, which overlooks a very nifty cathedral, San Lorenzo.

If you stepped outside the hotel–and tilted your head a bit–this is what you’d see.  Photo from here.

The architect, Renzo Piano still works from his native Genoa, and he has been busy for more than 20 years adding ideas, structures, and life to the city, especially on the old harbour.  He designed one of the world’s largest aquariums there, along with a biosphere (above), seen here.

This is a structure/sculpture called Bigo,  designed by Mr P to celebrate the hardworking cranes of the Genoan docks that, along with thick-backed shore workers, have loaded and unloaded the world’s heavy goods for a long, long time.  One of the arms of the Bigo now lifts tourists above the harbour for a gull’s eye view.  Photo above here.

This painting of the harbour, done more than 400 years ago by a man called Grassi, shows the busy-ness of the place back in the age of wooden boats and sails.  More here

The above image is of the harbour about a hundred years earlier, around the time that Genoa’s own C. Columbus set out (with Spanish boats and hopes) for America.  It shows the fortifications necessary to keep a harbour secure for its customers.

The lighthouse on the left in the above ancient print still stands at the entrance to the Genoa harbour, and people say it’s the oldest anywhere. Its red cross on a white background is the emblem of Genoa and has come to symbolize “help available” all over the place.

This painting of a ceremony that may never have happened is weird and beautiful, from here. It is among the many many treasures of the swell Maritime Museum in Genoa.

Another example of old Genoa meets new Genoa is the street called via Garibaldi (pic above left found here), whose amazing palaces (along with those of an adjacent street)  were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.  Outside, these buildings tell you a lot about what people fancied in the 1500′s.  Like great heavy doors and great scary doorknockers.

They also cared about eye catching colours combined with the kind of craftsmanship we are unlikely to see again.  Seen at Wapedia here

Inside, past the (heavy, scary) doors of these places, you might see almost anything (these neat chairs in Palazzo Bianco, photo here)

Silence and solitude and arches gently hued.  And this is a public building!  Nice image and more from here.

Or you’ll find a swish contemporary furniture store called  via garibaldi 12, which is its address.  See more

Hungry???

Genoa claims both Pesto sauce and Focaccia as its own, .

And there is seafood in endless variety, some of it spooky, all of it tasty, wherever you turn.

Above, dinner for two, outdoors, in a plain but life filled Genoan piazza, yummy to the end.

Just go, when you get a chance.

and go back often.

Two pics above from here.

Above is part of an exhibit of important 20th century design established at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1993.  These pieces of furniture were all designed by Pierre Chareau, born 1883, died 1950.  In between, he rose to the top of his profession in France, and then, after being forced to leave his country, he found himself in America, in New York, unknown and mostly unsuccessful in finding opportunities to deploy his remarkable talent. Image above found here.

Today, his furniture pieces sell for $50,000 and more, sometimes much more (above from Christies, here), and a house he designed in Paris, La Maison de Verre, is among the most highly regarded examples of residential design in the 20th century.

Designed for a physician and his wife and completed in 1932, La Maison de Verre is a mind spinning display of creative talent–miles ahead of its time, completely unprecedented, and still capable of causing jaws to drop in 2011.  Everything in the house was designed by M Chareau, everything (including the piano, we think).  It was purchased in 2006 and has been very respectfully restored.  Great story and slide show in the New York Times here.  Beautiful photos by Mark Lyon above and below.

Another recent view of La Maison de Verre.

Pierre Chareau began his professional life as a cabinet maker, and he has left us with a wonderful (and much prized) collection of small household objects like tables, chairs, stools, mirrors, and cupboards.

Pierre Chareau Stool in mahogany and patinated wrought iron ca. 1927 from Artnet

Umbrella stand at La Maison de Verre (Wikipedia!).

This wall mirror above sold recently at Christie’s for €91,000 or about $130,00 seen here.

Cupboard–how cute is that–seen here

There are, nowadays, companies reproducing his designs, so people can own something approximating a brand new Pierre Chareau, such as this lamp:

Based on the original below.

Despite the chilly reception he received in America, Pierre Chareau did receive one commission of significance–a studio house for the artist Robert Motherwell in the Hamptons, outside New York.  Once again he produced something joyously original: a low-cost structure employing materials and ideas based on military Quonset huts.

Wonderful photograph of Motherwell in his little Chareau house by the wonderful Hans Namuth in 1944, gratefully found here. The house was demolished in 1985.

Above interior of the Motherwell house from here

The story of Pierre is both inspiring and demoralizing.  His was a talent that seemed to know no boundaries, one of the great design talents of the last 100 years, and yet it was a talent that was allowed to go largely unused and even unnoticed in a place that prides itself, above all, on its ability to know the real thing when it sees it.  The lesson is, apparently, that talent is no guarantee to success, not then, not now.

Many books have been produced about Pierre Chareau and his work.  Here is one:

If you you find that true and deep inspiration is sometimes hard to find these days in the wonderful world of design, give yourself over to a feast of Pierre Chareau.  You won’t go away hungry.

Martin Parr is one of those photographers who takes pictures that any one of us might have taken, but we didn’t.  And if we did, you just know they would not, not in a thousand tries, make you want to keep on looking at them the way these do.  What does Mr Parr do that we can’t do?  Good question.

Above, a famous photo of his taken at the seaside in New Brighton, Merseyside, England

Pink lookout hut on the pier in Cardiff, Wales

A shop and its keepers in Cambridge England

A great selection of Martin Parr pictures, mostly taken in the UK, can be found at the website of the Guardian newspaper here.

When he’s not in England, Mr Parr is often in a sunny place, like Mexico.

Above is from a book of his called ‘A Fair Day: Photographs from the West Coast of Ireland’ found here .

This book ‘Bad Weather’ was his first, and it is just so amazing you think about the pictures in it days and days after you see them.  Make that years.

Mr Parr himself looks like he’d blend in to the crowd almost anywhere.

He’s wishing he was a fish, and she’s wishing he was too.

Now these two have a future, unlike the couple above them,  but they’ve each got their own ideas about things, despite the matching sweaters and hair.  It’s all there isn’t it?  update, 29 July 2011: This image was featured in an interview with Martin Parr.  It is in fact a photo by Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken, an influential, innovative photojournalist admired by Mr Parr (thanks Chantal).

Great photographers of the life that’s going on all around us preserve a momentary glimpse of an ongoing story.  You can’t help feeling that the action and sound will begin any second.  Now.

With Steven Holl’s work, the first time you see something he designed, you pretty much decide it’s one of the best things you’ve ever seen.  And the next time you see his name on something–which is likely to be in a different country–you say the same thing.  If he has a bad day at the office, we haven’t seen it.  He only seems to be able to do wonderful things.

Lucky us.

Above is known as PLANAR HOUSE, Arizona USA, 2002-2005. Images from Steven Holl website Above photos copyright Bill Timmermann

And just like that, we find Mr Holl in Switzerland.  Above called  Swiss Amba, photos Copyright Andy Ryan

Denmark needed a place for art, so Steven got on the plane.      Art Iwan Baan

Continuing North, Mr H designed this amazing thing above in Hamarøy, Norway in memory of the writer Knut Hamsun

Next door, the Finns asked for his help to make the KIASMA MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART in Helsinki, Finland. Interior Paul Warchol

Home at last, Stephen Holl designed the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art above in Kansas City, MO Photos Roland Halbe.

And this is the SCHOOL OF ART & ART HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
Iowa City, IA, United States, 1999-2006 (2 photos Andy Ryan; aerial photo Ron Mayland)

Every country should have a public building designed by Steven Holl.  What better way to announce that, as a nation, you are in favour of the power of the human imagination.