Calder: Sculpting Time

Culture

The introduction of movement into sculpture. That implausible leap from the static to the temporal. Alexander Calder, the inventor of the mobile, achieved what the great Hellenistic sculptors could only suggest in the windblown robe and fluttering wings of Nike of Samothrace. He broke the mold. Jean Paul Sartre described Calder’s mobiles as “mid-way between matter and life”. They are a composition of motions, a series of fleeting moments where balance, force and tension coexist in perfect harmony. Calder: Sculpting Time (published by Silvana Editorial, $50.00) covers MASILugano’s ambitious exhibition in 168 pages, highlighting his most prolific era, the 1930s to 1960s.

Peter Hujar Behind The Camera And In The Darkroom

Culture

Gary Schneider arrived in New York City from Cape Town in 1976, landing a job doing technical work for an avant garde theater in Soho. Through his partner, he met artist photographer Peter Hujar with whom he had an immediate rapport as he was interested in photography and printing. Hujar secured Schneider a job at a printers where he began to print Hujar’s work, and in the process becoming a close friend, protége, assistant and occasional subject for Hujar’s lens. Their relationship is now commemorated in a new book Peter Hujar Behind The Camera And In The Darkroom (D.A.P. $50, out now).

EVERYTHING IS MERCH

Culture, Features/Op-Ed

Is Millionaire Speedy a luxury bag or merch? What about the Balenciaga Maxi Pack? Some people’s idea of merch is Trump’s gold high-tops. Merch as a status symbol. Merch as a subgenre. Merch as a style statement. Merch as an identity marker. Merch as something of waning cultural relevance.

Op-Ed: The Avant-Garde Post Mortem

Culture, Fashion

When I founded StyleZeitgeist in 2006, my aim was to build a forum for people who genuinely love fashion as a creative discipline that speaks to a wider culture. I did not mean for it to solely concentrate on the fashion that I loved, the forward-thinking, boundary-pushing, one connected to youth culture, especially music, especially of the goth / industrial / postpunk-tinged kind. But it kind of morphed into that, because it attracted like-minded people. And so StyleZeitgeist became a hub for what’s come to be called the avant-garde – the truly IYKYK stuff, a fashion subculture.