IIT Mies

IIT Mies Wallpaper 2004 - portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

IIT Mies Wallpaper (2004) is a project developed for the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) that features a portrait of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe composed of pictograms that depict various student activities and, from afar, form a single coherent image. The 2x4 installation also includes copies of ANY Magazine (1994–97) for which the firm designed a layout system based on an underlying typographic grid.
What I like most about this portrait is that it was done using Adobe Illustrator. When I first saw it I was hype because I did something like in using Coca-Cola bottles and cans, but I didn't make the pattern small enough, I guess, to complete the effect of using smaller images to make one large image. I'M ON MY WAY TO DI TOP TOP!!!
You know what's sick about this portrait? From far it looks like Benday Dots =]

Roo-Shay

OOF, by Edward Ruscha

Pop Art! In the West? Typically, when we think of Pop Art we(or those who are not that interested) immediately think of the East because it was the center of art at the time and because of Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (Warhol's main subject of work), and maybe a few others. When I think of Pop Art, I think of Warhol, Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Edward Ruscha(pronounced roo-shay). A little like Roy Lichtenstein, Ruscha is noted and known for incorporating words and phrases in his paintings. I'm a graphic design major and typography is an essential aspect of the study, so I try to study typographic elements in art. Ruscha's OOF isn't anything special or out of the ordinary typographically, but I what I liked most about it was of course the word "oof," but also how the words contrast with background. OOF by Ruscha can be found at the MoMA.

Edward Ruscha has remained an important figure in American art since the early 1960s when his artwork first came to the fore as part of the West Coast Pop Art movement. Since that time, he has continued to develop his signature style, which combines words and images on the same visual field.

Ruscha also did the trademark for 20th Century Fox.

Desired Kicks

Nike Blazer High (anthracite/silver/black) $89.99

You all know I'm a "sneakerhead," I love sneakers, anything about sneakers, whatever! These Blazers are definitely on D.R.E.A.M's desired list, Top 10 maybe. When I first saw them I thought they were some Olympic kicks, but nope, I was wrong. Me and my cousin Kamar is about to go pick up a pair for ourselves. DESIRED NO MORE! And, I'm not even wearing them until everybody else victimize their kicks. Somebody tell me where to find a find a silver American Apparel track jacket.
This Blazer High is composed of grey, red, and black with a metallic silver swoosh to tie everything in. The metallic swoosh is a nice compliment to grey and black upper. There hasn’t been much information released about this Blazer but it has been reported that it has a flower print on the insole.
pictures from PickYourShoes

Visual Tranquility - Takashi Murakami

The exhibition runs from April 5th to July 13th.
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, New York 11238 - 6052
(718) 638-5000




"That I may transcend, that a universe my heart may unfold" Murakami, 2007
Each time I visit any art exhibition I go with the intention of gaining insight and design possibilities. Murakami's exhibit was especially inspirational because he coined his own style and gained international acclaim for it. What I like most about his works is the way he homogenize the colors - the colors are clearly different, but they are uniform.
Murakami is one of the most influential and acclaimed artists to have emerged from Asia in the late twentieth century, creating a wide-ranging body of work that consciously bridges fine art, design, animation, fashion, and popular culture.
The exhibition © MURAKAMI explores the self-reflexive nature of Murakami’s oeuvre by focusing on earlier work produced between 1992 and 2000 in which the artist attempts to explore his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity, as well as through self-portraiture created since 2000. Two works examining these subjects were a part of a group show, My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation, presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 2001.

Jean Michel-Basquiat

Jean Michel-Basquiat gained popularity first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray painting graffiti on slum buildings in lower Manhattan, adding his signature/tag of "SAMO" or "SAMO shit"(same ol' shit). Basquiat first started to gain recognition as an artist in June 1980, when he participated in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition. In 1982, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated extensively, eventually forging a close, if strained, friendship. By 1984, many of Basquiat's friends were concerned about his excessive drug use and increasingly erratic behavior, including signs of paranoia. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit by this point, starting from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New York's underground. Basquiat died of mixed-drug toxicity (he had been combining cocaine and heroin in his Great Jones Street loft/studio in 1988.
Basquiat's art career is known for his three broad, though overlapping styles. In the earliest period, from 1980 to late 1982, Basquiat used painterly gestures on canvas, often depicting skeletal figures and mask-like faces that expressed his obsession with mortality. Other frequently depicted imagery such as automobiles, buildings, police, children's sidewalk games, and graffiti came from his experience painting on the city streets. In 1982, Basquiat became friends with pop artist Andy Warhol and the two made a number of collaborative works. They also painted together, influencing each others' work. Some speculated that Andy Warhol was merely using Basquiat for some of his techniques and insight.