In the light-filled hills above the Pacific, a glass-and-steel house stands as a manifesto. Inside, shelves of books and folk art mingle with modernist chairs in plywood and fiberglass. It is not simply a home, but a vision: how design could be democratic, playful, rigorous, and alive. This is the world of Charles and RayContinue reading “The Eameses: Designers of the American Century”
Category Archives: Art
Surrealism: The Logic of Dreams
Few movements in 20th-century art captured the imagination as forcefully, or as lastingly, as Surrealism. Emerging in the 1920s from the embers of Dada and the disillusionment of World War I, Surrealism sought not only to revolutionize art but to liberate human consciousness itself. It was not a style, but an attitude — a wayContinue reading “Surrealism: The Logic of Dreams”
The Human Condition According to Valerie Solanas
By Bergotte Valerie Solanas is the writer this series was not supposed to include. She is not canonical. She is not comfortable. She wrote one major text, the SCUM Manifesto, which calls for the elimination of men, and she shot Andy Warhol in 1968, and she died alone in a welfare hotel in San FranciscoContinue reading “The Human Condition According to Valerie Solanas”
Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre: Whimsy, Power, and the Feminist Legacy of a Children’s Classic – Part II
When Shelley Duvall launched Faerie Tale Theatre in 1982, few could have predicted its cultural afterlife. The anthology series — running for six seasons, with 27 episodes aired until 1987 — brought classic fairy tales to life with an ensemble of Hollywood royalty. Robin Williams, Mick Jagger, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Bridges, Liza Minnelli, Vanessa Redgrave,Continue reading “Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre: Whimsy, Power, and the Feminist Legacy of a Children’s Classic – Part II”
Peter Blake, Self-Portrait with Badges, 1961
Close Looking · One Painting Everything I Am Is on This Jacket In 1961, Peter Blake painted himself in a Chiswick garden holding an Elvis magazine, wearing Converse boots and a denim jacket covered in badges. The result is the most precise and most melancholy self-portrait in British art. It is also, accidentally, a portraitContinue reading “Peter Blake, Self-Portrait with Badges, 1961”
Cubism: Shattering the Picture Plane
In the early years of the 20th century, painting fractured. Perspective, which had governed Western art since the Renaissance, was no longer sufficient for the modern world — a world of industrial speed, scientific discovery, and shifting perception. In the cafés and studios of Paris, two young artists, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, dismantled theContinue reading “Cubism: Shattering the Picture Plane”
Cool Britannia: Art, Attitude, and the London of the 1990s
It was the summer of 1997 and Downing Street had turned into a nightclub. Tony Blair, barely weeks into his premiership, was playing host not to diplomats but to designers, artists, models, and rock stars. In the garden, Kate Moss smoked cigarettes with Noel Gallagher of Oasis. Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, the enfant terriblesContinue reading “Cool Britannia: Art, Attitude, and the London of the 1990s”
Living in Silence
Makers & Rooms Ivan Van Mossevelde built a house of raw concrete in the Flemish countryside in 1972 for an art collector who filled it with Judd and Sol LeWitt. Decades later, a young architect spotted it through the trees during a walk, was refused entry, and spent years waiting for it to come toContinue reading “Living in Silence”
In Times of Dragons: Tori Amos and the Mythology of Now
By Bergotte The opening line of Tori Amos’s eighteenth studio album is a command: “Shush yourself, down now.” It comes from the album’s antagonist — the “sadistic billionaire Lizard Demon husband” from whose penthouse the album’s protagonist is fleeing — and it is the most precisely chosen opening gambit she has made since the firstContinue reading “In Times of Dragons: Tori Amos and the Mythology of Now”
Les Lalanne: Where Surrealism Meets Design
In the half-century arc of 20th-century design, few names shimmer with such eccentric magnetism as Les Lalanne. François-Xavier (1927–2008) and Claude (1924–2019) Lalanne were not just artists, not just designers—they were dreamers who translated the surreal into functional form. Their creations—sheep that double as stools, a cabbage sprouting chicken legs, gilded apples, and fantastical brassContinue reading “Les Lalanne: Where Surrealism Meets Design”
