On learning that weather erodes granite one inch every 100,000 years, sculptor Gutzon Borglum added an extra three inches to each president’s features on Mount Rushmore.
“Three inches would require 300,000 years to bring the work down to the point that I would like to finish it,” he said. “In other words, the work will not be done for another 300,000 years, as it should be.”
Jeremy Scott is fashion's most evolved connoisseur of junk culture, and, in his heyday, Franco Moschino loved nothing more than poking the bear of fashion orthodoxy with flagrant infusions of trash. So when Scott paraded his mutant hybrid of Ronald McDonald and Coco Chanel all in the name of the late, great Franco, there was a friskily superficial compatibility. But—chalk it up to the gulf of time separating the two careers—there was in fact a difference in tone between Scott's revision of the Moschino legacy and Franco's original template. Today's Moschino presentation was a crowd-pleaser. Franco, on the other hand, was more satirical by nature and made a habit of biting the fashion hand that fed him.
From Tim Blanks' 2014 runway review for Vogue
Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #18 (Cankun Factory, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, 2005)
Canadian art photographer Edward Burtynsky is my greatest influence in terms of landscape photography. I love the balanced framing of intense industrialization, and how he is able to present the brutal destruction of the natural world in a way that is aesthetically appealing, and even beautiful.
My collection of Canadian landscape photography attempts to immitate his work, on a more humble and local scale. You can view the collection by clicking here.
In May of 1990 Japanese billionaire Ryoei Saito made history when he purchased Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet and Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette at auction in the span of two days. He spent a record sum on the paintings, equivalent to about $300 million today. Following the sale both works went straight from the limelight into foam-padded packing crates and were shipped off to a top-secret storeroom in the Tokyo area.
Mr. Saito spent a few hours with his purchases, then locked them in a climate-controlled vault. And there they stayed, untouched and unseen–a symbol of the ever increasing commodification of art.
While the paintings rested, Saito struggled, financially and otherwise. The 75-year old Japanese paper magnate briefly caused a scandal when he said he would have the paintings cremated with him after his death, though his aides later claimed Saito threats were just an expression of his intense affection for the works.
After Saito’s death in 1996, it wasn’t clear who owned the paintings–Saito’s heirs, his company, or his creditors–or even where they were. Museum curators and auction houses tried to locate the works, but were never successful. To this day both masterpieces remain lost in the murky waters of the international art market.
Last week I bought a 24-pack of crayons from Target for $1.49. Since then, I’ve discovered that drawing faces with colored wax is pretty awesome.