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Illustrators and fine artists have been turning out tons of innovative architectural ideas for at least 120 years, but very little of it has been taken seriously by professional architects. I believe that their neglect is about to turn around, and in thirty or forty years a feeding frenzy will develop among architects for 20th Century art and illustration to crib from.
The reason I place this frenzy 40 years in the future is that some of the technology that'll enable it isn't in place yet. Take the Mary Blair painting above. Right now nobody could make an elevated train and tracks with a black as rich and saturated as the one above. Nobody knows how to make white light like the white in the train's windows...I mean white like the pigment, and not just sunlight. Nobody could do what Blair did and make the sky near a building black, even at night. Nobody could color a real building with the vibrant colors available from a tube of gouache. But they almost certainly will.
Have you seen the TV documentaries about the military research currently being done on bending light in order to render some colors nearly invisible? That's a neat trick, and it'll eventually pass into peace time civilian use. Depend on it, the same science that allows us to subdue color will enable us to enhance it. Expect to see Mary Blair's ideas made more real than any of us could have imagined.
BTW: Thanks to Amid for the picture above.
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Here's (above) another Blair picture. I I like the way Blair subdues the background buildings by making them shades of blue. It makes for nice contrast. The day will come when distant buildings that appear blue from our vantage point will become colorful when approached, and buildings that were previously colorful will become blue as they recede from us. I'm not talking about the misty blue brought about by aerial perspective, I mean saturated blue, like the pigment. The people actually inside the building will see no color change at all. What I'm saying is that the not-too-distant future may bring us subjective color, which is experienced differently by different observers standing in different places. Interesting, huh? |
13 comments:
Love love love that first picture! I'd love to buy the original, but with my luck, it will be out of my price range. :(
Not only do I love the colors, but I love how it captures "adult innocence". What I mean by that is the picture has a lot of qualities to appeal to children, but there's an air of sophistication to it to appeal to adults.
Jennifer: Wow, that's a nice comment on Blair's art! About buying the picture, you could ask Amid on the Cartoon Brew site about it. My guess is that it would be pricey.
Boy, was Mary Blair a master of color theory or what?! These two paintings are amazing works of art. Maybe in a few decades, a new generation of innovative, genius architects will find a way to make this type of stuff possible in real life. Life imitating art, I suppose.
WOW!! Thats actually really cool! I'd love to see bulidings look like Mary Blar paintings. they'd make for good photographs.
i always liked the freaky dark architechure of anton furst-famous for his work in tim burtons version of batman. it always looked like old and new were endlessly colliding-just like in a real city-sometimes here in new york you look up and see something youve never seen before, usually ancient, nearly forgotten, right upside something totally new-completely schizophrenic-anton furst nailed it!
Not exactly the same thing, but made me think of casa batllo by Antonio Gaudi. There's this peacock tiling on the facade that shifts color as you walk past it.
Also made me think of this: subjective advertising?
I can only imagine what it would be like if the subjective color effect were damaged by weathering or the building's decay. I'd give 5 million bonus points to anybody who could make a building look like a Robert Blechman drawing.
Hey, Eddie, I just started reading "Jane Eyre" for English Class, and was amazed to find myself REALLY enjoying it. I thought it was going to be a chore, but it's actually one of the best things of its kind I've ever read! I went back and watched your old video essay about Jane Eyre, and was wondering if any film versions of Eyre are good. I know the Orson Welles one comes highly recommended, but what about the 1982 mini-series or the one they made like 4 years ago? And how about some more posts on Jane Eyre?
I love how the book really portrays the suffering and hardship of the title character. I didn't expect the novel to be so unrelenting!
Jennifer, the original would be about 5 figures, easily. Or very high 4s.
Jorge: I haven't seen all the versions of Jane Eyre. Of the ones I've seen, my favorite by far is the one you mentioned with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.
I saw a feminist version with unknown actors that was absolutely terrible, and a slightly better version with Timothy Dalton that was okay in spots, but still not worth the time. The Susannah York/ George C. Scott version was good.
Hardcore feminists shouldn't be allowed near this story, because they turn it into a propoganda device, and miss the love story. Rochester has to be a man worth having or the story doesn't work.
Thomas: Thanks much for the links! The subjectice advertising link gave me a great idea for another sci-fi story, and Gaudi's tiled roof was interesting to see.
I wonder why Spanish-style roof tiles aren't used more frequently on American houses? Ordinary gravelly roof tiles wear thin and have to be replaced every few years. Spanish tiles look like they'd last a lifetime.
GW: Blechman? I can imagine a building with the illusion of broken, pulsating borders, at least when seen from a distance. i'm thinking of the way distant roads look when the air is distorted by heat.
Maybe exterior wall textures could be created that would create thousands of tiny vortexes of air on the side of a building, and create a slight shimmering effect in hot weather.
An awful lot of architectural innovations were made in the last thirty ot forty years which haven't been adequately documented because they were made by people who didn't have a big name, or with materials that weren't off the shelf.
Some really great architecture in this:
It's a show reel, so it may take a few seconds to get to the related background art. But it's good animation nonetheless!
http://vimeo.com/11364673
-Marsh
Wow! Thanks a million for the Jane Eyre recommendations, Eddie!
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