ISAMU NOGUCHI

Here's some work (above and below) by one of my favorite American artists of the 1950s: Isamu Noguchi. He's a recent discovery for me. I never heard the name til Auralyn told me about him.

 

He's most famous for the boomerang coffee table (above). Are these still for sale? Imagine: a museum-quality object d'art that you can afford to have in your own living room!

These shapes (above) are drawn on a grid on paper, but it's not inconceivable that somebody's made a mass market cardboard mobile of this. I'll have to look it up.

Wow! I'd love to have a plaster copy of this (above)! That's Noguchi in the foreground.

Here's one that looks like it was influenced by Kandinsky. 

 Noguchi designed a lot of paper lanterns. Here's one that looks like a TV.

Early on the man was a realistic sculptor. Geez, the guy could do everything!

STILL MORE NEW YORK CRIME PHOTOS

Can you take a few more crime photos? I warn you, it's grim stuff, not for the faint of heart.

We'll start with a crook being transported by the police. He hides his face from the photographer, no doubt because he doesn't want his mother to see the photo in the paper.

Above, Brooklyn teenagers reveal the armor they tried to wear to a rumble.

Above, a homicide victim...killed in his own apartment by a shot through the window. The picture was taken in 1925. 

Across town another man was murdered, also in his own home. Police always take at least one photo from directly above a corpse in the belief that this conveys more information than any other kind of shot. 

Maybe one of the murder victims was killed by one of these men (above). They're professional hitmen. Here they clown around for the camera, maybe in the belief that their lawyer will get them off. In this case they were wrong.

In 1960 John Favara (above, left), a neighbor and friend of mobster John Gotti (above, right), accidentally ran over and killed Gotti's twelve year-old son. A few months later Favara was kidnapped and "chainsawed" to death.

Yikes! A convict's bleak funeral in the mudflats.

Above, another hoodlum being transported by the police. The guy looks contemplative, as if he can see a vision of the horror awaiting awaiting him in prison. Imagine it...years away from the rest of the world, locked up in a cage with violent crazies.

Pictures of criminals were hard to get in the 19th Century. They just wouldn't sit still.

Flashbulb photography changed all that. Here's (above) the wife and child of the man who kidnapped Lindberg's baby. This was taken the day after his execution.

Probably newspapers can't run this kind of picture in our day. In my opinion that's a mistake. The news is made more exciting by pictures like this.

Was this a crime? Maybe it was just an accident. Imagine being a policeman and having to see things like this day in and day out.

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These photos were sampled from two interesting books: "Shots in the Dark" by Gail Buckland and Harold Evans, and "New York Noir."

MORE ON COLOR WHEELS

Aaaargh! I'm so sleepy I can hardly type, but I want to be sure I always get something up on a Tuesday, even if it's not well thought-out.

Anyway, here's my latest enthusiasm: color wheels. I like the ones figured out by Color Wheel Basics. It's a series of wheels that emphasize tints and shades, and secondary and tertiary colors.

I take a lot of flak for having color wheels on the wall. My friends say that a real artist doesn't need them. Maybe that's so, but looking at them stimulates my imagination, so up they go.

This interior decorators wheel (above) favors the kind of colors that were common a hundred years ago.

Here's (above) my most frequently used one.

New color wheels are always coming out. This Itten-type wheel looks like it would be fun to have on the wall but how does it work? Maybe it's not a wheel at all. Maybe it's just a nice pattern. I like the way that black sets off the other colors. Come to think of it, the wheel I said I use most often has plenty of black.

Here (above) are two that I just discovered. How the heck do they work?

This (above) is a color wheel that attributes flavors and aromas to the different colors. In this wheel tart and tangy are the complements of medicinal. I can't think of a use for this, but I'll bet it would have interested offbeat color theorists like Kandinsky.

THE EX-THEORY CORNER READER

THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT CHECKING THEORY CORNER EVERY DAY: A TRUE STORY

The reckless artist/computer user lapses from his Theory Corner routine. He views the site less and less as the months roll by. With the added time he's "saved" he takes to drink. His wife demures but he insists she take a "little sip."

 Devoid of the intellectual stimulation they took for granted on Theory Corner, and now being habituated to the bottle, the couple is unemployable. The wife is forced to take in washing.

With insufficient money to pay the bills, the family's furniture is repossessed. The dissolute artist consoles himself with mindless YouTube videos about funny house cats. His mind deteriorates.

 His wife and children are forced to take to the streets and beg.

 Now they face eviction. The children go to bed hungry. Even the computer has to be sold. They're bereft even of cat videos.

 Driven by alcohol, the ex-Theory Corner reader blames his wife for his problems. He treats her roughly.

 She sees no way out. On the waterfront a cry is heard in the middle of the night.

 Finally the trembling, emaciated artist winds up in a lunatic asylum, sans wife, sans children, sans everything. All day long he mutters to himself, "Theory Corner... Theory Corner... Theory Corner...."

A WORD TO THE WISE IS SUFFICIENT.

COSTUME DESIGN FOR THE MOVIES

There's a new book about costume design called, "Hollywood Sketchbook: a Century of Costume Illustration." I'm no expert but I'll be very surprised if this isn't the best book done on the subject in decades. Take a look at a few pictures and see what you think.

That green dress above looks like something Ginger Rogers might have worn. I like the slanted pose.

Haw! I wonder what film this dress was for.  Well, costume design for film isn't the same as fashion design. Costume design for the movies is supposed to heighten our understanding of a particular character in a particular situation in a particular story. It doesn't always aim to make that character look good.

Okay, I recognize these dresses (above) from Caberet. 

Yikes! Stork legs!

I know I've seen this (above) design somewhere...maybe on Eve Arden in a 40s film.

 What were these sketches for? Commenters said they're Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz.

I threw this (above) in because I liked the back shot of the girl.

Holy Mackerel! This (above) looks like something Bakst would have done, but it's by someone else.

CHRISTMAS GIFTS/THANKSGIVING

I don't have much money to spend this year, so I'm lucky that the gifts I have in mind are crafts, which is a field where bargains abound. Like the shadowbox diarama above...I love Mexican sculptures and the prices aren't too bad. That's because the box is actually pretty small, it just looks big here. The figures are made out of potato starch and gypsum. 

Or the Moroccan fabric on the left above...My daughter likes stuff like that. That bureau's kinda nice too, but who gives bureaus for Christmas?

This (above), believe it or not, is a pad of paper from a stationary store.

 Here's a nice Mexican beadspread. It's so cheerful!

More pricey, but still a bargain, is this (above) embroidered bedspread. There's better examples, this picture just happened to be handy.

Here's (above) another diorama. It only costs a few bucks.

 Here's one (above) with a theme common to all cultures...the table resplendid with good food.

 How about a Chinese dragon? They come in little paper cutouts like the one above...

...or in big sculptures like the dragons you see in New Year parades.

This guy (above) made his own paper dragon. The dragon could use some improvement but I like the way it's supported by little sticks.

What would I like for Christmas? Maybe a paper dragon kite. I'd hang it from the ceiling. I've heard that it takes an experienced kiteman to fly them. The head has to be light enough so that the disks that make up its body can support it in the air.

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Well, that's all on that subject. Later on this afternoon comes Thanksgiving dinner with friends. I love that holiday. When you think about it, we have lots to be thankful for, even in these times.

BTW: If you're making pumpkin pie be sure you use small mashed baking pumpkins and not the big jack-o-lantern pumpkins that you see at Halloween. The now defunct Horn and Hardart's restaurant made the best pumpkin pie but they were an East Coast outfit and I don't know if anyone on this side of the country ever tasted it. Too bad. That's like never having had pizza.

On the West Coast everyone thinks pumpkin pie is supposed to be brown, the way it comes out of a can.  Not true. A real pumpkin pie is orange like in the picture above, not brown, and it's made with condensed milk. Condensed milk tastes horrible when drunk, but it works great in baked goods. And did I mention orange zest? It'll need some of that too, but not too much.