Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933

When Alexander “Sandy” Calder (1898–1976), arrived in Paris in 1926, he aspired to be a painter; when he left in 1933, he had evolved into the artist we know today: an international figure and defining force in twentieth-century sculpture. In these seven years Calder’s fluid, animating drawn line transformed from two dimensions to three, from ink and paint to wire, and his radical innovations included openform wire caricature portraits, a bestiary of wire animals, his beloved and critically important miniature Circus (1926–31), abstract and figurative sculptures, and his paradigm-shifting “mobiles.”

Exhibition: Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933, at the Whitney Museum October 16, 2008 – February 15, 2009

Goldfish Sculpture by Yoshimasa Tsuchiya

Goldfish, a polychrome woodcarving about 24cm long

Goldfish, by Yoshimasa Tsuchiya

Guarded Thoughts, New Work by Ron Arad

Friedman Benda Gallery, will unveil the new work of Ron Arad. This new body of work, the artist’s most ambitious to date, propels Arad into previously unexplored sculptural dimension. In a departure both in scale and material sophistication, the artist uses his signature vocabulary of volumetric forms to unexpected and mesmerizing visual effect.

Exhibition: New work by designer Ron Arad, November 7th – December 20th, at the Friedmann Benda Gallery, New York, USA
via: dezeen

Travel: Night at the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining

In 1980, Stanley Kubrick came to the Timberline Lodge to film one of the all-time great horror classics, The Shining. In the film, Jack Torrance (Nicholson) gets a job as the custodian of the Overlook Hotel, in the mountains of Colorado. The place is closed down during winter, Torrance and his family will be the only occupants of the hotel for a long while. When the snow storms block the Torrance family in the hotel, Jack’s son Danny, who has some clairvoyance and telepathy powers, discovers that the hotel is haunted and that the spirits are slowly driving Jack crazy. When Jack meets the ghost of Mr. Grady, the former custodian of the hotel who murdered his wife and his two daughters, things begin to get really nasty.
The hotel in the film is actually called the Timberline Lodge and is located near Mt. Hood in Oregon, USA. For one night only, the hotel is hosting a 1920s era ball, in honour of the scene in the movie.

A Celebration of The Shining at the Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, Oregon, USA, October 31, 2008, at Come Play With Us

Spaces and Storytelling in Kubrick’s The Shining

Exhibition: Enzo Mari The Art of Design

GAM Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art will dedicate an extensive anthological exhibition to the works of Enzo Mari, eminent Italian designer with an intense artistic career since the 1950s, when he stood out as a prominent figure of Programmed and Kinetic Art. In 1963, Mari coordinated the Italian movement called Nuova Tendenza, and in 1965 he organised its participation in the Zagreb Biennial Exhibition. In parallel with his artistic career he worked as a designer, engaged at first in individual formal investigation and subsequently in collaboration projects with various enterprises involved in the fields of graphic design.
Organised in its entirety by the Enzo Mari Studio as “global project” (curatorship, arrangement and catalogue), the exhibition evolves in a chronological order that deliberately makes no distinction between Mari’s artistic production and the objects he designed for industry.

Exhibition: Enzo Mari The Art of Design, October 29 to January 6, 2009 at GAM, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy

A Night at the Guggenheim Revolving Hotel Room

Spend the night at the Guggenheim. Guests can reserve an overnight stay in a Revolving Hotel Room, a work of art created by artist Carsten Höller. Revolving Hotel Room is an art installation comprising three outfitted, superimposed turning glass discs mounted onto a fourth disc that all turn harmoniously at a very slow speed. At night guests can roam the museum alone all night, during the day the hotel room will be on view as part of the Guggenheim’s theanyspacewhatever exhibition.

Exhibition: theanyspacewhatever, October 24, 2008–January 7, 2009, Guggenheim, New York, USA
more: New York Post

New Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Masters

Over the past few years, Japanese bamboo artists have reached beyond the established boundaries of their craft. New Bamboo is the world’s first exhibition devoted exclusively to Japanese bamboo as a sculptural medium, featuring 23 innovators, old and young, who explore to the full the tension between traditional skill and new expressive opportunities. Ranging from ethereal, computer-designed filigrees, through dramatic wall pieces to angry-looking, dirt-encrusted tangles and anthropomorphic, sexually charged sculptures, the more than 90 works on display demonstrate awesome technique, meticulous attention to detail and extraordinary creativity.

Exhibition: New Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Masters, Saturday, October 4 – Sunday, January 11, at Japan Society New York, USA

Wallace Church Wine Bottle Design

With a Graphis Packaging Award, this design for a thanksgiving gift communicates in a simple and charming way.

Gift Package, by Wallace Church
via: The Dieline

Marc Newson Orgone Lounge up for Auction at Sotheby’s

“The form is one that I was striving for when I made the ‘Lockheed Lounge’ but, in those days, I didn’t have the knowledge or the resources to make it.”
- Marc Newson

Designed in 1993, the Orgone Stretch Lounge, made of aluminium and enamel, is the second artist’s proof from an edition of six plus two artist’s proofs produced by Pod. Orgone is expected to fetch up to a million dollars at auction at Sotheby’s in London this month.

Orgone Stretch Lounge, 400,000 – 600,000 GBP, by Marc Newson for Pod.
Auction at Sotheby’s, London, UK, Saturday, October 18th

High Tea Pot by Wieki Somers

Initiated by the National Ceramic Museum, Wieki Somers’ take on the traditional teapot has become a real conversation piece, made from real water rat fur, stainless steel and – er, bone china.

High Tea Pot, by Wieki Somers