It’s no surprise that Manhattan is swarming with celebrities, who make their lavish homes in neighborhoods like Soho and Tribeca and the Upper East Side. But never before have we seen so many of their dwellings mapped for the convenience of those who might want to seek out Tina Fey in the West 70s, brunch with Steve Buscemi in Park Slope, or ponder whether Glenn Close and Diana Ross — who are neighbors on Central Park West — ever hang out. Our greatest takeaway from Rentenna‘s map, which you can view in full here, is that Flavorpill HQ is located very, very close to the home of David Bowie and Iman. How rude of us not to have invited them over sooner! Seriously, guys, come borrow a cup of sugar from us anytime. [via Gothamist]
Tucked away quietly in a beautiful yet unassuming block of the Upper East Side, delicate signage and a vibrant red door designate a vital, yet often overlooked, cultural institution. The building that houses the Society of Illustrators and the Museum of American Illustration blends in seamlessly with its surroundings, acting almost as a metaphor for the nature of the artworks inside. We encounter hundreds of wonderful (and, admittedly, some not-so-wonderful) images every day, yet the way they have been incorporated into our environments and the tools with which we run our lives makes them easy to overlook. Even within the art world, illustrators are often not regarded with the same respect as gallery or “fine” artists, despite how perfectly executed or deeply inspired a piece may be.
Most urban dwellers have pretty set routines — there’s a certain path we take to the train each day, a specific spot where we wait on the subway platform, a coffee cart we stop at where we know the bagels are always good. But have you ever been walking down the sidewalk, and suddenly felt a bit disjointed — like you were a few steps ahead or behind of schedule? A new series by New York City-based photographer John Clang captures this feeling using a montage of images snapped moments apart in the same location.
“Working on this series, I explore how time moves in this seemingly static urban space,” he explains. “The people become the moving energy flowing through this space, marking the changes, forming the time.” There’s also a Sliding Doors-element at work: “We may have a ‘life’ that exists similarly on a different path, one minute before or after the one we’re living now. We merely just exist in this current dimension, and sometimes when time paths collide, we have déjà vu experience.” Travel around town (and the space-time continuum) in a slideshow of select images from Clang’s series after the jump.
What’d you have for dinner last night? Or, more importantly, were you also watching television, checking your email, playing with your cat, cooing at your baby, watching the clock at the deli, working late at the office, or juggling some other dozen daily activities that have little to do with savoring food? According to a Public Health Nutrition study 50% of our eating is now done simultaneously while doing something else entirely. Photographer Miho Aikawa captured a varied group of New Yorkers having dinner — from a thirteen year old girl in Carroll Gardens munching on pasta in bed with her computer to a daily commuter enjoying a sandwich and a beer on his way to Pleasantville to a monk from Myanmar eating a large meal cooked by and shared with friendly locals. Pop in on them at dinnertime in our slideshow.
New York City street photographer Frank Oscar Larson documented daily life in the bustling metropolis during the ’50s. The Queens Museum of Art will be exhibiting Larson’s compelling black and white snapshots, which the former banker took primarily in his spare time on the weekends. Larson’s photos of Times Square show a more innocent side of the Midtown junction, and his candid portraits of everyday life are quietly intimate. Many of the images were entered into photography competitions, but largely remained undiscovered. His grandson recently uncovered over 100 envelopes of medium format negatives dating back to the 1920s — images Larson used to develop in his basement darkroom in Flushing. The artist’s work will be honored at the museum from February 5 to May 20. For more information on Frank Oscar Larson: 1950s New York Street Stories, visit the museum’s website. Check out our preview of the exhibition in the gallery past the break.
We love the Pritzker Prize-winning architectural team of SANAA because they gave us the New Museum, a whimsical steel stack of a building that sits at the intersection of Bowery and Prince Street in New York’s Lower East Side shouting out a rainbow colored “HELL, YES” to everyone who walks by. We love them even more for their minimal houses filled with light, quirky furniture, and lots and lots of plants.
SANAA is Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa. Based in Tokyo, their architecture has been described as metaphysical, dreamlike, and ethereal. A reaction to the chaos and cluttered complexity of the modern world, says Kristine Guzmán, architect and curator at MUSAC, “SANAA’s houses are capable of transforming a person’s way of life.”
Taking cues from our favorite houseplant loving design icons, here’s our guide to bringing a little SANAA into your world. Click through to check it out and let us know what inspired you the most in the comments!
What, exactly, is outsider art? The label evokes a jumble of adjectives, from amateur to self-taught, shoddy to innovative, mad to genius, naive to prophetic. With this question in mind, we attended the 20th annual Outsider Art Fair in New York City over the weekend. Browsing through the over 30 booths, we asked curators, scholars, and the artists themselves what the term “outsider art” means to them, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of having one’s work labeled as such. As expected, the answers varied. View what those in the field had to say, along with some of the Fair’s highlights, after the jump.
Take a stroll through New York City in the mid-80s. Visit the pre-”Disney-fied” Times Square with its XXX theaters and Evangelical protestors. See glimpses of Manhattan and Brooklyn, before gentrification. Every time we look back at New York — in the 1900s, the ’40s, the ’70s — we get a twinge of idealistic nostalgia. Yet, it wasn’t all cheap hot dogs and naughty peep shows. “Gritty” isn’t an aesthetic. But go right ahead, nod and swoon and let the photographs of Steven Siegel transport you to the times, places and people since then displaced by the passing of decades and NYC’s vicious real estate market. For more Steven Siegel’s New York, check out dozens of photos in his set, hundreds on his Flickr page and his stellar short films of Subway graffiti and Coney Island.
With owner Hilly Kristal dead and a freaking John Varvatos store taking up space in its original Bowery location, it seemed safe to say that New York’s most storied punk club, CBGB, was gone for good. But in the age of retromania, can any significant musical landmark ever go quietly into that endless, drunken night? Apparently not! Gothamist says, “We have it on good authority that the legendary venue is still alive in spirit, and angling to take over a new space in Manhattan.” It seems the club will be rebuilt out of pieces from the old CBGB, which are currently in storage. Of course, it’s worth wondering whether anything that doesn’t involve Kristal, 315 Bowery, or, you know, the ’70s can fairly call itself CBGB. We’re pretty ambivalent, and leaning towards “no.” So let’s talk about it in the comments, shall we?
Most people wouldn’t expect to see Romanesque Revival architecture, fancy pants Guastavino tile, and brass chandeliers in a New York City subway station, but the City Hall stop (opened in 1904) along the Lexington Avenue Line features all that and more. Longer trains, longer platforms, and low ridership caused the city to close it off to the public in 1945, but its elegant architecture has endured for over seventy years. You can still catch a glimpse of it while rounding the loop heading back uptown, or during a tour (book ahead). We felt inspired by the ghost station to take a look at other secret stops along the underground: houses, societies, and entire cities. Head past the break to explore unusual underground marvels around the world.
