Here’s your curated ‘74Picks, around-up of the best to read, watch, listen, and do this week. From the first episode of the new ‘74PODCAST series Out of Focus featuring British designer Tom Dixon OBE, and Luca Guadagnino’s short “The Staggering Girl” to our designer spotlight The Lalannes, and Alex Katz’s newly opened ‘Ada (Outline)’, now on view at the New Art Centre, Salisbury.
LISTEN: Out of Focus – Episode #1: Tom Dixon
This new series in collaboration with Merve Çağlar is about imagining and creating in a world that has become increasingly obscure. COVID-19 has paralyzed humanity and the future of our planet is grim. Existing inequalities continue to worsen and the socio-political structures that brought us to today are now near collapse. How do you imagine, create, produce, or even function when our future is out of focus. Tune in to Merve Çağlar in conversation with leading artists, designers, architects, and professionals from the creative industry.
In the first episode of Out of Focus, Merve Çağlar and Tom Dixon, OBE discuss the experience of making things for pleasure, explore how design and art can become sustainable by locality, and the role of designers in today’s society. Listen here.
WATCH: “The Staggering Girl” directed by Luca Guadagnino
“The Staggering Girl” the visually mesmerizing short by Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino starring Julianne Moore, with a score by Ryuichi Sakamoto and costumes by Valentino Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli. Watch on MUBI.
LOOK: ‘74 Designer Spotlight: The Lalannes
For this week’s ’74Picks, we urge you to look at the whimsical works of the Lalannes. Acclaimed for his surreal animal sculptures, Francois-Xavier Lalanne worked closely with his wife, Claude Lalanne, producing curious objects that blur the distinction between fine and decorative art.
The Lalannes rejected the abstract styles popular during the mid 20th century, choosing instead to represent the flora and fauna of the natural world. While Claude preferred plant life, Francois-Xavier favored animals, creating works that, like Carpe (petite) (1987), add an artful element to the daily domestic experience.
Lalanne also created large-scale outdoor and public sculptures in which animals such as bulls, sheep, and gorillas are modeled in larger-than-life proportions, cast in bronze, and installed in locations ranging from rural backyards to bustling city streets. Whether indoors or outside, Lalanne’s works echo his belief that “the supreme art is the art of living.”
READ: Repurposing Food, Or You Know… Everything at CULTURE DESK
Penned by our guest writer Cansu Varol, read Repurposing Food, Or You Know… Everything at CULTURE DESK.
Think of the moment you are standing by the garbage can, holding a perfectly good – but a little crusty- chunk of bread or some expired products while having a sizzling feeling of guilt. Now take that amount of feeling and adapt it into a scenario where a chef of some hip restaurant has to decide whether to use the leftover bread or to just be done with it! And this is just a scenario where we are talking about edible things. But what about coffee grounds left in cups, some tomato skin, or just water used in boiling vegetables?
DO: Alex Katz’s ‘Ada (Outline)’, now on view at the New Art Centre, Salisbury.
Since creating his first painted cut-out in 1959, Alex Katz has been exploring the painterly and sculptural possibilities of the form. Although his cut-outs, like his paintings, depict different characters of the New York social milieu – family, friends, celebrities, and anonymous women – Ada, the artist’s lifelong muse and wife, remains his favorite subject. With their blank expressions and enormous scale, these cut-outs manifest the formal ideas which have fascinated Katz throughout his career: the juxtaposition between flatness and two-dimensionality, the visual language of advertising, and the tropes of American cinema.