From September 2008 to August 2009, Matthew Monteith was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. The Academy awards one-year fellowships to four visual artists each year and recently, they created the Abigail Cohen Rome Prize in photography, specifically enabling one photographer to live at the academy while working on a project. Monteith was interested in investigating how different institutions shape the way people look at art. While in Rome, he chose to make a series of images dealing with the odd disconnect of viewing art in a hermetic environment.
With the question, “What does it mean to view art, to be educated, to be able to see the world?” in mind, Monteith followed art students, designers, scholars, tourists, and others around Rome. He visited gardens, museums, public spaces, and churches. “I was trying to describe a viewer’s paradise,” says Monteith. “This place of looking and spending time truly considering something, which is often lost in the rush of contemporary society.”
In Monteith’s photos, the viewer observes the beholder as they take in the actual object. “We study many things in abstraction. You can read forever about Bernini and how he sculpts marble, but until you actually sit there and spend a considerable amount of time with the work itself, you don’t really grasp it,” explains Monteith.
Erwin Olaf’s “Hotel, Dawn & Dusk” opened last Thursday night at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler in New York to an energetic reception. Patrons eagerly filled the expansive gallery space to view new photographs and videos by the Dutch artist. Olaf’s solo show debut in New York was “Rain and Hope,” followed by a succesful sophomore show “Grief.” “Dawn & Dusk” marks the mature succession of Olaf’s vision.
Olaf describes “Dusk” as “a dark comic strip.” In response to Dusk, Olaf shot “Dawn,” images inspired by by an encounter in Russia with pale-skinned people in characterless rooms. Dawn and Dusk are inverted mirrors of each other, one dark and one light, both enigmatic in their own right.
Also on view is “Hotel,” a body of work dealing with Olaf’s travels and the accompanying feelings of transience and anomie, the unsettled sense of passing through, and the boredom of being on one’s own.
The Society of Illustrators was founded in 1901 to promote the art of illustration and to hold exhibitions. Today it continues to uphold this mission, honoring illustrators and showcasing their work in the Society of Illustrators museum and gallery.
On February 5th, 2010, the Society of Illustrators will be hosting an awards presentation and gala for winners in Illustrator 52: Book and Editorial. Josh Cochran will be honored for his “Sleepwalker” illustration in Medical Marvels, written by George Edward Stanley and published by Sterling.
Bernstein & Andriulli enthusiastically welcomes Tom Menneman to the agency. Menneman is widely recognized for his work in car and landscape photography and has worked with clients such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen.
Recently, Menneman shot windsurfing legend Bjorn Dunkerbeck for Volkswagen while on location on the northern coast of Spain. Menneman is currently finishing up another CGI catalog for Volkswagen and working on some editorial shoots in his free time.
B&A is very excited to be working with Tom Menneman, be sure to check back for more news!
Olaf Hajek’s debut monograph Flowerhead is being released in Europe in Feburary, 2010 by Gestalten. The international release follows shortly in March, 2010. The book is full of advertising, editorial, commercial portraits, fashion illustration, and rarely seen personal work from over the past three years of Hajek’s long illustration career.
Born in Germany and raised in Holland, Olaf Hajek draws inspiration from far-away places such as folk art in Africa and South America and the detailed work and interesting perspectives of India and Persia.
Emir Haveric traveled to Malaga, Spain to shoot Volkswagen’s new Golf R and the Scirocco R. The campaign is showing now across all of Germany and parts of Europe on billboards, in magazines, and more. American fans of the Golf R can rejoice as Volkswagen has decided to release the Golf R stateside to replace the R32.
The R-series Golf offers drivers a 2.0-liter direct-injection TSI, 265 turbocharged HP, and Volkswagen’s 4Motion AWD system. The campaign for this impressive new car marks the beginning of a new look in Volkswagen campaigns. Gone is the friendly, family oriented look and in is a slicker, more sophisticated approach, captured by Emir Haveric.
Mark Todd’s “Juggernaut” is a collection of new comic paintings and collage works on paper on view at Billy Shire Fine Arts. The show’s origin is Mark Todd’s early love of comic books and the fantasy world that accompanied them. More than just nostalgia, the pieces in “Juggernaut” are comic book reinventions full of wily energy. Collages and mixed-media pieces make use of found papers, xeroxes, cel vinyl, acrylic, spray paint, and various residue. The show is on view now until February 6th, 2010 – be sure to check it out! More images from the Juggernaut
Curator Carol McCusker had a vision, put out a call for entry, and one thousand submissions flooded in from 200 artists. McCusker narrowed it down to forty five photographs that now form “New Directions 2010,” showing currently at Wall Space Gallery. Emily Nathan’s “Green Sea” epitomizes the premise of the “down and out” motif of the show.
“Down and out” refers to the point of view of looking down from a high vantage point and out to a vanishing horizon that Albert Boime called a “Magisterial Gaze.” Ms. McCusker hoped that “the photographs would show a variety of ways that ‘down’ and ‘out’ can be imaged; and the emotional liberation such points-of-view can have on our often confined and overly responsible psyches.”
In the latest issue of New York Magazine, the cover story details the dissension that went on behind the scenes of John Edwards’ camp during the 2008 presidential election. Titled “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster,” the story is an excerpt from the book Game Change by New York Magazine’s John Heilemann and Time magazine’s Mark Halperin.
New York Magazine called on Nathan Fox to tell the story in the style of a graphic novel. Fox’s images illustrate some of the most appalling moments in the book, revealing the tawdry side of the carefully crafted image of the presidential candidate and his retinue.
The Young Victoria, a sumptuous period film, is now showing in theatres nationally. Award-winning actress Emily Blunt stars in the title role as the young heir to the British throne with up-and-coming Rupert Friend as her consort, Prince Albert. Initially an indie film, The Young Victoria has gathered much attention from the press, viewers, and industry alike. Emily Blunt has been nominated for a Golden Globe in the “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama” category. Critics are hailing it as “A delicious historical romance.”
Jim Wright travelled to West Sussex to photograph the cast of The Young Victoria for publicity photos and the one sheet. The shoot took place in the midst of filming at the stately Arundel Castle. Located two hours outside of London, the castle has housed many members of the royal family, including Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert.
The Communication Arts 50th anniversary Advertising Annual is out! Juror Paul Little, Creative Director at TBWA/Vancouver, said “…the most innovative work is in the online and integrated categories.” One of the big winners in the integrated categories is Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s “The Flame” body-spray campaign for Burger King. The campaign was accompanied by wild postings, online banners, live TV commercials and an online and mobile tool at firemeetsdesire.com, a site designed to help you get your game on once you got your “flame on.”
B&A is proud to announce that Kareem Black has recently joined the agency. New artist Kareem Black shot the print component of CP+B’s Burger King campaign, capturing Burger King’s spokesperson “The King” in various alluring tableaus where he beckons the viewer to experience ”The Flame” body spray scent. With a hint of flame broiled meat, the scent is sure to drive some people to the point of salivation.
“Top Gear,” popular hit BBC television series about motor vehicles, is broadcast in the UK, America, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and several other nations. The show is hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, but perhaps the most memorable character of the show is the test driver known as “The Stig.”
Starting last December, people had the chance to take “The Stig” home in Rod Hunt’s impeccably illustrated book, Where’s Stig?. Inspired by the classic children’s book Where’s Waldo, readers search for Stig as he is cleverly concealed in scenes such as “Costa del Stig” or “Bonneville Salt Flats Speed Week.” Featured above is Stig in Tokyo, can you find him?
Says Hunt, “I’ve never undertaken a project on quite this scale before, making Where’s Stig? isone of the most challenging projects I’ve ever undertaken, with a solid six months commitment, a huge amount of research and the most detailed artwork I’ve ever produced.”
Hunt’s intricate illustrations have captured the imagination of the public. Where’s Stig has sold over a quarter of a million copies, making it to the top 10 of the Official UK Book Charts. Learn more about the book and play the online game here.
Rod Hunt has worked with Top Gear Magazine for years; check out more of his work here.
Judges weighed in and thousands of people voted for AdWeek’s “Best of 2000s,” recognizing the decade’s best in the marketing, media, and agency world. With nearly twice as many votes as the runner-up, the Apple iPod silhouette campaign was honored as the best Out-of-Home-Ad of the Decade. Shot by Matthew Welch, the campaign marks a definitive moment in advertising.
2009 is coming to a close and we would like to thank all of our talent, clients, agents, and friends for a wonderful year. A blog was started (which became our homepage), new artists were signed on, and lots of cool projects were carried out. We leave you with this animated video and wish you happy holidays and a happy new year!
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners launched the “Plug into the Smartgrid” Augmented Reality campaign for General Electric. The power grid that energizes America hadn’t been updated in 112 years and GE was doing major overhauls. To educate consumers about GE’s powergrid updates, GSP developed the first campaign ever to use Augmented Reality. People were invited to print out a special AR marker that could be held in front of a webcam for a virtual experience of the Smartgrid.
The response went beyond expectations. What first started as paid media took on a new meaning when the campaign blew up on the blogosphere and began getting picked up by media outlets such as The New York Times, the official publication of the United Nations, Popular Science, and The Wall Street Journal. The augmented reality demonstration video on YouTube received over a million hits, which was then followed with over 80,000 views of user-generated videos of Augmented Reality.
To demonstrate the success of the campaign, GSPSF hired Serial Cut to build 3d information graphics for an animated case study. The engaging two and a half minute video demonstrates facts and figures from the campaign in a light-hearted tone, paired with the 3d informational graphic world that Serial Cut created. The case study is shown above, to view more work from Serial Cut click here.
