Tony Garnier Visionary Urban Designer

Architects are visionaries. Ever since Romulus slew his brother for the right to create the Eternal City, thinkers and design¬ers of urban life have not ceased to envision cities whose buildings, monuments, and thorough¬fares would not only serve (or control) city-dwellers, but also exalt the rulers and astonish travellers. But the multitudinous visions create a labyrinth of choices: to create flat cities? high cities? glass cities? green cities? Between utopias and dystopias, how can one determine which visions of life are best?

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France…Just the Facts Madame

Imagine 2,068,000 Parisians crammed into 105 km (not including 11 km of bones that lie under Paris in the catacombs) with 500,000 or so dogs (4760 dogs per km).  This means you have about a 1 in 4 chance that a Parisian you hear complaining about graffiti is a dog owner.  And this dog owner will be ignorant of the fact that although 4,000,000F go annually to cleaning up graffiti, 34,000,000F are spent cleaning up the canine land mines laid all over town.  20 metric tons of dog truffles daily.  Some of it is sucked up by those green vacuum cleaner-equipped motorcycles, some of it swept into gutters by the 12,000 branch brooms and 30,000 plastic branch brooms, and then washed out of sight, out of mind down many of Paris’ 18,000 sewer drains.  Instead, wouldn’t it be interesting to each day pick out 20 different dog owners and leave a metric ton on each of their doorsteps.  It would take 68 years to reward each dog owner- not a likely prospect.

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Sandra Kwock-Silve discusses “Crossings”

 Art, May 1989
While most of France is preparing for the big summer events that will fete  the Bicentennial of the French Revolution, some  85 Hawaiians have traveled halfway around the world to celebrate  the opening of Crossings France-Hawaii.  Art works by 45 contemporary island artists are the focus of the Crossings ’89 exhibit that begins May 22nd at the Mona Bismarck Foundation. Continue reading “Sandra Kwock-Silve discusses “Crossings””

Interview: Collector Stephen White

Los Angeles gallery owner Steven White talks about his passion for discovering the undiscovered… May 1989. Steven White’s collection of photographs with images dating from the l840’s to the early 20th century recently opened at the Palais de Tokyo. What makes this show special is that it includes not only legendary photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston but also unknown gems that White has retrieved from history’s ‘lost and found’. In the following interview Steven White discusses his philosophy of collecting, the Tao, and what’s wrong with the contemporary photography scene. Continue reading “Interview: Collector Stephen White”