Book Review Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
At first you might assume that Cathy Whitlock’s book, Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction is another sumptuous Hollywood-inspired coffee table book, brimming with oodles of stunning movie stills and illustrations of iconic movie scenes. Designs on Film, however, is so much more. A well-researched overview of the profession of film art directoion, the book profiles the top professionals who have worked in the field over the past hundred years.
Ms. Whitlock organized her work into two parts. Part one, “Architect of Dreams,” explains what it is that an art director does and how the profession has evolved over the course of film history. Ms. Whitlock also does a fine job of describing the responsibilities of the production designer and set decorator in relationship to the art director. The second part, the real heart of the book, recognizes the work of major art directors from the silent era through the early 2000s.
Designs on Film finally gives credit to the brilliant talents whose on-screen work is so distinctly memorable, but whose names and faces are barely known. Several photos feature great art directors at work in the studio: Hans Dreier (“Sunset Boulevard”), Edward Carrere (“The Fountainhead”), Carroll Clark (“Top Hat”) and RKO’s supervising art director Van Nest Polglase.
Designs on Film, one gains a greater understanding and appreciation of the work of the innovative designers responsible for Hollywood’s most iconic backdrops, those folks who were part-architect, part-artist, part-military leader and part-dreamer.
Elbert Hubbard: An American Original
Conformists die, heretics live forever.— Elbert Hubbard
In the documentary, “Elbert Hubbard: An American Original,” which first aired on PBS in 2009, director/writer Paul Lamont presents Hubbard, a major figure in the American Arts and Crafts Movement, as a man of contradictions. Hubbard was devoted to art, yet motivated by business; interested in the welfare of the common man but his Roycrofters created exquisite items only the wealthy could afford; family played a central role in his life, yet he was involved in a long-lived extramarital affair.
Hubbard’s early life is the stuff of Horatio Alger lore. He began selling soap at the age of 16 for the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York. With a keen mind for business, and perseverance, young Hubbard quickly rose up the ranks in the company by introducing “from factory to family” direct catalog sales. In 1880, Hubbard married Bertha Crawford and began a family. Three years later the Hubbards moved to East Aurora, a village outside of Buffalo.
Elbert Hubbard, photographer unknown.
Source: http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1216826209p5/114059.jpg
Yet with all his success Hubbard felt unfulfilled and began to question the direction of this life. The works of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman deeply moved and influenced him. Later on Hubbard would repackage many of these writers’ ideas as catchy mottoes in order to promote his ideals.
A Brief Visual History of Vintage Typographic Scripts
Thank you to Maria Popova of Brain Pickings for this review of Steven Heller and Louise Fili’s latest book Scripts: Elegant Lettering from Design’s Golden Age . According to Ms. Popova their book is, “a treasure chest of typographic gems culled from advertising, street signage, type-specimen books, wedding invitations, restaurant menus and personal letters from the 19th to the mid-20th century. Ranging from the classic to the quirky, the 350 stunning images are unified by a common thread: All the typefaces featured are derived from handwriting or symbolic of the handwritten form, and the letters in each touch each other.” Read the entire review.
Source: http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/scripts4.jpg
The Grove Park Inn
David Mathias, author of “Greene & Greene Furniture: Poems of Wood & Light,” posted a fine article on the historic Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. The hotel will be hosting the annual Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Conference, February 18 through 20, 2011. While we won’t be in attendance this year, Mr. Mathias will be there. He’ll be holding a booksigning, sponsored by Style 1990, on Saturday, February 19, from 1:00 to 3:00. So if you plan to be at the conference do take a moment to stop by.
Fred L. Seely. Grove Park Inn (1913), Asheville, North Carolina.
Source:http://www.wood-and-light.com/blog/files/grovepark.jpg
One more shameless plug: Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Conference attendees, please stop by the Dalton’s American Decorative Arts booth and say “Hello” to Dave Rudd and Deb Goldwein.
Greene and Greene Furniture: Poems of Wood and Light
David Mathias’s book on the furniture of architects Charles and Henry Greene will be released in September. You can pre-order it now on the Wood and Light Web site. While you’re there check out his blog and other great Greene and Greene related resources.
