Maynard L. Parker was an architectural photographer whose work appeared for much of the 20th century in House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Sunset Magazine and many covers for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, which was then called Home. He photographed many well-known architectural homes, including the work of Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright. Over 58,000 of those photographs are now available through the Huntington Library. Here are some examples.
posted by vronsky on Sep 13, 2009 - 3 comments

Stunning Conceptual Alternative Design for the New Museum of Contemporary Art Tower
posted by SamsFoster on Aug 9, 2009 - 44 comments

Modern Furniture Designs. Innovative and unique furniture has twists and turns, literal and conceptual ways of breaking from contemporary conventions and modern regularity. These creative furniture designs go beyond merely innovative, crossing boundaries of industrial, furniture and architectural design, using new methods and materials along the way.
posted by netbros on Aug 9, 2009 - 15 comments

Not For Sale: There are 27 million slaves worldwide right now. Here’s a map of where they are. [more inside]
posted by Pater Aletheias on Jul 23, 2009 - 34 comments

Martin and Lewis Just, wow. I had no idea. [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish on May 8, 2009 - 81 comments

Anthony Diaz Hope is a modern artist. He photographs a scene, dissects the image into a grid, and inserts pill capsules into each tiny segment.
posted by rageagainsttherobots on Dec 27, 2008 - 21 comments

Richard Serra: Man of Steel. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Nov 27, 2008 - 43 comments

Richard Wilkinson's illustrations - modern, melancholy pictures with a subdued palette but vivid identity.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 18, 2008 - 6 comments

A recent decision by the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board has saved an abandoned Denny's restaurant from the wrecking ball. On closer inspection the restaurant represents Googie-style architecture which was considered futuristic in the 60's. Granted it's not on par with the future of today. But there are some appealing offshoots in North West modernist designs. (Googie previously here).
posted by lightweight on Mar 15, 2008 - 42 comments

Turning a chapel into an apartment. The Dutch architectural firm ZECC has made a beautiful, modern apartment out of an abandoned chapel. There are more stunning photos and cross-sections in this PDF, though the text is in Dutch. Other stunning church renovations.
posted by desjardins on Jan 23, 2008 - 25 comments

4 Artists Paint 1 Tree, a segment from Disneyland included on the recent DVD release of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, features the artistic process of one of my favorite painters and cartoon modernists, Eyvind Earle. If you've seen Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, Paul Bunyan or Peter Pan, you're familiar with the fantastical and brilliant landscapes he produces. His paintings show a particular fondness for Big Sur and Central California.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Dec 10, 2007 - 5 comments

Yue Minjun, a Chinese avant-garde artist, known for his depiction of toothy, smiling males. More at Asia's Hottest Modern Painters. Bonus: Goldfish
posted by growabrain on Nov 11, 2007 - 22 comments

The abstract Polaroid photography of Grant Hamilton.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 29, 2007 - 15 comments

80 years of Found Footage Filmmaking...
1927-1967:
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, 1927.
Rose Hobart, 1936.
Night and Fog 2 3 4 5 6 7, 1956.
1968-2007 inside...
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Aug 28, 2007 - 12 comments

The Philosophy Research Base features thousands of annotated links and text resources for philosophy research on the Internet. Categorized by history, subject and author, this meta-index serves as both a study guide and a platform for a wide variety of community services for students and teachers in philosophy and related subjects.
posted by netbros on Aug 26, 2007 - 5 comments

Mars and Beyond - 50 years ago, this animated episode of Tomorrowland aired on Disneyland a few months after the launch of Sputnik - an entertaining melange of astronomy, sci-fi, pop culture, science, speculation, and surreality. Walt himself and Wernher von Braun make guest appearances and clip 5 is particularly trippy. (Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
posted by madamjujujive on Jun 10, 2007 - 9 comments

I'm a modern man, I'm a modern man, A man for the millennium, Digital and smoke free. - George Carlin hits one out of the park with the first four and a half minutes of this hour and a half Google Video. Then it's back to his stock in trade.
posted by Happy Dave on Apr 15, 2007 - 89 comments

Happy anniversary, modern art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon are 100 years old and look as fresh and exciting as ever.
posted by bru on Jan 11, 2007 - 41 comments

Modern Tales, the subscription-only webcomics site, today makes most of its content available for free. Joey Manley explains why. Any recommendations?
posted by barjo on Jul 17, 2006 - 9 comments

Are they music? Unusual ideas about musical notation.
posted by Wolfdog on Jun 27, 2006 - 18 comments

My earliest memory was when I was three. I had a fever and my mother was wiping a cold wet rag on my body. There were fish swimming in my room, as though I was underwater, but I could breathe just fine. That's why I was surprised to find this. "The contemporary art in Japan (english) is naturally influenced by the world contemporary art. But the power of the Japanese traditions, the oppressive presence of a dense urban environment and the various traumatism undergone by Japan for 60 years (defeat of 1945, Hiroshima, earthquakes, economic crisis, etc.) involve a production very rich, original and little known."
posted by sluglicker on Jun 4, 2006 - 6 comments

Ry Cooder's Ry Cooder's new album Chávez Ravine captures the world of the vibrant Chicano community that was bulldozed in the 1950's to build Dodger Stadium. Don Normark's book Chavez Ravine: 1949 provides more background on the place that was once a "poor man’s Shangri-la." of "wild roses, tin roofs, and wandering goats" where life "was lived fully, openly, and joyfully" before it was destroyed.
posted by robliberal on Aug 3, 2005 - 19 comments

Information Aesthetics is a weblog of experiments in visualization: a power cord that glows as one draws power, a crocheted Lorenz manifold, a live display of a computer thinking about chess, a color-changing flower that detects nearby wifi. To be sure, there are lots of old favorites here but probably some new ones as well.
posted by fatllama on Jul 15, 2005 - 12 comments

Design Observer and the New York Times (reg. req'd) on modernism.
posted by Tlogmer on May 16, 2005 - 4 comments

Art In A Box! : Modern artist Joseph Cornell made a name for himself by creating minature collaged works in boxes back in the 1930s when collage was still a relatively new art form. While his works and life story are often romanticized, the fact remains that he was both incredibly creative and incredibly strange. Certainly one of American Art's finest. (see old mefi post from 9/02)
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jan 21, 2005 - 10 comments

Ray Abeyta. "At first glance, many of Abeyta's works appear to be Spanish colonial paintings dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. However, the artist incorporates present-day imagery with Spanish colonial and indigenous elements." A short bio and history here. Here's one of my favorites.
posted by protocool on Jun 17, 2004 - 4 comments

Half-Life meets Matisse in a virtual reconstruction of the apartment of Etta and Claribel Cone. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the sisters amassed one of America's foremost collections of modern art. Today, many of the pieces can be viewed in the Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. As part of the 50^th anniversary celebration of the museum's acquisition of the collection, the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County designed a digital walkthrough of their apartment so that visitors could see the art in its original context.
posted by Aaaugh! on May 4, 2003 - 5 comments

pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat. Modern art is rubbish says Institute of Contemporary Arts Chief Ivan Massow...
posted by Spoon on Jan 17, 2002 - 28 comments

words! words! words! is a new magazine launched by our favourite texan-in-new-zeland ben brown. billing itself as a "street guide for modern literature", the first issue features articles by many talented online writers and is only $8 (with shipping) with a pay pal account. if you want to help spread the "word!", download the pdf flyer and paste it to cars, walls and people.
posted by will on Aug 21, 2001 - 6 comments