ANTHROPOLOGIE GOES DUTCH

Have you seen the latest Anthropologie catalog? It's stunning. They have taken a completely new approach, including designing a beautiful photographic page index. The products are shown in gorgeous still lifes that, as a geeky art historian, I can say reference both Dutch and Spanish still life painting from the seventeenth century. The brilliance of this graphic strategy is that the luminosity and richness of these painting traditions perfectly suits the Anthropologie identity.

See examples of Dutch still life here, a great comparison of these images to Spanish still life here, and the Anthropologie website here.

BRILLIANT GEOMETRY

I recently came across the super cool geometric paintings by Julie Bonifay (of Etsy store magnapaint) on my favorite blog Chroma Lab. These small hand-painted works are highly reasonably priced—$20 to $40!—and would make a fabulous colorful (and economical!) addition to your home.

The paintings remind me of this fabulous mobile (which has made the blog rounds over the last several months) by Themis, now on sale at the MoMA Store for $28. Or the work of the amazing Ronald Davis, as posted about here.

That's all for now folks! Hope you have a great weekend!

GLENN LIGON: AMERICA

Last night I went to the opening of a new exhibition at the Whitney Museum entitled Glenn Ligon: America. Ligon, a mid-career conceptual artist based in New York, creates work that deals with American history, literature, society and race. The work in the show runs the gamut from neon installations to paintings to drawings and, honestly, everything in the galleries looks absolutely stunning. Each and every piece is thoughtfully grouped and presented and, despite the variety of work in the show, everything appears uniformly elegant and fresh.

Do yourself a favor and a) read more details for the show here, b) read a review of the show here, and c) plan a visit to see it all here.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GOES UP

Oh my goodness, have you seen this project by the National Geographic? They managed to recreate the balloon house from Up and actually make it float (of course it took a lot of tweeking; it is impossible to recreate it exactly)!

Here's the skinny on the project, as listed on My Modern Met:

March 5 at dawn National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16' X 16' house 18' tall with 300 8' colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. The entire experimental aircraft was more than 10 stories high, reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet, and flew for approximately one hour.

The filming of the event, from a private airstrip, will be part of a new National Geographic Channel series called How Hard Can it Be?, which will premiere in fall 2011.

Cool, right? I can't wait to watch the show when it premiers.

(Want more balloon inspiration? Check it out here.)

CREATIVE MORNINGS

In January I went to a Creative Mornings talk with famed graphic designer Milton Glaser and nearly fainted in the face of his genius. Seriously, the man is a legend.

Well now you can see what I am talking about for yourself! Watch Glaser's inspiring talk above (and here).


Thanks to swissmiss for the heads up.

APPLE LOVE

This weekend I did something big. I bought a new computer! My old computer—faithfully known as Prince Humperdink—was getting rather elderly at age 4.5. And since we all know how much I am obsessed with Apple products, I waited until they released a new round of MacBook Pros and I bought one! I can't believe how amazing it is: nearly 8 hour battery life, amazing graphics, super fast. Seriously, check it out here.

And have you heard about the release of the second generation iPad? If possible it seems even more revolutionary than the first one. It has a front and rear camera, is significantly thinner, and has a sweet magnetically connected screen cover. Awesome. Now if I could only justify purchasing an iPhone, a MacBook Pro and an iPad all in one year.

Watch the intro video and learn more here.

LATE NIGHT ICE CREAM FIGHT

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Ice Cream Fight With Jimmy Fallon
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Hi all! Just a quick bonus post to say hello and share this amazing clip from Thursday night's Colbert Report. Did you see it? I thought it was adorable (I was pretty much laughing uncontrollably when Colbert made the crack about SNL). Check it out and get a little giggle going yourself. Why not? It's the weekend, right?

See you all on Monday!