Blog: Visual culture
15 July 2015
City of signs
Artist Alida Sayer witnesses a collision of ancient and hyper-modern in Andong, South Korea
The city of Andong, though widely considered the bastion of ‘traditional’ Korea, possesses a distinctively…
4 July 2015
Boxes of delight
Joseph Cornell was an avid collector who crafted a playful universe all his own. His fragile creations are on display at the Royal Academy, London
Collecting things in boxes has been a popular pastime for many people, from fossil hunters…
26 June 2015
Exhibition ephemera
Graphic designers collect all kinds of ephemera, from boxes crammed with flyers to pinboards covered…
18 June 2015
The man who branded Sainsbury’s
Sheffield designer Leonard Beaumont created the UK supermarket’s first postwar identity
Sheffield-born Leonard Beaumont (1891-1986) was the graphic designer who gave Sainsbury’s supermarkets and products a…
8 June 2015
Ghosts of the ghetto
Photographer Henryk Ross risked his life to bear witness to the Holocaust. By Sarah Snaith
The Art Gallery of Ontario is showing a selection of salvaged photographs taken by Jewish…
2 June 2015
Retrogressive
An archive of historical, ‘aw shucks’ clip art shows a clipped version of history, says Steven McCarthy
One afternoon about fifteen years ago, my University of Minnesota office phone rang, writes Steven…
29 May 2015
London’s American poster king
McKnight Kauffer’s Modernist posters for London Underground go under the hammer next week. By Graham Twemlow
In the design canon, from a contemporary perspective, the American-born poster artist Edward McKnight Kauffer…
21 May 2015
Stuck in the middle of Thatcherism
Chris Dorley-Brown’s ‘time travel’ photobook Drivers in the 1980s is reviewed by art director (and car blogger) Roger Browning
Not so much Drivers in the 1980s as East London drivers on Wednesday 20 May…
13 May 2015
Beyond selfish
Could Selfiecity’s systems of visual analysis one day become a force for the common good?
‘Selfies’ are a cultural phenomenon, and it seems you cannot move for people taking them…
11 May 2015
Noted #67
Chineasy, The Happy Reader, Yellow, Brick and Puss Puss
Here are a few projects that have caught our attention in recent weeks. The three…