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      Enzo Mari review – the anarchic Italian at war with design world ‘pornography’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 00:01 · 1 minute

    Design Museum, London
    From his steel-bar fruit bowl to his troop of wooden animals, the combative creator railed against ‘the rampant consumption of luxury furniture’ – despite his own hefty price tags

    Shortly before the maverick Italian designer Enzo Mari died in 2020 , he donated his archive to the city of Milan with one condition: it must remain closed for the next 40 years. It would take at least that long, Mari argued, “before we have a new generation that is not as spoilt as today’s generation and that will be capable of using it in an informed manner”.

    Those who don’t want to wait four decades should hightail it to the Design Museum in London, where a sprawling retrospective of Mari’s work is on show – perhaps for the last time in a generation or two. It is a fascinating and infuriating portrait of this self-styled contrarian, a fiery prophet of doom who carved out a career of contradictions. Mari was a lifelong Marxist who railed against the indulgent “ pornography ” of the design world, arguing tirelessly for workers’ rights and the democratisation of design. He was hailed as the “conscience” of the industry; the grumpy thorn in the side of the establishment who could be relied upon to hurl colourful insults at his contemporaries (“publicity whores!”), between puffs on his cigars.

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      Laurent de Brunhoff obituary

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 12:49

    Author and illustrator who carried on his father Jean’s adventures of Babar in more than 40 books

    Laurent de Brunhoff was five years old when his mother invented a story for him and his younger brother: it told of an orphaned African elephant who escapes to Paris, where he is kitted out in a green suit before returning to the jungle to become king of his herd.

    De Brunhoff, who has died aged 98, recalled how the excited boys recounted the tale to their father, Jean, an artist, who illustrated the stories and produced a book, Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar), which was published in 1931.

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      ‘Not a parable about death’: Raymond Briggs’s notes set record straight for The Snowman

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 5 days ago - 15:10

    Remarks scribbled in a Finnish copy of the much-loved book, to be featured in an exhibition on the author, reveal how the story was misunderstood

    It is Raymond Briggs ’s most loved book, notching up sales of 5.5m, while the TV adaptation is a hardy perennial in the Christmas schedules. However, the discovery of a Finnish edition of The Snowman with notes scribbled in the margin by its author decades after publication reveal that parts of the story have been misinterpreted.

    It has frequently been assumed that the melting and disappearance of the snowman was symbolic of the loss of Briggs’s parents and wife in the 1970s. Not the case, according to the author’s remarks.

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      Pop art pioneer Peter Blake: ‘I wasn’t really a swinger. I never did any drugs’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 09:30 · 1 minute

    The artist, 91, on not being taken seriously, his first solo sculpture show, and why his Beatles’ Sgt Pepper cover has been a mixed blessing

    Peter Blake was born in Dartford, Kent in 1932 and went to art school at Gravesend Technical College. Leaving at the age of 15, he did national service and then trained at the Royal College of Art. His early works were critical to the definition of British pop art. In 1967, famously, he designed the cover for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper ’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . In his varied career since, he has continued to develop an idiosyncratic and iconic style in paintings, collages, drawing and sculpture. He lives in Chiswick with his second wife, the artist Chrissy Wilson, to whom he has been married for 37 years.

    How does it feel to be showing what is effectively your first solo sculpture show at the age of 91 ?
    About 10 years ago, I was making a lot of very diverse work – painting, drawing, collages, sculpture. And I realised a lot of it would never be seen, that I was unlikely to have a third retrospective. So I decided to mount a series of shows with [the gallery] Waddington Custot. The first was portraits and people, the second drawing. This is the sculpture element of that concept. There are also three series of collages that I’ve made in the last two years. I still sit with a pair of scissors.

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      Unseen illustrations show the genius of Biba’s Barbara Hulanicki – in pictures

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 2 March - 17:00

    Beloved by celebrities such as Twiggy, Mick Jagger and Cher, Biba made style accessible to young people in the 60s and 70s. “Biba made fashion democratic – their clothes were inexpensive, of good quality and highly cherished,” says Martin Pel, curator of a new exhibition about the store founded by Barbara Hulanicki in 1963. These previously unseen illustrations, found in Hulanicki’s private archives, were made using pencil, pen and ink and gouache, and demonstrate why her designs are still regarded as the gold standard of fashion. “Barbara’s design philosophy followed on from her erstwhile career as a fashion illustrator,” says Pel, “where bold silhouettes and an avoidance of fussy detail made for a stronger look.”

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