Pegagogy: In Jaffa, Israel, designer Yaacov Kaufman has curated a show featuring some 300 examples of clothespins, tracing the humble history of this ubiquitous tool. On display are clothespegs that illustrate design variations (including those that attempt “to ‘uplift’ the product and it’s design”), functional innovations, artful interpretations, and cultural differences (“such as the Chinese bamboo peg, bearing the family name on it, to distinguish it in a communal space, or the huge Japanese carpet peg”).
Hearing colors: Opening Thursday, the Tate Modern’s exhibition Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction 1908–1922 tracks the early part of Kandinsky’s career, from early landscapes of the Bavarian countryside to his co-founding of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group, a period during which he “began to conceive of painting as an alternative pathway to spiritual reality.” The Telegraph reports that Kandinsky likely had synesthesia, a blurring of two or more senses, something he reportedly discovered during a Wagnerian opera in Moscow: “I saw all my colours in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.”
Architects’ Choice: Switzerland’s Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are the first architects to curate MoMA’s “Artists’ Choice” series, in which they can select and arrange works from the museum’s holdings. The objects they chose, from Eva Zeisel ceramcs to Tupperware, are hidden in walls and only viewable through slots, and their film suggestions (including Fargo) are projected on the ceiling. New York’s Alexandra Lange interviews the pair on their curious choices.
Gehry’s “Trojan Horse”: From its “outlandish disproportion to the neighborhoods around it” to the “abhorrent track record” of its financier, Bruce Ratner, the 16-tower Atlantic Yards development planned for Brooklyn is all wrong for his hometown, writes novelist and Brooklynite Jonathan Lethem in an open letter to its designer, Frank Gehry. Describing the “commercially ambitious, but aesthetically–and socially–disastrous” development (the biggest project by a single developer in New York City history), Lethem urges the famed architect to just “walk away” from the deal.
Artlinks: A lengthy list of art blogs, compiled by Re-title. And here’s ArtbloggingLA’s list of Los Angeles museums with MySpace accounts (here’s ours).