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CITY LIFE HARMONIZED

DECEMBER 2013

THE FUTURE DOSEN’T JUST HAPPEN. IT’S MADE

home,tech, fashion fall tends for next year followed by the

AVEDON

1

Edgy architect

Pharrellwilliams culture embrace the

4

Steps to crowdfund your ART

CONTENTS

CITY LIFE HARMONIZED

DECEMBER 2013

06

AG3NDA

Your goal to a health goal begins here with a dash of Art.

PHARRELL

21

13

They heard him out on his current project.

AVEDON

Oh mosh to his ground breaking photography.

ART DREAMS

25

4 Steps to get to your art dreams

CITY LIFE HARMONIZED

DECEMBER 2013

FASHION ASSOCIATE MARKET EDITOR RENEISE FRANCIS FASHION ASSISTANT BETTINA PROPHETE

BEAUTY

BEAUTY DIRECTOR CORYNNE L. CORBETT SENIOR BEAUTY EDITOR TASHA TURNER

DEPARTMENTS ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR CORI MURRAY SENIOR WRITER JEANNINE AMBER SENIOR EDITOR, HEALTH & RELETIONSHIPS SHARON BOONE SENIOR EDITOR, PERSONAL FINANCE & CAREERS TANISHA A. SYKES NEWS EDITOR WENDY L. WILSON WEST COAST EDITOR REGINA R. ROBERTON ASSOCIATE EDITOR, RELATIONSHIPS CHARREAH K. JACKSON

CONTRIDUCTORS EDITORS-AT- LARGE MIIKKI TAYLOR, EMIL WILBEKIN

P

ART

resenting SOCAL a Publication about Southern California celebrating its culture through the arts. SOCAL is a publication for the one’s who feed off inspiration and have a passion of the arts whether it be creating music, choreography, fashion, or new recipes. All is displayed with the tomorrow in mind by showcasing sophisticated,

contemporary,

urban,

trendy

creations.

ART DIRECTOR RODNEY ALLEN TRICE ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR RASHIDA MORGAN-BROWN ART/PHOTO PRODUCTION COORDINATOR RAQUEL BOLER

PHOTO PHOTO EDITOR DEBORAH BOARDLEY ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR TRACEY WOODS CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITOR REBECCA KARAMEHMEDOVIC

COPY

DEPUTY COPY CHIEF GRACE WHITE SENIOR COPY SHERRILL D. CLARKE

RESEARCH RESEARCH CHIEF CHRISTNE M. GORDON DEPUTY RESEARCH EDITOR AKKIDA MCDOWELL

ADMINISTRATION

aptivating art sends the viewer

to a realm of emotions, whether it be a memorable experience that was life changing , a dream of a world they would love to live in, or a spiritual tradition. That being said living in a city mixed with unique cultures one medium that is relate-able to all is Art.

w w w. s o c a l . c o m

CH

AN

GE

IN

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EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CHATEL THEAGENE

C

A R T

PLAYATTENTION

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

CONSTANCE C.R. WHITE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 04 FALL 2013

AG3NDA 1

EPICUREAN

Nobilo Pavlova Dessert FOR THE PASSION FRUIT CURD

Serves:

01. Put small sauce pan on the stove with water, bring to a boil, and then simmer 02. Combine sugar, eggs, and passion fruit in a stainless steel bowl.

8

03. Whip vigorously and place over the steaming pot, being careful not to burn yourself.

Prep Time:

Cook Time:

1 hour

12 hours

04. When it starts to warm up, add butter and continue to whip, using an electric blender if you prefer. You want to bring it to a thickness where it will hold 3 figure-8’s of curd on the surface.

05. When the thickness is achieved, put it in the blender to make sure it’s perfectly smooth.

06. Chill and place in a pipping bag.

FOR THE WHIPPED CREAM 07. Whip the heavy cream with a whisk or charge with one N20 charger in a canister.

FOR THE SOFT PAVLOVA MIX

INGREDIENTS 5 Large eggs

08. Cook water, com syrup, and sugar until soft thread (223-235◦F). Use a thermome-

1 1/2 Cups sugar

ter to ensure the temperature is correct.

1 3/5 Cups butter

09. Slowly pour into egg whites that have already been whipped until very foamy.

10. Add salt, whipping until it has almost doubled in size.

11. Set in fridge. Depending on your refrigerator and the volume at which this is

/5 Cup passion fruit purée

4

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SOFT PAVLOVA MIX /2 Cup water

1

stored colling should take around 10-45 minutes. It’s advised o make it a day out to

2

be sure it is cold.

4

12. When cool put into a blender and blend.

1

13. Put into a piping bag.

FOR THE SWISS MERINGUE 14. Set up a bain-marie: simmering water in a smaller pot than the bowl you are using.

15. Whisk all ingredients in this bowl over the steam until the sugar is completely dissolved. You can use an electric hand blender.

16. When sugar is dissolved, remove from steaming pot and whisk for around 10 minutes until you have very firm or stiff peaks. A stand mixer is best for this.

17. Spread a thick layer over acetate sheets.

18. Fold to make a cylinder, tape, and dehydrate in your oven overnight for about 8-10 hours a t 140◦F 19. Also make round discs to use as a “lid.”

20. Remove acetate within 3 minutes of removal from oven and then you are ready FOR THE GARNISHES AND PLATING 21. Pipes the cylinder of the passion fruit curd and soft Pavlova mix onto a plate.

22. Put the swiss meringue round disc “lids” on top.

/3 Cup com syrup /5 Cup Sugar /2 Cup egg whites

3 Gelation sheets 1 Pinch salt

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SWISS MERINGUE 4 Large egg whites 1 Cup sugar 1 teaspoon citric acid 1 Pnch of salt

INGREDIENTS FOR THE WHIPPED CREAM 2 Cups heavy cream

INGREDIENTS FOR GARNISH Strawberries Passion fruit seeds Acetate Sheets

23. Garnish with whipped cream, strawberries, and passion fruit. You can also use marigold flowers 06 FALL 2013

A

2 G3NDA

For many, no drink is more syn-

onymous with good health than green tea, the ancient Chinese beverage known for its soothing aroma and abundance of antioxidants. By some estimates, Americans drink nearly 10 billion servings of green tea each year.

But anew report by an independent laboratory shows that green tea can vary widely from one cup to the next.

Some bottled varieties appear to be little more than sugar water, containing little of the antioxidants that have given the beverage its good name. And some green tea leaves, particularly those from China, are contaminated with lead, though the metal does not appear to leach out during the brewing process.

The report was published this week by ConsumerLab.com, an independent site that tests health products of all kinds. The company, which had previously tested a variety of green tea supplements typically found in health food stores, took a close look at brewed and bottled green tea products, a segment that has grown rapidly since the 1990s.

It found that green tea brewed from loose tea leaves was perhaps the best and most potent source of antioxidants like epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, though plain and simple

07 FALL 2013

CHOICES

What’s in Your Green Tea?

LIBATION

DRAGONWELL GREEN TEA

tea bags made by Lipton and Bigelow were the mostcost-efficient source. Green tea’s popularity has been fueled in part by a barrage of research linking EGCG to benefits like weight loss to cancer prevention, but the evidence comes largely from test tube studies, research on animals and large population studies, none of it very rigorous, and researchers could not rule out the contribution of other healthy behaviors that tend to cluster together.

Perhaps the best source of antioxidants

This legendary green is a top ten tea in China hailing from the Zhejiang Province. Follow the famed crooked river on your trip through Zhejiang and steep in carefully hand-flatt jade-green leaves that create a mellow-sweet taste with chestnut overtones. Natural sweetness from the jade green leaf establishes complexity in this renowned sweet nutty tea.

IMPERIAL RESERVE

SAKURA ALLURE GREEN This legendary green is a top ten tea in China hailing from the Zhejiang Province. Follow the famed crooked river on your trip through Zhejiang and steep in carefully hand-flatt jade-green leaves that create a mellow-sweet taste with chestnut overtones. Natural sweetness from the jade green leaf establishes complexity in this renowned sweet nutty tea.

IMPERIAL RESERVE

AG3NDA 3

Windows into the Surreal “

5TH FLOOR

M

adder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word ‘genius’ is applied most often,” Time magazine wrote of its cover subject in 1934. Coco Chanel once dismissed her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” (To Schiaparelli, Chanel was simply “that milliner.”)

Indeed, Schiaparelli—“Schiap” to friends— stood out among her peers as a true nonconformist, using clothing as a medium to express her unique ideas.

In the thirties, her peak creative period, her salon overflowed with the wild, the whimsical, and even the ridiculous. Many of her madcap designs could be pulled off only by a woman of great substance and style:

Celebrating the surreal work of Elsa Schiaparelli Gold ruffles sprouted from the fingers of chameleon-green suede gloves; a pale-blue satin evening gown—modeled by Madame Crespi in Vogue—had a stiff overskirt of Rhodophane (a transparent, glasslike modern material); a smart black suit jacket had red lips for pockets. Handbags, in the form of music boxes, tinkled tunes like “Rose Marie, I Love You”; others fastened with padlocks.

Schiaparelli

BY Hamish Bowles Photocredit Portrait: Irving Penn

10 FALL 2013

PRODUCTS

NOKIA - 2520 Business partner $700 st

Y-3- Camouflage cape Warmths edge $760

Prune Nourry & JR Handing changing $720 st

Oliver Gal-”20x30” Crying paint $255 KAWS- 20”x 20” The child inside $800 t

Pharrell-Book Life’s journal $60 t

Drafting Table Drift all $265

Late Coffee Table Mornings back $600 st

Sony- 3D Home Theather System I-Max at home $700 st

Y-3 Honja High Foots armor $315 Diesel-Headheads Ears gear $250

PHAR RELL P “WHAT ABOUT AN AUDIOBOOK?”

INTER VIEW

harrell Williams asked, sitting at the head of a conference table at the Park Avenue South offices of Rizzoli as he looked at the nearly finished galleys for an October release called “Pharrell: Places and Spaces I’ve Been.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: TERRY RICHARDSON

SINGER-SONGWRITER, RAPPER, RECORD PRODUCER, FASHION DESIGNER, DRUMMER WITH MORE TO COME.

A

THEY HEARD HIM OUT

s he approaches 40, Mr. Williams, artist and superproducer, is having the opposite of a midlife career crisis. In addition to an ever-expanding roster of singers and songwriters with whom he collaborates (recent examples include Justin Bieber, Frank Ocean and Conor Maynard), his services are increasingly sought by corporations to remix their product designs. Since announcing in May that he is restructuring all of his creative endeavors under a single umbrella company, called I Am Other, Mr. Williams might as well have put out a “for hire” sign.

A luxury department store wants him to guest-curate its shoe department. Timberland wants him to make boots. A company in Pennsylvania wants him to promote boat covers using eco-friendly textiles produced by Bionic Yarn, yet another company in which he is a partner. He is pursuing deals, still in the exploratory stages, for dog leashes and maternity wear. He already makes bicycles with Brooklyn Machine Works that are almost entirely covered in leather. And on Monday, Us Weekly reported that Mr. Williams is in talks to join “American Idol” as a judge. “It amazes me that he has all of these broad interests, and fashion is just one of them,” said Kevin Harter, the men’s fashion director at Bloomingdale’s, which this month will introduce a high-end label from Mr. Williams called Bee Line, designed with Mark McNairy, the indie men’s-wear darling.

The products are great — camouflage jackets and streetwear with an amusing hunting motif — but what really sold Bloomingdale’s, Mr. Harter said, was the lack of any sense of boundaries as to what a celebrity-branded product could be. At one point, during the filming of a promotional video, Mr. Williams improbably put on a beekeeper’s hat. “I couldn’t believe he was letting us shoot this,” Mr. Harter said.

Perhaps the greatest asset demonstrated by Mr. Williams in music and fashion is the ability to look at a market and recognize what is not yet there, or, to put it another way, to championideas that are potentially great, even if at first they seem a little ... well, harebrained. An audiobook, per se, might not sell, but call it something else — an app with his music and commentary — and there was something worth thinking about.

During a week in July, he allowed a reporter to accompany him through a series of design and marketing meetings, with Timberland, Rizzoli, his fashion brands and Bionic Yarn (six in total), where he tossed out ideas as if they were Mardi Gras beads. How about hiking boots in offbeat shades of pink or orange? How about giving men, with every pair of shoes they buy, a free bottle of nail polish?

Hmm. Not every idea is going to work out.

At the West 56th Street offices of Timberland, Mr. Williams inspected a sample from their first collaboration, an army green boot that will be sold as part of the Bee Line collection next year. A six-inch-tall version will cost $250, about $100 more than a basic boot, but Mr. Williams has bigger plans. Pitching the company’s sales executives and designers, he suggested a version made from exotic skins, like ostrich or stingray, which might push prices above $2,000.

Andy Friedman, an account executive, delicately pointed out that the company, which promotes sustainable manufacturing, refuses to work with such materials because the tanning process can be harmful to the environment.

Mr. Williams suggested that the company make a sample anyway, just for him, to see how his fans react.

” ”

“We won’t compromise when it comes to our product,” Mr. Friedman said.

“Well, what do you have, outside of the cow family?” Mr. Williams asked. “Do you have goat?

When you watch Mr. Williams work, it is not unreasonable to wonder if he is spreading himself too thin, or even putting the value of the Pharrell brand at risk of overexposure.

Riding to the offices of his clothing collections in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, which is basically a luxury van outfitted with an office, a minibar and a rec room, he dismissed such a notion.

“I am overly ambitious, because I realize it can be done,” he said. “I don’t want to end up being a circus act, doing my most famous tricks when I’m 70.”

A focus of his expansion is the revival of Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream, the clothing labels that he started in 2003 with the Japanese designer Nigo, the creator of the cult streetwear label A Bathing Ape. At their peak, sales reached about $15 million, which is peanuts by celebrity-fashion standards.

”

”

I AM OVERLY AMBITIOUS, BECAUSE I REALIZE IT CAN BE DONE,

So last year, Mr. Williams signed a license with the Roc Apparel Group, the streetwear company founded in 1999 by Jay-Z and Damon Dash (and now part of the licensing company Iconix), a deal that has enabled him to lower prices.

Ice Cream is now a youth collection for action sports and will be sold at stores like Zumiez beginning next month. Women’s wear is on the horizon as well, with plans for a Billionaire Girls Club collection to be introduced next year.

At Roc Apparel, on the 39th floor of a garment center building, a half-dozen designers and sales executives were reviewing prototypes of the spring 2013 Billionaire Boys Club collection, which includes some experimental pieces that, resting on a hanger, looked less than appealing. Mr. Williams took off his black Tims, covered with his own hand-drawings of the Chanel logo on the right boot and toe bones on the left, and his red flannel shirt and his shorts and his T-shirt (all by B.B.C. on this occasion), stripping all the way down to a pair of camouflage print boxers and red socks. He tried on a pair of oversize jeans with ridiculously oversize patch pockets on both the front and back. The idea was for each pocket to be just big enough to hold a 40. A bottle of Olde English 800 was procured.

“You see, this is a denim story, and we are actually offering function to clubgoers,” Mr. Williams said, affixing a crystal-covered carabiner and a half-dozen fishing lures to a belt loop.

Skepticism about the jeans seemed to evaporate. They looked fabulous.

“He puts it on and everything works out,” Mr. Villepontoux said. “I don’t think he’s ever had a 40 in his entire life. I don’t think he’s even had a sip of beer.”

Mr. McNairy, a sort of grouchy fellow wearing a trucker hat (who was so not starstruck upon meeting Mr. Williams that Mr. Williams asked if he had said something wrong), had been opposed to the idea. But now that Mr. McNairy saw Mr. Williams wearing the jeans, he assented. “I like it,” he said.

At the end of the week, Mr. Williams met with Tyson Toussant, the founder of Bionic Yarn, which makes textiles using recycled plastic bottles, to discuss future projects. He was told that the company had just secured an order for boat covers, so Mr. Williams rattled off ideas for camouflage and leaf prints, and wondered aloud if they couldn’t design car covers as well. Perhaps a print of a wrecked car?

A manufacturer of tie-down straps, the kind used to secure objects to moving vehicles, wanted to discuss the possibility of creating a new line of dog leashes. He liked that idea, too.

Finally, a major denim label, which Mr. Toussant would not identify on the record, had approached the company about collaboratin

Q A

Q

”

LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION? HAS ANYONEOF MY PERSUASION EVER DONE ONE? NO. IT COULD CREATE A WAVE. with Mr. Williams but did not want to promote the Bionic Yarn fabric for fear of sounding nerdy.

Of course, Mr. Williams had an idea: a video showing skateboarders wearing the jeans with no mention of the fabric until the very end, with a simple image of a pair of jeans with the seven or eight plastic bottles used to make them.

“You don’t hear J.Crew talking about their cotton all day long,” he said. “Why should we talk about plastic?”

This brings us to the Pharrell philosophy that holds true whether we’re talking about jeans or a song.

“What we’ve got to do,” he said, “is make sure that all that the world sees is a great product that says OMG.”

A

”

DANIEL LIBESKIND H

as made a name for himself with major urban projects like the master plan for the World Trade Center site and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. But a growing part of his work involves design on a much smaller scale: furniture, building products, household accessories. He sees it as a natural extension of the architecture.

seeing the blend of Architecture and Nature

“Why just do the structure in the raw and then leave somebody to decorate it?” said Mr. Libeskind, 67.

“It’s a privilege to design at a small scale because it’s so intimate and so direct.”

While his head office in New York still focuses on the big stuff, part of his Milan office is now dedicated to designing “everything you need for a home,” he said, “or a place where you’re working.” So far, that includes things like door handles for Olivari, serving pieces for Alessi and a tub for Jacuzzi. Another recent project is the Paragon lamp for Artemide, a hinged task light that stands as straight as a skyscraper but can also curl down to illuminate something close up.

Over the years, Mr. Libeskind said, he has collected numerous designer lamps, and has come to the conclusion that a task light must meet two criteria. “First of all, it has to be something beautiful,” he said, “because it’s an object that sits on a table.” But it also has to be

functional, not only “in terms of the kind of light it throws,” he said, but also “how you change the light and how you move the lamp.”

In search of a few examples, Mr. Libeskind began at Foscarini, in SoHo, where he admired the Magneto, a lamp that uses a magnetic sphere to connect the head and the base, an arrangement that allows it to be positioned in various ways. “It’s never been done before,” Mr. Libeskind said, “and that’s one of the ways I judge design.”

It was also surprisingly functional. “This is almost like a flashlight,” he said, pulling the head off the base.

At Luceplan, he picked out the Mix lamp. “It’s interactive,” he said, experimenting with the flexible gooseneck. Also, he said, scrutinizing the serpentine form, “I like that it’s not completely familiar.”

At Flos, Mr. Libeskind went for a classic: the 1980 Gibigiana lamp by Achille Castiglioni, which uses a mirror to bounce light down to a work surface. “I like this reflective light,” he said, “and that the source isn’t visible.”

Another classic he liked was the 1954 Tripod desk lamp by Serge Mouille, from Design Within Reach.

Even after all these years, he said, its sculptural appeal still felt forward-looking. In fact, he speculated, “the designer of the space shuttle may have seen this lamp.”

20 FALL 2013

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whose fashion and portrait photographs helped define America’s image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century, died yesterday in a hospital in San Antonio. He was 81 and lived in Manhattan.

ve

The cause was complications of a cerebral hemorrhage suffered last Saturday, said his son, John. Mr. Avedon was in Texas on assignment for The New Yorker magazine, which hired him in 1992 as its first staff photographer. He had been working on a portfolio called “Democracy,’’

don

Some of his less controversial but nonetheless deeply insightful New Yorker portraits include those of Saul Bellow, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, John Kerry and Stephen Sondheim. His fashion photos at The New Yorker showed, if possible, even more edge, especially his pictorial essay in the November 1995 fashion issue.

It featured a human skeleton carrying on with elegant models.

His own archives also yielded visual treasures for the magazine, including portraits of Audrey Hepburn, W. H. Auden and Rudolf Nureyev’s foot.

Unlike his upbeat and glamorous fashion photography, Mr. Avedon’s portraiture chronicled a growing sense of disillusionment about the possibilities of American life and culture, especially after his optimistic years in the 50’s and early 60’s. From the start, his portraits seemed intent on peeling away the bright sheen of celebrity to reveal the ordinary, often insecure human being underneath, but in the 1970’s they became focused on the trials of aging and death.

In 1969 he photographed the antiwar movement, including the Chicago Seven during their raucous conspiracy trial. In 1976, America’s bicentennial year, working with the writer Renata Adler, he photographed 73 men and women in power for Rolling Stone magazine. Between 1978 and 1984 he produced a major body of portraits of people he believed were representative of the current spirit of the American West; his unhappy cast of ex-convicts, drifters, drinkers and others with hardluck stories led some observers to complain that he had become cynical and misanthropic.

Mr. Avedon’s mostly black-and-white photography was featured in a number of books and exhibition catalogues during his lifetime, including “Observations” (1959), with a text by Truman Capote; “Nothing Personal” (1964), with text by James Baldwin; and “Portraits” (1976), with an essay by the art critic Harold Rosenberg. His portraits from the West were published in the 1985 book “In the American West,” in conjunction with a traveling exhibition organized by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth.

A Record in Print A notorious stickler for precision in his photographic technique, Mr. Avedon long sought to control the organization and layout of his books and exhibitions, believing that the meaning of his images was in large part determined by their contexts, whether on the wall or in reproduction.

This was certainly apparent on the magazine page, where his pictures were characteristically distinctive and elegant. Although as a staff photographer at Harper’s Bazaar (19461965) and later at Vogue (1966-1970) he was somewhat at the mercy of the magazine’s fashion editors and art director, his photographs in reproduction virtually jump off the page with a signature brand of visual impact. He sought the same kind of stimulation in his exhibitions, creating prints that depicted their subjects larger than life-size, towering over the viewer.

Richard Avedon was born in New York City on May 15, 1923. His father, Jacob Israel, a second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrant, was the proprietor of Avedon’s Fifth Avenue, a Manhattan clothing store. His mother, Anna Avedon, came from a family that owned a dress manufacturing business. As a boy, Mr. Avedon avidly read fashion magazines and decorated the walls of his room with tear sheets of the fashion photographs he admired.

“One evening my father and I were walking down Fifth Avenue looking at the store windows,” he once told Newsweek. “In front of the Plaza Hotel, I saw a bald man with a camera posing a very beautiful woman against a tree. He lifted his head, adjusted her dress a little bit and took some photographs. Later, I saw the picture in Harper’s Bazaar. I didn’t understand why he’d taken her against that tree until I got to Paris a few years later: the tree in front of the Plaza had that same peeling bark you see all over the Champs-Elysees.’’

Mr. Avedon attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he and James Baldwin were co-editors of The Magpie, the school’s literary magazine. After a year at Columbia University he joined the Merchant assigned him to the photo section, where he learned photography, taking thousands of identification portraits of sailors.

INNOVATIVE FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY

20 FALL 2013

” ”

On leaving the Merchant Marine in 1944 he sought out Alexey Brodovitch, an influential designer and the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, and enrolled in his class at the New School for Social Research. In what was officially called the Design Laboratory, Mr. Brodovitch offered criticism and encouragement to photographers, graphic designers and illustrators, and on occasion provided them with paying assignments for the magazine.

Mr. Brodovitch and the 21-year-old Avedon formed an immediate and close bond; in 1945 Mr. Avedon’s photographs began appearing in Junior Bazaar and, a year later, in Bazaar itself. After being placed on the magazine’s payroll, he opened his own studio, which Mr. Brodovitch used as the off-campus home of his laboratory classes into the 1950’s. Mr. Brodovitch gave Mr. Avedon many plum assignments, including the privilege of covering the Paris spring and fall collections, much to the annoyance of the veteran staff photographers.

While Carmel Snow, the legendary editor of Harper’s Bazaar, covered the runway shows in Paris, Mr. Avedon had the more daunting task of arranging to photograph the new designer dresses as luxurious but wearable objects of desire. In 1954 he took his models to stereotypical French cafes, nighclubs and casinos, surrounding them with dinner-suited escorts. The following year he made fashion history by setting the couture-gowned models in the midst of a circus. The most memorable of those images, “Dovima With Elephants,” shows the most famous model of her day in an ankle-length Dior gown, standing in straw and holding the trunk of an elephant with one hand while gesturing toward another.

21 FALL 2013

I think all art is about control the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.

Mr. Avedon was encouraged by Mr. Brodovitch to break the boundaries of conventional fashion photography, mixing reality and fantasy with surrealist effect, and he soon learned to visualize his pictures in strictly graphic terms. At first he specialized in on-location scenes that included swirls and blurs of motion, in the manner of Munkacsi 10 years earlier.

His later adoption of a seamless white studio background for most of his fashion and portrait photography was at least partly inspired by Mr. Brodovitch’s characteristic use of “white space,” a means of making the subject seem suspended and weightless on the page.

Although Mr. Avedon made several attempts at photographing in the traditional documentary mode, including a number of street scenes taken on trips to Italy in 1946 and 1947 and a grainy series of images of patients at a Louisiana mental hospital in 1963, his significant contribution to photography’s documentary mode rests with his studio portrait style. In the studio he could isolate his subjects not only graphically but also psychologically, producing a convincing illusion of a direct confrontation between the person in the picture and the viewer.

Mr. Avedon’s deceptively simple portrait style was capable of a wide emotional range. He used it to glamorize some of the most beautiful women of the 20th century, including the models Dorian Leigh, her sister, Suzy Parker, and Jean Shrimpton; the actress Anna Magnani; and a young Jacqueline Kennedy on the eve of her husband’s inauguration as president..

But his portraits of such cultural figures as Ezra Pound, Charles Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Allen Ginsberg could be both sympathetic and moving. Clearly siding with the romantic posture of the alienated artist, Mr. Avedon could penetrate the carefully constructed image of someone like Monroe and present her as an apparently anguished individual caught up in a role that, like a dress a size too large,

1

Take the time to look at successful and unsuccessful campaigns in all disciplines before you start. Ask yourself who might invest in your idea and how you could interest them.

Your goal may be anything: a show, continued education, a new series of paintings, a travel opportunity, instructional materials or a book. Think creatively but realistically, envisioning the outcome. Analyze what would work for your project and what might cripple it.

Organize

2

Take the time to look at successful and unsuccessful campaigns in all disciplines before you start. Ask yourself who might invest in your idea and how you could interest them. Your goal may be anything: a show, continued education, a new series of paintings, a travel opportunity, instructional materials or a book. Think creatively but realistically, envisioning the outcome. Analyze what would work for your project and what might cripple it.

Communicate

3 4

Take the time to look at successful and unsuccessful campaigns in all disciplines before you start. Ask yourself who might invest in your idea and how you could interest them. Your goal may be anything: a show, continued education, a new series of paintings, a travel opportunity, instructional materials or a book. Think creatively but realistically, envisioning the outcome. Analyze what would work for your project and what might cripple it.

Follow Through

06 FALL 2013

CROWDFUNDING PRINCIPLES

How to Crowdfund Your Art Dream

Research

Take the time to look at successful and unsuccessful campaigns in all disciplines before you start. Ask yourself who might invest in your idea and how you could interest them. Your goal may be anything: a show, continued education, a new series of paintings, a travel opportunity, instructional materials or a book. Think creatively but realistically, envisioning the outcome. Analyze what would work for your project and what might cripple it.