Edouard Boubat: Peace Correspondent

Edouard Boubat

Edouard Boubat

Edouard Boubat

Edouard Boubat

Edouard Boubat

Edouard Boubat was born in Montmartre, Paris. He studied typography and graphic arts at the École Estienne and worked for a printing company before becoming a photographer. 

In 1943 he was subjected to service du travail obligatoire, forced labor of French people in Nazi Germany, and witnessed the horrors of World War II. 

He took his first photograph after the war in 1946 and was awarded the Kodak Prize the following year. He travelled the world for the French magazine Réalités, where his colleague was Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, and later worked as a freelance photographer. 

French poet Jacques Prévert called him a "peace correspondent" as he was humanist, apolitical and photographed uplifting subjects. His son Bernard Boubat is also a photographer.

Eero Aarnio: Ball Chair

Francoise Hardy in a Ball Chair

Eero Aarnio Ball Chair

The Prisoner in a Ball Chair

The iconic "Ball Chair" design, or "room within a room," which debuted at the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1966, featured a black interior that has now been rendered in bold red. 

Finnish designer Eero Aarnio developed this piece because he wanted a chair that was large enough to accommodate both him and his wife Pirkko. 

Experimenting with what was then a new innovation -- fiberglass -- Aarnio decided that a sphere was the right shape for the strong yet malleable material.

Organic Architecture: John Lautner, 1949 Schaffer Residence

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

John Lautner

The 1949 Schaffer Residence in the Verdugo Hills is probably best known now as the house from Tom Ford's great-looking movie, A Single Man. It's one of architect John Lautner's most understated designs, maybe, but it's also one of his most elegant. 

One of Lautner's early pieces, the house harkens back to a lot of Lautner's influences from when he was with Frank Lloyd Wright. 

The little shape of the kitchen was in much the shape of his tent that he had to design for himself when he was living at Taliesin West (FLLW's home and training grounds). For some critics it's one of the most resolved of his work, there's a lot of intricacy, but it all fits together in a sculptural manner that makes it not only a wonderful environment to live in, but what translates as a work of art as well.

Michael Pollan: How to Change Your Mind

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan has a new book out:

A brilliant and brave investigation by Michael Pollan, author of five New York Times best sellers, into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences 

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. 

But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. 

Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Number of Pages: 465

Spider Woman and Spider Rock

Joan Miro and his Constellations

Joan Miro

Joan Miro

Joan Miro

Joan Miro

Joan Miro

Joan Miro

In 1939, at the outbreak of the second world war, Miró and his family moved to Varengeville on the Normandy coast, a few miles from Dieppe. Georges Braque was a neighbor. The village was subject to a blackout, and that fact prompted Miro's most luminous and affecting series of paintings, "The Constellations." He explained their genesis in a letter to a friend -- "I had always enjoyed looking out of the windows at night and seeing the sky and the stars and the moon, but now we weren't allowed to do this any more, so I painted the windows blue and I took my brushes and paint, and that was the beginning of the 'Constellations.'" 

Painted on paper, the pictures create the most vibrant expression of Miró's inner universe, with its by now recognizable system of codes and symbols. 

On May 20th, with the advance of the German forces, he managed to get his wife and daughter on the last train for Paris, from where they miraculously found room on a train leaving for Spain. Miró had time to take nothing with him, except a roll of the starry paintings. 

The family got passage to Palma, Mallorca, where Miro had spent his childhood summers with his grandparents, and where, on August first, he resumed work after more than two months of escape. 

"The Constellations," which Miro completed in Barcelona, were among the first artistic documents to reach America after the war, and were exhibited in New York in 1945. 

Andre Breton, who saw them, talked of how at a "time of extreme perturbation" Miro had escaped into a realm of "the purest, the least changeable..."

Joan Miro on his "Constellations" series...