formless – Dubuffet and hylography

Last year Paul Noble and I explored his remarkable world of Nobson New Town [Link]. Our conversation became [In Parenthesis] a kind of inventory or dictionary of topics in the way that form emerges in Paul’s drawing [Link] Here’s one of my initial reactions [Link]: In Nobson, buildings and structures give form to letters; things…

Ruth Tringham, performance and creative confidence

Over twenty years ago I was in Paris as a Fellow of the Maison des sciences de l’homme at the Centre d’archéologie classique and the Centre Louis Gernet (Alain Schnapp, François Lissarague and colleagues), combining the connoisseurship of ancient Corinthian ceramics with my discovery of French anthropology of science and technology (Bruno Latour, Pierre Lemonnier,…

Tom Matano on timeless design

Our Revs Program class on judging the historical significance of artifacts – cars – is in flow [Link] This afternoon we were joined by Tom Matano – designer of the Mazda Miata and the RX 7 – two timeless classics. And this was his subject – what makes design “timeless”? For Tom it comes down…

car collection – changing agendas

This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link] Here are Sara Heppner-Waldston’s wonderful graphic recordings of the talks and conversations. Sketches of a paradigm shift in the world of car…

the automobile as document

This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link] The skill set of the sophisticated collector Miles Collier took us round some of the cars in the collection of the Revs…