More food for fodder: Fall Colors Month. When we visited LA two weeks ago, we were taken to dinner at MiniBar Lounge, a trendy little hotspot outside Studio City. We looked for stars. Wine was served in tiny little tumblers. And the decor was far out. The two main walls were black with white discs mounted, creating a powerful graphic effect that made your eyes swim after a few drinks.
On the other walls were some very trippy paintings by Margaret Keane, who was a 70's art star with her "big eyes" paintings (but is a very long story with dramatic intrigue).
I think you make a great point here, showing that INTENTIONAL use of black and white make them "colors" (I mean, of course they are colors...).
But I think we've all seen instances where white was *selected* and other places where white just *was*.
I always cite Apple's iPod as a "designed white" as opposed to looking like they ran out of money before they could apply color.
That picture raises a question I've been thinking about . . . what happens when you put a blue wall next to a red wall?
I'm thinking of a blue ceiling (Tiffany box blue, but a little deeper perhaps) next to a deep red wall. There's a fair amount of natural light in the room, and the windows have a warm old wood wide molding. It's just a slip of wall between the windows that is red, but I can't quite imagine the reflected light issues raised by the blue. The floor is very dark (although if the ceiling doesn't go blue, the floor just might.)
THX!
I like the discs on the wall. I put up a similar disc series on my blah-white-I'm-not-allowed-to-paint-over apartment wall. The real designers would probably cringe at my version - I tried to go with materials at hand and cut my discs from the large sides of cat little box card board (the box the litter comes in - not the one the cat goes in!). A little gesso, a little paint or wonderfully textured paper or fabric, and - tada! - decor discs for the wall! I'm toying with the idea of doing a sepia toned series of them with enlarged old family photos transferred on them -we'll see.
make that "cat litter" box cardboard - not "cat little" (clearly I've eaten far too much pre-Halloween candy at work today!)
Gosh, this place is 2 miles from my office and I've never even heard of it! I clicked through to their site to look at more interior shots. Had a big chuckle at pics of their "Treehouse" banquet room. I have the exact same "forest" photo-collage wallpaper in my bedroom. And it's on purpose. Really.
I've always loved the way "Studio City" sounds.
i clicked on the margaret keane link & saw more of those "big eyes" pieces--umm, not my cup of tea at all. kind of a weird hybrid of precious & creepy, & very 70's to boot.
To further prove that I am indeed a geek, I will fess up to the fact that all through college (early to mid 80s)--I collected a lot of "thrift store art", some of them Keanes. Had an entire wall of Keanes, waifs, clowns, large-eyed puppies and kitties, faux-cubist still lifes in the living room. And about a dozen black velvet framed "paintings" (70s African American Kama Sutra imagery, multiple Elvises, and ridiculous op-art daisies) under a blacklight--in my bathroom. (Ugh. And I wore black. And vintage. All the time.) But, in my defense, I did have a great entertaining space--for college student anyway.
And THIS is why NO ONE should EVER listen to my design advice.
enrique--yikes! you HAVE come a long way, haven't you? though i have to say, there's nothing wrong at all w/ wearing black; i don't care what the fashionistas say (and they always come back to it in the end anyway).
"kind of a weird hybrid of precious & creepy, & very 70's to boot"
sounds like some of my friends + i
(glad to see M. Keane make a splash in the new century, kind of like The Cure).
Keene was more '50s I thought--I remember my cheesy neighborhood ballet school had them in the sixties, and they were old then. Sooo creepy. Funny to think of people fighting over authorship of this hideous stuff.