The Strange Case of Peter Doig: Art, Lies, and LSD

In the mid-1970s, while taking classes at Thunder Bay’s Lakehead University, an Ontario correctional officer met a runaway Scottish teenager, who had recently left his family in Montreal to find work with a gas drilling company. The youth stopped going to class and found himself at the Thunder Bay Correctional Center for a five-month stay on charges of LSD possession. While interned, he took classes in the center’s fine arts educational program; the same officer, Michael Fletcher, noticed the teenager working on a Surrealist-inspired desert landscape painting, and helped the young expat apply for parole, with Fletcher himself taking on parole officer duties. Inspired to support the youth and see his talents developed, Fletcher bought the then completed 34” by 41” canvas for $100 and found him a job through the Seafarers Union in Thunder Bay. The teenager, Peter Doig, headed off to art school in London in 1979 and would eventually become “Europe’s most expensive artist” (as billed by the Daily Mail), selling a painting this past February for £7.8 million ($12 million)….*Click Photo to Continue Reading*

NEW YORK — How many ways can you reinvent the sofa? That’s the annual conundrum for designers and manufacturers in anticipation of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the industry’s essential stateside trade show. For the 25th year, the ICFF arrived in New York this weekend to serve as a stage for new collections. Touring the behemoth-sized Javits Center, we found plenty of new colorways, patterns, and materials for the forms we recall from ICFFs past. We also found, however, that the only designers with something truly new to offer had identified uniquely modern-day problems — specific cultural controversies, emerging technologies, evolving social practices — and responded to them, without any trendy gimmicks, sparkles, or smoke and mirrors….*Click Image to Continue*

Creatures of the Wind: A Brief History of Long Fashion Names 

The Design Writers’ Wishlist: 3 Gems From the ICFF We’d Like to Go Home With

Newcomers to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair could best describe the gargantuan annual trade show as the design world’s fashion week. It’s got booths instead of runways and lasts four days instead of 10, but in many respects, it’s the same party, different crowd. The ICFF swept through New York for the 25th time this weekend with its satellite fairs, furniture fanatics, and cocktail hours in tow, providing the stage for thousands of new designs to make their global debut. And while it’s the innovators that help keep the ICFF relevant, on a purely human level (just as in fashion), it’s the shiny, pretty, comfortable things you want to take home with you. Here are just three of the pieces we fell in love with this weekend….* Click Photo to Continue* 

“Pom & Me” by Takashi Murakami at Art Basel Hong Kong

HONG KONG — The doors to the VIP viewing of Art Basel Hong Kong opened May 22 after an early rainstorm that was followed by persistent drizzle. Amid the gloomy weather, the four-day fair started on a cautious note, with sales during the first few hours led by big-name international artists….*Click Image to Continue Reading*

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Worcester Art Museum Offers Unusual Promotion For Bob Dylan’s 72nd Birthday 

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Riviera Rev: Raf Simons’s Extraordinary Cruise 2014 Collection for Christian Dior

“The After Revolution” Highlights Tunisian Art in the Wake of Arab Spring

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