But it's all a scenography
after all
In this week’s newsletter we’ll dive into the theme of scenography, mostly on how the majority of well-crafted images are just the fruit of a great disposition of scenographic elements. Those elements are objects, walls, vectors or in most cases the characters involved in the scene: actors playing for the success of a narrative.
I don’t want to approach the theme in a sophisticated way (this is not a sophisticated newsletter), I want just to collect some examples that are worth investigate.
Given this premise, let’s start!
My name is Federico and welcome to Representations of Architecture #5.
Insights
This is one of the numerous drawings that swiss architect Adolphe Appia produced during his life. He designed some mystic scenographies that use the stair in a monumental and atmospheric way, with a special attention to how the light is conveyed and perceived. This drawing is interesting because depicts a scenography that was actually built for the Orpheus & Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck (you can find some photos online). Ross Anderson wrote widely on Appia’s work, for example in this great Drawing Matter article and in this AA Files book.
Gordon Cullen is one of my favorite draugthsmen of all time. In his 1961 book Townscape (revised and reduced in 1971 The Concise Townscape) he investigates the different features that the city offers to an average citizen. One of the best inputs that he gives is the concept of Serial Vision, a series of images that like a storyboard show how the city develops in front of our eyes. The perception (and subsequent satisfaction) that a space gives us is derived from the disposition of different depths that is possible to perceive. You can swipe the drawings in sequence directly from instagram or just read Cullen’s words from a page of The Concise Townscape at this link.
Very beautiful links
One of the things that I do in my spare time is lurking on artist’s personal profiles. I just browse their page until I get bored, opening all the links that they share. I discovered so many interesting things, and I also understood better their poetics and why they produced a specific image.
A couple of months ago I was lurking on Sarah Mazzetti’s facebook page (she is an italian illustrator that I really like) and I discovered a short film by Oscar Winner Zbig Rybczynski (just Zbig from now on). You can watch it here.
Down here another perfect short movie by Zbig:
These short movies brought to my mind other “domestic scenographies” that I will machine gun in your face in this series of links:
The futurist scenographies by Enrico Prampolini for the mute film Perfido Incanto:
The optic illusion of the Ames Room, reproduced and explained in this nice video:
The book Here by Richard McGuire. Here is probably one of the cornerstones of modern graphic novel. First published as a short story on the magazine RAW (by Maus’ Art Spiegelman), it was later revised by McGuire into a big and beautiful book published some years ago by Pantheon Books. We could say it is the story of a space through time. A room, always shot from the same perspective (fist and last image of the newsletter), is the scenography where characters interact. Years pass and characters grow and change, and the room does it too. Here is a visual experience that everyone should try.
You can find some preparatory sketches by McGuire, and the complete Here short story in this beautiful pdf by Five Dials.
IG pages
I like Sarah Mazzetti’s images because are the conjunction of a naive-soviet-poster aesthetic and an italian sensitivity. The characters are set in a tiny scenography: in this case were used just three levels of depth.
A Series of Rooms, curated by Bonell+Doriga, is probably one of the best pages that you can find in the endless feed of Instagram. They always present erudite references, mostly on the theme of the domestic space. If you want to feel a complete ignorant just scroll their page and discover insanely good images.
Misc
Looking at Zbig Tango short movie I also remembered a nice stop-motion video that a friend showed me 6 years ago. Lost into YouTube I searched for the openings of one of my top 10 (at least) tv series. It is called Kidding and here for you some flash infos: Jim Carrey plays the main character Mr. Pickles. Michel Gondry is involved in the project. Just 2 marvellous seasons. A cameo of Tyler The Creator. Sad story with puppets. What else could you ask? Here all the openings (maybe don’t watch them all, there could be spoilers):
This week’s newsletter is over: #5 is gone.
I wanted to leave you with a quote by Cullen with a little hint to one of the next newsletters, but I started thinking about Jim Carrey and his story. I thought about Man on the Moon, Jim & Andy and obviously Kidding. There are a lot of quotes by Carrey, but I will let you discover them by yourself.
Ciao!
Federico