Lilac Memories

An early intuition



I was struck by this beautiful stone house late last spring. There were a lot of contrasts that attracted me: the light grey walls with the dark outlines around the windows, the lilac bush's spontaneity and curvature alongside the rigid architecture of the building, the swirls under the balconies contrasted with the railings. Besides, it looked like a great study on dark charcoal drawing against a more colorful pastel palette.

After taking numerous photos, at various angles, I managed to come up with this cropping that seemed to work.



Here is the end result.



Yet, this year, while I walked along the street (Gerrard Street, just blocks away from Yonge), I came to this shocking discovery! The house was being demolished. And the beautiful lilac trees were gone.



I guess you can call it an early intuition. But, I'm very glad I took the time to make some kind of recorded memory of this understatedly beautiful house and its lovely lilac trees.

Makes one wonder though, who gets to decide which building stays, and which one goes. I assume that the empty space will soon be filled by a bland high rise.

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What's in a Logo?

When Diversity Weakens Design

There are many immigrant services agencies around Toronto. One of the most famous is an organization called COSTI. It was originally founded in the 1950s for Italian immigrants, mostly to help them with trades-related employment.

It has since grown to accommodate any current immigrant that enters Toronto.

Recently, the organization updated its website, and even changed its logo.


Original COSTI logo

Its original logo, obviously meant to represent the colors of the Italian flag, was much more dynamic and effective. It had three colors (red, green and usually a tan background rather than pure white), and a subtle symbolism with the red line indicating some kind of path into the horizon, leading the new immigrant straight into their new society. Its colors, concepts and message was more diverse.


New COSTI logo

The new logo has a two color scheme: a bland white background and an indeterminate (is it green, turquoise or blue?) logo. Thin, awkward lines resembling the skeleton of a not very stable umbrella embrace the diversity that COSTI is now meant to represent. Rather than indicating a path of integration as the original red line seems to imply, this broken skeleton of an umbrella suggests instead that these diverse newcomers remain under a separate, unified ghetto, rather than seek the manifold opportunities of an open society.

Diversity, in this case, means a badly designed logo, a paucity of colors and mixed (or even incompatible – for the new immigrant) messages. Diversity becomes enclosure - a lack of diveristy.

The proud Italians at least understood that their bold colors would get them into their new society. Whereas this new diversity seems to prefer that its members remain in the bland, broken and unstable boundaries of its own making.

My humble advice to COSTI would have been: do not change the logo. The Italians have left a mark in Toronto. Their success can only serve as a role model for future immigrants. Just the bold confidence of the original logo's design would have conveyed that!

But, I'm afraid in these days of diluted diversity, COSTI deliberately sought just the kind of logo they got.

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The Global Runway Part 2

Wrinkles, Straps and Short Hemlines

Vera Wang is the most famous wedding dress designer out there.

And once again, the informal wins the day in her Spring 2006 Wedding collection.

Compared to Amsale's serious formality, Wang seems to revert back to the dishevelled, rebel adolescent.

Surprisingly, her best cut wedding dresses are the short ones. But she is just following a certain juvenile tendency exhibited by many top designers these days.

Of course, designers don’t come out of the blue, they have to cater to their clientele. Yet, I can’t help but believe that people will follow the choices designers make, rather than dictate how these designers should design.

Designing is a big responsibility. Which requires a strong mind, and an even stronger principle.

Some Vera Wang examples:

Straps and lace;Wrinkles and uneven hemlines. Radical statements.

And her best designs also come incomplete - in length!

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The Global Runway Part 1

Formality and Culture

One of the most formal events of anyone's life is one's wedding. So, it seems hardly surprising that (Ethiopian) American fashion designer Amsale chose to design wedding dresses.

Amsale's Christian, formalized background, I would argue, led her to pursue one of the most formal clothings of all.

At her wedding, a girl is finally a woman. She leaves her parents' home to start her own. And will soon have her own children with whom she must interact as a fully matured adult.

Although, in Christian households, there is a hierarchy of adults, the woman is still the head of the internal runnings of the household, and the behavior and upbringing of the children. She cannot afford to regress into the child she was at her parents’ home.

That is the ideal, in any case.

So, the wedding dress expresses this ideal. It shows a formal and aesthetic acceptance of the woman's adulthood and womanhood at a most important turning point in her life.

Amsale captures this beautifully.

Almost all of her designs are exquisitely formal. Her choice of the stiffer satin rather than the formless silk, her clinching of the waist, her emphasis on clean, straight lines, and above all a mature femininity of beautiful lacework, show her innate understanding of this unique moment in a woman’s life.

I’m not surprised that Amsale has so far stuck with designing bridal wear, rather than branching out into other clothing lines

Until she has mastered her trade to the level of the formal designer greats like Valentino, she is better off keeping out of the limelight which might force her to compromise her style for the running market.

At least, that would be my advice to her.



Amsale's ivory-toned wedding gowns

(click on image to see larger version)

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Beauty in the Alleyways

Albert Franck's Toronto Scenes


Sunday Morning

Here is a lovely Albert Franck scene of the back alleys of Toronto. Although this one was painted in 1965, I see exactly the same scene in today's Toronto.

For a northern city, which is associated with drab weather and even drabber colors, these town houses and alleyways exemplify the colorful and haphazard Toronto that is really underneath it all.

Talking of snow, almost all of Franck's paintings are done in the nostalgic light and colors of deep winter.

And, yes, we do get to miss it when it isn't there!

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Interior and Exterior

Rembrandt's Jan Six Writing


Rembrandt has drawn several portraits of Jan Six next to an open window, often engrossed in some activity, as his writing above. It seems that Jan Six has that rare quality of being an outdoor’s man, with introspective sensitivities.

In this drawing, there is the sense of interiors and exteriors which he captures both with the actual subject of the drawing (Jan Six Writing), and with the formal composition.

The beautiful landscape which we glimpse through the open window suggests that Jan Six is engaged in some kind of mesmerizing world of his imagination while writing this letter. Who is it to, we ask; what is it about, is Jan Six longing for something, an encounter with someone, who resembles the beauty of this exterior landscape?

Now, to the composition of the drawing.

There are many "squares" in the picture: the square of the table, the square of the window, the square of the window shade, and the square of the letter.

Jan Six, as the protagonist of the drawing, shows us his importance by round hat he's wearing (who wears a hat indoors, to write a letter?). But, we know from this round hat, different from all the squares, that he's the focus of the attention.

The squared, flat table, on which sits the squared letter, mimics the squared vertical window opening.

From this we make the association that the inner world on the table and the letter, is linked with the outer world of the countryside by these converging squares.

Rembrandt draws an abstract picture (of squares and circles) to unite an emotional and visual one to build our imagination around a small, intimate story about a young man writing a letter.

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Phantasm and Phantasy

Poggolio on the Avant-Garde Disconnect with Society

Renaot Poggolio, a theorist on the avant-garde, comes to the same conclusions I that did that Canadian avant-garde filmmakers end up by converting reality into phantasm.

Poggolio (an Italian critic, which is an important qualifier in that the Italian avant-gardists played an important role in the dissemination of the art) quotes a social critic, Christopher Coudwell:

…a dissolution of …social values…results in the art work’s ceasing to be an art work and becomes mere private phantasy.

He sees the popularity of Shakespeare as the positive end of individualism, whereas the avant-garde pushed this individualism to such an extreme that it caused the disintegration of art instead.

Somehow, Shakespeare was able to include society into his eccentricities, and the avant-garde just resorted to phantasm and phantasy.

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