Black and White: Beyond The Color Spectrum opens on May 2 and runs through August 4, 2002 at The Design Center at Philadelphia University. The show, curated by Design Center Director Hilary Jay and New York-based designer Steven Guarnaccia, is a visually enticing exploration of polar opposites and ancient paradigms. It spins the world into cut-and-dried terms: good and evil, light and dark, life and death. Luck and fate show their hands in vintage dartboards, dominoes, dice and Crazy 8 balls.
Life and death make their mark with eye charts and x-rays, skeletons and sonograms, christening gowns and pistol range charts.
Black and White is a cultural exposé featuring hundreds of items from an array of categories: haute couture, high kitsch, fine textiles, period film clips, contemporary costumes, antique tschotckes, vintage photographs and 21st century design.
The inspiration for the show comes from Black & White, a new book of graphic and written essays by illustrator Steven Guarnaccia and designer Susan Hochbaum. (Chronicle Books, May 2002, $16.95.) Steven Guarnaccia’s illustrations frequent the pages of Playboy, the New York Times and Abitare. He is author of over a dozen books including Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Tale Moderne, published in April 2000 by Harry N. Abrams. In his spare time, Guarnaccia has consulted for Hallmark, Inc, created greetings cards for the Museum of Modern Art, and designed clothing and watches for Swatch. His wife, Susan Hochbaum, is a graphic designer specializing in corporate communications, books and packaging design.
Black & White: Beyond The Color Spectrum opens with a public reception on Thursday, May 2, 5:30 – 8pm. Everyone is welcome, free-of-charge.
“In some unexamined but authentic sense, the tones of black and white are the tones of truth and reality.” Christopher Hitchens
Pool, poker, a game of craps: these are the playground of the devil, and the outcome of a game of any one of them, especially a saloon in the badlands, could be a matter of life and death.
Even with the advent of color printed pages, black and white remains the color of the news, in all its quotidian sobriety. It’s also the team colors of high society, of tuxedoed affairs, of luxury on a transatlantic liner and of metropolitan fantasy, thirty floors up in a Gotham penthouse suite.
Which is good and which is evil? The bad guys in cowboy movies wear the black hats, but the Ku Klux Klan prefer white hoods to symbolize their brotherhood.
The first dartboard is believed to have been a section of tree trunk hung on a tavern wall by medieval archers. The tree rings evolved into the circles of the modern board.
“To call a spade a spade” dates to 1542 and refers to English common sense.
In 1927, Vogue proclaimed that “the smartest clothes for spring and summer are all white or all black.” (Things haven’t changed much in 75 years.)
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The Design Center is committed to investigating the uses, effects and meanings of design in our everyday lives. Through research, collecting, exhibitions, community outreach, The Design Center seeks to foster meaningful conversations concerning the impact of design on community, our health and our welfare. To achieve these goals, The Center places particular emphasis on school-age children and college students as potential catalysts for responsive design in the 21st century. In addition to its programs, The Design Center houses a nationally recognized collection of textiles, costumes, accessories and fabric swatches that is available for use by scholars and researchers from industry.