Carry the world's greatest art collection around in your pocket with MoMA's iPhone app

New York's Museum of Modern Art launched a new iPhone app yesterday and being the art fanatic I am, I downloaded it immediately.

I was not disappointed and am left pining for my next trip to Manhattan.

The app opens with a calendar. It's updated with the day's events at the museum, you can see upcoming events, preview the current exhibitions, see the current film schedule and get information on museum programs.

There's a separate tab for tours. Under Tours, you can browse the museum by floor and listen to a variety of museum-specific audio, including the full audio tour.

Under the Art tab you'll find the museum's entire collection, all cataloged and cross referenced. It's in this extensive catalog that you'll find everything, and I mean everything, that MoMA holds; whether it's on display or not.

In thumbing through it, I found some of my favorites works in that museum with no difficulty. If you ever want to see me reduced to a puddle of giddy, weepy awe, stand me in this museums galleries in front of any of these paintings.

First up is van Gogh's The Starry Night. He completed it in 1889 and it's his recollection of his view from the window of a sanitarium. To stand a few feet away from this painting allows a viewer to see the full fury and passion of van Gogh's painting technique. I swear, the paint's slathered on in layers that appear to be inches thick. I cannot look at this painting and not see the man Vincent van Gogh in all his broken glory.

Mark Rothko's another perennial favorite of mine, he's probably my favorite painter of the 20th Century. His No. 10 knocks me over for reasons I can't quite describe. I understand what he's doing and I can feel his mind working through this painting. But just barely. He gives me just enough to keep me wondering but never lets me in fully. I find his paintings mesmerizing.

Paul Cézanne's The Bather from 1885 is another one that rocks my world. I say the subject of this painting is the first real anti-hero in western art. He's in a classical pose but this man is no classical beauty. It's his plain-ness and everyman quality that makes this painting so modern. In 1885 this painting was a shock to the art world. Nobody glorified the non-heroic. The industrial revolution was ramping up and humanity was going to conquer all. There was no room in the popular psyche for a wan man in a desolate landscape.

Sorry to go all art school on you, but this is a great app. Go download it here and carry around the world's greatest art collection.

Where in the world is this suburb?

My post about American-style suburbia in Melbourne, Australia yesterday sent me on a wild search across the internet. I was on a quest to find similar developments around the world and I found them in spades. I don't know whether to be happy that for a lot of people in the developing world life's getting better. Or whether I should cry at the sheer waste of it. I decided that it's really not my place to do either but it does make me scratch my head. So since I found some really surprising images from all over, I thought it might be fun to show you guys a bunch of these homes and have people guess where in the world they might be.

All of these homes are less than ten years old and most of them came from Real Estate Worldwide.

The answers are at the bottom of this post.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

1. Accra, Ghana
2. Beijing, China
3. Koprivnica, Croatia
4. Lagos, Nigeria
5. Moscow, Russia
6. Nairobi, Kenya
7. Varna, Bulgaria
8. New Dehli, India
9. Sanok, Poland
10. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
11. Slobozia, Moldova
12. Tallinn, Estonia

How many did you get right? Any? Is this sort of thing surprising? Thanks for playing this game of Where in the World is this Suburb? One final question though: is this sort of development in the developing world a good thing or a bad thing?

American design in Melbourne

Reader Elisabeth from Melbourne responded to my question about how American design shows up abroad this morning with a link to an Australian company called American Homes. From what I can gather, American Homes sells house plans in the "American" style to Australian homeowners.

When I think of Melbourne, I think of historic structures like this one from Wikimedia:

When I think of new construction in Melbourne, I think of this home from FindNew.com.au.

Maybe I'm naive and have a stilted view of Australian housing, but what American Homes is selling is a slice of the Atlanta suburbs. Check these out:

Ugh. Those things look bad enough in an American suburb but they must seem really out of place in suburban Melbourne. Australians and anybody else, is that accurate? Elisabeth and her fellow Australians, do people really buy homes like this? Do these "American" style homes have a popularity anywhere else in the world? Let's hear from all over!

All in Good Food, a new chef's blog from GE Monogram

GE Monogram has two full-time chefs and the rule over the kitchen at GE Monogram's Experience Center in Louisville, KY. Chefs Joe Castro and Brian Logsdon have been working together for more than ten years, first at a Lousiville fine dining restaurant and now at the Monogram Experience center. They're as entertaining as they are accomplished chefs and I'm thrilled to see that GE Monogram's given them their own spot on the internet.

The blog launched a few weeks ago and they've been adding content steadily. The site looks fantastic, it's easy to navigate and it's brimming with great ideas and recipes. There's even a story by me.

So pop on over and give Joe and Brain a warm welcome to the blogosphere. They have a pizza dough recipe that rivals mine in its simplicity and if it's anything like the na'an recipe I got from them last summer, it will put mine to shame. All in Good Food can be found here.

Italian bath design, is it what people think it is?

This is a Roman toilet. As in Ancient Roman.

And this is what just about every bathroom I've ever been in in Italy looks like.

Italian culture has been perfecting the art of indoor plumbing for thousands of years and they have it down to both an art and a science. From what I've seen, bath design in Italy is a matter of efficiency, hygiene and speed. I find a lot to admire in how they go about designing bathrooms.

But when I'm in the US and I go looking for Italian bath components, I find anything but the efficiency I so admire in Italy.

Check out this combo from Hidra:

Here's another one, a little more sedate and also from Hidra:

Or how about this one from Simas:

Here's a sink-bidet-toilet combination from Axa-Moss:

Here's another sink-toilet-bidet combo, this time from Ceramica Cielo:

Somewhere I can hear the voice of a young Haley Mills, "Father, I must have a pony..."

So if this is how Italian Sanitary ware shows up for the rest of the world, why doesn't it look like that in Italy? I've asked this question about Italian kitchen design before and I'm asking it again because I didn't get a satisfying enough answer.

Is Italian design just for export? Or do they keep it to themselves and leave the pedestrian stuff for American visitors (never a tourist here!). Do all countries do that?

To all my non-US people, how does American design show up where you are?

What is the state of Italian bath design anyhow? Is it somewhere in the wall-mounted wonders from Hidra or is my vacation picture more like it?