This is artist Donald Judd’s loft in Soho, maintained as a museum but only open infrequently. It was one of the first artist’s lofts in Soho – not to mention in New York – and is now almost the paradigmatic example of loft living. Judd bought the entire 1870’s industrial building for 70,000 in 1968 and moved in with his family. One of the central figures in minimalist art, Judd clearly lived his own aesthetic. His interest in industrial materials and engineering methods is evident here in the lack of any attempt to domesticate the space as well as in the simple, unadorned furniture he built for it. The NYT ran an article a while ago which included an interview with Judd’s son Flavin, who was 6 months old when he moved into this loft and who nostalgically described the Soho of the 60s and 70s as a small town smelling fragrantly of the cigars manufactured nearby. These days there’s a certain huffiness out there about modernism and minimalism’s supposed kid-unfriendliness, but Flavin Judd remembers this space – ground zero of minimalism – happily and even nostalgically (there’s a small image of the Judds at home, below). “There were “the best Swedish breakfasts on the second floor — 50 people would come over — ham, cheese, weird flatbreads, salmon,” Flavin Judd said. “It was a great place to grow up.” To read the whole story, which includes information on the heritage restoration of the whole building, see the NYT. See also this blog’s previous post on minimalism.vs. maximalism in interiors. There’s a good shot of the a reproduction of Judd’s famous daybed on AT , and lastly, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change by Sharon Zukin provides a really fascinating portrait and social history of artist’s lofts, including 101 Spring Street. According to the Judd Foundation website, tours of the Spring St. building and loft are suspended during restoration but will start up again in 2010.

Photos from the NYT and from DiscoContinental on Flickr. Take a fun quiz (is it a Judd or a piece of cheap furniture?) here.

See all Joo Youn Paek’s inventions here. Yes, they’re functional: as art.

Swiss artist Felice Varini applies these geometric “perspective-localized” paintings to rooms and other architectural surfaces. Varini’s perspectival installations are interesting in that they project visually compelling geometric shapes onto architectural spaces but the shapes are only seen in their perfect geometric form from a single, specific vantage point. When you step away from that place, the image becomes fractured or distorted. The social implications of this idea seem pretty inescapable – there is a single, privileged point of view where the geometry lines up; for anyone else, the image is a jumble – pleasing, but strangely random. Quite apart from the conceptual elements, these are beautiful from any angle -not to mention nerd-pleasing. For more images, go to Felice Varini’s site. The only disappointment with his site is how seldom you get to see the “broken” image, which makes you wonder how committed he is to the flip side of the experience.

Our friend Germaine Koh was recently part of “Untethered,” a show at New York’s Eyebeam described by curator Sarah Cook as “a sculpture garden of everyday objects deprogrammed of their original function, embedded with new intelligence and transformed into surrealist and surprising readymades.” Germaine installed a water sensor at the nearby Hudson River, causing a velvet rope on stanchions to rise and fall in the exhibition space. The drama, a subtle one, thus somehow takes place in the lobby rather than the theatre. Interestingly, the river unexpectedly flooded on the night of the opening. We recently featured another piece from this show: Dead Star, an ovoid planet constructed entirely of dead batteries.

From we make money not art.

“Shooting Kitty” from CNET. This AR-15 rifle was decorated with “Hello Kitty” and Japanese flowers by a California rifle enthusiast, for his wife, and has now been nicknamed the HK-47. Weapons are increasingly being disguised as toys for even scarier reasons – see story on handguns and semi-automatic weapons painted in feminine or childlike schemes here. This is where life imitates conceptual art…

Shown above is an art installation titled The Weather Project by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, installed in the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern in London in 2003. A representation of the sun and the sky, the installation involved a semi-circular disc made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps emitting yellow light, a mist of sugar water created with dehumidifiers, and a huge mirror which covered the ceiling and reflected visitors back on themselves. In 1998-99 Eliasson dyed streams green to track the flow of water for his Green River Project. He’s known for combining elements of architecture, design and science to explore natural phenomena as light and water and encourages viewers to reflect upon their perception of the physical world and on the act of ’seeing yourself sensing.’ He was born in Copenhagen and now lives in Berlin. He dislikes talking about the biographical details of his life and is very private, but he has never managed to suppress the pleasing fact that he was the breakdancing champion of Scandinavia in his teens.