Elaine Mae Woo, the director of Frosted Yellow Willows (2007), a documentary about the career of Anna May Wong, visited Melbourne last week for the Anna May Wong retrospective at ACMI. Pictured are moderator Philipa Hawker (above, left), Elaine and myself on stage following the screening of Frosted Yellow Willows on Thursday night at ACMI. Elaine and I spoke about Anna May Wong at the Chinese Museum on Saturday afternoon (below), and then I introduced Shanghai Express (1932), one of Wong’s best and most memorable films, at ACMI on Saturday night.
Dominick Dunne and the grave of his daughter Dominique at Pierce Brothers cemetery in Los Angeles. Dominique’s tragic murder started Dominick’s second career as a ‘celebrity’ crime reporter and a crime fiction author.
I’ve designed a couple of brick walls for the apprentice bricklayers at Holmesglen TAFE to build. One is based on eating a vanilla slice and the other is based on Tintin’s rocket in Destination Moon by Hergé.
Apprentice bricklayer Brett who built the Vanilla Slice Wall
Students in my Popular Art, Architecture and Design class also designed some brick walls for the bricklaying apprentices at Holmesglen to build. Here is a small sample of them:
James Bond Wall—Brendon Pope
Abbey Road Wall—Mohamad Khalid
Super Mario Wall—Ai Ci Lo
Scary Wall—Joanne Nataprawira
Music Wall—Melika Mehdizadeh
Red Violin—Melika Mehdizadeh
The Joker/Heath Ledger Wall—Sandalie Seneviratne
Gift-Box Wall—Takuya Matatsumoto
Michael Jackson’s Feet—Kathryn Ko
Hitting a Brick Wall—Georgie Stokes
Optical Illusion—Marc Cheeng Ming Ern
Last week I spoke at the St. Kilda Historical Society’s ‘Memories of St Moritz’ evening at the St. Kilda Public Library. The St. Moritz ice skating rink was a famous St. Kilda landmark. However, the building was originally a dance hall called the Wattle Path Palais De Danse, which was designed by Arthur Purnell in 1923. Purnell’s initial design (the first and second images) was influenced by Islamic architecture, which I prefer to his final design (the third image and the model). Nevertheless, it was yet another iconic Purnell building.
Purnell’s 1924 sketch of Barlow Motors, 20 – 28 LaTrobe Street, Melbourne.
Newspaper advertisement of 1927 for Barlow Motors.
One of the most colourful clients of Melbourne architect Arthur Purnell (1878 – 1964) was Alexander George Barlow (1880 – 1937), a highly innovative—if slightly shady—businessman, who was a pioneer of the car retail industry in Melbourne. After his new car dealership Barlow Motors failed in 1930 during the Great Depression, he leased the Lower Melbourne Town Hall and installed a miniature golf course. Alas, this business went bust too. When things finally got too much in 1937, tragically Barlow killed himself. A.G. Barlow’s son Alexander (‘Alec’) Arthur Barlow (b. 1908) worked for Barlow Motors. In 1926 the company sponsored him and the Australian adventurer Frances Birtles to drive a Bean sports car from Darwin to Melbourne in the shortest possible time. They completed the 3391-mile journey in 205 hours, with many adventures along the way. If that wasn’t enough, Alec Barlow was also an aviator. In 1929 he crashed his plane on its maiden flight and then matter-of-factly bought a new plane a fortnight later.
This past semester at the University of Melbourne, where I teach, I asked a group of third year architecture students to imagine that A.G. Barlow and A.A. Barlow were alive today and needed a new building for Barlow Motors—consisting of a car showroom, a car service centre, a car park, a ‘bachelor’s apartment’ for A.A. Barlow, and a rooftop miniature golf course—which reflected the adventurous spirit of the Barlows. Since the types of cars sold by Barlow Motors no longer exist, the students had to choose a current brand for the company to sell. Following is a sample of the students’ buildings:
Designed by Samuel Liew.
Designed by Gabriella Muto.
Designed by Muhamad Firadaus Khazis Ismail.
Designed by Jason Ma.
Designed by Robert Smith.
Designed by Yong Hui Ying.
Designed by Rivkah Stanton.
Designed by Michael Collins.
Designed by Roselyn Tan.
Designed by Sheldon Williamson.
Designed by Andrew Jenner.
Designed by Wei Ren Choo.
Designed by Nick Robinson.
Following is the front cover for my next book, Victims and Villains: Barbie and Ken Meet Sherlock Holmes, and the text for the back cover. It will be published by Ramble House (www.ramblehouse.com) later this year.
BARBIE’S DEAD, at last!
On March 9, 2009, the infamous Barbie doll turned 50. As for her companions, the curiously asexual Ken and the forgettable Skipper (what kind of name is that for one’s baby sister, anyway?), nobody seems inclined to bake cakes with candles for either one of them. Barbie’s the star, at least for feminists and professors with time on their hands who have argued ad infinitum that this doll is turning our daughters into prepubescent sex maniacs, enthralled by her perky and anatomically impossible physique. But less hysterical researchers have recently noticed that little girls don’t seem at all inclined to emulate Barbie. They do, instead, hack off her oh-so-perfect hair, melt her dainty fingers over purloined cigarette lighters, and generally use her and her cohorts as subjects for grisly acts of mayhem. Kill them! And make ‘em suffer.
The innocence of childish impulses toward the dastardly is, of course, the real charm of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Hanging. Stabbing. Poisoning. Death by snake. One poor fellow even “blanched.” To read the most famous of Holmes adventures through at a sitting only increases one’s admiration for the ingenuity of the author who finds such varied and engaging ways of tumbling his victims into the hereafter. How much more gruesome pleasure is thus afforded by the sight of Barbie and company done to death over and over again in living color and three dimensions. It’s almost as delightful as spending an afternoon mutilating Barbie—or the truly dreadful Ken—with lighters and scissors! Sex? A passing fancy. Violence? Ah, that’s the ticket!
Karal Ann Marling
Professor Emerita, American Studies and Art History
University of Minnesota
I was very sad to learn of the death of John Michell, the eccentric ‘Dr Who-like’ author of many books on geomancy and sacred geometry. I corresponded with him when I was doing my Masters on building ceremonies in the early 1980s, inviting him to give a lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1984. When I picked John up at the airport, he had a brown paper bag full of clothes and a suitcase full of books. His lecture at the university was the best … and the worst. He needed a heliograph (?), and when I asked him what that was he said after a moment’s thought, ‘A toaster for books’. And he was absolutely right! The spine of the book he was projecting broke, the extreme heat melted the glue, and the in-built fan blew the pages out of the machine one after the other while he was speaking. It was hilarious! But John wasn’t fazed one bit. He stayed in our tiny one-bedroom flat in Minneapolis for a couple of days, and there were stories galore concerning that. For instance, he slept in the nude, blanket-less, on our sofa, waking very late, while we woke early and had to ‘divert our eyes’ as we tip-toed around him! Then in 1992, when I was doing my PhD and flat broke, I stayed with him for a few day in London (his house was just around the corner from the Portobello Road Market) and he was an extremely gracious host. What a colourful character John was!
Just back from the Popular Culture Association’s conference in New Orleans. There were two architectural highlights for me. Located on the edge of the city’s warehouse precinct is the Piazza D’Italia (1978), an icon of postmodern architecture. Designed by U.S. architect Charles Moore (water spouts out of his mouth and into the map-of-Italy-shaped fountain), it is a real gem. I also visited New Orlean’s 9th district, which was devastated by hurricane Katrina. If it wasn’t for the admirable efforts of Brad Pitt, whose foundation ‘Make It Right’ is constructing several new houses in the area, I don’t think very much rebuilding would be going on. There are still lots of wrecked and abandoned houses there, which is a bit depressing.
Piazza D’Italia
Reconstructing New Orlean’s 9th District
