Touch Virtuosi: Examining Bernard Rudofsky’s Approach to “Floors”

Andrea Bocco Guarneri has done well to have organized and executed such a thorough book as “A Humane Designer.” Guarnerri presents us with unpublished Rudofsky essays, forgotten design projects, his world travels, his history and more. One need only open the book randomly to find some hitherto unknown story about Rudofsky or project that Rudofsky [...]

The Ambiguous Other: Zizek on Japan

In a conversation entitled “Japan through a Slovenian Looking Glass: Reflections of Media and Politic in Cinema,” Slavoj Zizek is asked about Japan. In this brief essay I will flesh out and hopefully expand a few key ideas he presents, namely: Japanese negation, Japanese ambiguity and the importance of the surface in communication. Moreover, being [...]

An Explication of Bernard Rudofsky’s Advertisement from “The Kimono Mind: An Informal Guide to Japan and the Japanese”

The image of Japan when viewed through the medium of an advertisement is deceptive for their exists a gap between the seduction of the advertisement and the reality of the modern country of Japan. Moreover, approaching Japan may prove frightening for one who recognizes this difference, yet has had no [...]

An Explication of Bernard Rudofsky’s On Language from “The Kimono Mind: An Informal Guide to Japan and the Japanese”

Upon entering into a Japanese conversation with a native-Japanese speaker, one may find oneself at a crossroads of misunderstanding, incomprehensibility, extreme conversational nuance and tremendously polite speech. That this communicative mountain shall serve to block one’s attempts at deciphering the conversation or inspire one to imitate one’s Japanese conversant, depend on one’s capacities for minding [...]