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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1961)
o MEDFOBD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFQRD, ORE. THURSDAY. JANUARY 19. 1961 THE SHAPE OF THINGS Times Square Brilliance Suggests IMIev Art Form By RICHARD HIRSCH Director Alltntown Art Muitum Ritually, once a year, sev eral hundred thousand usually rational people crowd into . Times Square just before mid- mgnt. When the hands ot the clock both point to the verti cal, several tens of thousands of people blow horns with the intent of making noise, not music. Newsreel cameras lake in the whole performance. TV sets bring the noise and the electric advertisements of New York's Times Square into mil- ions of homes around the na tion. Newscasters ritually rant (or rave) about the New Year's arrival It's quite a show, I'm told. But Times Square is not a nauonai snrine. no monument even hallows it with some ref erence to national rjumose nr national memory. It is not beautiful. It commands no grand national vista. It over looks neither a great river nor is it flanked by great build ings whose past embody some symbol of this great country. Chaotically Ugly Times Square is simply ugly, chaotically. It is drab and patched by day. It is a traffic clutter surrounded by unplanned, unmeaningful, un inspiring and obsolete build ings whose principal functions - Is to hide behind great blank panels which support ads for familiar products. At night these aus, random ly plastered over decrepit house fronts, light up. Neon tubes and incandescent bulbs flicker on and off. Greens dance and reds creep, whites serpentine and yellows spread. It is, everyone says, very live ly. Painters even select spots of color from all this and call their works "Times Square No. 2." Or something. (Mon drian reduced this chaos to rectangles and gave us "Broadway Boogie Woogie.") In the eyes of history should we be judged by this cross roads of unplanned streets, this welter of ugly signs? We should and the judgment should be harsh. ah ran ox runuvr But, says the optimist, this is all part of the brash, vivid growth of the frontier, trans planted into urban terms. These flashing signs, these monumental arrays of clash ing lights, are symbols of the raucous competition in a free society. This is the great mar ket place and the hucksters must shout. True, perhaps, but there is an unchallenged neglect in all this, an indifference for which history will judge us, again harshly. Neon, and incandescent lights are now a new medium. They create shapes in the great vacuum of the night. They stimulate the eye so ef fectively, that even when they are but a jumble of brand names, a chaos of Pizza Palace invitations, the human eye is fascinated. All We Choose To Do But is this all that we can do with the resources of light? Obviously not. Unfortunately it is all that we choose to do with it. . T h i n k of the millions of Americans who use U.S. 1 from New England to Florida. At night what do they see? Neon lights for hundreds of miles, randomly touting wares and services in a glittering as sault upon the eye. The psy chological assumption behind these thousands of s i g n s is sound. The eye is attracted by light and color, even harsh lights and harsh color. But is there no other use for this fascination than to announce that you are speeding by Joe's Diner or Milton's Paint Shop. Boldly, one should insist that there are other uses and better uses for devices which, appealing to the human eye, are inherently suitable for en chanting it as well. That such uses are not common is be side the point. The point is that, with light, the Twentieth century has a new visual tool a new art medium. As of January, 1961, it is being used only to identify Splat's Root Beer and Deckle Edge Filters. And, one adds hastily, with letter shapes that would not have seemed "mod cm" to a Gibson girl. Piychological Rut This is all, somehow, per verse. It belongs to the psy chological rut that saw man's first self-propelled private con veyance not as a new thing, which it was. but as a "horse less carriage." Edison gave us a new object, the light bulb. Georges Claude gave us the neon tube. In what guise did our times choose to view these inventions and those that fol lowed? "Artificial light," nat urally, rated in candlepower. In Ihe meanwnne we nave 0 mmm mmmU MM eVlil'lilj,?'!'' I IP I Is V I Y r . W GIVES SUGGESTION - Times Square and the Great White Way in its traditional New Year brilliance of light and color. The fascination of these lights suggests that the same devices have the potential of a great art form. (AP Photo) C 5 Great Entertainers Names Imbedded in Hollywood Sidewalk Holly wood-UIPU-Some 1,550 stars are embedded in the sidewalks of Hollywood, bear ing the names of the great entertainers of the past and present. And if the number of plaques is any indication, the two greatest performers in show business history are Gene Autrey and Tony Mar tin. They have been honored with four each. They scored in all categories-movies, television, radio and recordings. This week the full list of names was revealed, and Charlie Chaplin still is among the missing. But Charlie Chase is there. Sponsored by the Holly wood Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with the Holly wood Property Owners Asso ciation and the Hollywood Im provement Association, the "walk of fame" has someone for everyone. Many middle-aged tourists will be puzzled when they come upon a star bearing the name of Ferlin Husky, who made the trade in the record ing business. Honor Many Stars And more than one of them New Fibre Retains Strength After Heat St. Paul, Minn. (UPD - Min nesota Mining and Manufac turing Co. has developed a fiber which retains its flexi bility and part of its strength after exposure to intense heat. The new fiber, available as a fabric, will not char or melt. It's possible uses include fire protective curtains and lin ing for the motor compart ments of missiles. will ask, "Who the duce Is Jimmy Boyd?" On the other hand, the younger generation will be thrown by such as Helen Twelvetrecs, Annette Rod La Rocque and Mae Busch. Everyone you can think of has been honored, from Bud Abbott to Adolph Zukor. In. eluded are Sarah Bernhardt movies and Arturo Toscanini radio and recordings proving there is nothing provincial connected with the project. Many stars have three plaques posted along Holly wood Boulevard and Vine Street -among them, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Eddie Cantor, Perry Como, Lou Cos tello, Blng Crosby, Nelson Eddy, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jane Fioman, Arthur God frey, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, Spike Jones, Al Jolson and Guy Lombardo. Sinatra Three-Timer Frank Sinatra's a three timer, and could have joined Autrey and Martin as a mem ber of the four-star club, but evidently his radio stint was overlooked. "Lassie" made the grade lor movies rather than TV and is the only animal rep resented. Fans of "Francis" the mule can write letters of disenchantment, but it won't do any good. The list is final. People named Brown were the most numerous, landing eight in all-Cecil, Clarence, Harry Joe, Joe E., Johnny Mack, Les, Tom and Vanessa. Visitors to Hollywood can cover the promenade of stars in approximately one hour. The odds are they won't find their favorites without run ning headlong into other tour ists seeking a familiar name or two. Makes Getaway By Three Story Leap San Francisco IUP11 - A San Francisco burglary suspect who was supposed to be tnk ing a bath made a "clean" getaway by leaping three stor ies to freedom from a window at San Francisco General Hos pital. John Baca, 43, clad in pa jamas and a robe, jumped out the window as a policeman stood guard at the door. Baca, who was being held on a burglary charge, was recuper ating from an arm Infection. When the policeman failed to hear water running in tha bathroom, he looked Inside and found his charge had disappeared. Let llhw4 0 'i -: , . ?n i i w 'Mmmi i mm STARS IMBEDDED - Some 1,500 stars are imbedded in tha sidewalks of Hollywood, bearing the names of great enter, tainers of the past and present. Stars in movies, television, radio and records are honored, with some listed in all fbuf categories. (UPI Telephoto) the neon tube with its broad color range can be sculpture and painting and stained glass. It can be even better than that: It can be, itself, an art medium of great versatility, suitable for many applications. It will be found that our cheapening of concept through the hot dog stand sign will make it difficult to break new ground in the direction of art expression. This will be the early pitfall, adding to the challenge. Nothing, however, intrinsically limits this field any more than any other field of art is limited. Craft solidly applied sustaining imagina tion and taste, is the sole re quirement and the sole limi tation. . First Experiments What could one expect from the first experiments in work ing with light as an independ ent' medium? Timidity and "horseless carriage" thinking. Some persistence in the face of the predictable failures, however, could produce a rich art form without precedent. Is this not a prize worth the thought and energy of some good designers and patient art ists? One feels it is. Those tin and cardboard horns which blared the other night on Times Square were noise makers and not music makers. We do not, merely be cause of this poor application, refuse the thought of man's breath being more modulated and controlled, to create, through other horns and mouthpieces, the disciplined sounds and harmonies which we call, music. Ih the same way the flicker ing lights of the Great White, Green,, Red and Yellow Way should not mislead us into thinking that man-made light cannot, also, weave strange new patterns to enchant the eye and elevate the mind. (Copyright 1961, General Features Corp.) Ton of Top Resources Costs Only 10 Cents , Washington - (Science Service))- The world's most im portant natural resource, wa ter, sells for about 10 cents a gallon but nearly 100 bil lion dollars will have to be spent by the United Stales to meet the demand for it in the next 20 years. Dr. A. L. Miller, director of the Interior department's Office of Saline Water, said this about water at the Amer ican Institute of Chemical En gineers meeting here. He re ported that his office has 54 different contracts with pri vate industry, universities and technical institutions dealing i with the problems encounter ed in the conversion of saline! water to fresh water. Forty million Americans are on the verge of a serious water shortage. The water supplies of 42 per cent of the cities of the United States are ! considered inadequate. Yet the oceans have an unlimited sup ply of water estimated at 320 rhr.inmed the use of our new million cubic miles. Low-cost light and color sources. Is it too late to do better? One hopes not. The flexibity of salt water conversion process es would provide an inex haustible water supply. Jrrl 3C LYNN'S MEATS Personally Owned and Operated EASTERN PRESENTING-For His First Appearance in East Medford "ABBA KAZABBA", the coffee drinking Arab. Come, See the Man on the Hills Coffee Can Featuring This Week End Hills Bros. 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