Other Places: Barbara Nessim

Barbara Nessim, the artist known for her Rolling Stone, TIME and New York Times Magazine covers, among other works, has a fascinating website tracking her output from the beginning of her career in the 1960s to the present. It includes a piece of video showing Nessim's hands as she invents place cards for one of her dinner parties. I haven't seen a more effective on-screen demonstration of improvisatory graphic art since the 1955 Henri-Georges Clouzot film, The Mystery of Picasso.

A tour of Nessim's site stimulates thoughts about lines: her ability to express complete ideas in one or two sweeping lines, and the thin, shifting and indefineable line between commercial art and "serious" art. The parallels with jazz are obvious.