1. Pure inspiration: Mixed media by artist & collector Nina Garner
Nina is a collector. Inspired by 19th century portrait and landscape photography, her work encompasses various techniques and materials to create compositions that glorify moments in time, the beauty in nature and people, using film photography and found objects, both synthetic and natural.
Find the artist’s website here.
2. An excellent podcast recommendation
“The Curious History of Your Home” delves into the origins of the humdrum. Found via The New Yorker.
3. Unabashed Women by Gerard Mas Are Sculpted with a Contemporary and Cheeky Twist
The artist works with various mediums, including wood and marble. He says:
This was an impossible job. There was always something that broke that beauty. And a sculpture attempting to speak of beauty with some disproportion or flagrant compositional flaw is pretentious if not ridiculous… I decided to anticipate that failure and deliberately introduce discordant elements that broke that pretended beauty by making our sense of good taste squeak. Let’s say it’s an ode to the impossibility of beauty.
Artist’s website here / Instagram. Found via Colossal.
4. The No-Neck trend of 19th Century Men’s Fashion
The greatest dandy of them all, Beau Brummel, is often given credit for the look. The tall, structured collar was partly an attempt to mimic the strong, column-like necklines seen on antique busts—hence the notion that one’s head was perched on a “noble Grecian column”.
All the portraits are by Louis-Léopold Boilly, circa 1800-25 found on Gods and Foolish Grandeur.
5. The 19th-century “Instagram Filter” craze that took tourists by storm
6. This article written by American College Kids in Paris in 1930
The Purple Parrot was a humor magazine published by students at Northwestern from 1921 to 1950. It contains short stories, poetry, essays, jokes, and a variety of advertisements. And the entire thing has been digitized!
Find it and zoom in to read here. Some interesting observations to be made.
7. Abandoned Wine Cellars in Southern Italy
These small buildings, which at first look may seem like small houses/caves (in fact it really looks like a small village), actually represented the core of the working and social life of Pietragalla people up to 50/60 years ago. Their purpose was linked to the production of wine; in fact here the first processing and fermentation of grapes coming from the vineyards scattered throughout the territory took place. Now there are just over 60 left and almost all of them are located in the Parco Urbano dei Palmenti at the eastern entrance of the town, but it is possible to find some scattered here and in the surrounding countryside. In the past there were certainly more of them, demonstrating a flourishing wine-growing activity that has now been lost along with most of the vineyards.
One of the palmenti has been converted into a restaurant…
Found on Medium.
8. These one of a kind embroidered shirts
Made by Polka.
9. How Venus di Milo was discovered by a farmer before it ended up at the Louvre
The 2nd-century BC Venus de Milo statue was discovered in 1820 by a farmer on the Greek island of Milos while working his fields. A French naval officer, Olivier Voutier, who had an interest in archaeology, witnessed the discovery and encouraged the farmer to continue digging. He saw its value and arranged its acquisition.
It wasn’t immediately purchased however, and in the meantime, the farmer accepted another offer from a different party before the French intervened and had it unloaded from the ship it was ready to depart on. The statue was ultimately given to King Louis XVIII, who donated it to the Louvre, where it remains today.
Voutier and the farmer uncovered two large pieces of the sculpture and a third, smaller piece. A fragment of an arm, a hand holding an apple, and two herms were also found alongside the statue. Two inscriptions were also apparently found with the Venus. One, transcribed by Dumont D’Urville, a French naval officer who arrived on Milos shortly after the discovery, commemorates a dedication by one Bakchios son of Satios, the assistant gymnasiarch. The other, recorded on a drawing made by Auguste Debay, preserves part of a sculptor’s signature. Both inscriptions are now lost. Other sculptural fragments found around the same time include a third herm, two further arms, and a foot with sandal.
Dumont D’Urville wrote an account of the find. According to his testimony, the Venus statue was found in a quadrangular niche. If this findspot were the original context for the Venus, the niche and the gymnasiarch’s inscription suggests that the Venus de Milo was installed in the gymnasium of Melos.
Contrary to the usual practice at the time, the Venus was not significantly restored but was exhibited in the state in which she was discovered.
Never knew the background story. Found on Wikipedia.
10. Nick Cave’s is now a Ceramicist
The rock star’s Staffordshire-style figurines, on show at the Museum Voorlinden, tell the story of the devil and have helped Cave make sense of his own life—and personal tragedy—in a way that his songs cannot
Read the article on The Art Newspaper.
11. A 1920s Telephone booth in former post office in Amsterdam
Found on Age of Diesel.
12. A Church, Mosque, Temple and Kovil all in one Tower in Sri Lanka
Ambuluwawa Tower is the first Multi Religious Centre in Sri Lanka. The fairy-tale looking tower with its crooked Burton-esque staircase was built as a biodiversity complex on top of a hill in in 2006 and also hosts a temple, church and mosque at the peak.
Photographed by Jord Hammond
13. Visit Cairo, through the eyes of young female skaters, drifters & bikers who defy the standards of Egypt’s society
Found on PetroWiki.
