13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 695)

1. Paris traffic jams Found from a series on Live Journal. 2. Night at the Museum in Paris Airbnb has launched its latest competition for the Olympics at the Musée d’Orsay. A perfect opportunity for Thomas Crown, surely. Find out more on Airbnb. 3. Aphrodite, Stuck in the mud Found on Arkeonews and ART news.…

Artist of the Week: A Janitor’s Mysterious Masterpiece

James Hampton’s magnum opus was discovered posthumously in a rented garage he had converted into his studio. The installation features over 180 individual found objects, mostly collected from dumpsters on his way home in the early hours after midnight, when he would clock out from his janitor duties at the GSA in Washington DC. The…

Never thought of it like that: Versailles, a Giant Nightmarish Hotel

The Palace of Versailles, famously opulent and vast, is often celebrated for its architectural grandeur and the lavish ceremonies that took place within its walls. But at its core, it was essentially a giant overcrowded hotel of horrors for the entire French nobility, who were given their own room and key that symbolised both privilege…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 694)

1. This Parisian illustrator Lovely work by Yukiko Noritake. 2. Who Ate Where: The Restaurants (and clientele) that defined New York I just finished watching Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs The Swans and found this compendium of NYC’s social history told through its restaurants, quite interesting: It’s only in New York that we have the…

Messy Nessy’s Cabinet, a Little Shop in Paris

I came across the space by chance (or we can call it fate). My children play in the little public garden that faces the shopfront and I’ve always been drawn to its window because it was one of the rare galleries left in Paris where an artist paints and sells his own work. I once…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 693)

1. This 1930s Art Deco Illustrator (and master of line-drawing) Art Deco Illustrator Charles Perry Weimer creates a powerfully graphic depiction of a 1930s couple in front of a classic Art Deco building with a clock face. This work is particularly relevant in today’s artworld, where few artists can do tight renderings with carefully composed…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 692)

1. Springtime Autochromes, 1900s Found on Société française de photographie. More about the surprising art of autochromes here. 2. How to get people to come to your art show Found on This isn’t Happiness. 3. Royal Neighbors of America, one of the largest women-led life insurers in the USA The early members of the Society…

Property of the Week: Anne Boleyn’s 14th Century French Home

Fancy living in your very own Rapunzel tower less than an hour’s drive from Paris? Our Rapunzel in this case was Anne Boleyn – the first of Henry VIII’s wives to be beheaded – who lived here in her formative years. It used to be much bigger mind you. The 14th century keep is all…

What it’s Really Like Finding a Priceless Artefact in a Thrift Store

We often have a romantic notion of what it might be like to walk into a thrift store and walk out with treasure. But in reality, what happens next can be a roller coaster ride that changes your life forever. In 2018, antiques dealer Laura Young discovered an ancient Roman bust in an Austin Goodwill…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 691)

1. Ron’s Place: England’s secret Outsider Art palace Behind the facade of this unassuming Victorian villa in the heart of Birkenhead, Merseyside, lies a hidden treasure trove of creativity and passion that was hidden for decades. This is Ron’s Place, a conventional flat transformed by Ron Gittins into a dazzling shrine of art, drawing from the wellsprings of ancient…