{art} – Page 517 – { feuilleton }

Telling Tales at the V&A

Robber Baron Table (2006) By Studio Job.

Telling Tales, a free exhibition now running at the V&A, London, is subtitled Fantasy & Fear in Contemporary Design. Looking at Studio Job’s timely and prescient Robber Baron Table, “fear and loathing” might be more suitable; a must for the current crop of squalid parasites in the banking industry. And speaking of parasites, among the exhibits there’s also the gilded grubs of Kelly McCallum whose work was featured here last September.

This exhibition explores the recent trend among European designers for unique or limited edition pieces that push the boundaries between art and design. It showcases furniture, lighting and ceramics, designed by a new generation of international designers, including Tord Boontje, Maarten Baas, Jurgen Bey and Studio Job, who are all inspired by the spirit of story-telling. Each tells a tale through their use of decorative devices, historical allusions or choice of materials, sharing common themes such as fantasy, parody and a concern with mortality.

Telling Tales runs until October 18, 2009.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Al Farrow’s Reliquaries
• Kelly McCallum’s insect art

The art of Benoit Prévot

The Fountain of Youth.

Another artist I ought to have mentioned earlier. Benoit Prévot is a French illustrator and comic artist with a sideline in stylish homoerotics. He’s witty too, wit being a rare quality in art of this nature, as is the Twenties’ atmosphere he so obviously enjoys. His official site has originals for sale.

Wine-Fuelled Imaginings.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Phallic worship
• The art of ejaculation

Tetragram for Enlargement

A stunning architectural video installation produced by Apparati Effimeri for last month’s Itinerario Festival, in which the stolid Rocca Malatestiana in Cesena, Italy, is painted with stripes, then mutated, melted and finally blown apart in slow motion. I’d love to see this effect applied to large city-centre buildings but the results are so striking they’d probably create no end of traffic accidents.

Via Further.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker

David Becket’s bookplates

From David Becket: His Book of Bookplates, a slim volume published in 1906. The wonderfully spare style of these looks advanced for the time but probably owes something to William Nicholson‘s earlier work. Nicholson collaborated with brother-in-law James Pryde (as “The Beggarstaffs”) on poster designs with the same reduced detail, masses of black and hand-drawn type.

For 764 (!) further bookplates, see LUNA Commons.

Andy Paiko’s glass art

The Glass Chair.

Today’s glass artists continue to astonish. Andy Paiko‘s one-off creation above is a chair whose vitrines contain a rhesus monkey skull, a piece of octopus coral, a murex spiny trumpet shell, the skeleton of a rat, and a mountain lion skull. The piece below contains a 24 carat gold-plated coyote skull with the work as a whole being described by the artist as representing various stages of the alchemical process. Go and feast your eyes on the rest of his creations. Thanks again to Thom for the tip!

Canis Auribus Tenere.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Josiah McElheny
• The art of Angelo Filomeno
• IKO stained glass
• Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
• Glass engines and marble machines
• Wesley Fleming’s glass insects
• The art of Lucio Bubacco
• The glass menagerie