A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Sculpture
French Girl.
One of the snow sculptures at the 20th International Ice-Snow Sculpture Expo in Harbin, China, which opened on Thursday. Exotic France in Harbin is the theme this year although this “French Girl” looks more like the kind of heroic revolutionary sculpture favoured by Communist regimes than anything that might originate in France. More pictures here.
Update: More and better pictures here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dead Monuments
The Giant Lantern Festival is an annual festival held in December (Saturday before Christmas Eve) in the City of San Fernando in the Philippines. The festival features a competition of giant lanterns. Because of the popularity of the festival, the city has been nicknamed the “Christmas Capital of the Philippines”.
Lots of Flickr photos and YouTube video.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Maximum Silence by Giancarlo Neri
Dans la Lune (2007).
Dans la Lune (2007).
“Il est dans la lune” can be translated as “He’s got his head in the clouds,” or “He’s on another planet.” Dans la Lune is a perfect title because in my work I try to create an imaginary place that relates to our longings for a better, grander existence.
Gorgeous paper sculptures inspired by Fabergé eggs and that favourite fetish object of mine, Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature. These are from a show at the Rice University Art Gallery, Texas. The Bellwether Gallery has an overview of Hassenfeld’s work back to 2001. Via Kimberly Brooks.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Darwin Day
• The glass menagerie
Dragonfly woman corsage ornament (1897–1898).
Gold, enamel, chrysoprase, moonstones, and diamonds.
Seeing as dragonflies emerged as a theme this week I can’t resist mentioning my favourite of all, this bizarre confection by glass artist and jeweller René Lalique (1860–1945), a dragonfly with female torso and gryphon claws. This was owned by wealthy Armenian collector Calouste Gulbenkian (in whose museum it now resides) and was worn once by Sarah Bernhardt. You can barely tell from this picture but the delicate gold wings are hinged at several points so they wouldn’t be obtrusive for the wearer.
The Lalique company made more glassware than they did jewellery and these included a range of unique automobile mascots whose pedestrian-puncturing potential saw them banished to museum cabinets as road safety laws evolved. The dragonfly design was an especially splendid example, being placed above a multicoloured disc lit from beneath which rotated in accordance with the speed of the car. The faster the car travelled, the faster the colours changed.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Lucien Gaillard
• Wesley Fleming’s glass insects
• The glass menagerie
The Frog with Rabbit Ears (1891).
La matière de l’étrange, an exhibition of ceramic grotesques by Jean Carriès is currently running at the Petit Palais, Paris, through to January 27th, 2008. Carriès doesn’t feature in any of my books about eccentric or fantastic artists which I find surprising, his work is very peculiar by 19th century standards, looking like the creation of a Rodin obsessed by Lautréamont. Carriès’ series of “horror masks” are so similar to the earlier series of heads by sculptor Franz Messerschmidt I suspect there may be an influence there. And like Rodin, Carriès also had unsuccessful plans for a monumental gateway ornamented with his figures and scowling faces. Unlike Rodin, his plaster draft of the work was destroyed by a criminally unsympathetic curator but the Petit Palais exhibition attempts a reconstruction based on a model by Eugène Grasset.
Thanks to Nathalie for the tip!
• English article at The Art Tribune
• French page with video of the exhibition
Head of a Faun (1890–92?).
Grotesque mask, element for the Monumental Door (1891–94).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Masks of Medusa
• Bernini’s Anima Dannata
• The art of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, 1736–1783
• The art of Stanislav Szukalski, 1893–1987