Nobody cares about Art

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Pretty.

 

[Free]

Cornwall gardens turn storm-felled tree into pouncing fox sculpture

About 600 pieces of wood were hand-split by The Lost Gardens of Heligan staff to create the animal's fur.

www.bbc.com

 

[Free]

Did some digging but was unable to discover who the artist is...

Maglink

 

[Free]

I consider some of his buildings to be works of art.

Frank Gehry, whose designs defied gravity and convention, dies at 96

Swooping, swirling, gleaming, sculpted — Frank Gehry made buildings we'd never seen before. The architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles transformed contemporary architecture. He died Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., after a brief respiratory illness, according to his chief of staff. He was 96.

Gehry won all the top awards — including the Pritzker Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1999, when the American Institute of Architects gave him their Gold Medal, Gehry looked out at an audience that included contemporary gods of building — Philip Johnson, Robert Venturi, Michael Graves — and said, "it's like finding out my big brothers love me after all."

From Bilbao to Las Vegas: Frank Gehry’s incredible architecture – in pictures

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Lanterns reveal scale of Echo Wood living trees artwork

The installation lies at the heart of a new forest being created between Bristol and Bath.

www.bbc.co.uk

The scale of a new living trees artwork has been revealed by an installation of hundreds of lanterns.

Echo Wood, between Bristol and Bath, is the latest project by artist Luke Jerram who created a giant Earth artwork which toured the country.

When finished, Echo Wood will feature 365 different species of trees planted in a circular pattern. The permanent installation at the centre of the new Lower Chew Forest in Compton Dando, will encircle an events space it is hoped will be used for generations.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Not sure if this is art or history or what, but it's an interesting read from the Financial Times (Evernote link because paywalled)

The Secret History of Unicorns

Sometimes, if you are lucky, you are given a unicorn for Christmas. Around 1567, the Duchess of Amalfi, Costanza Piccolomini d’Aragona, commissioned a nativity scene, a gift for her household. In this scene there were figurines of Joseph, Mary, the angels, sheep, dogs, camels carrying treasure, the ox and the ass — and a unicorn. Unicorns were, at the time, the height of fashion.

We are unlikely to be offered robust peer-reviewed evidence of a unicorn being present at the birth of Christ. But the duchess was not being whimsical; an educated woman of the 16th century would have believed in the existence of unicorns in the same way that she believed in the existence of giraffes; exotic, far away, surprising, true.

If Costanza had wished it, she could have traced the unicorn back through 2,000 years of history. It would have been worth her time, because to follow the lineage of the unicorn is to encounter the meeting point of science, natural history, generously lunatic myth and human desire.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Not sure if this is art or history or what, but it's an interesting read from the Financial Times (Evernote link because paywalled)

The Secret History of Unicorns

“...if a virgin girl is set before a unicorn, as the beast approaches, she may open her lap and it will lay its head there with all ferocity put aside, and thus lulled and disarmed it may be captured.”

Oh, sure. The old, "Open your lap and close your eyes. In a snap you'll be getting a big surprise." NOT FALLING FOR THAT ONE AGAIN!

To paraphrase one of our wise members, "First, show me the unicorn, then we'll talk about getting in the van."

 

[Free]

RIP to the meme world's greatest restoration artist.

Artist Behind Viral 'Beast Jesus' Restoration Dies at 94

RIP Cecilia Giménez Zueco, a legendary self-starter.

gizmodo.com

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Guardian's Martin Rowson and Ella Baron on their contrasting styles and methods

How we draw the age of Trump and turmoil: two cartoonists go head-to-head

 

[Free]

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Dumbledore's penseive is by Apple.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

RIP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatjana_Wood

 

[Casey Pelous]

A Bucky Fuller sculpture (or model home) collapsed under heavy snow.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/snow-smashes-buckminster-fuller-sculpture-2749337?amp=1

I was a big fan of Fuller, but he seems largely irrelevant today.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

You can say the same about Shakespeare.

 

[Casey Pelous]

You can say the same about Shakespeare.

You might. I wouldn't.

They're still making films of Shakespeare plays, films about Shakespeare, and films that borrow Shakespeare's plots. Shakespeare festivals around the world sell out regularly. (I'm a great fan of the one in Ashland, OR. First class stuff.) If there is some sort of afterlife, I imagine Lord Buckley is still carrying on about "Willie the Shake."

You know why they called him Willie the Shake?
Because he shook everybody.
They give him a nickel's worth of ink and five cents worth of paper,
he sat down, wrote up such a breeze, brrt, that's all there was, Jack,
there was no more.

That's all she wrote! Ever'body got off!

Ain't nobody making Dymaxion cars, and the geodesic dome, brilliant though it might be, is an architectural oddity, at best.

I think, too, some of his more general ideas, especially in the area of sustainability, have become "well, obviously" rather than the revolutionary thoughts they were at the time.

 

[Free]

I would not like to see Casey riled up.

(Also, buckyballs!)

 

[Veritable Quandry]

the geodesic dome, brilliant though it might be, is an architectural oddity, at best.

In The Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand devoted a section to resources and instructions for building geodesic domes. When he wrote How Buildings Learn, he devoted a few pages to apologizing.

One of the major talking points for dome houses was that they were supposed to be simple to build and make more efficient use of materials. What they found in practice is they are not any more simple than traditional buildings and they were less efficient in terms of materials. Turns out plywood comes in rectangles and domes use triangles. So you waste a lot of wood cutting them out.

He also writes about where construction fails. It is at the joints. Buildings develop leaks at the seems due to stress and expansion/contraction. And domes are all roof with lots of joints. They leak, and leaks lead to wood rot.

His other realization is that domes are a 3 dimensional curve. Furniture like shelves and tables are rectangular.* Like plywood and traditional rooms. You waste a lot of interior space in a dome because stuff doesn't fit very well.

*An archivist I worked with once took a temporary job moving a large collection into a building in Denver made in the shape of a giant teepee: a circle with inwardly sloping sides. Shelves and boxes do not curve horizontally or vertically. She had choice words for the architectural firm that built it. The only small grace was that the archivests had prevailed and stopped them from putting an open fireplace in the center.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I think, too, some of his more general ideas, especially in the area of sustainability, have become "well, obviously" rather than the revolutionary thoughts they were at the time.

You can say the same thing about Shakespeare.

That's the point.

Dome structures might not be practical houses but the structural techniques are everywhere.

And tensegrity is still huge.

 

[Casey Pelous]