Mary Beard claims this 16th century silverware is “the greatest jigsaw puzzle on earth”. Twelve plates, dazzling in their quality, were made, one for each of the first 12 Caesars. But who made them and for what purpose? Further, why were they pulled apart and then incorrectly put back together? Extraordinary eye candy, if you will, as this video (3.5 min) shows.
Something from the outer reaches of the art world. de Borchgrave, a painter by training, re-creates dresses drawn from Renaissance art through to the Ballets Russes – all created from just folded and painted paper. Well known in Europe, a retrospective show of her work is currently touring the US. Multiple images are here.
Mann is from the US South and its history shows in her work – family, mortality, racism. Images of her young children naked brought both acclaim and controversy, the latter seemingly a 1990’s over-reaction. “[Her work] looks caught up in some warped romance with the past, which nonetheless looks greater than almost everything around it.” More images are here.
Houston has its Rothko chapel; now Austin has an Ellsworth Kelly equivalent. As one might expect from this artist the focus of the chapel’s unornamented design is the play of light through stained glass windows. Hopeful about its impact on the local art scene, the curator muses “Truly, this changes the narrative.”
Part profile of the artist Pope.L, part defence of performance art. “[E]verything the artist touches is imbued with elements of theatre“– crawling Manhattan’s streets, sitting atop a tower eating the Wall St Journal, chaining himself to an ATM using a string of sausages. While only on “the periphery of fame, [Pope.L is] the most significant performance artist of our time”.