crooked house

Sandwich Bag Art

David LaFerriere, a graphic artist, has been decorating his sons' sandwhich bags since 2008. There are hundreds of them. Watch a video of him here.

Books and Buildings

By artist Frank Halmans.

Obsession, by Jennifer Rodriguez. It is a book of photographs of doors.

Photographs of Children from Around the World and Their Most-Prized Possessions

Lucas, from Sydney, Australia with his Thomas stuff.

Tangawizi, from Kenya, with his stuffed animal.

Photographer Gabriele Galimberti took pictures of children all over the world with their favourite toys. They're very interesting photos. I think it would also be interesting to have the children pose with ALL of their toys. (I would be mortified to have my children photographed with all of theirs, however. We practically need another house to keep them in.)

For some reason, this reminds me of Vera Saltzman's portraits of middle-aged women posing with their childhood dolls. (You have to click on "Sue and Winnie" on her portfolio site.) Maybe it's because the photos are interesting but I think they could've been even more interesting. In the case of Saltzman's series, all the women are wearing rather grim expressions and, as you look at more and more of the photos, it begins to look rather staged. I think they'd work better as a collection if they wore more natural expressions.

 

Miniature Landscape Nail Art

Miniature landscape nail art by Alice Bartlett.

Giant Swing Installation

Check out these photos of artist Ann Hamilton's gigantic swing installation at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. If I lived in New York I would so be there right now. That looks like one weird and wonderful way to relieve stress. There are a whole bunch of big swings hanging from the roof in this place, as well as that giant billowing curtain you see there. As the swings move, they make the curtain move. Apparently there are also radios wrapped up in paper bags strewn around. When you pick them up and listen, you can hear people reading.

I want a job making things like this.

 

Rainbow Primary School

This is a French primary school. It is gorgeous -- very energizing. They better not hire any old teachers who just want the children to sit quietly. More photos here.

Charlotte Sometimes

Another gorgeous book cover -- the New York Review Children's Collection's edition of Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes. Lizzie Skurnick mentioned this book today on her Shelf Discovery facebook page and I vaguely remembered reading it as a child. Can't wait to get my hands on a copy (preferably this one) and revisit it. (I had a wonderful dream recently that the New York Review people sent me copies of all their children's books. If only they would...)

Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, cover design by Roxanna Bikadoroff. Some of the books Bikadoroff has designed covers for have intriguing titles: Born on a Rotten Day: Illuminating and Coping with the Dark Side of the Zodiac and Not All Tarts Are Apple, for example. If I had the money to drop, I'd purchase all the books Bikadoroff has designed the covers for.

Madame X

I just discovered this painting Portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent on pinterest, where I pinned it to my board entitled "Noses." (It is a board devoted to attractive people with prominent and/or interesting noses. You'd think I had way too much time on my hands.) Curious about the identity of the lady, I looked it up. She is Virginie Amélie Gautreau, a Parisian socialite and notorious beauty originally from New Orleans, and this gorgeous, elegant painting was her undoing -- she had to retire from society after it was shown. And Sargent had to leave Paris. From Confessions of An Unrepentant Art Junkie:

So what did cause such a scandal with Mme. X that Sargent could no longer find commissions and soon had to move to London? According to Mary Alexander, it was the strap and the jewels. Let me explain. Sargent has portrayed Mme. X in the notorious black dress with jeweled straps. She shows off her wedding ring by displaying it against her black satin skirt. She also wears the tiniest of tiaras, barely there, in the shape of a crescent moon: the symbol of Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt. In the 1880s no one would wear evening dress without jewelry, earrings, bracelets, brooches and necklaces. The fact that Mme. X has only her wedding ring and tiara on, suggests that she is home from an evening out and has removed her outer wrap and jewelry. The wedding ring is, however, intentionally prominent. When Sargent originally showed the work in 1884, Mme X’s right strap was painted so that it had fallen off her shoulder, baring her chest suggestively. As Ms. Alexander pointed out, while these standards would change completely within the next couple of years, in 1884, the only contemporary works showing women in such states of undress, were Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings and drawings of prostitutes. Showing Mme. X in such a state lacked the propriety one should expect in a society portrait. Simple as that, according to Ms. Alexander.

Through letters between Mme X and Sargent, Ms. Alexander proved that initially the sitter was pleased with the portrait, though she found the process of posing for it tedious, so we know her initial reaction to the work was not the reason for its infamy. Ms. Alexander says that because it showed the Parisian society matron in a state of undress and posed as Diana “the Huntress,” with her haughty, aristocratic bearing, it lacked the dignity that Parisians expected of society portraits. Though there was a long tradition in French portraiture of portraying aristocrats as classical heroes or goddesses, this was not Mme. X as a Goddess. Her tiara and its reference to Diana allude to her as a huntress/seductress, not the embodiment of a classical goddess, and the strap, fallen off her shoulder and pressing into her arm reinforced the sexual power of the image, but all that seemed acceptable even to the sitter, until the picture was shown in the Salon of 1884.

Oh how times have changed. Apparently the hussy wore lavender powder, as well. There are two novels about her that I am about to track down: Strapless and I Am Madame X: A Novel.

Alice Illustrated

I get the Dover Pictorial email sampler and this week they shared some images from Alice Illustrated: 120 Images from the Classic Tales of Lewis Carroll. I'm adding it to my wishlist.