Coming Up · Art · Heritage · Society · Paris
The French state agency Le Mobilier national, which is responsible for valuable works of art, furniture and interiors in government institutions, palaces and collections, will hold an unprecedented auction on Heritage Days, 20 and 21 September. All proceeds from the sale of palace furniture, paintings, hangings, bronzes and the like
NB! · Art
Art · Observations · Humour
God forbid, of course, to find oneself in paradise with such an Adam. Johann Militz, an Austrian artist of the eighteenth century
Architecture · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris
It has been announced that the artist Christo Javacheff's grandiose project to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is postponed from this autumn to 2021. The married duo of pioneering artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude (who died in 2009), who won worldwide fame for their art projects
NB! · Art · Humour
Art · Observations · Humour
I usually pictured Bacchus as a hideous fatty, more like the Hedonism Bot from Futurama than a youth of idyllic beauty. Tullio Lombardo's Bacchus and Ariadne force one to revise the customary view of the ancient god, who here truly looks divine. In this work by Lombardo one
Art · Observations · Mores · Saint Petersburg
I do not know which came first, the roast chicken or the boiled egg, but pastry in the shape of letters is the very same alphabet biscuit from your childhood breakfasts, only larger and richer. In Germany today such baked goods are sometimes called Russisch Brot, supposedly because the Dresden
Art · Books · Mores
Ever heard of candaulism? It is a psychopathological syndrome manifesting itself in the desire to show strangers the nakedness of one's partner. In our own day, this pathology is not infrequently encountered on Instagram. Yet as early as 1646 one could learn of such a deviation from the
Art · Cinema · Humour
Works by the Swiss artist Emile François Chambon on modern lovers and stills from the film by the Soviet director Leonid Gaidai "Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures". Both date from the 1960s. Evidently this charming aesthetic of naive romanticism, of the builders of a new
Faith · Art · People · Humour
When you accidentally get caught in the reflection of someone else's selfie. It is commonly held that the celebrated painting of 1449 by the Netherlandish artist Petrus Christus depicts Saint Eligius, patron saint of goldsmiths, who served as goldsmith to the Frankish king Chlothar II and became Bishop
Art · Observations · People
Good Old Traditions of Self-Isolation. Today is the birthday of the celebrated Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949), remembered chiefly for canvases of grotesque figures, skeletons playing the part of living people, and masks. But what came to my mind was his lonely bathing machine of 1876. This early
NB! · Art · Observations · Paris
I do so long to be in the incredible Paris of the fifties of Jean Dufy. Place de la Concorde. I wish everyone such a Chagallian-Dufyesque mood