I was looking through a book of art history when I came across this photo of a reliquary of St. Vitale, made around 1170. A reliquary is a container for holding sacred relics, such as the bones or body parts of saints. This reliquary, made out of bronze with encrusted enamel, held pieces of what were supposed to be St. Vitale's skull. The skull pieces "could be placed in (and removed from) the container through a concealed opening at the rear of the sculpted head." To be honest, I'm not sure which St. Vitale this is supposed to represent, because there are a couple of them.
But what really struck me, as soon as I saw the photo, was how much the reliquary, with its creepy staring eyes, resembled James Holmes, the Aurora shooter. Compare for yourself!
Vernon Spicer was in his 60s when he began his career as an artist. One night he was woken by a dream, "I could see something that had a three-dimensional design, one that involved me using sticks to create.” His wife suggested the sticks were pieces of uncooked spaghetti. So he started using uncooked pasta to make paintings. As the Montgomery Advertiser puts it, "this man really knows how to use his noodle to utilize noodles."
If you decide to buy one of his paintings — I think the three below are his entire oeuvre — the price is $1800. He hasn't sold any yet, so you have a chance to be the first!
The pictures are from the Selma Alabama Photo Blog, which has higher-res versions posted. Though I suspect the pasta paintings, in real life, have a 3-D effect that the photos can't convey.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jan 05, 2013 -
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Category: Art, Food
Andrew Lausman of Lakeland, Florida has created a new genre of art. He calls it "explosionism." As far as I can tell, it involves dipping firecrackers in paint and shooting them at a canvas. A few of his works, which I found on his facebook page, are below. He focuses on space themes — galaxies and nebulae — perhaps because it would be hard to do a still life with flowers using firecrackers.
Lausman's art hasn't allowed him to quit his day job yet. (He's a dental assistant.) But he does have his first exhibition opening this Friday. [theledger.com]
There aren't that many people who seriously pursue art and wrestling at the same time, but Patrick O'Connor was one of them. Back in the 1940s, he was heavyweight wrestling champion of Ireland, but also had a Greenwich Village art studio. He was an artist of the "conservative Realist and Romantic school." Apparently he viewed art as his true passion. Wrestling was just a way to make money. From The Evening Independent, Sep. 9, 1944:
His portraits were too realistic. If a rich dowager had three chins, he refused to conveniently omit two of them. As a result there was no rush of customers, so the painter turned to wrestling as a means of earning an honest dollar.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any examples of his art, except for the ones that can be seen behind him in the pictures below. O'Connor is the one with the beard. The pictures were taken in his art studio.
Art is usually hung on walls, but the art of Fredrik Saker is now displayed on his driver's license, because he submitted a painted self-portrait of himself to the Swedish Transport Board for them to use as his license photo. And because it's a good likeness of him, the officials at the Transport Board accepted it. The self-portrait and his license are below. Saker has titled the portrait "This is not me." The BBC News suggests that Saker's work recalls "the art of the 16th Century miniaturists like Nicholas Hilliard" as well as "the Norwegian-born artist, Kjartan Slettemark, who made a career through questions of identity and travelled round Europe in the 1970s on a passport in which his head and beard had been superimposed on a photograph of the US president, Richard Nixon."
Saker couldn't have done this in the U.S. because the state Department of Motor Vehicles don't let you submit your own photo. (At least, they don't in California, which is the one I'm familiar with.) Though it might work for a passport application.
Made by GingerEla, who's now raising money on Kickstarter in order to sell these to the general public. Pledge $35 or more to her Kickstarter campaign, and one of these will be yours if she meets her campaign goal of $14,000. She's almost halfway there, with 15 more days to go.
Would pair nicely with the Bagel Möbius Strip, except that unfortunately it's not real bacon, but rather some kind of non-edible plastic resin. It's for sale over at shapeways.com for $19.
I'm sorry I learned about the Documenta Art Festival only just now. The thirteenth one occured this past September, and there won't be another for five more years.
We'll have to content ourselves with these videos till then.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.