Russian Suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) is currently enjoying a major retrospective at the Tate, devoted to “the fierce beauty” of his non-objective paintings, like Red Square (Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions), 1915, nothing other than an in-fact red square.

‘Charles,’ said Cordelia, ‘Modern Art is all bosh, isn’t it?’

“‘Great bosh.’

“‘Oh, I’m so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said we shouldn’t try and criticize what we didn’t understand. Now I shall tell her I have had it straight from a real artist, and snubs to her.'”

—Brideshead Revisited, Bk.II, ch.1

But Malevich was capable of more than great bosh. Just a few years earlier, needing money, the artist accepted a commission from Brocard & Co, a perfumier, to produce the above 8″ tall bottle.

Johann Heinrich Füssli, Undine kommt in das Haus der Fischer [Undine comes into the house of the fisherman], 1821, Kunstmuseum, Basel.

Via Theo.

Christina Bothwell, Deer sculpture in glass and ceramic

Ridiculously interesting:

[M]ixed media sculptor Christina Bothwell: Taking aesthetic inspiration from vintage toys and dolls, antique medical illustrations and old machinery, her work embodies a sense of the nostalgic entwined with that ineffable emotion of wonder. With their colorful glass bodies, delicately modeled limbs and faces, hidden layers and surreal appendages, Bothwell’s imaginative figures seem like they were plucked from some forgotten fairy tale (one which I am desperate to read).

There is an enchanting quality about her work which I can’t quite articulate, but I think at least part of it stems from her use of the translucent glass to explore the co-existence of the inner and outer workings of the body. The glass allows a soft light to radiate through the figure and reveal hidden treasures and imperfections within, but its material vulnerability also mirrors the vulnerability of the figures she depicts: little girls, infants, and small animals. A little bit magical and a little bit menacing, Bothwell’s intriguing sculptures invite the viewer to imagine their own narrative for her figures and to delight in their visual curiosity.

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Irene Hardwick Olivieri interview

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Interview in Glass Quarterly

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Heller Gallery

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Obsoleteinc examples for sale

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Hat tip to Madame Scherzo.

Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten, Man at a Window, 1653, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Resurrection of Christ, 1611-1612, Vrouwekathedraal, Antwerp

Sforza Hours’, Milan 1490.

BL, Add 34294, fol. 45r

Via Ratak Monodosico.

“‘Charles,’ said Cordelia, ‘Modern Art is all bosh, isn’t it?’

“‘Great bosh.’

—Brideshead Revisited, (1945) Book 2, Chapter 1.

The Brisbane Times was one of many international newspapers chuckling over an Italian cleaning woman’s natural mistake.

A cleaner at an Italian art gallery has thrown away contemporary artworks valued at $15,000, after mistaking them for a pile of rubbish.

The unnamed cleaner swept up the paper, cardboard and pieces of broken biscuit that had been scattered on the floor of the gallery in the southern town of Bari.

The boss of the cleaning firm said the woman was “just doing her job” and that the company’s insurers would pick up the bill for the damage to the works, which included pieces by Italian artist Nicola Gobbetto and David Jablonowski from Germany. …

“It is clear the cleaning person did not realise she has thrown away two artworks and their value,” he told local press.

The cleaner’s mistake is just the latest in a series of incidents in which museum staff have confused modern art with rubbish.

In 2001, a cleaner at a west London gallery binned a pile of used ashtrays, newspapers and dirty beer bottles, not realising it was a work by notorious British artist Damien Hirst.

Hirst had arranged the junk the previous night at a launch party in a spontaneous installation.

“I didn’t think for a second that it was a work of art – it didn’t look much like art to me,” cleaner Emmanuel Asare reportedly said at the time. “So I cleared it all into bin bags and dumped it.”

In 1999 an installation by Tracey Emin composed of an unmade bed, used condoms and underwear was ruined after museum attendants tidied it up, believing it to have been vandalised.

And a similarly over-zealous cleaner wrecked an installation called Untitled (Bathtub) by German artist Josef Beuys in 1986. The piece, displayed in Dusseldorf, consisted of a dirty bathtub, which the museum worker scrubbed clean.

Hieronymus Bosch, detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights tryptich , circa 1503-1504, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Amelia, an undergraduate studying music and informations systems at Oklahoma Christian U., a few days back, served up an interesting little bit piece of musicology.

Luke and I were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era.

so yes this is LITERALLY the 600-years-old butt song from hell

EDIT: I still can’t believe this took off like it did this is crazy??? Just wanted to let people know that there are indeed errors in the transcription and this is indeed not a very good recording (I threw this together in like 30 minutes at 1 in the morning,) but I’m working with the music department at my college to get the transcription more accurate!

(If Soundcloud embed does not appear, use link)

Hat tips to io9 and Ratak Monodosico.

John Charles Dollman, A Very Gallant Gentleman, 1913.

Henrik Nordenberg, The Artist’s Studio, 1891.

Hat tip to Madame Scherzo.

Roman painting of a rook perched on a vase.

Hat tip to Ratak Monodosico.

Michael Sowa, The Haunted City

Hat tip to Madame Scherzo.