Cary

A new version of our favorite vector graphics software, Inkscape, was just released! It’s faster and better than ever.

We’re particularly excited because Windell’s Hershey Text extension for rendering stroke-based engraving fonts is now in the set of included extensions.

Rocío Sagaó, 1950 

un ensayo del ballet "El vuelo del alma"

Photo by Nacho López

1930 Bentley ‘Blue Train’ Recreation

Tito the Turtle’s Tragic Tale.

I do a lot of these.
So do other people.

Portlandia, Mt. Hood pint glass

Speaking of drafting tables, carpenter Sean Headrick decided to build his own out of baltic birch ply, and featuring human-powered adjustability mechanisms. Judging by the looks of it, he either cut the forms out with a CNC machine or has extreme OCD.

See it in action:

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Giving colonoscopies probably gets boring after a while -- long stretches of intestine, maybe a polyp here or there. So these doctors were probably pretty surprised when they came upon...a cockroach! "How did it get there?", you might be asking (after vomiting a little in your mouth)? Apparently, the patient had a cockroach infestation at home, and the doctors guessed she may have inadvertently eaten one of the creepy crawlies. Whole. Probably best not to think about it too hard. Especially sinc

Problem: What do you do if you're an arms dealer that likes to entertain at home? When a would-be buyer of a re-fitted Abrams tank comes by with a bottle of rotgut, it's rude of you not to offer him a drink—but your ho-hum Venetian marble bar doesn't really make a statement, and that one that you've got made out of human skulls in the basement is too hard to balance bottles on.

Help is here from UK-based Fallen Furniture, which turns aircraft parts into art furniture. Their impressive, 600-pound, eight-foot-plus Cluster Bomb Drinks Cabinet "conceals an armory of custom-made cocktail utensils," features round glass shelves that rotate on a gold-plated spindle and lets the customer know that you are not a man to be trifled with.

It's not unexploded ordnance, by the way; Fallen Furniture creates these out of unarmed practice units used by the Royal Air Force in the '70s. But your guests don't need to know that. In fact, if you want to test their mettle, push the cabinet over in a fit of rage when negotiations get heated, and watch them scatter before the thing hits the ground. Their expressions will be priceless.

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Art Movements is a weekly collection of news, developments, and stirrings in the art world.

Firefighters freed an artist from a block of gypsum plaster in Rotterdam. The artist, an unidentified women, began to run out of oxygen during a botched street art project.

Police in Belgium are looking for a possible accomplice of Mehdi Nemmouche, the gunman accused of murdering four people at the Jewish Museum in May.

Sotheby’s will increase its buyer’s premiums beginning February 1.

Four months after replacing its docents with an internship program, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden amended its employment guidelines in order to encourage the return of long-standing volunteers.

Pop star Taylor Swift trademarked a litany of phrases used throughout her 1989 album. They include “Party Like it’s 1989,” “This Sick Beat,” “Nice to Meet You,” and “Where You Been.” Expect to see these phrases incorporated into artworks by indignant artists very soon.

British street artist INSA unveiled the “World’s largest animated GIF” (or, more accurately, the largest artwork to have been turned into an animated GIF).

The City of London’s Guildhall Art Gallery refuted The Art Newspaper‘s suggestion that it had moved a sculpture of Baroness Thatcher “into a narrow corner” (Hyperallergic’s Hrag Vartanian made a similar suggestion when he visited the gallery in January 2013). Neil Simmons’s sculpture was the subject of national attention when it was decapitated with the use of a cricket bat in 2002.

A French schoolteacher is suing Facebook for €20,000 (~$22,600). The schoolteacher’s Facebook profile was deactivated after he posted an image of Gustave Courbet’s painting “L’Origine du Monde” (1866) on the social network.

Doctor Elham Abdelrahman, the Egyptian Museum’s head of conservation, was demoted following the botched repair of Tutankhamun’s gold funeral mask.

Scientist Bruno Massa discovered four new species of cricket after finding undocumented specimens in museums in Madrid and Berlin. One of the bugs has been named Arostratum oblitum (Latin for “forgotten”).

A Banksy impersonator is on the loose in Cumbria, England.

The “Clever House,” a home in suburban New Jersey designed by architect Louis Kahn, is on sale for $289,900.

Ireland’s Sunday Independent reported that 21 artworks are still missing from Leinster House, three years after they were first reported missing.

A glut of 2015 Venice Biennale news: Pamela Rosenkranz will represent Switzerland, the UAE is putting together a group show featuring 14 artists, the Philippines will join the Biennale after a 51-year absence, and artists Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Ortega will collaborate on a site-specific work for the Mexican pavilion.

Transactions

Zaha Hadid settled her lawsuit against critic Martin Filler (read Hyperallergic’s previous coverage here).

The Gemeentemuseum purchased two dioramas by Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys.

The California Institute of the Arts became the first recipient of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Travel Grant, a $25,000 grant for art students.

Christie’s sold a Rubens drawing for $1,925,000, a figure over three times its high estimate. The drawing is a copy made after two groups of figures from Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement.

The International Center of Photography is purchasing its new space at 250 Bowery for $23 million.

The Museo del Prado acquired the Juan Bordes Library.

LACMA trustees Jane and Marc Nathanson announced eight promised gifts for the museum, including works by Warhol, Hirst, and Lichtenstein.

Barbara Levy Kipper has pledged 400 items from her collection of Asian jewelry and Buddhist objects to the Art Institute of Chicago.

The French culture minister, Fleur Pellerin, announced a €115 million ($130 million) funding package for the Château de Fontainebleau.

Transitions

The DUMBO Arts Festival is no more. The festival was originally founded in 1997 as the Art Under the Bridge Festival by residents Joy Glidden and Tyson Daugherty.

The American Bible Society will relocate from New York to Philadelphia.

Caitlin Doherty was appointed curator and deputy director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

The Wadsworth Atheneum will unveil the first phase of its $33 million renovation on January 31st.

The Mike Kelly Foundation will be represented by Hauser & Wirth.

The Rockwell Museum’s board of trustees appointed Kirsty Buchanan as curator of collections.

Thomas W. Lentz, the director of the Harvard Arts Museums, will step down on July 1st.

The Fountain Art Fair has gone on hiatus.

The Brooklyn Museum has appointed Lisa Bruno to be the chief conservator in its conservation laboratory.

Crime

Three masked robbers stole gold nuggets from the Wells Fargo Museum in San Francisco. The assailants crashed a stolen sports utility vehicle into the building’s entrance before holding up a security guard at gunpoint.

A sculpture was stolen from the the “Looking to the Future” public art installation in Norwalk, California.

Accolades

Ruth Adler Schnee was awarded the 2015 Kresge Prize.

Bethany Collins, Scott Ingram, Ryan Steele, and Orion Wertz were selected as the finalists of the Hudgens Prize.

Obituaries

Phyllis Diebenkorn (1921–2015), psychologist and widow of painter Richard Diebenkorn.

Edgar Froese (1944–2015), founding member of Tangerine Dream.

Senta Taft-Hendry (1924–2015), adventurer and tribal art collector.

John Wilson (1922–2015), painter and sculptor.

Holy COW this is cool, or at least, looks it. A California-based company called WayTools has developed the TextBlade, a diminutive, minimalist keyboard that nevertheless provides the same key spacing (19mm on center) as you'd get on a desktop or laptop, and 2mm of travel, which they claim "outperform[s] a Macbook Pro." And check out how this thing breaks down for storage and comes together for usage:

What you can't see in the video is that the TextBlade components apparently have some type of material or texture on the bottom that provides "rock-solid grip that hugs the table closer than a MacBook Air." It seems that that, in concert with the magnets, is enough to keep the thing from sliding around and/or disassembling, but to be fair I haven't actually touched one IRL.

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For butterfingered woodworkers, dropping a project on the shop floor can be bad. But just imagine if your materials of choice were crystal and glass.

Since 2004, California-based artist Jack Storms has been producing these rare "optic sculptures." Created by precision-machining lead crystal and dichroic glass, a single piece can take up to 18 weeks to produce.

While Storms has advanced the art by inventing a lathe that allows him to turn glass like wood, he first learned the "cold-glass" process of joining lead crystal and dichroic glass from a glass artist in New Hampshire. "Working side by side with the artisan for over a year, Jack learned every component and facet of this incredibly challenging and rare art form and eventually was a strong enough sculptor to branch out on his own in 2004 and open StormWorks Studio," reads the bio on his website.

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Liberia occupies a gloomy place in the Western imagination. Ask the average American what they picture when they think of the country, and they might say child soldiers, the murderous dictator Charles Taylor, or Ebola.

While working in the capital Monrovia for several months during 2014, photographer François Beaurain saw something else entirely. Children were playing. Adults were working. People were making music, going to school, and generally just trying to live good lives. In hopes of getting to know the strangers she saw in the streets, Beaurain started creating GIFs of daily life. “The more I was shooting, the more people I met, and the more I understood about Liberia and Liberians,” she told Hyperallergic.

The GIFS that resulted are charmingly playful, colorful, and hypnotic. But they’re also more than just eye candy, breaking past the never-tired tropes of silly cats and models stumbling on the runway to describe life in a real community. In Monrovia Animated, Beaurain has produced an unusual form of GIF-as-documentary photo, one that brings to life a far-off locale and makes us consider it in a way we’ve rarely been asked to before.

Carbon and glass fibers reinforce synthetics so that they can be used for vehicle body construction. But in this regard, there is an abundance of potential found in natural fibers -- obtained from hemp, cotton, or wood. If you combined bio-based textile and carbon fibers, you can obtain extremely light yet very sturdy components.

What members of the Florida National Guard found when they showed up at a shooting range for their annual weapons qualifying training shocked and angered them. Before they arrived, the North Miami Beach Police Department conducted sniper training at the site using mug shots of African American men for target practice. For Guard Sargent Valerie Deant, this was extremely traumatic: one of the hanging mug shots was of her brother, Woody Deant.

BRAS – Strapping. Supportive. Always near my boobs.

CHEESE – Sharp. Good with wine. Easily molded.

TV SETS – Modern. Always turned on. With a warranty.

BOOKS – Novel. Unpredictable. With a spine.

LIGHT BULBS – Efficient. Bright. On sale at Walgreens.

CARPETS – Stylish. Rugged. Lets me walk all over them.

PILLOWS – Firm. In excess. In my bed.

BABIES – Adorable. Potty-trained. With a nice crib.

SWEATPANTS – Warm. Resilient. Covered in cookie crumbs.

TAXIS – Clean. Safe. Willing to go to Brooklyn.

FLIGHTS – Smooth. Minimal baggage. With an emergency exit plan.

MIRRORS – Reflective. Full-length. Sees me for who I am.

FLOORS – Polished. Grounded. Underneath me.

KNIVES – Easy to handle. Clean-cut. In the kitchen.

SUNGLASSES – Cute. Protective. Easily Replaceable.

THESAURUS – Resourceful. Good with words. Magniloquent.

UBERS – Friendly. Convenient. Comes quickly.

FILMS – Funny. Original. Contains offensive language and adult situations.

SALADS – Wholesome. Well-dressed. Will lettuce be happy together.

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING – Classic. Distinguished. Indefinitely erect.

RELIGIONS – Philanthropic. Faithful. Interested in all kinds of sects.

TWEETS – Witty. Found online. Full of character.

BRAIN SURGERY – Complex. Open-minded. Faces problems head-on.

U.S. GOVERNMENT – Progressive. Diverse. Relatively debt-free.

WINE – Perfectly aged. On a case-by-case basis. In the cellar.

FACEBOOK WALL – Candid. Likable. Without babies.

KEYBOARD – Silent type. Writes letters. Gives me space.

SUN – Hot. Punctual. Always goes down.

benwarheit:

Things I like about this decal on a restaurant window:
-the insane orange waiter
-that he’s carrying his plates in the air like a strongman
-the couple looks like this isn’t the first time he’s done this, but it’s easier to just let it happen at this point.
-the sign says PASTA as if he’s screaming it like a frankenstein
-but he’s holding a plate of an entire chicken and a plate of wine glasses
-there’s three wine glasses
-one’s for him.

One of the major textual resources on pre-Columbian Mexico is now online in a digital platform launched this month. The 1542 Codex Mendoza, dating to just 20 years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, is a thorough report on Aztec society, from daily life to culture and rituals.

However, since it arrived at the University of Oxford in the 17th century, and currently in the collection of the Bodleian Library, it’s only been accessible to Mexico researchers in copy form, the major reproductions being in English. The online version of the Codex Mendoza, also available as a free iOS app, was created by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute for Anthropology and History) in collaboration with the Bodleian Library and Oxford’s King’s College London. It provides interactive translations to modern Spanish and English that smoothly hover over the sharply digitized pages, maps, and timelines complementing the text on territories and expansion, and expandable research activated by clicking on individual images and information.

The Codex Mendoza is a 16th-century report intended for Charles V (the future Spanish King Charles I), named for the then-Spanish viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, elaborating on the resources and living conditions of New Spain, with 72 richly illustrated pages in Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and 63 in old Spanish. It never got to him. French privateers attacked the transporting Spanish ship, taking the manuscript away to Henri II in France. Eventually it got to England, where it was overlooked until 1831 when a rediscovery revealed it as an incredibly rare resource on a vanished life.

The Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia’s Director of Academic Innovation Ernesto Miranda described the Codex project to the Associated Press as “virtual repatriation,” noting that they hope to collaborate with more European institutions to make it part of a digital series on Mexican codices. This idea of virtual repatriation is growing in museums and academia, such as with the digitizing of the Malagan masks of Papua New Guinea in 2012, the aboriginal artifacts of the South Australian Museum last year, or the ongoing work of the Digital Return online network. While even the best digital recreation isn’t the object itself, with its physical textures, its weight, its emotional presence, projects like the Codex Mendoza are still incredibly valuable in connecting a country of origin to its archives of inaccessible history.

View the digitized Codex Mendoza online, or download it for free as an iOS app. 

“

"Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.”

Don’t you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does?… The only time it isn’t good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

”

- Ernest Hemingway to Ivan Kashkin

The Armenian Pantheon of Gods on Mount Nemrut

Erected in 63 BC by King Antiochus I Theos of the Orontid Dynasty of the Armenian Kingdom of Kamakh (Commagene) located in the southwest of historic Armenia, today in the republic of Turkey. Traditional themes of Eagles and Lions trademark to Armenian imagery and identification.

SOURCE: Monarchy Of Historic Armenia - FB

Can you please paint Margaret Thatcher dressed as a Valkyrie, riding an enormous penis with wings through a thunderstorm for no reason other than I think it would be an incredibly powerful image.

Samantha Hirst