sky3000

When Edouard Martinet was 10, one of his teachers introduced his pupils to insects. Subliminally, the fascination sunk in to the young French boy. Fast-forward 40 years, and Martinet has become the art world’s virtuoso insectophile, transforming bits and pieces of cast-off junk culled from flea markets and car boot sales into exquisitely executed insect, fish and animal forms.

What sets Martinet’s work apart is the brilliant formal clarity of his sculptures, and their extraordinary elegance of articulation. His degree of virtuosity is unique: he does not solder or weld parts. His sculptures are screwed together. This gives his forms an extra level of visual richness.

Edouard lives in Brittany, France and studied design at the prestigious L’Ecole Superieure des Arts Graphiques in Paris. Martinet takes about a month to make a sculpture and will often work on two or three pieces at the same time. It took him just four weeks to make his first sculpture and 17 years for his most recent completion! His next show at the Sladmore Contemporary will be from November 27 – January 31, 2014.

Sladmore Contemporary
32 Bruton Place, Off Berkeley Square
London W1J 6NW United Kingdom
Ph. + 44 (0)20 74990365
info@sladmore.com
http://www.sladmore.com

Opening hours
Monday – Thursday from 10am to 6pm
Friday from 10am to 5pm or by appointment

[via Colossal]

Abdomen : steel tips for boots, bike headlights
Thorax and head : steel tips and bells from bikes and typewriters
Eyes : vintage watch case
Antennae : spectacles arms
Legs : bike brakes , bike chain , spoon handles
Wings : glass

Beak: autoscope
Head : two seed scoops
Eyes : ornaments for bike lights
Wings : Petrol tank plates of 40s and 50s motorcycle Monet-Goyon and Khoeler-Escoffier , bike chain guards
Tail : bike chain guards
Body : children’s tricycle fender Legs : springs , pieces of costume jewellery

Wings : moped chain guards
Legs : bike brake parts , pieces of winshield wipers , bike chains
Abdomen : old acetylene light tank
Thorax : car suspension part, small spoon parts , cream chargers
Head : headlights, bike parts
Butterfly trunk : clock springs
Hair : pieces of a daisy wheel
Antennae : brake cables, on the top : drawer knobs

Abdomen : patinated copper/brass bicycle pump, car horn part, parts of old acetylene bike lights ( at the ends)
Thorax : two motorbike rear lights , shell-shaped drawer handles, big upholstery tacks
Head : car or lorry old stop lights, parts of acetylene bike lights, parts of a daisy wheel for typewriter ( hair from the mouth)
Legs : tubes, bike cable guide, wing nuts, wire
Wings : umbrella ribs, wire, wire netting for hen coops

Wings : moped chain guards ( rusted and patinated)
Abdomen : motorbike headlights
Thorax : very old car headlamp
Legs : large upholstery tacks , car boot hinges, pieces of windshield wipers, bike brake parts, chain guards
Head : old rear position lamps , bike parts, pieces of a daisy wheel
Butterfly trunk : clock springs
Antennae : aluminium heating resistor

Thorax and head : sauce spoons, car parts
Eyes : marbles
Abdomen : bike or motorbike headlights
Antennae : small bike chains
Legs : cream chargers , brake parts , chains, alarm clock feet , spoon handles

Histagrams is the brainchild of Gusto NYC and Gavin Alaoen, two New York City based artists currently working for MTV Networks.

In a single topic tumblr named Histagrams, the duo imagine an alternate reality where Instagram is available throughout history. While not always historically accurate (e.g., Laocoön actually wanted to set fire to the horse and the moon photo was not from the Apollo 11 mission), the spirit of Instagram is instantly recognizable. They do well to mimic the type of photos shared as well as the hashtags and language used on the popular social network.

Hopefully the site continues to grow and they explore using actual Instagram filters to the images they select. For much more, visit Histagrams.com

[via Bored Panda]

French photographer Christophe Jacrot made ​​a series of photos dedicated to rain. ‘In my opinion, there are two ways of capturing the world for a photographer; on the one hand grasping its horror, and on the other sublimating it. I have chosen the second. More specifically, I like the way rain, snow and ‘bad weather’ awaken a feeling of romantic fiction within me, mainly in the big cities,’ explains the artist. Christophe Jacrot sees these elements as a fabulous ground for photography, an under-used visual universe with a strong evocative power with a richness of subtle lights. This universe is noticed only by a few people, since most are too occupied getting undercover.

All images © Christophe Jacrot | Via: FreeYork

wow Dylan!

ghostridetheweb:

Early morning sketch (NSFW)

Print

septagonstudios:

Shaun Swainland

Seven Deadly Sins

ikenaga yasunari

We featured Li Hui a couple of times before on iGNANT and we still love her beautiful and sensitive photography. Thus we invited the chinese self-taught photographer to take us with her and follow her on one day in her life. Li Hui shows 24 Hours through the lense of her camera. We are amazed by the beautiful result and hope you enjoy it just as much as we do. Enjoy.

[9:00 am] The first sunrays hit my bed.

[10:00 am] I’m hiding under my blanket where it’s warm and cozy.

[11:00 am] Time to get up and going.

[12:00 am] Enjoying a hot cup of tea.

[01:00 pm] The light is just beautiful and I am playing with my hamsters.

[02:00 pm] Me and my good friend are taking a trip to the nearby mountains. I always enjoy to have a walk or drive a car to there in the lazy sunny afternoon.

[03:00 pm] I love the smell of grass, the sun and the way its rays shine on my hand and the palm of my hand becomes transparent, then I enjoy taking some pictures to keep memories.

[04:00 pm] Nature has a lot to offer if you are open to let yourself inspire by its endless beauty.

[05:00 pm] The sun is about to go down for today.

[06:00 pm] We still don’t have enough and are playing around a little.

[07:00 pm] Enjoying the very las sunbeams…

[08:00 pm] …before it goes down behind the mountains for today.

[09:00 pm] We decide to get in the car and drive back home.

[12:00 pm] Back home I crawl back in my sheets. Good night everyone.

All images © Li Hui

Movie: Wong Mun Summ of WOHA explains how the Singapore studio tried to recreate geological forms in the architecture of PARKROYAL on Pickering, which won the Hotels category at last month's Inside Festival.  (more...)

Photographer Anthony Pappone specializes in travel, portrait and photojournalism. Since a child he has had a fascination with history, far away places and tribes with ancient cultures. Over the years Pappone has documented ceremonies and festivals around the world with many recent journeys around the continent of Africa. On Flickr and Behance you will discover numerous albums documenting these amazing events.

A recent series on Behance entitled The Spirit of Masks, highlights FESTIMA (Festival International des Masques et des Arts de Dédougou), a festival of masks that takes place every other year in the city of Dédougou in Burkina Faso.

Taken at last year’s festival, Pappone explains that the masks originate from a number of West African countries in addition to Burkina Faso. Dances are performed day and night and it is said the person wearing the mask embodies the spirit of the mask they wear. Some represent animals while others are used to ask for rain. While the images below show the visual component, an equally important element is the music and rhythm throughout the event.

To see more from the series check out the rest of the images on Behance or browse through the 148-picture gallery on Flickr. For more wonderful travel photography by Pappone, check him out at the links below.

In his project ‘Art x Smart’ Korean illustrator Kim Dong-Kyu updated paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Chagall or Munch with the latest achievements of our modern time. Already at the first glance it is obvious how ridiculous gadgets like iPhones, tablets and laptops appear in this ancient art, which questions our dealing with the advanced technologies. The works should be humorous parodies of the way smartphones have dramatically changed today’s social interaction. The models in the classical paintings use the devices to play games, take pictures and listen to music, as if the action was of second nature to them, like it is for us long since.

All images © Kim Dong-Kyu

In this remarkable scene, we see an exposed coral garden at low tide. The photo was taken by biologist and redditor Virupa, who took the shot in front of Lizard Island at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The island straight ahead in the distance is Palfrey. Virupa says he is standing about a third of the way between the islands in the shot and that he could have walked all the way to Palfrey without getting wet above his knees (source).

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres (1,600 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.

The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981. [Source]

The inspiration for the series ‘Accidental Empires’ by Matthew Quick, was the fall and rise of Empires in the history. ‘When the US seized Baghdad, the soldiers celebrated by destroying art. Removing contemporary politics, this destruction illustrates how little has changed psychologically in the 1500 years since the barbarian sack of Rome. With one notable difference. Rome was destroyed by uneducated warriors. In Baghdad, the event was stage-managed for TV’, he explains. His series shows ancient sculptures with odd requisites, which put them in a completely different light while depriving their solemn seriousness. The arising ironic undertone provides the perfect foundation for a revisionist take on the notions of beauty, pride, and nationalism.

All images © Matthew Quick

Working with oil paint on panels, the artist Alex Hall combines surrealism and figuration to create beautifully rendered, contemporary works. He draws inspiration from his own life encounters and the everyday struggles with which so many people can relate. His new series ‘Relativity’ depicts individuals floating in time and space. He chose to paint the figures with no distinct faces so they would relate to every man and every woman. This particular series is a very honest representation of where he is currently in his own life. Having recently graduated college and being thrown off his feet into the real world, he was extremely overwhelmed. ‘I began to realize that most people are familiar with this feeling of uncertainty. With that idea, I sought out to create a series that was a visual representation of an emotion that has been universally felt by all people: A sense of uncertainty, and ultimately struggling to achieve a balance in life.’

All images © Alex Hall

christine wus

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thisbeautifulwreckage:

sarabande de mcqueen by nabil nezzar

In this amazing capture by Steve Wall, we see a majestic moose shrouded in the early morning mist. Steve, who was on a camping trip at the time, recalls being woken up in the early morning by distant grunts:

“I threw on some clothes, grabbed my camera, and jumped in the canoe to follow the grunts. I quietly paddled around our point and into a little bay behind our campsite. And there I received the ultimate gift of the moose. For more than 30 minutes as the sun slowly peeked up through the morning mist I sat mesmerized as this majestic beast ate and explored less than 30 feet away. He posed, grunted, and swam in front of me several times before finally climbing back on shore and noisily disappearing through the trees.”

The passage above is a snippet from a longer (and really great!) recount of the trip and shot. You can read the entire story on Steve’s Flickr page. It is entitled, the gift of the moose.

Alyssa Monks

Paintings by Dorian Vallejo

Illustrations by Lois van Baarle (loish) dA l tumblr l shop

Illustrations by Taupe Syuka

Adirondack mountains, New York (Paul Frederick)

Seen here is an incredible triceratops sculpture made from dozens of jack o’lanterns. These are just a handful of the over 5,000 individually hand-carved and illuminated pumpkins at this year’s Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze put on by Historic Hudson Valley.

The event takes place at Van Cortlandt Manor in Westchester County, New York. You can buy tickets to the event from now until November 3 with a final viewing from November 8 – 11. Ticket prices: Adults, $16; Children 3-17, $12 (Saturdays $20, $16), FREE for children under 3 as well as members. For more information visit the official site at: http://www.hudsonvalley.org/events/blaze

Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur that lived during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 65.5 million years ago (Mya) in what is now North America. It was one of the last non-avian dinosaur genera to appear before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (the mass extinction of some three-quarters of plant and animals species on Earth). The term ‘Triceratops’, literally means “three-horned face”. [Source]

In the mid-1930s, some beautiful, high-quality books were published by a company called Limited Editions Club, which, according to Antiques Roadshow appraiser Ken Sanders, was “famous for re-issuing classics of literature and commissioning contemporary living artists to illustrate 1500-copy signed limited editions.”  One of those books—the 1934 Pablo Picasso-illustrated edition of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata—is, next to Henri Matisse’s 1935 edition of Joyce’s Ulysses, one of “the most sought after and desirable limited editions on the market today.”

The book’s rarity, of course, renders it more valuable on the market than a mass-produced object, but whether if was worth $5,000 or $50, I think I’d hold onto my copy if I had one (here’s one for $12,000 if you’re buying). While Aubrey Beardsley’s 1896 illustrations do full and stylish justice to the satirical Greek comedy’s bawdy nature, Picasso’s drawings render several scenes as tender, softly sensual tableaux. The almost childlike simplicity of these illustrations of a play about female power and the limits of patriarchy do not seem like the work of a rumored misogynist, but then again, neither do any of Picasso’s other domestic scenes in this spare, rounded style of his.

In Aristophanes’ play, the women of Greece refuse their husbands sex until the men agree to end the Peloponnesian War. The play makes much of the men’s mounting sexual frustration, with several humorous gestures toward its physical manifestations. Beardsley’s drawings offend Victorian eyes by making these scenes into exaggerated nudist farce. Picasso’s modernist sketches all but ignore the overt sexuality of the play, picturing two lovers (2nd from top) almost in the posture of mother and child, the pent up men (image above) as dejected and downcast gentle souls, and the reunion of the sexes (below) as a highly stylized, none too erotic, feast. These images are three of six signed proofs featured on the blog Book Graphics. See their site to view all six illustrations.

Related Content:

Henri Matisse Illustrates 1935 Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Iconic Artists at Work: Watch Rare Videos of Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Renoir, Monet and More

Picasso Painting on Glass

Find Lysistrata in our Free eBooks collection

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

See Pablo Picasso’s Spare, Tender Illustrations For a Limited Edition of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1934) is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and by Email.