Recently in Art Category

The Gasometer Oberhausen is a former natural gas storage tank, the largest of its type in Europe, which was converted into an art exhibition space in the 1990s. Using the unique nature of the space Christo (yes that Christo) has created the Big Air Package, the largest skeleton-free inflated envelope ever, at 90 meters high, 50 meters in diameter containing 170,000 cubic-meters of air (or there abouts). The envelops is 20,350 square meters of polyester fabric and 4,500 meters of rope, weighing a total of 5.3 tons. Two large fans keep the internal pressure at 27 pascals, which is enough to support the fabric.

It was, according to the press release, conceived by Christo in 2010 and will be on display from March through December 2013. He goes on to say, "when experienced from the inside, that space is almost like a 90-meter-high cathedral,"

Envelope during assembly	From ground-level, looking up
Envelope during assembly	Side with Gasometer structure
The man himself	Top of the Package, from outside

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I know it's out of date, but I liked the image for the Year of the Rat

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Because I like, conceptually, the various modernest takes on the common tropes of European art, here's Ecce Homo, in altarpiece-shape even, from Paul Delvaux.  Now interestingly, it's not the right form to be an Ecce Homo painting, and is properly subtitled The Descent from the Cross, but I wonder if the misnomer had some sort of meaning to the artist...oh those wacky Belgians.

If you've got the cash, it's for sale in Christie's Feb 2013 auction, The Art of the Surreal.

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I. Paulini is a relatively-unknown late 16th century engraver, the Met simply provides the bio "Italian, active 16th C" in its catalogue page for the Mythological Alphabet which is the source for the new banner image. The images are from the Internet Archive for the copy owned by the Getty. Their caption only adds that though the "traditional" date for the work is c. 1570, the watermarks of the paper point to a later date, 1590-1600, for their copy.

The letters themselves are mythological in content, mostly based, as far as I can tell, on stories from Ovid's Metamorphosis. The A has Acteon, having offended Artemis, turning into a stag, with hunting dogs in the background. The M shows Midas, as king in the background and turning a rabbit to gold in the letter proper.

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