Children not looking at modern art
Categories: Contemporary Art, history, Ideas, Museums • Tags: art, children, humor, imagination, museum, photography
Abandoned suitcases of insane asylum patients
Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: collection, history, institution, museum, nostalgia, outsider art, suitcase
Wax figures after the fire
I’m so unsettled and captivated by this incredible photograph of wax figures burnt and melted after the massive 1925 fire that destroyed Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. I think wax models alone are already pretty creepy, but I don’t think even the Chamber of Horrors can touch the pathos of this unintentionally gruesome scene. With missing heads and appendages, charred skin and clothing in disarray, the uncanny wax models truly look like the causalities of some great trauma. I’ve […]
Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: body, figurine, museum, sculpture, unsettling, wax
Opulent taxidermy made by Idiots
The Idiots are an artistic collective made up of Afke Golsteijn and Floris Bakker. They describe their work as “characterized by the use of animal material exquisitely sculpted into natural positions and combined seamlessly with rich materials such as embroidery and pearls.” Their work plays with all sorts of quirky taxidermy, such as the exposed fox spine of Thanatos and Hypnos (2011), the parrot headphones of Head Phones (Stilte!) (2009), or the slick oil drop bird in Oilbird (2008). However, I […]
Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: animal, art, bird, curiosities, jewels, lion, sculpture, taxidermy, unsettling
19th century papier-mâché insects
These wonderful papier-mâché anatomical models of bees were made around 1875 by Dr. Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux (1797-1880). As a medical student in France in the early nineteenth-century, Auzoux was frustrated by the lack of real cadavers and the expense and delicacy of wax models to study anatomy. After his graduation from medical school in 1818, the young doctor began experimenting with the creation of anatomical models, inspired by a visit to the papier-mâché workshop of Jean Francois Ameline in […]
Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: anatomy, bee, insect, papier-mâché, science, sculpture, victorian era
Hicken’s Fur-Bearing Trout
Rather than explaining this one, I think it’s far better to let your imagination run wild. Image from Myth or Marvel? The Fur-Bearing Trout. If you must, you can read more about this remarkable species here.
Categories: Curiosities • Tags: cryptozoology, fish, fur, humor, imagination, taxidermy
Morbid kidswear ads
If you haven’t already seen it, I strongly suggest you read about the fascinating Hidden Mothers phenomena in Victorian photography, and its possible relationship to the tradition of post-mortem photography. Amsterdam-based fashion photographers/artists Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm have put a morbid contemporary twist on the history of this imagery, recycling the aesthetic conventions of hidden mother and post-mortem photography into a commercial kid’s wear fashion shoot. In the first part of Blommers and Schumm’s ‘Kidswear’ series, an anonymous figure […]
Categories: Contemporary Art, history • Tags: art, body, children, face, hidden mothers, photography, unsettling, victorian era
WWII Parachute Crash Test Dummies
I know very little about these wonderful objects, but Obsolete, a combination antiques shop and contemporary art gallery in Venice, California, claims that they are World War Two parachute crash test dummies. The images are taken from Obsolete’s Facebook page, where it also says each dummy weighs up to 225lbs. I’d love to know more about these splendid models and their history, but information is surprisingly scarce. Here is a great history of the parachute, for example, but there is […]
Categories: Curiosities, history • Tags: body, crash test dummies, history, parachute, sculpture, WWII
Mostricciatoli: The little monsters of Tila Rodríguez-Past
Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: art, imagination, insect, installation, monastery, monsters, sculpture
The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things 