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    Eccentric Costumes From the New Emma Stone Film ‘Poor Things’ Go on View in L.A.

    Director Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film Poor Things tells the fantastical tale of a young woman, played by Emma Stone, who’s brought back to life by Willem Dafoe’s mad scientist. It’s the stuff of gothic horror, woven with the Greek filmmaker’s winking absurdism, as the movie follows our lead Bella Baxter from her rebirth in the 1880s through the 1960s. Key to that storytelling isn’t just Lanthimos’s surreal scene-setting, but the film’s lavishly eccentric costuming, overseen by designer Holly Waddington.
    “I was really encouraged by Yorgos to just go big,” the costume designer told the Motion Pictures Association of her work on the film. “What we ended up with had a lot to do with texture—big textures in the clothing, things that felt organic, things that felt inflated.”
    Now, Waddington’s costumes have made their way off-screen and into a showcase at the ASU FIDM Museum in Los Angeles. Organized by Searchlight Pictures, “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” arrays 13 costumes from the film, including eight worn by Stone, and others by her co-stars including Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, and Ramy Youssef. 
    Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things (2023). Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
    To the museum’s curator Kevin Jones, these pieces, while recognizably “historic,” present a blend of styles to create “looks that are not pedantic.” In an email, he brings up “leg-‘o’-mutton sleeves mixed with go-go boots, lobster-tail bustles worn as outerwear, and reconfigurations of Madeleine Vionnet and Charles James eveningwear.” 
    This interplay of styles emerged from Lanthimos’s and Waddington’s vast body of references for the film. According to her, they included Victorian designs as much as 1960s nods to the space age. The works of Otto Dix, Egon Schiele, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Singer Sargent also served as inspirations. Waddington’s use of period-appropriate fabrics were additionally woven with contemporary techniques—an, ahem, Frankenstein-esque mix-and-match that nailed the movie’s otherworldliness. 
    Emma Stone in Poor Things (2023). Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
    Among the pieces in the exhibition are a paper silk ensemble cut into a mermaid silhouette (what Waddington calls a “weird bustle cage“) that nods to Bella’s awakening youth, and an eye-poppingly yellow Victorian evening gown, complete with pointed sleeves, that marks her sexual liberation.  
    Jones himself highlights Bella’s first outfit, a lush blue creation, which mirrors the waters out of which she is rescued by Dafoe’s character, as well as a bronze satin day gown that “blends into the wood paneling of her husband’s chateau—sartorially imprisoning her just as he is trying to physically.” 
    “Each costume is a character unto itself that reflects the actor’s circumstance, and subtly reveals to movie-goers the hero’s or villain’s course of action,” he said. “How much costume detail is lost on screen, or how the colors or patterns enhance or subdue the believability of the storyline is evident in the exhibition.” 
    See more images from the show below. 
    Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
    Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
    Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
    Installation view of “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” at ASU FIDM Museum. Photo courtesy of ASU FIDM Museum.
    “Poor Things Costume Exhibit” is on view at the ASU FISM Museum, 919 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California, through December 15. 

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    Unsung Women Fashion Designers Finally Get to Strut at the Met

    I don’t normally think of my nonna when I go to fashion exhibitions. Museums tend to vaunt the “genius” designers, the couturiers, or maybe the socialites or celebrities who wear their creations. My grandmother, by contrast, worked in a factory as a seamstress in Rockaway, Queens. She spent all day cutting jackets, stitching trousers, and sewing dress patterns for someone else’s label. Then she went home and fashioned garments for her three children.
    Actually, many women in my family made clothes: they crocheted pink sweaters and baby bonnets, whipped up strawberry-print jumpers on sewing machines, embroidered fancy collars. Sewing gave them agency—a way to express their creativity, clothe their loved ones, or make money in a country where they didn’t speak the language.
    Gallery view, “Agency: Liminal Spaces of Fashion.” “Theodosia” tea gown by Maria Monaci Gallenga, ca. 1925. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
    I felt the spirit of all these women in my life as I walked through “Women Dressing Women,” a terrific new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. The show, on view through March 3, 2024, features 80 objects by 70 artists from the Costume Institute’s collection, from the famous—a Modernist black-and-cream Chanel suit from the 1920s—to the forgotten—a wonderfully weird plum velvet tea gown with sheer sleeves that hang like curtains from the Italian artist Maria Monaci Gallenga, who began making clothes for herself in 1910.
    It also honors the often unsung, often unacknowledged ways that women have interacted, and in some ways shaped, the fashion industry. “There were some discoveries,” said Karen Van Godtsenhoven, who curated the show with Mellissa Huber. “As we still look at our collection critically and want to interrogate why some designers have been less visible in the past.”
    The curators wanted to illustrate not only “the significance of women to fashion,” as Huber put it, “but in turn the significance of fashion to women.” “Women Dressing Women” opens with the Holy Trinity of female couturiers. A razzle-dazzle explosion of sparkling dresses that proves women can do showstopping design just as well as men.
    Gallery view: Left, Evening dress by Madeleine Vionnet, 1924-25; center: Evening jacket, Elza Schiaparelli, 1937; right: Evening dress, Gabrielle Chanel, 1928-39. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
    There’s a slinky chocolate silk gown embroidered with shimmering gold thread from Madeleine Vionnet, the virtuosic technician credited with pioneering the bias cut dress in 1926; a star-studded blue velvet jacket from Elsa Schiaparelli, the flamboyant Surrealist; and a black tulle confection shot through with sequin fireworks by the one-and-only Coco Chanel.
    That out of the way, the show then resumes chronologically. It starts with the countless anonymous dressmakers stitching custom wardrobes for clients: clothes filled with artistry but without a label.
    That changed in the turn of the 20th century, when the skilled seamstresses, model-makers, and salespeople at these workrooms began opening their own prestigious fashion houses.
    In the years between World War I and World War II, women ruled Parisian haute couture, churning out corsetless, loose-fitting dresses for liberated ladies like themselves. “Fashion was one of the first industries open to women,” Van Godtsenhoven said. “There’s this clichéd idea that fashion is just dresses or it’s frivolous, but in a very structural way, it’s given salary and a stable work life to women,” she added. “And I think there is also a connection between fashion and the larger feminist movement, because it’s really about women’s lives. There is a very big synergy between the progress women make in society and in fashion.”
    Gallery View, “Agency: Appropriating Menswear.” Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
    The Met has a trove of treasures from these women-led couture houses, many long-shuttered. Lucille—the label that self-taught dressmaker Lucy Duff-Gordon founded after her husband abandoned her and their young daughter—fabricated airy confections of silk chiffon. Callot Soeurs, helmed by a quartet of sisters who turned their lingerie and antique lace shop into a couture house, took inspiration from Eastern dress for their sumptuous, luxurious designs. The forgotten label Premet launched its sweet, tomboyish little black dress—dubbed “la garçonne”—in 1923, three years before Chanel took credit for the style.
    Gallery view, “Agency.” Left: Evening dress by Pualine de Rothschild for Hattie Carnegie Inc.; center “Future dress” Claire McCardell, 1945; right: tea gown, Jessie Franklin Turner ca. 1928. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
    The exhibit then moves on to the American ready-to-wear designers of the 1950s, such as Bonnie Cashin and Claire McCardell, who created easy, practical, yet idiosyncratic garments for the modern woman as an alternative to the stuffy couture coming out of Paris.
    The “boutique generation” of the 1960s and ‘70s—including Biba and Betsey Johnson—demanded even more autonomy. They opened their own shops and imbued their designs with political, social, and artistic ideas, such as Vivienne Westwood’s T-shirts denouncing overconsumption or her subversive use of traditional tartan plaid.
    The curators also aim to correct the historical record, giving credit to women workers who never got their due, including Ann Lowe, the Black society designer who made Jacqueline Kennedy’s wedding gown. Lowe has one of her signature rosette-strewn dresses in the show, from 1968, created for A.F. Chantilly, Inc., one of the various companies for which she freelanced in order to make ends meet.
    Gallery view, “Absence | Omission.” Left: Dress by Ester Manas and Balthazaar Delpierre for Ester Manas 2022. Right: “Delphos” gown, Adèle Henriette Elisabeth Nigrin Fortuny and Mariano Fortuny for Fortuny ca. 1932. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
    But the show’s most jaw-dropping revelation is the true creator of the iconic silk pleated “Delphos” gown by the Venetian house Fortuny. Historians had long attributed the design to Mariano Fortuny, instead of to Henriette Nigrin, his partner and muse—and a skilled seamstress herself—who actually created it.
    “The people at the Fortuny museum found the patent for the dress, which had a written note with something like, ‘My wife made this, but I don’t have time to put her name down for the pattern,’” Van Godtsenhoven said.
    When Fortuny died in 1949, Nigrin sold the brand to an interior designer named Elsie McNeill. She said Elsie could do whatever she wanted with their designs, she just asked that they stop production of her beloved Delphos. “These garments are of my own creation, even more than many others,” she wrote. “I desire that no-one else take them over.”
    Rei Kawakubo with models wearing Comme des Garçons, published in People, December 26, 1983.Photo by Takeyoshi Tanuma. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
    “Women Dressing Women” concludes with a selection of makers working today, such as Comme des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo, the Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, and Jamie Okuma, the first Native American designer invited to join the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Yet it’s the older, rediscovered, and reconsidered gems that feel the freshest.
    How lovely that the women who poured their blood, sweat, tears, and artistry into these astonishing pieces—that were in turn cherished so much by the women who donned them that they donated them to a museum to be preserved forever—finally get their chance to strut.

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    Irreverent Artist Jamian Juliano-Villani Will Headline a Solo Show at Gagosian in 2024

    Jamian Juliano-Villani, the New York-based painter known for reappropriating images from memes, fashion photography, and art history for her irreverent paintings, will be showing at Gagosian in March 2024.
    The solo exhibition, titled “It,” will feature new paintings, anchored by Spaghettios (2023). The large-scale work, about six feet long and seven feet tall, depicts a bowl of Campbell’s torus-shaped pasta in the foreground and a Spaghettios soup can in the background, with her signature hyperrealism.
    The show will be accompanied by the first major publication dedicated to her work, encompassing 45 paintings from 2013 to 2023, including a number of works from the March exhibition.
    “I am finally making the work I want to make,” Juliano-Villani said in an email. “Freedom of expression is something I do with defiance and it’s worth defending. Larry [Gagosian] understands that. This show is a love letter from one visionary to another.”
    Juliano-Villani is currently exhibiting one of her works at the Gagosian booth at Art Basel Miami Beach this week—alongside new art by the likes of Carol Bove and Lauren Halsey—marking the second year of her journey with the gallery.
    One of her works had previously been included in “100 Years”—a group exhibition and collaboration between dealers Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian during Miami Art Week in 2022, which launched her work with the gallery. Gagosian has since showed her work at Art Basel Hong Kong, Art Basel, and Paris+.
    Juliano-Villani had been represented by JTT gallery in New York and Massimo De Carlo, who has galleries in Milan and Hong Kong, as well as in London, since at least 2019. (JTT gallery, in a surprise move in August, closed after over a decade in business.)
    In 2021, Juliano-Villani opened her own Lower East Side gallery, O’Flaherty’s, with two longtime friends, Billy Grant and Ruby Zarsky. O’Flaherty’s recently moved locations and reopened in March, inaugurated by the Viennese collective Gelatin.
    “Jamian has such a unique and creative perspective that crosses generations from Pop Art to TikTok,” Gagosian senior director Kara Vander Weg said in an email. “We’ve been talking for some time and are delighted to host her exhibition next year.”
    “It” will be on view at Gagosian New York, 541 West 24th Street, New York, from March 16, 2024.

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    How Design Wunderkind Samuel Ross Reimagined the Humble Park Bench

    The humble public bench has undergone a radical revamp at Design Miami this year, thanks to artist and designer Samuel Ross. The British wunderkind has crafted a series of 12 innovative benches—in three styles—for use by the Miami Design District, currently and permanently installed along its posh promenades.
    The site-specific installation—previewed at Design Miami Paris in October—comes just in time for Miami Art Week, with its throngs of well-heeled visitors parading about the slick galleries, luxury boutiques, and tony restaurants of the 16-acre district. Ultramodern and utilitarian, the sculptures will no doubt offer welcome respite for the crush.
    A Samuel Ross bench located in the Miami Design District.
    Yet despite their futuristic appearance, the benches sit in the canon of British sculpture, according to Ross. “When you view the work,” he explained via video from his London studio, “you can see the relationship to [Anthony] Caro, [Barbara] Hepworth, and [Henry] Moore, which is purposeful. I’m extending the lineage of British sculpture and abstraction.”
    In particular, he said, the benches are a nod to Moore’s The Arch (1979–1980), a travertine marble monolith in Kensington Gardens that deftly combines architectural and anatomical forms. As a child, his father would often take him to see the sculpture. “Being raised by two artists, one who went to Central Saint Martins and the other who paints religiously, will have that effect.”
    A Samuel Ross bench located in the Miami Design District.
    Ross started the bench designs as charcoal sketches before translating them into 3D format and shaping the CNC steel in his workshop. In all, the process took 12 weeks to cycle through numerous iterations and prototypes. In addition to form, Ross also gave a lot of thought to human haptics, allowing for a smooth interaction between the benches and their use by people.
    “Housing the body is so interesting,” he said, “and the way temperature, elevation, texture, and materials come into play.” He considered “local variations that I don’t have to think about in England.” In other words, color absorption and heat on a steel sheet surface. He ultimately went with a chalk-white surface and a gloss veneer to reflect the sun’s rays.
    Sketches of benches by Samuel Ross.
    “The tension between the sculptural and the functional is an obsession of mine. The line between the two is very exciting to push and pull.” Ross, however, is no stranger to pushing boundaries. It’s at the core of his product and industrial design company, SR_A, which is taking on increasingly complex commissions, most recently a tourbillon wristwatch for Hublot and headphones for Beats, leading Apple to offer him a newly created plum position, that of Principal Design Consultant for Beats.
    SR_A is only part of his design ambitions. During Paris Fashion Week, his fashion line A Cold Wall has become a must-see runway event, particularly for its collaborations with brands including Nike, Dr. Martens, and Timberland. In fact, launched in 2015, the label was first on his to-do list of career objectives—at the urging of his mentor and friend, the late Virgil Abloh.
    Samuel Ross with his new faucet for Kohler.
    Fortuitously, one of the first actions Ross took upon finishing graduate school was contacting the celebrated architect-turned-artistic director of Louis Vuitton men’s. What began as an internship at Abloh’s own label, Off-White, led to the creation of A Cold Wall—which, in 2022, was the subject of a fashion exhibition at London’s V&A museum.
    Ross’s forays into abstract painting are finding success, too. His exhibition at London’s White Cube in April was well-received. So, too, was a show of granite sculptures at Friedman Benda in May in New York, his second solo show with the gallery.
    Bench by Samuel Ross at ‘Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design’ at Chatsworth House, U.K.
    There is another reason Ross has come to Miami, and that’s to present his inaugural collaboration with Kohler, the American bathroom company. Debuting at Design Miami, Ross has designed a distinctively angular double faucet, the Formation 01, that dispenses a smooth sheet of water. It’s cast entirely in a recycled epoxy, a new material developed by SR_A that “enables better angulation.” Created in solid orange, Ross’s signature hue, the striking tap will be sold in a limited edition of 299. In April 2024, Kohler will also host an installation by Ross at Salone del Mobile in Milan, taking over the Kohler palazzo.
    This isn’t the first time Ross has participated in Miami Art Week. He started visiting Art Basel and Design Miami in 2020, he said, when “there was this shift happening, a convergence of commerce and artistry that was coming to a head, the coalition of all of these corporate entities and creative communities coming together that really defines Art Basel for me. It seems to have quite a serrated edge to it.”

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    See Futuristic Works by Tilly Talbot, Billed as the World’s First A.I. Designer, Now on View in Miami

    Miami Art Week is welcoming all manner of young and emerging artists, but the Standard Spa on the beach will be showcasing a creative entirely unlike all others. 
    From December 5–10, the boutique hotel will host a presentation from Australian interior design company Studio Snoop, featuring works by its A.I. powered designer, Tilly Talbot. Titled “House of Tilly,” the show unfolds within a house-like structure, installed with five “future-living” design prototypes that have been crafted in partnership with human artists. Her collaborators include PLP Architects, Vert Design Studio, and Magical Mushroom Company.
    As a digital avatar, Tilly will also show up in an interactive experience to share insights into her designs, as well as information about the hotel, effectively serving as its concierge.
    Tilly was designed by the studio’s founder Amanda Talbot to respond to emotional intelligence, following her inquiries into how—and why—humans access A.I. “I started to come across this idea of how loneliness can lead people to tap into artificial intelligence,” she told Dezeen, “and how that can actually help people not feel lonely.” 
    The model has been programmed to generate “human-centered” and environmentally minded designs. According to Talbot, Tilly will prioritize eco-friendly materials in her designs, gathering data in real-time to inform her “educated decisions.” 
    The Tilly A.I.  Design Collection, featuring Polar Bear with Cadrys and Gus with PLP Architects and Magical Mushroom Company. Photo: Peer Lindgreen for Studio Snoop.
    Miami marks Tilly’s U.S. debut, following her appearance at Milan Design Week in March, where she presented at Charles Philip gallery. There, her machine-imagined works were arrayed alongside tablets with which visitors could interact with Tilly via chat. 
    Tilly is far from the only A.I. presence in the design space, which is increasingly tapping the potential of generative models. Zaha Hadid Architects, for one, has been leaning on machine intelligence in its design of workspaces, just as firms such as Kahler Slater and Coop Himmelb(l)au are tapping A.I. models to complete tasks including rendering and dreaming up innovative forms. 
    Talbot, for her part, is quick to emphasize that Tilly is a tool as much as a collaborator. As with most A.I., Tilly comes with built-in, which “you’ve got to get through,” but Talbot professed the model’s involvement in the studio’s processes has “invigorated” its practice. 
    “The more knowledge we have,” she said about A.I., “the more we can engage with it and learn about it and be a part of it.” 
    See more of Tilly’s designs going on view at Miami Art Week below. 
    The Tilly A.I. Design Collection, in partnership with Vert. Photo: Peer Lindgreen for Studio Snoop.
    The Tilly A.I. Design Collection, in collaboration with PLP Architects and Magical Mushroom Company. Photo: Peer Lindgreen for Studio Snoop.
    The Tilly A.I. Design Collection. Photo: Peer Lindgreen for Studio Snoop.
    “House of Tilly” is on view at the Standard Spa, 40 Island Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida, December 5–10. 

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    The Elusive Conceptual Artist Lutz Bacher’s Posthumous Show in London Hones In on Princess Diana

    The mysterious conceptualist Lutz Bacher is having her first posthumous institutional show at Raven Row in London. The artist herself initiated the concept for the exhibition with curator Anthony Huberman as a mixed presentation of audiovisual pieces which featuring old VHS footage from Princess Diana’s funeral and the voices and imagery of legendary figures from pop culture, including Leonard Cohen—but also Darth Vader. Eerie installations, including a pit of sand, fill the gallery rooms. After Bacher’s passing in 2019, the non-profit exhibition center Raven Row worked with the artist’s estate and Galerie Buchholz to deliver the exhibition.
    A California native, Bacher lived in the Bay Area and later New York. She was known to be highly secretive and never publicly revealed basic biographical information, like her birth name or age (although it is known that she was born in 1943). Nonetheless, she received widespread institutional recognition with solo shows at MoMA PS1 in 2009, the ICA in London in 2013, and the Secession in Vienna in 2016.
    At Raven Row, Bacher’s blend of found material, digital ephemera, and appropriated sounds and images is quintessential Bacher. In one gallery, panes of glass shimmer with projected images of the Empire State Building lit up with bright colors at night. In the lobby, the visitor is affronted by loud traffic noises, whereas upstairs, bible passages are blared out of a huge speaker while tinny radios play run-of-the-mill pop hits over each other. These strange works, that are tricky to categorize or contextualize, manage to disorientate the viewer in much the same way as our information-oversaturated world often succeeds in doing.
    “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” runs through December 17. Check out more installation views of the exhibition below.
    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Marcus J Leith.
    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Anne Tetzlaff.
    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Anne Tetzlaff.
    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Marcus J Leith.
    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Marcus J Leith.
    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Marcus J Leith.

    Installation of “Lutz Bacher: AYE!” at Raven Row gallery in London. Photo: © Anne Tetzlaff.

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    A New Show at the Royal Academy Celebrates Rarely Seen Impressionist Drawings, Including a Recovered Van Gogh

    It is little wonder that an art movement like Impressionism, popular for capturing the elusive immediacy of everyday life, would be drawn to drawing. Works on paper, historically relegated to the status of a preparatory sketch, soon became masterpieces in their own right. Emancipated from the formal rigor and slick stylisations of Rococo and Neoclassicist painting, the Impressionists were able to reveal something that felt much truer to real life. The course of modern art would never turn back.
    A new show at the Royal Academy in London brings together 77 drawings in pastel, charcoal and watercolor by Impressionists like Mary Cassatt, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Augustus Renoir, as well as prominent post-Impressionists like Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat. Many of these works are rarely exhibited in public because they are privately owned and their fragile materials can be vulnerable to the damaging effects of daylight.
    One highlight of the show, Van Gogh’s The Fortifications of Paris with Houses (1887), was nearly lost forever after it was stolen from Manchester’s Whitworth Gallery in 2003. The watercolor sketch and two other works by Gauguin and Picasso were miraculously recovered a day later, stashed by a public bathroom on the edge of Whitworth Park some 200 yards away. Having been removed from its frame and exposed to the elements on a particularly cold and damp day, the Van Gogh showed some signs of damage including a 5 inch tear on one side that has since been repaired. It was found with a smudged note stating: “The intention was not to steal. Only to highlight the woeful security.”
    The avant-garde compositions on view see their authors experiment with unusual vantage points, emotional expression, and greater spontaneity to create intimate figure studies, lively vignettes, and sensitive landscapes that capture something of nature’s ephemerality. These unrehearsed and unrestricted discoveries made on paper would go on to inform some of the best-loved canvases of the late 19th century and beyond.
    “Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec” runs through March 10, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.
    Vincent van Gogh, The Fortifications of Paris with Houses (1887). Photo: Michael Pollard, © The Whitworth, The University of Manchester.
    Odilon Redon, Ophelia Among the Flowers (c. 1905-08). Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
    Installation view of “Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, showing Edgar Degas, Dancer Seen from Behind (c. 1873). Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. Artwork: The Whitworth, The University of Manchester.
    Mary Cassatt, Portrait de Marie-Thérèse Gaillard (1894). Photo: © 2007 Christie’s Images Limited.
    Installation view of “Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, showing Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself (c.1890-95). Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. Artwork: The Whitworth, The University of Manchester.
    Georges Seurat, Seated Youth, Study for “Bathers at Asnières” (1883). Photo courtesy of National Galleries of Scotland.
    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Circus: The Encore (1899).
    Installation view of “Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, showing Camille Pissarro, The Market Stall (1884). Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. Artwork: The Whitworth, The University of Manchester.
    Installation view of “Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry.

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    “LA JOTA” Urban Postcards G085 by Giulio Vesprini in Zaragoza, Spain

    Renowned street artist Giulio Vesprini has recently unveiled a captivating mural as part of the Asalto Festival in Zaragoza. Nestled in the enchanting “La Jota” neighborhood, this masterpiece finds its canvas amidst a place rich in history and architectural charm. La Jota, with its roots dating back to an ambitious 1947 housing project, was envisioned as a garden city, where modest-sized homes would be complemented by communal gardens or orchards.The visionary project aimed to provide affordable housing for local workers, with meticulous planning by architects José Beltrán and Fausto García Marco. The neighborhood’s name pays homage to the construction company, “Obras y Construcciones Damán,” situated on Avenida Castaluña.Giulio Vesprini’s contribution to this historic locale transcends traditional boundaries, adding a contemporary layer to La Jota’s narrative. Through vibrant strokes and imaginative design, the mural not only revitalizes the neighborhood’s aesthetic but also serves as a tribute to the visionary spirit of its post-war architects. As spectators traverse the streets of La Jota, they are greeted by a visual feast that seamlessly intertwines the old and the new, a testament to the enduring impact of art on community and urban landscapes. The Asalto Festival has once again become a platform for artistic expression, bringing together history, architecture, and modern creativity in the heart of Zaragoza.Photo credit: Marcos Cebrian More