Stick around the art world long enough and you will hear that the art of painting is dead. Jim Shaw, Chris Martin and Klaas Kloosterboer prove the art world wrong in an old Submarine hall.
http://bit.ly/19ea2kO

(Source: retroblogtraveler.com)

In for some vintage swing in a magical, retro fantasy, Las Vegas setting? UK’s No.1 swing band The Jive Aces released last Tuesday (on the 11th of June) their new music video “King of Jive”.

(Source: facebook.com)

Photographer Suzanne Jongmans uses discarded packaging and insulation materials to create the caps, collars and dresses that shape the portraits in her serene, almost timeless photographs.  Inspired by 16th and 17th century paintings of masters like Holbein, Clouet, Vermeer and in general by paintings from Holland’s Golden Age these foam sculptures, as Suzanne calls them, are in fact made of an inferior packaging material which is often discarded after use. “You can call them upcycled art”, she says.

This week I am going to participate in TransHumance 2013, the experience of shared traveling at the pace of animals. TransHumance is an incredible travel adventure over 600 kilometers in the Provence, France, linking 40 communes, 6 parks and reserves, 3 countries and 2 continents.

150 riders on horseback (cowboys of the Camargue, riders and equestrians from the Maremma and Lazio area of Italy), joined by walkers from all backgrounds and nationalities, thirty Italian cows and a flock of sheep are due to arrive for the grand finale in Marseille (Marseille is this year’s European Capital of Culture) on Sunday, June 9 2013. http://bit.ly/19zUYiq

(Source: retroblogtraveler.com)

You don’t have to be in Delft long to see what inspired the famed Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Walk where Vermeer walked and the city comes to life right before your eyes. Fortunately Delft today looks very much as it did in Vermeer’s day. The diffused afternoon light gives it almost a serene, timeless quality that would have delighted this master of chiaroscuro and realism too.

The reproduction of the Vermeer’s masterpiece “Girl with a Pearl Earring” next to the New Church or “Nieuwe Kerk” (also nicknamed “the Dutch Mona Lisa”), is one of only 36 known/surviving paintings by Vermeer.

Hidden away in some quiet corner of the Belgian Ardennes, Le vieux Château de Commanster in the village of Commanster came as a nice surprise. Not that there is much château to speak of, but the interior, with its carved oak paneling of the staircase, the arms and doors, made up for the lack of the grandeur of the old castle (if ever there was one).

Le vieux château, built in 1741 by Henri-François Baptiste, alderman at the court of Salm and mayeur Gouvy, is now a listed building,  Inside there is a small pub (only open on Friday evenings, weekends and holidays ), where you can taste the local “Cervoise” beer, eat some bread and cheese “Old Castle / Vieux Château” or if you have a sweet tooth enjoy the local “tarts” or cakes. Time really seems to slow down in Le vieux Château de Commanster once you start staring at the soft blue flames fluttering around the grill, while at the same time observing how the embers of thick local wood add more burnt remains to the already existing layers of centuries old black dust.

In Rome on Pentecost Sunday May, 19? Go and see the magical appearance of fluttering rose petals coming down from the aperture of the Pantheon. It is beautiful and spectacular in every way! Read more on http://bit.ly/17E1HIQ

(Source: retroblogrome.com)