This week, the visual art is highbrow edifying stuff for the magazine-reading city elite, and the music is bottom-of-the-barrel gen-z raccoon food for degenerate pop fiends.
Vasile Ştefănoiu (Instagram) is a sculptor from Buzao. You could purchase this sculpture for the low price of $18,000. That link is the best source for more pictures of his work, including the very dynamic Arachne—Metamorphosis (2021).
Contemporary Art Curator has an interview:
That is why in some of my sculptures I take the narrative context of legends from the ancient Greek civilization and place them in different contexts, suggesting movement in metamorphosis, to create completely new meanings and evoke completely different emotions, a way of seeing again in modern times.
My goal is to rekindle interest in the imaginative richness of ancient Greek art, which from Auguste Rodin onwards was abandoned in sculpture.
Londonist has a feature on cutaway diagrams of Underground stations, especially Piccadilly Circus. The best two are the above, 1929, by Renzo Picasso, and the below, 1989, by Gavin Dunn.
"The Malachite Casket" from a 1980s edition of "The Ural Tales" by Pavel Bazhov, via Rare Books and More on Facebook.
New music: Cops and robbers by underscores. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). Midwest outsider pop; Adrian, Michigan. The opening track (which has its own music video separate from this album-length pickup truck ride) is a Trojan Horse; this is not album full of guitar pop.
I recommend track 2 Locals as a sort of bizarro girl-power anthem, with the squealing synthesizers emphasizing each word of the chorus. I recommend track 5 Johnny johnny johnny as a pop banger about slowly realizing your boyfriend is a creep. I recommend track 9 Geez louise, for reasons that will become obvious if you listen to it for at least a minute and forty-five seconds.
New music: Deadman Deadman Deadman by Skinny Pelembe. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). The opposite, a weirdo track fronting a rock album.
Old music: Freaks & Geeks by Oliver Tree (2020). (Website or Spotify or YouTube). This is what old music sounds like; get over it.
-Thomas