Around the web: death masks, seeing faces, and a spectacular gallery mishap

Victor Hugo, Vianden Seen through a Spider Web, 1871. Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y.; artres.com

Visual arts

• The most famous person to have died in the Seine River has no identity at all. Her death mask was mass-produced and sold as a decorative item, making her a muse for artists, poets, and other writers. She is kept alive these days in an out-of-the-way, family-run workshop in a Paris suburb.
• Deconstructing The Scream, Edvard Munch’s famous painting.
• “My sister, Fauzia, died too young and all we had left of her was her art – small, beautiful, incomplete pieces of her.”

• The Confederation Centre Art Gallery owned and frequently displayed six of her paintings, but under someone else’s name—a man’s name. Now Caroline Louisa Daly is finally getting her due.
• Of all the masters of the woodblock print in the Edo Period, Utamaro has the most colorful reputation: He made a living providing pictures of the “floating world” of commercial sex, commissioned by publishers who were paid by the brothel owners.

Photography

• The first photographically illustrated and printed book was taken by the first female photographer.
• “Signs help to order and regulate how we behave, and set the scope of what is possible in the landscapes we construct. When these signs are abandoned, they continue to tell a story: a melancholic tale of ruin and neglect.”
• When a photographer began seeing faces in ordinary, inanimate objects – a condition known as facial pareidolia – he turned it into a photo project.

Science

• Prescribing arts activities to some patients could lead to a dramatic fall in hospital admissions, according to a report from England.
• In the late 19th century, brain structures began to be uncovered by a Spanish microscopist called Santiago Ramón y Cajal. His drawings have a timeless elegance and enduring value for students.
• From The Great Wave to Starry Night, how a blue pigment changed the world.

Video

• We really shouldn’t enjoy this video of a gallery visitor accidentally toppling a row of pedestals like dominos.
• Here’s a less guilt-inducing watch: an artist at a café masterfully folding paper hand towels into “botanically correct flowers.”

Miscellaneous

• When a valuable piece of art is damaged beyond restoration, insurance pays out the value of the work, which is then legally declared “zero value.” But these works are not destroyed.
• Mumbai has the world’s second-largest collection of Art Deco buildings but no one notices them.
• Was Nabokov’s Lolita inspired by a little-known story by Salvador Dalí?