Monthly Archives: September 2007

Arthur de Pins is a French illustrator who happens to have his 30th birthday today. He also makes short animated movies (I featured his Geraldine film earlier on Frogsmoke). Some of the work on his website may be NSFW. Arthur … Continue reading →

Featured in MoMA: Bic Cristal® Ballpoint pen. The BIC pen is probably the most used French product in the world. In December 1950, Marcel Bich introduced his own ballpoint pen, and named it the BIC. The ‘h’ from Bich was … Continue reading →

Fragment of the Complete Map of Europe Over the past one thousand years, France hasn’t changed that much. Merge the Kingdom of the Franks with the County of Brittany, the County of Toulouse and the Kingdom of Burgundy, steal a … Continue reading →

manhole-covers.net is dedicated to old French iron manhole covers. “The visible glossy access to the dark underground world of sewers.” Like shields, slowly polished by traffic and sunshine they glow silently and show us the color of sky, these who … Continue reading →

The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, discovered in 1940, were closed to the public in 1963 due to deterioration caused by human intervention. But you can take a virtual tour! See the paintings with explanations of what they portray at … Continue reading →

Jean-Yves Lemoigne creates commercial and personal photographs that often make you smile, and always border the absurd. Official website

A great photo report on the construction of the Millau bridge over the River Tarn in the southern-French Massif Central mountains. The bridge is more than 300m (984ft) high – taller even than the Eiffel Tower, and was constructed by … Continue reading →

Self portrait of the Cosmonauts Of Kitsch Pierre et Gilles, Pierre Commoy (photographer) and Gilles Blanchard (painter), are gay French artistic and romantic partners. They produce highly stylized photographs, building their own sets and costumes as well as retouching the … Continue reading →

What would Europe have looked like, had Imperial Germany won World War One? This image is taken off a French magazine at the start of the war, painting an exaggerated picture of German (and Austro-Hungarian) land-grabs in a Europe dominated … Continue reading →

Spectacular images of French military planes. (And don’t miss the equally spectacular plunge at 2:40 and 3:15.)

This building, proposed for the Champs-Élysées in 1758, had air conditioning, a spiral staircase, and a drainage system in the trunk. The French government said no. There’s no accounting for taste. Three centuries later, this one was built in Bangkok. … Continue reading →

Carving up France. Part of Kohr’s map of “Little States” Having seen the end results of two world wars, Austrian political scientist and a philosopher Leopold Kohr wrote in his 1957 book “The Breakdown of Nations“: There seems to be … Continue reading →

“Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp” is a wonderful interactive trip through the life and work of the artist whose ideas redefined the meaning of art forever. The site, created by Andrew Stafford, is several years old but the content is … Continue reading →

From Dictionnaire Infernal, 1863. Illustrator: M. L. Breton. Collin de Plancy was an extraordinarily important French compiler of supernatural lore, and his Dictionnaire Infernal is the most important and most widely known of his many publications. It went through number … Continue reading →

[youtube]QeRsLkTXNyM#[/youtube] A remarkable first short film (8:26), inspired by the great classics: Paris 2020. The war of machines has begun. The only defense against the enemy: the Clio 3. Facing to his terrifying adversary, the enemy decides to send a … Continue reading →