The mimes are asking you to tone it down

In one of those "surely this is an April Fools prank" stories, Paris has a troupe of mimes that wander the nightlife sections of the city and encourage people to be less rowdy. Question of the week: what other behaviors would mimes be good at encouraging?

Lascaux coming to Houston

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The Houston Museum of Natural Science will have a big interactive and high-tech Lascaux Cave Painting exhibit beginning October 18. Ideally, you would have to follow a dog into a hole that drops you down into the exhibit, but I doubt they'll organize it that way.

Music review

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For only the second time ever (the first in 1960, conducted by Klein himself), Yves Klein's "Monotone-Silence Symphony" was performed last week in New York. It's exactly what the name describes: musicians playing a single note for 20 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of silence. This performance didn't include nude women dipped in paint and literally thrust up on a canvas while the music was being played, but it seems the performance was a hit anyway. I wish I could have been there. Klein has been a favorite of mine for a long time.

Sparkly Warhols

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The other weekend I went to a show called Warhol Out West. I wanted to see some big bright canvases (they also had a good collection of tiny Polaroids), but wasn't really expecting to see anything new. Even if you haven't seen all of his paintings, after a while you feel like you've got the basic ideas. But then I turned a corner and found a few pieces that were quite shocking. A number of the paintings (notably a big one with shoes and a slightly smaller one with a portrait of Georgia Okeefe) had diamond dust mixed into some of the ink, giving the works a literally shimmering appearance. I've never seen one of the sparkly Warhols before, and I'm so happy I paid the way-too-high fee for the show.

Glasstire's Fall Preview

Want to go see some art shows without travelling to New York or Venice or some other vaguely art-sy city? Check out Glasstire's Fall Preview of upcoming shows in Texas.

Secret Fore-Edge Paintings

We all agree that books are wonderful.
We all agree that paintings are fantastic.
And we all like hidden messages.

But where can we find all three brought together? Where?

Here.

High-quality fake Van Goghs

I know where you can purchase a high-tech 3-D replica of a Van Gogh painting that is "pretty indistinguishable" from the original. The interesting thing? It's the Van Gogh Museum who is selling the replicas.

Menil/Fiesta Project

Showing for two days next week: paintings based on visits to the Menil Collection and Fiesta Mart.

Good Art and Marginal Utility

One study suggests that we appreciate good art more with repeated exposure, but we appreciate bad art less with repeated exposure. It must be true--or at least scientificish--because it's in The Economist.

Mo' Money

Oh, so this is what "labels" are for. I know I've shared a number of art works dealing with cash, but I don't remember which ones, or when. Anyway, here's another cool cash artist: Mark Wagner makes very intricate collages out of bills.