French writer Roger Caillois spent more than twenty-five years collecting stones whose natural markings resembled landscapes, forests, storms, ruins and figures. None were carved or painted; their images were produced by mineral pressure, fractures and time. His collection eventually grew to more than a thousand specimens and inspired The Writing of Stones, in which geology becomes a form of art created before human beings arrived to look at it.
In 1831, Prussian architect Carl Ferdinand Langhans built the Pleorama, an indoor simulation of a voyage around the Bay of Naples. Twenty-four passengers sat inside a wooden boat floating in a pool while enormous painted coastlines moved past on either side. The boat rocked, a boatman sang, the light changed and Mount Vesuvius appeared to erupt. The journey lasted an hour and went nowhere.
Concha García Zaera was a Spanish digital artist who began using Microsoft Paint in her mid-seventies, after the smell of oil paint disturbed her ill husband. Working point by point with a mouse, she spent weeks constructing detailed landscapes inspired by photographs and postcards her husband had sent from his travels. Her granddaughter opened an Instagram account for her, and at 87 she became an unlikely star of pixel art. Disney later commissioned her to recreate the poster for Mary Poppins Returns entirely in Paint.
Désert de Retz was the private world of an eighteenth-century French aristocrat who treated landscape gardening as autobiography. He designed the estate himself and disguised his house as the shattered base of an impossibly large classical column. It was less a garden than one man’s attempt to build the ruins of a civilisation that had never existed.
Bōsōzoku are Japanese motorcycle gangs known for riding in noisy convoys and dressing like a collision between military pilots, mechanics and delinquents. Their uniforms feature embroidered slogans and coats altered to hang almost to the ground. The motorcycles receive the same treatment: towering seats, extended fairings, raised handlebars and exhaust pipes engineered to make an entrance. The subculture peaked in the 1980s but remains active today.
Dìshū is the practice of writing Chinese calligraphy on pavement with large brushes dipped in water. Commonly performed by older people in public parks, it uses the ground as an endless sheet of paper. Poems, sayings and enormous characters remain visible only until the water evaporates, clearing the surface for the next writer. The finished work usually disappears within minutes.
Guérewol is an annual courtship festival held by the Wodaabe, nomadic cattle herders of Niger and the wider Sahel. Men spend hours applying red, yellow and white pigments, arranging beads and feathers, then dance in long lines while singing and exaggerating their expressions. The display can continue for hours beneath the desert sun. Women act as judges, selecting the men they find most beautiful. In Guérewol, male beauty is neither private nor effortless. It is painted, rehearsed and subjected to public review.
Ève Salvail is a Québécois model who became instantly recognizable in the 1990s after shaving her head and tattooing a Chinese dragon across her scalp. The decision was made while modelling in Japan and helped attract Jean Paul Gaultier, followed by appearances for Chanel and Versace.
In 1998, Helmut Lang became the first fashion designer to advertise on top of New York taxis. Instead of elaborate campaign images, the small roof signs often carried little more than his name. They circulated until 2004, turning ordinary yellow cabs into a moving extension of Lang’s severe minimalism.
From 1992 to 2009, a six-storey DKNY mural overlooked Broadway and Houston Street in SoHo. Designed by Peter Arnell and painted directly onto brick, it placed the company’s initials over the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty. It appeared in the opening credits of NYPD Blue and gradually became an unofficial city landmark. When Hollister acquired the wall’s advertising rights and painted over it, New Yorkers mourned the loss of an advertisement.