Calling all lover of arts from all range and style.

[BlackRazor]

Hello Board !

I need some creating power and suggestion about an upcoming adventure in my group. My players are about to enter a town where bards and arts are regarded with adoration and respect. I need help creating a "Museum of artistic oddities" where the strangest, unusual or overwhelming beautiful art pieces have been stocked for a thousand years. They are searching for a specific art piece linked to the recent death of one of their close friend and I want to make the trip interesting

Any suggestion welcome, from the incredibly banal (Like "Black square on a white field", a painting by Chekov which is exactly what the title implies, nothing more) to the sublimely complex (Picasso "Guernica", Dali works near the end of his career or M.C. Esher staircase.) Sculpture, drawing, metalworks, illusions, virtual cubes, anything !

Thank you in advance and lets Get our neurons firing !

 

[kenjib]

Joseph Bueys did scultures in lard, including a lump of lard on a wooden chair. Can't find any pics online though...

 

[diaglo]

does necromancy in performance art work?

or if not how about a construct?

 

[s/LaSH]

Yeah, magic's going to change the way this works.

I can imagine that many works of art would be petrified or imprisoned creatures or heroes, maybe with... alterations (using Stone Shape or just a chisel).

Then you've got your weird little elemental vignettes, like an array of tiny Gates onto elemental planes and pocket dimensions that create the most intriguing patterns of steam. There's a fountain-like thing in my city, but it's difficult to describe... it's made of these pointed buckets, all at different heights, and of different sizes, and the movement of water down the series (well, it's not a series, there are more of them on the same level) is quite fascinating.

You'd probably see a few really exotic pieces, seeing as how adventurers tend to wander the world. Things like Egyptian scarab-sphinx signets (got one), Aztec figurines and crystal skulls, large numbers of coral bonsai from the merfolk... think outside the square.

 

[Moulin Rogue]

Arcimboldo is a real delight if you're into playful stuff.
http://www.illumin.co.uk/svank/biog/arcim/arcidx.html

The "hidden" skull in Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors is the most famous example of anamorphosis, which was kind of a virtusoso fad for a while.
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/5702/holbein.html

What is anamorphosis?
http://www.geocities.com/anamorphosisdotcom/what-is.html

How about magical fountain sculptures with clever designs? Sounds like a gnome thing maybe, if you have to solve a little puzzle to get a drink.

How's this for off the wall: let's say dwarven artisans are mostly sculptors because of all that chiseled rock they live around. Only a few go into painting but their design shows a much greater interest in solid blocks of form than colour. The result? Eventually, cubism.

 

[V_Shane]

I have some 3 PDFs full of visuals, you can check out a free version I did on GameWyrd's Echo #6...hope that helps

Shane

 

[Moulin Rogue]

Slipped to page 3 already? *tsk*

Barbarians can't use craft while raging, but how about a Jackson Pollock-style improvisation? Invent a legend of a half-orc who tried his hand at painting, but soon got frustrated and threw all his paint at the canvas. A critic saw it and praised the result as a raw expression of uninhibited primal force.

There was another thread somewhere around here about what to do with a god of sleep - how about tying that deity to the D&D equivalent of the Surrealist movement somehow?