STUFF TO DO, TO BUY, TO TALK ABOUT
Wag earner
Is it art? Or arf?
It’s both at the exhibit “Best in Show: the Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today” on display now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Animal lovers who can’t make the exhibit can pick up the companion book by the same name from Yale University Press for $50; it’s the perfect coffee table work for dog fanatics. It features 60 canine-related pieces by artists from Dali to Andrew Wyeth with essays discussing the dog in the context of art for 400 years.
One additional treat: the quotes from historical personages who turned to mush when talking about their mutts. Like this one from the keen-eyed 14th-century nobleman and art patron Jean, duc de Berry: “A hound is the noblest and most reasonable beast that God has ever created.”
Jackie Loohauis
Splitting hares
The box set “A Box of Bunny Suicides” is not for sensitive types. Come on, the name alone suggests a twisted sense of humor.
Andy Riley delivers with page after page of little white bunnies pulling the plug in cartoon form from hiding under an elephant’s footstool to sticking their heads in a revolving door as it moves. The little fluffy rabbits just don’t want to live any more.
The two-book set includes “The Book of Bunny Suicides” in tandem with “The Return of Bunny Suicides” for a total of more than 200 renderings of bunnies trying to do themselves in. Riley is also the author of “Great Lies to Tell Small Kids,” a dark-humored book we mentioned in Stuff on Nov. 9, 2005.
“Bunny Suicides” is from Plume Paperbacks. It sells for $14.
Kathy Flanigan
Copyright 2006, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)
Copyright 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc. Note: This notice does not
apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through
wire services or other media
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.