Going out in style?


The would-be occupant of this lobster coffin knew the value of a dramatic exit. 

So, too, does a crew of artists in Paris. They have bought a communal tomb in a cemetery near Montmartre and adorned it with a bronze sculpture large enough to house their cremated ashes. The sculpture, shaped like a cactus, bears less resemblance to a crucifix than to a certain provocative hand gesture. The scheme’s aim is to create an irreverent mausoleum that is a symbol of absurdity in this Parisian village of the dead, whose 21,500 graves include Edgar Degas and François Truffaut.        —Diane Richard, writer, December 30

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Photo credit: Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York Times

Source: Doreen Carvajal, “French Artists Will Take Their Irreverence to the Grave,” The New York Times, December 29, 2015