Weekly Design Roundup – Constantin Brâncuși, West African modernism, and medieval details
🌀🌀🌀 Welcome to the swirl of my design-addled brain!
Welcome to the first instalment my ⋆ .𖥔˚Weekly Design Roundup˚𖥔. ⋆
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I guess this is also a welcome back to Artifex - after a nearly two-year hiatus, we’re back baby. One of my themes for 2025 was to create rather than simply consume online, and reinventing Artifex is part of that theme.
The other piece is wading slowly into posting videos on Tiktok about all things design, art, architecture, etc. And getting back into posting regularly on Instagram. The plan is for all these mediums (~media~ if you will) to pull on one another and overlap in different ways, creating an (Avery) ecosystem.
My first regularly scheduled programming in this ecosystem (mixed metaphors??) will be a weekly round-up of things I’ve discovered over the previous 7 days and that inspired me in one way or another - enter the Weekly Design Roundup.
This week we’re kicking things off with Constantin Brâncuși
Constantin Brâncuși was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer who lived and worked in France for most of his life. He is considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century for his pioneering modernist sculpture.
I had a vague awareness of Brâncuși, but it was the above Valentine’s day Instagram post of his sculpture Le Baiser that tipped me over into the Wikipedia rabbit hole.
All that to say - Brâncuși is insanely fucking cool. Drawing inspiration from Romanian folk art as well as Byzantine, Dionysian, and Cycladic traditions, he pioneered modernism in sculpture after turning down Rodin’s invitatio0]
n to join his atelier as an apprentice, saying "Nothing can grow under big trees."
Alpha60 Autumn 2025 collection
Alpha60, an Australian independent clothing brand, just dropped the first release of their Autumn 2025 collection inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris.
Le Mépris is one of my favourite films. Alpha60 is one of my favourite brands. And their moodboard for this collection is the stuff of dreams.
I have yet to pull the trigger on this Issey Miyake-esque pleated Le Mépris tank… but watch this space.
Le Cinéma Club - ALL DAY I DREAM ABOUT SPORT
ALL DAY I DREAM ABOUT SPORT is a film by Gabriel Moses and Pharrell Williams currently being shown on Le Cinéma Club (also viewable on YouTube!). Le Cinéma Club is a uniquely curated streaming platform screening one film every week available for only 7 days - and this week’s offering is “a visual love letter to West African culture steeped in the everyday experience of life in Senegal.”
I was originally turned onto Le Cinéma Club by Absolument!, my (internet) friend Kelsey’s incredible Substack! This week was one of my favourites, the anthropological study combines striking visuals with a haunting score produced by Pharrell into a loose narrative. Its ambiguity and intensity immediately reminded by of Claire Denis’ Beau Travail.
If you have 20 minutes - go get lost.
And if you, like me, want to delve a bit deeper into West African artistic and architectural modernism, I would highly recommend the CCA’s (Canadian Centre for Architecture) Centring Africa: Postcolonial Perspectives on Architecture project. Lots of essays to choose from but Where was not modernism? is a standout.
Smilingbeetroot
Smilingbeetroot is an Instagram account dedicated to sharing the small and often strange details in historical art. It has been one of my favourite art-focused accounts on my feed for a good while - but lately I’ve found myself smiling even more regularly at the weird and wonderful world they’ve curated.
Maybe it has something to do with how suffocatingly dreary our London winter has been. How desperately I’ve been looking for small moments of beauty, of silliness, of weirdness amidst the monotonous grey. Anyways - go follow them. Go bask in the weird.
Finally - Tommaso Cascella’s studio
This deep (and I mean deep) dive began with a simple Instagram post by Giulia Lanaro titled ‘Tommaso Cascella’s home-studio 🌙 1998’.
The Yves Klein Blue bed knocked me right out and had me Googling “Who the hell is Tommaso Cascella?”. Turns out the original Tommaso was an Italian painter, part of the multi-generational artistic Cascella family comprising of his father Basilio, brother Michele, sons Andrea and Pietro, and grandson - also called Tommaso.
The above studio photos of from Tommaso Jr’s home studio. His abstract, geometric forms can be found not only in his sculptures which are littered throughout his home, but also in his paintings. Drawn to bold, primary colours and collage techniques, Tommaso’s entire body of work feels like a delightful combination of Giacometti, Miro, Picasso, Kandinsky, and Calder.
If you want to explore Tommaso’s studio in more detail, there is a single video on Youtube from the Nam Accademia Nazionale di San Luca interviewing the artist at his home (just turn on subtitles!).
“You have seen some beds, a lamp, the chairs then underneath there are ceramics and the idea is not art made for museums or for an ostentation of power - I would really like art to be so widespread that we all lived immersed in art.”
My favourite quote of his of course captures my own life’s ambition - to be immersed in art at all times. And to sleep in a hand-sculpted Yves Klein Blue bed every evening.
Perhaps a pilgrimage to the Basilio Cascella Civic Museum is in my future.
That’s it for this week! ꩜꩜꩜Avery
Welcome back!