Art: POEMS OF DECAY

The expansive ground floor of Paris' Musée National d'Art Moderne looked like a specter-haunted landscape from Mars. Birdmen, ten inches tall, made up of a human thorax, bare-boned ribs and a spinal column topped by oversized beak and reptilian eyes, stared back at the spectators. A human-size Praying Mantis in female form crouched ready to spring; a Shepherd with half-decayed body tottering on three spindle legs looked more like an abandoned sheep carcass than a human figure. The reason for this nightmare in Paris last week: 82 pieces finished in the last twelve...

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