THE BEST Art & Design

Quentin Tarantino and 13 artists team up for The Lost Art of Inglourious Basterds show 2/18/10 in Los Angeles; limited to 6 prints each and signed by Quentin, proceeds go to Haiti.

At nearly 8 feet tall and weighing over 1,200 lbs, we’re not sure if we’d rather be stuck with this Alien Queen Sculpture or the real thing; it’s made from over 4,000 pieces of recycled steel.

A treat for both stargazers and typesetters, Ross Berens’ Under the Milky Way collection gives all eight planets (and yes, Pluto) their own unique 13″x19″ poster with facts and figures.

Matthew Albanese’s Strange Worlds photography looks like tilt shift at first, but they’re actually meticulously detailed miniature sets; he uses everything from plaster to paprika to make them.

Sorry, Ash, you’re not the first to try and catch ’em all, and you won’t be the last: Squirtle and gang go really old school with this collection of Pokemon as traditional Japanese art.

He-Man was never the sharpest sword in the armory, which explains this Mr. Villains Class of 1983 “photo”; this fantastic retro poster by Christopher Lee is a must for MOTU fans.

Taking him four years to complete, Jens Gustafsson’s My MS Paint World is the Sistine Chapel of bitmaps; it’s 8883 x 7636 pixels large (8 feet x 8 feet) and takes up a 203 BMP file.

Benson Chou revamps the classic Brand Alphabet with his own 21st-century version that includes everything from Facebook to DC Shoes; download the 11×17 poster free here.

Projection art gets interactive with Night Lights; it uses twelve 20,000 lumen projectors to amplify body, hand, and phone movements into 5-story images on the Auckland Ferry Building.

Mitchell Collet’s sculptures aren’t just any old car parts; they’re slices of automotive history, including the side panel from a 1967 Honda R300 or the grille of a 1961 Aston Martin Zagato.

It’ll be 2010 before we can name everything on this Science Fiction Screen Print; it’s a giant 14″x34″ poster with 61 robots, 58 aliens, and 30 icons from sci-fi film, tv, books, and games.

Kristy Anne Ligones’ semi-realistic portraits of Family Guy actually paint fairly normal versions of Peter, Lois, Chris, and Brian; that said, Stewie and Meg are as creepy as ever.

Easily the most rectilinear depiction of 2000-2009 we’ve seen so far, The New York Times’ Picturing The Past Ten Years paints an entire decade with good ol’ rows and columns.

Nils Volker’s slowly crawling Lightdrawing Robot seems more like the half-shell Da Vinci than the real one; still, there’s something charming about painting with LEDs and long exposures.

Own a piece of WW2 history with this Spitfire Sculpture; limited to 24 pieces, it’s crafted from the Spitfire engine of an RAF ace who fought in the Battle of Britain; #13-24 sit on engine conrods.

Santa keeps current thanks to Peter Terren’s 30 foot Tesla Christmas Tree; it was shot by rotating a rod atop a Tesla coil while switching color filters (the star is 10 dead flourescent tubes).

Maxim Dalton’s Guitar Lessons is a noteworthy performance, with 35 of the world’s most amazing axes on a single 19″x25″ poster; it includes Slash, Hendrix, Clapton, and more.

Celebrating the upcoming Simpsons: The Complete Twentieth Season DVD set, this epic Simpsons poster is a who’s who of Springfield; check out the scrollable version here.

If you’ve used up all your lives and find yourself in 8-bit heaven, don’t be surprised if you see an extra dimension or two: Sevensheaven’s Voxel Game Art puts a 3D spin on 2D games.

T Campbell & John Waltrip’s Epic Misney celebrates Disney and Marvel becoming the happiest ohana on earth with a mashup that’ll hook you in with its fantastic and incredible images.

For diaper dudes and dudettes who know how to dish it out: Shi Jinsong’s gun-toting, stainless steel carriages takes the pacifism out of pacifiers with badass baby transports.

Master Chief, Kratos, and other characters get reduced to their digital basics with these Videogame Minimalism posters; it’s created by a SCEE artist and also available for sale here.

Minifigs get superpowers thanks to artist Ulises Farinas’ LEGO Superheroes; he’s only done two pieces (DC-themed Rise and Lego my Marvel), but they’re absolutely marvel-ous.

The living dead strike back in this series of re-imagined Star Wars posters; created by Matt Bush for zombie theme week at StarWars.com, all six episodes get an infected makeover.

eBoy’s Amnesty Poster is part of the Poverty is Modern campaign, with 4 Euros of each poster donated to Amnesty International; it’s a disturbing, pixelated look at human rights issues.

After you get over the initial “What the heck?!” shock (it is art, after all), this Rotating Kitchen art piece by Zeger Reyers is pretty cool in a giant blender-sort of way; it’ll spin until 2/28/10.