Painted Greek statues
I remember reading that Greek and Roman statues were originally painted, but I didn’t know that through the use of modern scientific equipment, we actually know how they looked.
(via @brainpicker)
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kottke.org posts about art
Art and science
I don’t know what is being represented in either of these posts from but does it float, but they’re both capital G Gorgeous.
The images from ‘The most interesting trend in the development of the Internet is not how it is changing people’s ways of thinking but how it is adapting to the way that people think’ are from 3D compositions (concepts for Iron Man 2) by Prologue.
Here’s an example from ‘The most intense moments the universe has ever known are the next 15 seconds’, which is a gallery of the University of Florida Sparse Matrix Collection.
(Thanks, Adam)
The bike is back
Here’s a great story of Jami getting her bike stolen last night in Brooklyn. Wait, why is that great? Because, thanks to some internet sleuthing, a lot of luck (!!!), and solid police work from Brooklyn’s finest, she had it back by 11:30 this morning!
While we’re on the subject of bikes, according to a recently filed patent, Apple is looking at making a smart bike. I look to the future and I see 1) Consternation that Apple has signed an exclusive agreement to release the bike on Trek frames only for a period of 3, 4, or 5 years depending on which rumor you believe. 2) Several media stories crediting Apple for popularizing the riding of bikes. 3) Several media stories criticizing Apple for claiming they popularized the riding of bikes, even if they didn’t.make that claim, 4) Much rejoicing 3 weeks after release of the bike when someone has figure d out how to jail break the phone into a fixed gear. 5) 250 posts from John Gruber refudiating predictions of iBike failure. I look forward to all of it.
Lastly, on the topic of bikes. My friend Chris Piascik is drawing all the bikes he’s ever owned. This wouldn’t be a big deal for most people, Chris, however, has owned a gazillion bikes. The drawings are accompanied by vignettes on the bikes and I think the project will end up being more of a memoir than Chris originally anticipated. (Disclosure: If I had to name a favorite artist, it’d probably be Chris, and I post his art often on UW.)
Scratch ticket art
Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom, as Ghost of a Dream, create artstructuresculptures out of scratch tickets to show “unfulfilled dreams as well as money that could have been saved and possibly spent on the item itself”. “Dream Car” uses $39K worth of discarded tickets, and “Dream Home” uses $70K. That one’s really nice.
For what it’s worth, Was and Eckstrom aren’t the first to see art in scratch tickets. Rebecca Simering has explored the medium, as has the “I Love My Life The Way It Is” project. ILMLTWII is a project I want to believe in, but before sending scratch tickets to strangers in England, you should be aware of the risks.
(Via Cool Hunting / Derek)
Controversial album art
Wikipedia has a page dedicated to controversial album art, which I found recently while looking up background on the 23rd birthday of Appetite for Destruction (yipe).
Eric Bana - Out of Bounds (1994)
The cover art features Bana naked from behind while streaking at a crowded AFL game. He is reaching for the ball and his buttocks are covered with the message “contents may offend”. The scene was created digitally, with the overlap of two photos. An alternative cover for the album was later released.
I was really hoping Eric Bana had a musical release in his background because musical releases by actors are usually hilarious, but this one appears to be comedy. Sigh.
Bee vision
This computer display covered by glass beads must be how bees see the web.
(via today and tomorrow, which is celebrating five years of excellence this week)
Art for the everyone
Scott Snibbe’s interactive art projects are available for sale on the iPhone/iPad and he’s pretty happy about it.
Over the past few days my first three apps became available on the iTunes store: Gravilux, Bubble Harp, and Antograph. I’ve been dreaming of this day for twenty years: a day when, for the first time, we can enjoy interactive art as a media commodity no different from books, music, and movies.
I remember the Gravilux Java applet from back in the day and happily bought it for the iPad.
Fraud and art-world CSI
In a barnburner of an article for the New Yorker, David Grann investigates the work of Peter Paul Biro and the forensic analysis of artworks for which he is well-known.
He does not merely try to detect the artist’s invisible hand; he scours a painting for the artist’s fingerprints, impressed in the paint or on the canvas. Treating each painting as a crime scene, in which an artist has left behind traces of evidence, Biro has tried to render objective what has historically been subjective. In the process, he has shaken the priesthood of connoisseurship, raising questions about the nature of art, about the commodification of aesthetic beauty, and about the very legitimacy of the art world. Biro’s research seems to confirm what many people have long suspected: that the system of authenticating art works can be arbitrary and, at times, even a fraud.
However, the more Grann and others dug into his past, the more Biro seemed to be in fraudulent territory himself.
Muybridge, but not by Muybridge
Possible clues have emerged that Eadweard Muybridge may not have taken all the photographs attributed to him.
Naef explains why he thinks that stereographs attributed to Muybridge were in fact taken by Watkins, who sold the negatives to Muybridge. Muybridge then printed and sold them under his own name. “I think from what I’ve seen and knowing what I know about Muybridge - and I’m not an expert on Watkins by any mean and Weston is - I think yes Muybridge published pictures by other people,” Brookman said. “Some by Watkins potentially, but I think Muybridge was also a photographer and a significant photographer.”
Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes has a three-part interview with photography curator Weston Naef about why he thinks this is so. Part one is here. (No word yet on why Muybridge has so many unnecessary letters in his name.)
Altered United States
Michael Crawford monkeys around with a map of the US. This piece is called Los Angeles Getting More Annoying as We Speak:
I also liked his alteration to a Chuck Close portrait: Rauschenberg Minus Nebraska.
Make your own Mondrian
Composition with JavaScript is a Piet Mondrian painting with moveable lines and changeable colors so that you can make your own version.
Composition with Javascript is an interactive work made using HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery, based on Piet Mondrian’s “Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue and Grey” (1920). It allows everybody deconstruct the original painting and form it again in whatever he or she wants. Lines are shiftable (just drag it with your mouse) and colours changeable (click on it). Texture of the painting was preserved for authentic look. One can play with composition, forms and colours, alter the harmony of the piece or even destroy it and compose something pictorial.
A pixel art documentary
Pixel is a short documentary film exploring the artistic use of pixel-style animation in contemporary video games.
(via waxy)
Paris art heist
A masked bandit broke into the Paris Museum of Modern Art last night and stole 5 paintings. Included in the grab were a Picasso and a Matisse.
Here is the list of paintings and what they look like:
”Le pigeon aux petits-pois” (The Pigeon with the Peas) by Pablo Picasso
”La Pastorale” (Pastoral) by Henri Matisse
‘L’olivier pres de l’Estaque” (Olive Tree near Estaque) by Georges Braque
‘La femme a l’eventail” (Woman with a Fan) by Amedeo Modigliani
”Nature-mort aux chandeliers” (Still Life with Chandeliers) by Fernand Leger
(via @jkottke)
Bieber is the reason
My friend Chris Piascik has done a daily drawing every day for over 2 years. Some really good stuff. It’s almost always a crazy squiggly monster of some sort or intricately hand-drawn typography.
He also loves The Misfits. A couple months ago, he mixed The Misfits’ Crimson Ghost logo with a cat to get Cattitude. I thought the Crimson Ghost would go well with Justin Bieber, too, and have been asking Chris to do it for weeks. He finally did, and oh man, he might be making it a T Shirt, as well. 10 points if you get the reference in the title of this post.
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