Bitfall makes images out of falling water droplets. (via infosthetics)
Bitfall makes images out of falling water droplets. (via infosthetics)
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kottke.org posts about Art
Great influence map of European art and
Great influence map of European art and sculpture (looks largely French), detailing relationships between masters and students as well as collaborations. Reminds me of a Feynman diagram.
Seyed Alavi’s carpet for a Sacramento airport
Seyed Alavi’s carpet for a Sacramento airport walkway features an aerial view of the Sacramento River. “It is truly amazing what is possible to print images on these days. Of course, for home use the cost is still somewhat prohibitive, but that is slowly changing as well.” (thx dunstan)
Gallery of work by guerilla artist Banksy
Gallery of work by guerilla artist Banksy from the West Bank barrier in the Palestinian territories. “An old Palestinian man said his painting made the wall look beautiful. Banksy thanked him, only to be told: ‘We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home.’”
A history and examination of paint by number
A history and examination of paint by number. “It invited people who had never before held a paintbrush to enter a world of art and creativity.”
Cezanne and Pissarro at the MoMA
Cezanne and Pissarro at the MoMA. “Working in tandem or with each other in mind, Cezanne and Pissarro formulated a distinctly modern art, simultaneously self-confident and self-critical.”
J. Seward Johnson, Jr. recreated a bunch
J. Seward Johnson, Jr. recreated a bunch of impressionist paintings as sculptures you can walk around in. Looks very cool…the photos are from a show going on through Aug 7th at the Nassau County Museum of Art.
Duccio’s Madonna and Child
The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently purchased a painting called Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna. The Met paid $50 million for the early Renaissance piece, more than they’ve paid for any single acquisition to date. The New Yorker has the story of how they came to own the last Duccio in private hands. In the article, Calvin Tomkins explains the reason for the painting’s importance:
Small as it is, the painting has a powerful presence. It captures the eye from a distance, and commands, up close, something like complete attention. Holding the Christ child in her left arm, the Virgin looks beyond him with melancholy tenderness, while the child reaches out a tiny hand to brush aside her veil. Centuries of Byzantine rigidity and impersonal, hieratic forms are also brushed aside in this intimate gesture. We are at the beginning of what we think of as Western art; elements of the Byzantine style still linger—in the gold background, the Virgin’s boneless and elongated fingers, and the child’s unchildlike features—but the colors of their clothing are so miraculously preserved, and the sense of human interaction is so convincing, that the two figures seem to exist in a real space, and in real time. Candle burn marks on the frame, which is original, testify to the picture’s use as a private devotional image. It is dated circa 1300.
I had the good fortune to stumble across the Duccio at the Met a few weeks ago (I was there for the Diane Arbus exhibition and passed it by accident on the way to another part of the musuem). What struck me at the time was a certain oddity of the piece…almost like it wasn’t what they’d said it was but magical all the same. I know Jack about art[1], but after reading more about Madonna and Child, it probably seemed odd to me because it’s a transitional piece, not quite Renaissance but not quite Byzantine either. The piece is a thin slice of a phase transition that had barely begun, a moment frozen from when the artists of the day were collectively working out how a Renaissance painting would eventually differ from earlier European styles and represent the wider cultural changes then occurring. Marco Grassi writes in The New Criteron:
More importantly, the artist places the Virgin at a slight angle to the viewer, behind a fictive parapet. She gazes away from the Child into the distance while He playfully grasps at Her veil. One must realize that every aspect of this composition represents a departure from pre-existing convention. With these subtle changes, Duccio consciously developed an image of sublime tenderness and poignant humanity, almost a visual echo of the spiritual renewal that St. Francis of Assisi had wrought only a few decades earlier.
More more on Duccio, check out his biography on Wikipedia and some collections of his work (1, 2, 3), including other Duccio representations of the Virgin and Child),
[1] I wish I’d taken an art history class in college, but my 18-yo self wasn’t that interested.
Age Maps
Age Maps. “Two photographs of the same person, from different periods of time (child and adult) are spliced together.” Very cool effect.
Eyebeam is looking for R&D Fellows
Eyebeam is looking for R&D Fellows for their new OpenLab. “The ideal fellow has experience creating innovative creative technology projects, a love of collaborative development, and a desire to distribute his or her work as widely as possible. We encourage artists, hackers, designers and engineers to apply.”
Photomosaic version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night
Photomosaic version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The image is made up of over 210,000 individual photographs.
Delettering the public space
Delettering the public space. “In a remarkable display of cooperation for the sake of art, every store on a popular shopping street in Vienna allowed their signage to be masked in yellow fluorescent foil.”
How Danny Gregory makes those nifty watercolors
How Danny Gregory makes those nifty watercolors that illustrate The Morning News. “Roz, the color theory teacher, warned against it, but I laid down a blue underpainting!”
Photographer Clayton James Cubitt interviews Tom Carden
Photographer Clayton James Cubitt interviews Tom Carden about their Metropop Denim collaboration. “I don’t think the work ever belongs to the computer, any more than a photograph belongs to a camera. The computer is a tool — there wouldn’t be any artwork if I didn’t tell the computer exactly what to do — it just works a hell of a lot faster than I do!”
Eyebeam is currently accepting proposals for their
Eyebeam is currently accepting proposals for their fall/winter Artist in Residence program. If you get in, I will be within heckling distance of your workspace.
Drawing Restraint 9 is the first collaboration by
Drawing Restraint 9 is the first collaboration by super-couple Matthew Barney and Bjork.
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art NOW THEN online exhibit
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art NOW THEN online exhibit. “What did professional comic artists draw like when they were 12 years old”?
Unknown painting by Edvard Munch found behind another canvas
Unknown painting by Edvard Munch found behind another canvas.
Chen Shaofeng paints his subjects while they paint him
Chen Shaofeng paints his subjects while they paint him. The results are hung side-by-side in his show.
Interview with Jonah Peretti, director of Research
Interview with Jonah Peretti, director of Research and Development at Eyebeam.
A street sculpture by REVS was recently
A street sculpture by REVS was recently stolen in my neighborhood.
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