Weekend Tidbits 6/29

A pristine "temple of the dead" has been uncovered in Peru

Archaeologists recently uncovered remnants of the ancient, pre-Incan Wari civilization in Peru, along with an impressive collection of gold grave goods and more than 80 entombed bodies!

Frida Kahlo's Closet Opened 58 Years After her Death
Diego Rivera forbid anyone access to Frida's clothing closet after she died, but it's finally been opened for the first time to reveal that she had quite the awesome taste in fashion. She used her fashion and accessories both to play off her disabilities and to reference her heritage.  

Adventure Time does Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam"
...no further explanation necessary for this awesome fanart :)

 Thousands of cave paintings discovered in Mexico
Burgos, a region in the San Carlos mountains that was previously thought to be uninhabited by pre-Hispanic peoples, was apparently host to a large unnamed and fairly undocumented tribe of native people, whose cave paintings number in the thousands and may date back to 6000BC!






Bizarre Japanese retro-futuristic art from the 1930s - 1960s
A collection of this crazy, super weird art has just surfaced online. Definitely worth scrolling through! The robot nanny one really disturbs me.

Cross Current: Byzantine Connections at the Menil

Interesting exhibition at the Menil in Houston, contrasting the use of certain images and theories of viewing of modern and contemporary art, versus Byzantine art. I personally find Byzantine art to be fascinating. I wish I could get down to Texas this summer to see this.









Let My People Show: Welcome to "Jew York"
A rather brash exhibit of a huge variety (83 I think?) of Jewish artists from the mid twentieth century to present. Nothing except the artists' common ethnicity ties the show together, and many contemporary artists have chosen to make commentary on the theme itself through interesting and possibly politically-incorrect references to Jewish history and art history. Definitely looks to be an intriguing show.

Is "internet art" a thing?

The New World of Net Art

Reading this article, I kind of had a "Wait, what?" reaction to the fact that these types of interactive websites, which have been around for as long as I can remember being actively involved in internet culture, are considered a form of art. Especially the Facebook projects that are described, which are little more than the role-playing games that so many of us have participated in for years. Sometimes I feel I am a bad art historian because my first reaction to some things is to be "Wait, that's considered ART?". But thinking about the types of sites and interactive cyber projects this article talks about, I guess they should be considered art...as strange as it seems to me (probably because I'm so used to taking them for granted due to seeing them and interacting with them so often). But people do put a lot of time and effort into designing such internet spaces, so it's only fair to give them credit for their effort and to call their work art. (but I'm still a little doubtful about that Facebook RPing nonsense.)

What still weirds me out about this whole topic, though, is the fact that people are actually paying thousands of dollars for ownership of these internet projects and sites. That, I find, is kind of dumb. But then again, I kind of have a prejudice against the art market in the first place, as I think that many art historians have. Oftentimes the price a collector pays for art goes up and up not because of the talent or innovation of the artist, but because, somehow, due to marketing and word-of-mouth, owning that art becomes a status symbol. Much of the art market becomes centered around owning the next big thing, or the current cool thing, to look good among your peers, or merely to try to turn a profit. For this section of the art market, there is extremely little appreciation or understanding of the actual art. And that's what I find disagreeable and sad, and more than a bit distasteful.

In any case, no one can deny that the type of internet art the article speaks can sometimes be pretty neat. Here are a few such sites that I've bookmarked recently, which I think would probably fall under the label of "internet art".

The URL Project - Rafael Rozendaal's collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA allows YouTube commenters to come up with URL names and Rozendaal creates an internet art site using that URL. Some of them are fun. Rozendaal is one of the most famous "internet artists" at the moment, and his sites are the epitome of what the article above is talking about when it refers to internet art. I've included links to a couple I like, but all of them can be accessed via the links at the top of each of the pages. Many of these are interactive via clicking, but many are just simple repetitive animations, which I suppose are artistic but...I feel they're lacking. Once again, this guy has become famous for doing simple website programming that many internet users have been doing since the advent of the internet. I feel like the only people who'd think this was worth the money are those who don't spend much time on the internet in the first place. They pay $5000 a piece for these little sites, just to say they own them. What do you think of that?
(Warning: some of the sites are pretty epileptic, and one in particular refers to self-harm, so be careful clicking through the little linked images)
Short Explanation Video
Into Time
Looking at Something



...meanwhile, the following sites are much more impressive works of internet art, in my opinion. 

Incredibox - create your own music in this fun drag and drop interactive game

Draw a Stickman - popular site lets you create your own stick figure hero that becomes part of an animated adventure

100,000 Stars - an interactive zoom-in/zoom-out map of the galaxy

The Quiet Place - a simple, relaxing exercise in the form of a sort of poem

Weave Silk - weave beautiful, colored pieces of silk in your own artistic patterns. I LOVE this one.

Create Your Own Nebula - another click-and-drag create-your-own-art website. create gorgeous star nebulas of a variety of colors. really neat.

Weekend Tidbits

News and things of interest in the art world to hold you over through the weekend. Weekend Tidbits posts should be up every Friday or Saturday :)

Edinburgh's Mysterious Miniature Coffins

Fairy memorabilia? A mimic burial relating to a mass murder? Really fascinating investigative story about these creepy little guys.

Contemporary Art from Oregon's Umatilla Indian Reservation

A fantastic exhibition of contemporary American Indian art. Some really neat stuff. I love all the colors used. I'm not typically a fan of most contemporary art, but I love this.

Secret to Roman Concrete could Revolutionize Infrastructure 

Ever wondered why so many ancient Roman monuments and architecture have withstood the test of time so well? The Romans used a different type of concrete, the recipe for which has been, until very recently, lost to history. Now scientists have figured out what they did to produce such amazing concrete, and their findings could prove extremely important in the coming years!

The Beautifully Strange Photography of Roger Ballen

The work of this South African photographer is super creepy and a bit disturbing, but a very interesting look into what is known as the idea of "zef", or "common", in Afrikaans. 

TrowelBlazers: In Search of the Female Indiana Jones

A new tumblr project aimed at celebrating female archaeologists, geologists, and paleontologists in these fields which are typically considered male-driven.

When an Army of Artists Fooled Hitler

A recently declassified American operation during WWII, a group of artists and other creative men enrolled in the American army used deception and art skills to deceive Nazi troops. A fun story that's being made into a documentary.

Unicorns and classic art

Raphael, Lady with a Unicorn, 1505

One of my favorite works of art is Lady with a Unicorn by the Renaissance master Raphael. I had never heard of or seen it before I visited the Borghese Gallery in Rome this past March, but the moment I set eyes on it I fell in love. I adore Raphael's art in general, but it's rare to find such a lovely secular work (or, more secular than much of his oeuvre, in any case). It's fantastically charming: the girl is so pretty (and surprisingly serious!) and the unicorn is such a tiny little bundle, like a pet cat or goat in her lap. Charming really is the best word I can use to describe a painting of a baby unicorn and a lovely lady. Charming and adorable.

The subject of unicorns has been a popular one lately on art and culture blogs, partly because of the new unicorn exhibit at the Met's Cloisters museum in New York City. As you may know, the Cloisters is the Met's special Medieval space, located separate from it's main building. I've yet to visit it myself, though I'm hoping to get the chance when I am in the city this October for New York Comic Con. In any case, it's supposed to be quite a spectacular place to visit and I'm sure the unicorn exhibit will prove to be very popular, seeing as how the mythological creature continues to capture the dreams and imaginations of generations the world over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/arts/design/search-for-the-unicorn-at-the-cloisters.html?_r=0
http://www.artnews.com/2013/05/23/unicorns-in-art/

The Artifice blog has a great article on the Medieval history of the unicorn and other related creatures from Medieval bestiaries, and how psychology and philosophy of the era may have contributed to their mythos. The focus of the article is visual theory and the idea that vision holds power, more so than simply enabling you to view your physical surroundings. Check out the full article for some interesting history on Medieval philosophy regarding vision and how it relates to such legendary beasts as the unicorn.
http://the-artifice.com/coming-eye-to-eye-with-the-beasts-of-the-medieval-imagination/

Woodcut from The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents by Edward Topsell, 1658. (Source: Wikipedia)

It's fascinating to me that unicorn-esque creatures can be found in the mythology and art of cultures worldwide, including those in Asia and the Middle East, even dating as far back as 5000 BC. Why are single-horned creatures so predominant in ancient and Medieval legend? Is there factual basis for them? We have of course certain one-horned animals existant today, such as the rhinocerous, the narwhal, and certain types of African antelope that are generally double-horned but may be born with only a single horn due to genetic disorders. Are any of these the sources of the mythological creature? To me, it seems doubtful considering the limited range of the animals and the very UNlimited range of the worldwide folklore. Unicorns are written about by the ancient Greeks who considered them factual animals, mainly inhabiting India. The Bible makes mention of them multiple times, and versions of the unicorn can be found in ancient Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Persian, and Indian mythology.

As prolific in appearance as the unicorn is throughout history, it is no surprise that unicorns can be found throughout the world's art history as well. Here are just a few examples of depictions of unicorns through the ages and from around the world. Apparently Salvador Dali had a real fascination with unicorns during the 70s (I've only included two of the multitude of paintings, sketches, and unicorn sculptures he produced). Further research might prove interesting, when/if I have the time.

Salvador Dali, The Happy Unicorn, 1977.

Annunciation with the Unicorn Polyptych, 1408, National Museum, Warsaw. (Source: Wikipedia)

Maiden with the Unicorn,  French, 15th century, tapestry, Musee de Cluny, Paris. (source: Wikipedia)

Japanese kirin statue, 1637. Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine, Fukuoka, Japan. Source.

Salvador Dali, The Laser Unicorn Disintegrates the Horns of the Cosmic Rhinoceros, 1974.

...I really love this one, mostly because of the awesome title.

Unicorn aquamanile (contains spout and liquid for hand-washing or cup filling), German, 1425-1450, copper alloy, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Domenichino, Virgin with a Unicorn, 1602, fresco, Palazzo Farnese, Rome. (Source: Wikipedia)

Marvel's Art Appreciation Variant Covers

Every so often, Marvel comics does a set of variant covers featuring their characters drawn in the style of a variety of classic works of art history. Obviously, I love this, though I have yet to collect any of the actual covers myself. Here are a few of my favorites under the cut. Note that the Marvel variation is on the left, and the original inspiration is on the right, with the artist underneath. 

 

Inspiration: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Hello and welcome!

Hello and thanks for giving this blog a chance! I hope you'll stick around and enjoy the posts. Please don't hesitate to reach me via any method listed under the Contact page, and also take a look at the About this Blog page to get a gist of the goals and purpose of this blog/project/what-have-you :)

I figured I'd start off by sharing a few of my favorite works of art, of all different mediums. I love quite a variety of completely different things, so it was a bit hard narrowing the list down to just a couple to share today.

The Urnes Stave Church, Norway, dated around 1132 AD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnes_Stave_Church
A very early Christian church in Norway that was built and decorated in the Viking style. I adore the carvings on the portals: interweaving dragons and snakes and what look like deer!