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.