These cave paintings of seals are believed to be at least 42,000 years old, making them the oldest dated paintings known to man. (photo by the Fundación Cueva de Nerja, via diariocordoba.com)

Our knowledge of art continues to expand by leaps and bounds. While we once believed that art was the exclusive domain of the more evolved Homo Sapiens Sapiens the latest find, according to archaeological project leader José Luis Sanchidrián, suggests that the earliest known painting was created by Homo Neanderthalensis. So, maybe you should think twice before calling someone a Neanderthal.

Gizmodo spotted the news on Spanish-language sites:

According to the latest dating of the charcoal found next to the paintings — used either to make the paintings or illuminate them — these seals may have been made more than 42,300 years ago. In fact, they may be as old as 43,500 years.

There have been other art objects, particularly sculptures like the Venus of Hohle Fels (35,000-40,000 yrs old), that come close in date but none as old as this.

These newly discovered paintings push the origins of painting back 10,000 years. Previously the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, which was featured in Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” was the earliest known work.

This latest fact is sure to frustrate archaeologists going forward as they wade into the “is it art” debate. Picture it:

Older Archaeologist: “Do you think this clutter of skeletons was the burial chamber of an Aurignacian settlement?”

Younger Archaeologist: “Have you considered it could be an art colony or a gallery space?”

Older Archaeologist: ”What?”

Younger Archaeologist: “Yeah, like the remains of some durational performance piece. Just because they’re Neanderthals doesn’t mean they’re not artistic.”

Or maybe not, though this guy does look like an artist.

UPDATE: One of our Facebook commenters pointed out another object in the same date range (but still not as old) as these newly discovered paintings is the Divje Babe flute. The “instrument” consists of holes carved in a cave bear femur, which is believed to be made by Neanderthals and is on display at the National Museum of Slovenia (Narodni Muzej Slovenije) in Ljubljana.

LOS ANGELES  — For one night only, Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History hosted a new video game.  It was a big deal.  Literally.  Sited in the massive dome at the Hayden Planetarium, Space Cruiser was a multiplayer immersive experience.

The game, designed by Ivan Safrin, Stephin Merritt, Greg Fox and Babycastles, put participants into a space ship as they worked to navigate through an asteroid field.  What’s more, it was entirely social, as each player controlled different parts of the ship. Here’s what Carolina Miranda had to say at WNYC:

One person handles thrust, another controls lateral left-to-right movement and yet another handles the roll (placing the ship on its side so that it can squeeze between tight clusters of galactic detritus a la Han Solo). Three other players control “repairs” (namely, pressing a button) after the many inevitable collisions.

It got me thinking about City Fireflies, a massive, Minefield-like game projected onto a building facade. Using the light from their iPhones to trigger sensors, players had to physically dance around the open square to knock out invading creatures. Designed by Medialab-Prado facade, it’s an ongoing project that runs evenings in Madrid.

Let’s hope this trend in architectural-scale video games continues.  With wall projections from the 1980s by Krzysztof Wodiczko, and more recently more whimsical pieces by Graffiti Lab, leading the way, there’s so much great potential for highly social immersive gaming experiences like these.

Elmgreen & Dragset's "Paparazzi" (2010) graced the entrance to Performa 2011's opening-night benefit. (photo by the author)

The power of celebrity images via Spiegel Online:

“Corbis CEO Gary Shenk estimates ‘that anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of images that are sold into media these days are entertainment images,’ most of them taken by paparazzi.”

This stats gives a better context for the bad art of Richard Phillips and why Gagosian probably represents him.

h/t @jmcolberg

Enzo & Nio take aim at the New York mayor in this recent street poster which uses the original 1788 Marie Antoinette painting is by Adolf Ulrich Wertmuller as its base. (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

This week, Catherine Opie fatigue, Yayoi Kusama, David Shrigley, tall buildings and economic downturns, post-structuralism, LA architecture and color theory for kids.

 This review of Catherine Opie’s new book Inauguration, which photographed the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, is pretty interesting. Particularly this part:

Disillusionment with Obama is widespread. His unsteady governing has tested the once hopeful. Obama’s own “eccentricities” seem to have been sanded away … Obama and Opie could be mirrors of one another, the one in politics, the other in the arts.

 The Economist seems to think Yayoi Kusama is ready for her spotlight:

Many women artists wait a long time for accolades. The advantage of late recognition is that it can spur them to new heights. Louise Bourgeois did some of her best work in her 80s. Ms Kusama aspires to do the same. The announcement of the Tate retrospective somehow “flicked a switch in her,” says Glenn Scott Wright, director of the Victoria Miro gallery, Ms Kusama’s European dealer. Indeed, the artist has made more than 140 paintings in the past two years alone.

RELATED: The LA Review of Books takes a look at Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama. I’m not quite sure why the reviewer repeats the absurd idea that Kusama is an “outsider artist,” though to the writer’s credit, they don’t seem to believe it:

At any rate, the congruence between her hallucinations and her work would seem to mark her as an “outsider artist”: one who creates art as a personal outlet for some deep, compulsive need. And yet, Kusama is highly aware of her profile in the press and her place in history. She often offers long lists of her accomplishments — her autobiography reads like a curriculum vitae in places — and narcissistically quotes at length from press accounts.

 A report from the David Shrigley show at the Hayward Gallery in London.

 Do very tall buildings foretell economic downturns? Hmmm… this from Architizer:

Last week, British investment bank Barclays Capital released an annual report and analysis known unassumingly as the ‘Skyscraper Index.’ The report stated that their index “continues to show an unhealthy correlation between construction of the next world’s tallest building and an impending financial crises,” citing statistics from New York in 1930, Chicago in 1974, Kuala Lumpur in 1997 and Dubai in 2010.

 Rosalind Krauss is interviewed by Yve-Alain Bois for the new edition of the Brooklyn Rail … and just when you thought post-structuralism was dead and buried. The whole interview is little dull but worth it just to read Krauss say this line:

… my writerly voice had really become very wooden, so that I couldn’t write anymore. It wasn’t fluid, it was just very, very dead.

Cue dramatic music and someone saying, “no shit.”

 This week, there is news that a few major museums have been filling out their collections. The MoMA has acquired a number of feminist-related art works, while the National Gallery of Art in DC has snapped up a still life by Robert Seldon Duncanson, which adds a bit more African American heft to the institution’s historic American collections.

 Ever wonder why there are no skyscrapers in the Soho, Lower East Side, Village neighborhoods of Manhattan?

 The DJ Moby has started an architecture blog about LA. So far it’s pretty dull but who knows, maybe it’ll pick up. He appears to be one of those “many artists are moving to LA because NY, London and SF are too expensive” devotees. Really? The primary reason to move to LA is the cost?

 A 1928 letter to a 16-year-old Jackson Pollock from his dad. It includes:

The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc.

 Color theory explained by Sesame Street for kids.

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.

It's the ultimate party photo — 3D, animated and bearded. Image courtesy DIGITALKITCHEN.

LOS ANGELES — It looks like animated GIFs are certainly seeing a renaissance. Shortly after spotting the NYPL’s Stereogranimator, I stumbled across Protobooth, an animated GIF photobooth.

Yes, you read that right. Concocted by the Seattle-Los Angeles-Chicago design firm Digital Kitchen, the Protobooth consists of four Macbook Pros, three Canon 5D MKII’s, a few other gadgets and a party in a portable kit. Utilizing a recipe of software hacks culled together with MaxMSP, the Canon EOS Utility and the Adobe Suite (Photoshop and Flash), the Protobooth makes it easy to take animated GIFs at a party.

Three cameras were used to create the 3D animated GIF effect. Image courtesy DIGITALKITCHEN.

While some of the images are indeed animated, most have the same effect as Stereogranimator, namely, to simulate a 3D viewing experience. The moments are frozen in place, and just like bullet time, we zoom around — albeit without the full 360 experience.

So where can you get one? Ah, that’s the rub. “We have no plans to commercialize the Protobooth,” David Mikula told me in an email. Mikula, who holds the cool title of “Senior Creation,” worked on the project with a half dozen others on the team. “It was an internal project that we had a lot of fun creating. That being said, everything we learned from this process has the potential to make its way into future projects.”

Here’s hoping Digital Kitchen at least throws together an open source kit and instructions for the Protobooth-less among us. In the mean time, we can watch the frenetic images and be jealous. Or those who attended 319 Scholes Art Hack Day probably got a taste of another version of the same concept which was created by Ashley Zelinskie.

“The moment we saw the images animated together, we got excited,” Mikula said. “We immediately started thinking about the possibilities.”

However, while learning more about public art, I began to notice a startling trend; it appears that the public possesses an odd affinity toward public works. Aside from the common images of the Statue of Liberty or the popular monuments in Washington, DC, I found image after image of art lovers groping, humping, licking and kissing public statues in a trend I have come to refer to as Statue Porn. I began looking for more of these photographs and compiled roughly 50 into this GIF.

I dismissed this public love affair with artworks as horseplay; mere childish humor for those who do not fully appreciate or understand art. Yet, as I found more and more images, I could not help but question this gut reaction, was I being snobbish? This is a trend, and as someone fascinated by public art, I cannot ignore the public’s reaction.

Honestly, how are we supposed to engage with a giant naked woman carved from stone? What interactions does the city hope to incite when they fund bronze statues of only naked white people who have been dead for many years and have no direct relevance to it’s location? I slowly came to believe Statue Porn is more a product of bad public art than a bad audience. I had made the easy mistake of blaming the public in these photographs, when I should be critical of the art itself.

*   *   *

Image credit in order of appearance. 1. autumnismyfavoritecolor on Flickr, 2. Jim Bates, Seattle Times, 3. Wuicho of Brown Planet, 4. lolgallery.com, 5. Photo of Shenae Grimes, unknown photographer, 6. Of Jamie Smith, unknown photographer, 7. Suicideblonde on Tumblr, 8. love2travelwritefilm.com, 9. Unknown photographer, 10. questioneverything.ca/features/parliamentary_comparisons, 11. zenith2007 on myLot, 12. jenmac on blogger, 13. Noelle Boc, 14. Vincent Abbey, 15. Peter Visontay, 16. Rylie on Tribe, 17. travish89 on myspace, 18. meri on blogger, 19. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 20. littlejessmo on flickr, 21. lolgallery.com, 22. lolgallery.com, 23. lolgallery.com, 24. lolgallery.com, 25. lolgallery.com, 26. lolgallery.com, 27. lolgallery.com, 28. zenosfrudakis.com/sculptures/public/index.html, 29.myoldmansaidfollowsunderland.blogspot.com, 30. justbarkingmad.com/?p=2212, 31. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 32. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 33. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 34. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 35. Mr. Nhi^^ on Flickr, 36. http://oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 37. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 38. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 39. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 40. o6-carebear-o6.xanga.com, 41. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 42. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 43. oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-poses-with-sculptures.html, 44. Sierra Greaves, 45. lolgallery.com

A minimalist map of Paris created by Lineposters. (image via lineposters.com)

LOS ANGELES — It’s always interesting to see different schematics for visually approaching a city. So much of how we experience a new place is defined by the map in our heads, and those maps tend to be limited to subway maps and, increasingly, Google Maps.

New York City visualized through its tweets. (image via Eric Fischer)

Which is why I like minimal city maps by Lineposter. Reduced to the basic squiggles and nodes of the subway systems of major cities like New York and London, they’re instantly recognizable and yet abstracted from the usual rainbow array of subway colors and numbers. I’d like to see more cities, especially sprawling transportation networks like those in Seoul and Tokyo, or the bare bones system in Rome. But what they’ve put together so far is great.

But maybe there are other ways to see the city too.  Consider Eric Fischer’s map of the Bay Area based on geolocated tweets. While the majority of the city doesn’t tweet, this is good data for how real people actually use the city, and where they tend to concentrate. It’s fascinating to see how a place like Manhattan truly functions as a central nervous system, and how the influence dissipates the further you get from the heart. The only thing cooler would be to visualize this maze over time, rather than just space.

The minimal design of Sabine Marcelis's House Wine kit makes it a visual work of art itself. Image via sabinemarcelis.com.

LOS ANGELES — Like most gallery goers, I enjoy a good glass of wine with my art. And while wine tasting is an art in itself, I never thought the wine could be transformed into art.

So I was delighted to come across Sabine Marcelis’s “House Wine,” a living installation meant to be shown  prominently in your home … all the while concocting your next glass of vino. It greatly simplifies the home wine-making process into elegant tubes and glass vessels that richly display the color of your work in progress.

Like a plant, House Wine is meant to receive “nurturing and care” from its owner, providing therapeutic pauses in an otherwise busy day. Marcelis says this about his decision to bring wine-making out into the open:

“Where the process is often hidden away from view in garages and basements. This is a real shame, as wine is a living, breathing entity which deserves an audience to witness it maturing.”

Now all we need is a tabletop vineyard or maybe this will help.

HOUSE WINE from sabine marcelis on Vimeo.

Some of the search results for Kickstarter when you plug in "art".

LOS ANGELES — For Co.Design recently, Bruce Nussbaum reflected on the idea of “indie capitalism,” a form of small scale, independent capitalism focused more on makers and communities:

“It’s socially focused, not technology focused, more designer/artist-centric than engineering-centric. I especially like ‘indie’ because the indie music scene reflects many of the distributive and social structures of this emergent form of capitalism. It’s no accident that Portland and New York have vibrant indie music scenes and are the centers of a rising new indie capitalism.”

In a post-2008 world, all the artists I know have had to take a ruthlessly entrepreneurial mindset to both promoting their work and sustaining their creative practice. A recent post in GigaOM makes the case that the internet has been a boon for artists willing to navigate the plethora of tools for promoting their work and raising much-needed funds:

“Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music.”

Consider, too, the 2011 stats released by Kickstarter, which helped creatives collectively raise almost $100 million this past year.

“More than one million rewards were selected, nearly quadruple the year before. Approximately 1,000 projects were successfully funded each month. In fact, more projects succeeded in 2011 than launched in 2010.”

Jason Eppink tried (tongue-in-cheek) to raise $5,000 to donate money for his friends' Kickstarter campaigns.

Art projects received nearly $6 million in pledges. For perspective, that’s double the reported operating budget of Creative Time. And with a total 78,588 backers for 1,172 projects this year, that averages out to about $75 per donor and $5,000 per project (enough for Queens-based artist Jason Eppink to fund his friends’ projects).

Of course, shooting past traditional art world gatekeepers and straight to one’s audience is fraught with its own challenges. Instead of individual investors, artists have to manage their own financials and marketing and deal with thousands of backers scattered around the world, not to mention shipping or promised rewards and correspondence. But it’s refreshing to see that alternatives to the traditional system are becoming more and more viable.

Btw, did you know Hyperallergic has a curated page on Kickstarter? Now you do.

Original unaltered images in center via and via

The full list is here.