Imagine for a moment that in the days after Johannes Vermeer’s death in 1675, that his widow Catharina and eldest daughter Maria, sitting in a darkened room of the Vermeer home, conspired to settle their numerous family debts in a secretive way. Owing their baker the largest sum of money, the widow and her daughter would give up two of the Master’s last paintings to settle their debt. In a theory developed by Cooper Union art history professor Benjamin Binstock, the two debt-settling paintings were actually the work of the daughter, Maria Vermeer.
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The 1913 Armory Show was a watershed moment, introducing American artists and the art-viewing public to the European avant-garde, including artists like Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Brancusi, and more. And now, just in time for the show’s centennial next year, we know a little more about it, thanks to two newly rediscovered installation photographs from the original fair.
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You all remember that blank art history book that the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) wanted its students to buy, right? The one with no actual pictures of art? Well, students took their concerns about the terrible textbook to the faculty, and here’s what they came back with.
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LOS ANGELES — Masterpiece Cards are a new art learning system from Susan Benford, who heads up the company. Benford developed the cards as a learning tool of those studying art history.
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Booooooom invited their readers to recreate their favorite paintings or photos using photography. The results are pretty creative.
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The pepper-spray cop from UC Davis, or Lt. John Pike, has become a meme, but not just any meme but one that is walking through art works of every stripe if only to prove have ridiculous and absurd his actions were in the face of non-violence resistance.
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Evacuated from my Lower Manhattan apartment and hiding from Hurricane Irene, I find myself thinking about anonymous street art and what it means to art-viewing practices. Different from traditional art and even graffiti, the anonymous works that are found on construction walls, corners of the street and shop grates pose a difficult yet exciting problem for the street art or historian enthusiast that comes across them.
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This month marks the 100th anniversary of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, and the Financial Times observes the occasion with a fascinating feature article that tells the tale of the theft of what was (then as now) the world’s most famous work of art
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This post is an image-only art mix tape of 5 works of contemporary art chosen around the theme of summer. It’s my look at the oncoming season through art, specifically inspired by our recent humidity.
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Cave paintings are so in right now! From Werner Herzog’s documentary to the recent discovery of new cave paintings in Spain, primitive art is totally in fashion. These newly uncovered 25,000 year-old paintings are thin line drawings of horses and human hands, rendered in a deep red.
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