News Art Blog

For art history, August 21 and 22 are the dates that will live in infamy, not December 7th (all apologies to FDR). In some strange nexus of negative karma stretching over nearly a century, three of the greatest art heists of all time took place on these dates: the theft of the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (shown above) from the Louvre in Paris, France, on August 21, 1911; the theft of Goya’s Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London, England, on August 21, 1961; and the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream (shown above) and Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, on August 22, 2004. Each story ends happily with the works returned safe and sound, but the stories behind each still bewilder and amaze. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Days of Infamy: August 21 and 22 and Major Art Heists."

In a world where the future of seemingly everything is online, museums — those repositories of the past — seem to resist the internet’s full digital embrace. It’s a question that’s increasingly crossed my mind thanks to a series of unrelated stories that share two common questions — how do people use museums now and how will they in the future? For every digital breakthrough enticing us to step on the virtual gas comes a cautionary tale reminding us to pump those virtual brakes. Ultimately, the online revolution is coming to museums, but is the future of museums really online? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is the Future of Museums Really Online?"

When painter and showman Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre burst onto the scene in 1839 with his Daguerreotype—one of the earliest forms of photography—“Daguerreotypemania” quickly ensued. The art world quickly took notice of the new kid on the block, both negatively and positively. Dominique de Font-Réaulx’s simply titled Painting and Photography: 1839-1914 tells the not so simple story of how photography came to influence the world of painting, and vice versa. “[C]oncentrating less on immediate links between a photo and a given work of painting or drawing,” de Font-Réaulx instead focuses “on the manner in which photography gave rise to a paradigm of representation at once original yet familiar.” Painting and Photography: 1839-1914 outlines how what started as competition soon became an alliance of vision that changed the way we see forever. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Photography Changed Painting (and Vice Versa)."


[Many thanks to Rizzoli USA for providing me with the images above and a review copy of Dominique de Font-Réaulx’s Painting and Photography: 1839-1914.]

A second Mona Lisa? One made even earlier than the one hanging in the Louvre? It sounds almost too good to be true, and probably is. A Swiss-based organization calling itself The Mona Lisa Foundation launched a full-scale international media assault asserting that the painting formerly known as the Isleworth Mona Lisais actually also by Leonardo da Vinci and is the long-presumed-lost “Earlier Mona Lisa” (detail shown above) alluded to in texts by Leonardo’s contemporaries. The idea that the most famous painting in the world suddenly has an older “sister” understandably sent a shockwave through not just the art world, but the world at large. But after the dust settles, the “Earlier Mona Lisa” is most likely neither earlier nor a Leonardo Lisa. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why You Shouldn’t Believe the “Earlier Mona Lisa” Hype."

Ask a gaggle of economists which country has the world’s fastest growing economy and they’ll most likely say China. At the very least, most Americans see China as the world’s leading economic power, if you believe the polls. A clear sign that China sees itself as a global economic power might be that the Communist country is looking more and more cosmopolitan when it comes to culture, specifically the visual arts. According to a recent report in The New York Times, Chinese museums are finally “open to the world.” That openness marks not necessarily a search for cultural freedom, but rather a reaching for cultural dominance to match their dominance in the economic sphere. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is China Looking to Conquer the Art World, Too?"

Short of inventing a time machine and travelling back to the 16^th century, we’ll most likely never know what Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa looked like when it was first painted. Mini “time machines” in the form of copies made between Leonardo’s day and our own give us an idea of what Mona may have looked like at different points in time, but nothing could bring us back to the moment of creation—until now. On view now at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, is what experts believe is a copy of the Mona Lisa painted by a student at the same time and even in the same room as Leonardo the master. A modern miracle of conservation and art history research, this new discovery will change the way we look at the most famous painting in the world forever. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Does the Prado’s Mona Lisa Copy Tell Us About the Real Thing?"