Art and Art History News
Katrina Grant
via Guggenheim website | Fortunato Depero, Skyscrapers and Tunnels (Gratticieli e tunnel), 1930. Tempera on paper, 68 x 102 cm. MART, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: © MART, Archivio Fotografico
A round-up of portrait news (rediscovered Seurat self-portrait, new book by James Hall and an Artemeisia self portrait acquisition) from the the Melbourne Portrait Group.
A good review of the current Futurism show on at the Guggenheim ‘What is most interesting about Futurism is not, then, the element of Futurism that can be preserved from Fascism, but what Futurism reveals and expresses about the soul of Fascism.’
Winthrop Professor at UWA asks Why are Western Australian art and artists invisible? Also a great discussion in comments on the need for digitisation of archives and other materials for ths study of Australian art.
Speculation on a possible successor to Ron Radford at the NGA - this article really only looks at current directors of state galleries, which seems a bit narrow, though that would follow the pattern of the last few appointments.
A long but interesting read on using computer vision to improve image databases. This addresses the problem of often only being able to search image databases using words. John Resig has used the TinEye image matching tool with the Frick photo archive to create software to analyse images themselves and look for matches, similarities and so on.
An article on restoring Hugh Paton’s ‘Entrance to Glen Etive from near Kings house’ from the NGV.
Still on the topic of art conservation - the University of Melbourne has announced a gift of $6.9 million from the Cripps Foundation to support art conservation at the university. The funding will go toward a new chair in Cultural Materials Conservation and a new centre.
The Vatican has announced a plan to digitise 3,000 ancient manuscripts over the next four years. Excellent to read that the library wants to make the scans available for free viewing online. More at the Art Newspaper.
A stolen Gauguin and Bonnard turn up after spending almost forty years hanging on the walls of the home of a Fiat worker, who bought them in 1975 for the modern equivalent of about £300.
Update: The author of the research on the Mantegna painting I mentioned two weeks ago, Heather Dalton, has kindly supplied a link to the article proper - it is pay-walled but should be accessible for people with university library access or similar.