Art and Artifice

Last updated July 15, 2022

A self-portrait of Van Gogh found beneath layers of paint on an entirely different painting

Story at Washington Post

The painting "Head of a Peasant Woman" is in the collection at the National Galleries of Scotland and was being inspected for their coming Impressionism exhibit.

"...the mysterious image was revealed by an x-ray taken when art conservators examined Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman of 1885 ahead of this forthcoming exhibition

Vincent van Gogh La Mousmé 1888, detail

Fake Chagall painting purchased at $90K to be destroyed – Irish Times

Article describes how "fluid" is art authentication, and that something declared "real" in one era can be overturned later by the experts in another era.

Two years ago, when she was looking to sell works from her collection, Sotheby’s suggested it might be a good time to auction her Chagall, among others, Clegg said. But the company told her it would have to send the work to France for authentication by a panel of Chagall experts.

... to Clegg’s dismay, the expert panel in Paris declared her Chagall to be fake, held on to it and now wants to destroy it.

Technology is piercing a hidden world inside artworks

Using X-rays and spectrum scanners to look at layers inside of a painting that are not visible to the naked eye has been used by restorers, researchers and experts for decades, but with the advent of more readily available AI technology the possibilities for computers to go much further into inspecting every atom of an artwork is growing rapidly.

Story at BBC News

Five years ago, the National Gallery in London acquired new state-of-the-art scanning equipment capable of capturing so much data about a single painting that most cultural organisations are poorly equipped to make much use of it. Some are now initiating cross-sector collaborations with universities that can offer superior computing facilities and broader expertise. As part of a recent partnership with University College London and Imperial College London, called Art Through the ICT Lens, or ARTICT, the National Gallery has been producing much clearer images of Francisco de Goya's Doña Isabel de Porcel (c 1805), a fashionable young woman wearing a black mantilla (scarf). In 1980, a mysterious second portrait of a man in a waistcoat and jacket was discovered underneath. Getting a clearer image of the man has meant combining multiple scans from different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, some of which reveal certain aspects of the painting better than others. At first, this process had to be done manually but thanks to this new research, it has now been handed over to a computer.

Andy Warhol, vinyl record cover artist - 28 examples at vintag.es

Thomas Hovedan, Self-Portrait of the artist in his studio, 1873

Winslow Homer - Autumn, 1877

Famous artworks that have been attacked, vandalized and damaged – MSN News

Some of the artworks discussed: Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, The Night Watch, Rokeby Venus, White Cross, Guernica and others

The Bucolic heroic and Rosa Bonheur – review of the book Art is a Tyrant

At the New York Review, written by Regina Marler

"[Her] ... painstaking realism has long since fallen out of fashion, but interest in her life as well as her art is on the rise. This fall the Musée d’Orsay will host its first exhibition devoted to her work; a French postage stamp honoring her bicentennial was issued in March; and recently, the first full-scale biography in forty years appeared: Art Is a Tyrant by Catherine Hewitt. Bonheur described her life as one of “struggle, triumph, and glory.” At the height of her career she had a studio in Paris, a mansion in Nice, and a château at the edge of the Fontainebleau forest..."

Man attacks painting of Mona Lisa with a cake

Story at Chicago Tribune

"...Videos posted on social media showed a young man in a wig and lipstick who had arrived in a wheelchair. The man, whose identity was unknown, was also seen throwing roses in the museum gallery to slack-jawed guests. The cake attack left a conspicuous white creamy smear on the glass but the famous work by Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t damaged."

More art pages in the Archives