Art and Artifice

Last updated August 8, 2022

Wild geese, willows and peonies from 1568–1615 - folding screen - Work possibly by Kano Motonobu, six panel folding screen. Color on paper, Freer Art Gallery, Washington DC

Wild geese, willows and peonies 1568–1615. Work possibly by Kano Motonobu, six panel folding screen, and and color on paper. Freer Art Gallery Washington DC. Photo by Erik Weems

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

More art pages in the Archives