Banksy Painted Over

From Art News

A Banksy work was recently painted over by rail staff in the UK, which has prompted locals to complain. Rail staff now have photos of work by Banksy, so they don't make the same mistake again.Does that mean that money lifts an artist above being called a vandal? Are people annoyed by the fact that it's such a great piece of grafitti or that it could have been sold at Sothebys for $50,000? If Thomas Kinkade suddenly gets the urge to start putting his art on buildings without permission, should we leave them up too?I have nothing against Banksy.. I actually like him.. he makes me smile.. this story just got me thinking about art..The rail officials first said "We don't want graffiti on our property and we will remove it," he said. "It's ugly, illegal and the public don't like it."They then said "We have now issued our maintenance crews with photographs of Banksy's work, so if they come across it, they'll recognise it for what it is. We will then try and remove it if at all possible and auction it for charity." Read more at This is London>> Banksy, Controversy

Something always turning up in Egypt

French archaeologists have found a Persian temple, from around 500 BC in the Egyptian desert.

http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-02-21T142121Z_01_BAN151663_RTRIDST_0_OZATP-EGYPT-TEMPLE-20070221.XML

3,000-year-old tombs are found in Egypt

The tombs of a Pharaonic butler and scribe that had been buried in the sand for more than 3,000 years have recently been unveiled in Egypt. The tombs, along with the painted coffins of a priest and his girlfriend, were discovered early this year at Saqqara near the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser — the oldest of Egypt's more than 90 pyramids…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070220/ap_on_sc/egypt_tombs_1;_ylt=Aj6Ty5egHWh5PcjI1RXiodJFeQoB

Artists to sing for planet

A series of worldwide concerts to focus on the threat of climate change, with a powerhouse lineup from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Snoop Dogg to Bon Jovi will be held on July 7.

The 24-hour event is part of a campaign, Save Our Selves — The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis, that promoters hope will trigger a broad movement to address the global climate crisis.

More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear at the July concerts, including Melissa Etheridge, the Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Duran Duran, Korn, Pharrell, the Black Eyed Peas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Faith Hill, and Tim McGraw.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070215/ap_en_ot/gore_concerts

Estonia votes to remove Soviet statue

Is this what happens to art when its no longer in vogue? Makes you wonder about all the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, etc. statues out there and what was taken down.


Estonian lawmakers on Thursday narrowly approved a bill calling for the removal of a Soviet war memorial from their capital, ignoring Moscow's warning of "irreversible consequences" for relations between the two countries....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070215/ap_on_re_eu/estonia_soviet_monument

Paints’ Mysteries Challenge Protectors of Modern Art

LOS ANGELES — In a sprawling, white-on-white lab here that looks like a set from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a British scientist named Thomas Learner recently lifted the top from a small box of slides, the kind that usually contain microscopic samples of bacteria or chemicals.

But this was a different kind of lab, and the slides were coated with dozens of shades of dried acrylic paint, at once as ordinary as house paint and as precious as rare isotopes. This is because the acrylics had been taken from the Santa Monica studio of Sam Francis, the abstract painter, who died in 1994 and who, like many artists of his generation, had largely abandoned the oils that had been the medium of painting for at least five centuries. Instead, he turned to their modern successors: acrylics, enamels, alkyds and many other substances that are more synthetic than organic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/arts/design/14pain.html?ex=1329109200&en=7ff8b0098107f219&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Antony and Cleopatra were not beauties

Antony and Cleopatra, one of history's most romantic couples, were not the great beauties that Hollywood would have us believe, academics have said.

A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen had a pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose...Her Roman lover had bulging eyes, thick neck and a hook nose...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/6357311.stm

Archaeologists extracting ancient lovers

Archaeologists working on the eve of Valentine's Day" carefully began digging up the bones of a prehistoric couple on Tuesday, hoping to keep their 5,000-year-old embrace undisturbed forever.

The skeletons unearthed last week were being scooped out of the earth to undergo tests before going on display in the northern Italian city of Mantua, archaeologists said.

The pair, buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago in the late Neolithic period, are believed to be a man and a woman who died young, because their teeth were found intact. Archaeologists have hailed the find, saying that double burials from that period are rare and none have been found in such a touching pose. "We will work to keep them together,"...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/italy_prehistoric_love;_ylt=Al0CtAY0LHuoq9Xs4tFVSQ1FeQoB

Discover Magazine new March issue

Discover Magazine's new March issue is out.

Look for stories on: the Bactrian Gold – the 2,000 year old treasure in Afghanistan (with some beautiful picture of gold jewelry) and Jane Goodall

Poggibonsi the Fraud and The Medici Archive Project

I found this intriguing note on a listserv:

"A really lovely site for Art and History students is the Jacopo di Poggibonsi site which has been copied into Wikipedia as genuine. See if you can find the clue to its provenance (Google helps!)"

The site seems excellent for web legitimacy demonstrations. A Google search for the fictional artist even brought up lesson plans based around the website.

Then, when following it up, I found an excellent and genuine repository for primary source documents associated with the Medici family in Florence.

The Medici Archive Project is a not-for-profit corporation that plays aleadership role in the field of historical research. The chief focus ofthe Project's activity is the
Archive of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany(1537-1743), housed in the Archivio
di Stato in Florence, Italy.

While the scans are in Italian, English translations are featured side-by-side . . .
If you are an art history nerd like me, you're heart will go a-twitter at the chance to gander through documents like this:

Entry from a volume made up of a series of survey descriptions ["Visita"]written by Cosimo Acciaioli of the subject towns and territories of the State of Siena, part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, at the time of Ferdinando I de' Medici. Acciaioli visits Moniciano and comments on the need to restore the Palazzo Pubblico there, providing a cost assessment of the work to be done.

Blog you should be reading

Diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive

Dr Eskander's journal starts in November 2006 and describes the perilous and tragic situation that the Iraq National Library and Archive is operating under and which led to the institution's temporary closure at the end of that month.

In early December, after consulting the heads of his departments, Dr Eskander re-opened the National Library and Archive even though the security situation remained as bad as before.


Dr. Saad Eskander's journal http://www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html

Eternal love? Couple hugging for 5,000 years!

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, hugging each other.

"It's an extraordinary case," said Elena Menotti, who led the team on their dig near the northern city of Mantova. "There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging -- and they really are hugging."...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070206/sc_nm/italy_embrace_dc

Looters still ransacking Afghanistan

More than five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, the plundering of Afghanistan's archaeological sites and museums not only continues but has evolved into a sophisticated trade that could be financing the country's warlords and insurgents, experts say...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070203/ap_on_re_as/afghan_looting_1;_ylt=AipaIOanDK5Nq6E22C7oNrZFeQoB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Ancient Village Lifts Some of Stonehenge's Mystery

"...archaeologists have uncovered a nearby ancient settlement that once housed hundreds of people — possibly the builders of Stonehenge."

When I was at Stonehenge oh-so-many-years-ago, the guide said that the rocks had been pulled from 200 miles away -- anybody else heard that?

Interpreting Art - Artist or Critic?

By art news blog
Ana Finel Honigman has asked an interesting question over at the Guardian blog. She asks, Is an artist's idea of what their work means more important than the viewer's interpretation, or are they both valid?I like the idea of a work of art doing its own talking. If it needs an explanation by the artist, he/she has probably made the work too complicated. An artist and an art critic should be two very different people. One creates art and the other talks about art.I would still rather listen to an artist talk about art, rather than a critic talking about art though.Here's what Ana Finel Honigman says.."..many academics or critics exploit art's "messages" for self-interested methodological or political ends. But many excellent artists leave themselves defenseless against such hijacking because they cannot articulate persuasively why they do what they do. And further complicating these relationships is that many artists who can explain their work are more articulate verbally than visually, which is why much of bad art is not really art but is rather merely illustrations of ideas.." Guardian Blog