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VISUAL

How Portland’s Art Scene Influenced The New Michelle Williams Film

"Before filming, Williams participated in sculpture training sessions, both on Zoom and in-person at Lahti’s art studio in Portland. Lahti began by sculpting while Williams watched, and later the actor got her hands dirty and molded clay herself." - Los Angeles Times

How Hip Hop Influenced Visual Art

Modern art was profoundly affected by jazz. You can see its influence not only on American artists such as Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott and Bob Thompson but also on Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian. Has hip-hop had a comparable impact on art? - Washington Post

The Enslaved Painter Who Modeled For Velázquez And Became A Star Artist In His Own Right

"(Juan de Pareja) remains an elusive figure within art history, with details of his life prone to myth, his paintings often misattributed and no more than two of his works ever exhibited in the same place." - CNN

A Critic Makes The Rounds Of Immersive Art Shows

Adam Platt: "As you move from one pleasantly distracting set piece to another, pondering when to ingest the lemon-flavored edible in your pocket, it feels like playing hooky — a reprieve from the hushed, ponderous solemnity of the Establishment museums and galleries." - New York Magazine

An Architect Dreams Of Rebuilding A Ukrainian City As A City of The Future

The vision that he outlined was grand. It included restoring the largely bombed-out building of the regional administration as a functional monument, the way Norman Foster did with the former Reichstag building in Berlin by capping it with a giant glass dome. - The New Yorker

Man Spends Years Trying To Convince Art World He Found A Raphael In An Antique Shop

Twenty-seven years, reams of research and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, Ayers’ associates have come forward to claim the artwork, called the Flaget Madonna, as a work from the studio of Raphael, an Italian painter from the High Renaissance. - Chicago Tribune

Some Benin Bronzes Contain Metal Mined In Germany, Say Scientists

"The Edo people in the Kingdom of Benin, modern Nigeria, created their extraordinary sculptures with melted down brass manilla bracelets. … A team of German researchers compared their metal with metallic ores and mines across Europe before tracing them to the Rhineland in western Germany." - The Guardian

Florida’s Department Of Education Gives Its Approval To Michelangelo’s David

"'Florida encourages instruction on the classics and classical art, and would not prohibit its use in instruction,' Alex Lanfranconi, communications director for the Florida Department of Education, said in a statement." - ARTnews

$200 Million Gift Of Calders To Seattle Art Museum

As part of their gift, the Shirleys will give SAM 48 works by Calder, spanning the artist’s career, with mobiles at various sizes from the large-scale to the intimately small, as well as works on paper. (The approximate value of the 48-work donation is $200 million.) - ARTnews

Met Museum Returns More Stolen Antiquities

The $25 million sculpture dates to 225 C.E., and is believed to have been looted in the 1960s from a shine at Bubon, an archaeological site in southwest Turkey. It had been on loan from a collection in Switzerland since 2011. - Artnet

Remember Damien Hirst’s Spin Paintings? Now You And AI Can Make One Of Your Own

Hirst did the originals, back in the 1990s, by dripping paint onto a rotating canvas. Now he and his partners have set up an AI generator with which you can designate colors and spin styles — and then get the resulting work as either a hard copy or an NFT. - Artnet

Is The Philadelphia Museum Of Art Sitting On A Vermeer We Didn’t Know About?

"Arie Wallert, a former Rijksmuseum scientific specialist, … is convinced that there are two versions of the young woman playing a guitar: the long-accepted painting at Kenwood House, in north London, and a very similar composition that has been in the Philadelphia museum's stores for nearly a century." - The Art Newspaper

How Architecture Has Become A “Hollowed-Out” Profession

Greater specialisation had become necessary and appropriate as construction grew in complexity, and they felt this compartmentalisation of roles would allow all aspects of architectural work to be carried out more skilfully. The logic is understandable, the outcome disastrous. - Dezeen

Fifty Years After He Died, This Is What Picasso Has Become

It’s no longer necessary that he connect in people’s minds with any actual art. It’s enough that he stands for that bigger thing: unfettered creativity. In fact, it’s better. A clear line connects Picasso’s description of his pictures as “a sum of destructions” and the capitalist mantra of “creative destruction.” - Washington Post

The Painting In The TV Room (AKA The Breughel) Sells For $850K

Yes, the family had long called it “The Bruegel,” but it was an affectionate dig at a painting that was clearly a fake. Turns out, the family joke was a hidden masterpiece, a genuine work of Pieter Bruegel the Younger, a 17th-century Flemish artist. - Washington Post

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