Category: visual

“Now in its eighth year, the 2011 Combustion Art Competition Awards held at a recent meeting of the Combustion Institute brought together a bunch of pyrotechnic scientists eager to show off their red-hot creations.”

“The Klimt-inspired Barbie, in her glistening, geometric gown – along with, fittingly enough, a Mona Lisa-inspired Barbie, adorned in Renaissance finery, and a van Goghian Barbie, rocking a Starry Night cocktail dress – are the three inaugural offerings of the Barbie Collector Museum Collection.” ($34.95 each)

“Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds” drew strong criticism from experts in underwater archeology and cultural heritage groups who argued that the excavation of the boat had not meet the field’s standards. They also contended that a show at the Sackler, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, would seem to give approval to what they considered objectionable methods.

“It depicts Gwyn bare-breasted and stuffing sausages, a composition laden with titillating symbolism. She is dressed in white, a satirical pun on virginal purity, while a black manservant standing by her may allude to the black-haired king known as ‘the black man’.”

“An attempt to have the Mona Lisa return from France for a temporary visit to Italy has been dismissed by gallery chiefs.” Said a Louvre official, “Any attempt to move the painting would cause incalculable damage – it’s just not worth the risk.”

Christopher Knight on the Ardabil Carpet: “[S]tand at one end of the enormous carpet – it’s more than 23 feet long and 13 feet wide – and an immense garden of formal and conceptual splendor unfurls before you. … With its deep indigo field, the floral carpet, royally commissioned for a dynastic shrine, pictures a sky garden’s vivacious glory spread beneath your feet.”

“Google Goggles is at base a visual search engine that is activated not by typing in key phrases but by taking a picture on your smartphone of the object … in question. They call it a ‘visual query.’ Now Getty visitors using the program can take pictures of paintings that interest them to bring up links to information, starting with content prepared by the museum.”

“Critics of an urban improvement effort in the South Korean capital that requires developers to provide public art say the law generated too many works that many find objectionable. It has been changed.”

“The Museum of Fine Arts has agreed to pay restitution to the heir of a Jewish art dealer killed at Auschwitz after determining that a 17th-century Dutch painting in its collection was once owned by him and was probably plundered by the Nazis.”