Category: visual

Explorers report they have found the “winter home” of John the Baptist” on the east shore of the Jordan River. They also found a skull too, which some say may have been John’s. “Until now, testing on the skull has not been completed, so we can only say it belonged to a hermit, because the region of Wadi Kharrar was inhabited by many hermits. The cave carved into the rock was dated to the 1st century AD.” – Bahrain Tribune

Last month Athens opened a new subway stop at the Acropolis, decorated with replicas of the Parthenon marbles that Greece wants to retrieve from Britain. Next up are plans for a new Acropolis Museum, designed to up pressure on the English to return the sculptures. – The Art Newspaper

In Egypt “British archaeologists have discovered 30 new sites filled with drawings carved into rocks. Unseen by human eyes for up to 6,000 years, the rock engravings depict cattle, giraffes, ostriches, hippos, boats, and the men and women who lived in the area around 4,000 B.C.” – Discovery

“In a literate society, perhaps no form occupies this zone of invisible visibility more completely than typography, which makes type designers among the most influential, if anonymous, artists in history.” – New York Times

“The Tate Modern is literally and figuratively the biggest thing to happen in the world of contemporary art, anywhere, for the last 25 years. The mutant offspring of such questionable immensities as the Pompidou Center and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Bilbao Guggenheim, and the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the new Tate represents either the beginning of the end of the British art scene, or the end of the beginning. It makes you wonder if success will spoil the English art world.” – Village Voice

John Walsh has been checking out other museums since he stepped down as director of the Getty in September. “I keep thinking, what price success? Museums are drawing huge audiences, but to what? To dazzling new buildings or renovated ones, very often, or to ballyhooed exhibitions of overexposed art (even things with a dubious place in art museums like motorcycles and guitars). In settings like that, looking at works of art is becoming a point-and-click sort of thing. There’s a crowd flowing around you, noise . . . glance, move on.” – Los Angeles Times

A drawing on a Post-it note by the artist Kitaj was sold for £640. “Guinness World Records has now declared the price has made it the world’s most valuable Post-it note. The manufacturer, 3M, held the sale to mark the 20th anniversary of its notes.” – The Independent (UK)

What art the top German collectors bought this year. – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

London doesn’t just have a roll call of fancy new arts buildings in which to play. There’s a lot to go inside, too. “The long-term effect of the building programmes of recent years is now beginning to be felt; in terms of the number and quality of our exhibitions, London’s visual culture is now the richest in the world.” – The Telegraph (UK)

A half dozen major museums, artists and university presses are being sued for “appropriation” of copyrighted images. “The plaintiffs are seeking to hold the defendants liable for promoting and selling the disputed image, which they say was distributed on T-shirts, magnets, books, brochures, cards, websites and street billboards, including two immense building displays in New York arranged by the Whitney Museum. The lawsuit raises the question of what happens if an underlying image used in such a work is not in the public domain.” – The Art Newspaper