The famous animal paintings in the Chauvet cave, of France, are dated at around thirty-five thousand years old; the Sulawesi warty pig outdoes them by roughly ten thousand years. - The New Yorker
Colour has a life beyond any individual perception. It exists as both the quality of a thing as well as an approach to that thing, or “a dance between subjects and objects, mind and matter.” - Prospect
To be fair to Pornhub, the Birth of Venus is definitely a "classic nude." But the larger issue is about how museums make money - and during COVID, "as in-person activity slumped, sales of licensed goods rocketed." Is it too much exposure? - The Guardian (UK)
You might think that's obvious, but it's not necessarily so to those in the capital city. Even during COVID, "London draws all the oxygen, not to mention the cash; once again, it’s as if nothing could possibly be happening anywhere else." - The Guardian (UK)
It's likely you find the French artist a bit, well, staid. Boring, even. But: "Quite a bit of wildness hides beneath the cloak of scholarship and respectability." - Hyperallergic
A longtime director fired, a bequest altered, plans for the sculpture garden to become a museum - there's a lot going on at LongHouse Reserve. (Some board members say there's not, and it's a "what do they call it, the 'noisy minority.'") - The New York Times
While some on this list are obvious, others may inspire an artistic pilgrimage - though Milan "is a chaotic hotchpotch of buttresses, pinnacles and a reputed 2,245 statues, part gothic, part classical. Like an overdressed model on a Milan catwalk." - The Guardian (UK)
"Slipcovers are what you put over a tired sofa or tatty armchair to refresh and resuscitate the worn-out object’s useful life. After the quarter-ton steel Die, Isermann’s light textile cube performs a resurrection ... avowedly secular and unequivocally domestic in form." - Los Angeles Times
Ahead of talks with Boris Johnson, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, "Our position is very clear. The marbles were stolen in the 19th century; they belong in the Acropolis Museum and we need to discuss this issue in earnest." - The Guardian (UK)
Sometimes, fame is not great, and no, you shouldn't hot-wax a mural from the 1400s: "Since their discovery in 1844, the murals have been damaged by damp and incorrect preservative treatments." - BBC
A decade ago, the international art world derided Hong Kong as a “cultural desert.” The opening of the multibillion-dollar M+ museum epitomizes the city’s ambition to shake off stereotypes by creating “Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture." - ARTnews
The giant billboards now or until recently plastered across the churches for products ranging from OPPO smartphones to Recarlo jewellery – signal that these companies are financing the restoration of the fragile facades. - Apollo
The spokesperson said in a statement: "We can confirm that the artwork at the end of 'The Outlaws' was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it." - CNN
The catalogue for this fall's Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Madrid museum has reclassified The World's Most Expensive Artwork into the "attributed works, workshop or authorised and supervised by Leonardo" category. (Not that Salvator Mundi is actually there, mind you; its current whereabouts are still unknown.) - ARTnews
During restoration work at Calverley Old Hall, between Bradford and Leeds, workers discovered what turned out to be floor-to-ceiling paintings ("basically Tudor wallpaper") in a fantastical style ultimately based on the emperor Nero's Golden Villa. - The Guardian
