And amusing this show certainly is. For 'The Urethra Postcard Collection' Gilbert and George have produced an enormous 564-piece collection of 'postcard art', in which they have arranged, you guessed it, postcards, in grids and framed them. Some of the cards are shop-bought, and some are found in telephone kiosks. The grids represent the sign of the Urethra, which the artists were delighted to find was what an eccentric Victorian theosophist, a pioneer of masturbation correspondence courses, used to sign his name with: i.e. a dot with a circle around it.

However, as is often the case, civic leaders tend to make use of popular theories in diluted or superficial forms. As Thomas Sevcik lamented, “Poor Richard Florida – his theory is very right but it was then misused for short-term thinking. I am not criticizing his claim for creative capital.” What Sevcik does criticize is the resulting phenomenon, what he describes as “The use of art and culture [and] the culture industry as a simple marketing tool, a superficial way of trying to gain momentum for a city…and it’s not really helping the cities.”

HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb's salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy's paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Within these limitations, they proved themselves curatorial visionaries; most of those they supported and befriended went on to become world-renowned artists including Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. "Not even a toothpick could be squeezed into the apartment," recalls Dorothy. In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The vast majority of their collection was given as a gift to the institution. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece. Today Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They've refilled it with piles of new art they've acquired.

HERB & DOROTHY is directed by first time filmmaker Megumi Sasaki. The film received the Golden Starfish Award for the Best Documentary Film and Audience Award from the 2008 Hamptons International Film Festival. It has also received Audience Awards from the 2008 SILVERDOCS Film Festival and the 2009 Philadelphia Cinefest. Palm Springs International Film Festival named HERB & DOROTHY one of their "Best of Fest" films in 2009.

[RA: Architect Maya Lin's shaped earth "Wave Field" is 10,000 square feet and has rippled the University of Michigan campus since 1995.]

A world renown artist will soon be a free man after spending a year in a half in the Leon County Jail.

James Boggs was sentenced Friday afternoon to time served on weapons and drug charges.

Court records show he must serve another four years probation, including completing a mandatory drug treatment program.

Boggs was arrested back in September 2006 after deputies found a gun, an axe and methamphetamines in his van.

Hahn's most significant publication was the dual-titled 'Monographie der Spinnen / Monographia Aranearum' (Monograph of Spiders) which was issued in instalments between 1820 and 1836. Of the eight or so (near-) complete copies of this work in the world that have survived, none is apparently a definitive version. The history of the publishing is complicated, involving a change in printers following a quarrel, a small number of subscribers, unauthorised episode issues and, when combined with a sixteen year period of publication, the scarcity of complete works becomes understandable.

I took a break from working on orders yesterday to join Mary Morgan in visiting the Gallery Project space on S. Fourth Ave., where artists are in the process of installing their pieces for a new show that starts tomorrow, December 10. I don’t normally cover (non-performing) art, but this exhibit is just so cool I couldn’t resist.

But students curious about the figures and images in the murals are left guessing –– there are no descriptions in the Reference Room for the paintings. So what, then, are those two huge works of art?

As it turns out, the oil-on-canvas paintings are titled “The Arts of Peace” and “The Arts of War,” and were originally created for the Manufactures and Liberal arts building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, also called The Chicago World’s Fair, held in 1893.

Gari Melchers, a Detroit born artist, created the two works. Melcher would go on to paint murals for the Library of Congress and the Detroit Public Library.

Welcome to the web page of the house and Museum of Sir John Soane, R.A., architect.

Soane was born in 1753, the son of a bricklayer, and died after a long and distinguished career, in 1837.

Soane designed this house to live in, but also as a setting for his antiquities and his works of art. After the death of his wife (1815), he lived here alone, constantly adding to and rearranging his collections. Having been deeply disappointed by the conduct of his two sons, one of whom survived him, he determined to establish the house as a museum to which 'amateurs and students' should have access.

david lynch reports on the weather from los angeles

Here are just some of the ways spiders have featured in the rituals, beliefs, art, entertainment and literature of people from all over the world, from ancient through to modern times.

* Spiders in history
* Spiders in Aboriginal art
* Spiders in Vanuatu
* Spiders in West Africa
* Tarantulas - the truth behind their evil image
* The truth about Miss Muffet?
* Spiderman

These facts added together suggest a mystery at the heart of how we as artists choose to portray moonlight in paintings. If moonlight is just gray-colored light, and if it’s close to the minimal threshold of our color receptors anyway, then why do so many artists paint moonlight as bluish or greenish? Do we really see it that way? Is it some kind of illusion, or perhaps is it just an artistic convention?

Pewabic Pottery is a living treasure and offers visitors an exciting glimpse of a little known part of American history. Founded in 1903 during the Arts & Crafts Movement, Pewabic is nationally renowned for its tile and pottery in unique glazes. Today it is a non profit ceramic art education center which welcomes 70,000 visitors annually.

As the name suggests, the Turkish Map Fold is a way to fold a map. Generally speaking, we fold maps to make them easier to store and carry. This particular method is interesting because when you grasp the two edges and pull it open, the entire surface of the map comes into view in a way that resembles a blooming flower. And when you push the edges back together, it refolds itself to the way it was. The photo above shows an example of an artist's book constructed from a number of squares of paper folded in this manner, all joined together with adhesive.

One other contemporary artist, Robert Irwin, has explored the splitting of focus. Writing about Irwin in his book Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Lawrence Weschler quotes him explaining that he trained himself by “placing a dot on a window and gazing both at and beyond it, thus allowing two planes of focus, one for each eye.” Irwin played with perception in a famous series of paintings of dots and discs, but the Oakes twins are alone in using split focus to draw perspective. They didn’t know this until after they’d done it.

The Saul Steinberg Foundation is a nonprofit organization established by the artist's Will. Its mission is to facilitate the study and appreciation of Saul Steinberg's contribution to 20th-century art. Through the development of databases, archives, and publications, the Foundation serves as a resource for the international curatorial-scholarly community as well as the general public.

This week in the magazine, Malcolm Gladwell asks why we equate genius with precocity. Here Gladwell talks about how artistic prodigies differ from late bloomers and the kinds of support over decades that some artists need to realize their gifts.

Listen to the mp3 on the player above, or right-click here to download.

maps, drawn by hand, collected

Welcome to Bildarchiv Foto Marburg's Image Index of Art and Architecture!

At present, the "Image Index" contains 1.9 million pictures which you can order as scan, slide or proof.
Photographs may only be published with the express consent of the institution that owns them!
For information on Bildarchiv Foto Marburg's Terms of Use, please consult our
Price List and the General Terms and Conditions of Business.

n Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex Atlanticus" (1483 - 1518), a premature perspective anamorphose is seen, depicting the head of a child. (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) Other early examples of anamorphic arts from the 16th. Century are found in temporary treatises on perspective, Barbaro (1569) & Vignola (1583)

For a real autonomous description of this art-form we have to wait till the dawn of the 17th. Century, Salomon de Caus (1612), Niceron (1638), Dubreuil (1649). Also Kircher (1646) & Schott (1674) mention the art of anamorphosis. Athanasius Kircher is very well known among historians of the Magic Lantern, explained on other pages of this web site.
In Kircher's "ARS MAGNA LUCIS ET UMBRAE", 1671, several early examples of Magic Lanterns are seen, although these are NOT the earliest references leading too the grandfather of the projector.

a fully worked ontology of art with this interesting node in the huge tree

anamorphic art is art that has to be distorted to be viewed; this is a deep deep link into a collection. the next link will be to the ontology browser that helped me find this. first saw stuff like this in Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column long ago.

The spontaneous swiping of women's underwear that night at Alice Lloyd became a standard, planned practice that went on for ten years—the ritual seeking of trophies by men raiding women's dormitories and sororities.

great series of art about kids who love the subway in nyc

It consists of a website that sends emails to a tank of three snails, each of which move messages around by the RFID chips fitted to their shells.

Write less. About six words. Maybe seven.

Craft technology is our term for the interweaving of computation with craft materials. This blending can take many forms, including the application of specialized software to aid in the design and construction of crafts (such as mechanical toys and paper

who does what at umma

Brian Dettmer sifts through stacks of antiquated books, boxes of dusty cassette tapes, and piles of obsolete maps to uncover the perfect source and subject for his conceptual explorations and sculptural dissections.

The Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit has been created to demonstrate the power of maps. An initial theme of this exhibit is to compare and contrast first maps of our entire planet with the first maps of all of science as we know it.

Three weeks ago, the British Museum quietly launched its comprehensive website of what it calls flat art: mostly so far its enormous collection of prints and drawings.

portfolio of graphic design

Pho is Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup, of course. It's apparently pronounced "FA." I started eating it when I lived in Washington, D.C., at a place called Pho 75 in Rosslyn. When John Parres and I found a Pho kitchen in Los Angeles, we agreed to eat there ev

I've just returned from being on the road since last Sunday. Whilst flying into Adelaide this everning I thought about the different modes of seeing, as we flew across the Australian landscape from Canberra to Adelaide.

Established with the generous support of alumna Penny W. Stamps, the Distinguished Visitors Program brings respected emerging and established artists/designers from a broad spectrum of media to the School to conduct a public lecture and engage with studen

crocheted graffiti, chicago (no seriously)

lots of little cool paintings

I HAS A WALTZING BUCKET LOADER

A list of vendors in the Ann Arbor area that sell stuff artists want, on a Google map.

books sorted so that their titles tell a story; awesome. The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.

homemade ethos prominent in this design blog

which album cover does this come from?

mark smithivas public art project

annotated log of postings to the bibliodyssey collection of design, illustration, and antiquaria. wonderful.

Version is an annual springtime convergence that brings together over 400 artists, musicians, and educators from around the world to present some of the most challenging ideas and progressive art projects of our day.

excellent long "ask tufte" discussion of transit maps worldwide, including many links and much to admire.

Contributors to the exhibit are John Baird, Bill Bresler, Matt Callow, Erin Dorbin, Geoffrey Foster, Stephen Gutierrez, Ralph Krawczyk Jr., Michael C. Myers, Marjorie O'Brien, Mark F. O'Brien, Ross Orr, Andy Tanguay, Roger Varland, Linda Wan, Andrea Wiggi

“We would never say a work is mostly red, or instills a sense of ennui, or features a dog playing poker,” agreed Bruce Wyman, director of new technologies for the Denver Art Museum. “Tagging gives us a set of eyes we don’t have.”

Louise did her MFA at Michigan - beautiful seascapes and Maine landscapes - very lovely.

metromode magazine feature on the shadow art fair and the rest of the art going on in ypsi.

grocs funds student projects that mix art and technology

digital version of print magazine. march 2007 issue has Lego interview. very brave to offer 250mb+ movies as downloads in magazine format.

start out just styling things with the color red, and then when you have it figured out do more. +9 other tips

It involved soaking newspaper or magazine clippings in solvent, laying them face down on drawing paper and then hatching back and forth across them with a dry pen nib.

Basically, the idea is to spread the seed and let nature go. It’s about living in an edible jungle. You don’t need to pay 100 yen to buy a few pieces of lettuce or herbs. You just plant some seeds, the rain falls and they grow, and you get hundreds of

The museum exhibits the world's largest collection of anatomically correct fabric brain art, inspired by research from neuroscience, dissection and neuroeconomics. Our current exhibition features three quilts with functional images from PET and fMRI scann

not the best blog in its genre, but the idea is a good one - students of mass psychology should look at more photographic evidence of the details of this. disappointed there are no u of michigan football crowds.

SKANDIA — Nationally recognized wildlife artist John Heath age 78, peacefully passed away February 24, 2007 after a lengthy illness.

The toy camera aesthetic turns its back on sterile technical perfection. Instead it celebrates the messy unpredictability and dreamlike imagery that only a truly rotten camera can provide.

a hit! as complete a bio as you'd need to dig more

"compelling marines"

aha! les chaney is lester joseph chaney. still tagging, now I have a full name.

not sure who the photo is of. looking for information on artist les chaney of chicago.

autistic artist sketches a lifelike panorama of rome from memory after a single view from above

pictures of macy's 1932 thanksgiving parade from an estate sale on backroads in texas

art design movies in a blue house in ann arbor

old school