From Vincent van Gogh we have over 900 paintings as well as over 1000 drawings.

He made nearly all of them during the final five years of his life. 365 times 5 would be just over 1800 days for those 900 paintings. Let’s call it a painting every other day for half a decade.

How many did the aspiring artist with connections to the art market sell? None.

Comes now the news that beneath a quickly executed “Patch of Grass” reminiscent only in the most generic way of Dürer’s Great Piece of Turf, some helpful particle-accelerated synchrotronic X-rays have revealed what was known to be there (thanks to infrared reflectography), but had previously not been seen: an early portrait, from Vincent’s days as an evangelist among the coal miners.

This won’t change our conception of the artist much, unless it be with regard to his second thoughts, but it’s nice to see further confirmation of his early stylistic tropes.

From Patrick at Popehat comes news of a blockbuster art theft. Someone with no intention of selling the thing, and every intention of savoring it (or perhaps eliciting ransom for it), has contracted a crack team of pane-removing window climbers to cut from its frame a priceless Caravaggio:

The interesting detail here is that the person who commissioned the black bag operation is no connoisseur. The painting by Caravaggio, commissioned by Ciriaco Mattei, created around 1602, and documented within that generation, is most assuredly the one safely hanging in Dublin.

The stolen painting is a copy.

The very good copy in Odessa, closer to the original than any of the other half dozen seventeenth century copies, is probably not an autograph replica. Instead it may well be the copy Asdrubale Mattei commissioned from the otherwise unknown artist Giovanni di Attili.

Or is it?

For the gritty details from the pen of the fellow who cleaned and authenticated the Dublin piece, see Sergio Benedetti, “Caravaggio’s ‘Taking of Christ’, a Masterpiece Rediscovered”, The Burlington Magazine #135:1088 (Nov. 1993), pp. 731-741.

For a contrary view, and to gain a sense of how diplomacy and collegial relationships taint connoisseurship, see Peter Conrad, “In search of the real Caravaggio“.

Once in a while, the world sees the discovery of an ancient artifact in good condition that isn’t a forgery.  In this case, excavators near Skopje have unearthed a relatively awesome late Roman Venus pudica:

All too often, things like this turn up and prove to be clever forgeries, sometimes to the amplified embarrassment of those who underwrote relevant purchases.

Truths and legends about the forgery of old sculptures offer a lot of fun.  The most interesting recent example is, of course, the notorious Getty Kouros.

More pop-culturally amusing at the moment is the fact that several of the Aztec crystal skulls in prominent collections — artifacts that inspired the focus of the latest Indiana Jones flick — have been proven to be forgeries.

In related news, the inevitability of revising the Etruscan section of all those art history survey books is finally upon us.  They’ve long noted that the suckling Romulus and Remus were additions from the Renaissance, but many had held out hope that the lactating she-wolf would turn out to be pre-Roman.  Alas, she’s from the high Middle Ages.

Art hooligans have struck again. Followers of POPaganda artist Ron English have caused a stir in Boston.  Working in a neo-Warholian mode, which both misses and reinforces whatever Warhol was on about, English has morphed portraits of Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama: Set aside the curiously Alfred E. Neumanesque effect of Lincoln’s cranium on Obama’s visage.  Bracket out– as evidently the good people of the South End have done– any apparent semiotic purchase achieved by the inapt comparison.  The real punch here is that fans of English have taken to the streets, leaflets and posters in hand, to promote the work:

…it stirred a tempest in this insular arts community, though it had nothing to do with Lincoln, Obama or English himself.

Rather, residents, business owners, and even fellow gallery owners expressed frustration, angst, and anger over the way some English enthusiasts descended upon the city, plastering windows, telephone polls, and other surfaces with miniature posters meant to advertise the massive exhibit.

Here, the gently transgressive artistic mischief of a renegade billboarder gone legitimate gives way to the obnoxiously ingressive promotional mischief of his legion of popycat plasterers — a comical outstripping indeed.

Meanwhile, other artistic laborers in the same semantic field have made strides in a different direction.  Rather than echo Warhol’s pop appropriations of extant photography to remake what’s old, digital modelers such as Ray Downing at Studio Macbeth have decided to add a new wrinkle to what’s fauxld. They’ve created a high-resolution, high-poly model of Lincoln and have staged their model in optically naturalistic virtual settings to create what appear to be fresh photographs of the sixteenth president no less persuasive than whatever Matthew Brady wrought. Ron English and Ray Downing are reworking classic iconography.

I find the Downing’s way much more relevant and telling in relation to contemporary political stagecraft.  It’s not the readily identified trappings of consumer culture that gives pause; Pop has long sinced ensured that overt adverts will dwell in inescapable irony.  Half a century later, is that insight not yet played out?

In this, the early 21st century, what rightly gives pause is the convergence of digital simulation and dissimulation under the emotion-stoking aegis of honest Abe.  In studio, it’s an academic exercise with commercial applications.  But how about in the polis?

From Patrick at Popehat, we learn of a simple but amusing deconstruction of Thomas Kinkade’s mass market landscapes. A sample:

There is an inexplicable absence of people, despite the presence of livestock, abandoned agricultural implements, raging chimney fires, what have you. …it seems as if a sort of aestheticically-directed neutron bomb had detonated, leaving standing only the charming buildings…

For Bosch, it was the bubble-bosomed, jewel-laden temptresses and the winged demons with fish eyes and spiked tails swinging mowing-scythes who represented the driving forces behind Renaissance depravity. For Kinkade, the ultimate context for modern evil is the seemingly static, wholly-controlled, wholly-contrived resort environment… where NO OTHER PEOPLE can interfere with one’s vacation….