Days of Infamy: August 21 and 22 and Major Art Heists

For art history, August 21 and 22 are the dates that will live in infamy, not December 7th (all apologies to FDR). In some strange nexus of negative karma stretching over nearly a century, three of the greatest art heists of all time took place on these dates: the theft of the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (shown above) from the Louvre in Paris, France, on August 21, 1911; the theft of Goya’s Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London, England, on August 21, 1961; and the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream (shown above) and Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, on August 22, 2004. Each story ends happily with the works returned safe and sound, but the stories behind each still bewilder and amaze. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Days of Infamy: August 21 and 22 and Major Art Heists."

Piero di Cosimo: Renaissance “Madman” for the Modern Age

Half a millennium later, you would think the Italian Renaissance could hold no more secrets from us, no “codes” to decipher. And, yet, secrets hiding in plain sight continue to startle modern audiences with the depth and breadth of that amazing era. One of the well-kept secrets, at least until now, was the work of Piero di Cosimo, subject of his first major retrospective, Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.  Called “a madman” for his personal and artistic quirks by Renaissance chronicler Giorgio Vasari, Piero’s ability to paint in multiple genres all with a dizzying amount of detail may have seemed madness to contemporaries, but appeals to modern audiences conditioned for such visual assaults. There may have been a method to Piero di Cosimo’s madness after all. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Piero di Cosimo: Renaissance “Madman” for the Modern Age."

Forget Da Vinci, Try Solving the Piero della Francesca Code

Fans of Dan Brown (and Tom Hanks) hoped to get an education in the Italian Renaissance along with their beach reading (and movie-going) of The Da Vinci Code. But they and those who think that Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello are just Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are missing out on a Renaissance master of art and mathematics just as captivating and mysterious as Da Vinci—Piero della Francesca. In Piero della Francesca: Artist and Man, James R. Banker relies on newly discovered documents and years of study of the Renaissance to crack the “Piero Code.” You won’t run across the Knights Templar or unearth the Holy Grail in Banker’s biographical study, but you will come away with a real-life detective tale compellingly told and a greater understanding and appreciation of an artist whose art may look otherworldly but, as Banker suggests, grew directly from Piero’s hometown roots. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Forget Da Vinci, Try Solving the Piero della Francesca Code."

An Exhibition About an Art Critic?

Nobody goes to a baseball game to watch the umpires, so why would someone go to a museum to see an exhibition dedicated to an art critic—one of those arbiters of taste who hopes to mediate but sometimes only muddles the interaction between artists and the public? England’s Tate Britain bets that the British public will come to watch the umpire in their new exhibition Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation. Not just your average umpire, Sir Kenneth Clark (shown above) ruled over art criticism for decades, stretching from his becoming Director of the British National Gallery in 1933 at just 30 years of age all the way to his crowning achievement with the 13-part documentary Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark in 1969. Although the main focus of the show is on Clark’s work in the 1930s and 1940s, by having the show’s title hark back to his highly personal broadcast of what was civilization and art, it raises the larger question of how this public servant served the public for well-intentioned good and possibly ill, as any critic can. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "An Exhibition About an Art Critic?"

Are Our Minds Wired to Enjoy Cubism?

When Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque first brought Cubism onto the modern art scene in the first decade of the 20^th century, the initialreviews were mixed. Like-minded artists and art lovers embraced Cubism as a startling new way of seeing breaking violently with the representational art of the past. Many others, however, saw only madness and perhaps a little fraud in these images taking everyday objects and representing them from every angle simultaneously. Preferences for modernism or classicism certainly played a big role in responses. But what if we could wipe away those preferences? Would an unprejudiced viewer accept and maybe even enjoy Cubist paintings? A team of researchers recently tackled that question by testing whether art novices shown a series of Cubist works expressed a liking for the works and if detectablility—whether or not the viewer could visually reverse engineer the image back to its everyday source—played a role. Their results not only suggest that Cubism can be enjoyed by the novice, but that more difficult (but not too difficult) works to untangle tickle the pleasure zones of the mind. Are our minds wired to enjoy Cubism? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Are Our Minds Wired to Enjoy Cubism?"

Is the U.S.'s Vermeer Invasion Too Much of a Good Thing?

The last foreign military invasion of the United States (which included the burning of the White House) took place two centuries ago. Half a century ago, a different kind of British Invasion brought us the Beatles and the Stones. This year, America faces yet another foreign invasion on a small scale physically, but on a mammoth scale culturally. Through a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the art world stars, 14 of the 36 paintings currently acknowledged to be painted by Johannes Vermeer, including the novel- and movie-inspiring Girl With Pearl Earring (detail shown above), are all within the reach of a train ride between a handful of East Coast museums. For American art lovers on a budget, the idea of Vermeers coming to them rather than the alternative might be an opportunity too good to miss. For international Vermeer followers, the bunching of masterpieces makes an American vacation heaven and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor the train to paradise. For American museums looking to boost attendance numbers and revenue, the Vermeer invasion might be the cure for what ills them. But is the Vermeer invasion too much of a good thing? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is the U.S.'s Vermeer Invasion Too Much of a Good Thing?"

Has Norman Rockwell Been Outed?

Any biographer writing about a familiar subject faces the same towering problem—how do I make this person seem new and modern? When writing about an artist such as Norman Rockwell, whose art acts for many as a visual time capsule of early and mid-20^th century Americana, that issue becomes doubly difficult to surmount.  In American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, author Deborah Solomon re-evaluates not just Rockwell’s work, which has been unjustly dismissed as kitsch for too long, but also Rockwell himself and the motivations hidden in his art. Among those hidden clues to the man she finds in Rockwell’s paintings, Solomon unearths homoeroticism and a fascination with preadolescent boys that puts the artist in a wholly different light. Although Solomon never slaps the label of homosexual or pedophile on Norman Rockwell, she comes awfully darn close. Those innuendos have infuriated Rockwell’s descendants and raised larger questions about the dangers of modern biography. Has Norman Rockwell been outed? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Has Norman Rockwell Been Outed?"

Who Was the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa?

“Unimaginable!” roared Parisian newspaper headlines on August 23, 2011, the day after the Louvre discovered that someone had stolen Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Who, everyone asked, took La Joconde, as the French called her? Two years passed before the world learned the thief’s name—Vincenzo Peruggia, an obscure, Italian housepainter. Although Peruggia’s name’s been synonymous with art theft for a century, who Vincenzo was has always remained a mystery. What made him take the painting in the first place? Filmmaker Joe Medeiros tries to solve that puzzle in his charming and eye-opening documentary, The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, the True Story. Shuttling back and forth between Italy and France, just like Peruggia himself, Medeiros and his crew visit not just the scene of the crime, but also the scenes of Vincenzo’s life before and after the theft in search of the man behind the mask of the thief. The result speaks as much about the power of art as about the way history and its players never truly die. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Who Was the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa?"
[Many thanks to Joe and Justine Medeiros for providing me with the image above from, press materials related to, and viewing access to The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, the True Story, now playing in select theaters across America.]

Is Albrecht Durer’s Last Supper Better Than da Vinci’s?

With Easter coming this Sunday and the minting of a new pope still fresh in people’s minds, considerations and reconsiderations of Christianity seem natural and unavoidable. The Renaissance art of the Italian big three—Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Raphael—continues to dominate the popular imagination, but a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, asks us to turn our eyes north, to a different kind of Renaissance man. Albrecht Dürer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina features all the bravura draftsmanship of Albrecht Dürer, who epitomizes what we now call the Northern Renaissance. When we think of Dürer, we think of his oversized talent matched by his oversized presence in the unforgettable portrait in which he set himself up as Christ himself. And, yet, Dürer, as the show demonstrates, could push ego aside in depicting scenes of great religious sensibility. For centuries, da Vinci’s take on The Last Supper has stood as the gold standard (even when the painting itself threatened to fall apart). Is it wrong (or even blasphemus) to ask if Dürer’s interpretation (shown above) is just as good, or even better? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Albrecht Durer’s Last Supper Better Than da Vinci’s?"

[Image: Albrecht Dürer. The Last Supper, 1523. Woodcut. Overall: 21.3 x 30.1 cm (8 3/8 x 11 7/8 in.). Overall (framed): 40.6 49.3 3.6 cm (16 19 7/16 1 7/16 in.). Albertina, Vienna.] 
[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for providing the image above and other press materials related to their exhibition, Albrecht Dürer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina, which runs through June 9, 2013.]

Can We Ever Restore Leonardo’s “Last Supper”?

Upon seeing in person Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, American novelist Henry James pithily dubbed it “the saddest work of art in the world.” War, weather, da Vinci’s own failed experimentation, and, most of all, time have taken such a collective toll on a work that Renaissance contemporaries called miraculous and instantly recognized as a game changer in art that we most likely may never see it in anything close to its original glory. In Leonardo and The Last Supper, Ross King performs a different, but still glorious restoration of da Vinci’s mural masterpiece in all the color, detail, and depth of the original. King brings to the table all the social history surrounding the work that makes the story of The Last Supper’s creation and survival itself sound like a miracle. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can We Ever Restore Leonardo’s Last Supper?"

[Image: Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, called Giampietrino (active 1508-1549). The Last Supper (detail), ca. 1520. Image source here.]

[Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me with a review copy of Ross King’s Leonardo and The Last Supper.]