La Disputa

You must have heard this morning that they found a new painting, Profile of the Bella Principessa attributed to none other than Leonardo da Vinci himself. Could it be? Are $150 million dollar paintings still lying around to be suddenly “discovered”? Honestly, I’m not sure. I want to believe that it’s true, it’s gorgeous, it’s in great condition, and it was sold to New York art dealer Kate Ganz 11 years ago. She does say on record in 2008 that she does not think it was da Vinci’s work. Why did she attribute to da Vinci now?

It’s probably because I’m a cynic at heart, but it’s bothering me. It’s bothering me because while there are quite a few of profile drawings that look similar to Ms. Bella, there aren’t many profile paintings – if any. A fingerprint sounds like fantastic proof even without a provenance but – and you can throw a stick at me here – it’s also bothering me that Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol hasn’t been out for a month yet.

Personally, I’ll wait before I make my own decision. I would love to believe there’s another LdV found, but it’s more likely that some student emulated his work. What do you guys think?

Siren is here!  Buy this gorgeous book here:
http://sirencomic.com/

You can see Selene’s face (girl with tiara in the left hand corner) if you squint!

This morning, I was cleaning my bookshelves.  This is usually an ineffective activity for me; I pick up a book to dust it and two hours later I find myself having reread it, still in its dusty condition.  I haven’t yet found an efficient strategy to combat this.

Today I fell upon my teeny, tiny Book of Urizen by the poet and artist William Blake.  And the first thing that I thought as I opened the pages was, “Ohh!  It’s actually a graphic novel!”  How did I not make the connection before?  See for yourself:

This book was written in 1794.

I know I’m desperately late to write about this project, but someone just told me about it and I wondered if you guys heard of it already.

It’s called the Shelley Jackson Skin Project.  Shelley Jackson invites participants to tattoo one word on themselves- one she chooses.  All those words together are a story.  Nobody knows the story except for the participants. 

I can see the art behind the concept.  What makes me uncomfortable with the idea is that she calls particpants “words”, as though the word on their skin is now their whole of identity.  A word they haven’t chosen themselves.  Her last three lines in her “Call for Participants” epitomizes that to me. 

“Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.”

I would not disvalue this project, I think it’s fascinating.  But I would not participate.  Would you?

Two pieces of stupidity news:

Firstly, a painting of Bernie Madoff by Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming was NOT sold when exhibited at the 11th annual Armory Show in NYC.  Surprised?  Really? 

Secondly, the United Nations building in NY apparently does not insure or register its art.  So when a bunch of it went missing, no one even has a clue where to start looking for them- or even what was lost.  Embarrassing.