Category: Art Literacy

An electric company in England has uncovered a host of millennia-old objects dating to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman, and Saxon periods at a site near the city of Dorchester. Spanning 6,000 years of history, the artifacts were excavated as part of a project that lasted almost two years.

The finds were announced last month by the London-based electric company National Grid, which partnered with Oxford Archaeology to conduct the project. Historic England, the Dorset AONB Partnership, and Dorset County archaeologists also provided input.

Artifacts recovered include over 6,000 shards of prehistoric pottery and more than 40,000 struck flints, as well as a greenstone axe head, a bone awl, and antler tine, all dating to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

The Neolithic period in Britain starts around 4,000 B.C.E. and continues to 2,500 B.C.E. During this time, the population transitioned from hunting and gathering to a more sedentary lifestyle characterized … Read the rest

Artist Leslie Wayne molds and manipulates oil paint to create surfaces that blur the confines of painting and sculpture. Wayne found “an approach to [paint] that was very dimensional,” as she told Brooke Jaffe in a recent interview for “ARTnews Live,” our ongoing IGTV series featuring interviews with a range of creatives.

Wayne, the daughter of a concert pianist and a writer, began painting lessons at the age of 7 and lived in what she describes as a very open and “encouraging” household. Dissatisfied with the body of abstract geometric paintings featured in her first show—she says they felt formally rigorous but “hollow”—Wayne soon began integrating sculptural techniques into her paintings, which she says “helped me kind of build a vocabulary that was fresh and new to me.”

It was then that Wayne realized “paint could be used like you would use any other material to build a work … Read the rest

A three-year-long, multimillion-dollar legal battle between the estate of Robert Indiana and the Morgan Art Foundation, which represented Indiana during his lifetime and owns the copyright to much of his work, including his famed “LOVE” symbol, has culminated in a settlement. Various suits and countersuits that were pending in court were also dismissed. The news was first reported by the New York Times.

According to a filing in New York District Court last week, the remaining suits between the Morgan Art Foundation and the executor of his estate, James W. Brannan, have all been dismissed, along with ones against the artist’s longtime caretaker, Jamie Thomas. The settlement will allow for the estate and the Morgan Art Foundation to jointly represent the artist’s work and grow his market. The terms of the settlement were not revealed, though all the parties agreed to bear their own legal costs.

In the days … Read the rest