Art Literacy

Shop small and be rewarded! Spend $10 this weekend at a small business on Amazon, and get a $10 credit toward your Prime Day purchases. 

Itching for Amazon Prime Day? Here’s a tip: You can save $10 during the event next week (12 a.m. PDT on June 21 to 11:59 p.m. PDT on June 22) by starting your shopping early. Through midnight on Sunday, June 20, Amazon is offering a $10 credit to use on Prime Day to members who spend $10 on products from select small businesses selling in Amazon’s store (exclusions apply).

To get access to the deals, however, you have to be an Amazon Prime subscriber.

Every year, Amazon’s Prime Day offers thousands of deals on the site’s products, from electronics to books and art supplies. This year, the 48-hour event will begin at 12 a.m. PDT on Monday, June 21 and conclude at 11:59 p.m. PDT … Read the rest

The cave art of our distant ancestors has always been the object of fascination, but the details of how this work was made are often vague. A study on ancient lighting techniques, first repoted by CNN, is bringing us a step closer to understanding how ancient artists worked.

Spanish archaeologists Ángeles Medina-Alcaide, Diego Garate, Iñaki Intxaurbe, José L. Sanchidrián, Olivia Rivero, Catherine Ferrier, Dolores Mesa, Jaime Pereña, and Iñaki Líbano performed experiments to figure out how Paleolithic artists lit the dark caves that were their studios and canvases.

To get a better understanding of the three main light sources used to work in the caves, based upon the evidence found in Paleolithic sites in Southwest Europe, scientists recreated torches, fireplaces, and portable grease lamps. The experiments led to a better understand ing of the peculiarities of each source, including which type of residue each different technique produced. This information should … Read the rest

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