Everyone's a Critic Sunday - January 21, 2007 One day I was browsing through an art history book and I realized that "American Gothic" was not in the book! I thought it was odd. The painting is like one of the most important and famous paintings to ever come out of America. (It's also probably the most parodied!) The book I was looking through was "History of Art" by H.W. Janson. This book has been a staple to art history for decades. Countless universities use it. H.W. Janson was a very important and prestigious art historian/critic. During the 40's and 50's, he taught at the University of Iowa. It turns out that Grant Wood, despite his lack of a college education, also taught at the University of Iowa as an associate professor during this time. During Wood's controversial tenure, he butted heads with a lot of the professors. One of these professors was of course H.W. Janson. Eventually the two began bickering about everything from Wood's Regionalistic style to the structure of their art department. Janson grew to become Wood's worst critic. After WWII, Janson had had enough and embarked on a smear campaign to destroy Grant Wood's credit. So Janson's tactic was to compare Wood's Regionalistic style to - get this - "Hiter-approved art of National Socialism in Germany during the same decade!" I'd say that was a little drastic. Wood's reputation quickly diminished after that. Janson even refused to acknowledge Wood or even Regionalism in "History of Art" for decades after that. It has just been recently that Wood was incorporated into Janson's book. That's of course because Janson died in the 80s. I'm guessing that Wood and "American Gothic" quickly bounced back from the war of words because his painting has become one of the most famous from American art. I just thought that was an interesting little story about bias in the art education/history world. That was today's art history lesson. Unravelling the Da Vinci mystery Saturday - January 13, 2007 Associated Press FLORENCE, ROME, Jan. 13. — A real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalising clues and cunning art sleuths, may be one step closer to a solution, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be concealed behind a wall in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Italian culture minister Mr Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given their go-ahead for renewed exploration in the palace, which houses Florence’s city offices. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in one of the walls may have preserved for more than four centuries Leonardo’s unfinished mural painting of the “Battle of Anghiari.” “We took this decision to verify conclusively if the cavity exists and if there are traces of the fresco,” Mr Rutelli said during a visit in Florence. The search for the Renaissance masterpiece began about 30 years ago, when art researcher Mr Maurizio Seracini noticed a cryptic message painted on one of the frescoes decorating the “Hall of the 500” once the city’s seat of power. “Cerca, trova” “seek and you shall find” said the words on a tiny green flag in the “Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley,” one of the military scenes painted by sixteenth century artist Giorgio Vasari. Between 2002 and 2003, radar and X-ray scans allowed Mr Seracini and his team to find a cavity behind the fresco that is the right size to cocoon Leonardo’s work, which was long thought to have been destroyed when Vasari renovated the hall in the mid-sixteenth century. Knitta Please Tuesday - January 9, 2007 Check these gals out. They call themselves "Knitta." They're a guerrilla knitter tag team. They go around the inner city knitting cozies and sweaters around car antennas, poles, bottles, doorknobs among other things! Its a very clever idea. Similar to spray paint graffiti but more considerate! I want to see them knit socks on a passed-out bum... Knitting a utility pole, a door handle, and a brick on the Great Wall with a knitted cozy. http://www.knittaplease.com <previous next>