Retiring this blog

 Update: I'm retiring this blog. Looking at copying some posts to my main blog...

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Where is Van Gogh's Dr. Gachet?

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Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet who took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life, and was painted in June 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. There are, or were, two versions of the Portrait of Dr. Gachet, as well as a single etching. The whereabouts of the original Portrait of Dr. Gachet are unknown, and is one of today's biggest art mysteries. Portrait of Dr. Gachet - the original Whereabouts unknown First sold in 1897 by Van Gogh's sister-in-law for 300 francs, the original Portrait of Dr. Gachet was subsequently bought by Paul Cassirer (1904), Kessler (1904), and Druet (1910). In 1911, the painting was acquired by the Städel (Städtische Galerie) in Frankfurt, Germany and hung there until 1933, when the painting was put in a hidden room. It was confiscated by the Nazis in 1937 as part of its campaign to rid Germany of so-called degenerate art. Instead of destroying...
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100 Years of Bauhaus

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In honour of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus school, some interesting resources... For the better part of a century, Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Dessau has been a mecca for a certain flavor of design lover. People from around the world travel to the modernist building in Weimar, Germany, to pay homage to the school that launched countless design careers. Now, a smaller version of the Dessau is hitting the road in celebration of the Bauhaus’s 100th anniversary this year. A 161-square-foot building-on-wheels designed to look like the iconic workshop wing of the Gropius building - glass facade and sans-serif signage included - will travel to Berlin, Kinshasa, in the Democratic of Congo, and Hong Kong, playing host to workshops and exhibitions that aim to update the Bauhaus’s European-centric teachings for a more global modern age. ... [read more on Curbed] . When architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in 1919, his utopian manifesto proclaimed that minimalism and a...
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Santa Bibiana's Bernini

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Santa Bibiana is a small Baroque style, Roman Catholic church in Rome devoted to Saint Bibiana, a Roman Virgin and Martyr. The church is home to a statue of the saint, created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1626, his first public religious commission. It shows St. Bibiana holding the palm leaf of martyrs, standing next to the column to which she was to be martyred. The sculpture has been in the news lately, after it's return from its first-ever loan to an exhibit, at Rome's famed Borghese Gallery, no less. The piece had only be moved once before, to protect it during assaults during World War II. In the process of returning the statue to her niche in the church, the ring finger on her right hand snapped off. While the art movers were devastated, much has been made of the clean break; had the digit been pulverized, it would have difficult to repair. Alas, the art restorers have done their work, and the digit has been reattached. If you've never seen a Bernini sculptur...
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