Stone Age art gets animated

Welcome to Animation Domination, Stone Age style. By about 30,000 years ago, Europeans were using cartoon-like techniques to give observers the impression that lions and other wild beasts were charging across cave walls, two French investigators find.

Ancient artists created graphic stories in caves and illusions of moving animals on rotating bone disks, say archaeologist Marc Azéma of the University of Toulouse–Le Mirail in France and Florent Rivère, an independent artist based in Foix, France.

Flickering torches passed over painted scenes would have heightened onlookers’ sense of seeing live-action stories, the researchers suggest in the June Antiquity.

Azéma and Rivère summarize their 20 years of research on Stone Age animation techniques, much of it previously published in French, in the new paper. They also describe for the first time examples of animation at two French caves, Chauvet and La Baume Latrone.

A 10-meter-long Chauvet painting represents a hunting story, Azéma proposes. The story begins by showing several lions, ears back and heads lowered, stalking prey. Mammoths and other animals appear nearby. In a second section of the painting, a pride of 16 lions, some drawn smaller than the rest to appear farther away, lunge toward fleeing bison.

Stone Age artists meant to depict animal movement in such scenes, Azéma says. An eight-legged bison at Chauvet, for example, resulted from superimposing two images of the creature in different stances to create the appearance of running.

In France, 53 figures in 12 caves superimpose two or more images to represent running, head tossing and tail shaking. At the famous Lascaux Cave, 20 painted animals display multiple heads, legs or tails.

A carving on an animal bone from another Stone Age cave in France depicts three freeze-frame images of a running lion, another way to represent motion.

Ancient Europeans also invented a kind of animation toy, the researchers suggest. Sites in France and Spain have yielded stone and bone disks, typically with center holes, showing opposing images of sitting and standing animals.

In experiments conducted since 2007, Rivère has reproduced these engraved disks and looped strands of animal tendon through the center holes. By twisting these strands, the disks rotate back and forth rapidly enough to make animals appear to be sitting down and standing up.

That’s the principle behind the thaumatrope, a device invented (or perhaps reinvented) in 1825. Two strings attached to the ends of a disk or card with an image on each side — say, a vase opposite a bouquet of flowers — were twirled between the fingers, so that the rotating pictures appeared to combine into a single image, such as flowers in a vase.

The Mona Lisa's Twin Painting Discovered

The Mona Lisa is one of the most enigmatic and iconic pieces of Western art. It has inspired countless copies, but one replica at the Madrid's Museo del Prado is generating its own buzz: Conservators say that it was painted at the same time as the original — and possibly by one of the master's pupils, perhaps even a lover.

Juxtaposing the two paintings — and using infrared technology, which works like an X-ray, allowing one to see beneath the paint to see previous, obscured versions — conservators say that Leonardo and the painter of the replica made exactly the same changes at the same time.

The copy brings da Vinci's studio to life — and stirs up questions. Who was this mystery painter? According to Bailey, the artist is likely to have been one of Leonardo's main assistants: Melzi or Salai (who was rumored to have been da Vinci's lover).
Side by side, the pictures look noticeably different: The copy is significantly brighter and more colorful; even  

Mona Lisa's famously coy smile takes on a new cast.
Bailey says the find will be relevant to historians and laypeople, in that paradoxically, a copy might bring viewers to the original with fresh eyes.

Stone Age art gets animated

Welcome to Animation Domination, Stone Age style. By about 30,000 years ago, Europeans were using cartoon-like techniques to give observers the impression that lions and other wild beasts were charging across cave walls, two French investigators find.

Ancient artists created graphic stories in caves and illusions of moving animals on rotating bone disks, say archaeologist Marc Azéma of the University of Toulouse–Le Mirail in France and Florent Rivère, an independent artist based in Foix, France.

“Stone Age artists intended to give life to their images,” Azéma says. “The majority of cave drawings show animals in action.”

Flickering torches passed over painted scenes would have heightened onlookers’ sense of seeing live-action stories, the researchers suggest in the June Antiquity.

Azéma and Rivère summarize their 20 years of research on Stone Age animation techniques, much of it previously published in French, in the new paper. They also describe for the first time examples of animation at two French caves, Chauvet and La Baume Latrone.

“Movement and action are indeed represented in cave art in different manners,” remarks archaeologist Jean Clottes, a rock-art specialist who now serves as honorary conservator general of heritage for the French Ministry of Culture. Clottes led a 1998 investigation of Chauvet’s 30,000-year-old cave paintings.

A 10-meter-long Chauvet painting represents a hunting story, Azéma proposes. The story begins by showing several lions, ears back and heads lowered, stalking prey. Mammoths and other animals appear nearby. In a second section of the painting, a pride of 16 lions, some drawn smaller than the rest to appear farther away, lunge toward fleeing bison.

Stone Age artists meant to depict animal movement in such scenes, Azéma says. An eight-legged bison at Chauvet, for example, resulted from superimposing two images of the creature in different stances to create the appearance of running.

In France, 53 figures in 12 caves superimpose two or more images to represent running, head tossing and tail shaking. At the famous Lascaux Cave, 20 painted animals display multiple heads, legs or tails.

A carving on an animal bone from another Stone Age cave in France depicts three freeze-frame images of a running lion, another way to represent motion.

Ancient Europeans also invented a kind of animation toy, the researchers suggest. Sites in France and Spain have yielded stone and bone disks, typically with center holes, showing opposing images of sitting and standing animals.

In experiments conducted since 2007, Rivère has reproduced these engraved disks and looped strands of animal tendon through the center holes. By twisting these strands, the disks rotate back and forth rapidly enough to make animals appear to be sitting down and standing up.

That’s the principle behind the thaumatrope, a device invented (or perhaps reinvented) in 1825. Two strings attached to the ends of a disk or card with an image on each side — say, a vase opposite a bouquet of flowers — were twirled between the fingers, so that the rotating pictures appeared to combine into a single image, such as flowers in a vase.

Exhibition at Tate Modern reassesses the work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye is a major exhibition which reassesses the work of this Norwegian painter. It proposes a ground-breaking dialogue between the artist’s paintings and drawings made in the first half of the 20th century and his often overlooked interest in the rise of modern media, including photography, film and the re-birth of stage production.

Few other modern artists are better known and yet less understood than Munch (1863-1944). He is often presented primarily as a 19th century painter, a Symbolist or a pre-Expressionist, but this exhibition aims to show how he engaged emphatically with 20th century concerns that were thoroughly representative of the modernity of the age. Organised in close cooperation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Munch Museum in Oslo, it features over sixty carefully-selected paintings and fifty photographs, alongside his lesser-known filmic work. These reveal Munch’s interest in current affairs and how his paintings were inspired by scenes observed in the street or incidents reported in the media. Far from confining himself to the studio, he frequently worked outdoors to capture everyday life.

The show also examines how Munch often repeated a single motif over a long period of time in order to re-work it. It gathers together different versions of his most celebrated works, such as The Sick Child from 1907 and 1925 and The Girls on the Bridge from 1902 and 1907, and others from collections including the Gothenberg Konstmuseum and the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo. Like other painters such as Bonnard and Vuillard, Munch adopted photography in the early years of the 20th century and his photographic activities were largely focused on self-portraiture, which he obsessively restaged and reworked. Self-portraits also lay at the heart of Munch’s painted oeuvre. In the 1930s he developed an eye disease and made poignant works which charted the effects of his degenerating sight. His last work, on display here, was one such self-portrait.

 Munch’s use of prominent foregrounds and strong diagonals reference the advancing technological developments in cinema and photography. Creating the illusion of actors moving towards the spectator, as if looming out from a cinema screen, this pictorial device can be seen in many of Munch’s most innovative works such as On the Operating Table 1902-03 and The Yellow Log 1912 from the Munch Museum. Munch was also keenly aware of the visual effects brought on by the introduction of electric lighting on theatre stages and used this to create ethereal drama in, for example, his 1907 Green Room series. The duality of presence and erasure is further explored in key works such as The Sun 1910-13 and Starry Night 1922-24, where matter takes on an ephemeral or ghostlike appearance. The exhibition was organised by the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, in cooperation with the Munch Museum, Oslo and in association with Tate Modern, London. It was curated by Angela Lampe and Clément Chéroux at the Centre Pompidou and by Nicholas Cullinan at Tate Modern assisted by Shoair Mavlian. A fully illustrated catalogue is available from Tate Publishing.

The Wonderful Oil Paint Of Scottish Landscapes

The wonderful art of Francis e Jamieson pAair framed scottish oil landscapes 1910-40We offer this exceptional and large pair of framed Scottish beautiful landscapes by renowned artist Francis E Jamieson and oil painted between 1910 and 1940. Painted in oil on canvas one oil portrays a picture by a cottage next to a loch below a mountainous back drop while the other shows wonderful a waterfall set within a mountainous luxury's landscape. Both are signed FE Jamieson and both were framed in the 1960’s in frames contemporary of the a period.

The Excellent Cottage Cattle Watercolour Painting

This is an excellent English School water color dating from the during Victorian period.The wonderful art of painting cottage scene depicts a classic late nineteenth  Century antique Victorian period sweet 'chocolate box' study of a tatched cottage with leaded windows nestled beside huge mature trees in the rural English countryside. Two cows, one recumbent, bask in the sunshine as cute voices of birds fly in the blue clouded sky.

The 17th Century Of Oil Painting White Goat

This magnificent late 17th century oil painting of white goats, sheep and shepherd dogs on a mountainside is typical of the pastoral works of some Flemish and Dutch artists working in Italy in the late 17th century.

The great famous in Rome, these artists formed a society known as the Bentveughels ('Birds of a Feather'), known for its scandal as well as for its most intellectual life, which was active c. 1620-1720, and consisted of some 70 members, many with famous nicknames such as 'Scarecrow', 'the Ferret', 'Ugly Puppet', 'Sunflower', 'Adonis'. The wonderful present artist is likely to have worked within this orbit, specialising as a painter of animals in the same tradition as Frans Snyders (Antwerp 1579-1657 Antwerp), Snyders' brother-in-law Paul de Vos (Hulst 1591- 1678 Antwerp), Snyder's pupil Jan Fyt (Antwerp 1611-1661 Antwerp), Fyt's pupil David de Coninck (Antwerp 1644-1701 Brussels), and Rosa da Tivoli (Frankfurt am Main 1657-1706 Rome).

The drama of Italian landscape as well as the country's rich cultural heritage provided many such artists with the material for their works, and the present wonderful painting, whose grand scale suggests that it was commissioned for an aristocratic beautiful house, evidently draws on the strong Italianate pastoral tradition amongst Flemish artists.