Tag: Art

Can Jackson Pollock paintings be displayed any which way? Upside-down, sideways? Sure, why not? Especially when the paintings are reproduced into two-inch magnets. The Art Institute of Chicago takes some of their most famous art, reprints it into tiny two-inch…

Go to images.google.com and search for: art. That’s it—just one word: art. What do you think you would get? Images of the Mona Lisa or other famous paintings? Google gave me images of splashy colorful art. What results did you…

When I look at my 63 art projects, it seems like a lot. Lots of art across a variety of things.  Yup, I just shared my complete list of art projects—both projects that are public, and the projects that are…

A floor-to-ceiling shelf holding hundreds of books. Makes a beautiful backdrop. But you can’t read the books. You can’t even touch them. It’s a work of art. Oooook. I need to investigate this artwork further. During lunch I breezed through…

Get a new painting every day as your browser’s homescreen. I love the Chrome add-on, Google Arts & Culture. They display quite a range of artwork from famous artists to lesser-known artists. And if you don’t like the particular artwork…

Happy little snowflakes softly land on the cold hard metal of the Picasso sculpture. Such a beautiful scene: the contrast of the white snowflake against the dark, aged corten steel. I find this two-minute, 46-second video very calming. Nothing “happens”…

Every morning I walk by the Chicago Picasso. Not just by it, but I walk right up next to it, so I can run my hand along the base. With all the snow we’ve been getting, it’s been fun seeing…

Ever see something cool along your commute, but you don’t stop to take the photo? I bet it happens to thousands of people every day. It almost happened to me today. Along my commute, I pass by the giant Picasso…

Anytime you see something wrapped in public, it’s like the artist Christo has attacked. In fact, that should be the official hashtag for photos of wrapped things in public: #ChristoAttacks! Take this statue of Thomas Jefferson (photographed by Steve Tanner).…

The candy pile is the first artwork the Art Institute acquired in 1999. It has the reference number of 1.1999. I googled all the other years from 1879 to 2018. Yup, that’s 139 Google searches. Google totally DID NOT like…

I regularly follow the #candypile hashtag on Instagram. Mostly to see people’s photos of Félix González-Torres’ candy pile installations at various museums. photo by oriane_trnat Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris photo by sfknycat The Met Breuer in New York photo by…

Today I was thinking about how I love photographing panoramic photos. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could make origami with these panoramic images? But origami is mostly done with square-shaped paper. Not long sheets of paper. Bummer—but wait! There…

Ever want to photograph something REALLY close with your phone? Your phone’s lens has a limit on how close you can get. But slide one of this little macro lens onto your phone, and now you can get up super…

Want to visit the Art Institute of Chicago?—but wait—you are out of yogurt. That’s the dilemma I found myself in this afternoon. I wanted to visit some fine art, but I was out of fine yogurt. Perhaps one can survive…

Last night I was looking up guerilla art, specifically the wikipedia page. Looking through the history of changes to the page, someone recently removed an artist name, because they said the artist was a “non-notable”. Which is the wikipedia rule.…

Rather surprising there are only eight total guerilla art videos on Youtube in the past year. A few of them are about guerilla art, but most aren’t even really about guerilla art—that is, installation art. As author Keri Smith defines…

I had fun faving 70 photos on Flickr tonight. I was searching street installation, pavement installation, and site specific. You can’t really make a screenshot of your favs like this on Instagram. Flickr is better than Instagram! To make this screenshot,…

A Banksy painting was shredded immediately after its auction ended. Apparently, the auction house Sotheby’s didn’t know this was going to happen—or did they? Blogger Jason Bailey wrote a detailed analysis behind the Banksy shredder: Myth Busting Banksy. Was it a…

The artist known for his own shade of blue. Yves Klein patented International Klein Blue in 1961. He passed away one year later at age 34. During that brief time, he painted all sorts of things blue—human bodies, monochrome paintings,…

What are the art world’s most popular artists? One method is to look at the most-followed artists on Artsy.net. If an artist is in a museum, gallery, or auction house, then they are most likely going to have a presence…

When something has a cool photogram/Bauhaus look, it’s “Moholy-Nagy-esque.” That is, something that looks like László Moholy-Nagy’s work. My brother Erik created this really cool image that is “Moholy-Nagy-esque”. As of right now, there are only five results on Google for this…

The roundness of this Gamorrean Guard illustration reminds me of the Chicago Bean. EVERYTHING reminds me of the Chicago Bean these days. Glenn Savage has done other sketch cards for Star Wars. The Gamorrean Guard is my favorite. This is…

The John Singer Sargent exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago is closing this weekend. Thankfully my brother informed me of that this morning. Now that I work within walking distance of the Art Institute, I wanted to take full…

One of the world’s most iconic public artworks is right across the street from my new workplace. That famous artwork? The 110-ton reflective bean in Chicago. Installed in 2006, this mirrored sculpture hit the ground just in time for our…

Hyperallergic is one of the art websites that I regularly enjoy; therefore, it’s exciting to hear they are now doing a weekly podcast! To give you a taste of Hyperallergic’s fun stories, here’s some of the most recent articles from…

Goodbye, Tower. I just left the Tribune Tower for the last time. On my way out, I made a giant five-foot wide pencil rubbing. Here’s a four-minute video with me narrating its creation along with a time-lapse. Etched into the…

Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t let you search through your favorites. You can see a grid of your favorite photos. But there is no search. If there is a photo you fav’d a while ago, and you want to pull it back…

Frame conservation. Picking the right frame to match artwork from centuries ago. The Art Institute of Chicago has an employee with the title of Assistant Conservator for Preparation and Framing. Kirk Vuillemot has been restoring and creating frames for the…

Seeing tiny snowflakes embedded in ice makes me wish I still carried my iPhone macro lens with me. This photo is a bit blurry, but you kinda get the point. The macro lens would have really zoomed in on a…

Every book should have its own hashtag, so we can follow conversations about the book on Twitter. I’m looking to tweet quotes from an awesome new book “Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain“. However, there is no hashtag for the book. The…

I love how the results for Mona Lisa on Google Images first start off with all serious, normal images. And then as you scroll down, the images get more and more ridiculous with all the spoofs. And then after the…