- Sofi on Art Newsletter
- Posts
- This Week's Can't-Miss Art Stories & Inspo
This Week's Can't-Miss Art Stories & Inspo
What I've found for you š
Welcome to your weekly drop of the most important art news, fuel for your brain and music for your studio. In just 5 minutes.
TOP 3 ART STORIES THIS WEEK
Story #1: From Woody Allen Scandal to Book Theft: Russia in the Spotlight š²
Woody Allen just lit up headlines, and not in a good way. š·
The 89-year-old director appeared (virtually) at the Moscow International Film Week, praising Russian cinema and even saying heād like to make a movie there someday.
Ukraineās foreign ministry wasted no time firing back, calling his appearance a ādisgrace and an insultā to artists killed in Russiaās ongoing war. Their statement accused Allen of helping whitewash atrocities by showing up at what they called āPutinās bloody festival.ā
Allenās take? The war in Ukraine is āappalling,ā but attending the festival doesnāt mean heās insulting its victims. He doubled down on his love for Russian cinema, reminiscing about watching Sergei Bondarchukās War and Peace (all seven hours of it) in one sitting.
Culture is never neutral when war is on the table. š
At the same time in the libraries in Europeā¦
Alexander Pushkin self-portrait, 1820s, scanned and processed by Mariluna., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A wave of stolen Russian classics hits Europeās libraries. š¦¹āāļø
It sounds like a spy novel, but itās real. Since 2022, around 200 rare volumes of Russian literary giants like Pushkin and Gogol have vanished from European libraries, being quietly swapped for near-perfect fakes.
A 49-year-old Georgian man was caught in Brussels with forged editions in his luggage after lifting books in Vilnius. Days earlier, he tried (and failed) to access rare Pushkin works in Paris. Soon after, staff at Franceās BibliothĆØque Nationale realized nine original titles were gone, replaced with flawless counterfeits.
The pattern runs across Europe. Libraries in Berlin, Geneva, Helsinki, Lyon, Munich, Prague, Riga, Tartu, Vienna, and Warsaw have all been hit. Warsawās university library lost 79 books, making it the hardest hit. Polish prosecutors call it organized crime and hint at Russian state involvement.
Well, I donāt even know what to say any more. š¤
Story #2: Van Gogh Museum: āPay up or we shut downā
The Van Gogh Museum just announced: without more cash from the Dutch government, the doors could close. Theyāre even dragging the state to court, waving a 1962 deal that promised lifetime upkeep for the collection.
Hereās the math: the museum gets about ā¬8.5M a year. It says it needs ā¬11M. That extra ā¬2.5M would unlock a ā¬104M āMasterplan 2028ā ā a three-year project to fix busted climate systems, elevators, and fire safety. The museum would stay partly open, but the works are non-negotiable.
This isnāt some lazy institution begging for money: the museum already covers 85% of its own income from tickets and merch. And 57 million visitors since 1973 have literally worn the place down.
However, without that extra cash, the worldās most famous Van Gogh collection could be left in the dark.
The Prado Museum just dropped Aracne, a software that reads the fabric of paintings like a DNA test. Built with the University of Seville, it scans the weave of a canvas to reveal when and where it was made, and even if two works came from the same roll of cloth.
Why it matters: until now, museums mostly studied pigments and paint layers. The canvas itself was the big mystery. Aracne flips that. Itās already changed the label on a Sofonisba Anguissola portrait of King Philip II, showing it was painted at the same time (and on the same fabric) as a companion piece, not years apart as once thought.
Anyone can try it. The Prado put Aracne online for free. Big names like Londonās National Gallery are already using it, but you could run it on a photo of your jeans if you wanted. So, that means a global open-source upgrade for how we study art, making the invisible fabric of history visible. š Quite cool, isnāt it! š
The histograms of the two portraits painted by Sofonisba Anguissola, Museo del Prado
Artist Antony Gormley. Source: JindÅich Nosek (NoJin) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152786265
Thought of the Week š§
This time I want to share with you this freshly published short essay by sculptor Sir Antony Gormley about public sculptures. Here is one paragraph from it, line by line, for a bit slower reading:
Sculpture is the most resistant and atavistic of all artforms, but it is also the most radical. It insists that by changing matter, it changes the world.
Sculpture, rather than making a picture of a thing, is the thing.
In that respect, it is a more powerful agent of change than any two-dimensional representation or symbol.
As such, it can act as a powerful antidote to the allure of the virtual that has arrived with screen-based communication.
Sculpture reinforces that we are things as well as living beings in a world of things, and that our relationship to the world is most powerfully reinforced in firsthand physical experience.
Continue reading here. What a beautiful essay, published by Artreview. I love it.
āImagination is the seed ground of possibility and the engine and source of personal liberty.ā ā¤ļø
Music for Your Studio š§
Meet Wolf Alice = pure alt-rock chaos meets dreamy melodies. Londonās genre-bending crew went from underground buzz to Mercury Prize winners, and their live shows hit like a thunderstorm wrapped in velvet.
This new song just got released, and... warning: this track is dangerously catchy š
A Little Extra: colors we canāt see
Septemberās Beaux Arts asks: are there colors beyond human sight?
Spoiler: yes, and artists are already using them.
From Kandinskyās sound-paintings to Turrellās glowing rooms, creatives have always pushed past the visible. Think āimpossible colorsā that trick your brain, UV art that doubled as protest, and todayās digital hacks that pull hues from outside nature.
Science isnāt staying out of it either. After 2009ās āperfectā YInMn Blue, - Berkeley researchers now unveiled āOloā - a brand-new shade between blue and green.
The research follows an experiment in which researchers in the US had laser pulses fired into eyes. By stimulating specific cells in the retina, the participants claim to have witnessed this blue-green colour:
(You might want to lower your screen brightness for the next picture š)
Translation: did the color wheel just got an update? š
Well. Thatās what Iāve found for you this time. š
Wishing you fruitful creating journey! Meanwhile Iāll keep my eye on whatās happening in the art world, to share it with you again very soon - OK? š š«¶š» Bye!
š
(Cover image credit: Photograph of the sculptor Ana de Gonta ColaƧo at the AcadĆ©mie Julian in Paris (1929), working on the sculpture āJe me lĆØve ma lampe pour Ć©clairer ta routeā, and on the right, on a bench, the sculpture āO Homem e a imperfeiĆ§Ć£oā. Anonymous, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)