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Leonardo's Notebooks

2007-01-24T09:06:00.000-05:00

This an interesting website detailing Leonardo's notebooks, their history and where they can be found today.

"Already in 1630, the Barnabite Antonio Mazenta speaks of the dispersal of the Leonardo manuscripts, and singles out Pompeo Leoni, a sculptor at the court of the King of Spain, as one of those chiefly responsible not only for losing part of the collection, but even worse, for rearranging the order of its contents. Indeed, in an effort to sort the artistic drawings from the technical ones, and to put together the scientific notes, he split up the original manuscripts, cut and pasted pages and created two separate collections."

That's really a shame.

The Real Da Vinci Code

2007-01-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

According to the Associated Press, researchers think they might have found a lost Leonardo work hidden within the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio in Rome. If true, this painting has been in hiding for more than 4 centuries. The work, the Battle of Anghiari, was considered Leonardo's greatest masterpiece in it's time.

The artice says it will take at least a year and a half to find the painting, without destroying the landmark, so we're going to have to wait until it's found.

100 Years Of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

2007-01-11T23:42:00.000-05:00

It's exactly a century since Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The GuardianPicasso worked on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as he had never worked on any painting before.

"One art historian has even claimed that the hundreds of paintings and drawings produced during its six-month gestation constitute "a quantity of preparatory work unique not only in Picasso's career, but without parallel, for a single picture, in the entire history of art". Certainly, it matches the work artists had traditionally put into history paintings and frescoes. Picasso knew he was doing something important, even revolutionary - but what? reveals why this explosion of sex, anarchy and violence gave birth to the whole of modern art"

Check out the article

Big Sale!

2006-12-18T18:36:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to alert everyone to the big sale we're having on the main site. All In-Stock paintings are on sale, so go check it out and get your last minute holiday gifts!

Portrait of Dr. Gachet

2006-11-29T12:33:00.000-05:00

While doing some research for the site, I came across this story of Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet. It details the story of the painting's sale in 1990 and its prompt disappearance there after.

"No one was laughing, however, after his death in 1996. It wasn't clear who owned Gachet–Saito's heirs, his company, or his creditors–or even where it was. Museum curators and auction houses tried to locate it. But while representatives of Saito's company assured the world that it was still around, a veil of secrecy shrouded all future transactions. Gachet simply seemed to vanish into the murky waters of the international art market."

While the article was written 6 years ago, it's fair to say not much more information has been discovered. It would be a shame if this painting didn't surface again soon.

How Do I Find These Things?

2006-11-20T20:21:00.000-05:00

A Lego version of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night

Wow is all I can say...

Only 10,000 bricks?

This Might Be The Strangest Thing I've Ever Seen

2006-11-16T00:49:00.000-05:00

This might be the strangest thing I've ever seen

"Every Christmas, My Aunt Joan gives me a Monet calendar. After a couple years the same old paintings became dull. So she started enhancing the master's works with a variety of stickers. Observe how dinosaurs, teddy bears, and farm machinery bring new life to tired old impressionism."

Why didn't she just give a Van Gogh Calendar instead?

My Weekend in Vegas

2006-11-13T10:17:00.000-05:00

If any of you have not read Nora Ephron's article in the Huffington Post about being in the room when Steve Wynn's elbow fatally went through Picasso's La Reve (The Dream) you should check it out. This article may be a little old, but this blog wasn't set up at the time, and I thought I would include it.

From Cezanne to Picasso

2006-11-09T12:24:00.000-05:00

Ed Voves has written a fascinating piece in the California Literary Review in conjunction with the special exhibition currently on display at the Met in New York entitled “Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde.” This exhibition will be on display until January 7th before being moved to Chicago and is definitely worth checking out if you are in the area. The exhibit:

“recounts on an ambitious scale the vital contributions Vollard made to the development of modern culture. The first dealer to mount exhibitions of the work of Vincent Van Gogh, he paid an allowance and supplied art supplies to Paul Gauguin during that painter’s impoverished final years in the South Pacific and he was an early champion of the career of Pablo Picasso.”

He was apparently so passionate about the artists that he liked, that at one point he bought 5 paintings from Cezanne for 300 francs when he only had 900 to his name. Obviously it turned out to be a good investment.

Does anyone have $100 million I can borrow?

2006-11-07T16:00:00.000-05:00

It looks like the price of famous paintings just keeps on rising:

“Last week, a piece by Jackson Pollock was revealed as the most expensive painting ever sold, at £73m. That exceeded the £71m paid in June for a 1907 portrait by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt.”

Soon it won’t be uncommon to see a $200 million painting.

Our New Blog!

2006-11-03T00:26:00.000-05:00

Hi and welcome to Ownapainting.com's new blog. We will be using this blog to post articles and items of interest to those who may visit this space. Please feel free to comment on these postings or recommend any item that may be of interest to our community.