The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, Georges de La Tour.

On Google Art Project.

Original is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Hovig Alahaidoyan is a UK concept and visual development artist and designer for games and film.

Though his blog is not extensive, and his portfolio is available only as a PDF, Alahaidoyan recently participated in Under Tomorrows Sky, in which he helped bring to life the visualization of a future city as conceptualized by a think tank of scientists, technologists, futurists and other artists (images above, top three sets of images and detail crops).

The site for the project has large images of the work he contributed (and here).

The large images for that project show Alahaidoyan’s skill at simultaneously conveying scenes of huge scale and the human scale in which people exist in relation to those scenes.

[Via Popular Science]

In what is an instructive example of the ever shifting landscape of art history, and the mercurial nature of the past in general, a painting in the Dallas Museum of Art that had long ben attributed to the hand of Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand has been reassigned to George Inness, another great American landscape painter.

Inness was very much influenced by Durand, particularly early in his career, and went on to become even more well known than the elder artist.

Attribution of the painting had been in question, and was borderline to being reduced to “Attributed to Durand” status. Associate Curator of American Art Pauline Gill studied the painting, which was in storage, and in a search for possible alternative attribution, came across a pen and ink drawing by George Inness from the Princeton University Art Museum which appears to be a potential study for the painting.

An expert on Inness was called in and the painting has been reattributed to the more well known artist.

In a demonstration of the little realized fact that a large percentage of the titles of historic artworks are given by curators and art dealers after the fact and not named by the artists themselves, the painting has been retitled from “In the Woods”, a title in keeping with Durand’s works, to “Stream in the Mountains”, a title more in line with the themes associated with Inness’ work of the period.

Unfortunately, the museum’s website, in accord with the apparent unwritten standards of PR cluelessness demonstrated by a huge number of art museum websites, has not capitalized on the news by publishing an article and image accessible from the home page, but has instead left the story to languish in an unillustrated press release.

The local and national press have done a better job of covering and promoting the story.

I couldn’t even come up with an image of the work on the museum’s site by searching the collections for either Durand, Inness or the alternative names given to the work (sigh).

Visual effects artist Catherine Nelson, who has worked on films like Moulin Rouge and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, creates her personal work in the medium of digital photography, compositing hundreds of photographs into miniature floating worlds.

There are several series in the “Artwork” section of her website, as well as earlier works that include imaginary landscapes.

[Via Slate, which has a nice overview of some of her images in Christopher Johnson's article on Nelson this morning.]

Snake Charmer at Tangier, Africa by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Yes, that Tiffany. Many who admire his designs and stained glass aren’t aware of his work as a painter. See my previous posts (listed below).

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow has placed online a catalog of their collection of Japanese Prints from the 18th and 19th centuries.

You can browse through sections for landscapes, beauties, actors, warriors, sumo wrestlers, flowers and birds.

You can also browse by artist or school, and there are additional reference materials.

(Images above: Katsushika Hokusai, Katsukawa Shunkō Ii, Utagawa Hirosige I, Utagawa Hirosige, Shosai Ikkei, Kikugawa Eiza, Kitagawa Utamaro)

[Via MetaFilter]

An art student at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts who lists himself as bENCE hAJDU on Behance has posted a short series of images in which he has used digital image editing to remove the people from some classic paintings and fill in the backgrounds where they once existed.

Makes you think twice.

[Via NewsWorks]

I wrote about illustrator David Johnson in June of last year. At the time I particularly admired his portraits, wonderfully composed of contrasting areas of intricate line and carefully arranged open shapes.

Johnson has launched a Tumblr blog on which he is posting a series of the portraits, titled A Portrait a Day Keeps Myself Sane.

The portraits are mostly, though not all, literary figures, and Johnson is posting them accompanied by relevant quotes. The portraits also feature figures from music and other areas and include a self portrait (images above, bottom)

As much as I enjoyed Johnson’s portraits amid his other illustration, when taken together like this they are even more wonderful, with face after face revealing itself in sharply distilled contrast to the others.

Johnson has a skill for suggesting strong planes in his faces without the use of tone. The open areas take on a surprising geometric solidity, and create a firm platform on which he can arrange his playful marvels of flowing, looping, wiry, clipped, shaggy, dangling, frayed and calligraphic hair.

A visual treat every day.

Hopefully, there is a book or similar collection project lurking here somewhere.

For more, see my previous post on David Johnson.