Nantes, France: A city rebuilt on contemporary art

Jun 21, 2012 | news

© Le Voyage à Nantes (via HuffPost)

When Nantes, France shut down its shipyard– one of the biggest in the world, its young mayor decided to reinvent the city with contemporary art as its backbone.

This art is large-scale, massive even, and placed outside where everyone can see. Last year more than 200,000 tourists visited during the summer, and this year’s marketing campaign aims to draw 40,000 more.

There’s an 18th century stone house that looks like it’s being swept away by the Loire River, a 200-foot skeletal creature anchored to the beach that becomes more or less visible with the tide, plus a four-story mechanical elephant that took over the city’s abandoned docks.

For more on Nantes, check out the original story on Huffington Post Arts.

New imaging system developed for frescos: thermal quasi-reflectography

Jun 19, 2012 | news

“The Resurrection” from artmight.com

A team of Italian researchers recently developed a new imaging tool that can capture features that would otherwise be undetectable. Thermal quasi-reflectography creates images using reflected light from the mid-infrared part of the spectrum.

The new imaging system was successfully tested on two famous works of art: the Zavattari frescos in the Chapel of Theodelinda and “The Resurrection” by Piero della Francesca. The tests revealed details missed by earlier tests and easily identified old restorations where missed gold decorations were simply repainted. In “The Resurrection,” TQR found an area around a soldier’s sword that was painted using two different fresco techniques that previously went unnoticed.

Rather than detect heat like traditional thermography techniques, TQR tries to minimize heat, shining a faint mid-infrared light source onto the surface of the painting. It then records the light that’s reflected back to the camera. It’s considered a “powerful yet safe tool for artwork diagnostics,” that better differentiates between materials in a painted surface.

Whatever we can do to keep these works around– art must outlive time:)

Read the rest of the original story on Market Watch here.