– Paula Deen Is an Artist: Turns out former butter evangelist and current weight loss expert has a hobby: art. A behind-the-scenes look inside her Savannah home on Woman's Day's website includes photos of her improbable and very detailed shell artwork. Inspired by a local Savannah woman known as The Shell Lady, Deen began hot-gluing seashells and starfish to basic stone busts. She calls it "the best therapy ever." But it isn't just busts she's starfishing: "I've done picture frames, the handles on serving utensils — you name it, I've shelled it, y'all!" she says. [Eater, PaulaDeen.com]
– Taxi TV Gets an Art Jolt: Thanks to the nonprofit Art Production Fund, Taxi TV screens will soon feature MTV "Art Breaks"-style video art sandwiched between its regular weather reports, local news, and Guess commercials. The first featured artist is Ryan McGinley, whose clip of his friend Jessica Tang wearing nothing but a gold wig and blue T-shirt as she parades through the streets of New York will run through February 5 in about 3,000 taxis. "It’s something I made this summer around the city, guerrilla style, with no permits or anything," McGinley said. [NYT]
– Korean and American Museums Team Up: As a result of a new partnership between museums in South Korea and the United States, art will travel between the two countries' institutions more freely in coming years, beginning with the painting and decorative arts exhibition "Art Across America" — drawn from the collections of LACMA, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Terra Foundation, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art — at the National Museum of Korea (February 4-May 19). Next year, the Korean institution will send an exhibition tentatively titled "The Art of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910" to those museums in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Houston. [TAN]
– Banned Sex Manual Comes to Auction: A manual of sex and pregnancy first published in 1684 and banned in Britain until 1961 will go under the hammer in Edinburgh next week. The copy, dating from 1766, is expected to sell for between $490 and $650. "There were a lot of urban myths in the book, particularly about the risks of having sex outside marriage and the impact that could have on the birth of the child," said book specialist Cathy Marsden. Over time, the volume — titled "Aristotle's Compleat Master-Piece" to hide its risque content — became an oddball pornographic hit. [AI UK]
– Online Art Sales Account for 10 Percent of the Trade: Tucked into a now-familiar story questioning the viability of online art initiatives like Art.sy ("As a tool for broadening public engagement, art.sy is on surer footing; its business model, less so") is an interesting factoid: Online art sales account for 10 percent of the art trade, according to a March 2012 report by the European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF). [Economist]
– Louvre-Lens Launches With Strong Attendance: The Louvre's new satellite location in northern France, Louvre-Lens, logged an impressive 140,000 visitors in its first month of operation, putting the €150-million ($197-million) museum on track to meet its first year attendance goal of 700,000. Among those visitors, more than half came from the surrounding region, while attendees from other areas of France accounted for 32 percent and Belgians made up 10 percent. [AFP]
– How Do You Authenticate a Picasso?: The question is more difficult than it sounds. For years, two ofthe Cubist's heirs issued competing certificates of authenticity; this fall, four of Picasso's five surviving children agreed to consolidate the authority to authenticate their father's works in the hands of his second-oldest child, Claude. But not everyone who matters is on board. Trust us, the knotty affair is more interesting than it seems. Best just to read the story. [ARTnews]
– Coffee Shop Art Made to Last: A mural on the side of the appropriately named coffee house Frescoes in Bedford, England is drawing applause for its flawless replication of a section of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling (to see the opus, click on our VIDEO OF THE DAY, below). The café's owner, Kevin Kavanagh footed most of the paint and lime plaster work's £12,000 ($19,500) bill himself. The artwork, created by local artist Ian Carstairs using a 3,500-year-old method, is now apparently more durable than the building on which it's painted. "The lime plaster mix that you put on first, you could hit it with a sledgehammer and it wouldn't break," Kavanagh said. [BBC]
– More and More Artists Making Wallpaper: From lining entire booths at fairs to selling roll online for three- and four-digit sums apiece, high-art wallpaper is drawing increased interest from artists, collectors, and interior decorators. "Artists are becoming more interested in that line between what's art and what's part of your everyday life," said artist Gregg Louis, "and wallpaper becomes this weird fuzzy space — is it art, or is it decoration?" [WSJ]
– Australia's Heritage Gum Trees Torched: Two gum trees in the Australian outback that were made famous when Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira included them in one of his watercolor landscape paintings — so famous, in fact, that they were slated to become national heritage sites — have been destroyed in an apparent act of arson. His paintings helped establish the gum tree as a symbol of Australian identity and, according to McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art author Susan McCulloch, the trees' destruction is "appalling and a tragic act of cultural vandalism." [Guardian]
VIDEO OF THE DAY
Ian Carstairs's Michelangelo mural on a Bedford coffee shop
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