L'amour fou

(via The Guardian) Total internal reflections of Robert Hughes on surrealism, the most popular art movement of the 20th century + The Victoria and Albert's big show for this year, Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design + the unique designs @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/design/story/0,,2041396,00.html

Useful link: vam.ac.uk/surrealthings

Classics Of Everyday Design

(via The Guardian) Jonathan Glancey's classics of everyday design:
Classics of everyday design No 21
Classics of everyday design No 22
Classics of everyday design No 23
Classics of everyday design No 24
Classics of everyday design No 25

I liked this one.

Nonsmoking Capricorn Museum Seeks Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends

Carly Berwick writes about the new trends among institutions to use MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking web sites to reach new people and forge virtual communities + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2366&current=True

Walker Art Center
Andy Warhol Museum
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Tate Gallery
Brooklyn Museum
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Guggenheim Museum New York
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum

Modernizing The Modern

Kelly Devine Thomas writes about New York’s Museum of Modern Art + what the museum has been, what it is, and what it wants to be + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1630

Common Gemstone Treatments

Tourmaline, often occurs in very dark shades of green, so dark as to appear almost black. This as well as the dark blue material can sometimes be made lighter (and the green possibly more greenish) by heat treatment. The temperature must be controlled carefully as overheating may cause destruction through loss of water. Such heat treated materials tend to be somewhat more brittle than untreated material, which may show itself in a tendency to abrade along facet junctions. Sometimes heat treatment of dark green tourmaline results in a structural alteration at the surface; this is believed to be the cause of so-called satellite reading noted when a refractive index is taken on such material.

Zircon. Heating to temperatures in the range of 900° - 1000°C is used to produce the commercially most important colors of zircon. Reddish brown stones are first heated in a reducing atmosphere, which may alter the color of the stones to blue, colorless, or an undesirable off-color. Those that have not turned blue or colorless may next be heated in oxidizing environment, converting some to colorless and others to a yellow, orange or red color. Stones that still have not taken on a marketable color may be heated further in either atmosphere, and some stones may go through several heating. While virtually all of the heat treated may be quite stable to light and reasonably high temperatures, some heat treated zircons will revert to their original pre-treated color over time. As a precaution, such treated zircons are sometimes exposed to sunlight for several days or stored in the dark for as long as a year in an attempt to weed out unstable stones.

Tanzanite, the important gem variety of zoisite, is one of the most strongly pleochroic gems. Most of the material as mined exhibits three pleochroic colors: violet to purple, blue, and yellow to green. The third of these colors gives the stones a rather unattractive muddy appearance. Heating to relatively low temperatures bleaches the unwanted yellow to green pleochroic component, leaving the desirable violet and blue colors. Proper magnifications may reveal evidence of heat treatment, although it is usually assumed that the material in the gem market has been heat treated.

Fall Forward

Economist writes about the strong art market (despite trouble with sub-prime mortgages and other issues) + the new mood in the art market + the expensive works by familiar artists + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9928476

The White House Washington

Bonnie Barrett Stretch writes about the portrait of George Washington that has hung in the White House since 1800 + the controversy + various interpretations by historians and experts + the real story and other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1608

Mind Games

John Cassidy writes about the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which uses state-of-the-art imaging technology to explore the neural bases of economic decision-making @ http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/09/18/060918fa_fact?printable=true

Neuroeconomics is an interesting concept. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in my head when I make stupid decisions when buying gemstones, jewelry + anything.