John Myatt, the famous forger who spent years behind bars for his fraudulent versions of works by Monet and other artists, is interviewed this week in The Independent, and comments on the state of fraud investigations in the current art landscape.  “The art industry has been nodding through paintings with extremely dubious histories,” he says. “It’s been colluding with galleries and auction houses for 50 to 60 years and I know the Police Art & Antiques Unit even went to one museum with evidence of fraud and they weren’t interested – they said they were happy that the contagion [of fakes] had now been removed from their archives.” (more…)

Researchers at Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering have created an impressively accurate replica of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise using nano printing technology.  The new technology, which uses focused beams of electrons and microscopic aluminum rods to print at extremely detailed levels.“Each color pixel on this image was mapped to the closest color from a palette that we created using arrays of metal nanodisks, and the code spits out a series of geometries corresponding to this color,” says researcher Joel K.W. Yang. (more…)

Sturtevant, the appropriation artist who worked at making manual repetitions and recreations of iconic artists and young upstarts alike, has died.  Reports claim that the artist, who won the Golden Lion at the 54th annual Venice Biennale, was 84 years old, but as much information about the artist remains unknown, this is not certain.  Sturtevant will be the subject of an upcoming career retrospective this November at MoMA.  “Her various catalytic conversions prove that art can be (at its best?) an impetus for action—aesthetic, cerebral, insurrectionary ,” said writer Bruce Hainley. (more…)

Wade Guyton, (Installation View), via Art Observed

Seven years have passed since Wade Guyton exhibited a solo show at New York’s Petzel Gallery, an expanse of time that has seen the artist capping a mid-career retrospective at The Whitney Museum, and entering the upper echelons of the American art canon.  Whether intentionally or not, Guyton’s exhibition of new works manages to address the passage of time and his increased status in the international art world through a minimalist series of linen prints, created using the same files from his last show at the gallery.

Wade Guyton (detail), via Art Observed (more…)

Trance, the newest film by British director Danny Boyle features a selection of three recreations of Goya’s Witches in the Air, done by British artist Charlie Cobb.  The replicas were used to emphasize the densely textured surface of the work, as digital replicas or prints can often appear distorted or unconvincing on film.  The work involved the acquiring of rare paints, as well as hours of study viewing the work.  “Just to stand in front of it, you get a real feel for the painting.” says Cobb.
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