Put that art history degree to good use

As reported in the Guardian, historical paintings of sunsets are being analysed in the hopes of providing information about climate change:

The team, at the National Observatory of Athens, is using the works of old masters to work out the amount of natural pollution spewed into the skies by eruptions such as Mount Krakatoa in 1883. ...

The team found 181 artists who had painted sunsets between 1500 and 1900. The 554 pictures included works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough and Hogarth. They used a computer to work out the relative amounts of red and green in each picture, along the horizon. Sunlight scattered by airborne particles appears more red than green, so the reddest sunsets indicate the dirtiest skies. The researchers found most pictures with the highest red/green ratios were painted in the three years following a documented eruption. There were 54 of these "volcanic sunset" pictures.

Prof Zerefos's team is now talking to the Tate in London about repeating the study with 40 paintings from the 20th century, to see whether artists have captured the effects of pollution on sunsets since the industrial revolution.

Want to prep yourself for taking part in the follow-up follow up study? Try David Adam's online sunset painting course.

Image: David Adams, East Coast Romance, acrylic on masonite. Image from davidadamsonline.com

New Zealand's 10 greatest paintings

I was going to try to write something incisive about the list of NZ's 10 greatest painting chosen by a group of NZ's visual art luminaries in this week's Listener. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, but I knew I wanted to squeeze the phrase 'a sad indictment' in there somewhere.

As it is, I've decided to just post the list for posterity, so one day when I'm old and and frail and looking back fondly on the riches that life has presented to me, I'll be able to mull over what people thought about painting in this country in early April, 2007.

• 'Māori rock art' (date unknown), proposed by Andrew Paul Wood
• Petrus van der Velden, 'A waterfall in the Otira Gorge' (1891), proposed by David Eggleton
• Rita Angus, 'Cass' (1936), proposed by Jenny Harper
• Frances Hodgkins, 'Kimmeridge foreshore' (c. 1938), proposed by Mary Kisler
• Colin McCahon, 'French Bay' (1956), proposed by Peter Simpson
• Micahel Smither, 'Christ driving the money lenders from the temple' (1972), proposed by Stuart McKenzie
• Philip Clairmont, 'Window' (1978), proposed by Martin Edmond
• Philippa Blair, 'A man's tent is like a god's temple' (1982), proposed by Tessa Laird
• Julian Dashper, 'Mural for a contemporary house 4' (1988), proposed by Robert Leonard
• Shane Cotton, 'Red shift' (2006-07), proposed by Jim Barr and Mary Barr.

Blog buzz

I've been playing around a little with blog search engines, and I think I've settled on IceRocket. It's got a nice lay-out (strongly reminiscent of Google), not too many paid ads, you can search MySpace separately, and clicking the search results takes you directly to the blog, not to another page of advertising.

And remember Google Fight? On IceRocket you can measure and graph 'blog buzz', and generate results like the one at the top of this blog: Painting (in blue) takes on Relational Aesthetics over the past month. Stats don't lie.