Author: Juan A. Esteban
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Painting an impossible sky
On Wednesday, 12 August 2026, a total solar eclipse will traverse Spain: the first visible from the Iberian Peninsula in over a century, according to the National Geographic Institute. It is an opportune moment to recount a matter I find most compelling regarding the phenomenon: that for centuries, European painting depicted an eclipse…
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The common pool
In September 2019, the cellist Zoë Keating published her figures: two hundred and six thousand and eleven streams on Spotify that month, seven hundred and fifty-three dollars. A year earlier, she had amassed two million streams and two hundred and forty-one thousand listeners across sixty-five countries, which yielded twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-one...
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Changing the past by decree
Between 2005 and 2009, two Chinese artist brothers, Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, created a series of sculptures about Mao Zedong. In one, Mao appears kneeling and repentant; in another, seven Maos point their rifles at the figure of Christ; in a third, they represent him with breasts. They are satirical, irreverent works, and recognisable within…
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That which no longer launches
On 31 December 2020, Adobe withdrew support for Flash. Twelve days later, it blocked the execution of any content still utilising it. For almost everyone, this was a footnote, the end of a technology that had been dying for years. For museums that had collected internet art, it was another…
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The unseen museum
When one traverses a great museum, one has the impression of viewing its collection. One is not viewing it. One is viewing a minuscule selection, and the remainder—the vast portion—resides elsewhere: in climate-controlled warehouses, in numbered crates, on grid racks where paintings hang on edge like folders in a filing cabinet. The…
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An image without provenance
On 27 January, the British Museum published on Instagram and Facebook a series of images of a young woman contemplating pieces in its galleries. The accompanying text invited one to pause: looking with calm is always worthwhile. The images were generated with artificial intelligence, and that was not stated in the caption. Yes…
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Pigments I no longer grind
At university, I learned to manufacture my own paints. I arrived at grinding the pigment on the slab with the muller until the lumps were broken, at incorporating the binder little by little, at noting when the paste had bound. I also learned to prepare my supports: to stretch the canvas, to size it, to apply the primer and to…
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Authenticity does not reside in the material
A painting from four centuries ago has been relined, its varnishes removed and replaced, its frame changed several times, its cracks stabilised, some area repainted by hands that are not those of the author. If one could count the atoms, perhaps very little would remain of the matter that left the original workshop. We call it authentic,…
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The trajectory that cannot be commenced
To establish a foundation in Spain, it is sufficient, in practice, to have thirty thousand euros: the law presumes that endowment to be enough. It is a high figure for an individual and a low one for an institution. What the law does not say is what happens the following day. The following day begins a problem of circular structure that…
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Whose black is it
En julio de 2014 se presentó Vantablack, un recubrimiento que su fabricante anunció como el de mayor absorción de luz registrado hasta entonces. Lo desarrolló una empresa británica, Surrey NanoSystems. En su versión original está hecho de nanotubos de carbono tan diminutos y apretados que la luz entra entre ellos y prácticamente no sale: según…