Author: st6n
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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 museum that is not seen
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 of this year, the British Museum published a series of images on Instagram and Facebook depicting a young woman contemplating pieces within its galleries. The accompanying text invited viewers to pause: observing with composure is always worthwhile. The images were generated using artificial intelligence, and this was not disclosed in...
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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 altered on several occasions, its fissures stabilised, and certain areas repainted by hands other than those of the author. If one were to count the atoms, perhaps very little of the material that emerged from the original studio would remain. And yet…
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The trajectory that cannot be commenced
Para constituir una fundación en España basta, en la práctica, con treinta mil euros: la ley presume suficiente esa dotación. Es una cifra alta para un particular y baja para una institución, y ese equilibrio es deliberado. Lo que la ley no dice, porque no le corresponde, es lo que pasa el día siguiente. Al…
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Whose black is it
In 2014, the darkest material ever manufactured was introduced to the world. Known as Vantablack, it was developed by a British firm, Surrey NanoSystems, and is composed of carbon nanotubes so minute and densely packed that light enters between them and virtually never escapes: it absorbs 99.965% of the light it receives. A surface coated with...
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That which returns
En los últimos años hemos visto algo que parecía impensable hace una generación: objetos que regresan. En 2021 Francia devolvió a Benín veintiséis obras del tesoro real de Abomey, tomadas como botín en 1892. En 2022 Alemania firmó la transferencia a Nigeria de los mil ciento treinta Bronces de Benín identificados en sus museos públicos,…
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Which original must be returned?
When the Vatican Museums concluded, in 1994, fourteen years of cleaning the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, the world encountered a Michelangelo it did not expect. Beneath centuries of candle soot, brazier smoke, animal glue, and overpainting from previous restorations, an explosion of colours appeared: pinks, acidic greens, luminous yellows,...
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Twenty-seven seconds
There is a figure that circulates through museum outreach texts with the authority of the obvious: the average visitor looks at the Mona Lisa for fifteen seconds. It is repeated in articles, talks and guides, always to say the same thing, that we no longer know how to look, that contemplation is dead, that we pass before works as before…