eMusings

The joy of the Internet is also its drawback: there is simply too much information, much of it excellent, for the mind to absorb. I hope that in making these suggestions for your web surfing I have singled out some of the best.

The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, is producing some fine work. Enlarge some of the thumbnails here and see what these bright kids are up to.

Orly Montag, of Bezalel, has created these haunting ceramic figures.

Take a look at what The Magazine see ahead in design trends, particularly using natural materials.

3. Holly Sears paints with oil on linen to create mythical landscapes. She focuses on an imagined world filled with both live and dead creatures.

4. James Walton Fox applies oil to birch panel to create a landscape of colorful signatures.

Tony Cragg has a show of new sculptures called "Squirming Interlopers" at the Louvre in Paris, France.

The BBC takes us to the 2011 Kinetica Art Fair which they call "Weird and Wonderful". It's an apt title, so enjoy the video. Also check out the still images from the fair.

Discovery News presents a slide show of photographs shot during the civil war. Matthew Brady and his contemporaries remind us, using what was then a new technology called photography, of the scenes where some 620,000 lost their lives.

The Huffington Post gives us a slide show which they call "Greatest Museums Never Built". Some pretty fanciful computer renderings allow us to see these imaginative structures that never made it past the drawing board.

Take a look at IONONE's presentation of music and art, particularly this sonata for solo viola. You might also scroll down and try some of their other musical treats: I enjoyed "The Return of Memory", and these are all free MP3's.

The Max Planck Institute, in colaboration with the Art History Institute of Florence, has written an excellent article called "Early Globalization of Art", on the history of art focused on the interactions between India, Central Asia and the Mediterranean, rather than the usual emphasis on European nations. There are some exquisite reproductions here, as well as a well-reasoned analysis of this neglected area of study.

The Royal Academy presents a lovely exhibit of the paintings and drawings of Watteau, which they describe as "the real deal".

c.Corinne Whitaker 2011