This is what happens when you let math nerds around the literature

Weird.

1: there is a thing called the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences
2: they took time to run statistical analyses of great works of literature
3: they found fractals. And in the case of a number of stream-of-consciousness novels (and the Bible), they found really complex fractals-within-fractals structures.

So, um, that happened.

The Ghiberti panels are fakes!

But don't worry. They're high-quality replicas of the centuries-old masterpiece, and the originals are going to go indoors for display. These are Ghiberti's first bronze doors, the ones he won the contest to make. The later doors for another side of the baptistry--the so-called Gates of Paradise--were replaced and restored years ago.

Amalia Ulman

I don't have an Instagram account or follow anything on Instagram, so I just learned of Amalia Ulman and her long-term "Excellences and Perfections" project (for some reason referred to as a "hoax," as if pretty much ALL social media isn't a projected identity). But a number of museums, including the Tate Modern, are showing it for non-Insta-folks like me.

Manet wasn't just good with paint

He was also, apparently, good with words.

"A different kind of canon"

In my English class we've been dealing with issues of canon. Today a friend sent me this piece about the artistic canon, AIDS, and black bodies. It's a powerful essay about really important art.

Sometimes annotation can be really funny

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes a strange column about art and beauty. And then Artnet contributor Ben Davis adds his own comments. The result is really funny.

It's hard out there for an art forger

This essay explains how making paintings that look exactly like other paintings may be the simplest part of forging art.

Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai

On late-night cable one night, some time around 2003, I came across Jim Jarmusch's film Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. It's a strange and gorgeous movie starring Forest Whitaker (how can you not like Forest Whitaker?) as a hitman for a minor mobster.

The movie's music, the first film that RZA scored, is a major character unto itself, and the film score is one of those albums that I've been listening to again and again for about 15 years now. I don't remember where or how I got it, but I got the Japanese version, which has the original score, plus two Wu-Tang songs that aren't actually in the movie. The soundtrack released everywhere but Japan has a lot of great hip-hop from the movie, but not the score. If you're going to find this album, find the Japanese score version. Trust me.