- After the Rijksmuseum’s landmark Vermeer retrospective opened last month, writer Lawrence Weschler traveled to Amsterdam for the Atlantic to investigate art historian Benjamin Binstock’s widely ignored theory that six of Vermeer’s paintings may have actually been created by his daughter, Maria:
If Vermeer didn’t paint all of the works attributed to him, then why is there no record of Vermeer ever having had any kind of assistant, despite the strict rule of the local painters’ guild (of which Vermeer was for a time the head) that assistants be registered? How could a girl as young as Maria—a teenager, if Binstock’s chronology is correct—have possibly created a painting as extraordinary as Girl With a Red Hat? Also: Why would Maria have suddenly stopped painting—and isn’t it too much of a coincidence that she stopped painting when her father died? And is Binstock’s chronology even correct? The dates he assigns to paintings are crucial to his narrative, but some differ significantly from the dates proposed by others, providing ample scope for debate. Critics could have raised these and other questions—but again, no one did.
- A team of scientists created what they call the “lightest paint in the world,” with the capability to keep surfaces cool and change into any color. Max G. Levy writes for Wired about this “structural paint” and its range of potential applications, from aircraft design to urban planning:
Structural paint may also last longer. (Some airlines repaint planes every four years.) Pigment molecules break down in sunlight but structural color doesn’t—so it doesn’t fade. “We have all these ways of trying to fix pigment, to try to prevent it from oxidizing and losing its color. Or it fades and we throw it in the landfill,” says Baumeister, who is also a cofounder of consultancy Biomimicry 3.8. “But when you need color to last forever—for the life of the organism—structural color is…
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