Exhibition review: The Art of Plant Evolution

Exhibition: The Art of Plant Evolution,
The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens (until January 3 2010)

Amanita muscaria by Alexander Viazmensky
Shirley Sherwood Collection

There have been a variety of exhibitions commemorating Darwin's 20th birthday celebrations this year and many have focused on evolution. I recently went to see The Art of Plant Evolution at Kew Gardens. It manages to neatly combine art and science by displaying botanical paintings in the latest evolutionary sequence revealed by recent DNA analysis.

I learned a lot about botany while going round the exhibition and subsequently reading the catalogue! Although I think I need to keep rereading until it all sinks in! It made me wonder how many botanical artists and illustrators are aware the range of information contained in this exhibition. I'd certainly recommend it to anybody interested in the botany as well as the art.

If you think about botanical art you frequently think of flowers - however there's a lot more to botanical art than just flowers (as the images in this post illustrate).

The exhibition uses a very useful 'tree of plant evolution' to explain the various relationships between different plants. The main plant groups covered by the exhibition are as follows:

• fungae
• algae
• mosses
• monilophytes - such as ferns
  
• Gymnosperms - those with a naked seed
  
• Angiosperms - 300,000 species of flowering plants. The latter includes the basal angiosperms - minor groups (the "does not fit anywhere else" plants); and the basal angiosperms - monocots (60 species with asingle seedling leaf and floral parts on whorls of three)
  
• Eudicots - identified by DNA sequence and have pollen grains with distinct grooves - early diverging eudicots; core eudicots (minor groups); core eudicots (asterids); core eudicots (rosids);

I was absolutely amazed at the variety of plants contained within one plant grouping. Who knew that mistletoe and gunnera are part of the same plant group? Or that the plant which produces black peppercorns and magnolias are both members of the minor group of basal angiosperms?

Phyllostachys virdis by Ann Schweizer
Shirley Sherwood Collection

Each species chosen is illustrated with a painting from the Shirley Sherwood Collection. The exhibition displays 50 orders of plants in 118 families and features over 130 paintings by 84 contemporary artists from countries such as China, Australia, Japan, Brazil and the UK. Paintings cross the plant world providing everything from seaweed to daisies, including mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants.

Botanical art is combined with over 20 plant fossils on loan by courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum. These include fossil fern fronds, leaves of cycads, the Wollemi pine, ginkgoes and poplar, together with tiny walnuts and peas in a pod. Some of the fossils date from over 370 million years ago

Pseudotsuga menziesi by Brigid Edwards
Shirley Sherwood Collection

One of the aspects of the exhibition which I particularly enjoyed was being introduced to a lot of very good botanical artists whose work I'd never seen before. New names to me included:

• Jean Claude Buytaert (Belgium) - a full time sculptor, painter and graphic artist and past Professor of Botanical art living in Antwerp. His work is a wonderful dry point etching of a pickaback plant
• Ann Schweizer is a South African artist whose pomegranates were gorgeous as well as botanical art
• Alexander Viazmensky, a Russian artist born in Leningrad who speciailises in painting mushrooms in watercolour. I loved the way there were 'specks of earth' painted on to the paper. You can see him doing a workshop on painting mushrooms on the Botanical Illustration blog of the Botanical Art and Illustration at Denver Botanic Gardens.
• Alvaro Nunes - a Brazilian artist with several stunning pieces in the exhibition and book.
• Mariko Imai - a Japanese artist whose painting of a pitcher plant is superb

Nepenthes truncata by Mariko Imai
Shirley Sherwood Collection

• Francesca Anderson's beautiful and fine pen and ink drawings of an orchid and a cyclamen. She's a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Director of both the American Society of Botanical Artists and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens You can see more of her work on this page of the latter's website. She's certainly inspired me to have another go at my pen and ink botanical artwork.

In addition, there are works by artists which are better known to me and members of the SBA.

• Coral Guest has a stunning painting of a Lilium Regale at full size - as is usual with Coral - it's not unlike this one - but bigger!
  
• Helga Crouch who is a founder member of the SBA works in a very effective but understated way and a feeling for seasons. The exhibition includes her study of mistletoe on vellum.
• I always love anything produced by Brigid Edwards or Susannah Blaxill
  

Memorabilia of Darwin - The exhibition also contains memorabilia of Darwin who was a great friend and colleague of Kew's first directors, Sir William and Sir Joseph Hooker. Many of his letters and other artefacts are stored in Kew's Archives. A selection of Darwin items are showcased, including a letter dated 11 April 1833 , taken from a collection of letters which Darwin sent to his mentor, Prof. John Stevens Henslow, narrating Darwin 's adventures and discoveries in Patagonia whilst he was on the famous Beagle voyage. Visitors can also see a rare sketch done by Darwin of an orchid specimen that he collected in the field.

The Art of Plant Evolution - the book

The Art of Plant Evolution (published by Kew Publishing) is the book produced to accompany the exhibition. It publishes in the USA in February 2010. Authors Dr Shirley Sherwood and Dr W. John Kress of the Smithsonian combine science with botanical art to provide readers with a sense of how contemporary scientific discoveries are changing our understanding of plant relationships. It features illustrations of all the paintings in the exhibition plus a number of very helpful graphical art explanations of plant classifications (eg a tree of plant evolution) which clearly shows current understanding of how different orders of plant families are related.

See my Book Review: The Art of Plant Evolution on Making A Mark Reviews.....

Entry to the exhibition and Gallery is free and included with a ticket to the Gardens. Opening times during the Winter months are detailed below.

Note: The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art - The Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens, opened in Spring 2008 and is the first public gallery in the world dedicated to botanical art. The gallery, designed by leading architects Walters and Cohen, exhibits precious works of art from the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Dr Shirley Sherwood

Links:

• The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew - my information site about Kew Gardens - it makes it easier to find the links to useful information on the Kew website!
• Winter Opening times - 9.30am-4.15pm
• Admission to Kew Gardens includes free entry to all Galleries, Glasshouses, and the Rhizotron and Xstrata Treetop Walkway. Adults £13, Concessions £11, FREE for children under 17 (accompanied by an adult).

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The garden behind the paintings - Giverny

I've written about Monet and his gardens before - at some length - but this is the first time I've been able to show readers what Monet's garden at Giverny actually looks like.

Below you can find two videos. You can imagine you're Monet is you like (if you ignore the noise from cars and other visitors!) and take

• A walk around Giverny - #1 The Water Garden - a non-stop walk around the perimeter of the water garden at Giverny. It was 12 minutes but I've snipped and shaved it down to 2 seconds under 10 minutes
  
• A walk around Giverny - #2 The Close Normand (the flower garden) - the walk back up to the house through the Clos Normand (flower garden) to the door into 'la maison'
  

These are links to the photos I took which are on Flickr

• Monet's water garden, Giverny
• Giverny - Clos Normand

On the right you can also see a drawing I'm still working on of the water garden at Giverny.

(Work in Progress) The Water Garden at Giverny
9" x 12", coloured pencils on Arches HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

You can also read about my visit to Giverny on 1st October this year over on Travels with a Sketchbook - in The Water Garden at Giverny

For people who have not read about Monet and his gardens before, here's a note of my previous posts on this blog about Monet and gardens:

Giverny

• Gardens in Art continues - with Monet
• Gardens in Art: Monet and the flower garden at Giverny
• Gardens in Art: Monet and the water garden at Giverny
• Gardens in Art: Monet's final Nympheas
• World record bid for Le Bassin aux Nymphéa by Monet
• Why and how Monet developed his series paintings
• Monet's Nympheas in the Musée de l'Orangerie

Other gardens painted by Monet

• Gardens in Art: Monet and Argenteuil
• Gardens in Art - Monet and Vétheuil
• Gardens in Art: Monet and the Mediterranean

You can find out more about Giverny in my information site - Giverny a great garden.

Note - Of course if you were really Monet you'd have both sets of big green doors wide open and you'd walk back across the road rather than using the tunnel under the road which is now a lot busier than it was when he lived there!

Links:

• Claude Monet - Resources for Art Lovers
• Giverny - a great garden
  

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Exhibition Review - Royal Institute of Oil Painters

Yasu by Yasunobi Shidami
First Prize, Winsor and Newton Oil Painter Awards
copyright Yasunobi Shidami

I went to see the 2009 Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters at the weekend and was very impressed by a number of the paintings. 254 paintings - of all sizes and styles - were on show at the Mall Galleries. It's now finished but is definitely a show to try and get to each year.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, Adebanji Alade, who had a work in the show, has a great post about a number of the other young artists who were showing work - see Some young painters I loved at the ROI Exhibition 2009

Artists who impressed me included:

• Linda Meaney - who won the Stanley Grimm Prize at the ROI last year. I'm not a huge fan of photorealism or massive macro works but the simple fact of the matter is that I couldn't take my eyes off her very large painting of physalis. I loved the colour of the reflected light in the shadow areas. She also had a much smaller painting in the show of the same subject and that also had significant impact. She teaches her techniques in both workshops and holidays
  

Physalis II
36" x 36", oil on canvas
copyright Linda Meaney

• Chris Bennett whose Blackbirds painting was extremely striking. Judging by his website he has both a very defined style and subject matter
  
• Lucy McKie - who besides being a very good painter does a nice line in titles ( I particularly liked "Only food and sauces"). Interestingly she is a portrait painter but only one of her paintings was a portrait - suggesting and artist who might like to paint other subjects more often?
• Bryan Ryder who paints the Norfolk coastline. An interesting artist - obviously somebody who enjoys line (I love the drawings and pen and wash work on his website) but also has a very sure touch with oil paint and colour.
• and finally, three painters who never disappoint and who I seek out every year - David Curtis, Luis Mendoza and Paul Banning

ROI Prizewinners 2009

The ROI has a very long list of awards - a definite incentive for encouraging entries!

Winsor & Newton Oil Painters Awards

• 1st Prize (£1000 Winsor & Newton Fine Art Materials) - Yasunobu Shidami for ‘Yasu’ (see top) - this very large work remind me a lot of a very large 'big head' painting which won a major prize at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters not that long ago. This is a self portrait and the painting is large and the paint has been applied thickly. Some really great modelling.
  
• 2nd Prize ( £600 Winsor & Newton Fine Art Materials) - Eskov Pavel for ‘Winter landscape, Sant-Petersburg. This painting reminded me of past traditions of oil painting - in a nice way! Brilliant handling of painting white snow and obviously an artist who is very attuned to the painting of trees.
  

Museum of Art in Saint Petersburg by Eskov Pavel
2nd Prize, Winsor and Newton Young Artists
and C. Roberson & Co. Prize for notable work
copyright the artist

• 3rd Prize (£400 Winsor & Newton Fine Art Materials) - Alice Hall for ‘Battersea Bridge’. Juding by her website she's a committed plein air painter. She graduated in Fine Art from The University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in 2007
• Winsor & Newton Non-member Award (£150) Rupert Cordeux for ‘Victorian cream jug
• The Alan Gourley Memorial Prize (2008) for Anthony Green 2009 - awarded for apainting of outstanding merit - Rosemary Carr for ‘Cloudless for the second of June, Roundstone bog’
• The Phyllis Roberts Award an award of £2,000 to encourage and support young painters was won by Michael Robson for ‘Wormit House, September evening’ (see right). It was very reassuring to see a more abstracted work getting a major prize
  
• The Le Clerc Fowle Medal presented to the painter of an outstanding group of paintings: Ronald Morgan. I also saw several other good sets of paintings in the show
  
• Stanley Grimm (2008) for the most popular paintings in the show: two prizes - 1st Prize to John Sprakes, 2nd Prize to Mick Dean; bonus prize to Brian Ryder
• L. Cornelissen & Son for outstanding work to Roger Dellar for St. Peter’s, Rome
• Frank Herring Easel Award to John Stillman for “Brilliant light, Richmond”
• Menena Joy Schwabe Memorial Award of £250 to Barry Peckham for‘Whitby morning’
• A&K Wilson Award- Stephen Teeuw for ‘The mandolin’
• DAS Award of £500- Anna Redwood for ‘Back light’
• Fine Art Uk Award to Pat Maclaurin for “Lustre vase”
• The Ranelagh Press Award for an exceptional small oil to Peter Barker for “October morning dew”
• The Arts Club Award to Bill Dean for “Burlington Arcade”
• The Bridge McFarland Solicitors Award of £350 to Malcolm Ashman for “Bridge, London"
  

I always enjoy tracking down the websites and having a jolly good look at the art on websites. I enjoyed the process nearly as much as viewing the exhibition. I'm extremely impressed by the number of artists who have websites - it makes a very nice change. Maybe it's expected of an artist who paints in oils?

I've also got a video of the exhibition but need to check out whether that can be shown - watch this space!

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8th November 2009: Who's made a mark this week?

Summerlight, Clapham Common
Winner of The Artist Magazine competition
24" x 18" Oil on Linen 2009
copyright Adebanji Alade

I've got very behind with seeing exhibitions so I'm offering a belated congratulations to Adebanji Alade (Adenaji Alade: My art, my passion for sketching) who won the Artist Magazine Prize at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters at the Mall Galleries - see his post about how he found out Winning "The Artist Magazine/Royal Institute of Oil Painters Competition" 2009.

He followed up with a very insightful post about painters in the Young Artists part of the competition - see his post Some young painters I loved at the ROI Exhibition 2009

I'll be reviewing the exhibition myself tomorrow. Here's a detail (on the right) of Adebanji's fluid and effective style of painting.

Art blogs

art blogs - landscapes

I'm still working towards the landscape project I aimed to start earlier this year - before life hijacked me!

• Reflections on a Pond now has it own website. It includes videos by Kevin McPherson and the paintings by season.
  
• it's always a pleasure to look at Marc Hanson's landscapes on his blog

Lazy River
19" x 25" , Pastel
copyright Casey Klahn

• take a look at Casey Klahn's River Series - I think it's the best thing I've seen Casey do - plus you can see it in an exhibiton - (details below) - use for images
• Keiko Tanabe (Keiko Tanabe Fine Art) is new to me. She's an award-winning watercolour artist who was born in Japan but who now lives in San Diego and a relatively new member of the Daily Paintworks team.
• Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) how has a fan page on facebook - Sarah Wimperis Paintings
  
• this is my sketch of Autumn at the Sackler Crossing, Kew Gardens which includes a link to a video of our walk on an Autumn afternoon at Kew Gardens - you can try and judge whether I caught the values and colours of the scene - as it changed colour! ;)
  

Autumn colour at the Sackler Crossing
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

art blogging from/about France

• Ronell van Wyk (African Tapestry) has a stunning post about Carnets de voyage - many of which have been produced by French artists
• Joan continues to post about France and is putting me to shame. Not only did she do more painting but she's getting them posted to her blog faster as well!
  
• L' Tour Eiffel Paintings - Posting #4
• Paris Life Paintings (Posting #5)
• More Paris Highlights (Posting #6)
• More of Paris (Posting #7)
• Painting Monet's Garden - Day 1
• Painting Monet's Garden - Day 2

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has a whole series of posts about this visit to Nantes . It includes a post Jules Verne Museum about him working on a drawing using water soluble coloured pencils
• Meanwhile Laura (Laurelines) has posted part six and last! of her Brittany sketches.
• I managed just one sketching post this week - A Day in the Musée du Louvre - as well a post about The Louvre Museum in Paris on this blog

art business and marketing

• Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog) writes about Marketing Mondays: "Unsolicited" Submissions
• Art Marketing Secrets has posts about optimising how you website is found by the search engines Artist Website SEO Strategy #1: Help Google Read! and Artist Website SEO Strategy #2: Stellar Page Titles!

art competitions

• the Shortlist for Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2009 announced was announced this week
• This post by Casey Klahn (The Colorist) gives you his take on How to Paint for the Prize
• The exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (see below) has a competition to Create your own drawing in the style of Picasso, Schiele or Matisse. You can email your entry. There's only one entry online so far but you can view the entries received to date here. I think I might have a go..... ;)
  
• This is the Shortlist for Saatchi Gallery – Sunday Telegraph Art Prize
• artrepublic and streetsmart (which raises money for the homeless charities supporting people living on the streets) are running a Street Art competition. The competition criteria is simple – artrepublic are searching the nation for an artist to create an original ‘Street Art’ image that makes a positive contribution to the urban environment and raises awareness of the homeless situation in the UK. If you are a member of Flickr, images can be uploaded for the Street Art competition via the StreetSmart’ group on Flickr. Closing date is Friday 8th January 2010.

art economy and collectors

• Beyond the boom - is an overarching view of the global art market by the Financial Times in London (last month) - it's a recommended read
• some contradictory reports about the state of auctions
• Bloomberg - Sotheby’s Third-Quarter Loss Widens as Weak Economy Damps Sales
• and then Sotheby’s Outguns Christie’s With Sale of Giacomettis, Picassos
• meanwhile Bloomberg also reported Picasso Flops as Impressionist Auction Misses Target (Update2)
• leading the Financial Times to comment - The art market: ‘When you have the right property ... you get fireworks’

The autumn sales of Impressionist and modern art held in New York this week demonstrated that big money is still available on the right works of art but that the market will mercilessly reject the run-of-the-mill.

• In 1 November the Lehman Brothers Art Collection was auctioned off in Philadeplhi. These are the Wall Street Journal's pre-auctionreport on Wall Street's Orphaned Art - plus this is the slideshow of some of the pieces for sale in terms of what Lehman Bros. left hanging on the walls - plus the post-auction report Lehman Still Hot on Art Market
• The New York Times repots that Art Buyers Bullish on Lehman Brothers Collection; while Carol Vogel reports that On the Block: Traditional Offerings, Bargain Prices
• Interestingly the Wall Street Journal also opined that The Art World Goes Local and that collectors are staying closer to home in terms of the artists they collect
• meanwhile the FT last month also comments on How Ebay compares with a flea market

The Ebay experience is not unlike a flea market visit – wading through endless tat in search of a gem.

• Jonathan Jones attracted a diverse set of comments on his article Contemporary artists must do better. I was inclined to agree with some of the comments - guess which ones!
  

Art education and workshops

art school

• This is a Times article about the The Prince's Drawing School which I've attended- The Prince's Drawing School aims to revive an unfashionable skill

workshops

• How to make a lot of money as an artist? - become a famous painter and give 5 day workshops @ $2354 for instruction (excluding transportation, lodging or dinners). After gasping I stoppd and crunched the numbers - Kevin MacPherson will be earning $70,620 if he fills his two 5 day workshops next June (link not yet posted to his workshops page on his website). Do tell if you sign up whether you think it's worth it.
• In the meantime, for those who would like to express their opinions on what makes a good art teacher, do please take part in the November Making a Mark poll - see MAM Poll (Nov. 2009): What makes a good art teacher? It's attracting a lot of very interesting comments and perspectives on just what sort of person and what sort of approach makes for a good art teacher.

Tips and Techniques

• How to clean a Rapidograph Technical Pen on the IamAnt blog is a great detailed step by step explanation with images
• You can now download ready made templates for e-books on Blurb
  

Art exhibitions, galleries and museums

Anita from Hungary - on the pavement in Trafalgar Square
outside the National Gallery in London yesterday

Art museums

• In Milan you can see Inside Leonardo's Notebook - With 1,119 pages of drawings and notes, almost all of them in Leonardo da Vinci's own hand, the Atlantic Codex is by far the largest set of works by the archetype of universal genius.
• you can view a BBC video of the Ashmolean in Oxford which reopened this week following its major refurbishment
• The Dulwich Picture Gallery's current exhibition is Drawing Attention: Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Van Gogh, Picasso and more Master Drawings from the Art Gallery of Ontario. Thanks to Bernard Victor who reminded that this was on. These are the video-logs about the exhibition
  

This glorious group of 100 of the best works ranges from Renaissance Italy to 18th century France, from English watercolours to masterpieces by Picasso and Matisse, from German Expressionism to Canada's own Group of Seven and David Milne. It includes Guercino, Boucher, Gainsborough, Ingres, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Turner, Leger, De Kooning, and Canada's remarkable Emily Carr.

• there's a nice slideshow about an exhibition of rock and roll photography on at the Brooklyn Museum. Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present' is on until January 31, 2010 in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor. You can also read an associated NYT article Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?
  

artist/blogger exhibitions

Artists and bloggers who are having exhibitions now or in the hear future include:

• Casey Klahn (The Colorist) at the Northwest University, Health and Sciences Center - his exhibition River Passages - Currents in Landscape Art opened last week and is on until January 4th., 2010

Blue & Gray River
10" x 14.5", Paste
Copyright Casey Klahnl

• Jamie Williams Grossman is Celebrating the Hudson Valley with four other artists in a show which opens on Saturday, November 14, 4-8pm, Bannerman Island Gallery, 150 Main St, Beacon NY. You're all invited!
• Klunk Garden by Gelitin, 2009.........but how do they breathe?

Copyright

Google is trying to rewrite the copyright regime by monetising content - but what about if your copyrighted work is a painting rather than a Mr Bean video - and you can only sell it once?

Opinion Poll

I started a new MAM Poll (Nov. 2009): What makes a good art teacher? on Monday - and if you've not voted yet the poll is in the side column. There is one characteristic which is way out in front.

Websites, blogging and twittering

Making A Mark is now on Facebook - feel free to offer hints and tips!

• I posted about The state of Technorati - and the blogosphere in 2009 and a techie post about how to Customize your art news

In 2009, there's been a 68% increase in blogs with ad tags installed........54% of part-time bloggers make money from their blogging...........89% of part-timers and self employed insist that adevrts must align with the personal values of their blog

• inveterate users of Google apps might want to take a look at Transparency, choice and control — now complete with a Dashboard! and then go take a look at their dashboard - and get a shock! ;)
• The Google Reader blog announced that Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking. Also see this help page about recommended feeds
  
• Mashable has a couple of useful posts for social applications:
• it tells you how to have a successful Facebook fan page
  
• plus HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists saves me having to write the same conclusions down!
• Meanwhile Problogger highlights 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog

and finally................

A slightly unusual post - 255 artists to meet Pope to revive relations.

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Techie - Customize your art news

I learned yesterday, courtesy of a tweet from Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, that it's possible to customise Google News to obtain news on very specific search terms.

If you're interested, here's what you need to know:

• First off, you'll only be interested in this if, as I do, you use Google News to identify news you are interested. It's now possible to customise Google News by adding new sections to it and moving them around. This basically requires you to have a Google Account and you need to be logged in.
  
• I started out - from the link provided by Matt - in something called the Custom Sections Directory. This lists various customised searches - and you can search this to see if what you want has already been added. You can narrow it down by type of news and category and whether it is the most popular or the most recent.
  
• If the section you want doesn't exist you can create it. Just click on the blue button to 'create a custom section'.
• The next step is to work out what the right search terms are to get the best results. You won't see any results come up until you insert search terms. 'Art' for example has too broad a use as a word to be very helpful. 'Painting' can bring you news of the death of a much loved character in the Archers. However add 'artist' to 'painting' and you start to get something a bit more sensible. Do play around with the search terms as they seem to operate independently of one another.
  
• You can also limit your search to specific geographic areas - such as a country or a state in the USA - so I created a couple of new news sections
• Finally you can decide whether or not to publish your section to the Directory - which I did
• You can then add to your own news page any of the sections in the directory.
  

Here are the new sections I created which are now included in the News Directory!

Artists is about visual artists from around the world and their paintings, drawings and sculpture.

Art Markets & Economy now brings me news about how the art markets are doing around the world

Images from
Google News: Art Markets & Economy

Art exhibitions - UK limits my news source to UK news

You can find the sections in the directory if you use the right search term. For example 'art' will bring up the latter two sections but not the first - for that the best search term is 'artist'

One final tweak - you can switch to images view to look at your news - which can be quite interesting in terms of deciding whether or not to click on an item of news.

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The state of Technorati - and the blogosphere in 2009

Last month Technorati relaunched itself, messed up my blogs and issued another report on the state of the blogosphere. This is my perspective on why Technorati still needs to pull its socks up

The new Technorati

Technorati was originally designed to help people find great blog content.

However the old Technorati was infested with splogs (spam blogs). So much so that a lot of us stopped using it as any sort of reference site for looking at other blogs. It badly needed sorting out - and finally they got round to doing something about it. I've absolutely no idea why it took so long.

Last month they relaunched their website. This is the launch announcement. The impact has been:

• the site has been redesigned
• The Technical Authority algorithm has been changed
• a new Topical Authority ranking has been itnroduced which is limited to a specific category
• an improved Blog Directory (they claim - I am far from persuaded)
• the opportunity to publish articles directly on Technorati
  
• very many claimed blogs have reverted to a technorati authority of 1 - no matter what their previous authority was
• feeds have been removed and blog posts are not displayed unless a blog has been authenticated
  
• any link between blogs and fans have been removed as have a whole range of features.
  

It is in effect a ground zero solution. They've wiped the slate clean and put us all back to square 1!

This is the beta stage known bugs and unreleased features page.

Why Technorati has messed up my blogs

I went to take a look at my account this morning for the first time in a long while. This blog had a Technorati authority of 1 and no blog feed. It used to have a very high authority and ranked in the top 30,000 blogs in the world.

I was not impressed. This post Where did all my authority go? on the Technorati blog does not help. They claim that their FAQs answer the questions - but they don't - as evidenced by the very many adverse comments on that particular post.

What I do know is that they are working their way very slowly through a zillion blogs and authenticating them. I've spotted some blogs which have been authenticated and have a new authority - such as Drawn and Urban Sketchers - which are big group blogs - but it's not so great for anybody who is near the back of the queue!

I was even less impressed when I found that it was totally impossible to edit details and get my profile to save the blog feed, an updated description and revised tags. Sure, I can enter them but they just won't save.

For Technorati to make changes to clean up their act is a good. To do so with a new site which isn't functioning properly is not so good.

The state of the blogosphere 2009

The state of the blogosphere used to be one report which was easy to link to and reference. The new improved version provides lots of mini reports and no over arching, comprehensive, "it's all in here" report and link.

So here's the link to the list of the items making up the State of the Blogosphere in 2009. They call it a feature I call it a mess. They're trying to deliver it as if it was a magazine without a magazine format!

These are the links to what look like the main items of interest. I haven't bothered to list all the various interviews with various talking heads but you can access them through the above link.

• State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction A look into our methodology and a glance at the findings.
• Day 1: Who Are The Bloggers? SOTB 2009 Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group.
• Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging - SOTB 2009 Self-expression and sharing expertise continue to be the primary motivations for bloggers.
• Day 3: The How Of Blogging: SOTB 2009 The most read and highest Authority blogs post more than the average blogger.
• Day 4: Blogging Revenues, Brands and Blogs: SOTB 2009 More bloggers than ever are making money from blogs, however they are not the majority
• Day 5: Twitter, Global Impact and the Future Of Blogging - SOTB 2009 Many bloggers use Twitter and, despite all of the blogosphere's past success, believe it can do much more in the future.

I have some reservations about the survey they did. Surveying 2,828 bloggers nationwide sugests a pro-USA focus. That said the findings are interesting

Technorati - How do you measure the success of your blog?
(see end of this post for links to the data)

So what are the main messages? In summary, this is what they're saying about blogging in 2009:

• bloggers continue to be influential
• attitudes held by bloggers don’t differ very much by age or gender, or even across geographies
• responses were differentiated between different types of bloggers who are:
• hobbyists - 72% are blogging for fun/ personal satisfaction. Of these 71% update at least weekly, while 22% update daily
• Part-Timers - 15% supplement their income but blogging is not a full time job. Of these 75% share expertise and 72% attract new clients
  
• Self-Employeds - 9% are self-employed and probably the most professional of which 10% report blogging 40 hours per week or more. 88% use Twitter
  
• Pros - are increasingly influential bloggers. 4% blog full-time for an organization thought few very few spending a full 40 hours per week blogging. 69% value Pageviews as most important success metric.
• 70% of Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employeds are blogging more than ever, while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less.

Among Pros, however, the leading metric of success is the number of unique visitors. Hobbyist bloggers overwhelmingly blog about personal musings while professional and aspiring professional bloggers tend to be more topical...........
the majority of bloggers describe their blogging style as sincere, conversational or expert. Snarky and confessional are the least popular styles.

• blogging topics have not change significantly - except many more now blog about the economy and/or focus on value (I started a whole new blog focusing on value for money for artists!)

The How of Blogging

• time spent on blogging varies widely
  
• blogs which get read the most post more often than other blogs (personally I think frequency varies enormously depending on the type of blog; I can think of a question which was not asked in the survey which would have helped us understand this aspect a bit more)
  
• the majority of blogs use tags and categories for their content and archive it
  
• 75% syndicate a feed with the full content of their blog posts (and some of who had a few too many enounters with splogs nabbing our content do not)
  
• most bloggers use free third party hosting service (such as Blogger)
• photos are the most popular form of media used by blogs
• 20% update their blogs using a mobile device
• blogger use on average 5 activities to drive traffic to a blog
• it appears that smaller blogs benefit from traffic derived from search queries using three terms or more
• 74% of bloggers use a third party service to monitor their site traffic
• bloggers report Google Analytics being by far the most popular stats service - although Quantcast is found on more blogs than Google Analytics (for the record I like both of them and use both of them - as well as Statcounter!)

Blogging Revenues, Brands and Blogs

• In 2009, there's been a 68% increase in blogs with ad tags installed (Technorati speculate that this indicates an increased empasis on monetizing blogs while I think i'd argue changes in ho easy webware made it for bloggers to accept adverts also had something to do with it!)
  
• hobbyists don't make money from blogs
  
• most bloggers who make money do so by hosting adverts and generating invitations to speak at events (presumably as an 'expert' as evidenced by the blog)
  
• 54% of part-time bloggers make money from their blogging
• 17% of pro and self-employed bloggers derive their income from blogging
• 89% of part-timers and self employed insist that adevrts must align with the personal values of their blog (meaning if the blog is a way of expressing one's personality and identity then all adverts need to be congruent with who you are as a person. I know that's the main issue which has always concerned me about adverts - how one can keep them tailored to who you are as well as what your blog is about)
  
• the mean annual revenue from advertising - by type of blogger - will surprise quite a few people - it did me!
• the mean profits for blogs with reported revenues is $57,369.20
• before you get too excited you should take a look at the range of figures quoted for the expenses of professional blogging
• different types of bloggers typically sell and manage adverts on their blogs in very different ways

When it comes to brands, 70% of bloggers are talking about them. 46% of respondents post about the brands they love (or hate), while and 38% post brand or product reviews. Part-Timers, and Self-Employed bloggers are talking about brands at a much higher rate (80%), with one in three posting reviews at least once a week.

• those who are blogging for business purposes report an incraesed profile as a result of blogging
• 56% of bloggers say they are now better known in their industry as a result of their blog
  

Twitter, Global Impact and the Future Of Blogging

• 73% of the survey respondents used Twitter compared to just 14% in the general population. Twitter is used both to promote and to understand what people are buzzing about
  
• over half syndicate their blog posts using Twitter
• two thirds say Twitter has had no impact on their time spent blogging
• people have a huge range of reasons why they don't have a Twitter account
• Politics technology and business are the three areas where blogging has had the most impact in the past - and it's anticipated this will continue - particularly in relation to voices of dissent and the gloablisation of the notion of freedom of speech
  
• blogging is particularly good at identifying issues which need to be addressed - within a global arena.
  

Importantly bloggers are clearly recognised as people who are influencing and driving activities at a global level and within the political arena - as indicated by the both the USA and Iranian presidential elections. Interestingly blogs were perceived to be at least as accurate as traditional media and sometimes much more up to date. (I've certainly seen evidence of late that initiatives started by bloggers and tweeters are now routinely providing subject matter for more traditional media)

Compare your blog stats

Day 3: The How Of Blogging: SOTB 2009 provides stats for you to compare how well your blog is doing to other blogs and the type of author. You can review your scores for unique visitors and pageviews.

Links:

• Technorati
• Technorati Blog
  
• A Making A Mark Guide: Installing Google Analytics on your Blog

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The Louvre Museum in Paris

One of the museums I spent a lot of time in while in Paris was the Louvre Museum which is the most popular museum in the world.

The Louvre is physically huge, its collection is very extensive - and huge - and it's the most visited art museum in the world. It had 8.5 million visitors in 2008 and that figure is expected to increase to 10 million in the next five years.

Some statistics

The Louvre contains 35,000 works of art in eight departments; the permanent collections occupy more than 645,000 square feet of exhibition space............In the first five months of 2009, 167 works of art valued at €38.6 million, or about $50.9 million, entered the museum. This was in part made possible by the soaring number of visitors
New York Times - The Louvre

According to the Museum's Director, Henri Loyrette

If you want to see everything you must walk 14 kilometres
Henri Loyrette - New York Times - On a Mission to Loosen Up the Louvre

That's 8 miles! Consequently, there's absolutely no point in trying to get round all of it - it's just far too big and even walking around it all at top speed would take you a very long time. The trick is to be selective - and to know what you can find before you vsiit.

I've developed a new information site The Louvre - Resources for Art Lovers which helps to provide some guidance to what the museum covers and how to access what you might want to see a little bit more easily than you can on their new website - which is excellent in many ways but also buries important stuff!. I'm anticipating developing it quite a bit but it's now in a fit state to publish.

What to see

Initially I've just focused on paintings - and I've highlighted some of the collections. However there is a lot more to the Louvre than paintings. I think of it as being what you would get if you merged the British Museum and the National Gallery in London.

Louvre: crowds lining up to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo
all photos copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Sadly most people visit with a view to seeing a very few pieces - the famous ones. Hence you get huge crowds around items like the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo - a lot of them people in big groups doing the 'highlights'.

80 percent of the people only want to see the Mona Lisa

However it was interesting to find that another fine painting by Leonardo da Vinci lay just outside the Mona Lisa room - and hadn't drawn a crowd for the painting - but had a few people stopping to see how the artist who was producing a copy was getting on! I don't know what that says about most of the visitors...........

Interestingly the New York Times commented on this phenomena recently in At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus. Which I found fascinating particularly since I was both snapping and looking!

Cameras replaced sketching by the last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to look. It became possible to imagine that because a reproduction of an image was safely squirreled away in a camera or cell phone, or because it was eternally available on the Web, dawdling before an original was a waste of time, especially with so much ground to cover.

I sketch in galleries in London - but then I know where to find the sketching stools. I haven't yet located them in the Louvre and I didn't see any in use either. So maybe they need to reintroduce the sketching stool and allow people to sketch as well as photograph and paint the art?

Get away from the main attractions and the main painting galleries are actually very pleasant places to view art - and not at all crowded. Over on the top floors of the Richelieu were people who were much more interested in the art. Good for getting to overhear some informed views!

What I did find on this visit was that I began to appreciate much more why some artists got tired of the very large history paintings which dominated French art for a long time. Which is helping me enormously with an excellent book - The Judgement of Paris by Ross King - that I'm currently reading - it's the story of the revolutionary decade prior to Impressionism and the way the French art scene behaved prior to the breakaway.

Louvre Museum Photography Policy

As I did for the Musee d'Orsay, in order to explain why I've got quite so many photographs of the interior of the museum and various works of art I'm going to highlight the photography policy.

They have a new Regulation regarding photography in the museum which is as follows

Still and video photography is permitted for private, noncommercial use only in the galleries housing the permanent collection. The use of flash or other means of artificial lighting is prohibited.

Photography and filming are not permitted in the temporary exhibition galleries. The same restrictions apply to the photographing or filming of technical installations and equipment.

composite of still life paintings in the Louvre
photos copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I decided to be quite focused while photographing work in the Louvre - which explains why I have been able to develop these dedicated Flickr sets to share with those unable to visit.

The wonders of digital photography and very big storage cards is I didn't think twice about photographing the work AND the label so I knew who was the artist and when it was painted. for me, there is nothing more irritating than visiting a museum, finding a painting which sticks in my head, having a photo of it but also having absolutely no idea who it is by!

• my Louvre set of photos on Flickr
• My Louvre set of still life paintings on Flickr (I've still got work to do to finish labelling all the images)
  
• My Louvre set of paintings and pastels by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779)

Access: You can find all you want to know about practical aspects of visiting in this section of my new site - The Louvre - practical information for the visitor. €9 will get you access to all parts for one day. If you've got children, it's worth noting all visitors under the age of 18 get in free. It also seems to have become very disability focused which is good!

Sketching at the Louvre

You can see my sketches done while in the Louvre on my sketchbook blog - see A Day in the Musée du Louvre

Links:

• Louvre Museum website
• The Louvre - Resources for Art Lovers
• Wikipedia - Louvre

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