Picasso said he wasn't always trying to make a work that was beautiful-- his focus was sometimes on other qualities and things--, and he considered the expected cliched commentaries about the work's beauty, or lack thereof, to be missing the point. Many of his cubist works were trying to depict three dimensions in a two … Continue reading Picasso and the relevance of beauty in his art

I have put up on an alternate website a free online introductory course in authenticating photographs, with readings, photos, videos and homework questions. In fifteen parts, it covers all types and eras of photographs, from daguerreotypes to Polaroids, cabinet cards to modern digital processes. Photo identification course site:  

A popular but discredited story is that the Eskimo language contains many times, even multiple times, more words for snow than English. The story is that Eskimos have words for different kinds and states of snow that we don't have: where we might say "falling snow" they supposedly have a single word. At first blush … Continue reading The Myth of Eskimos Having Many More Words for Snow

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a famous quantum mechanics principle made by the Nobel Price winning physicist Werner Heisenberg. Written as a mathematics equation, the most common word translation is that it is impossible to determine both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle (an atom's electron, proton or neutron). The more accurately … Continue reading Werner Heinsenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Clocking in at under two minutes, the below a very short video I made for an authentication tips column I write for Sports Collectors Daily.  It shows a simple way to identify many black and white photographs as old. This is important if you’re at an antique store or estate sale and want to be confident that expensive, … Continue reading Short Video: Quick Antique Photos Authentication Tip