Digital Rembrandt Show Restores Lost Details

Work created during stay at asylum

(NEWSER) - A previously undiscovered Van Gogh has been found hiding in plain sight—beneath another painting. Conservators at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts X-rayed The Ravine, revealing another painting created several months earlier, the MFA and the Van Gogh Museum said today. A pen-and-ink drawing of the concealed painting, Wild Vegetation, is in the Amsterdam institution. More»

Showcases darker tones of earlier work

(NEWSER) - For the first time in five years, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has added a new piece to its collection—and it looks a little different from your standard Vincent van Gogh. This one is an 1882 watercolor whose tones are much darker than those the artist later adopted. The painting shows what van Gogh called a "lonely and melancholy" dead willow leaning over a pond near the Hague. The young artist immediately wanted to paint it: "I'm going to attack it tomorrow morning," he wrote to his brother. More»

Pablo Picasso makes 2 appearances

(NEWSER) - Following the record-breaking sale of Edvard Munch's The Scream , the Guardian takes a look at the other biggest sales of art at auction. The top five:

1. Edvard Munch, The Scream, $119.9 million.
2. Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, $106.5 million.
3. Alberto Giacometti, L'homme qui Marche I, $105.2 million.
4. Pablo Picasso, Boy With a Pipe, $104.2 million.
5. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, $87.9 million.

Dining-hall paintings show lighter side of Scream painter

(NEWSER) - The painter of The Scream was also an interior decorator of sorts: Edvard Munch painted a set of murals long displayed in the dining hall of an Oslo factory. Now, that canteen—currently owned by Kraft Foods—could be on its way to a sale, paintings included. Officials plan to keep an eye on the potential sale since the canteen is regarded as a national treasure; Kraft says it will make sure the paintings enter safe hands, the BBC reports. More»

Coffee shop owners plan to appeal

(NEWSER) - Sorry, tourists, but it looks like the Netherlands is remaining firm on a ban that will prevent foreigners from buying pot in its famous cannabis cafes. A judge upheld the new law, due to go into effect in three southern provinces on May 1 and throughout the country by the end of the year, after it was opposed by café owners who argued it discriminated against foreigners. Others fear the ban will simply lead to an increase in street dealing. The group of coffee shop owners plans to appeal and may eventually take the case to the European Court of Human Rights, the BBC reports. More»