Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Friday, August 3

Imitations—or homages?—old

The painting, entitled Head of a Man, has been owned by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne since 1940 and had been valued at around £10.5m.

But after a series of tests, experts in Amsterdam concluded it was most likely to have been painted by a contemporary.

The artwork depicts a curly-haired, bearded man against a brown background.

In a statement released on Friday, gallery director Gerard Vaughan said the piece had been accepted as a Van Gogh for more than 10 years before the gallery bought it. —BBC News

...and new:

A video installation by the Singaporean artist Lynn Lu has been withdrawn from the Singapore Art Show after Ms. Lu conceded its close resemblance to the work of an American artist, Jason Mortara. After the installation was mentioned in an article published in The International Herald Tribune on July 20 (and in The New York Times on July 25) Mr. Mortara wrote to the National Arts Council in Singapore to declare that Ms. Lu’s work, identified by the title “X,” above, was “a substantively direct copy of a copyrighted piece” that he created in 2002 and called “Memories Revisited.” In it he used ink to write memories from his life on pieces of toilet paper before burning them over a candle. In “X” Ms. Lu wrote the names of former friends, colleagues and lovers on toilet paper using apple juice so that the names would appear briefly when exposed to the heat of the candle. —NYT

Thank you to all who came out to my reading on Wednesday—it was nice to see you!