Soap Bubbles, after 1739, by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. (Courtesy of LACMA.)

• “How abstract can a landscape become while remaining a landscape?”
• Hyperallergic has done an incredible job keeping tabs on damage to the Egyptian National Museum and other Egyptian museums during the demonstrations. More here.
• Al Jazeera’s Flickr feed. (Fast Company.)
• Portraits of the tortured: This looks like a can’t-miss exhibit in L.A.
• And the Super Bowl bets are on: This year it’s the Milwaukee Art Museum versus the Carnegie Museum of Art. Up for grabs: French impressionist paintings.
• Best. Artist Profile. Ever.: The Rembrandt of Riyadh.
• Ai Weiwei ceramic sunflower seeds to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. (Arts Journal.)
• If this isn’t a clusterfuck of art world ridiculosity, I don’t know what is.
• Mothers, the harshest art critics. (This story is hilarious.)
• Tattooed ladies. (Marshall Astor.)
• If you live in NYC: Take the Artist Cost of Living Survey. It’s to help a new foundation determine grant awards. (Art Fag City.)
• VHS.
• Photographer Phillip Toledano, reimagined as one of many dictators.
• The perils of appropriation: Mr. Brainwash getting sued by photographer Glen E. Friedman for copyright violation on a Run DMC image.
• Today’s Graff: ESPO (aka Steve Powers) in Syracuse. (Scroll down.) Plus: A photo tour of his studio.
• On the financials of the urban art market: A profile of Steve Lazarides. (Ekosystem.)
• Nest factories. (BLDGBLOG.)
• Some great pix of Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel in Germany.
• One of the most ridonkulous, excessive museum schematics I’ve seen in a loooong time. And it’s in Miami, of course.
• An action movie sequence that will make your day. (@mltb.)