As one looks at this desolate new photo of Mars, taken by the Spirit's Rover at the Mars landing site on Monday, I wonder what the first ever photos of the Red planet will fetch in vintage art auctions in a couple of hundred years (the vintage moonlanding photos already fetching quite a nice price).

I was also struck how the new photo of Mars looks a little like a Richard Misrach, but more brooding and less "landscapy" and "pretty."

Click on the photo above to visit the NASA website. It's a spectacular presentation of the Mars mission. Check out this breathtaking photograph of the Olympos Mons volcano - the largest in the solar system.

NASA is sort of re-inventing photography, as these images are not truly "photographs" but are created after processing thousands of laser altimeter elevation measurements taken by the Mars Global Surveyor. Then a computer back here puts it all together and creates a 3-D image - but this is definately art as the output of machines.

Finally ArtsJournal.com has a visual arts BLOG! It's Artopia - John Perreault's Art Diary.

John Perreault has been writing about art for many years, including art criticism for the Village Voice, ArtNews, Art in America magazines, and others.

He is currently an associate editor and writes regularly for both N. Y. Arts Magazine and American Ceramics; he is also on the editorial advisory board of Sculpture magazine and is a trustee of the Tiffany Foundation. He has also been president of the American Section of the International Association of Art Critics.

Perreault has also written a book for Abrams on the watercolors of Philip Pearlstein and is now editing a three-volume anthology of his collected writings. He has also been a museum curator, an arts administrator, and professor of art history and is thus superbly qualified to offer us a great insight via his BLOG/Art Diary into the visual arts in New York and elsewhere.

Bookmark Artopia - John Perreault's Art Diary and visit often.