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Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

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Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#21

Post by jowiar »

olavk wrote: post #8
protonimitate wrote: post #2

This is quite an amazing collection, and great for archiving purposes. But, (I can't help myself), I am conflicted about the digitization of museums/artists/artworks. Seeing a work of art, let alone one of the greats, is something that should be experienced in person. Reducing it to pixels for instant digestion is a sub-optimal way to experience it. Granted, this is amazing to research and exposure, and for distribut…

I kind of disagree - many paintings are actually better experienced on print or online than in real life. Just take your example of Mona Lisa - you will get a better impression of the art from a good reproduction than from watching it behind glass surrounded by hordes of tourists at the Louvre. It is a relatively small painting and you can't even get close! Many classic paintings are awkwardly placed with bad lightin…

For me it’s hit or miss. The Mona Lisa was underwhelming in person, and I saw it on a day when there were few crowds. Guernica, the Sistine Chapel (if you avoid the cattle prods), Garden of Earthly Delights (and plenty of the Goya/Velazquez/El Greco works at the Peadon), the Van Gogh room in Musee d’Orsay —- all worth a trip if you have the means.

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#22

Post by tjwds »

protonimitate wrote: post #2

This is quite an amazing collection, and great for archiving purposes. But, (I can't help myself), I am conflicted about the digitization of museums/artists/artworks. Seeing a work of art, let alone one of the greats, is something that should be experienced in person. Reducing it to pixels for instant digestion is a sub-optimal way to experience it. Granted, this is amazing to research and exposure, and for distribut…

I manage the digitization program for a university library system (though I'm leaving this role very soon).

Yes, digitization is inherently a transformation and remediation of the work. This means that yes, something is taken away. But the value add, in my opinion, is so great that it's very well worth the money and time that goes into it.

My favorite work of art ever is Friedrich's The Monk by the Sea [0]: it fills me with emotion every time I see its digital facsimile. I hope one day that I'll be able to see it in person, but for now, it's accessible to me and billions of others to appreciate and enjoy.

> works are beginning to become 'instagram' friendly

Respectfully, I highly disagree with this sentiment. In my personal experience, I'm seeing just as many artists pushing back on reproducibility and the "prettiness" of art as there are folks trying to create works that look good on office walls or on Instagram stories.

> to hordes of people taking selfies with the Mona Lisa instead of appreciating it

Finally, again, I respectfully disagree. Who's to say that I can't enjoy art and take a selfie with it too? Many people like to add some sort of lens, most frequently their phone camera, to their experiences at concerts, museums, and galleries. I don't think anyone's qualified to tell those folks that they're doing it wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monk_by_the_Sea

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#23

Post by labster »

olavk wrote: post #8
protonimitate wrote: post #2

This is quite an amazing collection, and great for archiving purposes. But, (I can't help myself), I am conflicted about the digitization of museums/artists/artworks. Seeing a work of art, let alone one of the greats, is something that should be experienced in person. Reducing it to pixels for instant digestion is a sub-optimal way to experience it. Granted, this is amazing to research and exposure, and for distribut…

I kind of disagree - many paintings are actually better experienced on print or online than in real life. Just take your example of Mona Lisa - you will get a better impression of the art from a good reproduction than from watching it behind glass surrounded by hordes of tourists at the Louvre. It is a relatively small painting and you can't even get close! Many classic paintings are awkwardly placed with bad lightin…

This is true of Mona Lisa, where you wait in a huge line to get 3 meters away from the portrait, and have maybe a couple minutes to look at best. Reproductions win out there.

But for Van Gogh, they do a terrible job a capturing the heavy texture of the paint. On flat paper he's a decent artist, cool expressionist style. But the real things feel alive; they have physical depth and draw the viewer into the painting. It's like night and day.

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#24

Post by xiao_haozi »

ArcticCelt wrote: post #14
rococode wrote: post #6

Woah. In an ML class I took last fall we got to design our own classification challenge problems that the entire class then competed on. The one our group made used this exact dataset (the museum website)! We called it VANGOGHORNO haha. We basically pulled the images from the collection and mixed them with non-Van Gogh paintings. It was surprisingly a very learnable dataset, the top two teams got around 97% accuracy…

Is there some downloadable archive file of all painting in the higher resolution or did you simply roll your own web scraper?

I didn't see any, but you could stitch them together, e.g. https://vangoghmuseum-assetserver.appspot.com/tiles?id=56466...

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#26

Post by pducks32 »

protonimitate wrote: post #2

This is quite an amazing collection, and great for archiving purposes. But, (I can't help myself), I am conflicted about the digitization of museums/artists/artworks. Seeing a work of art, let alone one of the greats, is something that should be experienced in person. Reducing it to pixels for instant digestion is a sub-optimal way to experience it. Granted, this is amazing to research and exposure, and for distribut…

I minored in Art History and have a real love of art. I obviously studied using digitized work and still was able to fall in love and appreciate the majesty of it. But then I was in Florence and went to see David (something I had seen a ton) and wow it took my breath away. It was so much more amazing and awe inspiring.

Nevertheless, I still see such an amazing hope in having these works digitized at least to give people some perspective at the range of many great artists and to allow the art to inhabit a person's life in the way they want which is what the artist would want. And hopefully if they love it enough and it impacts them then they can go see it in person.

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#27

Post by 01100011 »

protonimitate wrote: post #2

This is quite an amazing collection, and great for archiving purposes. But, (I can't help myself), I am conflicted about the digitization of museums/artists/artworks. Seeing a work of art, let alone one of the greats, is something that should be experienced in person. Reducing it to pixels for instant digestion is a sub-optimal way to experience it. Granted, this is amazing to research and exposure, and for distribut…

Came here to say this. I took art in college but never really 'got it' until I saw Van Gogh's Mulberry Tree in person. There is a depth and a visual intensity that just doesn't come through in a tiny little picture on your screen or in a book. Until you've seen great art in person I don't think you really grasp what it is about art that makes it such an important piece of humanity.

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#29

Post by andybak »

bookofjoe wrote: post #17

Oh, but I long for visiting this and other museums in VR. Real soon now, I guess.

There have been several small attempts but no coherent joined up effort.

I really hope some galleries are digitising their collections via 3D scanning. Viewing something like a Van Gogh in VR without some real texture and depth is not convincing. Some of that paint is 5mm off the canvas. You can see that from a fair distance.

Re: Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online

#30

Post by andybak »

robin_reala wrote: post #12

As nice as this is, it would have been even better if they’d used an understandable CC licence instead of the custom non-commercial sub-A4 one they’ve decided on. There are at least a couple of museums now that have licenced their entire digital artworks as CC0[1][2], and I’ve been talking to Munchmuseet in Oslo recently who are planning to licence their entire new digitised collection[3] as CC4 (free use with attrib…

I think the UK has mostly settled for cc-by-sa (attribution share-alike) which is at least tolerable. Non-commercial is a minefield even for public sector usage.
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