Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–37 of 37 posts

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#31

Post by quitit »

Gigachad wrote: post #26
navigate8310 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Camera cannot capture subtle details that are visible only through naked eyes and a creative brain to process

The only thing a camera is not capturing is any 3D details and light reflectivity. Unless you are trying to create an absolute perfect replica, I’m not sure why you’d need that level of detail. As an artist you should be able to add that detail yourself.

There's plenty of reasons to not use a photo or a scan, but some trivial reasons are: translucent, metallic/pearl, and fluorescent paints and pigments.

Other reasons include gamut limitations, interactions with light (as you've noted already), and the point of the exercise is to capture minor details and attempt to understand the artist's original decision making processes. That can involve looking at the artwork under different lighting conditions, from different angles and so on.

Photos of course make good reference pieces, but snapping a photo or downloading a scan of a piece is going to leave many frustrating questions unanswered.

Despite the outcome the goal isn't to reproduce the piece. It's to emulate the process that led to the piece.

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#32

Post by voxic11 »

gitroom wrote: post #30

tbh the copyright stuff always feels way too long - I just want to look at cool art and make stuff without all this red tape

Originally copyright was 14 years with the option to extend another 14 years if you registered your copyright. That seems a lot more reasonable to me, no idea how we ended up with 100+ year copyrights.

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#33

Post by keiferski »

Gigachad wrote: post #26
navigate8310 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Camera cannot capture subtle details that are visible only through naked eyes and a creative brain to process

The only thing a camera is not capturing is any 3D details and light reflectivity. Unless you are trying to create an absolute perfect replica, I’m not sure why you’d need that level of detail. As an artist you should be able to add that detail yourself.

There are a million reasons why a photograph is not equivalent to an in-person artwork, but the most convincing one in my experience is scale. Computers make every painting into the size of your screen. Seeing a gigantic painting in person by an artist that specializes in scale is an entirely different experience.

As examples: Botticelli’s Venus is a much different experience in person, when you see it from across the room. Anslem Kiefer’s paintings don’t hit you nearly as hard via photographs vs. in person. And so on.

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#34

Post by paleotrope »

voxic11 wrote: post #32
gitroom wrote: post #30

tbh the copyright stuff always feels way too long - I just want to look at cool art and make stuff without all this red tape

Originally copyright was 14 years with the option to extend another 14 years if you registered your copyright. That seems a lot more reasonable to me, no idea how we ended up with 100+ year copyrights.

I'm also sure this inhibits digitization of art because the museums are balancing access and revenue.

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#35

Post by xhkkffbf »

gitroom wrote: post #30

tbh the copyright stuff always feels way too long - I just want to look at cool art and make stuff without all this red tape

Most of the art in museums is long past the copyright date. This includes many artists who are considered "modern". Works by Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, M. C. Escher, Max Ernst and Constantin Brâncuși are some found on the recent lists of art entering the public domain.

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#36

Post by cwmma »

colechristensen wrote: post #3

>Why This Movie Perfectly Re-Created a Picasso, Destroyed It, and Mailed the Evidence to Picasso’s Estate Pablo Picasso died more than fifty years ago at the age on 91. Four of his children are dead and the one remaining alive is 76. It's really stupid that people have to go all of this trouble for work done so long ago. Intellectual property laws should not protect your work for the benefit of your middle-aged grand…

This happened in 1996 though.

Re: Legal art forgery, for the sake of movies (2014)

#37

Post by dublin »

Gigachad wrote: post #26
navigate8310 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Camera cannot capture subtle details that are visible only through naked eyes and a creative brain to process

The only thing a camera is not capturing is any 3D details and light reflectivity. Unless you are trying to create an absolute perfect replica, I’m not sure why you’d need that level of detail. As an artist you should be able to add that detail yourself.

Even the best photography does a very poor job of capturing what many works of art actually look like. This is an area where tech is not the answer, and those that insist it is are just ignorant of the subtleties of actual artwork. BTW, this isn't some woo-woo claim, there are myriad things that cameras capture very poorly, if at all, starting with the obvious things like reflections (amny types), refractions (ditto), transparency and translucency (esp. in marble!), and many, many more.
Post reply on HN