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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

#61

Post by bigiain »

protonimitate wrote: post #13
olavk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fair enough. To be honest, I have issues with the Museum/Gallery institution as it exists, but that's another story altogether. My bigger point, which maybe wasn't clear from my post, is that Art is one of the greatest ways to express humanity, and by digitizing and industrializing, we will lose some of that human aspect. >>In any case, for most ordinary people it is totally unrealistic to travel to museums all over…

I have a similar viewpoint - in that personally I consider seeing original art locally, even though it isn't a Van Gogh or a Da Vinci or whatever, is worthwhile anyway. At the same time, digitisations or reproductions of "famous" works can still be rewarding.

Same with music, while recordings of Coltrane or Miles (or 50Cent or The Sex Pistols or Beyoncé, substitute whatever your musical tastes encompass) are great - it's still also great to go and see local live acs - who're potentially awful - but are often surprisingly enjoyable.

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

#62

Post by briandear »

a_d wrote: post #57
epberry wrote: post #55

Some of his more famous paintings like Starry Night and Wheatfield with Cypresses aren't here. I guess I'll have to settle for Wheatfield with Crows! The sketches are fantastic tho - you have to scroll quite a ways to get to them but they are worth it.

There is a hi-res version of starry night, if you admire that painting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-... It is 30,000 × 23,756 pixels (file size: 205.1 MB) . While incomparable to seeing it up close, a lot of brush details can be seen up close. If there was such as thing as a favorite jpg, for me this is it! :-)

It’s spectacular on a 5k monitor! Thanks for sharing.

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

#63

Post by briandear »

protonimitate wrote: post #13
olavk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fair enough. To be honest, I have issues with the Museum/Gallery institution as it exists, but that's another story altogether. My bigger point, which maybe wasn't clear from my post, is that Art is one of the greatest ways to express humanity, and by digitizing and industrializing, we will lose some of that human aspect. >>In any case, for most ordinary people it is totally unrealistic to travel to museums all over…

Except a large part of “local” art is derivative, contrived crap. Much is good, but the benefit of large museums like the Musee d’Orsay for instance is that there are professional curators that can create stories with the selection of art. However despite a large number of inept curators on the local scene, there are a few Peggy Guggenheim types that have an eye for new artists that are masters in the making. I like local art, but there’s a non-trivial number of “artists” that are pretentious beyond their talent and they think they are saying something when if fact, they are as unoriginal as Louvre copyists. It’s a joy to find an artist that is really good, but the signal to noise ratio is pretty terrible.

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

#64

Post by briandear »

jowiar wrote: post #21
olavk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Guggenheim collection in Venice is world class amazing — in a setting that is more like the artists might have invisioned their work being displayed. Definitely worth the trip if you find yourself in that part of the world.

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

#65

Post by hiccuphippo »

zokier wrote: post #37
ryaneager wrote: post #28

Script to download full sized images: https://gist.github.com/RyanEager/a747215c259ffecb9beb1dfec0...

Please do not abuse these sort of services. Sure, downloading one-offs for legitimate personal use is fine (in my opinion) but please be reasonable and avoid discouraging them of publishing more stuff or even locking down the existing collections more down. Sure I understand it's bit annoying that they do not provide the higher resolution as downloads, and that they don't have more liberal license. But it is still pr…

Someone could offer a torrent file or ipfs hash to the files so other people don't have to hug their bandwidth to death.

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

#67

Post by AceJohnny2 »

Van Gogh has a special meaning for me, because it's the first time I was fascinated with a painting.

To put things into context: my mom is an art historian, and when I was a kid she'd regularly drag me to museums. I remember being bored out of my mind, with only the cool architecture of the museums themselves to mildly entertain me.

To this day I'm pretty uninterested in the classics

Years later, in my late 20s, I went to the National Gallery in London, and saw one of Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Cypresses" [1] there, and for the first time a classical painting struck me as beautiful. Maybe it's the pastels, maybe it was the texture of the gouache (which no digital picture reproduces, you'd need a detailed 3D model), I just stood there entranced by this painting.

I bought a (stupidly overpriced) print of it at the gift shop, and to this day it's still the only classical painting I can recognize a love for.

Sadly, that particular painting isn't part of this digitized collection, since the collection is from the Amsterdam Museum, not from London's National Gallery.

[1] https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gog...

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

#68

Post by archagon »

If anyone's interested, I made a set of apps that turns your macOS desktop into a rotating art gallery, given an existing directory of images. It's all done in a completely native way, so you don't have to worry about weird software interactions or future compatibility: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/05/02/a-native-art-gallery-for...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to throwing this batch in there. Hope somebody sticks them all in a torrent soon.

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

#69

Post by archagon »

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…

Personally, I'd rather voraciously consume as much art as humanly possible. This is a privilege only granted to the last few generations; why waste it?

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

#70

Post by pierrec »

jaspervdj wrote: post #51

Slightly off-topic, a big part of seeing a painting in real life is seeing the structure and layers of brush strokes. It's a long shot but does anyone know if any work has been done to create depth maps of paintings and possibly combine them with scans?

That information can be captured and reproduced with holograms. Among others, OptoClone holograms have been made that were entirely realistic (viewers thought they were the real object):

https://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-52/iss...

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