Living Paintings: 13 Caravaggio Works of Art Performed by Real-Life Actors

in Art, Theatre | November 12th, 2018

Michelan­ge­lo Merisi da Car­avag­gio, the father of Baroque paint­ing, shocked the upper class aes­thetes of his day by draft­ing pros­ti­tutes and pro­le­tari­ats as mod­els for his pri­mar­i­ly Bib­li­cal sub­jects.

Ten years ago, under the direc­tion of founder Ludovi­ca Ram­bel­li, eight mem­bers of the Ital­ian com­pa­ny, Malathe­atre, dis­cov­ered first hand the insane­ly rig­or­ous pos­es Car­avag­gio demand­ed of his mod­els, cre­at­ing 23 tableaux vivants inspired by the master’s oeu­vre.

The com­pa­ny sought less to repro­duce the paint­ings than the scene Car­avag­gio would have gazed on from behind his easel.

The 13 stag­ings in the video above make one aware of the intense phys­i­cal­i­ty evi­dent in Caravaggio’s work.

All those extend­ed arms and inver­sions are agony for a mod­el. After 30 sec­onds or so, even a sharply inclined neck or bent back can serve up a small taste of what it’s like to be cru­ci­fied.

The result is exquis­ite. The eight play­ers are not just extra­or­di­nar­i­ly fit spec­i­mens, they have clear­ly devot­ed much thought to the emo­tion­al life of each char­ac­ter they embody, sus­tain­ing the moment with great focus and deter­mi­na­tion.

The action unfolds in the suit­ably ancient set­ting of Naples’ Church of San­ta Maria Donnaregi­na Nuo­va.

When not called upon to mod­el, the per­form­ers become stage hands, help­ing each oth­er to arrange the sim­ple, well cho­sen props and flow­ing man­tles.

(I enjoyed the small joke of a female Bac­chus.)

Per­formed live to selec­tions from Mozart, Bach, and Vival­di, this com­pa­ny has set­tled on the Lux Aeter­na sec­tion of Mozart’s Requiem to accom­pa­ny their archival footage.

The next oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the show per­formed live will be in Naples on Decem­ber 28.

Have a look at the video below, for some com­par­isons between the orig­i­nal paint­ings and the 13 tableaux vivants seen in the video:

The Entomb­ment of Christ

Mary Mag­da­lene in Ecsta­sy,

Cru­ci­fix­ion of Saint Peter

The Behead­ing of St John the Bap­tist

Judith Behead­ing Holofernes

Fla­gel­la­tion of Christ

The Mar­tyr­dom of Saint Matthew

Annun­ci­a­tion

Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Nar­cis­sus,

The Rais­ing of Lazarus

Saint Fran­cis of Assisi in Ecsta­sy

Bac­chus

via This Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Why Babies in Medieval Paint­ings Look Like Mid­dle-Aged Men: An Inves­tiga­tive Video

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a for­mer artist’s mod­el turned author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Database, Will Feature Works by 600+ Overlooked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Centuries

in Art, Museums | November 9th, 2018

Many of the works we found—well, nobody knew they were there. Nobody knew any­thing about the artists. … They weren’t impor­tant, but rather behold­en to their fathers, moth­ers, and hus­bands. They had no voice.   

— Jane For­tune, Founder of Advanc­ing Women Artists (AWA)

The paint­ings, draw­ings, prints, and sculp­tures the late Jane For­tune refers to above were dis­cov­ered in muse­um stor­age spaces through­out Flo­rence.

Many of their female cre­ators were acclaimed dur­ing their life­times. By the time For­tune set about restor­ing their work—and vis­i­bil­i­ty —to the pub­lic view, they were vir­tu­al­ly unknown, even to muse­um staff.

Saint Cather­ine with Lily by Plau­til­la Nel­li

That may change as ear­ly as the fall of 2019, when A Space of Their Own, an illus­trat­ed online data­base of over 600 female artists work­ing in the US and Europe between the 15th and 19th cen­turies, launch­es.

In prepa­ra­tion for their rein­tro­duc­tion, many of the works appear­ing on A Space of Their Own have under­gone exten­sive restora­tion, cour­tesy of Jane For­tune’s non­prof­it Advanc­ing Women Artists.

David and Bathshe­ba by Artemisia Gen­tileschi

Inter­est­ing­ly, women make up the major­i­ty of art restor­ers in Flo­rence. This pro­fes­sion­al dom­i­nance can be traced back to the mid-60s, when a cat­a­stroph­ic flood laid waste to mil­lions of the city’s art trea­sures. “It was the first time women began wear­ing trousers in Flo­rence,” Lin­da Fal­cone, AWA’s cur­rent direc­tor told art­net. “Women’s lib­er­a­tion in Flo­rence is deeply linked to the art restora­tion effort.”

Many of the artists in the data­base were self-taught, barred from seek­ing for­mal train­ing or study­ing anato­my on account of their gen­der. They could not hope to make a liv­ing from their tal­ents when women were for­bid­den from issu­ing invoic­es. And then, of course, there are the demands of mar­riage and moth­er­hood.

Small won­der they have been so under­rep­re­sent­ed in muse­ums and art his­to­ry books.

Self-por­trait by Leonet­ta Pier­ac­ci­ni Cec­chi

Peruse a menu of paint­ings in need of restora­tion spon­sor­ship and learn more about the artists on AWA’s web­site. Sign up for the newslet­ter for updates in advance of A Space of Their Own’s grand open­ing.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

The Icon­ic Uri­nal & Work of Art, “Foun­tain,” Wasn’t Cre­at­ed by Mar­cel Duchamp But by the Pio­neer­ing Dada Artist Elsa von Frey­tag-Lor­ing­hoven

The Cre­ativ­i­ty of Female Graf­fi­ti & Street Artists Will Be Cel­e­brat­ed in Street Hero­ines, a New Doc­u­men­tary

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 30 ) |

Behind the Banksy Stunt: An In-Depth Breakdown of the Artist’s Self-Shredding Painting

in Art | November 7th, 2018

By now, even those of us who pay no atten­tion at all to the art mar­ket have heard about Banksy’s lat­est art stunt: a paint­ing called Bal­loon Girl that, when it sold for $1.4 mil­lion at auc­tion, then imme­di­ate­ly shred­ded itself. Assess­ments on the intent and impact of the piece’s self-destruc­tion have var­ied: many have com­plained that, far from the bold state­ment against the eco­nom­ics of mod­ern art it may have looked like (and many of Banksy’s fans may well have come to expect from his artis­tic per­sona), it could also be noth­ing more than a cyn­i­cal pub­lic­i­ty stunt to raise the spec­u­la­tive val­ue of his work fur­ther still. And a coun­ter­point, in the words of econ­o­mist Tyler Cowen, an expert on the eco­nom­ics of cul­ture in his own right: “Banksy is a genius.”

So how prop­er­ly to think about the Bal­loon Girl stunt, which has received no small amount of press but which remains some­thing of an unset­tled issue? Here to help clar­i­fy the mat­ter is a new and top­i­cal episode of The Art Assign­ment, John and Sarah Green’s web series pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

As well as pro­vid­ing a brief primer on Banksy and the way his career has so far made its mark (often lit­er­al­ly) on the world, the eleven-minute video gets into how his build­ing a shred­der into a pic­ture frame and set­ting it off at the moment of sale fits into his body of work, art his­to­ry, and the inter­na­tion­al art scene as it is today.

“There are many ways a work of art comes into being, be it an addi­tive process, a sub­trac­tive process, one that must unfold in space and time, or one that’s imma­te­r­i­al and not exist­ing until the moment it’s per­formed and then dis­ap­pear­ing as soon as it’s over,” says Sarah Green. “Girl with Bal­loon was one art­work, and now it’s anoth­er that came into being through a pub­lic auc­tion but which still very much has a mate­r­i­al pres­ence, because the object was­n’t destroyed — it’s only half-shred­ded — and since it was can­vas going through, the remain­ing fringe is pret­ty sta­ble.” In a sense, then, even this self-destruc­t­ing art­work nev­er real­ly self-destruc­t­ed. So what, in artis­tic terms, actu­al­ly hap­pened to it? We may con­tin­ue argu­ing about it for years, but it will always come back to the shred­ding itself — an event reliv­able at any time in Banksy’s “direc­tor’s cut” video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Banksy Shreds His $1.4 Mil­lion Paint­ing at Auc­tion, Tak­ing a Tra­di­tion of Artists Destroy­ing Art to New Heights

When Robert Rauschen­berg Asked Willem De Koon­ing for One of His Paint­ings … So That He Could Erase It

Watch Dis­ma­land — The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film, A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Banksy’s Apoc­a­lyp­tic Theme Park

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

The Art Assign­ment: Learn About Art & the Cre­ative Process in a New Web Series by John & Sarah Green

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Library of Congress Makes Thousands of Fabulous Photos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

in Archives, Art, Education, Libraries, Photography | November 2nd, 2018

The his­to­ry of the ven­er­a­ble Library of Con­gress demon­strates the vast impor­tance that the founders of the U.S. accord­ed to read­ing and study­ing. It may be one of the country’s most durable insti­tu­tions, “the old­est fed­er­al cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion in the nation,” it pro­claims. While par­ti­san ran­cor, war, and vio­lence recur, the LoC has stolid­ly held an ever-increas­ing­ly diverse col­lec­tion of arti­facts sit­ting peace­ful­ly along­side each oth­er on sev­er­al hun­dred miles of shelves, a mon­u­ment to the life of the mind that ought to get more atten­tion.

Tout­ing itself as “the largest library in the world,” its col­lec­tions “are uni­ver­sal, not lim­it­ed by sub­ject, for­mat, or nation­al bound­ary, and include research mate­ri­als from all parts of the world and in more than 450 lan­guages.”

Its first mate­ri­als were, of course, books—including over six-thou­sand books pur­chased from Thomas Jefferson’s pri­vate col­lec­tion after the British burned the orig­i­nal library down in 1814. Now, it “adds approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 items to the col­lec­tion dai­ly,” in every pos­si­ble for­mat one can imag­ine.

And since its dig­i­tal col­lec­tions came online, any­one, any­where in the world can call up these vast resources with an inter­net con­nec­tion and a few clicks. Though we tend to take such things for grant­ed in our fer­vid­ly dis­tract­ed times, a lit­tle reflec­tion should remind us of how incred­i­ble that is. But before we wax too rhap­sod­ic, let’s remem­ber there’s a busi­ness end to the LoC and it’s called the U.S. Copy­right Office, that guardian of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty that both ensures cre­ators can prof­it from their labors and pre­vents the free and open use of so many enrich­ing mate­ri­als long after those cre­ators have need of them.

But the Library has done its dig­i­tal users a ser­vice in this regard as well, with its “Free to Use and Reuse Sets,” a siz­able col­lec­tion of images that the Library “believes… is either in the pub­lic domain, has no known copy­right, or has been cleared by the copy­right own­er for pub­lic use.” (The use of the word “believes” seems to leave room for doubt, but if you got it with per­mis­sion from the LoC, you’re prob­a­bly safe.) Need pho­tographs of Abra­ham Lincoln—and scans of his speech­es, let­ters, and “duel­ing instruc­tions”—for that book you’re writ­ing? You’re cov­ered with this gallery. Need a col­lec­tion of clas­sic chil­dren’s books for your web­site (or your read­ing plea­sure)? Here you go.

From the graph­ic genius of vin­tage WPA and trav­el posters to icon­ic jazz por­traits by William Got­tlieb to base­ball cards to end­less­ly quaint and quirky Amer­i­can road­side attrac­tions to pic­tures of dogs and their peo­ple… you nev­er know when you might need such images, but when you do you now know where to find them. Want to know what’s in the set called “Not an Ostrich”? A valkyrie cat named Brunnhilde, for one thing, and much more here.

The Library cur­rent­ly high­lights its “Poster Parade”—a set of posters from the 1890s to the 1960s fea­tur­ing “trav­el, com­mer­cial prod­ucts, war pro­pa­gan­da, enter­tain­ment, and more”—in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Poster House, a muse­um open­ing in New York next year. These range from delec­table art nou­veau ads to shouty broad­sides telling you to drink your milk, brush your teeth, or have “More Cour­tesy.” Sen­si­ble pre­scrip­tions, but we also need more knowl­edge, study, and thought. Start at the LoC’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here and har­vest your free to use and reuse images here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Large Archive of Han­nah Arendt’s Papers Dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress: Read Her Lec­tures, Drafts of Arti­cles, Notes & Cor­re­spon­dence

Get­ty Images Makes 35 Mil­lion Pho­tos Free to Use Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Model Book of Calligraphy (1561–1596): A Stunningly Detailed Illuminated Manuscript Created over Three Decades

in Art, Books, History | November 1st, 2018

When­ev­er a tech­nol­o­gy devel­ops just enough to become inter­est­ing, some­one inevitably push­es it to extremes. In the case of that reli­able and long-lived tech­nol­o­gy known as the book, writ­ers and artists were look­ing for ways to max­i­mize its poten­tial as a device for con­vey­ing the writ­ten word and the drawn image as far back as the 16th cen­tu­ry. One par­tic­u­lar­ly glo­ri­ous exam­ple, The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy, has come avail­able online, to view or down­load, thanks to the Get­ty. This decades-span­ning col­lab­o­ra­tion shows off not just the artis­tic writ­ing implied by the title but illus­tra­tions whose vivid­ness and detail remain strik­ing even today.

“In the 1500s, as print­ing became the most com­mon method of pro­duc­ing books, intel­lec­tu­als increas­ing­ly val­ued the inven­tive­ness of scribes and the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties of writ­ing,” says the Get­ty’s site.

“From 1561 to 1562, Georg Boc­skay, the Croa­t­ian-born court sec­re­tary to the Holy Roman Emper­or Fer­di­nand I, cre­at­ed this Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy in Vien­na to demon­strate his tech­ni­cal mas­tery of the immense range of writ­ing styles known to him.”

Three decades lat­er, “Emper­or Rudolph II, Fer­di­nand’s grand­son, com­mis­sioned Joris Hoef­nagel” — a Flem­ish artist well known at the time for his spe­cial­iza­tion in sub­jects to do with nat­ur­al his­to­ry — “to illu­mi­nate Boc­skay’s mod­el book. Hoef­nagel added fruit, flow­ers, and insects to near­ly every page, com­pos­ing them so as to enhance the uni­ty and bal­ance of the page’s design. It was one of the most unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tions between scribe and painter in the his­to­ry of man­u­script illu­mi­na­tion.”

What we see when we flip through (or zoom in to great lev­els of dig­i­tal detail on) The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy’s 184 pages may look like a uni­fied work exe­cut­ed all at once (see them all at the bot­tom of this page), but it actu­al­ly com­bines the sen­si­bil­i­ties of not just two cre­ators sep­a­rat­ed by not just the art forms in which they spe­cial­ized but more than thir­ty years of time. Hoef­nagel, how­ev­er, did­n’t stay entire­ly out of the realm of the tex­tu­al: though most of what he brought to the man­u­script takes the form of illu­mi­na­tions, he also added an entire­ly new sec­tion on writ­ing the alpha­bet. He under­stood the impor­tance of not just well-craft­ed pic­tures and text but their appeal­ing inte­gra­tion, a con­cept famil­iar to any design­er work­ing in today’s forms of cut­ting-edge media — as books were four cen­turies ago. You can pur­chase print edi­tions that repro­duce por­tions or the entire­ty of The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Learn Cal­lig­ra­phy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famous­ly Inspir­ing Cal­lig­ra­phy Teacher

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

36 Artists Give Advice to Young Creators: Wim Wenders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Patti Smith, David Byrne, Umberto Eco & More

in Art, Creativity, Education, Life | October 31st, 2018

“What­ev­er you do, nobody else can do that bet­ter than you. You have to find what you can do bet­ter than any­one else, what you have in your­self that nobody else has in them. Don’t do any­thing that you know, deep in your heart, that some­body else can do bet­ter, but do what nobody else can do except for you.” That sounds like fine advice, but when receiv­ing advice we should always con­sid­er the source. In this case we could hard­ly do bet­ter: the source is Wim Wen­ders, direc­tor of Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, and many oth­er films besides, an auteur sel­dom accused of mak­ing movies any­one else could make.

Wen­ders’ inter­view clip and the oth­ers here come from “Advice to the Young,” a video series cre­at­ed by the Louisiana Muse­um in Den­mark (which has quite an impres­sive gift shop, inci­den­tal­ly, if you hap­pen to need advice on gift-shop­ping). Jonathan Franzen, author of nov­els like The Cor­rec­tions, Free­dom, and Puri­ty, admits to feel­ing embar­rass­ment about “giv­ing advice to the young writer,” but he still has valu­able words for cre­ators in any domain: “The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun, to try to cre­ate some­thing that is fun to work on.”

And by fun he means fun like you have on a ten­nis court, where “you’re not just mess­ing around, you’re not just hit­ting the ball wher­ev­er you want — you are focused on hav­ing a game, and once you are in it you are hav­ing fun. That’s the kind of focused fun I’m talk­ing about, and if you are hav­ing that kind of focused fun, there’s a good chance that the read­er will too.”

The range of writ­ers from which Louisiana Muse­um has sought advice also includes Lydia Davis, whose sen­si­bil­i­ty may dif­fer from Franzen’s but who has gar­nered an equal (or even greater) degree of respect from her read­er­ship. “You learn from mod­els and you ana­lyze them, you study them, you ana­lyze them very close­ly, one thing at a time,” she says, begin­ning her more expan­sive advice based on her own method. “You don’t just sort of read the para­graph and say, ‘Oh, that real­ly flows, you know? That’s good.’ You say, ‘What kind of adjec­tives? How many? What kind of nouns? How long are the sen­tences? What’s the rhythm?’ You know, you pick it apart, and that’s very help­ful.” Her oth­er sug­ges­tions include to “be very patient, even patient with chaos” and to keep a note­book (“it takes some of the ten­sion and the wor­ry away, because if you write it down, it may just be a note. It does­n’t have to be the begin­ning of any­thing”).

“Do what you want to do,” Davis con­cludes, “and don’t wor­ry if it’s a lit­tle odd or does­n’t fit the mar­ket.” That bit of guid­ance seems to have worked for her, and in the great vari­ety of forms it can take seems to have worked for seem­ing­ly every oth­er artist. Take Ed Ruscha, for instance, whose can­vass­es of gas sta­tions, cor­po­rate sig­nage, and oth­er icons of Amer­i­can blank­ness must hard­ly have seemed geared toward any par­tic­u­lar “mar­ket” when first he paint­ed them. For the young he has only one piece of advice, received sec­ond-hand and briefly deliv­ered: “No one could ever beat this thing that Max Ernst said. They asked him what a young artist should do, and he said, ‘cut off an ear.’ That’s good advice to fol­low. You can’t beat that.”

Oth­er artists fea­tured in the video playlist include Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

To Make Great Films, You Must Read, Read, Read and Write, Write, Write, Say Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wern­er Her­zog

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Art Institute of Chicago Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Resolution

in Art, Education, How to Learn for Free, Museums, Technology | October 25th, 2018

After the fire that total­ly destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio, many peo­ple lament­ed that the muse­um had not dig­i­tal­ly backed up its col­lec­tion and point­ed to the event as a trag­ic exam­ple of why such dig­i­ti­za­tion is so nec­es­sary. Just a cou­ple decades ago, stor­ing and dis­play­ing this much infor­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, so it may seem like a strange demand to make. And in any case, two-dimen­sion­al images stored on servers—or even 3D print­ed copies—cannot replace or sub­sti­tute for orig­i­nal, price­less arti­facts or works of art.

But muse­ums around the world that have dig­i­tized most–or all–of their col­lec­tions don’t claim to have repli­cat­ed or replaced the expe­ri­ence of an in-per­son vis­it, or to have ren­dered phys­i­cal media obso­lete.

Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions pro­vide access to mil­lions of peo­ple who can­not, or will not, ever trav­el to the major cities in which fine art resides, and they give mil­lions of schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents resources once avail­able only to a select few.

We can’t all take the day off like Fer­ris Bueller and stand in front of Georges Seurat’s Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te. But thanks to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, we can all view and down­load the 1884 pointil­list paint­ing in high res­o­lu­tion, zoom in close­ly like the trou­bled Cameron to spe­cif­ic details, share the dig­i­tal image under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, and sim­i­lar­ly inter­act with an oil sketch for the final paint­ing and sev­er­al con­té cray­on stud­ies.

And if that weren’t enough, the muse­um also includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry, notes on prove­nance, audio and video his­to­ries and descrip­tions, and edu­ca­tion­al resources like teacher man­u­als, les­son plans, and exams. This goes for many of the 44,312—with more to come—digital images online, includ­ing such famous works of art as Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 The Bed­room, Grant Wood’s 1930 Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Pablo Picasso’s 1903–4 blue peri­od paint­ing The Old Gui­tarist, Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks, Mary Cassatt’s 1893 The Child’s Bath, and so many more that it bog­gles the mind.

Browse Impres­sion­ism, Pop Art, works from the African Dias­po­ra, Cityscapes, Fash­ion, Mytho­log­i­cal Works, and oth­er gen­res and cat­e­gories. Search artists, dates, styles, media, depart­ments, places, and more.

A per­son­al vis­it to the Art Insti­tute is an awe-inspir­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, if you can get the day to go. You can vis­it the web­site, with full unre­strict­ed access, and gath­er infor­ma­tion, study, mar­vel, and casu­al­ly browse, at any time of day—every day if you like. No, it’s not the same, but as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, in some ways, it’s even bet­ter. And if, by some awful chance, any­thing should hap­pen to this art, we won’t have to rely on user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos to recon­struct the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry.

The launch of this col­lec­tion comes as part of the museum’s web­site redesign, and it is an exten­sive, and expen­sive, endeav­or. The Art Insti­tute, which charges for entry, can afford to make its col­lec­tions free online. Some oth­er muse­ums charge image fees to sup­port their online work. Ide­al­ly, as art his­to­ri­an Ben­dor Grosvenor writes at Art His­to­ry News, muse­ums should offer free and open access to both phys­i­cal and online col­lec­tions, and some insti­tu­tions, like Sweden’s National­mu­se­um, have shown that this is pos­si­ble.

And, as Grosvenor shows, the suc­cess of open access online col­lec­tions has yield­ed anoth­er ben­e­fit, for both view­ers and muse­ums alike. The more peo­ple are exposed to art online, the more like­ly they are to vis­it muse­ums in per­son. Chica­go awaits you. Until then, vir­tu­al­ly immerse your­self in the Art Institute’s many thou­sands of trea­sures here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Leonardo da Vinci Saw the World Differently… Thanks to an Eye Disorder, Says a New Scientific Study

in Art | October 24th, 2018

Leonar­do da Vin­ci was a man of many abil­i­ties, so many that he has defined the very image of the man of many abil­i­ties for more than 500 years now. His­to­ry remem­bers him for his impres­sive intel­lec­tu­al feats of sci­ence and engi­neer­ing (as well as the ambi­tion of his to-do lists), but even more so for his works of visu­al art. Most of us get our intro­duc­tion to Leonar­do through images like the Mona Lisa, The Last Sup­per, and Vit­ru­vian Man, not least because they’ve long since become too cul­tur­al­ly promi­nent to avoid. The ques­tion of how on earth he did it nat­u­ral­ly springs from con­tem­pla­tion of Leonar­do’s whole body of work, but also from con­tem­pla­tion of many of the indi­vid­ual pieces that con­sti­tute it. A part of the answer, recent research sug­gests, may well have to do with a dis­abil­i­ty.

“There is now evi­dence that da Vin­ci’s renowned capac­i­ty to repro­duce the three-dimen­sion­al world in paint­ings may have been aid­ed by an eye dis­or­der that allowed him to see in both 2‑D and 3‑D, accord­ing to a study pub­lished Thurs­day in JAMA Opthal­mol­o­gy, a peer-reviewed jour­nal,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Allyson Chiu.

“Da Vin­ci is believed to have had a con­di­tion called inter­mit­tent exotropia, a form of stra­bis­mus, com­mon­ly referred to as being ‘walleyed’,” a form of an eye mis­align­ment. If he did, it would have ham­pered his depth per­cep­tion enough for him to see a flat­ter world than the one most every­one else does, and thus a world more suit­ed to faith­ful repli­ca­tion on the page or the can­vas.

But the fact Leonar­do that could some­times con­trol his eyes enough to get them into prop­er align­ment, says the study’s author Christo­pher Tyler, would make him “very aware of the 3‑D and 2‑D depth cues and the dif­fer­ence between them.” He came to sus­pect that Leonar­do suf­fered from exotropia — if “suf­fered” is quite the right word here — after notic­ing the align­ment of the eyes in both images con­sid­ered por­traits of the man him­self as well as the por­traits Leonar­do made of oth­ers (on the the­o­ry that the work of an artist will, to an extent, reflect his own char­ac­ter­is­tics). The oph­thal­mo­log­i­cal­ly inclined can judge for them­selves by read­ing Tyler’s paper online. And if oth­er, sim­i­lar stud­ies done in the past also hold up, Leonar­do isn’t alone in art his­to­ry: such fig­ures as Rem­brandt, Picas­so, and Degas have also left behind evi­dence of their pos­si­bly stra­bis­mic vision. We some­times say that artists see the world dif­fer­ent­ly; the great­est artists may take that say­ing to a new lev­el of lit­er­al­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

What Leonar­do da Vin­ci Real­ly Looked Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast