What pos­sessed the man who attacked Rembrandt’s The Night Watch with a bread knife in 1975, “jab­bing two-foot-long knife marks into the sur­face,” as Nina Sie­gal writes at The New York Times, “cut­ting a sev­en-foot-wide hole, and rip­ping off a sec­tion of the can­vas”? This was not the first time the paint­ing had been man­gled. In 1715, just a lit­tle over 70 years after the mon­u­men­tal work’s 1642 com­ple­tion, the Ams­ter­dam city gov­ern­ment decid­ed to move it, and removed a sig­nif­i­cant part to shrink it down for eas­i­er trans­port. The miss­ing top and left por­tions have nev­er been recov­ered.

It sur­vived intact for two cen­turies then faced its first knife attack in 1911. Then it sur­vived two World Wars only to endure the sec­ond attack. Then, in 1990, it was set upon by a man armed with sul­phuric acid.

Thanks to the quick think­ing of a Rijksmu­se­um guard, only the painting’s var­nish sus­tained injury. These are just some of the facts we learn in the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary Expe­ri­ence The Night Watch, a joint cre­ation of NTR TV chan­nel and the Ams­ter­dam Rijksmu­se­um.

You can read or hear the painting’s his­to­ry in Dutch or Eng­lish, learn the names of the his­tor­i­cal fig­ures depict­ed in it, learn about Rembrandt’s com­mand of com­po­si­tion and chiaroscuro, and much more. (Enter the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary here.) The painter’s mas­ter­ful, dra­mat­ic use of light and shad­ow to cre­ate a sense of depth—probably the most famous exam­ple of his use of the technique—is respon­si­ble for the painting’s usu­al title, since most of its view­ers have assumed that the assem­bled vol­un­teer mili­tia depict­ed in it came togeth­er in the dead of night. (The shad­ows had dark­ened con­sid­er­ably over the years until a thick lay­er of var­nish was removed in the 1940s.)

But Rembrandt’s mas­ter­piece was orig­i­nal­ly called Mili­tia Com­pa­ny of Dis­trict II under the Com­mand of Cap­tain Frans Ban­ninck Cocq, and it records not a troop of sea­soned sol­diers but a gentleman’s shoot­ing com­pa­ny, one of the bands of civic guards that had “effec­tive­ly devel­oped into a social club for well-to-do cit­i­zens” who would “turn up most­ly as cer­e­monies or to quell minor riots.” Each of the men memo­ri­al­ized paid to have his like­ness includ­ed. We may nev­er have known their names except that in 1715 they were added inside a shield paint­ed by an anony­mous artist for some rea­son. The work is full of oth­er such mys­ter­ies.

Who is the small girl in white, bathed in angel­ic light, to whom our eyes are inevitably drawn? “She does not have any trace­able iden­ti­ty,” our nar­ra­tor tells us, “she is Rembrandt’s inven­tion,” a sym­bol of the com­pa­ny. And yet behind her, almost com­plete­ly shroud­ed, is anoth­er girl, iden­ti­ty unknown, who most of us would prob­a­bly nev­er have noticed had she not been point­ed out. “In The Night Watch,” we dis­cov­er, “noth­ing is what it seems.”

Learn more of the painting’s secrets at the online doc­u­men­tary project here, see sim­i­lar­ly inter­ac­tive art his­to­ries from NTR on M.C. Esch­er and Hierony­mus Bosch, and, above, lis­ten to an Art­sy pod­cast fea­tur­ing Rijksmu­se­um cura­tor Pieter Roelofs and oth­er Rem­brandt experts who explain what makes The Night Watch so wild­ly famous that more than one per­son has felt dri­ven to destroy it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

Enter an Online Inter­ac­tive Doc­u­men­tary on M.C. Escher’s Art & Life, Nar­rat­ed By Peter Green­away

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The lines of the descent from the plu­to­crat­ic wealth and auto­crat­ic pow­er of the late 19th cen­tu­ry to the worst atroc­i­ties of the ear­ly 20th might seem appar­ent to some peo­ple. So too can we trace from the Gild­ed Age an insti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of mon­u­ments to art, cul­ture, and high­er learn­ing unique to mod­ern times. Whether by virtue of greed, guilt, or noblesse oblige, or some of all of the above, wealthy indus­tri­al­ists sought to show—as Andrew Carnegie wrote in his “Gospel of Wealth”—that “the hous­es of some should be homes for all that is high­est and best in lit­er­a­ture and the arts, and for all the refine­ments of civ­i­liza­tion.”

The trea­sures of world cul­ture were donat­ed back to the world, but the proud benef­i­cence of their givers lived on in the insti­tu­tions. In the case of Cleve­land tele­graph mag­nate Jeptha Wade, who was him­self a daguerreo­typ­ist and por­trait painter, the mem­o­ry of the gen­er­ous gift con­tin­ues in Wade Park, home of the Fine Arts Gar­den and the Cleve­land Muse­um of Art, cre­at­ed from his bequest.

Now, over 125 years lat­er, Wade’s patron­age lives on online. “Brace your­self for some meme-wor­thy Egypt­ian cats and gif-able Renais­sance babies,” as Zachary Small jokes at Hyper­al­ler­gic.

The muse­um has just announced its dig­i­tal col­lec­tion with a poignant quote from its founder declar­ing it an eter­nal dona­tion to humankind: “The state­ment ‘for the ben­e­fit of all the peo­ple for­ev­er’ was writ­ten into Jeptha Wade’s 1892 deed of gift for the land on which the muse­um stands… reflect­ing its founders’ belief that muse­ums should be places for inspi­ra­tion and for cre­at­ing won­der and mean­ing in people’s lives.”

This may sound like osten­ta­tious rhetoric, but the announce­ment also tells us that its free dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is “using Open Access,” which means “the pub­lic now has the abil­i­ty to share, remix, and reuse images of as many as 30,000 CMA art­works—“near­ly half of the museum’s entire col­lec­tion,” notes Small—are now “in the pub­lic domain for com­mer­cial as well as schol­ar­ly and non­com­mer­cial pur­pos­es.” Take even a small sam­pling of their open col­lec­tions and you may find more than enough inspi­ra­tion, won­der, and mean­ing.

Take, for exam­ple, Van Gogh’s The Large Plane Trees, J.M.W. Turner’s The Burn­ing of the Hous­es of Lords and Com­mons, El Greco’s The Holy Fam­i­ly with Mary Mag­dalen, and Edouard Manet’s Berthe Morisot. Take work from Rem­brandt, Velázquez, Mon­et, Cezanne, Car­avag­gio, Pis­sar­ro, Degas, Rubens, Poussin, Rodin. Take mas­ter­ful works like ancient Egypt­ian New King­dom Head of Amen­hotep II Wear­ing the Blue Crown and Timurid peri­od Iran­ian Roy­al Recep­tion in a Land­scape—as well as many from cen­tral Africa, Chi­na, India, Japan and Korea.

The Open Access col­lec­tion has swelled to over 34,000 images that can be down­loaded as jpgs or high-res­o­lu­tion tiffs. These and over 60,000 more online works come with descrip­tions, cita­tions, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ries, and more. What­ev­er con­flu­ence of his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary events brought Cleve­land’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion into being, it does indeed seem to be for the great ben­e­fit of a great num­ber of inter­net-con­nect­ed peo­ple around the world. Take full advan­tage of its new­ly pub­lic resources here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Google Puts Over 57,000 Works of Art on the Web

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

Vin­cent van Gogh nev­er went to Japan, but he did spend quite a bit of time in Arles, which he con­sid­ered the Japan of France. What made him think of the place that way had to do entire­ly with aes­thet­ics. The Nether­lands-born painter had moved to Paris in 1886, but two years lat­er he set off for the south of France in hopes of find­ing real-life equiv­a­lents of the “clear­ness of the atmos­phere and the gay colour effects” of Japan­ese prints. These days, we’ve all seen at least a few exam­ples of that kind of art and can imag­ine more or less exact­ly what he was talk­ing about. But how did the man who paint­ed Sun­flow­ers and The Star­ry Night come to draw such inspi­ra­tion from what must have felt like such exot­ic art of such dis­tant a prove­nance?

“There was huge admi­ra­tion for all things Japan­ese in the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry,” says the Van Gogh Muse­um’s visu­al essay on the painter’s rela­tion­ship with Japan. “Very few artists in the Nether­lands stud­ied Japan­ese art. In Paris, by con­trast, it was all the rage. So it was there that Vin­cent dis­cov­ered the impact Ori­en­tal art was hav­ing on the West, when he decid­ed to mod­ernise his own art.”

Hav­ing got a deal on about 660 Japan­ese wood­cuts in the win­ter of 1886–87, appar­ent­ly with an intent to trade them, he ulti­mate­ly held on to them, copied them, and even used their ele­ments as back­grounds for his own por­traits.

“My studio’s quite tol­er­a­ble,” he wrote to his broth­er Theo, “main­ly because I’ve pinned a set of Japan­ese prints on the walls that I find very divert­ing. You know, those lit­tle female fig­ures in gar­dens or on the shore, horse­men, flow­ers, gnarled thorn branch­es.” More than a diver­sion, he saw in their rad­i­cal dif­fer­ence from the rig­or­ous­ly real­is­tic, con­ven­tion-bound tra­di­tion­al Euro­pean paint­ing a way toward “the art of the future,” which he was con­vinced “had to be colour­ful and joy­ous, just like Japan­ese print­mak­ing.” As he devel­oped what he called a “Japan­ese eye” while liv­ing in Arles, “his com­po­si­tions became flat­ter, more intense in colour, with clear lines and dec­o­ra­tive pat­terns.”

The Van Gogh Muse­um has dig­i­tized and made avail­able to down­load Van Gogh’s Japan­ese art col­lec­tion, or at least most of them: you can read about the hun­dred or so “miss­ing” works here, and you can view the 500 the muse­um has retained here. Every time you reload the front page, the selec­tion it presents reshuf­fles; oth­er­wise, you can browse the col­lec­tion by sub­ject, per­son and insti­tu­tion, tech­nique, object type, and style. Some of the best-rep­re­sent­ed cat­e­gories include land­scape, actor print, spring, and female beau­ty. Whether the Japan-inspired Van Gogh (or col­leagues who shared his inter­est, chiefly Paul Gau­guin) suc­ceed­ed in cre­at­ing the art of the future is up to art his­to­ri­ans to debate, but no one who sees his col­lec­tion of Japan­ese art will ever be able to unsee its influ­ence on his own work. Not that Van Gogh did­n’t admit it him­self: “All my work,” he wrote in a lat­er let­ter to Theo, “is based to some extent on Japan­ese art.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

The Van Gogh of Microsoft Excel: How a Japan­ese Retiree Makes Intri­cate Land­scape Paint­ings with Spread­sheet Soft­ware

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

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.

“I could do that” goes the refrain of philistines at mod­ern art gal­leries, some­times fol­lowed by a “Hell, my dog/cat/baby/elephant could do that!” Sophis­ti­cates smirk know­ing smirks. Oh no, sir or madam, they most cer­tain­ly could not. But maybe every­one, at some lev­el, comes across Agnes Martin’s White Stone or Jo Baer’s Unti­tled (White Square Laven­der) and thinks it looks like some­one “just took a tube of white paint and spread it on a can­vas.”

It’s tempt­ing to imag­ine, notes Vox in the explain­er video above, but “it’s not actu­al­ly that easy.”

Oh, real­ly? Enlight­en us…. Why exact­ly did Robert Ryman’s all-white paint­ing Bridge sell for $20.6 mil­lion dol­lars? This ques­tion may be answered in anoth­er video. Here, we get a lit­tle bit of art history—on the ori­gins of the all-white paint­ing in the min­i­mal­ism of Kaz­imir Male­vich (he pre­ferred to call it “Supre­ma­tism”) and the devel­op­ment of Min­i­mal­ism, cap­i­tal “M.”

Elis­a­beth Sher­man, assis­tant cura­tor at the Whit­ney Muse­um in New York says that “white isn’t ever a pure thing, white is always tint­ed in some way.” Of course we know this, she acknowl­edges, because we’ve mar­veled at the dozens of shades of white in the paint sec­tion of the hard­ware store. Attend to the sub­tle gra­da­tions of white, from warm to cool, and the range of tex­tures, lines, pat­terns, shapes, and “sub­tle intri­ca­cies,” and the all-white paint­ing begins to reveal itself as an almost liv­ing, breath­ing thing rather than a piece of dec­o­ra­tive dry­wall.

Art his­tor­i­cal­ly, the vari­ety of white paint­ings came about prin­ci­pal­ly in the 50s as a response to Abstract Expressionism’s emo­tion­al excess­es and the out­sized ges­tur­al per­son­al­i­ties of De Koon­ing and Pol­lock. Artists like Bauhaus alum Josef Albers and Min­i­mal­ist purist Frank Stel­la pro­posed that “the art object” should “be as far removed from the author as pos­si­ble.” No greater an attack could be launched on the idea of art as per­son­al expres­sion than the all-white paint­ing.

This ten­den­cy toward total abstraction—reducing art to fields of col­or, non-col­or, and sim­ple shapes—has made a lot of peo­ple very upset. Vox includes sev­er­al clips of “men get­ting angry” at Min­i­mal­ist art. The word “pre­ten­tious” pops up a lot. The all-white paint­ing has even inspired a play, Yas­mi­na Reza’s Art, about “a group of life­long friends who are torn apart when one of them buys an all-white paint­ing for $200,000.”

As for “I could do that”… in near­ly every show she’s worked on in her career as a cura­tor, Sher­man remarks, “some­one has said that.” Well, she says, yes, maybe you could. “But you didn’t.” So there. If look­ing at an all-white paint­ing (or an all-black paint­ing) makes you feel angry, annoyed, or dis­mis­sive, maybe, she says, try and get beyond that first impres­sion and engage with the sub­tleties of the work. And maybe don’t ask how much the muse­um paid for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Puts Online a Huge Col­lec­tion of Bauhaus Art Objects

Watch At the Muse­um, MoMA’s 8‑Part Doc­u­men­tary on What it Takes to Run a World-Class Muse­um

The Tree of Mod­ern Art: Ele­gant Draw­ing Visu­al­izes the Devel­op­ment of Mod­ern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

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