Our Level 4 students are all exploring ways of making art from the concept of 'The City' this term. I have recommended the wonderful daily blog 'Spitalfields Life to them as an inspirational treasure chest of what a City can be when you look at it through its people. Posts have been categorised and can be searched by sections including Night Life, Criminal Life, Past Life, Plant, Animal and Literary Lives to name just some. Today's blog is particularly magical. Read here about a musician and artist exploring the paintings of Giorgione by re-creating them in authentic materials in a beautiful studio in the middle of an abandoned tramshed in Clapton, London.
A sensitive reading of The Night Watch by Guardian writer Jonathan Jones has Rembrandt depicting democracy in action , the assortment of different types of people as night falls assembled to protect their community. Rembrandt's painting is once more on show after 10 years of renovation of the Rijksmuseum hindered access to their marvellous collection.
The Rijksmuseum used imagination and digital technology and the Internet to keep their works as visible as possible whilst the museum was closed. I blogged about one of the ways they used back in November (6th). It comes as no surprise to me therefore to see that, to advertise the reopening, the Museum staged a rather wondrous re-enactment of the Night Watch in a shopping centre.
And here are Jonathan's lovely words about Rembrandt's Night Watch, words that help keep alive for us the idea that art is important ...
"In the 21st century, as democracy and community are beset by menaces from climate change to the violent economics of austerity, The Night Watch ought to be cherished as political art. It portrays not only what the Dutch, but all democracies ought to hold dear – the courage of flawed human beings to come together while acknowledging one another's individuality and difference. It is an icon of tolerance, diversity and the magic golden light that makes a society work. While these ordinary people stand guard, we feel a bit safer in our collective defiance of the dark".
Here at Cardiff Met we offer an MA in Death and Visual Culture and for staff and students of that course and all others interested in the subject here is a link to the wonderful Wellcome Institute Collection covering their current exhibition 'Death: A self-portrait' which runs until 24 February 2013. Events associated with the exhibition including discussion days and a day of films about death are listed here
'(The) exhibition showcases some 300 works from a unique collection devoted to the iconography of death and our complex and contradictory attitudes towards it... including art works, historical artefacts, scientific specimens and ephemera from across the world. '
On show are rare prints by Rembrandt, Dürer and Goya , anatomical drawings, war art and antique metamorphic postcards; human remains , Renaissance vanitas paintings and twentieth century installations celebrating Mexico’s Day of the Dead, ancient Incan skulls and a chandelier made of 3000 plaster-cast bones by British artist Jodie Carey.
The website also offers links including one to 'Stories from the Day hospice' a blog by Chrissie Giles who
throughout the summer of
2012, spent time at the day hospice at Princess Alice
Hospice, Esher, running a creative writing group. In a series of posts
she reflects on her experiences there and showcases some
of the writing produced by group members.
You can also view three extraordinary skulls (two Mexican, one Japanese) from every angle as they revolve on screen.
A book 'Death a Picture Album' accompanies the exhibition.
Girl Reading by Katie Ward comprises seven linked stories set over a period of over 700 years, from 1333 to 2060. Each is an imagined story behind a painting, photo or sculpture. The subject is always a girl, or young woman reading. The pictures are not shown in the book so I have given you the links below.
The stories are also concerned with the changing position of women and the choices they have had during those hundreds of years
Dutch art director Christian Borstlap created this film for the new Rijksmuseum project Rijksstudio. The film includes 211 artworks from the museum's online collection.
Video: Part of a Bigger Plan Music: 'Dreaming' by Allo, Darlin
The Rijksmuseum uses Rijksstudio to make more than
125,000 objects from the collection digitally accessible, free of charge. You can zoom in, share them,
and ‘like’ them. You can also create collections of your own, using your
favourite images and details. Not only that, but the Rijksmuseum is also
inviting you to use these images to create beautiful products.At this resolution, a single detail is still sharp
enough to decorate a car.
This pageshows some examples of other people’s creations and offers links to websites
that supply various forms of printing on demand. Using them you could order wallpaper
, decorate a scooter, have a vinyl foil for your phone, all of them featuring
works of art from the Rijksmuseum
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is internationally renowned
for its collection of art . It offers an overview of world art from
pre-dynastic Egypt to 20th-century Europe, and counts among its many treasures
Greek sculpture and Roman sarcophagi; medieval ivories and Old Master
paintings; Art Deco jewelry and 19th-century European and American
masterpieces.
In 2011, the Walters launched a redesigned works of art website with 10,000 online artwork images freely licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Apart from their image rich website, works of art from this museum have been donated as 19,000 + freely-licensed images to WikimediaCommons. This is one of the largest and most comprehensive such releases made by any museum.
The images and their associated information join the collection
of more than 12 million freely usable media files, which make up the image repository
for Wikipedia.
The
image donation is part of the Walters Museum’s larger initiative to provide
free public access to its collection, both online and offline, beginning with
the removal of admission fees in 2006.
The Mystic Lamb of 1432 by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, known as the Ghent Altarpiece, recently underwent emergency conservation within the Villa Chapel in St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent.
Every inch of the altarpiece was scrutinized and professionally photographed at extremely high resolution in both normal and infrared light.
The photographs were then digitally “stitched” together to create highly detailed images which allow for study of the painting at unprecedented microscopic levels. The website itself contains 100 billion pixels. These high-definition digital images are now available on an interactive digital website, “Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece”
The website features overall photographs of the polyptych in its opened and closed positions, and from there users can zoom closer into the details of individual panels of the altarpiece, down to a microscopic level. Scrolling and zooming features are guided by a thumbnail image to indicate the location and size of the detail on the altarpiece. Users are also able to open two windows simultaneously to compare any two images from the site.
This project, funded by the Getty Foundation ran from April 2010 through June 2011 and consisted of three main segments: an urgent conservation treatment, an assessment of the current condition of the altarpiece, and a campaign of technical documentation. Its goal was to establish whether a full restoration treatment of Van Eyck’s famous polyptych was necessary in the near future, which indeed turned out to be the case.
I have a tendency to walk into walls by mistake-Google Street View makes it inevitable. I just can't get the little man to walk a straight line.
Google have a new project-'The Art Project'-like Tesco they get everywhere and try most things. Today it's taking you on a tour of the World's museums (well some of them). As well as being able to view some lovely quality artworks -you can zoom in to see minute details, you can elect to walk around the Museum they are hung in using Google Street View technology. The only trouble is that (due to Copyright restrictions) as you walk (if you can manage to not start walking up walls by mistake or keeling over at odd angles (me) most of the paintings appear 'blurry' (as Google puts it). This makes the experience of visiting the Tretyakov Gallery similar to how it would be after some Black Market home brewed vodka. It's safer to navigate via the floor plan feature. Certainly there is a wealth of information tucked into this website including Youtube videos, audio tours and text information about the works. You can also search for more works by a particular artist across all the museums.
(thanks to Gina for this one)
Google Art Project contributing museums (so far)
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
National Gallery, London - UK
Palace of Versailles - France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
The Royal Academy Winter loan Exhibition catalogues (1870-1913 ) have been digitised and are now available online via the RA Collections section of the Royal Academy Website. http://www.racollection.org.uk/
In 1870, coinciding with its move to Burlington House, the RA began organising an annual loan exhibition of Old Masters and works by recently deceased British artists, known from its inception and for many years as the Winter Exhibition.
Go to the RA Collections page . This website contains images of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, historic books, archives, historic photographs and plaster casts owned by the Royal Academy. A special section on Constable includes a video on his treatment of weather and light.
For the Winter Loan catalogues click on the Exhibition Catalogue link (in a list top right) to view thumbnail images of the title pages of each catalogue. Click on a thumbnail image to display a large image of the title-page. Use the Next & Previous buttons to browse through the catalogue. You can also enter search terms in the Search within the catalogue box to search for artists, titles and lenders within the catalogue. This will display a list of the pages on which your search terms were found.
Below the catalogue pages you will also find thumbnail images of some of the works that were exhibited in the exhibitions. Clicking on a thumbnail image will take you to a page displaying a larger image and more information about that work.
