12 ms·

Van Gogh Museum's High-Quality Reproductions

142 points by cwmoore 8y ago

pcurve 8y ago
Art major in me made me giggle when I saw this site. I'm fortunate to live in area with relatively easy access to his paintings, but with such high quality reproduction, it's 'almost' as good as going to museum.
- zerkten 8y ago
  I'm amazed that this is online, but the Van Gogh museum experience was really fantastic. I got back from Amsterdam a little over a week ago and was impressed at how innovative it felt compared to US art museums I've visited. We happened to enter the The Van Gogh Dreams installation (https://vangoghmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/van-gogh-dreams https://vangoghmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/van-gogh-dr...) ahead of the main museum and I found it a very helpful experience before seeing the art.
  - bloodorange 8y ago
    May I recommend the movie "Loving Vincent". Do note that the tale is not a happy one.
    - monkeydust 8y ago
      Watched this on Netflix the other week. Amazing film, worth reading into the production of it to fully appreciate it.
    - TheAdamist 8y ago
      Doctor who's "Vincent and the doctor" is great as well, but a tearjerker of an ending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_and_the_Doctor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_and_the_Doctor
  - rdschouw 8y ago
    Interesting you think that. Van Gogh was a great painter but the museum is really not that good. I went last year. I find most art museums where I live (NYC) more interesting IMHO. They've also a no-photographs-policy and overly aggressive attendants who are just plain annoying.
    - zerkten 8y ago
      Why is the no photographs policy a problem when you can get reproductions online? That piques my interest as a photographer. Off the top of my head, the layout and design of War Photos Limited in Dubrovnik (http://www.warphotoltd.com/ http://www.warphotoltd.com/) offered many more interesting opportunities for an interesting shot.
cwmoore 8y ago
I certainly hope anyone who gets the idea to print these out will take a moment (or a year) to find the originals and appreciate the quality of the paint used before they try to get this impact out of a dot-matrix++ printer. Also, note the rights: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/organisation/conditions-use-and-permissions-of-images https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/organisation/conditions-use-... Edit: removed irrelevant anecdata
diego898 8y ago
This is fantastic. Does anyone know of a tool to download the pictures, titles, and description to display as desktop backgrounds (for this and other museum sites)?
- ilisp 8y ago
  * ArtPip - mac and windows * City Art Search - windows * City Art Search Preview - Windows
- andrepd 8y ago
  For Android there's Muzei.
- crtasm 8y ago
  Scripts created for this site were posted on a previous HN thread. There were also some on the r/datahoarder subreddit.
noir-york 8y ago
Fantastic resource but rendering (post-)impressionist paintings onto a 2d canvas removes a vital element from any such painting - the brushstrokes. I still remember the goose bumps I got when I first saw a Van Gogh for the first time; the paining felt alive. Having said all that, I cannot afford an original Van Gogh so occasional visits to the Musee D'Orsay and Amsterdam will have to do :/
- hyperbovine 8y ago
  Oil paintings can be perfectly reproduced using 3d printing, including the brushstrokes: https://shop.verusart.com/pages/vincent-van-gogh-collection https://shop.verusart.com/pages/vincent-van-gogh-collection The only reason this is not more widely available is due to snobbery and elitism in the fine art world, IMO. Imagine a world in which there were only a single copy of every work of Beethoven.
  - noir-york 8y ago
    Thanks for the link! Didn't know the technology existed. However, browsing the site it appears that only a few (250) repros are made available - such a pity. Hope the tech gets applied more widely.
  - cwmoore 8y ago
    "Perfectly reproduced" is a reach. "Reproduced with relief texture" is more accurate. A key reason these are inferior to hand-painted originals has less to do with snobbery and more to do material qualities of eg. oil paint and hand-stretched canvas. The idea that it is only elites who can tell the difference is an unsupported statement about art appreciation among the general population.
    - noir-york 8y ago
      I have considered getting an artist to reproduce a Van Gogh the old fashioned way - painting it. Never went ahead with the idea but I assume (I am not a painter) that modern high quality oils would allow a reasonably talented artist to repro a Van Gogh to a sufficiently accurate degree. I just need it to "fool" me, not an expert.
kingkingking 8y ago
This is one of the best test comments ever. Its bigly.
DOsinga 8y ago
This is very nice. On the other hand Van Gogh died in 1890 so his work should really be in the public domain. Here the Van Gogh Museum is claiming copyright on the reproductions as a separate work of art and using that to restrict what you can and cannot do with these images.
- VonGuard 8y ago
  They see this like an orchestral recording of an original work, except they are the only ones with the original work...
- Animats 8y ago
  In the US, they can't. See Bridgeman vs. Corel. Despite whining from the museum community, nobody has successfully enforced a copyright on a public domain work in the US since then. This follows the Supreme Court decision in Feist vs. Rural Telephone, which wiped out copyright in telephone books as not being creative works. Bridgeman was followed by Meshwerks vs Toyota, which ruled that 3D scans of an object are not new works.
  - frgewut 8y ago
    But the Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas apparently is a creative replica. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/arts/statue-of-liberty-stamp-copyright-las-vegas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/arts/statue-of-liberty-st...
- LocalH 8y ago
  Yet another example of the modern "maximalist" copyright protection mindset. My opinion is that, if a work is public domain, then any such format-shifting should also be public domain. I don't really see anything transformative in the Museum's usage of Van Gogh's work that would entitle them to protection. I posit that within the next century, we will see the total death of the public domain. There are already those pushing for truly perpetual copyright out there, I ran into one such guy on (of all places) a C64 retro forum.
kough 8y ago
If you zoom in on the image all the way with the controls (to load the highest detail tiles), and then zoom your browser window out all the way, the full-detail image will be rendered at full size and can be saved by right-clicking the canvas and asking to view the image in a new window, then saving that image. I’m currently enjoying a beautiful new desktop background :)
buzz27 8y ago
This is great. Can you point to any other similar sites, where I can download printable high res images of significant or interesting artwork? I found some at the Library of Congress, for example.
- emmelaich 8y ago
  The neighbouring Rijksmuseum has digitised most (all?) of their collection with CC-0. Including Rembrandt's Night Watch: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5 https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5
- Erwin 8y ago
  Google Art Project has quite a lot images, but they use some tiling tool to let you zoom on a super-large image. Some people have "pirated" them and uploaded them here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gigapixel_images_from_the_Google_Art_Project https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gigapixel_images... There are also various scripts around to re-create the image locally, but the first I tried was broken. I have a few of those (and the Dutch museum) loaded cycling up on my Electric Objects display.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  [clickhole warning] https://www.artsy.net/collect?medium=painting&sort=-decayed_merch https://www.artsy.net/collect?medium=painting&sort=-decayed_... http://search.getty.edu/gateway/search?q=&cat=type&r=%22Photographs%22&types=%22Photographs%22&highlights=%22Open%20Content%20Images%22&rows=10&srt=a&dir=s&dsp=0&img=0&pg=1 http://search.getty.edu/gateway/search?q=&cat=type&r=%22Phot... https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/
jimmcslim 8y ago
Seems like Van Gogh makes fairly frequent appearances on these pages. Anyone care to venture why he resonates with the Hacker News crowd so much?
anarchitect 8y ago
I’ve worked on dozens of these “print on demand” programs over the last 10+ years for museums and galleries like Tate, MoMA, The National Gallery etc. They are a fairly standard part of most museum’s retail operations, but this is a particularly nice example. Licensing for fine art reproductions in museum retail can work in very strange ways, even if the work is out of copyright. For example, if a work is not part of the gallery’s collection, permission may be sought from the owner who may or may not own the high res, as well as the estate of the artist. I many cases this is not required as the work is not in copyright, but nobody wants to step out of line.
kjullien 8y ago
On a very related note I'd recommend watching a documentary about replicas : China's Van Goghs a 2016 documentary about a Chinese painter that has made it his life to sell replicas for ~5 bucks a piece that get sold for 500 once in the Netherlands...

142 points by cwmoore 8y ago

Art major in me made me giggle when I saw this site. I'm fortunate to live in area with relatively easy access to his paintings, but with such high quality reproduction, it's 'almost' as good as going to museum.

zerkten 8y ago
I'm amazed that this is online, but the Van Gogh museum experience was really fantastic. I got back from Amsterdam a little over a week ago and was impressed at how innovative it felt compared to US art museums I've visited. We happened to enter the The Van Gogh Dreams installation (https://vangoghmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/van-gogh-dreams https://vangoghmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/van-gogh-dr...) ahead of the main museum and I found it a very helpful experience before seeing the art.
- bloodorange 8y ago
  May I recommend the movie "Loving Vincent". Do note that the tale is not a happy one.
  - monkeydust 8y ago
    Watched this on Netflix the other week. Amazing film, worth reading into the production of it to fully appreciate it.
  - TheAdamist 8y ago
    Doctor who's "Vincent and the doctor" is great as well, but a tearjerker of an ending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_and_the_Doctor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_and_the_Doctor
- rdschouw 8y ago
  Interesting you think that. Van Gogh was a great painter but the museum is really not that good. I went last year. I find most art museums where I live (NYC) more interesting IMHO. They've also a no-photographs-policy and overly aggressive attendants who are just plain annoying.
  - zerkten 8y ago
    Why is the no photographs policy a problem when you can get reproductions online? That piques my interest as a photographer. Off the top of my head, the layout and design of War Photos Limited in Dubrovnik (http://www.warphotoltd.com/ http://www.warphotoltd.com/) offered many more interesting opportunities for an interesting shot.

cwmoore 8y ago

I certainly hope anyone who gets the idea to print these out will take a moment (or a year) to find the originals and appreciate the quality of the paint used before they try to get this impact out of a dot-matrix++ printer. Also, note the rights: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/organisation/conditions-use-and-permissions-of-images https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/organisation/conditions-use-... Edit: removed irrelevant anecdata

diego898 8y ago

This is fantastic. Does anyone know of a tool to download the pictures, titles, and description to display as desktop backgrounds (for this and other museum sites)?

ilisp 8y ago
* ArtPip - mac and windows * City Art Search - windows * City Art Search Preview - Windows
andrepd 8y ago
For Android there's Muzei.
crtasm 8y ago
Scripts created for this site were posted on a previous HN thread. There were also some on the r/datahoarder subreddit.

noir-york 8y ago

Fantastic resource but rendering (post-)impressionist paintings onto a 2d canvas removes a vital element from any such painting - the brushstrokes. I still remember the goose bumps I got when I first saw a Van Gogh for the first time; the paining felt alive. Having said all that, I cannot afford an original Van Gogh so occasional visits to the Musee D'Orsay and Amsterdam will have to do :/

hyperbovine 8y ago
Oil paintings can be perfectly reproduced using 3d printing, including the brushstrokes: https://shop.verusart.com/pages/vincent-van-gogh-collection https://shop.verusart.com/pages/vincent-van-gogh-collection The only reason this is not more widely available is due to snobbery and elitism in the fine art world, IMO. Imagine a world in which there were only a single copy of every work of Beethoven.
- noir-york 8y ago
  Thanks for the link! Didn't know the technology existed. However, browsing the site it appears that only a few (250) repros are made available - such a pity. Hope the tech gets applied more widely.
- cwmoore 8y ago
  "Perfectly reproduced" is a reach. "Reproduced with relief texture" is more accurate. A key reason these are inferior to hand-painted originals has less to do with snobbery and more to do material qualities of eg. oil paint and hand-stretched canvas. The idea that it is only elites who can tell the difference is an unsupported statement about art appreciation among the general population.
  - noir-york 8y ago
    I have considered getting an artist to reproduce a Van Gogh the old fashioned way - painting it. Never went ahead with the idea but I assume (I am not a painter) that modern high quality oils would allow a reasonably talented artist to repro a Van Gogh to a sufficiently accurate degree. I just need it to "fool" me, not an expert.

kingkingking 8y ago

This is one of the best test comments ever. Its bigly.

DOsinga 8y ago

This is very nice. On the other hand Van Gogh died in 1890 so his work should really be in the public domain. Here the Van Gogh Museum is claiming copyright on the reproductions as a separate work of art and using that to restrict what you can and cannot do with these images.

VonGuard 8y ago
They see this like an orchestral recording of an original work, except they are the only ones with the original work...
Animats 8y ago
In the US, they can't. See Bridgeman vs. Corel. Despite whining from the museum community, nobody has successfully enforced a copyright on a public domain work in the US since then. This follows the Supreme Court decision in Feist vs. Rural Telephone, which wiped out copyright in telephone books as not being creative works. Bridgeman was followed by Meshwerks vs Toyota, which ruled that 3D scans of an object are not new works.
- frgewut 8y ago
  But the Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas apparently is a creative replica. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/arts/statue-of-liberty-stamp-copyright-las-vegas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/arts/statue-of-liberty-st...
LocalH 8y ago
Yet another example of the modern "maximalist" copyright protection mindset. My opinion is that, if a work is public domain, then any such format-shifting should also be public domain. I don't really see anything transformative in the Museum's usage of Van Gogh's work that would entitle them to protection. I posit that within the next century, we will see the total death of the public domain. There are already those pushing for truly perpetual copyright out there, I ran into one such guy on (of all places) a C64 retro forum.

kough 8y ago

If you zoom in on the image all the way with the controls (to load the highest detail tiles), and then zoom your browser window out all the way, the full-detail image will be rendered at full size and can be saved by right-clicking the canvas and asking to view the image in a new window, then saving that image. I’m currently enjoying a beautiful new desktop background :)

buzz27 8y ago

This is great. Can you point to any other similar sites, where I can download printable high res images of significant or interesting artwork? I found some at the Library of Congress, for example.

emmelaich 8y ago
The neighbouring Rijksmuseum has digitised most (all?) of their collection with CC-0. Including Rembrandt's Night Watch: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5 https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5
Erwin 8y ago
Google Art Project has quite a lot images, but they use some tiling tool to let you zoom on a super-large image. Some people have "pirated" them and uploaded them here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gigapixel_images_from_the_Google_Art_Project https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gigapixel_images... There are also various scripts around to re-create the image locally, but the first I tried was broken. I have a few of those (and the Dutch museum) loaded cycling up on my Electric Objects display.
kowdermeister 8y ago
[clickhole warning] https://www.artsy.net/collect?medium=painting&sort=-decayed_merch https://www.artsy.net/collect?medium=painting&sort=-decayed_... http://search.getty.edu/gateway/search?q=&cat=type&r=%22Photographs%22&types=%22Photographs%22&highlights=%22Open%20Content%20Images%22&rows=10&srt=a&dir=s&dsp=0&img=0&pg=1 http://search.getty.edu/gateway/search?q=&cat=type&r=%22Phot... https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

jimmcslim 8y ago

Seems like Van Gogh makes fairly frequent appearances on these pages. Anyone care to venture why he resonates with the Hacker News crowd so much?

anarchitect 8y ago

I’ve worked on dozens of these “print on demand” programs over the last 10+ years for museums and galleries like Tate, MoMA, The National Gallery etc. They are a fairly standard part of most museum’s retail operations, but this is a particularly nice example. Licensing for fine art reproductions in museum retail can work in very strange ways, even if the work is out of copyright. For example, if a work is not part of the gallery’s collection, permission may be sought from the owner who may or may not own the high res, as well as the estate of the artist. I many cases this is not required as the work is not in copyright, but nobody wants to step out of line.

kjullien 8y ago

On a very related note I'd recommend watching a documentary about replicas : China's Van Goghs a 2016 documentary about a Chinese painter that has made it his life to sell replicas for ~5 bucks a piece that get sold for 500 once in the Netherlands...