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BS: Web Art Update
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Subject: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 08 Oct 05 - 09:31 PM BS: Web Art Update Previous threads gave links to several "web art museum" resources on the web. Try BS: Fine Art Resources for most of them. I haven't rechecked all the links posted in that thread but I think most of them should still be good. As is common now, the thread has lots of out of order posts, so read carefully if questions come up. The purpose here is to point out that what has sort of become my favorite (at least most often visited) art site, the Art Renewal Center (.org), had 3 or 4 hundred artists and less than 20,000 images when I started looking about 3 years ago, but has been adding stuff regularly, and now stands at: …………………….artists :: 4,954 …………………….images :: 58,330 I think, if the truth be known, that they count thumbnails and large images as two separate images, but that's still a lot of art The ARC web museum is running at about 10,000,000 hits per year from around 5,000,000 visitors. So far as I can tell, I've looked at ALL of the thumbnails – but it's taken me three years or so to do it. I don't recommend that method to others. One reason for less frequent visits to other sites is that ARC now has most of the same "standard works" that you previously had to shop around for. Often they're the same images found on other sites – usually appropriately credited. Frequently they're a better resolution, or cleaned up for better color presentation. Many of the artists and images now at ARC are not available, or available only by searching one image at a time, elsewhere on the web. Many of the artist pages include biographical info not otherwise easily available, and quite a lot of them have multiple "biopic" pictures of the artists. You can go to The Art Renewal Center which is the "home page." They still are crusading for "restoring respect for" the specific kinds of art favored by "Fred," so there's still quite a lot of feverish commentary, but there are also links there to a lot of "special features." Just ignore the political stuff if it doesn't suit you. Those who just want to browse might want to look at the 225 most visited list, where the "hits per artist" for the 225 most frequently visited artists at ARC, with links, are shown. It's not surprising, since ARC is about the only place you can find his work and "Fred" likes him, that William Bouguereau leads the list. Raphael comes in fourth, and Rembrandt is at number 7, just ahead of da Vinci. The first living artist I spot, without looking too hard, is Juliette Aristides at number 49. You can also go directly to the Museum Content for a list of artists with links to their works. Note that you can choose to sort the list by Name, Date of Birth, Date of Death, or by Number of Works Posted. (By number of works, John Singer Sargent leads, with 429, although he's number 6 on the "popularity hit list." Albrecht Dürer is second at 263, 16th on the popularity list.) There are about 34 web pages of artist listings now, about 150 per page. Those specifically interested in currently working artists may go directly to the Living Masters Gallery. There's only about 40 of them, so this is a quick(?) tour. Note that a recent change in policy means that large images by living artists (or recently deceased ones whose survivors have copyright) can be displayed but can't be saved (easily). In most cases you can right-click on the thumbnail and save it. You'll often get a better quality image from thumbnails here than from "large images" elsewhere on the web. One thing missing at ARC is a way to search for artists by subject matter, but that's true of nearly all the other good sites as well. While I can assure you that there are lots of landscapes, lots of sailing ships, plenty of portraits, etc., you'll almost need to know the name of the artist to find the ones who specialized. While I have some notes (mostly made as I reviewed recent additions) from which I could theoretically extract some representative samples for some subjects, that sounds like a lot of work to me. Even my list of the 1,000 or so artists who've represented "naked" would require some organizing. Working artists – who teach – can get the application to have their own atelier "accredited" by ARC at Application Procedure. It's a bit "pricey" for part timers, but seems to have been good for those who've been listed. You do have to like "their kind of art." Those not quite that interested can enter the annual contest. Details for the current (coming) contest don't appear to have been posted yet, but you can get an idea of whether you're interested at Annual Competition. The sidebar samples here from recent winners show some pretty good stuff, although there are direct links to the full competition reports elsewhere. Theoretically, you can order a "good print" of any image on the site, although there probably are cheaper places to get "fairly good prints." Happy browsing. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: Desert Dancer Date: 09 Oct 05 - 01:48 PM Doesn't posting a linked list of the most visited images render it self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing? Just a thought. Interesting site. ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: Desert Dancer Date: 09 Oct 05 - 02:12 PM Bizarre art politics. ~ B in T |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 09 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM Becky - I think making it self-reinforcing may in fact be part of the reason the list was posted. It does reflect the "political" purpose of the site, but it's one of the places where visitors, especially new ones, can get a good slice of "what's up" without a lot of in-your-face advocacy. The site is too large now for most people to just jump in and see what it's about. Since the list is there, it provides a place where those who aren't looking for a specific artist can get a "short sample" of what's available. I don't see a problem with suggesting that people start with what other people have looked at most. I would think that many of our people here would be interested in the link to the "Living Masters" pages as well. It's another "short list" that gives a pretty good impression of where the site is trying to go (what kind of art) with its encouragement of living artists. The range of styles there is somewhat narrower than for the site as a whole, although still with good variety. (There's not much demand currently for etchings and engravings, or for those charming little "watercolor on ivory" lockets people used to put in their pocket to remind them of their loveys; but these, and other,styles are amply represented in the museum.) John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 10 Oct 05 - 06:07 PM Since the thread only stayed up for the weekend, a refresh for those who read at the office. (You don't have to admit it.) John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 10 Oct 05 - 11:32 PM Dead? Food for Worms? Shuffeled off this mortal coil with Shuffelotomus?
Where are services?
A bouquet of bracken will be sent.
Sincerely,
Please, Art, die soon, calla-lilies become expensive in the fall. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: Desert Dancer Date: 11 Oct 05 - 12:11 AM I typed another reply last night, but my keyboard batteries were crapping out and with multiple browser windows open, in my frustration I lost my post. I checked out the "living artists" list. I thought the range of content was interesting: from fairly photographic (and to me, uninteresting) portraiture, through nostaligic mimicry of 19th century romantic themes, to more creative (and interesting) things. Too bad about the missing etchings. ;-) My grandfather, Frank A. Nankivell, and his daughter (my father's half-sister, Edith) were artists whose first love was printmaking, though they both worked in oils, as well (oil portraiture was bread and butter for my grandfather, he also did illustration and cartooning, and printing for other artists). My grandfather was working when Modernism reared its ugly head, and was tempted by the dark side: he was involved with the New York Armory exhibition of 1913. I'd call most of his work impressionistic, though. Here's a pre-Armory print, that was in the exhibition. Here's a painting that's almost certainly post-Armory (and that my family didn't know about until a curator contacted them for this recent show). I think it's great. My aunt stuck to realism, though her paintings are somewhat impressionistic. She always considered herself a lesser talent. Here's a print of hers. Of course, neither of them really drifted into modern abstract art, everything's representational. For myself, lately I'm really into Andy Goldsworthy. :-) ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 11 Oct 05 - 02:06 AM Becky - I've looked through the Armory exhibition before, although it's been a while. There is some good stuff there, and I may have to go back. The "quick look" just now wasn't too thoruogh. Thanks for the reminder. I'm afraid my own tastes would pick your aunt's print as "most likely to be hung at home," but that's just a personal proclivity. The etchings are "missing" only from the "Living Masters" group. The ARC Museum has quite a few, by a variety of artists. One sort of special example is a fairly large group of Gustave Doré illustrations for Dante - at very high resolution for web pictures. At about 1/2 MB each, they were too much of a challenge for my slow connection to look at all of them at the HiRes size, and besides I'd read the book. (About 70 of the 79 Doré works there are from this series - with associated text and footnotes. In some of the HiRes images you can even see where he "erased" the mis-scratches.) My notes show recent additions to artists for about a dozen for whom I've noted that the works posted include etchings. Since I wasn't looking for etchings, I probably missed some; and I didn't start making notes until the updates started to overwhelm me so I don't have subject notes for ones I looked at earlier that haven't had recent changes. There are, in fact, a number of "impressionists" (at least in name) in the museum, with some good bio information on several. They don't go far into the "abstract" movements though. I'll have to look for whether your gandpa pops up in any of the bio data there - since there are scattered citations on a whole lot of artists from the time of the beginnings and early development of impressionism. (I forgot to look. Maybe he's there.) John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: Jim Dixon Date: 11 Oct 05 - 07:08 PM Those who are enjoying this thread might also enjoy one I stared awhile back: Paintings of folk musicians and dancers. I'd be delighted if anyone could add some good links—or even just titles and artists—to that list. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 12 Oct 05 - 01:41 AM Jim D – I should have remembered that one before starting the Folksongs in Art thread up above. I was looking for a something a bit different – artworks that directly refer to a particular legend/lore/song. There have been some good suggestions there, but I'm hoping for lots more. Possibly most stuff in that thread would be applicable to your more general one. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: Desert Dancer Date: 02 Nov 05 - 11:37 PM Here's another site linking to several online collections of fine art: InSight Visual Collections: Fine Art. I haven't actually browsed, yet. To you use the InSight browser, you have to disable any pop-up blockers you might have on (such as in Firefox). ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 03 Nov 05 - 01:13 AM Becky - Looks like a lot of stuff there. The couple of individual collections I looked at descriptions on appear to have some pretty good selections. I'm afraid the Insight browser may present some problems for my setup, so I'm not sure whether I'll decide to change my setup to do any deep probing. My normal popup blocker, for most situations, pops up a header notice when a popup is offered and then allows me to click the notice and tell it whether to allow the popup and continue with the page. If I allow popups just for the page, or for the site, I don't get too uncomfortable about it. The Insight browser pops up a notice that I must enable popups, but locks my browser so that I can't unblock just for that site. The only thing I can do is cancel Insight's notice, which disconnects me. It doesn't appear that I can even copy the URL for the page where the Insight notice appears, in order easily to go back in and manually permit popups selectively for that page/site. Apparently, the only practical approach is to turn off your popup blocker completely, for all sites, in order to get in. The blocker I normally use is integral with my firewall, and essentially it means I have to turn off my firewall to get in. I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that; but I'll consider it. The Insight IE setup also gives instructions that do not apply, as written, to any recent (3 versions or more, at least) version of IE. This doesn't give me a warm feeling about changing all my IE security setup just to get into their images. I probably will make a try at it, but the Insight index obviously is set up by Insight, and shows only sites using their browser. A JAVA option apparently is offered, but that's a lot of work to turn on too. From inside a university network, I'd be less concerned; but I'm exposed to the whole big bad internet with only my own security controls/settings for protection. It will take a while to decide how far I want to go with it. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 Feb 06 - 06:50 AM Since this thread started in October of 2005, the ARC webmuseum has added 156 new artists and another 2,900 images Recent rather large additions to a few individual artists' galleries at ARC have made impressive(?) collections available for a specific couple of artists that may be of interest to a few people. As my tastes seem to differ significantly from what others favor, it's just a guess that someone might be interested in: Winslow Homer born 1836 - died 1910 now at 207 images. There's little I can say about paintings by Winslow Homer except that these are a lot like what one expects of Winslow Homer, although with a sample of this size someone may find some subjects they hadn't realized he'd painted. I do like his work, but it's not what I'd hang around the house in any quantity. There have been a fairly large number of additions of artists from the same, or related, "schools," but they're too numerous to attempt to cite here. Mary Cassatt born 1844 - died 1926 now at 185 images Another artist who seems to be popular with many people. Her work is appealing but a bit outside the focus of my own "studies." The Cassatt gallery has nearly doubled in recent months, although many of the newer images are pastels that are less finished than her best known oils. A few images show the effects of some less than ideal storage, and quite a few may have been "studies" not intended as finished works; but there are many charming examples of a variety of little rug rats hanging upon their mothers… … … . Gustave Doré born 6 January 1832 - died 25 January 1883 97 images. Although there have been no large numbers of additions recently, a few people might want a reminder of the large collection of very high resolution images of Doré's illustrations for Dante's The Divine Comedy. A couple of people have recently posted comments surreptitiously quoting captions from some of these – in the BS threads – so they may be as well known as is necessary. You too can know where they come from, and will be able to quote impressively. The Doré images include a few other kinds of things in addition to his book illustrations. (Note: the quotes are extensive, and include some citation notes. There is a separate link to an "explanation of citations.") ******** A fairly recent change in policy at ARC has blocked download of "large images" for all living artists, and for a few recently deceased ones where there could be © conflicts. You can still save the thumbnails, and in many cases they're better than what's available elsewhere. A couple of live ones with fairly large recent additions: Robin Buick born 1940 now at 51 images New images not much different that those previously shown, but they do indicate some different settings where his statues have been installed. Mario A. Robinson (living, but no d.o.b. given) at 43 images A somewhat "different" artist, possibly with great appeal to a few for his subject matter. Mario does mostly pastel, particularly portraits and small scenes, and apparently specializes in subjects from his local community. Han-Wu Shen born 1950 - 75 images Also see at: Han-Wu Shen at Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery Shen has officially immigrated to US from China within the past month or so, but has been fairly well known internationally for a few years, and has received impressive honors in China. Large images at the Cordair Fine Arts Gallery include some of the same paintings as are at ARC. The larger images at Cordair can be downloaded, but are marked with © notes and are a bit smaller than typical ARC large images. Many of the living artists whose images, other than thumbnails, can't be saved from ARC have their own websites where "reference copies" of fairly good resolution can be saved. (And there are many more living artists in the ARC collections.) There have been large numbers of lesser known (so far as I know) realist artists (and some impressionists) added recently, and for anyone who can tell one sailing ship from another, or one sailing ship artist from another, it should be a good place to look for 18th to early 20th century artists. Similar comment applies to "workers in fields" and "mountain and lake landscapes" and "period domestic scenes," "portraits," etc. As I can't tell one from another generally, the index is at: Index of Artists, by Name (5,110 Artists, 61,156 Images) You can sort the Index by name, date of birth, date of death, country (sometimes loosely defined) and by number of images at ARC. Unfortunately there's no Title index to the works included in the collections. You can search by artist name, but unfortunately not by title or subject. The default sort withing an individual artist's gallery is by "quality" as judged rather loosely by ARC "experts." You can change the order of display there to sort by date of posting or by image title, although the alphabetical sort is rather crude. If you need to look for an artwork by title, a reminder that ArtCyclopedia still does a fair job of indexing "traditional" web art galleries, and can be searched in several modes. This site also has a number of "canned" searches by various categories that may be of interest to those who haven't looked recently. ******* An incidental note: The San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, which has an excellent selection, has always "inhibited" saving of their enlarged images. They appear recently have converted all enlarged images to a "Flash" display that even evades leaving useful traces in places suited to more "arcane" capture methods….I haven't seen other sites using this method, but there are some I would suspect of being "interested," so getting and saving favorites before others catch on seems something to consider… (where one can do it honestly, of course). John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: CarolC Date: 27 Feb 06 - 10:04 AM That's a wonderful source for paintings of people using realism. I'm a big fan of realism in art myself. But it saddens me that the site owners consider humans to be the only subjects worth painting. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 Feb 06 - 10:21 AM CaroleC - That's not at all the case. I just happen to like that sort of stuff, so it's what I noticed and linked. In fact it gets rather boring, for me, tracking all the "new" postings that don't include humans, or include them only incidentally. Is there a particular sort of subject you'd prefer? John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: CarolC Date: 27 Feb 06 - 10:49 AM I like everything. Still life, landscape, flowers, trompe l'oeil. The reason I got that impression was because I thought I read something from the site owner saying that the site was for paintings with human subjects. Maybe I misunderstood. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Web Art Update From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 Feb 06 - 11:26 AM It's true that the "realists" generally consider the human form as one of the "really good subjects," but I can assure you there are a good number of still life artists represented. Occasionally there's even one who did something other than pots full of flowers (usually dead animals?). Most of those who specialized in still life don't have as many images up, per artist, as the ones who took on more varied subjects. One "©ARC Living Master" who does a fair percentage in still life paintings is Timothy Tyler. (Try at about page 4 or 5 of the Tyler Gallery.) Fred took a "special interest" in him, so there's a rather overblown (IMO) "analysis" of one of his paintings (which Fred bought) up front, but stills are about half(or a third?) of his 53 images at ARC. And there's a seemingly endless parade of artists who painted nothing but "tall masted sailing ships." Sometimes the waves go one way, and sometimes it's 'tother, but I can't tell one from the next. Several omit the ships and just painted the waves. There are some fairly large collections of "Hudson Bay School" artists, and a lot of one- or two-painting artists of that school, who painted glorious landscapes, with nary a soul in them. Scots and Dutch painters also seem to be well represented in the landscape specialists. Venitian and other Roman landscapes seem to be the entire output of a number of artists represented there. Scenes of Paris seem usually to have a few "figures" in them, but they're often rather incidental to the architecture. Several "Orientalists" omit the harems ($%@#!) and seem to have painted only deserts and buildings. There are a few artists who specialized in animals, either domestic or exotic, and a fair number who seem to have painted only horses. (The latter also suggest that no 19th century British artist ever actually saw a horse, but maybe the Brits do/did breed them malformed that way - at least for racing.) John |
