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