Tuesday, December 27

Van Gogh's Bedroom: Painting's reproductions in danger






These details of Van Gogh's bedroom, and the Bible of his "L'Arlesienne, this post, are great examples of the way reproductions by internet could give a more accurate notion of how a painting is seen in reality.

Unfortunately these are rare even thou now people go to museums with cameras but they prefer taking a picture of themselves next to their favorite or most famous paintings they find.
When only paper was available and a single picture of a painting was published in different books there was always a great disappointment in front of the real canvas. I felt fulled.

When I saw this version of Van Gogh's bedroom for the first time I questioned everything I knew about all the artists I had never saw at least five original works.
I could never imagine that the brushstrokes were that sick and he used impasto.
I could not take my eyes from the pillows and, sorry conservation team, I touched the left pillow because I simply could not restrain this impulse.

What I'm witnessing now is a degradation of images of paintings.
There are several sites selling famous masterpieces by repainting them and they are found at search engineers as the first answers if one looks for an artist.

People are publishing these paintings as originals over blogs because they rush to publish the first picture without reading they are fake and has little to do with the original. Usually the colors are different or brighten to make it more appealing giving that plastic flower effect on the table instead of the real one.
It is getting harder and harder to find a good reproduction over the www.

Most museums, I thought they would promote their masterpieces through the web, are not helping publishing good images and are more interested in using interactive experiences that only change angles in a suspicious 3D environments, or other kind of interaction.

In same cases, they don't publish 10% of what they have and are always inviting us to go to their next exhibition even though we are at the other side of the ocean.
For the moment I'll watch these two Bedroom's details: look that, as he said in a letter to Theo, he uses green at the pillows and a little bit of white.