It’s nice to start the new year by looking forward, but it can be just as instructive to look back; and there are some great resources that make looking back easier and more fruitful than ever.

Project Gutenberg is a great idea. Not just in the sense of “great” as “terrific”, but in the sense of “great” as “milestone” or “extraordinary”.

If you’re not familiar with it, Project Gutenberg is an attempt to digitize and archive as many public domain cultural works as possible (as opposed to archiving technical information). Started in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, and maintained and contributed to by thousands of volunteers, the archive already contains the full text of more then 20,000 books that are old enough to have moved into the public domain.

These are archived as free eBooks in several formats, Plucker a format that can be read on a Palm device or smartphone with the open source Plucker Viewer; HTML, which can be read online or downloaded as a Zip file; and plain text in ascii and utf-8 encodings. There are also audio books, sheet music and pictures.

Even though the length of time it takes for a book to become public domain was extended by the Copyright Term Extension Act, as the result of intensive lobbying by Disney and other corporate entertainment barons (hence its nickname as The Mickey Mouse Protection Act because the change happened as MM was about to slip into public domain), there are still a number of books in the archive printed after color printing became economical enough to include good reproductions of illustrations and other paintings, in addition to the older pen and ink illustrations.

Unfortunately, the weak link in the Project Gutenberg chain seems to be that the scanning and preparation of many illustrated books for the archive has apparently been done by individuals with no knowledge of graphic arts basics, and/or by brain damaged rhesus monkeys, resulting in the frustrating presence of a number archived illustrated books in which the illustrations are dark, blurry, over-compressed smears, or ratty, scratchy GIF files. (The latter is sadly the state of their archive of the wonderful John Tenniel illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For better resources, see my post on Sir John Tenniel).

Thankfully, this is not always the fate of illustrated books in the collection, possibly because some graphics knowledgeable people have volunteered to help. A case in point is Masters of Water-Colour Painting by H.N. Cundall (HTML version here), a book published in the 1920’s with color plates of great watercolors, like the plate above, “Palazzo Contarini Fasan on the Grand Canal, Venice” by Samuel Prout.

There are some other gems in the collection but you have to look for them, a process that’s not always as easy as is should be. The project has a decent search feature, if you know what you’re looking for, but is weak on browsing. Repeated searching can bare fruit, the terms “painting” and “painters” will return different results. Try the Advanced Search or Catalog Overview page, from which you can use the Anacleo, Yahoo and Google search features.

Also, once you find a title you like, look in the “Bibliographic Record” section toward the top of that entry’s main page for the “LoC Class” link, in the case of the above title, the class is “ND: Fine Arts; Painting“, and returns some good results.

Digging will be rewarded.

Obviously, a project like this depends on contributions of money and time (they are always asking for help in the form of distributed proofreaders); and, though I can’t speak for the program, it looks to me like it might benefit in particular from they help of individuals with some knowledge of digital media and graphic arts.

[Masters of Water-Colour Painting link via Acuarela]

MUVA (Museo Virtual de Artes - El Pais) is a virtual art museum for contemporary art from Uruguay. It’s been on the web for a number of years. I’m not sure exactly when it debuted, but it predates the virtual spaces in virtual worlds like Second Life by a good bit.

The museum is an online gallery, with rotating shows of various artists, that is arranged in a 3-D virtual space that you can “walk though” using links in the interface. Hovering your mouse over parts of the interface, or on control buttons, allows you to navigate through the gallery spaces in which previews of the works are arranged like paintings hanging on the virtual walls of the museum. Clicking directly on a work allows you to view a larger image of the work in much the same way you would in a standard online gallery. A small map in the interface shows you your position and orientation within the museum’s floors and galleries.

There is a relatively new Flash version now to compliment the original HTML version (shown here). Try a little of both to see which you prefer, depending on the speed of your connection. Both versions are offered in either Spanish or English. When in doubt, there is a help feature at the bottom of the interface and if you become impatient, use the Site Map.

This arrangement is obviously not as efficient as regular thumbnail-and-enlargement online galleries, but sometimes, particularly when viewing art, efficiency is not the point. The 3-D environment is convincing and consistent enough to give you a feeling of taking some time to wander through a real museum, with it’s attendant “Let’s see what’s in this gallery.” sense of exploration.

Overall the effect is clever and entertaining in it own right, leading you to perhaps spend some time with some artists that you might not be familiar with or seek out under other circumstances.

2006 marks the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth, so you’re likely to hear a lot about him this year, from me and others. As part of Holland’s celebration of Rembrandt’s 400th, two of the major museums in Amsterdam, the Rijksmusem and the Van Gogh Museum are having a fascinating exhibit (at the latter space) celebrating and comparing the work of home-boy Rembrandt with bad-boy Caravaggio in what promises to the the chiaroscuro smack-down of the ages.

The Rembrandt - Caravaggio exhibit (which also has its own site here), will compare the work of the two great painters by hanging their paintings side by side, giving visitors the chance to compare their technique, subject matter and emotional impact.

Rembrandt and Caravaggio (actually Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio, Italy) were the two greatest masters of the Baroque period, and two of the greatest painters ever. Both were revolutionary in their way, both reached heights of success and depths of personal tragedy, both painted scenes of violence (usually biblical) as well as calmer subjects, and both developed their own powerful style and acquired painting skills in the rarified heights of supreme virtuosity.

Rembrandt was influenced by Caravaggio; he learned of the other master through Dutch artists like Honthorst and Van Baburen who traveled to Italy and carried the Italian master’s influence in their own work. It’s unlikely the influence traveled in the other direction.

Both painters were masters of chiaroscuro, the use of dramatic contrasts of light and shadow to describe form. (Chiaroscuro is Italian for “lightdark”.) You can see the technique, as well as some of the power, drama and superb skill of both painters in the images I’ve posted above: Rembrandt’s The Blinding of Samson and Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes.

Since we can’t all go to Amasterdam for the exhibit (sigh), here are some links to resources and galleries for the two artists on the web so we can do our own smack-down. Unfortunately, there’s nothing for Caravaggio like Jonathan Janson’s amazing site devoted to Rembrandt: life , paintings, etchings, drawings and self protraits. (See my post about this site and Rembrandt’s drawings.) The other major web galleries are represented in my list for both artists:

Art Renewal Center: Rembrandt
Art Renewal Center: Caravaggio

Webmuseum: Rembrandt
Webmuseum: Caravaggio

Web Gallery of Art: Rembrandt
Web Gallery of Art: Caravaggio

Olga’s Gallery: Rembrandt (contains ads)
Olga’s Gallery: Caravaggio (contains ads)

Artchive: Caravaggio (contains ads)
Artchive: Rembrandt (contains ads)

On canvas, my money would be on Rembrandt, if only because I feel a more human connection to his work than to the turbulent emotions of Caravaggio. In the ring, however, smart money would be on Caravaggio, who had a history of violent conflicts, arrests and imprisonments for assaults, and killed a man in a dispute over a game of court tennis. (He spent a couple of years on the run, during which time he did some of his finest work, and was eventually pardoned by the Pope.)

In either case we come out the winners. It’s hard to overstate the importance and influence of these two heavyweights of painting virtuosity and artistic vision.

I decided my first post for this weblog would be ARC.

This site is just amazing. The heart of it is an enormous virtual museum of realist and representational art filled with high-resolution images of thousands of paintings (as well as some drawings).

Browse through the Museum (online galleries), which you can sort by artist’s name, nationality or dates. The vast array of monitor-filling high-res images are sometimes accompanied by super-high-res versions that let you see details you can’t see in most book or poster reproductions.

The site is somewhat clouded by its emphasis on art politics and its “Philosophy”, basically a constant rail against modernism that takes on an air of importance and exclusionary doctrine that starts to sound like… well, like the arrogant, exclusionary art-establishment modernists themselves. ARC champions 19th century academic art, once the art establishment, now out of favor, against the current modernists, once out of favor, now the art establishment. (Sigh.) Same as it ever was.

Anyway, don’t let that (or their incessant, inexplicable attempts to elevate William Bouguereau to demi-god status) get in the way of the art. The art is spectacular. The art is amazing. Any minor gripes I might have fall by the wayside in light of what they’ve accomplished. ARC is a mind-opening, eye-dazzling online collection.

The site also includes a gallery of selected modern realists, a listing of ateliers (studios and schools) of modern realists, and many other resources for anyone interested in representational art.

Warning - be prepared to spend hours feeding your eyeballs once you start.