The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free

If you stand as close as you can to a Rothko (with your knees practically touching the velvet rope barrier), and stare for a while it just completely envelopes your eyes. The colors take over your entire field of vision and you can really get lost in them, and just "feel" the painting. You can't really do that otherwise without someone asking you to please move. The Pollocks were my favorite, but it's all incredible. It definitely became my favorite type of visual art after that and I will always visit the Met and MoMa when in town.

Edit: Unfortunately, seems like none of those are public domain, so only low resolution images are available.

Rothko's works are often installed in "environments" like at Tate Modern or in Houston. Many people can experience them at the same time and there's not much to be gained from closing in to six inch viewing distance. They're works of the movie age.

On the other hand, the situation with a Durer print or some other delicate miniature image is really helped by digital distribution. For 3D artifacts, being able to orbit them in a viewer is another good thing that we'll probably see more of. Lightfields, even.

Rothko is an interesting case for digital reproduction because his work is all about aura and atmosphere but, technically, his work is not exactly impossible to fake. Is his work really spiritual or maybe a bit bogus, for that reason of being grandiose and imposing yet also "easy"?

Best argument, I think, in favour of Rothko and the like is the idea that "what's difficult is not to make something, but to put oneself in a state conducive to making." (Brancusi)

How different complex, technical software engineering is to the simplicity of even the most elaborate painting/sculpture...

I disagree; simply, "nothing compares to the real thing". But I can't have the real thing right here, so a large hi-def monitor is better than nothing.

EDIT: If I sell a 40" monitor displaying a high-res Van Gogh - will the price compare to the real thing? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436535?sortBy...

Instagram has been absolutely great for understanding art as its happening right now. There are so many curators out there that'll help you "get" it.

A few favorites:

https://www.instagram.com/aureta

https://www.instagram.com/diaartfoundation

https://www.instagram.com/avant.arte

https://www.instagram.com/booooooom

https://www.instagram.com/larryhofmann

https://www.instagram.com/ignant

https://www.instagram.com/charlottedicarcaci

https://www.instagram.com/delpozo

(and follow the people they follow as well to get the complete picture)

If you understand why they do art now, you will understand why they did it 500 years ago.

(All IMHO, and sorry if it states things you already know:) I 'get' art, and I'll say that 'getting' art is a misunderstood, over-emphasized concept. Find works that move you, that challenge your perspective. Who cares what everyone else thinks or likes? Find your art. Art is in the eye of the beholder; don't worry too much about the artist's intentions - they lost that control once they put it on paper - what does it mean to you, as it is right there at that moment? Art isn't some secret code that needs decoding; it is what it is, to you. Just to get your mind working on it; here are some questions to ask yourself and tips:

* How does it make you feel? To really grasp art, bring the emotional part of you to bear - it's more far effective than the rational side in this regard. Then try to articulate it (which ties in the rational side). If I can't seem to get traction then I just think 'how do I feel?' - not even how does the object in front of me make me feel, but just 'how am I feeling?' - and often, presto, everything comes into focus.

* Unlike real life, nothing in a work of art is accidental or gratuitous (unless it's intentionally that way!). Why is that red line there? What would a different red look like? A much thicker line? A less opaque one? Rotated 90 degrees? Or, why is it set on a sunny afternoon? What if it was cloudy? Nighttime? Moonlight and stars?

* Often the most powerful question: What are the assumptions behind image in front of you? What didn't they paint (or sculpt, etc.)? If it's a Renior of nudes by a stream, the painting assumes there is beauty in pink flesh, in nature, a relationship between those two things, and it assumes there is no shame in it, no danger, but something positive.

If a work of art makes me uncomfortable, that's a great starting point - what is making me uncomfortable? It's just an object; it can't do me any harm or do anything at all. Often the works that make me most uncomfortable at first - the ones I hate - are the ones that I love the most in the long run. The ones that bore me are the worst.

Reading a book on art history can help you understand a lot of the context behind and specific images in the art (X was a big issue at the time, or image Y represented something in that culture), but IMHO it is much more valuable to read later, to learn something that enhances your burgeoning art appreciation rather than to learn about something you aren't familiar with in the first place. Just find what you love.

What is the artist trying to say?

Have they said it well?

Was it worth saying?

These are of course highly subjective. Your answers may be very different from those of others and even from the artist themselves. And that's fine.

These questions can also springboard your curiosity if you allow it. What was the artist trying to say? How can I tell? What can I read to help understand the context within which the artist was working? This can be a lovely, deep, rich contemplation if you choose. You can set your own pace, and decide when you have had your fill.

https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess

This Perl script should get most of the images (but it would probably be better to save them in the original sub-directories):

    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use LWP::Simple;
    use JSON qw(from_json);
    
    my $url    = "http://metmuseum.org/api/collection/collectionlisting?offset=";
    my $args   = "&pageSize=0&perPage=100&sortBy=Relevance&sortOrder=asc";
    my $offset = 0;
    
    while ($offset < 5000) {
      my $decoded = from_json(get($url.$offset.$args));
      $offset = $offset + 100;
      my @results = @{ $decoded->{'results'} };
      foreach my $i ( @results ) {
        my $filename = $i->{"largeImage"};
        my $title = $i->{"title"};
        print "Status: ".getstore("http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/".$filename,$title.".jpg")." ".$filename. "\n";
      }
    }

I'm particularly interested in the paintings for use as wallpapers, but there are lots of printed materials dating back to the 17th century (and probably earlier).

https://twitter.com/quasimondo/status/825821993501069317

A lot of people are confused about the licensing of museum images and why it's news that a major museum is releasing them CC0 when they're already public domain. I see some good thoughts here--e.g., absolutely there is a difference between 2D and 3D images (an image of a 3D work might have sufficient additional creativity involved to support a separate copyright), and yes, the Bridgeman decision is a thing. But Museums have a lot more to worry about than that. E.g., there are a lot of orphan works. More importantly, there are important people they want to be careful not to offend, whether living artists, their estates, their representatives, or potential donors. In my experience, all of those groups except artists tend to be more conservative about sharing than the staff at most museums.

This is not to say that any of that trumps the law. But Bridgeman was one weird case in one weird situation and it hasn't been tested in a museum setting. What we're talking about is not whether you can legally use the image as you like, but whether the museum will willingly show you the image. By 2011, the tide had turned and it was not going to be long before most/all major collections saw sharing as more valuable than hoarding. But in 2009 that wasn't the case.