Monday, December 28th, 2009 11:21 am
I think there needs to be a new form of international art thief, one who breaks into museums and makes high quality scans of the old paintings, to be released on Wikileaks. It's utterly ridiculous how hard it can be to find good copies of famous works of art.

Just watching the media try to come to grips with this "crime" would be awesome.
Monday, December 28th, 2009 07:58 pm (UTC)
And then it escalates. E starts bringing in precision laser scanners and posting 3d models of famous sculpture...
Monday, December 28th, 2009 07:59 pm (UTC)
Pretty soon, you can torrent the entire Louvre..
Monday, December 28th, 2009 08:10 pm (UTC)
OMG. I have a new ambition.
Monday, December 28th, 2009 08:14 pm (UTC)
I like it!
Monday, December 28th, 2009 08:31 pm (UTC)
The trick would be to build a small machine that you could just leave behind when you visit that would do the scanning for you.
Monday, December 28th, 2009 09:38 pm (UTC)
I had the pleasure a while back of helping to stage an exhibition of original oil paintings by Josh Kirby. You can buy copies of Josh's work in many bookstores attached to the front of Terry Pratchett books. There are also art books on sale which also faithfully reproduce Josh's work on high-quality paper in large formats.

At the exhibition I had the pleasure of viewing Josh's original work from six inches away; each painting was a metre square with texture and presence that a smaller flat-printed image just can't reproduce. Paint is not ink, in both its three-dimensionality as well as the way it reflects light.
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 02:25 am (UTC)
i had a similar reaction to viewing some original van Gogh paintings: the prints just don't do them justice.
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 02:47 am (UTC)
Clearly this calls for holography.
Monday, December 28th, 2009 10:35 pm (UTC)
I've been meaning to pirate a Brancusi for a while....
Monday, December 28th, 2009 10:40 pm (UTC)
Also, you don't need to scan them. A medium format digital camera and auto-stitch with dewarping can give you 300dpi prints without even trying very hard.
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 05:58 am (UTC)
:-)