Van Gogh Prints In 3D: Almost the Real Thing For $34,000 104
dryriver writes "The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam has developed high-quality 3D reproductions of some of its finest paintings, with what it describes as the most advanced copying technique ever seen. Axel Rüger, the museum's director, said: "It really is the next generation of reproductions because they go into the third dimension. If you're a layman, they are pretty indistinguishable [from the originals]. Of course, if you're a connoisseur and you look more closely, you can see the difference. Each reproduction is priced £22,000 – somewhat more than the cost of a postcard or poster. But the museum is hoping to increase access to pictures which, if they were sold, would go for tens of millions of pounds to Russian oligarchs or American billionaires. The replicas, called Relievos, are being created by the museum in partnership with Fujifilm, with which it has had an exclusive deal for three years. Such is the complexity of the technology, known as Reliefography, that it has taken more than seven years to develop and only three a day can be made. It combines a 3D scan of the painting with a high-resolution print. The "super-accurate" reproduction even extends to the frame and the back of the painting. Every Relievo is numbered and approved by a museum curator. There is a limited edition of 260 copies per painting."
If you haven't seen the paintings in person... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't seen the painting in person, don't make fun of this. Like most people, I saw pictures of Van Gogh's paintings in books for years. Then when I was in my early 20s I visited the Metropolitan, where IIRC at least two Van Goghs were there. The big takeaway from seeing them in person is the heavy paint. You might even go so far as to say "gobs", but that would be an insult. There was obvious genius in the way it was applied, and from that moment no picture books is the same. Strangely, Van Gogh paintings in person also reminded me a bit of 60s psychedelia which oddly (just a bit) made me think of them as cheap-looking, until I considered that this was the 19th century and what we now see as familiar was quite revolutionary.
Love or hate, you'll look at his work differently if you see it in person. The exhibit that traveled to Washington DC did not give me the same impression, but I seem to recall being velvet-roped a bit further back. The Met made up for that by having the security guard practically breathing down your neck, which is perfectly understandable.
Consider what the goal is. (Score:1, Insightful)
The summary makes it quite clear that the goal is to offer rich people something so they will not buy all the real paintings in which case the museums had nothing left to display. There are not that many people around that could buy the originals, so there is no need to produce more. Actually having them more rare makes it more likely those that otherwise would buy one of the originals take one of those realistic reproductions instead.
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Re:Prediction (Score:2, Insightful)
How many zirconium necklaces would be sold if the price was $2000?
Considering how well diamonds sell despite the fact that their scarcity is also artificial, that may not be a good way to make your point.
Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
If I have $34,000 to spend on an art, I'm going to buy a genuine art, not a reproduction.
Big Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
I can get the same effect from 40mg of dimethyltryptamine and a half-pint of jagermeister.
Plus, the stars in Starry Night will turn into tiny aliens that talk to me.
outrageous (Score:4, Insightful)
It's pretty outrageous that these institutions monopolize cultural treasures that are long out of copyright. These 3D scans should be publicly available so that anybody who wants to can reproduce the artwork in whatever detail they are capable of.
Re:A couple of hundred is all a copy is worth (Score:4, Insightful)
Plenty of courts have shown that exact replicas of an existing work show no originality, and are thus merely mechanical reproductions unworthy of a unique copyright. In other words, the replicas cannot be copyrighted separately from the original work. (The ability to produce replicas remains with the original work's owner.)
Meanwhile, the original works are in the public domain, having been produced in the 1880s or 1890s. So there's no original owner. In other words, anyone can produce a copy or derivative of any style you choose, limited only by your access to the original to study it.
If these reproductions don't come with a EULA, there's nothing legally stopping me from scanning it myself and printing 2000 more copies.