Hundreds of Rembrandt paintings, etchings and drawings will go on display in Amsterdam this weekend, bringing together works from more than 100 museums and collections around the world in the most complete showing of his works to date, yet not everyone is happy about it. Why? Because the images are all life-size digital reproductions of the originals, showing the works they way they looked when they were first created rather than how they appear now.
Based on discoveries found by examining the originals with x-rays and microscopes, organizers of the The Complete Rembrandt exhibition -- which runs from July 5th through September 7th at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange -- were able to create digital images that recreate the vibrant colors Rembrandt originally used, or that add pieces back to paintings that over time had been cut off.
Rembrandt's most famous painting, the Night Watch, is one such piece that has been trimmed over the centuries, and is actually missing two figures in its present form. The full-size reproduction of how Rembrandt originally painted the picture will be portrayed in the exhibition alongside a replica of the damaged version, to show the differences.
This approach can be seen as a different way of "restoring" a painting without tampering with the original. It allows for a much broader display of the artist's work than would be possible with the originals, and is a much more educational and accurate display of how he intended his paintings to look.
Yet there are those who feel that passing off posters as art will hamper one's appreciation of seeing the original paintings. To me, that seems absurd. Think of all the artists who sell prints of their works, so more people can enjoy them. The goal of the Rembrandt prints is a little different, but is no less artistic. It represents a significant achievement that is only available now with modern technology and discoveries. I hope the exhibition eventually travels beyond Amsterdam and around the world for more exposure, and that this approach is taken with other artists as well, as it is a breakthrough way to learn about the great art and artists from the past. An excerpt from a Yahoo.com AP news story about the exhibition follows:
Based on discoveries found by examining the originals with x-rays and microscopes, organizers of the The Complete Rembrandt exhibition -- which runs from July 5th through September 7th at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange -- were able to create digital images that recreate the vibrant colors Rembrandt originally used, or that add pieces back to paintings that over time had been cut off.
Rembrandt's most famous painting, the Night Watch, is one such piece that has been trimmed over the centuries, and is actually missing two figures in its present form. The full-size reproduction of how Rembrandt originally painted the picture will be portrayed in the exhibition alongside a replica of the damaged version, to show the differences.
This approach can be seen as a different way of "restoring" a painting without tampering with the original. It allows for a much broader display of the artist's work than would be possible with the originals, and is a much more educational and accurate display of how he intended his paintings to look.
Yet there are those who feel that passing off posters as art will hamper one's appreciation of seeing the original paintings. To me, that seems absurd. Think of all the artists who sell prints of their works, so more people can enjoy them. The goal of the Rembrandt prints is a little different, but is no less artistic. It represents a significant achievement that is only available now with modern technology and discoveries. I hope the exhibition eventually travels beyond Amsterdam and around the world for more exposure, and that this approach is taken with other artists as well, as it is a breakthrough way to learn about the great art and artists from the past. An excerpt from a Yahoo.com AP news story about the exhibition follows:
The life work of Rembrandt...[goes] on display next week in full-sized digital reproductions that attempt to recreate the works as they emerged from the artist's studio rather than as they exist today.
In some ways, the high resolution images are more authentic than the real paintings, said Ernst van de Wetering, a leading Rembrandt scholar who supervised the project.
Employing computer wizardry, pieces of canvas or panel that were sliced off centuries ago have been patched back on. Colors are restored to the vibrancy they had when they came off the master's brush. Details hidden in darkness because of aging pigments emerge into view...
Not everyone is happy with the idea of passing off posters as true art...The exhibit revives a 3-year-old debate about the value of seeing copies of the full range of Rembrandt's work as compared with viewing a few originals..."Reproductions cannot convey anything of the wonderful three-dimension quality of Rembrandt's painted surfaces," [Axel] Ruger wrote...
[Van de Wetering] argues that Rembrandt made copies of his work, and had his students make more copies, because he wanted a wider audience.
"Rembrandt would have been very happy if he had known we were doing this," he said. "But the copies he made of his works are many times worse than ours."
Comments