kottke.org posts about art
The Public Domain Review has published some lovely illustrations of goldfish from a 1780 monograph called Histoire naturelle des dorades de la Chine.
Histoire naturelle des dorades de la Chine (1780) — the dorades in the title refers not to sea bream but the fish’s gilded appearance — was the first monograph on goldfish published in Europe, from a time when the fish were still bound up with Eastern exoticism in the Western imagination.
You can peruse the entire document at the Internet Archive.
A few weeks ago, I posted about the hundreds of stills from their animated movies that Studio Ghibli has made available for free download. Since I’m a big fan of the weird little guys director Hayao Miyazaki loves to put in his films (e.g. the kodama in Princess Mononoke1 and Spirited Away’s soot sprites), I thought it would be cool to pull some images from the Ghibli archive featuring these lovable little freaks.
And an honorable mention to this frame from Porco Rosso:
The weird little guys category generally doesn’t apply to humans, but this image of little kids crawling all over a pig man’s airplane certainly classifies as an unusual swarm.
There’s something a little bit mesmerizing about Aled Thompson’s illustrations of birds. They are at once highly detailed and also slightly vectorish — and it shifts back and forth while I’m looking at them, like one of those young woman/old woman optical illusions.
You can find more of Thompson’s work on Instagram and Bluesky and can purchase prints here. (via @mims.bsky.social)
I love the colorful illustrative style of these adverts for the Queen City Printing Ink Company done by Augustus Jansson in the first decade of the 20th century.
Several years ago, digital microscope technology company Hirox collaborated with The Mauritshuis museum to create a 10-gigapixel scan of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Recently, Hirox upped the game with the creation of a 108-gigapixel scan of the painting. 108 billion pixels! And each pixel is 1.3 microns in size — 1000 microns is 1 millimeter. Incredible.
You can explore the scan of the painting courtesy of Hirox. Be sure to check out the 3D view (button at the bottom of the page); here’s a topographical view of the pearl:
For a look at how they captured this image, check out this behind-the-scenes video.
Well this is just wonderful: Studio Ghibli has uploaded hundreds of high-resolution still images from almost all of their films, including all of the major ones: Princess Mononoke, Sprited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, The Boy and the Heron, Howl’s Moving Castle, etc. etc. The images are labeled “solely for personal use by individual fans to further enjoy Studio Ghibli films” and people are urged to “please feel free to use the images within the bounds of common sense”.
Head to the list of Ghibli movies and click through to each film to find & download the stills. (via open culture)
Silenced Science Stories is a collaboration between scientists and artists to tell the stories of scientific experts who have been affected by the Trump regime’s purge of their ranks.
We are organizing an illustrated series of portraits and stories of scientific experts whose work is being affected by federal budget cuts and mass firings.
We have over 30 science artists who are volunteering to create these features to communicate the careers and the important scientific research of federally employed and funded scientists.
If you’d like to get involved, they are looking for both artists and scientists with stories to tell. You can read more about the project in Physics Today. (via jonathan hoefler)
This is a visualization created on the screen of an oscilloscope by a musical piece:
Primer is an introduction to oscilloscope music, a genre and art form where vector visuals are formed by the music itself. The image is produced by using the left audio channel to control the beam on the X axis, and the right audio channel to control the beam on the Y axis.
Once I wrapped my brain around what was happening here, I found this to be quite an impressive achievement: creating beautiful & coherent visuals from non-discordant music. (via waxy)
Spanish artist Sebas Velasco does these cool oil paintings that seem more like snapshots than conventional portraiture, still life, or landscape. They’re captured from the height & distance of a camera, they have photographic depth-of-field, etc. I like them a lot. (via colossal)
I like these collage-like artworks by Tavares Strachan. One of the figures depicted above in the third piece, just above the queen, is polar explorer Matthew Henson, who was the first person (maybe?) to reach the geographic North Pole in 1909 as part of Robert Peary’s expedition.
Using paint in water to simulate clouds or smoke, Rudy Willingham created these magical scenes of characters from Severance (Instagram).
Willingham also created this cool animated zoetrope record with dancing Severance characters.
A great behind-the-scenes look at the work and process of artist Amy Sherald in these two videos from Art21.
In her studio in New Jersey, artist Amy Sherald paints portraits that tell a story about American lives. Her face just inches away from a canvas, the artist carefully applies stroke after stroke, building her narrative through paint. “I really have this belief that images can change the world,” says Sherald, a belief she acts upon in her compelling paintings, which depict everyday people with dignity and humanity. Following the tradition of American realists like Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, the artist uses her paintings to tell stories about America. Searching for models, settings, and scenarios that would convey the kinds of stories she wanted to tell, Sherald began to populate the world of her paintings with everyday people in everyday situations.
Sherald’s exhibition at The Whitney opens next month. (via the morning news)
The MFA in Boston is putting on an exhibition this spring and summer called Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits.
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) once wrote, “What I’m most passionate about…is the portrait, the modern portrait.” This passion flourished between 1888 and ‘89 when, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, the artist created a number of portraits of a neighboring family—the postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children: Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. Van Gogh’s tender relationship with the postman and his family, and his groundbreaking portrayals of them, are at the heart of this exhibition, which is the first dedicated to the Roulin portraits and the deep bonds of friendship between the artist and this family.
The BBC has more on the show and the artist’s relationship with the Roulin family.
“So much of what I was hoping for with this exhibition is a human story,” co-curator Katie Hanson (MFA Boston) tells the BBC. “The exhibition really highlights that Roulin isn’t just a model for him — this was someone with whom he developed a very deep bond of friendship.” Van Gogh’s tumultuous relationship with Gauguin, and the fallout between them that most likely precipitated the ear incident, has tended to overshadow his narrative, but Roulin offered something more constant and uncomplicated. We see this in the portraits — the open honesty with which he returns Van Gogh’s stare, and the mutual respect and affection that radiate from the canvas.
The exhibition will run at the MFA from March 30 to September 7, 2025 and then move on to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from October 3 to January 11, 2026.
Am I excited to see this exhibition? Yes. Is this post an excuse to post 1889’s Portrait of Joseph Roulin, one of my favorite van Gogh’s? Also yes. Win win.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this photo before, of artist Amy Sherald and former First Lady Michelle Obama sharing a hug during a session for Sherald’s iconic portrait of Obama. What a different time that was, huh?
The Public Domain Review (a true gem of the web) has launched The Public Domain Image Archive, “a curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse”.
While The Public Domain Review primarily takes the form of an “arts journal”, it has also quietly served as a digital art gallery, albeit one fractured across essays and collections posts. The PDIA sets out to emphasise this visual nature of the PDR, freeing these images from their textual homes and placing them front and center for easier discovery, comparison, and appreciation. Our aim is to offer a platform that will serve both as a practical resource and a place to simply wander — an ever-growing portal to discover more than 2000 years of visual culture.
The “infinite view” is particularly fun…you can just pan & scroll and let the whole collection wash over your visual cortex. (via colossal)
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