A move across a 39 foot scroll painted by Song artist Wang Ximent (1096–1119)

YouTube ^

[mairdie]

Indeed. You wonder what he could have accomplished in a longer life.

[TheCipher]

They have it at the National Palace Museum in Taipei ( I live about 20 miles from there )

[ADemocratNoMore]

Gorgeous ! Genius ! A Prolific Prodigy !

Tragedy ! In that probably 99 %+ of us living in the “West” don’t have a clue masterpieces like this exist. I, myself, while certainly not being an art scholar do appreciate the fine arts, yet, while I appreciate oriental art I had no idea of such a Herculean feat by someone of such youth.

Tragedy ! Imagine what Wang Xmeng could have done had he lived another 50 years or so.

Music ! Excellent, as always. I’ve always been fond of traditional Indian music since I first heard Pandit Ravi Shankar back in the 60’s and I appreciate traditional Japanese and Chinese music as well. I discovered the Guzheng from the scene in Red Cliffs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3SIC6RGKBk

Kudos ! to you for putting together another fine video exploration of the artistic world for us.

Kudos ! also for providing a download link so we didn’t have to suffer from the attack of the UTube jitteritus.

! Thank you !

[TheCipher]

The digital copy was on a 20 foot screen at the base of the painting. On certain parts of the painting ( like the boats on the river ), they “brought it to life” by animating it ( also adding sound effects and music )

[Republicanprofessor]

Ping to look at later in more depth.

Thanks!

[mairdie]

YOU are very, very lucky!

One of the wonderful things about the old art classes was that you didn’t have to be able to JUST identify an artist and date the piece, you also had to say WHERE it was located. So later, as a traveling adult, you’d know that DC or Kansas City or Boston or Chicago were THE places to visit. I gave up flying halfway thru my professional life on the theory that no company pays me combat pay, so I’m locked out of all the wonderful museums around the world. But now that I’m older, the web is beginning to offer me video tours of the Louvre and all these wonderful places I’d never see in person.

You have such incredible art all around you. Color me German Expressionist green with envy.

[mairdie]

Going to a Ravi Shankar concert must have been a rite of passage in the 60’s. I remember one, too. And I’m so glad you’re enjoying these. I am so much enjoying the remembering and the reading and the learning.

All of the clean copies of the videos are available for download on my site. Up until one year ago, that’s the only way people got my videos. The Fine Arts videos have their own small download list at:
http://www.iment.com/maida/tv/songvids/fine-art-videos.htm

Before I put my videos up for download, they used to only be available from fans around the world who would set up copycenters and duplicate VHS and Beta tapes for people. And I’d keep a library of dup tapes for people to borrow. Of course, then the quality would be degrading all the time. I have some music videos from other people that you have to strain to see who they’re about. I’ve been working with an archivist to transfer whatever videos people sent me for permanent archiving.

I’m so very glad you’re enjoying the art. I’m so excited about the overall Chinese art video and fingers crossed it will come out well.

[mairdie]

There are MAJOR advantages both ways, so brilliant of them to provide both. I get lost in the lace of a Vermeer portrait in person and remember being hardly able to breathe for the intensity of the experience. But then there are pieces that are so damaged by time and so small that you have trouble seeing what the artist accomplished.

The paintings on silk can discolor with age, as oils can darken with aging varnish. And photographs have SUCH a wide color spread that it’s hard to tell what the original colors even WERE. Most versions of the photographs are lightened, but how you do that is an art form in itself. Straight Brightening/Contrast will often turn these photographs yellow. I find the best way to lighten them is with Levels. When the level graph comes up, for most art I just pull in the sliders from the ends. With this Chinese art, that doesn’t work. Here you have to take the MIDDLE slider, leaving the ends alone, and move THAT to lighten. That keeps the original color and, if a trace of yellow does appear, you can correct THAT with another color correction layer. So it takes a good deal of digital work to get each photograph to its best look, and then to be able to push in on detail that would take good eyes and your nose up against the painting glass - well, thanks to the museums who are doing that work.

[TheCipher]

Here is their current exhibition. They do the same thing to this one ( the animation ) as they did with the Wang Ximeng painting. It gives you an idea of what it looks like animated. Just click on the Website button to go to the animation :

National Palace Museum