The Rodin Museum's bronzes are not even "the originals", which makes this whole thing amusing.
The originals created by Rodin were clay models, from which plaster molds were made. Those were used to cast bronzes. Not just one bronze copy, many copies. There are at least 23 copies of "The Thinker" cast during Rodin's lifetime, and even more later copies.[1]
In the SF Bay Area, the Palace of the Legion of Honor has one. One of the point clouds shown is of Rodin's "Gates of Hell", and a copy of that can be seen outside the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, which has a small garden of Rodin bronzes. So if you really need a 3D scan, there are lots of bronzes available to scan.
What scares the Rodin Museum is that they are still selling reproductions.[2] Resin copies are available through the gift shop, and bronze copies can be ordered. They have a complicated argument about "moral rights" to justify their monopoly which is marginal at this late date. (Rodin died in 1917.)
> What scares the Rodin Museum is that they are still selling reproductions.
No, what scares them is the idea that someone else might view their artwork without visiting their museum. Revenue from the gift shop doesn't enter into it at all.
What's the issue with 3D printing?? The open-source community reproduction of Roden's The Thinker is at least as hi-rez as the professional scans.
Rodan was a great artist, but his works were cranked out in a factory, with parts of the process outsourced. The concept of "original" here is weak.
There was once a comic, "The Artist", which had a little guy with a beret and smock. In one panel, he was shown standing on a railed balcony overlooking an enormous high-volume printing press. The caption was "Each print was produced under the direct control and supervision of the artist".
I've seen such an operation in person. Back when software came in boxes, I ordered some custom boxes made. I went to the printing plant with the box artwork on a CD, and talked with the prepress person. She made it fit the box template, using a Macintosh connected to a plate-making machine the size of a car. She said "You want to see the press?", and so I put in earplugs and went into the pressroom. They had a press about a hundred feet long, sheet fed, and capable of about 12 colors of ink. Extra colors were used for shiny gold seals, brushwork, and other special effects. It wasn't turning out boxes that day. It was printing "art reproductions". When the box business was slow, they printed high-quality artworks. Some were reproductions of public domain or licensed material, and some were contract jobs for artists. Pricing was about $4000 for the first copy, $0.25 for each additional copy. It's almost all setup cost. They had some original art and printed copies hung side by side to show off how good the copies were.
The lower-volume version of this is Giclée prints.[1] Those are "collectables" made on an inkjet printer. The term was coined in 1990.
Henry Ford was once marketed to by an art dealer. They sent him a big glossy coffee table book, a catalog of pictures they were selling. When they came by for the sales pitch, Ford's response was to ask why he would want the original when he had a perfectly good copy in the book. He was pulling their chain, of course, but what else would you expect from the guy who made mass production of automobiles work.
The art industry tries very hard to push the concept of valuable "originals". But really, some of this stuff should be taken about as seriously as "original" NFTs.
There's currently an "art glut", despite frantic efforts to prop up collectable art prices.[2]
I'm more curious how 12 was arrived at. Why not 10 (the French invented metric, after all) or 16 if they were going for some arbitrary round number?
Speaking of Rodin bronzes, if you ever get a chance, check out the Auguste Rodin Gallery at the Maryhill Museum of Art [0]. The museum is located in a beautiful setting on the sides of the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state basically in the middle of nowhere. If the weather is nice, the views of Mount Hood in Oregon are fabulous. The bronze casting process is explained and demonstrated in the gallery. As I recall, there are more than ten steps involving negative and positive impressions before you get to the final work of art. How this fabulous art collection ended up in such a remote location is also an interesting story.
> "...if you ever get a chance, check out the Auguste Rodin Gallery at the Maryhill Museum of Art"
I wholeheartedly concur. Just a few hours up the Gorge from Portland/Vancouver, Maryhill is a great place to take visitors up for it.
If memory serves, the Rodin exhibit has original plaster casts signed by Rodin and dozens of other works. In addition, the vast museum contains the huge and fascinating collections of its founders.
Nearby is the Stonehenge replica constructed to match the original as closely as possible. Definitely worth visiting.
Several of the sculptures the museum scanned were plaster casts, including La Porte de l'Enfer and Les Trois Ombres. Given the destruction and reproduction inherent in the way Rodin's studio and foundry partners were producing bronzes at the time, the plasters are the most accurate, highest quality versions of the works, and are the closest to the hand of the artist. The molds used for the production of bronzes would have been made (and remade after they wore out) from the plasters. Accurate scans of the plasters are, arguably, therefore of much higher archival and commercial value than any scan of a subsequent bronze cast would be.
Not only that, many of Rodin's works were scaled up or scaled down from the original, using a pantograph.[1] When you see a monumental scale Rodin bronze, you're looking at something that was traced from a smaller version.
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
The originals created by Rodin were clay models, from which plaster molds were made. Those were used to cast bronzes. Not just one bronze copy, many copies. There are at least 23 copies of "The Thinker" cast during Rodin's lifetime, and even more later copies.[1]
In the SF Bay Area, the Palace of the Legion of Honor has one. One of the point clouds shown is of Rodin's "Gates of Hell", and a copy of that can be seen outside the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, which has a small garden of Rodin bronzes. So if you really need a 3D scan, there are lots of bronzes available to scan.
What scares the Rodin Museum is that they are still selling reproductions.[2] Resin copies are available through the gift shop, and bronze copies can be ordered. They have a complicated argument about "moral rights" to justify their monopoly which is marginal at this late date. (Rodin died in 1917.)
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Thinker_sculptures" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Thinker_sculptures
[2] <a href="https://boutique.musee-rodin.fr/en/10-sculpture-reproductions" rel="nofollow">https://boutique.musee-rodin.fr/en/10-sculpture-reproduction...
thaumasiotes · · focus · HN ↗
No, what scares them is the idea that someone else might view their artwork without visiting their museum. Revenue from the gift shop doesn't enter into it at all.
schiffern · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5169144" rel="nofollow">https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5169144
RobotToaster · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
whiplash451 · · focus · HN ↗
Article R. 122-3 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS · · focus · HN ↗
jmvoodoo · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
Rodan was a great artist, but his works were cranked out in a factory, with parts of the process outsourced. The concept of "original" here is weak.
There was once a comic, "The Artist", which had a little guy with a beret and smock. In one panel, he was shown standing on a railed balcony overlooking an enormous high-volume printing press. The caption was "Each print was produced under the direct control and supervision of the artist".
I've seen such an operation in person. Back when software came in boxes, I ordered some custom boxes made. I went to the printing plant with the box artwork on a CD, and talked with the prepress person. She made it fit the box template, using a Macintosh connected to a plate-making machine the size of a car. She said "You want to see the press?", and so I put in earplugs and went into the pressroom. They had a press about a hundred feet long, sheet fed, and capable of about 12 colors of ink. Extra colors were used for shiny gold seals, brushwork, and other special effects. It wasn't turning out boxes that day. It was printing "art reproductions". When the box business was slow, they printed high-quality artworks. Some were reproductions of public domain or licensed material, and some were contract jobs for artists. Pricing was about $4000 for the first copy, $0.25 for each additional copy. It's almost all setup cost. They had some original art and printed copies hung side by side to show off how good the copies were.
The lower-volume version of this is Giclée prints.[1] Those are "collectables" made on an inkjet printer. The term was coined in 1990.
Henry Ford was once marketed to by an art dealer. They sent him a big glossy coffee table book, a catalog of pictures they were selling. When they came by for the sales pitch, Ford's response was to ask why he would want the original when he had a perfectly good copy in the book. He was pulling their chain, of course, but what else would you expect from the guy who made mass production of automobiles work.
The art industry tries very hard to push the concept of valuable "originals". But really, some of this stuff should be taken about as seriously as "original" NFTs. There's currently an "art glut", despite frantic efforts to prop up collectable art prices.[2]
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e
[2] <a href="https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/art-glut-tanking-market-why-collectors-should-invest-1236164715/" rel="nofollow">https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/art-glut-tan...
userbinator · · focus · HN ↗
julienchastang · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://www.maryhillmuseum.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.maryhillmuseum.org/
jrapdx3 · · focus · HN ↗
I wholeheartedly concur. Just a few hours up the Gorge from Portland/Vancouver, Maryhill is a great place to take visitors up for it.
If memory serves, the Rodin exhibit has original plaster casts signed by Rodin and dozens of other works. In addition, the vast museum contains the huge and fascinating collections of its founders.
Nearby is the Stonehenge replica constructed to match the original as closely as possible. Definitely worth visiting.
CosmoWenman · · focus · HN ↗
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co47993/machine-for-reproducing-sculpture" rel="nofollow">https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co47993...