Fan Art Book Cover

Troy Simpson’s Funny Dictionary (National Library of Australia publishing) catalogues numerous amusing mis-definitions perpetrated by students. One of his fans painted the illustration above — Troy holding the book cover (WorkingType Design).

“METAPHOR n. 1. a thing you shout through.
2. a kind of signalling used chiefly for long distances.”

See here for an account of the amusing speech given at the launch of Troy’s book.

Global Street Art

If street art is to your taste, Google is making a special effort to make viewing it exceptionally easy. The tromp l'oeil tricks used by some of the artists are genuinely remarkable. And given that street art in most places is likely to be rather ephemeral, cataloguing its diverse nature and global reach seems a worthwhile project. Unfortunately, google also has a history of offering short-lived services, so view it while you can...

Great Art by the Virtual Truckload

Via the fine folks at Open Culture, a definitive list of the best collections of digitised artworks. 

• Google Art Project (250,000 images)
• L.A. County Museum (20,000)
• New York Public Library-Historic Maps (20,000)
• Norway National Museum (30,000)
• SFMoMA Rauschenberg Collection
• Stanford University’s Cantor Art Center (45,000)
• Stanford University’s French Revolution Collection (14,000)
• The British Library (100,000)
• The British Museum (4,200)
• The Getty (100,000)
• The Guggenheim (1,600)
• The Met (400,000)
• The Morgan Library Rembrandt Sketches (300)
• The Museum of Modern Art/MoMA  (65,000)
• The Museum of New Zealand (30,000)
• The National Gallery (35,000)
• The New York Public Library: Photos, Maps, Letters (180,000)
• The Rijksmuseum (210,00)
• The Smithsonian (40,000)
• The Tate (70,000)
• The Whitney (21,000)
• The Van Gogh Museum (3500)
• Yale’s Great Depression Photo Collection (170,000)
• Vermeer (36)

Many of the artworks are scanned at very high resolution. In the case of institutions such as the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, re-use and alteration of the artworks is encouraged and celebrated. Considerable debate has erupted as to whether the wide availability of such material is somehow corrupting the ability of the general public to appreciate the actual rather than virtual artworks.

For those institutions that allow use and remixing of the digitised artwork, authors and designers have at their disposal a vast and powerful visual resource.