Yes, we do research here at the Curiosity Shop. While checking out weather apps I ran across a sale on a series of art history apps. So we'll talk about the weather tomorrow!
A company called overdamp led by a person called Boram Kim has produced a large series of collections of artists works. One of the nice things about an IPad is its luminous color screen and these pictures certainly show about as well as anything I've ever seen. Some of the collections are exhaustive; the John Singer Sargent collection includes 412 works. The collections are divided in logical ways-some artists chronologically, others like Rembrandt by type of work. Most have a slide show mode with music. Some like the Rembrandt have connections to Wikipedia. The organization is not perfect with some pictures presented in duplicate and an occasional mistake in naming a work, but all in all these are outstanding apps. They are on sale now for 99 cents. I downloaded the Sargent, Rembrandt, Homer, and Waterhouse collections.
Also in the art category are the collections from MOKOO.org by Wei Yao. Here along with a gallery of works you get a wikipedia based biographical book and links to YouTube pieces on the artist. I downloaded the Vermeer and was really entranced. Again, the works were on spectacular display, but one of the most interesting things were two YouTube films. Both were professionally made and originally show on TV. The first from the BBC explored Vermeer's masterpiece "The Art of Painting" while the other from the National Gallery of Art give us four pieces on four different works plus a segment on camera obscura. Vermeer only did 34 paintings that survive and 17 have a mysterious pin prick in them. It's worth the very low price of this app just to learn the secret of the pin.
MOKOO also has similar works on several other artists including Rembrandt, Monet, and Van Gogh. The two great Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai are also featured. All these apps are good sized to giant files, but if you love to look at great art this is way to go!
Welcome
A curiosity shop is a place of odds and ends in a wide range of categories. One never knows what one will find on any visit, and that is the goal of this blog. Here you'll find postings on doings around Easton, the world's environment, history, recipes, fly fishing, books, music, and movies with many other things thrown in as well. Hope you enjoy it and keep coming back.
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