Art is getting mobile

Our visual art encyclopedia now has a mobile application!

Thanks to the efforts of Ukrainian volunteer you can enjoy over 86000
artworks of more than 350 artists on your Apple device. Browse most
viewed artworks and paintings by artists or simply search for your
favorite artwork to enjoy it.
The app is currently available on iTunes as a
free application for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Get inspired with art in your pocket!

We have 75000 paintings!

We've reached the point of 75000 paintings! This week we've launched such artists:

Andrea del Sarto, High and Late Renaissance, Italian
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/andrea-del-sarto
Hercules Seghers, Baroque, Dutch
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/hercules-seghers
Jusepe de Ribera, Baroque, Spanish
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jusepe-de-ribera
Pietro da Cortona, Baroque, Italian
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/pietro-da-cortona
Jan Siberechts, Baroque, Flelmish
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/jan-siberechts
Adriaen van de Velde, Baroque, Dutch
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/adriaen-van-de-velde
Antoine Pesne, Rococo, French
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/antoine-pesne
Allan Ramsay, Rococo, Scottish
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/allan-ramsay
Fyodor Rokotov, Rococo, Russian
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/fyodor-rokotov
William Shayer, Romanticism, British
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/william-shayer
Cornelis Springer, Romanticism, Dutch
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/cornelis-springer
William Holman Hunt, Romanticism, Symbolism, British
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/william-holman-hunt
Philip Wilson Steer, Impressionism, British
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/philip-wilson-steer
Mario Sironi, Futurism, Metaphysical art, Italian
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/mario-sironi
David Salle, Neo-Expressionism, American
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/david-salle

Stay with us!

Financial Report 2012 Q1

In February we started accepting donations from our users. It wasn’t much, but still we are very thankful for your help (A. R. Wallace, Kristina Marie Brendel, joeyv7), it means a lot! We’d also like to tell you (and all our future potential donors) how we’ve spent your money.

Costs:
1. Hosting

WikiPaintings hosting is based on dedicated server running on windows server and hosts project and Amazon Web Services, which uses
- S3 to host backup files
- CDN for static files to improve site loading speed

leasweb
january 2012	$ 198,70
february 2012	$ 198,70
march 2012	$ 198,70
total for 3 month	$ 596,10
amazon aws
january 2012	$ 43,77
february 2012	$ 55,06
march 2012	$ 84,10
total for 3 month	$ 182,93
total hosting expenses for 3 month	$ 779.03

2. Development

WikiPaintings technical support and development includes work of web developers and html coder. In 2012 Q1 we added following features:
- Editing functionality improvements
- Preparations to migrate data to Microsoft Azure data storage.
- Donations

	hours	price per hour	total
total for 3 month	32	$ 12,00	$ 384,00

Total expenses for 2012 Q1: $1163,03

Incomes:

Our project is non-commercial. Since we don’t have any kind of advertising, our only source of income is donations from our users.

Donations	Date	Amount
A. R. Wallace	Feb 3	$ 30,00
Kristina Marie Brendel	Mar 4	$ 100,00
joeyv7	Mar 12	$ 15,00
Processing Fee		$4,35
total income for 3 month		$140,65

The difference between our costs and incomes was paid from personal funds of the initiative group.

We would like to thank again to our donors. As you can see from this report, 100% of your donations directly funded project costs. Just as importantly, your aid demonstrated solidarity with our goal to make art open and accessible!

We would also ask all our users (who have such possibility) to donate small sum to this project. Without public support, further development of WikiPaintings.org would be impossible.

Unfortunately, our country (Ukraine) doesn’t support such popular payment gateways as Paypal, Amazon, and Google Checkout; that’s why we have to use IPay.ua payment gateway. We beg your pardon for this inconvenience.

We have a lot of ideas how to improve our site; shortly we’ll publish our “Roadmap” which includes all productive ideas of our users. With your little help, we can make Wikipaintings so much better!

Discussion: PLEASE don't simplify art!

We had a very interesting e-mail from one of our users. We've decided to post it here together with our reply, and ask you to join the discussion. Perhaps together we'll find optimal way of further development of WikiPaintings.

PLEASE don't simplify art!

Art is great and beautiful, but also complex, confusing and frustrating. Using the same historicist approach that dictates a certain path of art movements through time is allowing for the continued misinformation of the general public, and insuring that poor art historians and critics remain in positions of power (and so the art market prevails over art itself). An encyclopedia of painting is possible, but grouping these artists across time under art "movements" is ignoring their own, individual, nuanced trajectories full of unexpected twists and turns. Please do not disseminate concepts that are still in discussion. The idea of art movements as a linear history of art itself is already questioned and discredited by most serious scholars. Please do not force artists and their works into neat little boxes. Categorize only what is objective and certain: dates, names, techniques. But please, please do not force a conceptual framework onto art! Please don't help maintain misconceptions about art! Please don't objectify art - it is much much more. This is a great project, but it is already headed in a labeling rather than informing and enlightening direction. Please. Help art break free from the confines of imposed categories!

Anonimous user.

Do we?

Thank you very much for your passionate remark! It’s a real pleasure that someone obviously well-informed and so in love with art still finds our project great, despite of the fundamental disagreement with its structure.

We truly do understand your point of view. Indeed, when applied to such a different (in historical perspective and conceptual value) items as art of 15 and 20 century, notions like art movement and genre are somewhat confusing, because they have slightly (and sometimes crucially) different meaning in those contexts.

However, do you really think it’s possible, or productive, to talk about art history without these notions? Can you study art avoiding terms like Renaissance,School of Paris, and portrait? Don’t you think that limiting a vocabulary to “objective” categories like dates, names, and techniques is even more “forcing a framework” in the sense of eliminating possible interpretation?

Let’s not go to extremes, because both of them are absurd. Putting art into “neat little boxes” of styles, and claiming that Monet’s Impressionism is literally the same as Levitan’s Impressionism is just as stupid as avoiding all style classification at all, and stating that those two artists have nothing in common and differs one from another as much, as Rembrandt differs from Malevich.

There are plenty of amazing sites, dedicated to individual artists, which provide well-structured analytical scope of their “nuanced trajectories full of unexpected twists and turns”. There are also quite a lot of extensive web recourses which do not apply any classification to art. We offer something in between. You can browse some artist’s woks chronologically and analyse evolution (or degradation :) of his unique style, but you can also compare stylistically related paintings of different artists and draw your own conclusions.

We don’t see how it’s possible to provide basic knowledge without “labels”. Would you use them as information or disinformation depends solely on your intellectual potential.

We just provide you with tools. Use them creatively!

Respectfully,

WikiPaintings Team.

The first "millionaires" on wikipaintings

What is common between Salvador Dali and Claude Monet? Works of both artists are equally popular on wikipaintings.org and have already scored over million views!

Ballerina in a Death's Head - Salvador Dali

Dandelions - Cloud Monet

¡Hola!

Salvador Dalí  

We are happy to inform you that the Spanish version of wikipaintings.org is available now! We'll be grateful for your comments and corrections of possible mistakes, because Spanish language is not native to us. Please send your feedback to wikipaintings@gmail.com

Estamos contentos de informarle de que la versión en español de Enciclopedia de pintura wikipaintings.org ya está disponible! Agradecemos sus comentarios y correcciones de posibles errores, porque el lenguaje español n es nuestro idioma nativo.
Para contactarnos por favor escriba a wikipaintings@gmail.com

February

We are still growing. We are happy to announce that we had 500K visitors last month which enjoyed more than 7 millions of paintings. Approximately, every second we show 4 paintings worldwide, starting from United States to San Marino.

It is fascinating to see how you say about wikipaintings.org on twitter:

Wow why have I never discovered wikipaintings before this is a God send - @Olivia_Trinder

http://www.wikipaintings.org/ is literally a dream come true. - @NicholasBoyd

This is my new favorite website - @bobdobolina

Thank god for wikipaintings #lifesaver - @NicoleScott_

If you go to http://www.wikipaintings.org you will never be dissapointed, especially on an HD monitor. You'll probably cry tears of joy. Unreal! - @mattewestvanic

We added donations so you can help to develop new features faster and cover hosting expenses.

We do have a lot of new ideas. Our nearest plans are focused on improvements of editorial functionality, couple of gallery features and Spanish version of our encyclopedia.