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Oh, I don't know... a printed image in a book has a pretty limited resolution. An on-line image can offer a lot more... take a look at the very high resolution imagery provided by http://googleartproject.com./ You can see the work as a whole or if you'd like to you can zoom in to see more detail than you could see if you were standing in front of the real piece.

I don't care how high the resolution is, it's not going to look as good as the original unless the original is crap, and if it's crap you won't see it in a museum or an art history class... well, ok I take that last back, many hitsorians will show slides of crappy work that went for big money two centuries ago that are worthless now because they were always artistically worthless. But he'll have slides, the pictures won't be in any book I know of. Also, you're not going to need a magnifying glass to look at a one square inch piece of a six by ten foot painting, not even in a drawing class.

The book illustration is to show the artists' style, composition, and... well, for use of color you're going to have to see the original work, because neither in a book or a web page will the colors match the actual work exactly.

I've you haven't seen it yet: Google Art Project

Google street view style 360 degree angle views through the museums and incredibe high resolution images of each painting, fully zoomable to where you can see cracks in the paint.

Picasso and Van Gogh doesn't need to be rewarded or encouraged to paint more (though, if they wanted to come out of a mortal retirement, I think the world would welcome them). However, the people and organizations that keep ownership of those works need some inducement, and the means, to protect those artworks, conserve them, and display them in a proper setting. The copyright for them may have expired ages ago, but that does not mean that they can just be given away to The People: they were expensive to acquire, and are surprisingly expensive to keep. Proper conservation of artwork requires climate controlled spaces, appropriate lighting, security and insurance, curators. For maximum impact and access, artworks need museums that have ample space to display large collections of related artworks, preferably in the middle of major cities where the most people can get to them. None of these things come cheap.

In other words, these artworks require some ongoing revenue stream. Without it, such artworks will eventually fall into disrepair, end up in private collections, and eventually be lost to the public in general. Consider it a tragedy of the commons, applied to Picasso and Van Gogh.

Count yourself lucky to be living in this day and age. Although you aren't yet able to access gigapixel renderings of every priceless work of art, for free, from your computing-device-of-choice, anywhere in the world, you are getting pretty damn close. No other generation in the whole history of humanity has ever had that chance. A century ago, if you wanted to have a good look at the Mona Lisa, you needed to travel to Paris and see it in person. While that is still mostly true (i.e., to see it yourself you have to travel to it, rather than the other way around), you can get close by visiting the Louvre's website. See also Google Art Project.

Oh, I don't know... a printed image in a book has a pretty limited resolution. An on-line image can offer a lot more... take a look at the very high resolution imagery provided by http://googleartproject.com./ You can see the work as a whole or if you'd like to you can zoom in to see more detail than you could see if you were standing in front of the real piece.

Even consumer grade printers can print at 1200 dots per inch. A decent monitor may display around 2048 x 1152 pixels though of course there are some better. Pixels do not directly translate into dots per inch but a four inch by four inch square on photo paper can outdo the resolution of a monitor.

They seem to believe that a url where you can see it online is as good as having it printed right in fromt of you. Were I one of those parents I would just hand then a piece of paper with a link to a picture of $180. Fair is fair.

Oh, I don't know... a printed image in a book has a pretty limited resolution. An on-line image can offer a lot more... take a look at the very high resolution imagery provided by http://googleartproject.com./ You can see the work as a whole or if you'd like to you can zoom in to see more detail than you could see if you were standing in front of the real piece.

OTOH, I have to agree that having the images the text is discussing right next to the images would be much more useful if you want to, for example, study art history.

google: http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/vangogh/the-bedroom iipimage: http://merovingio.c2rmf.cnrs.fr/iipimage/showcase/zoom.php?path=%2Fbaie3%2Fpyr-F5%2FF5702%2FHD3%2FHD3_pyr_000_090.tif The problem is that we don't have their money! :(