I first put up this site in January '95, long
before the Internet boom of '96. Netscape was in version 1.0, Yahoo
was a hobby of two Stanford students, and there were already several
other artists on the Web (now Yahoo
lists over 2000). Some of them are still out there -- pay a
visit to Erico Menczer, John
Jacobsen, Herman van Valen and Steve Strasnik.
Design
HTML was invented as a means of conveying information, rather than
making an aesthetic statement, and my original
design of the site's title page was purely utilitarian. I still
feel reluctant to use new fancy stuff that takes ages to load and
hangs older browsers, but tables turned out to be an extremely
versatile layout tool (not unlike boxes in TeX) if you understand how
to use them. In June '98 I completely redesigned the site to make it
look like it does now. If you are interested how it is done, feel free
to view the HTML source (which is a big mess). I also have a duplicate title page with all the tables made
visible by specifying a 1-pixel border, so you can see how they work
(some of the tables only have one row and one column).
Please do not hesitate writing me either by email (manin@pobox.com) or via the comments form with any questions,
criticisms and suggestions.
Images
The images presented here are scanned from color photographs taken in
daylight. Since all monitors are different, it's very difficult to
adjust colors so that they are true to the original painting. I
targeted them for a quality monitor set to a rather high brightness,
so if they look darkish, try increasing brightness on your
display. Computer monitor is fundamentally different from a
painting in that it is luminant, while the painting is
reflective. When I had to choose between colors that are too saturated
and the colors that are dusty and diluted, I chose the former.
Finally, for those who are interested in examining the brushwork, I
provide enlarged fragments of some
paintings.
Still, an artist displaying paintings on the Web is in a better
position than a musician using MIDI. MIDI has a distinct mechanical
quality, like tap water in a city. Lucky are the writers who don't need
anything more than plain old ASCII!
