Printing Out Your Favorite Art

While looking for possible models to print out on the 3D printers, I came across a website that made me begin to question what 3D printing allows people to make. On the website shapeways there was a post about printing out your very own famous work of art.

While it looks like a great opportunity (after all, who DOESN'T want their own Venus de Milo statue?), it also got me thinking about the legality of it all. One man in San Diego named Cosmo Wenman has two life sized reproduction of the Head of a Horse of Selene from 432 B.C. While the original is in the British Museum, Wenman has made it a habit to go to museums all over the world and taking pictures of famous sculptures.  Taking at least 200 pictures of each one, Wenma can then construct the files on his computer and post the finished model on websites like Thingiverse. 

On top is the original Horse Statue in the British Museum and below is Wenman's printed one. 

While Wenman is sticking to taking pictures primarily of older statues of antiquities to avoid copyright concerns, there is still a question of legality and whether or not these are forgeries. Wenman claims that these are not simply cheap knock-offs for people to print, but lets be honest here. If you had the opportunity to print out your very own Bernini or Michaelangelo sculpture for very little, would you say no? 

And being able to 3D print sculptures was only the beginning. 3D printers are now able to recreate fine art paintings with the specific textures and brushstrokes certain artists are known for. By scanning the paintings with two cameras zoomed in very close to capture all the colors and details, they can then be rendered as a 3D scan and put together to become the whole painting. 

For an example on how exactly a painting can be printed, here are two videos demonstrating it. 

Ultimately, technology is making it very accessible to obtain famous artworks as "authentic" as they can be. But the question is how comfortable you as the buyer feel about how it was made.  Is it a reproduction of the artwork or a forgery? That is most compelling thing to think about.