POPULAR PRINTS

Global Gallery may be a commercial concern, aiming to sell “the highest-quality fine art prints currently published”, but it offers ample educational and aesthetic benefits, too. Promising the ultimate “art shopping experience”, the gallery provides a “power search” with which purchasers can select and combine categories, artist, genre, subject and colour to find whatever they require.

The full artist list is vast and you can give yourself a thorough art education merely by viewing the prints available and accessing the “knowledge centre” for biographies, art movements and random trivia. However, the Top 100 Prints and Posters is proof that popularity is no real measure of artistic merit. Many will frown at the high placing of Jack Vettriano while wondering just who exactly Alice Dalton Brown and Michael Sowa are. Andy Warhol’s trusty tomato soup can is the bestseller – some point concerning the irony of consumerism coming out on top. www.globalgallery.com

STREET SMART

Street art is “art created in public places, often without permission”, according to the brilliant Streetsy website. Here is underground art at its best, with the curator Jake Dobkin, who lives in New York, posting images that cover stencils, stickers, posters, paint and sculpture found wherever he has roamed.

The Streetsy pool has more than 90,000 pictures at Flickr, as well as almost 8,000 in Dobkin’s photostream. A few display an artistic talent worthy of a Basquiat or Banksy, though many crude and cheeky dashes of graffiti are effective enough to make them worth seeking out. If your own work is deemed good enough it could be added to the Dear Streetsy section. www.streetsy.com

BLOG OF THE WEEK

Frank Serpico was the heroic cop who exposed New York City police corruption in the 1970s (he was portrayed on screen by Al Pacino). At his official blog, evidence of his strict moral code reveals exactly why bent officers hated him and conspired to have him shot in the face.

“Paco”, as he is known, writes poetry that would make Harold Pinter proud and grandstanding polemic condemning the current Bush Administration and his old enemies in all its forms, filed under the general heading “corruption”. As in the case of Goodfellas’ Henry Hill, it is fascinating to see the real person come through after a trip into the Hollywood mincer. frankserpico.blogspot.com

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Did you know Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (I’m sure we’ll get used to the title) has already finished principal photography? It was wrapped up on October 11, according to the official Indiana website. There is lots of archive material and a brief making-of video with glimpses of a bushy brunette-haired Cate Blanchett plus Ray Winstone and John Hurt, both bearded. Come May and the US release, this site will be rammed with web goodies that will help you to forget that Harrison Ford is 65. www.indianajones.com