A quick virtual jaunt to see Great Art
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I happened onto Google’s virtual art museum site by accident a week ago. Those clever people have digitized hundreds of works of art from 17 museums around the world, and you can see them in roughly the same way that you see things via Google Maps. That gives you incredible control (as you’d imagine) but also weirds up the experience quite a bit (as you would also imagine). It’s something I bookmarked, and I reckoned that it was something that others could add to their list of online places to go to kill a little time. What the heck, right? If you’re going to spend half a weekend in Farmville, you can certainly carve out an hour to take in a little “high culture” while sipping a Diet Coke.The fun begins at The Google Art Project, but before you go skipping off, here’s a bit of perspective from an ex-art student with the help of a really good article entitled “Treat for the virtual art lover”
Plan on spending a bit of time just getting used to their interface.
To quote from the above article:
It is very much a work in progress, full of bugs and information gaps, and sometimes blurry, careering virtual tours. But it is already a mesmerizing, world-expanding tool for self-education. You can spend hours exploring it, examining paintings from far off and close up, poking around some of the world’s great museums all by your lonesome. I have, and my advice is: expect mood swings. This adventure is not without frustrations.
You click to move around, and can look in different directions as you navigate your way around the galleries. But it’s not a perfect system. The movement comes in a strange sweeping motion that’s a little disconcerting, and you tend to end up looking in the wrong direction more often than you’d like. Those are the kind of things that can take all the fun out of the experience if you don’t get the hang of it.
Good news; bad news: You DO get to look at the painting up-close and personal (some more than others); you DON’T get to “feel” it in the way you usually would in an art museum.
… you can look at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus almost inch by inch. It’s nothing like standing before the real, breathing thing. What you see is a very good reproduction that offers the option to pore over the surface with an adjustable magnifying rectangle. This feels like an eerie approximation, at a clinical, digital remove, of the kind of intimacy usually granted only to the artist and his assistants, or conservators and preparators.
Even better news: Despite glitches in the interface and the limitations of looking at art on a screen, there is something that you get from this surreal online experience that just wouldn’t be possible in the real world — space! time! freedom! Meaning … you can look at whatever you’re interested in as long as you want, as close as you want, and you can do it all while sitting in your favorite chair listening to your favorite mood music and sipping/munching/slurping your favorite food.
Google maintains that, beyond details you may not have noticed before, you can see things not normally visible to the human eye. And it is probably true…. Still, the most unusual aspects of the experience are time, quiet and stasis: you can look from a seated position in the comfort of your own home or office cubicle, for as long as you want, without being jostled or blocked by other art lovers. [emphasis mine]
So I’m saying, have a go at it. A lot of people I know have a kind of funny relationship with art museums. They like them, but they’re intimidated by them. They feel good when they go, but they’re not always sure they want the bother of going. So don’t go and do go at the same time. Such is the blessing of culture that’s only a mouse-click away.
Put on some classical music, get yourself a good cup of coffee/tea/whatever, close the door for 15 minutes or so, and go look at Van Goghs and Rembrandts and stuff — HERE. Good fun, and good for you.
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BTW, I should’ve mentioned that my extremely pixellated detail of Venus isn’t from the Google Art Project. Their magnifications are much better done than that — I was just having a bit of illustrative fun.
You’ve used my favorite painting in the world! I call her “Venus on the Half-shell.” I have been to Florence several times and when I am there, the first thing I would do (except on the day the Uffizi is closed) was go in pay my lira (I havent’ been back since the euro was introduced) and gaze at her to start my day. Some days I’d even go back later to see her again.
She is so beautiful and ever so much larger than you would expect. Exactly the opposite of Mona who is so much smaller than you’d think.
And I’ve never quite understood why Mona was a (secular) icon; I can understand why this Venus is. I’ve never had the pleasure of a personal introduction, but I wish I had.
Our Kansas City art museum is the Nelson-Atkins. Really small by comparison to any of the great museums, but it has a couple of those kinds of artworks that are the same for me — I *know* I’m going to go see them and I plan the visit so that I’ve got the best chance of some quality time.
I don’t imagine it could ever be like that with a virtual art museum. But I suppose if it was a museum that you’d never get to any other way (as with the number of them in the Google Art Project that are in the Netherlands), getting to see it online is better than not getting to see it at all.