I saw the new Google Art project yesterday when searching for something and thought it might be interesting. How wrong could I be? Very!
Google have wheeled their Street Map camera's around every major Art gallery in the world taking pictures of all the work, allowing you to 'walk' around, from the comfort of your chair.
I searched the Uffizi, for the Botticelli painting I recently posted about and was horrified by the pixellated grey mess i found in its place. Art should be seen in the flesh wherever possible, and the magic of these masterpieces should be protected and embraced. I am by no means against reference, (for which Google images is amazing and allows me to write this blog), but i am against replacement.
What about the context of the setting, the heat of the city, light, vibrancy of colour, scale, emotion that's emitted, history, damage, realness...the experience!
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
Art project is Not useful, it is damaging. I know some galleries already have similar types of thing themselves, but its the wholesale nature of this which is the problem. The obssesion is with access, with amounts of information, not useful information. So now you can virtually fly around all of the greatest artistic treasures in the world during your coffee break. It's just making the world so small, static and stale.
Please Google, can you leave me somewhere to explore myself, something to find myself and make up my own mind about, by seeing it as it was made, and meant to be seen.
I have deliberately not linked to the Art Project site, and i suggest that instead of searching for it you think about doing something else. Maybe go into your library at lunchtime and flick through some art books, with faithfull lithographic reproductions, go to your nearest gallery, or dust off the old SLR camera, and discover.
(Phew, sorry)
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