February 8, 2011
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Roberta Smith reports today in the NYTimes about the Google Art Project, an online tour of selected offerings from 17 museums, a number of which I hope is growing:
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.
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At the same time the chance to look closely at paintings, especially, as made things, really to study the way artists construct an image on a flat surface, is amazing, and great practice for looking at actual works. And while the Internet makes so much in our world more immediate, it is still surprising to see what it can accomplish with the subtle physicality of painting, whether it is the nervous, fractured, tilting brush strokes of Cezanne?s ?Ch?teau Noir? from 1903-4, at the Museum of Modern Art...
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