Google Art Project.

The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. You can take a tour through the rooms and decide which artwork to look at. I zoomed onto the Mosaic floor by a group of Russian and Italian artists (bottom image), which is located in the room in second image from top. Isn’t that just incredible? I love technology!

The Hall of Mirrors at Palace of Versailles in France. This is what a typical “gallery view” looks like, and you can navigate by either using the arrows, or by clicking on different rooms on the floor-plan in the right hand side.

La Primavera (Spring) by Sandro Botticelli at Uffizi Gallery in Florence. (As a little side note, I was very lucky to see this painting at Uffizi almost four years ago. I never much cared for it until then, but when I saw it in real life – everything changed. You know that moment when you realise that photos and digital images can never quite capture the actual beauty of the real thing? Well, this was one of those moments… And then I bought a little canvas carry-bag at the gift shop to always remind me of this painting. Shame that the carry-bag is too small and pretty useless as I’d use it much more then I do. Anyway, where were we?)

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli at Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Bottom image is the super high zoom of Venus’ eye. Yep, true story!

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh at MoMA in New York.  Super high zoom of the edge of the moon in the bottom image. You can even see the cracks in the paint!

No doubt that most of you would have heard about the Google Art Project by now, no? Either way, it’s not like the mighty Google need any press from lil’ ol’ me but I couldn’t resist – it’s too exciting not to share! Released only last week, Google Art Project has taken the internet and the art world by storm. Utilising the same technology as Google Street View, the project brings over a thousand artworks by hundreds of artists across 17 premiere galleries from all over the world to anyone with an internet connection. Ah-ma-zing!

You can do virtual tours of the participating museums, stroll through their rooms using arrows which are there to help you navigate, select specific artworks and zoom-in to view them in super-high res (and by high-res I mean up to 7 billion pixles. Yes, that’s 7 BILLION pixels. Shit-a-brick. That’s a lot of pixels man.) There are links to museum websites, information and notes on specific artworks and their respective artists, etc, etc. Absolutely incredible stuff.

Clearly, nothing beats the actual visit and seeing paintings in the flesh, but for those people who aren’t lucky enough to be able to travel to all these galleries, this is an incredibly powerful substitute. It is wonderful to see that art is made accessible to (almost) all of us everywhere, and not just to the elite. Not to mention the immense educational possibilities of such a website. Google’s creative ability to think outside the box, and dream up and execute new ideas is quite simply unrivaled.

The future is NOW.

On ya Google, you lil’ ripper!

I’ve already been to Russia, France, Germany, Spain and Italy this morning. Lets have lunch in New York, shall we? Fab. See you there.

x dana

Now, I’ve just quickly popped into MoMA in New York to see what’s happening… Hmm… No crowds. This is pretty cool! Anyway, that painting on the wall straight ahead looks interesting… Let me zoom in…

…and voila! The Seed of the Areoi by Paul Gauguin. (MoMA in New York – room shot where this painting hangs is shown above).

The Bather by Paul Cézanne at MoMA in New York.

Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

Woman at a Window by Caspar David Friedrich at Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) in Berlin.