WeB of Art

At the helm of affairs is London-based Amit Sood,who is head of googleartproject.com. Sood always found art as absorbing and was fascinated by the e-world. “This has now worked out to create this art project,” tells Sood,as he logs on to the website. The project,which was initiated about two years ago,evolved when Sood started documenting his visits to museums online. “But it took off,only when others at Google joined me. Together with our museum partners around the world,we decided to create an exhaustive resource for art-lovers. It is our way to bridge the gap between those who want to visit these places but can’t,” says Sood as he talks about the project,which allows anyone and anywhere in the world,to learn about the history and artists at the click of a mouse.

There are various iconic works,like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Chris Ofili’s No Woman,No Cry,apart from French artist Paul Cezanne’s post impressionist works and Byzantine,the eastern Roman Empire’s iconography,which can be viewed while you take the virtual tour. From the ceilings of Versailles to ancient Egyptian temples,a collection of James Whistler’s stylised butterfly paintings and Rembrandt’s works all over the globe,the tour will give you all. “About 486 artists from around the world have been included. Done on high resolution,the site enables one to study details of the brushwork and patina in detail,” says Sood. He also talks about the fine-details that become clear online. He points at the tiny Latin couplet,which appears in German Northern Renaissance style artist Hans Holbein Younger’s The Merchant Georg Gisze. It can be read by just increasing the size of the webpage. One can easily spot the people hidden behind the tree,in Alexander Ivanov’s The Apparition of Christ to the People.

On the website,the info panel allows people to read about an artwork,find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos. As for their ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature,it allows users to save specific views of any 1,000 plus artworks and build their own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared.

“It’s our first step towards making art more accessible and we hope to add more museums and works of art in time. India for now is high on our agenda,” says Sood,who having moved out of India in 1997,hopes the expansion plans will see him reviving ties with the country.