[SergeiSK]

Google Art Project - a seventeen museums from nine countries, 385 showrooms and 400 artists and 1060 pictures in high resolution. Anyone who has access to the Internet, can now visit the Metropolitan Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Tate and the Hermitage and to consider their exhibits in such detail that are not available even in reality. Google has made an invaluable gift to all lovers of art.

Until experts Google has not photographed at high resolution the famous painting "Harvest (August)" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, director of London's Tate Gallery did not know that it depicts the traditional Fat Tuesday's game, during which the peasants throw the stick in-bound pole goose. The actual size of the figures of these people in the background does not exceed a few millimeters, so consider them in a picture stored in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is almost impossible. Rather, it was impossible until recently.

Google Art Project was launched six years ago in the usual format for the company: most of the day staff perform their duties, but a fifth of working hours they are allowed to spend on side projects that interest them. So at some point, all art lovers in Google teamed up and decided to use the means at their disposal technology to make art more accessible.

Many museums and galleries and had laid out their digitized collections on the Internet, and a lot more . (The most revealing from this point of view of the New York Museum of Modern Art, which published on its website absolutely everything he has - 34,000 works, many of which are in the museum to see the impossible.) However, thanks to technologies such as Picasa, App Engine and Street View, enthusiasts from Google managed to create something new.

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Firstly, no one has ever collected in a single database and systematized the work of the various museums in the world, creating something more than just a collection of reproductions. Secondly, the Google project is interactive: You can create your list of masterpieces and share them with friends. Thirdly, Street View allows you to literally "walk" through the halls of the famous museums. Consider the picture in this mode does not work, but no Japanese tourists and museum keepers.

Deserve special mention paintings, photographed in ultra-high resolution . Image of each of them consists of approximately seven billion pixels, that is, their resolution is a thousand times higher than that of a simple digital photo. Due to this increase may be considered not only Bruegel peasants but also the most delicate brush strokes, minute details and cracks in the paint. There are other features - for example, now "No, woman, no cry" from the Tate Gallery can be viewed in a special "night" mode to see its hidden by Chris Ofili inscription, which is visible only in darkness.

For Russian museums such shooting was a gift. Director Irina Lebedeva TG told that their "flagship" picture - "The Appearance of Christ to the people," Alexander Ivanov - For Google removed the whole day. "In order to do so themselves, we have no technology, no such opportunities," - she added. " level shooting is such that even the experts wondering, researchers and conservators ", - acceded to the representative of Directorate of Hermitage.

By itself, a new project has emerged, and critics. So, journalist The Daily Telegraph has accused Google Art Project in the absence of inclusiveness. For example, in a project (yet) involved such major museums like the Prado and the Louvre museum and the collection presented reflects too selectively. In this criticism is most embarrassing that someone decides for you, what pictures you want to see, and what does not .

Another, more common complaint is that the viewing of masterpieces in the internet automatically makes them, depriving the context, and there is a danger that in the future want to visit museums in general no longer . In addition, Google is able to show you a picture in such detail, which can not be distinguished by looking at it in a museum. If the simulacrum becomes so high quality, why bother to take reality into account? This problem, being inherently philosophical, is actually quite interesting.

Recently, a Swiss intellectual and writer Alain de Botton, known for his desire to carry a mass philosophy, art, literature, and in general all areas traditionally considered to be the lot of highbrow experts, said that museums generally have avoided his "museum." De Botton argues that, with its large number of very important from a spiritual point of view of the material, museums are absolutely not trying to convey to the audience the meaning of certain products, while this should be done.

According to the writer, museums need to make greater efforts to ensure that their visitors to understand what, in fact, a picture, connect blurring art values with certainty the values of Christian culture. Write, for example, instead of dry historical reference on the information plate: "Look at this painting and remember how important it is to be patient" or "This sculpture should inspire you to think about how to make the world fairer."

At the nominal absence of a connection between the ideas of de Botton and Google Art Project, they actually move around in one direction. The point is that if museums and really move into the internet, will disappear the same context that the common man is increasingly confuses . Leaves and some implicit default obligation to understand: when you can simply browse the picture by pressing one button, responsibility evaporates by itself.

Complementing these online reproductions of signatures in the spirit of motivational de Botton, we get a completely new type of museum. Their visitors will no longer feel awkward and, referring to the explanatory remark will never doubt what it means and what appeals to their heart's "Birth of Venus" by Botticelli or the artist's bedroom in Arles, Van Gogh. Not that this simplicity could not enter the museums in their present form (though this incredible perspective), just a virtual exhibitions it corresponds much better.

Refraining from the far-reaching conclusions, the creators of Google Art Project just announced that it is very glad to implement your project and hope in the future to expand it, making the democratic, if not art itself, or at least access to it. Nothing to do but to thank them for it. Say what you like, what they did was absolutely amazing .

Alex Kadaner