Online imagery does away with visit to art galleries

Published: 12:00am, 18 Apr 2006

Call me a barbarian. I don't care. I never want to visit another art gallery again.

The reason is the swathe of online imagery that just leaves so much artwork for dead. Please do not flame me but I would much rather look at some of the photos splashed on the Net than make the schlep to some stony institution.

So goodnight Guggenheim and au revoir to the Louvre. If you think I must have been taking crystal meth to talk like this, hit this link www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/. Gaze at some images displayed by the online photo management and sharing application Flickr.

I looked at nine dazzling photos. One is simply cute - it depicts a girl cradling a floppy panda that sucks her fingers. Another is trippy - it depicts the trim, multicoloured head of a lizard peeking out of what looks like a lily. Another is sexy - it portrays a girl leaning towards the lens and displaying the buckle of her belt, which is carved in the shape of the f-word.

I could happily grab any one of these images and use it as desktop wallpaper. Or I could just flip from image to image indefinitely, distracted by the 'gorgeousity' and 'interestingness' (to use Flickr language) and running the risk of becoming addicted. Hence the on-site warning: 'You might want to take your phone off the hook, send your boss to an executive training session and block off some time on your schedule, because we don't think you're going to be walking away from your screen any time soon.'

Speaking of soon, one advantage of cyberspace 'art' is its capacity to be up-to-the-minute and enable moments of synchronicity. One second I was reading an online story from The Times newspaper about how the Bush administration was a physically exhausted flop. Then I received this link, www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm, which deftly illustrated that point.

The webpage referred to shows George W. Bush tumbling through space. Occasionally, his limp body snags on an obstacle. To see him continue his spiral towards rock bottom, you just click and drag.

Whatever your politics, the spectacle is hypnotic. If you want equally striking visual experiences delivered in real-time, the Web is festooned with extraordinary webcam stills. Look no further than the Alaska Volcano Observatory (www.avo.alaska.edu/) , which virtually allows you to jump into the furnace. You can almost smell the smoke and feel the lava brushing against you like a snake.

If you think that all this modern material is rubbish, you can always admire the work of classical masters online, too. Go to Olga's gallery (www.abcgallery.com/) and you can save yourself the need to buy a ticket to Europe: from Vincent van Gogh to Raphael and Caravaggio, it is all there.

If you despise western art and would rather feast your eyes on Chinese work, hit Chinese Art Net (www.chineseartnet.com/meindex.htm) . This site exposes everything from traditional fans to Xu Xi's Ireland landscape paintings.

Purists will say that all this stuff is no substitute for the original. Oil on canvas has its own particular sheen impossible to reproduce online especially if the viewer has a cathode ray tube monitor.

But the result of all the online exposure for all kinds of imagery is that art, once so much the province of the elite, fey and fussy, is now social - especially in the case of Flickr. Unlike rival sites such as Shutterfly and Snapfish where the stress is more on storing photographs, at Flickr photos are tagged, commented on and shared with relish, making everyone's private Truman Show public property. It's a voyeur's dream.

So pick up your digicam, start snapping and uploading. Let's see what is going on in your world.

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