Art and Accessibility
Nothing replaces the experience of seeing a painting in the original. Someone, sometime, maybe hundreds of years ago, touched this canvas, right here, like this…viewing a painting is very personal. Seeing the work places you in the presence of the artist, a one to one dialogue – the original painting has the breath and physical presence of the artist. Mark Rothko thought paintings should be shown in museums in separate rooms, just one viewer and one painting – so personal did he feel the experience to be.
In a world of multiples, painting is in a funny situation. We are used to reproduction, fancying it up by calling it “virtual”. But what makes things “work” in modern society is accessibility, so this seems a promising development:
Roku LLC of Palo Alto and RGB Labs of Seattle both offer consumers and business a way to use their pricey LCD and plasma-screen monitors to display the high-definition video reproductions of paintings such as Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” whenever the screen’s owners seek a respite from watching TV sitcom stars.
If the average person could purchase a flash memory card of a particular artist’s work for their soon to be affordable large screen high definition TV, it would change the artworld forever – democratizing painting the way paperback books democratized publishing.
