Amidst the current chaos of the Coronavirus, any visits to art galleries, exhibitions and showcases has been deterred. Combined with the abundance of time given to us in this lockdown which can make it increasingly hard to settle into a routine, the external art world has certainly taken a hit. However many art institutions have come to you, through your phone or laptop, so you don’t miss out.
1. Google Arts and Culture
This is an app that can be downloaded with IOS and Android. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, the design on Google Arts & Culture makes it more rewarding to scroll through artwork instead. Learn about different movements of art through the accessible descriptions and be directed to different artists- both classical and contemporary, to get a flavour for their works.
Google Arts & Culture has a feature which enables artwork to be projected into your living room by using your camera. Thus, instead of watching television you can observe some of life’s greatest masterpieces from the comfort of your own sofa. This also allows you to get a more thorough look at these pieces as you can get a lot more closer to them than you would in person.
A rather more fun aspect of the app is that you can take an “Art Selfie” in which you can take a selfie and it shows you which art work you resemble most, although this is not always as flattering as it sounds!
You can access the galleries that have made themselves online. This means you can partake in virtual tours around galleries as renowned as the Louvre and The British Museum. Further more they can take you even further around the globe, extending further than galleries in the ‘French Cultural Journey’ which takes you to all the culturally virtuous landmarks of France without the price of a plane ticket.
2. The Contemporary Art Gallery https://www.contemporaryartgalleryonline.com/
This website separates the artwork into segments as niche as “Green” or as broad as “Expressionism”. This makes filtering through different styles of art much more efficient as you can come to terms with which style of art resonates with you most. Within each category they display a range of works. The Surrealism category, for example, shows pieces as blatant as Page’s Whispered Love and as abstract and evocative as Lawrence’s The Sphere of Life. The Archived Exhibitions page provides a bounteous select of works, allowing you to look through the development of artists' work from 2013 until 2019.
Furthermore, The Contemporary Art Gallery has a 2020 Art Competition Listing encouraging aspiring artists with or without experience to partake. With competitions ranging from ‘All Botanical’ to an ‘Open/ No Theme Competition’, there is plenty of opportunity for you to get involved.
This is an online art gallery which focuses predominantly on contemporary artists. The “Discover our Rising Stars” page on it is a brilliant place to stay current with contemporary emerging artists from across the globe from German to Croatia without having to leave the comfort of your house.
It is explanatory of artist’s techniques in a thorough and accessible way such as in Mbaye Babacar Diouf, a Senegalese artist’s, work. This directs a perspective for you to look at his City scapes – offering a more peaceful gaze around cities than in the reality of this crisis.
The different sub sections are, similarly to the Contemporary Art Gallery, very niche which helps refine your search. It has categories ranging from: Historical & Political, Portrait, Urban, Abstract and Landscape. Yet they display a range of artists within these categories. Such as Pierre Van Dijk’s landscape oil painting In the Field Picking Flowers with its very impressionistic influence comparing drastically to Simunovic’s more abstract Bay of Love. Despite both of them depicting people emerged into landscapes.
4. Art Gallery Online https://artgallery.co.uk/
This is similar to Singulart in many aspects but it provides a nice space to browse art for sale online. They highlight individual artists such as Natalie Toplass, a botanical artist, meaning you can view the range of art she produces in great depth. This shows the evolution of artist’s work over the years such as Toplass’ rather oriental style to the thoroughly pastoral English which brings the outside world, once again, to your screen. Their premier gallery displays a multitude of art and gives the sense of being in a local, independent gallery.
Written by Emily Quli
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