What is the relationship like between art and the internet? Well, to paraphrase the song Love and Marriage, art and the internet go together like a horse and carriage. This is because the internet provides two essential services without which the art world would be unable to function. Above all else, the internet has become the central location for buyers, sellers and art enthusiasts to learn more about the subject of their enthusiasm and business, whether it be eighteenth century portraiture or the latest art movement causing a storm in New York and London. Just as you can never know too much about a subject as vast as art, it is also true that you can never run out of ways of learning about it on the internet, from looking through back issues of an art periodical for a particular piece you overlooked about the various methods Renaissance painters used to mix their paints to researching your favourite artist and browsing through various sites to uncover a particular piece of information about him or her.
Alternatively, most major national collections have their own fully interactive web sites, many of whom even provide a virtual tour of the gallery. This way you will be able to view every painting in the collection of museums such as The Museum Of Modern Art in New York, The National and Tate Galleries in London, The Louvre in Paris, The Prado in Madrid and The Uffizi in Florence. In addition to viewing the work, a good gallery site should also have the online resources to enable you to dig a little deeper into the work on display, with artist biographies, historical overviews, scholarly essays and links to other relevant web sites. They should also have images available of work not currently on display and details of past, present and forthcoming exhibitions, in addition to an online shop, booking facilities, opening hours and directions to the gallery.
Other resources on the internet include online editions of various art journals such as The Art Newspaper and its sister papers in France, Italy and Greece, and a great number of official and unofficial web sites covering particular artists. There are also many sites used by artists themselves to keep in touch with the public, gather information about their work and serve as a shop window for it. The variety of ways artists can be represented and represent themselves online is not restricted to this, however. It is only natural that as the internet grows and plays an increasingly important part in our daily lives, artists start to use it as their chief means of expression to explore how society is changing, especially in light of the fact that the information superhighway has enabled a revolution in the way we manage, consume and distribute images. Evolving out of a combination of conceptual art, performance art and digital art, internet art is still in the early stages of its evolution, but will undoubtedly grow in significance and popularity over the years.
Of course, aside from being used as a means of getting information and keeping in touch, the internet is chiefly used by people to source services and do their shopping, which accounts for the terrific success of sites like Amazon and eBay. Amazon is able to undercut the prices of everything from books and cds to electronic appliances and household goods because it doesn’t have to spend so much on rent and maintenance. And eBay provides a way for customers to uncover items they have been looking through the second hand stores and auction houses for years and potentially get a bargain too, depending on how many other bidders are interested in it. The great attraction of shopping online consists of three principal benefits: the potential savings it is possible to make compared to high street prices, the opportunity to shop around and compare prices without leaving your chair and the convenience of having the product sent directly to your front door.
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