Recently I became acquainted with Jenna who helps curate the Artsy Web Site and we realized that we have a common goal:
To make art and art history
accessible to people,
no matter what their background
or what they may have previously studied
With my novels, first “Dreaming Sophia,” and now with my new book “Waking Isabella” due out later this fall, it is my intention, to take readers on a trip to Italy, to visit a fascinating country and learn a little Italian. But it is also my fondest desire to promote the idea that art can actually “talk to you” if you stop and listen.
The more you know about an artist and his work, you will have a better understanding of the artist’s motivations as well as the period in which he worked and the social and cultural forces at play, thus making the visual experience of standing before a painting or a sculpture all that more rewarding.
After exchanging a couple of emails with Jenna, I discovered more about the Artsy site and was seriously impressed with the depth and breadth of information that it offers up to visitors. It is a site that features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place. They have a growing database of 800,000 images of art, architecture, and design by 70,000 artists spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and include the largest online database of contemporary art. Artsy is used by art lovers, museum-goers, patrons, collectors, students, and educators to discover, learn about, and collect art.
Recently, I wrote a post about Elsa Schiaparelli, the Italian fashion designer with a surrealist heart. In this post, I mentioned the artist Man Ray. To learn more about this particular artist, you can jump over to the Artsy site and find his biography, as well as over 120 images of his art, exclusive articles, and up-to-date Man Ray exhibition listing. The page also includes related artists and categories, allowing viewers to discover art beyond the Man Ray page.
The Artsy site is a “meraviglia” as Sophia, the ultimate daydreamer and artist would say! There you will find the world of art at your fingertips on the internet. But, just remember… it is just the warm-up that will prepare you for your next encounter with a piece of art in a gallery, or a museum, or even on the street…so that you too can have a nice little conversation with it the next time you bump into each other.
