Best Apps and Websites for Art Lovers
To appreciate art, you don’t have to be physically near it
Well, at least to set your foot on this path of enjoying art and learning more about it. Especially in the post-COVID era [are we already post or rather still in though?].
In this article, I won’t go into just simply numbering the commonly known resources like Wikipedia or WikiArt (which is always good to find some initial information and visuals if you know exactly what you are looking for).
Instead, I’d rather show you some resources I use myself — the ones that feed my own art passion and keep me in the loop of that’s going on the art world today.
So, whether you’ve just embarked on a journey of exploring arts or you are a savvy art enthusiast or aspiring art collector, there are quite a few interesting apps and websites to include in your art discovery routine.
1. Enjoy beautiful art and Learn something new every day
Have you ever used your phone to make that daily contact with art and its history? If that still sounds queer, then I have excellent news for you! Or, if you are rather used to a convenience of a universe of beautifully organised data at hand, then there is a great news for you too!
Smart Art — Art History Escape is a new iOS app (so far available for iPhones and iPads only) that was created by yours truly to help you discover brilliant artists, their art and its history, and get inspired and learn something new every day.
Briefly, Smart Art contains over 1000 of original curious and relatable short art stories written in a witty, conversational tone and added there daily. They are all grouped into nicely organised themes like, for example, Myths and Legends, Medieval Monday, Secret Symbols or Art Market, to name a few.
And the bespoke art history quizzes are another way to discover brilliant art and check your knowledge along the way.
The whole library is based on an easy-to-navigate collection of over 80,000 classified paintings (continuously growing and updating) from Medieval Manuscripts to Abstract Expressionism.
All artworks, stories and quizzes are neatly interrelated with each other by tags and search filters like style, genre, artist, school, and others — a great and intuitive way to discover myriads of new artists and artworks even if you have no prior knowledge or don’t know where to start from.
Anyway, not to self-promote that much the thing that I tailor-made personally, I simply welcome you to try and test it yourself and let me know what you think.
Some other apps you may enjoy
Of course, there are several other art apps you may download conveniently for your phones and see if they are the ones that work best for you:
- Google Arts and Culture app. Many of you are familiar with this huge initiative of a giant tech company, that encompasses thousands of museum collections of all sorts under one digital roof. There you could find curated articles on all sorts of arts and cultural aspects and find some curious information on the particular topic you are interested in.
- DailyArt. Perhaps the first ever mobile app that started introducing people to art in a form of a “daily dose”, as they called it. For 8 or something years in row they share an artwork a day and accompany it with a short gist of its background.
- There are also apps, like Artsy or SaatchiArt, for example, which might be a perfect match if you are more into contemporary art and don’t mind an opportunity to immediately buy something that pleased your eye.
2. Don’t miss the art history News
Oh I personally adore how this sounds.
Indeed, there is a lot going on in the world of arts [and I don’t even mean contemporary here] — thefts and re-discoveries, exhibitions and X-Ray scientific research revelations, art market sleepers and hammer price sensations. All of that is happening daily.
There are tons of conventional and reputable resources usually recommended for reading to keep being in the know, like The Art Newspaper or, again Artsy websites, for example.
However, my news supplier of choice here is the Art History News blog. It is owned and initially curated by the famous British art researcher and connoisseur Bendor Grosvenor [not to mention he is a charming TV-host at BBC projects like Fake or Fortune or The Britain’s Lost Masterpieces].
A few moths ago another art historian Adam Busiakiewicz seemed to take over the posts there, though still, the quality and the signature tone of presenting and commenting on the hot art topics of today is still there. Highly recommend.
Another source of distilled art information of impeccable quality is The Burlington Magazine.
The renown traditional paper editorial had finally established it’s presence online and now their interesting articles with the latest art research from all over the world are available both in the form of the online issue for subscribers and in an ever-growing database of free content.
3. Digging deeper & Reading further
Now when you got interested by a particular thing and know what exactly you’d like to know more about, time to find it in a broad search online.
A small digression here. Of course, there is nothing better than reading a real book or admiring a glossy album of some artist’s catalogue raisonée, or some richly illustrated exhibition catalogue with notes, or a good scholarly monograph. Not even saying that enjoying art is broken without seeing it in flesh in art galleries , exhibitions and museum collections. All this goes without saying.
At the same time, it is still a privilege for many, and well, almost for everyone in the pandemic period. And the opportunities of still getting close to art we love brought to us by the power of Internet, is an exceptional not-to-miss opportunity, which was not available to any generation before.
There are tons of links to this or that piece of art info online, though not all of them are really worth investing your time. Here are the resources that provide quality experience and which I love using myself:
- Museums’ websites. Well, not all of them are yet there, though some are a real treasure troves, like their brick-and-mortar offline homes. The MET, Rijksmuseum, Mauritshuis, Art Institute of Chicago are the best examples with good navigation, downloadable collection and insightful artwork background information and additional research.
- Art auctions’ websites. That’s right, the best of them like Sotheby’s and Christie’s provide outstanding notes and hd-images of the numerous museum-quality artworks from private collections. Read this article of mine on Why Auctions are New Museums here.
- Art databases. Though most of them are still limited in this or that way, there are still some which are quite an authority in certain domains. Like RKD — which might seem less user-friendly at first sight, though has an extensive information on old master artists and their interrelations, especially accurate and detailed for the Dutch painters of the previous epochs.
- Dedicated art blogs and research projects. Finally, there is a good chance that you may find some specific authority (be it an institution or an individual) on a particular subject of your interest [say, British artists or Portrait miniatures]. My personal favourites are The Frame Blog, where the author knows everything about frames from all time periods, and the Pastels & Pastellists project by Neil Jeffares — simply the best, one of a kind and the most extensive information source on all things pastel. And yes, an infinite source for inspiration not only from the subject matter, but also from the author’s utter dedication to the art that he appreciates and truly loves.
