TO THE ENTRANCE
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Virtual Exhibition to mark Lieve Hemel Gallery's 30th anniversary on 2 December 1998 This virtual exhibition was set up to mark the gallery's 30th anniversary on 2 December 1998, when the web site was still in its infancy. I have not yet come to grips with state-of-the-art three-dimensional techniques and what's more, my main concern revolves around file size control so as to ensure a more or less acceptable rate of downloading. An so I plump for the simplest method available to suggest the third dimension in a two-dimensional plane: the line. This design undeniably conveys a sense of the primitive and I intend to leave it as is, so that the date of this Virtual Exhibition will permanently be hinted at by its design as much as by its content. Commercial? Whenever the Internet is mentioned, it is usually in terms of commerce, market, sales, customer canvassing and the like. I subscribe anything but wholeheartedly to this view, which as such is hardly surprising given my familiarity with the art market. I am still finding it hard to believe that having looked at a work of art on screen, people would actually proceed to buy it. There are several reasons why I can't quite believe that they would. First, there is the fact that the process from appreciation to buying has simply always taken time, even in the dark ages, when there was no Internet. It can take quite a few years before someone's familiarity with art has matured to the point where he or she has grown sufficiently comfortable with the idea of raking over a substantial sum of money to invite what is essentially a highly personal expression by another individual into their life. Second, reproductions of works of art almost invariably look better, or different, than the original. What the monitor presents to the viewer prompts the same caution as does printed matter. Generally speaking, moreover, buying a work of art is an act of highly emotional intensity, and although there is every chance that future generations will have grown so accustomed to the many options of the digital world as to have shed their inhibitions in this regard, I'm convinced that mankind is still quite some way away from reaching that stage. What's so wonderful about a web site is that notwithstanding the above restrictions it nevertheless opens up opportunities for projects that are not marred by attempts at boosting sales. Assuming that the scope for selling art via the Internet is destined to remain limited for the time being, isn't it an attractive alternative to organise something completely non-commercial, such as an exhibition of works of art that are not for sale, a collection whose compilation would require a great deal of money and effort, like a museum? Of course a virtual museum along the above lines is a wonderful option, regarding it as I do as one of my duties to ensure fame for my artists, but who would have thought that something which normally speaking would only be achievable for a gallery owner on the off-chance has come within reach thanks to the Internet? And before you get carried away, let me assure you that compiling a virtual exhibition is every bit as difficult as creating a real one. I should know - I vastly underestimated the job, as witnessed by the mere fact that I am completing this cover text over a year after the exhibition was launched and am partially rewriting it, while I have turned the second genuinely virtual exhibition, Anneke van Brussel's Virtual Portrait Gallery, into a sort of permanently unfinished symphony to which I devote a couple of hours' work every week. Format A monitor is two-dimensional and rectangular, there's no need to train beams of light on the exhibited works, drill holes, paint the wall white or hoover the floor … and yet just displaying the flat reproduction is not enough. You need to dress up the flat space with graphics, as minimal as these can be left. The graphic design assumes a prominent role together with the technical composition: do you opt for scrolling or for pop-ups? I don't want to bore you with too much detail, but let me assure you that a web site of this kind gradually evolves, like a genuine structure that needs to fit together in a logical way. There are times when you discover after a great deal of hard graft that things should be done differently altogether. More often than not it takes several months of hard work only to acquire insights that make you decide to redo an entire series. And sometimes you start on something that you find cannot yet be done. I had initially wanted to go for state-of-the-art three-dimensional reproduction. However, the accompanying huge file sizes and steep equipment prices prompted me to rethink my strategy and plump for the exact opposite: the plain suggestion of a space through a couple of lines. I got to this point by studying the way in which Anneke van Brussel in some of her paintings suggests a table to position a still life on. This in itself yields a far from straightforward scenario: where the lines suggest a tapering of the wall in perspective, the clickable thumbnails of the paintings are also required to be shown in perspective. Such resources as I had at my disposal only allowed me to achieve this in part. The critical viewers will notice that there is no question of an condensed reproduction - if anything, the opposite applies. This section of the web site could be seen as an antique, everything happening much faster in the digital world. Selection Several considerations are involved in making the selection of works to be displayed. As it was an anniversary exhibition and quite a few recent works of the artists in question were already featured on the site, I decided to focus on works from the past. The criterion of availability or rather, whether the work of art is within reach or is situated elsewhere as part of a (well-known) private collection, either around the corner or on the other side of the world, is more or less irrelevant for an exhibition such as this: a slide or photograph suffices. The interesting thing is that it enables you to see the difference between a painter's earlier and current work. Take Ben Snijders, for example, whose paintings forming part of the virtual anniversary exhibition were created some 20 years ago. You can still spot Ket's influence in his work and yet see at the same time that he is starting to develop the balanced horizontal and vertical compositions which have since developed into such a feature of his work. A fascinating exercise. And then there are works of art - monumental commissions more often than not - which because of their size and purpose will never end up in the gallery anyway. Goudji's silver altarpiece for the cathedral in Chartres, France is a fine example: as impossible as it would be for me to display it either at the gallery or at an art fair, the web site is not bothered by such restrictions. A further criterion is the possibility of highlighting an aspect of an artist that to date has gone more or less unnoticed. Take Olav Cleofas van Overbeek, for example, who over the years has produced several splendid portraits - most of them in commission - three of which I have included in the virtual anniversary exhibition. For similar reasons I have included Anneke van Brussel's portraits, which then went on to prompt me to rearrange a much more comprehensive overview of this section of her work in a separate section entitled "Anneke van Brussel's Virtual Portrait Gallery". The most apposite way of concluding this introductory text is by saying "To be continued", for if there is one thing that defines the Internet, this is surely it. Koen Nieuwendijk |