Klimt vs Klimt, A Virtual Museum Showcasing The Works of The Painting Genius
Some of Klimt's restored artworks, which have been previously lost in 1945, are also on display.
-
"The Embrace", one of Gustav Klimt's most iconic works.
If you feel like touring a Gustav Klimt museum, you can now do so from the comfort of your own home.
Google has just made available 700 assets related to the Austrian symbolist painter in a digital exhibition that could be toured in an augmented reality pocket gallery.
The exhibition, titled Klimt vs Klimt – the Man of Contradictions, is hosted by Google Arts & Culture and will have 63 of Klimt’s masterpieces arranged under a single online viewing room, with “visitors” being able to virtually move around the gallery while exploring the paintings which have been digitized in ultra-high resolution.
The 700 assets would not only include the paintings, but also the unorthodox painter’s letters, drawings, and illustrations.
Dr. Franz Smola, the Klimt-expert and curator of this exhibition, oversaw the reconstruction of Klimt’s faculty paintings: Lost in a fire in 1945, these artworks were reconstructed by using AI technology which used archival data and scholarly research in order to color them, as they were only previously presented in black and white.
Smola expressed his fascination with the process, saying that the coloring result “was surprising because we were able to color it even in the places where we had no knowledge.”
With more than 100 thematic tours, visitors will be able to fully explore the creativity of the Austrian painter through unfinished sketches, videos, and digitized ephemera, most of which are available online for the first time.
Klimt vs Klimt – the Man of Contradictions was created in collaboration with the Belvedere museum, where Dr. Franz Smola is a curator.
