At Sotheby's, paintings come to life in virtual reality.
A new look at painting gives you the opportunity to face René Magritte's quietly roaring lion and see Dali's horse harnessed to a wagon gliding past.
Sotheby's allows you to literally step inside some of the paintings in the exhibition and sale as part of the Surrealist Art Evening on New Bond Street in London. Four works in particular stand out at the auction: the illusory Spanish expanses on Salvador Dali's masterpiece "The Transitional Moment", the fantastic landscape of Paul Delvaux's "Girls on the Water", the machine-like creatures in Andre Masson's "Hotel of Automata", as well as the neighborhood of a mighty lion and a fragile egg on the "Wedding dinner" by Rene Magritte.
Sotheby's has invited visual effects company FGreat Studio, and now gallery visitors can immerse themselves in the world of works of art using Oculus Rift virtual reality glasses. Sotheby's installation of Rift is just part of a digital strategy to attract new tech-savvy buyers who are able to appreciate painting in a different way. The video below will help you understand what the effect of total immersion looks like.
To create this effect, the canvas is reconstructed, a three-dimensional model of each element is created, and elements invisible to the viewer are modeled based on the existing textures of objects. The result is a three-dimensional picture that you can take a tour of.
FGreat Studio's Executive Creative Director, Conrado Galvez, states: "Unlike a 2D piece, a 3D piece can be viewed from many different angles, so we need to understand the artist's work and respectfully recreate the scene he painted so that visitors get a more vivid experience." impression. For this reason, we try to avoid creating elements that are not on canvases.”
Three professionals continuously - from briefing to final delivery - worked on the project for five weeks. And this work should bear fruit. Significant sums are expected to be offered for the four main works of the auction. Salvador Dali's Transitional Moment is valued at £6.8 million. The price of Rene Magritte's painting "Wedding Dinner" can be up to 1.2 million pounds. Two other masterpieces are also highly valued: Andre Masson's "Hotel of the Automata" is exhibited for 2 million pounds, and "Girls on the Water" by Paul Delvaux - for 2.2 million.
When it comes to bringing art to life in virtual reality, surrealism is one of the best ways to put it in a new environment. This means a completely different relationship with art. Many visitors who have never experienced virtual reality will be able to see the paintings of their favorite artists in a different way, and these impressions will remain with them for a long time.
Last year, Salvador Dalí's early works and Bosch's terrifying oil painting were brought to life at the Dalí Museum using Google Cardboard virtual reality glasses.
You can visit the evening of Surrealist art and get an impression of the installation until March 1, 2017.
