• Binding: CD-ROM
• Brand: TOPICS Entertainment
• EAN: 0781735800324
• Format: CD-ROM
• Label: Topics Entertainment
• Manufacturer: Topics Entertainment
• Model: CS-32
• Platform: Windows 98
• Publisher: Topics Entertainment
• Studio: Topics Entertainment

Manufacturer: Topics Entertainment

Countertop's Art for the Ages takes advantage of the flexibility of the CD-ROM medium to build an art museum inside your computer. By integrating audio clips, interactive links, historical text, time lines, and a zoom function with reproductions of the works themselves, this program emulates the experience of seeing these works in person with a knowledgeable tour guide. It might stand to reason that if the makers of this program bothered to use technology creatively to present a virtual museum, they would then strive to make the content of Art for the Ages innovative as well--but sadly, it's not so.

The objective of this program is clear and admirable: to take works from around the world spanning eight centuries and present them in an interesting, coherent, and educational format. On many fronts, Countertop accomplishes this goal. Art for the Ages is attractively designed and relatively user-friendly. This program, however, is fundamentally flawed, not for what it includes, but for what it omits, namely, women. The only prominent woman in this four CD-ROM set is the Virgin Mary, and even the commentary on her is largely devoted to what she is wearing.

Art for the Ages covers a time span (ending in 1914) that drops off before many renowned female artists escaped the periphery of art history, but that does not excuse the blatant disregard for the importance of women in art as subjects (even objects) or as audience. Even the "in-depth" analysis of male artists' pieces neglects the relationships that artists such as Gauguin, Rodin, and van Gogh had with women, relationships that may have highly influenced their works. The capabilities of the CD-ROM format could have incorporated women and other members of society on the margin into this retelling of art history without usurping the importance of white male artists. What Art for the Ages accomplishes, on the other hand, is that it presents hackneyed perspectives in a post-modern package. --Cintra Pollack

Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Comment: This product never worked. I mean NEVER worked. I have a Pentium 3 450 Dell system, and I follwed all the directions given, but the product was never able to be opened. I tried to contact the manufacturer and not only was no one able to help me, I was not able to return the product because it is software and you could, potentially, copy it once it is opened. Perhaps this product would work on your system, but why chance it? Save your money and buy a product from a more reputable company with good customer service.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: a decent resource that ultimately misses it's mark
Comment: This compilation was the embodiment of just about every single thing that frustrates me with textbooks; it takes such a scholarly approach that it really has no real conceptual grasp of it's subject. Every bio ends up stripping the artist of their personal life and turning them into some sort of icon with boorish and sometimes even irrelivant facts, which in my mind is stifling to the very nature of art. You can't systematically deconstruct a Van Gogh unless you have somewhat of an insight on the artist's life. You can't simply state that Gustav Klimt was a founding member of "the secession" without delving into his motivations, and who is going to know what the "the secession" is without already having a knowledge of Klimt's background? The motivational interpretations are sometimes just as muddled, inaccessible and dare i say even somewhat pretentious (when we learn from sources such as this, it's no wonder why the general public has such a tendency to disregard the fine arts).

I really don't know who the target audience was by these programs because it's most likely to disinterest any novice to the world of art and it lacks the depth to appease anyone that's even remotely educated with art.

"Art for the Ages" is a decent basic resource for your usual uninvolved, highschool/college report but it really has a talent of taking some of history's most fascinating figures and dehumanizing them into boring, vague and detatched descriptions.

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