What’s better — appreciating art in person or extremely up close through a computer screen?

You know that moment when the alarm goes off in the museum?

Everyone looks around at each other sinlessly and rolls their eyes in stratospherically superior intelligence compared to the, as yet unidentified, perpetrator. Loud disapproving tuts are clacked by a number of tongues to make it abundantly clear that their owners didn’t set off that beastly noise, but obviously the tip of some other idiot’s nose crossed the invisible laser beams woven across van Gogh’s priceless (actually incalculably valuable) ‘Starry Night’.

‘The Nincompoop in the Room’ jerks back in terror and goes puce, uttering a barely intelligible “terribly sorry” (or possibly an expletive) to anyone who is not already actively avoiding eye contact with the philistine. Except, of course, the still statue of a security guard who has been waiting with quiet anticipation for this moment in his otherwise nauseatingly dull 8-hour shift.

Our humble, saintly-patient guard is subjected to a life of watching self-proclaimed art experts amble (or disrespectful, unseasoned youths screech) past him, either not noticing him or not acknowledging his existence. Art connoisseurs’ hands are loosely clasped behind their backs in classic (absolutely expected in certain academic circles) ‘museum-gait’, clenching exhibition leaflets or spectacles between their twitchy fingers, their noses ever so slightly turned up in readiness simply to verify on the next label what they already knew (of course).

But now, finally, our strapping Cerberus can leap up from his rickety, probably-older-than-Vincent-himself, folding chair and bark, “Stand back!” Stern. In a strong voice. So ready. Perhaps even a tiny growl.

The problem is that this marvelous jewel of a painting, as well as hundreds of thousands of other masterpieces in museums around the world, is literally screaming to be looked at up-close, to be touched and loved, as indeed it once was by its creator whose nose was so close to its canvas that varying degrees of Turpentine-induced headspinning gave him epic dreams at night. Perhaps that explains the psychedelic, utterly loopy sky.

One must have a certain proximity to get a proper sense of the painterly textures dancing on the canvas, the multitude of colors sometimes found in a single brushstroke, the miniscule tonal variations and the little Tangos and Salsas taking place within a single inch of canvas, these the results of a lifetime of subtle, practiced handjerks or light whispers of a thumb and its two neighboring fingers manipulating the bristles, either forcing them into submission or letting them act out and roam freely.

Two words: surface quality. That’s what we want to study and what the painting also desperately wants to show off, like someone revealing a new tattoo to his buddies. It’s the art of the mark-making. It’s the spectacle of the art-making.

In abstract art, this is of particular fascination, of course. There is that magical moment of transition that occurs between you first standing up-close-and-personal in front of a dinosaur-sized canvas and all you see are random splodges and paint-shuffles the size of your left leg, but then you slowly move backwards and this divine chaos cheekily reveals itself to be none other than a colossal, shirtless (and more importantly Angelina-less) Brad Pitt. Vast museum spaces can provide this experience. A laptop, sadly, cannot. That journey from total confusion and meaningless, albeit beautiful, gestural marks, to the big disclosure, is absent. That walking backwards. That anticipation of the revelation.

But what the laptop can do is give you the nose-to-paint close-up. Without the Turps though. Sadly. What the laptop also won’t do is set loose a pack of rabid wolves when you touch the screen. Maybe someone could invent an app that would mimic this. That could be fun.

I was thinking that perhaps I’ll walk around my laptop in terriblyserious museum-gait and stare ‘intelligently’ at my screen which will have Vincent’s ‘Self-portrait with Grey Hat’ staring back at me. We’ll wink at each other in the knowledge that at any moment I will reach out my hand and I will brazenly touch him. For the first time.

And to add to that already dizzying excitement I’ll then have the privilege of zooming in on just one single brushstroke on his left cheek, see it in more intricate detail than ever before possible, and study its magnificence with all the time in the world.

No one will be sidling up to me and invading my personal space, silently wishing me away so that they can have their turn and frankly killing my moment with Vince. I won’t be rubbing shoulders with famous collectors and I won’t be able to play the ‘dare you to set off the alarm’ game which is, let’s face it, so much fun. I won’t have to queue and I won’t have to pay and I won’t have to put up with other people’s body odors and coughing and sneezing.

I’ll be with my Vince. Alone at last. But I still won’t be able to really ‘feel’ that paint.