The only artist to be featured at all eight Impressionist Exhibitions in Paris was Camille Pissarro. The Impressionist movement emerged during a period of rapid social change and growing industrialization with more people moving to cities. In Pissarro’s works, he specifically concentrated on the conditions of different weather and times of day to alter how he painted scenes of a city. My paper focuses on the Boulevard Montmartre series and his use of building tonal relationships and skill of lighting placement across the fourteen paintings in order to establish a harmonious composition where the day’s essence radiates off the canvas.
If life is said to imitate art, then Suzanne Valadon’s rebellious, unorthodox, bohemian lifestyle is reflected in her artworks. Valadon's choice of the nude as the primary focus of much of her work reveals much about her role in society. A as a member of the working-class, Valadon was able to step outside the domestic and painted within the traditionally male domain. The art of Suzanne Valadon has been reprised in recent years as feminist art historians have been questioning the art historical canon and challenging the ideology of the nude as a masculine domain. This paper will discuss Valadon’s time as a model, what influence this had on her works, and her relationship with Edgar Degas, her family, and female contemporaries. It will also examine why Valadon chose the nude as the primary focus of much of her works and what this says about her role in society. Through this study, I hope to give better insight on why Valadon’s works were championed during her life, but the recognition faded after her death. Through her work, Valadon challenged not only the rules of the day, but she reclaimed the female nude in her work, the woman was no longer an object to be viewed but a subject in her own right.
William Morris, a famous 19th-century British textile designer, craftsman, Socialist, and poet, was a prominent and multifaceted figure. His flattened, floral designs were inspired by his love for the 14th- and 15th centuries and generated the Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris briefly worked as a painter and founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In his only surviving oil painting, La Belle Isuelt, Morris depicts the medieval subject, Iseult, from Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, 1485. Through the theme of Arthurian legend, reference to medieval symbols, wall tapestries, and other motifs, Morris displays his admiration of Medieval themes.
Delphi - a touchscreen video game art installation for galleries and museums.
Viewers can explore a contemporary interpretation of the ancient Greek site of Delphi, home of a mythical oracle.
The Delphi gallery installation, designed for museums and cultural centers, gives each visitor about ten minutes to explore Delphi and visit the oracle to get a personalized message. The installation is easy to use, and accessible for general audiences of all ages and degrees of experience.
Two cubes (or a cube and a chair) are placed on a 7cm high, 2m square plinth stage; the large cube is a ventilated cabinet and tabletop for a touchscreen, the other cube is a seat. As players step up onto the plinth to interact with the touchscreen to explore the virtual world, they enter the installation observed by the other gallery visitors who watch the interaction on large video screens around them, displaying the virtual environment of Delphi onto the gallery walls, with soft, ambient sound of the Greek countryside and occasional interactive events.
Delphi requires controlled lighting and electricity, between 50-500 sq meters, large video displays, audio, plinth, and two cubes (or cube and chair) as above. An area of about 500 square meters is optimal, although smaller is possible. A CAVE version of Delphi is currently being researched.
Visitors can explore the environment in and around the hills and monuments of Delphi. By artificial intelligence, Delphi responds by AI to each visitors style of play, actions, responses, and behavior, choosing a classic Delphic maxim (150 Delphic maxims drawn from historical and literary sources) for each player in turn.
Unzip Delphi_Oracle_install.zip into a Windows folder to create a folder called Delphi_Oracle and its contents.
Change directories to browse into the Delphi_Oracle folder, and double-click on Delphi_Oracle.exe to play Delphi. If Microsoft Smartscreen asks to prevent an unrecognized app, click More info, and click Run anyway.
With mouse or touchscreen you can move and interact onscreen;
Slow or stop, left mouse button or touch the center of the screen
Move forward, mouse button or touch center top of screen (higher = faster)
Move backward, mouse button or touch center bottom of screen (lower = faster)
Turn right, mouse or touch right side of screen
Turn left, mouse or touch left side of screen
Look up and down, left and right mouse buttons together (or two fingers)
A touchscreen makes it feel very immersive, and a mouse also works just fine too.
Currently working to run Delphi in the CAVE software for CAVE systems.
Delphi is first and foremost a work of contemporary art and an interpretive reconstruction of a cultural treasure for everyone. Looking for a contemporary art gallery where I can premiere it.
-benb
copyright 2022 Benjamin Britton
June 14, 2022
all rights reserved
This project analyzes a print from the UC Art Collection called “Dusty Millers” and the amateur artist that created it. Diving into the artist’s biography and relations, this project first aims to understand how the amateur artist went about studying printmaking and how he became an important advocate for the medium in London. Secondly, the project discusses artistic influences from the 19th century that inspired his style and subject matter of his prints that include depictions of rural landscapes and daily labors.
The University of Cincinnati Art Collection houses prints by two early 20th century German Expressionist printmakers, Max Pechstein (1881-1955) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945). Pechstein’s Das Vater Unser (The Lord’s Prayer) series (1921) originally a portfolio of twelve, is represented in the University of Cincinnati Art Collection with nine of the bold woodcut prints. Kollwitz’s small postcard lithographs, Two Chatting Women with Two Children (c. 1930) and The Hospital Visit (c. 1926), are intimate and show the artists soft touch. Though formally very different, these prints share a common subject, the suffering of Germans during the interwar period (1918-1939). Both artists personally experienced both World Wars and their tragedies, and while Pechstein rarely addressed it directly, Kollwitz’s career was full of her antiwar sentiments. The prints grapple with the grief, political turmoil, and financial difficulties associated with the interwar period and each artist turns to their own form of religion to exercise their pain.
Draft of capstone class final project. Includes file of images and wall labels for DRAFT of the exhibition. Includes prints from the UC art collection from the 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, and 20th century.
The representation of architecture within art is a main theme for artists of all time periods. Within the UC Art Collection, prints display different stylistic approaches from abstract to realistic when portraying architecture. This exhibit will display five prints that compare and contrast the idea of stylistic approach. By viewing these artworks, there is the question as to why artists chose to portray the two types differently. Does the style dictate the importance or function of the architecture? Through exploration, one could say that there is a correlation between the type of architecture and its stylistic rendering. When viewing the examples of the collection, architecture that is considered monumental, such as cathedrals or government buildings, seem to be portrayed with realistic detailing and perspective, leaving no room for artistic expression in the portrayal. On the other hand, common architecture is portrayed with more abstraction but allows more freedom of expression from the artist to interpret the structure. Is one better than the other or do these two separate approaches give their subjects individualized attention to their charms?
