Why Did The Chauvet Painters Utilize Perspectival Drawing?

By Junru(Cedric) Shi, Siyao(Skye) He and Ruoyang Sun

Google Arts and Culture: Too Easy?

To analyze if a new technology can provide all the art interpretation we need, we would always think about one question. That is, could this platform provide what the audiences obtain in a real gallery and more? Most of the first generation of art presenting is all about collecting and recording.

Of course, we must think in a different way now, since we already have a lot of platforms providing simple records of the artworks. An art technology platform doesn't necessarily have to imitate the real version of art galleries. On the contrary, it should present functions that are unique to the technology and form new meanings of the artworks during the process.

However, the experience in the galleries and museums remains to be crucial for art audiences. In terms of Google Art & Culture Platform, it uses gigapixel capture to record high resolution of artworks, which allows people to view clear pictures of the works without traveling, Yet, the new problem is, these artworks are just too easy to be accessed now. Sitting at home and gaining access to museums is relaxing indeed. But when it comes to art, especially modern art, deep understanding is often required. The second audiences walk into a museum, they would have this feeling that they need to think critically. It is more like an experience of a ceremony or ritual for them. Taking the artworks away from the museums also takes away the surrounding context. Though the platform provides background information, it can't imitate the real surrounding of the work — where the works are? How are they curated? Which other artworks are together with them? Therefore, Google Art & Culture may support a new platform to review artworks, but it doesn't indeed facilitate the process of interpreting artworks in a more sophisticated way.

Although technologies like Google Arts & Culture cannot completely replace museums, they provide the audiences with an alternative way to view and comprehend art. As an author who have written many art books, André Malraux, when working on The Voices of Silence, realized "an important principle governing his work: his selection, organization, and juxtaposition-montage of photographs of artefacts with accompanying text was governed by the idea of the museum as a cultural encyclopedic system" (Irvine, n.d.). Google Arts & Culture works similarly. Although it is a completely different platform of showing arts from museum, it has the museum idea. Google collaborates with cultural organizations to bring the artworks online. Google use their advanced tools and systems to manage the collections. Technologies such as videos, notes, and maps are used to help audiences view and understand artworks. Artworks are not just placed randomly in the online galleries but are well selected and organized by curators. By using technologies like Google Arts & Culture, audiences can access artworks without the limitation of time and space, and also know the background and the context of the artworks, which also helps the art to reach people and to spread.

From a Design Perspective: Google Arts and Culture as a Digital Medium

As a digital platform, the purpose of Google Arts and Culture is an open-ended and to-be-designed answer. Designers of the platform could hardly get the desired strategic answer from their users/interactors, they need to define what the platform includes, entails and facilitates, in the purpose of building a new and smooth digital art-viewing convention. It serves virtual museum goers whose interest and passion about art are disparate and possibly look for different degree of experience from the platform. A physical museum is such a well-established institutional idea that most visitors, however far from the art world they may be, know the conventions and the things-to-do: there are actual artworks to examine or browse through, caption texts that try to facilitate you understand, and possibly other kinds of curated experience that directs a person to explore the physical space and try be immersed in an art-experience. The shift to digital sphere means a transition in nature of presentation and possible advances or new ways of seeing and interpreting. Life under quarantine has rendered the professional life of digital designers and organizers much busier, and also urging us to engage more with such practices and critique the practice of it. The following is some pluses and minuses that we observed looking overall at the Google Arts and Culture project, from a standpoint of whether it enhances the understanding and increase knowledge about the artworks.

➕:

Easy access to world-famous paintings and artworks. Takes advantage of some digital affordances such as re-positioning artworks through the camera or zooming in to certain artworks and guide the audience's sight.

Encourages artworks and artists who work more closely with digital platforms, as what it suggests an open pitch and out-reaching process.

➖:

Sometimes prompting the "superficial" engagement of interacting with art such as self-taking or comparing your own color palate with famous paintings. These practices are quick, seemingly interesting but also somewhat reduces understanding art to a complete personal level without reference to the context, history and necessary introduction into artworks and ideas. We can hardly say this is a negative feature of the digital platform, actually it gathers attention and holds interests, but still, somewhat deviates from what "we are supposed to do in a museum visit" (if such an ideal does exist). No one goes to the physical museum just to take the souvenir booth photos, though it is an important thing to do and remember the trip with. But the nature of a digital experience might put such things into the forefront and becomes the only destination for visitors.

Also, the question of who holds the power to present what kind of content and interpretation rises again. Running such an ambitious project means a lot more than just building a digital platform which needs careful design, it also needs to partner with art institutes, private or public, big or small. If the physical art world is already messy in terms of power relations and influence, how could such a platform run by a world-level tech company and what incentive does it have? The process as I see it now is still largely selected and chewed over and fed to me. But a successful process of interaction should probably "not draw attention to the medium itself", a design ideal that Google Arts and Culture is still a little bit far from (Murray).

References:

Martin Irvine, "André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire (The Museum Idea) and Interfaces to Art"

Janet Murray, Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Excerpts from Introduction and Chapter 2.

By Kaya Tang, Seven Wu, Karen Zhang

A Digital Experience of Media Convergence

"As a culturally encyclopedic medium the computer inherits age-old traditions of human culture, expressive of our core need to collect, preserve, and transmit knowledge across generations." Contemplating the notion of how human beings have always been obsessed with the legacy for a probable existential reason, the development of encyclopedic affordance seems an inevitable outcome. Driven by curiosity that we can never satiate, we are never before provided with overcrowded information unsorted, and therefore encyclopedia is logical in that it facilitates productive intellectual access towards the network of artifacts.

"Objects in digital form can have multiple instantiations, existing as identical copies or as variant examples of a common pattern." Google is experimenting with different methods to showcase the same artifacts. "Chauvet: The Dawn of Art" is interfaced with various instantiations to deliver a coherent information graph. By offering a digital reproduction of the object, users are allowed the capacity to contemplate it with the facilitation of "zooming in" to explore the details and highlights to grasp what should be paid attention to. "Chauvet: The Dawn of Art"  has been processed into a 10-minute VR experience with narration to explore. The experience is immersive and almost invading the audience's viewing journey. We are positioned to be closer than ever to the artwork, which seems to be an attempt to recreate the "aura" Benjamin has mentioned that was lost due to, in this case, the digital reproduction. However, VR is playing with the idea of the uniqueness of the artifacts and time and space. Immersive experience absorbs our sense of time and space, placing us "inside" the aura. The experience is erotic in a way that is not to be reasoned out, which is a similar experience of seeing the unique artifacts. Virtual reality has the potential of subverting the opposition of viewer and artworks by downsizing us to the role of the trespasser of the artworld.

Nevertheless, we can still see Google Arts & Culture (GA&C) designers struggle with media convergence challenges and conform to the easy way out by presenting information in separate four categories.

Google Arts & Culture and Museums

According to Wikipedia, the GA&C is "an online platform through which the public can view high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world." It connects over one hundred museums across the world and displays thousands of artworks with many details, seemingly providing "the here and now of the work of art" in Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Ages of its Technological Reproducibility , which in fact does not. He further explains that "what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter's aura." Technologies enable the reproducibility of art and polishing and perfecting the effect of its reproductions. The GA&C succeeds in inviting visitors to explore the images, videos, or stories and helps them to be part of the experience in one new media aesthetic. However, can reproductions ever become the same as the original art?

Despite the nature of reproduction, the GA&C defines its menu as Discover, Zoom in, and Learn, which overlaps with the function of museums to some extent – collecting, conservation, research, exhibition, and education. However, collecting and conservation means the reproduction of artworks; exhibition is limited in size and sense; besides, education is not open to all kinds of visitors. Here comes another question, if the GA&C becomes a digital reproduction of museums in the perspective of functions, can it count as an "interface" to the "museum as interface"? According to Malraux, la musée imaginaire is an abstract, ideal meaning system, which actual museums or art history books realize in their structures of organization and validation. The GA&C is at most one of the structures of organization and validation, more of an "interface" to the "art history book as interface."

Focus On The Interaction

According to Murray, interaction design should always aim to "…make an object that is satisfying in itself and that advances the digital medium by refining or creating the conventions that best exploit four affordances." We believe that GA&C as an emerging digital medium does a great job of creating such affordances for interactors though it still needs further improvement to polish the design.

Encyclopedic

 Generally speaking, GA&C could be seen as a virtual Meta-Museum but biased because it focused on the western representation of art the most. The platform now collaborates with more than 100 museums and still working on establishing more partnerships to enrich its collections. It gives solid and reliable credits to every single artwork as well as providing descriptions and links to external sources for people who wish to learn more. Although unlike traditional museums that artifacts are put into different rooms, GA&C allocates artworks into various categories, including artists, mediums, art movements, places, etc. Besides, we specifically want to mention the feature that GA&C allows interactors to explore artifacts based on colors. Even though we don't know how exactly the behind algorisms were implemented, they might heavily utilize content recognition with machine learning. These categories could be seen as various themes in a museum and allow users to make connections among masterpieces either within or across categories.

Spatial

It is obvious that people could access GA&C whenever and wherever they want if they have an Internet connection. Besides, the platform has developed both the official website and mobile application designated for different devices. Moreover, the "View in Street View" feature regenerate the environment of an artwork to a great extent that allows interactors to explore the contexts and conversations created in the actual exhibition place.

Procedural

Since GA&C is built in a digital environment, it won't be hard to relate it to how computer provides this type of affordance. One could easily navigate and explore different pages in the platform by simple clicks. In addition, the "Art Camera" feature provided by the platform guides interactors step-by-step when appreciating a selected painting. For example, if using this feature with a PC, as the interactor scrolling down, the screen will automatically zoom in or out to show different selections of the painting along with the highlighting stories about them. From a snapshot of an artifact to an apparent brush stroke that composes it, GC&A tries to simulate a physical visit to a museum or place that preserves the actual work.

Participatory

GA&C no doubt inherits some of the conventions established in the digital world. For example, when the mouse hovers certain elements, the cursor will change from default to a pointer that indicates a clickable content. The icons of share, like, and link are all transparent enough in their indicated meanings so that interactor will usually acquire the requested information or perform desired actions without confusion. Furthermore, GA&C designed several features that require interactor's participation in its mobile application. For example, one could place an artifact in our room as they are physically facing the work and sense the real size of it. One could also take a selfie to see what portrait matches their look. All these features encourage interactor's engagement as a new way to explore the art world, and might potentially arouse the interest in learning.

When talking about how we perceive the world physically, we always consider the five basic senses that human being has: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Nowadays, it would be easy for online platforms like GA&C to simulate the functions that our eyes and ears could accomplish. However, the lack of touch, smell, and taste shape the design challenge of remediating physical art objects. Hence we believe that although online museum, like GA&C, is a great innovation, it might never replace the existence of the physical museum, at least not today.

Works Cited

Chauvet: The Dawn of Art by Jonathan Tanant, Google Arts & Culture, Atlas V | Experiments with Google . https://experiments.withgoogle.com/chauvet . Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.

Edward P. Alexander and Mary Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums , Second Edition (Mountain Creek, CA; London, UK: Altamira Press, 2007).

Janet Murray, Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

Jay David Bolter, Maria Engberg, and Blair MacIntyre. "Media Studies, Mobile Augmented Reality, and Interaction Design." Interactions 20, no. 1 (January 2013): 36–45.

Martin Irvine, "André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire (The Museum Idea) and Interfaces to Art".

"Meet Our Ancestors." Google Arts & Culture , https://artsandculture.google.com/project/chauvet-cave . Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Era of its Technological Reproducibility" (1936; rev. 1939).

Kening Song, Zihui (Zoey) Wang, Xueying Duan

「Global Audience」

On the information page of Google Art and Culture, it states that they "discover artworks, collections, and stories from all around the world in a new way" and "powerful technologies can…preserve these artifacts for a worldwide audience today and tomorrow". They proudly provide the possibilities for people all over the world, as long as they have internet access, to view the details of each artwork they "collected" without any cost, time, or space limitations.

From the education perspective, Google Art and Culture indeed decrease the entry-level for people to see fine art, for instance, no more cost for traveling across cities to see a specific artwork in a specific museum or "this artwork is temporarily unavailable to display". We will discuss this with an example later in our post. However, another question shows up: if the artworks are reproduced and present in Google Art for a worldwide audience, how do they choose their artwork from a global perspective? I have seen artwork collections like "Monet was here: travel Europe through Monet's eyes", "Round the block: Icons of Japanese Ukiyo-e block printing", and "Spain: Spanish Culture in Every Sense". It seems like Google art not only tries to do what the "museum" does but also provides more information and offers a diverse introduction for different cultures from different groups, communities, countries.

Google art once received criticisms for its "western" views and "Eurocentrism". Now, it can tell from their current display that they did tires to balance the content. However, it is also true that most content they choose is what western audiences are familiar with and in western popularity, for instance, the content related to Japan is still about "ukiyo-e". It is reasonable that I start to meet something new from what feels familiar with me already, however, will google art try to do so? Similar questions as Sheila Brennan asks "not just find more works by this artist as is currently supported, but a way to search across museums or browse/search works by tags within or across institutions". How can google better use the technologies to provide a better context for the global audience?

We know that the museum functions as a cultural encyclopedia. "Our feelings for a work of art is rarely independent of the place it occupies in art history…We interpret the past in light of what we understand." (Malraux) When the reproduction loses authenticity, the here and now of the work of art, how Google Art can sustain and support this function? Just as Procter states "Without the walls and real-world spaces that art lives within, curators cannot create the conversations and truthfully tell the stories that only emerge when works are placed in physical proximity."

「Participation」

As for online visual art encyclopedia platforms, since audiences or users are isolated from the artworks, these platforms are always trying to integrate audience and artworks. When considering how to get audiences immersed and participate in the online environment, it seems that "zoom in" and VR technologies are broadly used by many online platforms. According to Benjamin's idea of "here and there", when "walking" along on the virtual road in museums and "standing" in front of masterpieces, VR technologies enable audiences to enter the real museum setting. Especially if the technology offers a historical setting, hopefully, audiences can feel the past and present at the same time.

In order to enhance audiences' participation, online platforms make full use of technologies to let audiences spend more time on one specific artwork.

Present more details. For example, high-resolution images enable audiences to see each stroke of Van Gogh's The Starry Night . So maybe when audiences physically stand in front of the masterpiece, they don't have much time and patience to focus on every detail due to the number of tourists and the museum fatigue, but by dragging the whole painting through the mouse, audiences are able to discover almost every corner of the painting. In this way, audiences even pay more time and are more curious about one artwork.

High-resolution images in Google Arts & Cultural platform

The Panoramic Palace Museum (https://pano.dpm.org.cn/gugong_app_pc/index.html)

Break physical limitations. As for the use of VR in "the panoramic palace museum", users can even "enter" the main halls to see the throne clearly, which is definitely impossible for a physical visit due to the protection of relics.

Enhance the entertainment effect of the interface. As the video shows, users can zoom in and zoom out to see every detail of the artifacts. In fact, most of these artifacts are in relatively small size and are protected in the showcases. Thus in the physical visit, audiences have no chance to be close to these relics, but on the online platforms, by dragging the virtual relics, audiences can see the texture, color, and even the bottom of the artworks. Audiences may feel that this operation is intriguing and they are closer to the relics, which, in turn, enhances the users' participation of the online platforms.

Besides, when Murray indicates that "though we have a well-developed design protocol for user need analysis and user testing of industrial products, users cannot tell us how to resolve problems that require new design strategies. " I think it's right when I remember my attempt at the function of "view in street" in Google Arts & Cultural platform, I was confused with the button of zooming in and out, as well as how to control my virtual movement. I complained about the vague paintings on the walls and the sudden movement in the virtual room. The technology should have given us the feeling of "here and there", but the actual experience was weak. As for me, I had no idea how to improve user experience, and thus I turned back to the basic "zoom in high-resolution images" function which I am already familiar with. That is a real example of how users prefer to be limited in familiar functions rather than boldly improving new technologies. But my second thought is that this kind of preference of familiarity exists all the time. How about the time when we used social media for the first time? Or how about the time when we used the internet for the first time? It also reminds me of the rebellious spirit of artists. When audiences first appreciated impressionist paintings, these impressionist artists hardly obtained a compliment but received much criticism. It seems that new trends, new technologies always need time to wait for users or audiences to fit in, and then the useful comments may appear.

「Digital Reproduction」

To understand an artefact is placing it under its culture and social background, including the social movements, artist's thoughts, and the action of people who engage in it. The evolution of the medium of art changes from canvas, photographs, and then digital media created with bits and bytes. Each of those phases carries its own useful affordance in presenting artworks and interacting with audiences. In modern times, when there occurs an accumulative knowledge-sharing platform – the internet, people are still exploring and exploiting the infinite usage and application of this novel invention. For audiences to discover and engage with the artworld, the new media provides a new way to appreciate the artworks. McLuhan mentions "Medium is the extension of man", so as the museums that expand their business to the online collection that partly changes people's perceptions and opinions of the museum and artwork. Benjamin declares to posit artworks in their appropriate space that maintain their value and engagement, while online archives transfer art to the age of mechanical reproduction. So online museums are actually complementary to offline museums, or are they catching up with or even beyond the current functions that real museums possess?

Unlike the traditional media that people have already got a deep impression on its operating mode and function modules, the internet archive provides us with a novel and unreliable framework that brings the audiences with an unfamiliar way to solve problems and search for information. Compared with Google Art and Culture to several other online visual art encyclopedia platforms, there are several general parts that they share in common. Those projects mainly aim at providing artworks around the world accessible for netizens in multiple languages. Also, WikiArt , like Wikipedia, provides high freedom for users to contribute their thoughts and help update the website. Smarthistory , as its name shows, is the most famous art history platform in the world, and aims at building understanding across cultures. Also, Google Art and Culture collaborate with many art institutions to keep providing inspiration for future artists. There're also platforms involving an online shop to sell small copies of masterpieces to earn some money for website operation. There're also classifying methods for artefacts categories. WikiArt categorizes its works from the genres, nationalities, creating period of its artists as well as the style or media of the artworks. Smarthistory has elaborate divisions from geographical locations and the creating time periods. There are also several different criteria here in Google Art and Culture like artists, mediums, art movements, and so on. The abundant choices give audiences a broader choice for different purposes of viewing this site.

Wikiart

Smarthistory

Google Art & Culture

New medium presets also accompany new design problems. The understanding of the audience's experience is always changing and updating the limited function needs to be upgraded as the presenting form of artworks develops.

For example, I find the following spray painting exhibition located in NYC on Google Art & Culture. There are artists calling against the Brian O'Doherty's 1976 essay "Inside the White Cube", for them, breaking out of the box highlights the dichotomy between traditional exhibition methods and the contemporary street art movement. So the web designers take photos of those street paintings in their own street space. In this way, it challenges the clean, static, artificial white wall's function in interpreting the actual art object. When appreciating street art, the surrounding environment should also be taken into account: the noises, smells, and pedestrians behind the photo also influence our perception of this artwork in the static and one-dimensional record on the webpage.

Breaking Out of the Box (2013), NY

Also, SAAM (Smithsonian American Art Museum) has presented a bunch of time-based media, not only including what we often think of as photos and visual installations, but also have video games, video clips and films. Here is one of its exhibitions: the collection of video game Flower. Flower is a PS4 based game that the players have to control the wind to spread the flower petals across the land. The high resolution and the vivid imitation of modern nature, together with the well-designed music and motion, presents the complete and immersive experience of the rhythm of a pedal riding with the wind. But in SAAM's description page, it only presents the screenshot of the game that I don't find a very successful example.

Flower (2007), SAAM

References:

Janet Murray, Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Excerpts from Introduction and Chapter 2.

Jay David Bolter, Maria Engberg, and Blair MacIntyre. "Media Studies, Mobile Augmented Reality, and Interaction Design." Interactions 20, no. 1 (January 2013): 36–45.

Slides: Art and Museum Interfaces

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Era of its Technological Reproducibility"

Martin Irvine, "André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire (The Museum Idea) and Interfaces to Art"

André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire " The Imaginary Museum," Part 1 of The Voices of Silence (French, 1951; English, 1953)

Jay David Bolter, Maria Engberg, and Blair MacIntyre. " Media Studies, Mobile Augmented Reality, and Interaction Design ." Interactions 20, no. 1 (January 2013): 36–45.

By Ruoyang Sun, Junru(Cedric) Shi, Siyao(Skye) He

Seeing Pickett's Charge through Online Platforms

As a museum dedicated to contemporary art, the Hirshhorn gives audiences the opportunity to experience contemporary art and culture and  let art conversations happen here. There are different artworks exhibited in the Hirshhorn . Among them, Mark Bradford's Pickett's Charge, which is more than forty-five feet long, takes up the entire circle on the third level. Inspired by French artist Paul Philippoteaux's  cyclorama of 19 century which portrayed Pickett's Charge, Mark Bradford  used colored paper with different layers to create  eight abstract paintings. In this artwork, Mark Bradford wants the audience to think about the political climate in 2017 through the lens of the American Civil War (Hankins & Aquin, 2018). Mark Bradford's art is always political. Pickett's Charge is not an exception. "Pickett's Charge was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Union positions on July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg in the state of Pennsylvania during the American Civil War" ("Pickett's Charge", n.d.). Mark Bradford used eight paintings on canvas to convert the historic scene of Pickett's Charge to abstract art. According to Evelyn Hankins and Stephane Aquin, Mark Bradford's Pickett's Charge "disrupts not just the original painting but, more importantly, space and time, with the multiple layers stressing the enduring interplay between past and present,as  well as the complexity of historical narratives, ever in flux and frequently contested" (Hankins & Aquin, 2018). It is very important to understand the background and the context of the art. If the audiences go to the Hirshhorn and view Mark Bradford's Pickett's Charge without the knowledge of the background the context, they may enjoy it but hardly understand it.

If the audiences have the chance to view Mark Bradford's Pickett's Charge in person, they will notice the layers and the thickness of the painting. However, they cannot see that through online gallery. Online galleries like Google Art & Culture can provide audiences with digital copies of artworks but never the same experiences with the museum visit. The digital form is flat but the artwork in the museum has layers, thickness, and texture. Also, online visit, although saving time and energy, cannot let audiences experiences the conversation happening within the museum. They cannot see in what room or what sequence the artwork is placed. They cannot see which two paintings are putting together by the curators. All  the artworks in the museums are organized in a professional way and the only way to experience it is to go in there.

Virtual Visits and the Physical Museum: Which Does the Job Better?

The question here is a  little bit arbitrary . What kind of job or function do art exhibitions bode exactly? If there is a fixated, certain and absolute mission that museums must fulfill , it would probably be easier to present the straightforward result to public  and both experiences would focus on.  But as museums are to be defined and curated, to be in flowing conversations as an interface and that contemporary art is of " pluralism " and open to a wide range of movements, genres and mediums, and based in distinct international cultures, it seems to be harder and harder to define what the job should be.

Having been to the Hirshhorn Museum, one of the most important impressions it had on me was the feature of the building  as it is in the shape of concentric circles which automatically  dis poses challenge or a specific way to display artworks. As we know some art works play tricks around this fact. I remember being able to follow along  the circle, liking embarking on an exploration unlike going into "white cubes" which is a matter of course process. The zigzag space turns  the traditional rectangular regular art space a little bit . The building itself provided an interesting interface for possibilities of prese ntation.

The Hirshhorn Building (extracted from the Website' s Main Page: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/ )

The Bubble Project of Hirshhorn

The Bubble Project from 2009 to 2013 brings us to think about the space problem in another way. Indeed, the Hirshhorn building is peculiar and eye-opening, but do we really need a balloon that costs more than 10 million dollars just for a potential space  underneath it where  symposiums and exhibition take place?  This is the concern that shut down the whole project in 2013 , the idea was polarizing and perhaps too bald just like some contemporary art. This makes me think of the limitations of "playing with space" as reality proves that takes actual effort, monetary expenses and sometimes the idea behind it may not be worth the toil.

Visiting Hirshhorn virtually , however, grants me a different perspective as of visiting the museum itself. I was led by its web design, offered a list of  related  notions, themes  to explore on my own, jumping through what's physically in the museum here and there and trying to fix t ogether a patchwork of "things or exhibitions" that make up the Hirshhorn. In the process, I have become familiar with the intended design, chosen highlights, and preference of art school selected and presented by its digital presentation. YouTube Channel on the other hand is a little bit scarce  of resource, but in my view gives a better presentation of what artists themselves want to say to the audience or interpret his own work. Having a separate  channel on a popular platform for publicity seems like an imperative thing to do at the moment, but integrating the resources around one artist, exhibition, school of art would really ease the burden on visitor's shoulders who might have to extra interested in a particular thing and go through different destinations searching for i nformation.

Some questions that I tried to ask myself. Will I consider myself "have been" to Hirshhorn if I only spent time perusing  through its webpages? Will I tell other people that I have? In trying to answer these questions, I somehow went back to thinking about the "here and now" of contemporary art. An d I think each different nature of exploration adds to my overall understanding of an artwork , of Hirshhorn as a museum  and of contemporary art as a concept. Virtual spaces are free of the many physical constraints  or merits, and physical visits are still a huge part of how we perceive and experience art, perhaps we miss the latter more so in a time like this .

References:

Evelyn Hankins and Stephane Aquin, Mark Bradford, Pickett's Charge (Washington, DC and New Haven: Hirshhorn Museum and Yale University Press, 2018)
Joseph Stromberg. "The Hirshhorn Museum's 'Bubble' Project Is Officially Cancelled." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, Retrived  June 5, 2013 from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/the-hirshhorn-museums-bubble-project-is-officially-cancelled-93034072/ .
Pickett's Charge (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett's_Charge

By Kaya Tang, Seven Wu, Karen Zhang

Virtual Museum vs. Traditional Museum

The virtual museum is a new type of museum established on the Internet using modern information technology such as computer network technology (CNT) and multimedia technology. Its emergence has led to a new phase in the development of museums and has also led to significant changes in the structure of museums and the way in which they perform their functions. Compared with a traditional museum, the virtual museum is a multimedia information integration application system that possesses features like digital storage, networking transition, knowledgeable services, shared resources, globalized services, etc. It makes a huge and fundamental change in systematic knowledge dissemination, internal collection management, and external information inquiry. Besides, It takes the museum industry a big step forward to improve the social utilization of the collections as well as to popularize knowledge and share collection resources within and beyond the industry.

The main differences between virtual and traditional museums are the following:

• Spatial difference. Virtual museums are spatially penetrating and can radiate across the country and even around the world.
• Temporality difference. Virtual museums are not subject to time constraints and can be browsed online at any time.
• Autonomy difference. The virtual museum has changed from "I'll show you whatever I want" to "you can see whatever you want", so that visitors can browse across the page according to their preferences, thus satisfying their individual needs to the fullest extent.
• Display methods are different as well. Traditional museum displays are generally presented to viewers in a combination of text, pictures, photographs, and exhibits. Whereas the virtual museum takes dynamic simulation, animation production, video production, and other modern technologies, then combined with text, pictures, and exhibits in the form of display, so that the dissemination of information from text records, static pictures based on limited space into lavish illustrations both visually and aurally. Along with the open access, the audience now can enjoy the infinite fun of museum visiting brings by modern multimedia technology without leaving home.

Based on the above discoveries, we can't help asking ourselves that is a virtual or online museum a museum . Although in this post we considered it would be, but is it really? According to Collins Dictionary, "A museum is a building where a large number of interesting and valuable objects, such as works of art or historical items, are kept, studied, and displayed to the public." Obviously, a virtual museum is not constructed in a building. Besides, the Internet has become a two-way stream with information nowadays. Anyone who can upload images online has the choice to edit articles on Wikipedia. We used to trust museums like we trust dictionaries and Encyclopedias because they could dedicate resources to our research. However, in the age when Wikipedia is dimming Encyclopedias, do museums still matter? Could a museum ever be fully digitalized?

An Interface Imagined

When we observe the websites of museums, their pages are organized and manifesting the specific functions of museums. There're pages dedicated to "their missions, their collection, and their exhibitions" as well as their educational value. Google's standardized "Arts & Culture" platform downplays the subconscious awareness of walls, lights, curators and many elements of an art museum that are materially visible as well as mentally restraining and innovating.

The ritual, which was introduced and socialized by the museum as an institution and as a notion, is that artwork contemplation has been rendered private rather than public. The experience of seeing art at the museum is public whether we visit it alone or not, and by standing before the artwork, we are, as the audience, become part of the artwork at the present moment for other audiences to contemplate. But by interfacing artwork on the internet, it reaches the people at home on their private computer. Artworks are not only households but personal.

Meanwhile, the artwork is less of a private collection but serves more public benefits. You can shelf an art piece but not be able to limit its reproduction on the internet. The motivation for collecting art is open to new interpretations.

I've been trying to see what kind of experience it is to use VR as an interface for art. There are inevitably a lot of experiences preserving the structures of museums. However, there are observations with the indication of limitations and possibilities for VR.

1. 2 forms: 1) a guided tour with a curator of sorts; 2) a space with artworks installed for people to observe
2. In installation art with mirrors, VR still has a problem with the identity of the audience.
3. Artworks are more aggressive but feel less dangerous.

See the Hirshhorn with the Hirshhorn Eye

Apart from the virtual tour on its official website, the Hirshhorn Eye (Hi) on-site, a mobile art guide, is a milestone as well, a great example of utilizing media in art. Abandoning the traditional audio guide, the Hirshhorn redefines the in-gallery art guide in a mobile way. Instead of downloading an app, Hi is available on web browsers. By scanning the specific artworks, tourists can unlock the storytelling videos by artists or curators, just as face-to-face communication. Hi better serves as an interface among museums, visitors and artists: connecting people to resources; bridging objects to people, places, and purposes; providing relevant information. It looks as below:

Brian O'Doherty mentions in Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, art museums were a sacred place like churches: "unshadowed, white, clean, and artificial – the space is devoted to the technology of esthetics … the spectator, oneself, is eliminated. You are there without being there – one of the major services provided for art by its old antagonist, photography." This assumes museums to be a sacred temple that visitors should keep a distance from the art. However, nowadays museums are striving to become a forum helping the public to communicate, find, generate answers to meanings. The interface has become more interactive than ever before.

Works Cited

"Hirshhorn Eye – Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: Smithsonian." Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden | Smithsonian, 2020, hirshhorn.si.edu/hi/.

"Museum." Collins Dictionary. Collins, 2020, www. collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/museum .

O'Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube: the Ideology of the Gallery Space. University of California Press, 2010.

Pereira, Lorenzo. "Is Every Museum Going to Become a Digital Museum ?" Widewalls , 5 Nov. 2015, www.widewalls.ch/digital-museum/.

Thomas, Selma, and Ann Mintz. The Virtual and the Real: Media in the Museum. American Association of Museums, 2000.

Digital Interface of Today's Museums

Contributed by Hao Shen, Ke (Alex) Ma, Zungui Lu

Interfaces for Virtual Museum Exhibitions and Access to Collections

As the Hirshhorn's introduces itself, the Hirshhorn (Hirshhorn Museum, n.d.) provides "the artists of today a national platform to explore new ways to create, with performance, digital media, video, and technology." Globalization and hybridization, the characteristics of contemporary art, are in the blood of the Hirshhorn. Joseph H. Hirshhorn, the founding donor, carried the identity as an immigrant, a collector of modern art, and served as an interface for the audience to know the liquidity and hybridization of contemporary arts and the Hirshhorn. According to Lerner (1974), variety and scope were the themes of Joseph H. Hirshhorn's collection, which renders his collection a cultural asset. The architect, Gordon Bunshaft, involved in the dialogue with Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" sensibility, presenting the architecture in a functional instead of the fashionable way. At the same time, the architecture keeps the "symmetry and frontality" of Washington, DC, architectural mode to echo with the initial goal of complement the National Gallery of Art. As the ARTLAB+ digital education studio was established in 2010, the Hirshhorn consolidated its role as an interface for cultural and educational functions, providing the cutting-edge ideas and artworks for Washington, DC teenagers.

Mark Bradford's Pickett's Charge and the Hirshhorn mutually help each other to fulfill their missions. Given the location and mission of the Hirshhorn, Mark Bradford's Pickett's Charge is curated in a space that can inspire the viewers to rethink and ponder about American history. Thus, the Hirshhorn serves as an interface for the audience to further get into the sociopolitical meanings behind Mark Bradford's artworks, as the Hirshhorn plays an important role in both art and American history regarding the founding of the Hirshhorn with an Act of Congress. Plus, Mark Bradford employed materials with use values in this age, such as billboard papers, pixelization of original artworks, various layers and ropes, to achieve the dialogue with the original cyclorama across time and space and depict the turning point of the Civil War with materials that the views can relate in the age.

Museums' Digital UX Should Be a Increasingly Major Part of Overall Museum Experience

During extensive quarantine due to COVID-19, museums are "forced" to shift to digital platforms temporarily. However, digital interfaces, be it websites or mobile apps, should have been an organic yet crucial part of designing the experience for the visitors, no matter whether it's for bolstering band image, boosting the revenue, or facilitating education. It's a digital world.

Imagine this: when you want to plan a visit to any museum, or search for some art-related information, what would you do first? Visiting its website I'd say. Thus, the website acts as the entry point, or the first interface for most of the visitors/users.

Businesses throughout the industries have been building up the common sense that it's not the product that they are selling nowadays, but the experience. Some museums, like Hishhorn, are doing a great job to craft an engaging, graceful, and uniform experience for its target, but there are more who are still thinking it in an old way: a website is all about providing information.

So, what kind of UX (user experience) are we talking about here? We can look into it from three aspects: user, content, and aesthetics.

1. Who are the users?

Different museums may attract different types of audience. For instance, according to the staff from Hirshhorn, most of the visitors are those who are on a trip rather than locals. In this case, the first group is the focus, meaning the designer should really ponder upon how to attract people and sell the "product". However, for some museums which also function as a research institution, or let's say an archive for artworks, a well-designed information architecture with a focus on the collection information is the driving power.

We also need to realize, for most of the visitors of museum websites, mobile phones are their interface. Hence, a responsive design matters.

2. What content are users looking for?

Based on the analysis of the audience, we can imagine what kind of information the users are expecting for.

• All the necessary information for the visit in a clear and straightforward way
• Featured collections and artworks
• Reasons for visiting, joining, or even donating
• An archive of artwork/artist information
• The resources provided for researchers, educators and others

Let's see how Hishhorn, SFMOMA, and SAAM complete this task starting from the navigation design which is the door to all the content.

（Hirshhorn Global Navigation Bar）

(Hirshhorn Hamburger Menu)

Hirshhorn provides an incredibly clean and straightforward global navigation for its users, and these tabs are right to the point. Importantly still, they leave a hamburger menu right beside the navigation bar which will lead to a pop-up page with more more in-depth information grouped together in a clear and intuitive way.

(SFMOMA Global Navigation Bar)

(SFMOMA Hamburger Menu)

SFMOMA is very ticket-driven. You can feel it from the navigation bar which only hosts a ticket tab, a search icon, and a hamburger menu icon, or you basically can find a prominent button calling for buying tickets on every page.

However, the hamburger menu page is divided into two groups emphasizing on the "archive" part or the reasons that attract the future visitors. After the visitor is hooked, they can toggle between the tabs in the lower level. It makes perfect sense if marketing is the core mission of SFMOMA's website.

(SAAM Global Navigation Bar)

(SAAM Global Navigation Bar – Dropdown)

SAAM takes a very different approach – leaving all the functions they want to achieve through the website out there. What is even more user-unfriendly is that they even have a drop-down list of each tab with tons of sub links, which will put the user at lost in a second. We can see that SAAM still utilizes the website as a digital information showcase.

3. What does the website look like?

Ideally, the UI design of a museum's website should be aligned with its style and mission and the visual design is the extended part of the museum's design.

(Hirshhorn Website)

The Hirshhorn clearly has its well-organized design system and the layout, typography, and use of multimedia is very modern and user-friendly which perfectly matches its position as a contemporary art museum.

(SFMOMA Website)

SFMOMA treats its website design carefully as well. However, they're not being serious enough about this as much as Hirshhorn does. Big blocks or words with less emphasis will wear out a visor easily.

(SAAM Website)

The designer of SAAM's website apparently is not a user themselves. Packed information, less color contrast, and zero attention given to accessibility one more time prove that they just see the website as a place to throw all the information they have on there.

How does Hirshhorn archive and present the site-specific artwork? (using Mark Bradford's exhibition as an example)

1. Textual brief intro of the artist
2. Recording the installation procedure;
3. Inviting the artist to talk about his/her work (both in short paragraphs, quotes and the recording of long conversation interview);
4. Taking photos of the artwork(both the complete view and detailed look).

Screenshoot at https://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/mark-bradford-picketts-charge/

The museum attempts to provide diverse information to the audience:

1. The brief introduction introduces the artist's bio and gives a general idea of his art style and former works;
2. The video of the installation procedure shows the behind-the-scene story in which the information of the scale, texture, weight, and other material characteristics of the artwork are presented, helping audiences to feel and imagine the physical artwork;
3. Talking with an artist could help audiences understanding the thought embedded in the artwork and help them with their own interpretation by providing more contextual information;
4. Providing a detailed look of color and texture to present information to the audience showing how the experience will be like and how the artwork looks like in the curated exhibition space.

By using multimedia methods, Hirshhorn offers information about how the artwork looks and what the artwork talks about.

Hirshhorn website's contribution to audiences' interpretation

When I browsed the Hirshhorn website, I found that rather than a grid view, the website displays collections in the list view. For my own experience, it is hard to use, especially when you click the "+" icon, and tons of Published References are shown in the drop list. As for me, the "Works on View " section is not so user-friendly when I was expecting a more traditional encyclopedia view that presents each collection in grids with the artist's name and year. I don't think I am encouraged to explore the online collection by myself. But however, I like how they archive their exhibition and help with my potential or past onsite experience. In each exhibition page, they offer multimedia information that I have mentioned above. I think their website serves for interpretation and encourages audiences to adopt the information and knowledge into my own interpretation and understanding when I am trying to appreciate the certain artworks. They stress more significance on the mission to help visitors feeling and understanding the exhibitions. As for onsite some onsite visitors, they could gain more contextual information and the interpretation from artists themselves. As for those visitors who could only access online, they also provide a multi-sensory experience to them for appreciating and feeling the artworks. From my point of view, the website using a grid view to display collections and direct users to the page of a single collection is more like the encyclopedia that we have talked about before. By using hyperlinks, this kind of encyclopedia is like an index that guides audiences to every single unit. Even though this kind of museum websites could also add more information to their onsite works and be as the online archive for a museum, they could also be an individual online museum, just like Google Art and Culture. However, as a website that serves a contemporary art museum (which physically exists), it also has to fulfill the task of the museum to help audiences and encourage them to join in the conversation with the artists, which is also important for contemporary art.

References

Hirshhorn Museum. (n.d.). History and background for the Hirshhorn Museum . https://hirshhorn.si.edu/about-us/

Lerner, A. (1974). An Introduction to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden . New York: Abrams.

Kening Song, Zihui (Zoey) Wang, Xueying Duan

Authenticity, Original and Historical meaning

In explaining the concept "authenticity", Benjamin says that "In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art – its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique existence…bears the mark of the history to which the work has been subject." (253). When we use the technology to reproduce the artwork, we actually detach the artwork from its original historical and local contexts – the "unique existence". It loses its "authenticity" and exits closer to everyone due to the possibility of mass production. Everyone can get a copy of it easily and appreciate it without truly seeing the "real" one. Just as Benjamin states, "by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique" (256).

Then, we still seek to see the original one, even travel abroad and wait in long lines to have a glimpse through the crowd. Benjamin argues "since the historical testimony is founded on the physical duration… is jeopardized by reproduction, in which the physical duration plays no part" (254). What technology has no ability to copy and reproduce is the physical duration, from the original one, we can see the actual crack of an oil painting. Although we can see that in some high-quality photocopy, the feeling, the visual look is still different when compared to seeing the original one. The high-quality digital scanning version of the artwork on the computer screen we can see today still has a different size than the actual one. It also transforms from the original 3D object into the 2D plane. We obviously cannot see the actual crack and brush strokes in the digital copy.

We (at least most people) also agree that the true one bears its history's meaning, even the spirit of a nation. In my perspective, the context of the artwork is more about its history and cultural meaning. In one way, it is the record and the culture encyclopedia. No matter whether it recorded the aristocratic collections of paintings or Morse's a democratic meaning of the meta paintings, what is important is that it uses different unique carriers to record it and represent it. In these dialogs between the artworks and the nowadays viewers, the context does matter.

Continue talking about the uniqueness: "here" and "now"

When we take photographs of artefacts, we are able to focus on some specific angles or details of the paintings or sculptures. To some extent, photographic reproductions do decontextualize and drag artworks out of the historical period, which loses the wholeness of the context to assist audiences to get a better understanding of artworks. But when putting these reproductions together to make comparisons, the museums or the books have a chance to educate audiences, which may create a new wholeness to show the completed art style of the specific period. In this circumstance, shall we regard the new combination of some chosen photographic reproductions as a new "uniqueness"? Do they create a new "aura"?

I remember that when I visited the Newseum, I noticed that there were a lot of photographs that won Pulitzer prices were related to wars and disasters. It gave me a kind of feeling that whenever in the 1980s or 2010s, the world is always full of these bad things, but we all know that these events cannot present the whole world. It is because the photographers are in these situations and these kinds of photos are eye-catching. Thus, when I took this picture of these original pictures, may I say that I create a new "uniqueness" combining some atmosphere of wars?

The photo was taken in the Newseum

Add on what we are talking about the "here" and "now", we want to go deeper to think about the difference between the perspectives of painters and photographers. Take La Grenouillère as an example, Monet and Renoir both stood in a similar position to depict the pond. Even though they saw the same scene, they had different "here" and "now", and thus they focused on different features, used inconsistent colors to show their emotional feelings. In the drawing process, the artists may emphasize entirely distinctive features and git rid of some scenes that they don't pay much attention to. Because everyone focuses on what they personally think is more interesting. But as for photographic technology, if the photographers use the same kind of camera to shot the same scene, especially if they use similar focal lengths, their results may turn out to be similar. From this point, since cameras can't delete some features and persist others (if you do not use Photoshop!), can we say that cameras obscure the degree of different "here" and "now" to some extent?

La Grenouillère, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1869

Bain à la Grenouillère, Claude Monet, 1869

Photography and modern performance art

The introduction of photography, like any other technologies, indicates the transmission of living habits and social ethos. In Foucault's perspective, technical mediation is the very material of human ethical activity and reflection. It can be seen of one's transformation of mind through the engagement of new technologies. Photography first as a medium for cultural heritage for promoting art and educating people. Just like museums often work as the cultural encyclopedia and the interface to the art world. They also collect prototype works as exemplars. From early works, paintings are aiming at recording artworks in a complete canvas, often portrayed as a gallery scene with a collage of previous masterpieces. The need to record artworks accords with photography's function that keeps art eternal and epitomizes human intelligence.

The impact photography has on art creation has both realistic and objective sides. For one thing, art exists due to the aura of where it belongs. One's uniqueness depends on its actual appearance to actual viewers in its creating context. It's hard to remove art from its creating context, like the necessity to endow the artist's characteristic. Therefore, the feeling to view the art object on one's own is irreplaceable. However, for another thing, sometimes the place limits the accessibility of art objects and further impede its education and communication. Though the artworks call for concrete perception for reliable interpretation, the digital collection nowadays has enabled a more convenient way to gain general information of artworks from different art periods. It is still possible to visit on-site after the basic consciousness of it first.

Also, the photograph record sometimes can fix and grasp the crucial image of the artwork. Performance artists also use it to supplement and support their work by introducing photography properly. For photography, it is about the relationship between the photographer and the object (subject) he/she shoots while the performance art is about the relationship between artists and environments. So, the photographs can sometimes grasp the key point of artwork and save further imagination to audiences. Berndnaut Smilde is a Dutch artist who makes perfect miniature clouds in a diverse array of indoor locations, from coal mines to cathedrals. He only uses materials like smoke and water vapor and concentrates it using his special equipment. The ephemeral nimbus occurs only for an extremely short time before it vanishes or changes its shape. Although I can't deny that it is the temporary sculpture that questions the materiality beside us, it ultimately gets to gain everybody's attention by recording the images and regard them as a whole.

Yves Klein, Leap into the Void (1960)

Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus Neuehouse

Sometimes, photographs are not only about documenting performances but can also make the photographer's own work from it. There was an exhibition in Tate called "Performing for the Camera ". It included not only the works made by a momentary action but also several continuously shooting to include a story. The continuity of the photos plus the viewers create a new aura of "not only performing for the camera but also bringing people into your performance, so the responses become part of the work". There are also photographers working on a single motif for years that we can hardly say his photos are not artworks when they "are placed together on a museum wall". That also emphasizes the importance of "making" rather than reproduction.

References

Martin Irvine, " André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire (The Museum Idea) and Interfaces to Art ".

Walter Benjamin, " The Work of Art in the Era of its Technological Reproducibility " (1936; rev. 1939).

Bohrer, Frederick. " Photographic Perspectives: Photography and the Institutional Formation of Art History ." In Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline , edited by Elizabeth Mansfield. London; New York: Routledge, 2002.

Dorrestijn, S. (2012). Technical mediation and subjectivation: Tracing and extending Foucault's philosophy of technology. Philosophy & Technology , 25 (2), 221-241.

Tate. (n.d.). Performing for the Camera – Exhibition at Tate Modern. Retrieved from https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/performing-camera

Slobig, Z. (2017, June 3). How This Artist Makes Perfect Clouds Indoors. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2015/06/berdnaut-smilde-nimbus/

By Kaya Tang, Seven Wu, Karen Zhang

Photography's Role in Art History

The view on photography's role in art history is a dialectic opposition with its advantages, facilitation with the construction of art history and contingencies in the very potential ideological tendencies of a unified art history narrative.

In Bohrer's article "Photographic Respectives: Photography and the Institutional Formation of Art History," he explicitly illustrates some of the roles photography has played in art history beyond mere technological facilitation to an ideological construction tool that has been buried in plain sight but shadowed by avoidance of acknowledging photography. He conducts a thorough literature review on numerous ideas of how photography functions.

Photography is assigned the social uses of being "realistic" and "objective" and served to buttress the realist claim of objecthood and presence. It functions as a stand-in for the art object, and index that points to one unique artwork.

1. Connoisseurship: Photography as an aide-mémoire, an aid to the memory, is one of the modern technologies, contributes to the emergence of connoisseurship by improving or replacing the need to visit the art object, allowing them the intimate materials for patient comparison.
2. Slide Lectures: Beginning with art slides, photography is incorporated into and helps establish the art education institution. It allows comparing, contrasting different works, creating dialogues between artwork that were irrelevant, and introduces formalism into art history for photography has proffered visual evidence.

The action of interfacing artworks with photography is additive as well as subtractive. What is missing in the graphic reproduction of artworks, not only sculpture and architectures but also paintings is their scale, surface, lighting, and frame. But when the camera flashes, it functions more than capturing, it also constructs appearances.

Insidious Roles:

1. Enforcement of Renaissance perspective: The camera, with or without realizing its limitations, obeys the strictures of conventional perspective in its genetic birth and continues to pose a biased ideological tendency on our thoughts. The technology was designed and created to follow a system codified in the Renaissance, where "horizontally running parallel lines meet at a vanishing point but vertical parallels do not."

An idea we've been contemplating here is: What are the new limitations that will be imposed on art in the future now that 3D scanning is introduced to the art industry, which amends the deficiency of representing architectures and sculptures? And what does VR do to the question about scaling? And do these new technologies also do additive jobs and what are their jobs?

"No museums exist, none has ever existed"

As an extension of the roles of ideology formation here is how technology is merely recruited for their mediating functions. "No museums exist, none has ever existed" Museums become this troll to select works for them to become art. We wonder how street art challenges that while mildly twisted and absorbed into the convention by appearing on the bidding stage?

Art is institutionalized and thus easily forms a warm bed for anyone who wants to use it for political intentions. Before this weeks' reading, We weren't able to fully understand what Walter Benjamin means when he talks about the "politicization of art" vs. "aestheticization of politics". We now, to some extent, see why he is fearing art, alienated from its "aura", the local and historical context, would be easily deployed for political intentions.

The Secret Behind Photography

The flash of a camera is by no means a reproduction of an artwork. As Bohrer proposed in Photographic Perspectives, "considering the glossy black and white prints that have been our stock-in-trade from Berenson's day to the present, it is not difficult to see that much is simply not transferred from object to photograph." The 2D representation of art is unable to bring back the original scale, texture, etc. Even more, the representation merely produces an image for people to grab an overview of the single artwork. However, tracking the hints behind photography, we see a treasure honeycomb organized by art professionals, including artists, historians, and museums. Photography only smoothens the transfer of information. Martin Irvine provides a more explicit explanation, "it is not a question about technologies themselves, but about the institutions and ideologies mediated through our technologies." What photography has done is similar to a painting, a museum, or an exhibition. It accelerates the progress that professionals gather information and make selections; it supports the network that the public conceives art and art history. It is the people behind technologies that are making breakthroughs. Anything that is beyond the idea itself is an interface. Similarly, museums nowadays are providing open access to collections for the public. From the perspective of interfaces, open access serves the same role as photography. How people utilize resources is what really matters. New technologies such as AR and VR may replace photography as an educational method; however, ideas behind technologies shall never be replaced.

Context Always Matters

Although we see one of the major uses of photographic works is to support an idea or argument, their true value should never be limited to this. In fact, photography should be treated as a form of art like paintings and sculptures. Therefore, the study of it became essential ever since it was introduced. We especially wonder that if the need for understanding historical and local contexts for artworks has increased or decreased. As mentioned above, photography makes artefacts more accessible, whether through online or physically visit. Centuries ago people would go to churches and museums to worship artefacts due to their cult value; thanks to photography and other advanced technologies, nowadays, the images come to you, and you don't go to them.

According to Benjamin, art was "prasitically dependent on ritual", and the center of an art critique would be authenticity before the mechanical reproduction era. Recalling paintings are originally an integral part of the building for which they were designed, together paintings and the architecture itself make up the building's memory. The place, time, and position are all crucial elements to compose the historical context. We then wondered how would photo establish such memory or context with its presentation, especially in 2D format?  Benjamin also pointed out that mechanical reproduction shifted the focus of artefacts from ritual to political purpose. In other words, the cult value of an artefact tends to be less important than its exhibition value. It is because of the "ambiguous" characteristic of photography that makes such a form of art tie to politics. Besides the meaning of an image can be changed according to what you see beside it or what comes after it, with mass media images, the meaning of an artefact could also be easily manipulated because any part of it could be cropped out and taken out of the original context (deductive), even creates a whole different context (productive). Just like Bohrer states, "(p)hotography, then, has a double effect in its power on the viewer. It both enforces the perspectival vision, and withholds (in effect argues away) some of the raw evidence of the sense." The following picture is one of the famous examples to illustrate how image cropping causes ambiguity. The original photo (center) is an Iraqi soldier surrendered to the U.S. Army after crossing the border in Kuwait. This can be interpreted either in a threatening (left) or charitable (right) way by simply selecting which part of the image to show.

Figure 1: A famous example of ambiguity induced by image cropping. Credit to AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye.

For most people, they tend to believe in what they have seen and to relate an artwork or photograph with their own experiences. They would not bother to explore and learn the historical meaning. In today's world, an art object could be easily transformed into a social object through digitalization. During the pre-digital photography period, people capture artworks to remind them these are what they are seeing or they have seen. However, with the prevalence of social media, the purpose of it would more likely to be " I was there; I came, I saw, and I took pictures/selfies " especially in museums and art exhibitions. It would not be a surprise to hear answers like "It is just so cool" when you ask someone to explain why they took photos of a certain artefact. Therefore, there is no doubt that, for human beings, the need for understanding historical and local contexts of artworks has decreased when they just want to put an interface (artwork) inside another interface (photograph). However, people should actually desire more about the context when apprehending artefacts because such information could now easily be found due to the open-access of art, the innovation of photography, and the development of modern technologies.

References:

A Vision-based Fully Automated Approach to Robust Image Cropping Detection – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-famous-example-of-ambiguity-induced-by-image-cropping-The-original-photo-of-an-Iraqi_fig1_335602306 [accessed 30 Mar, 2020]

Bohrer, Frederick. "Photographic Perspectives: Photography and the Institutional Formation of Art History." In Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, edited by Elizabeth Mansfield. London; New York: Routledge, 2002.

Martin Irvine, "André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire (The Museum Idea) and Interfaces to Art".

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Era of its Technological Reproducibility" (1936; rev. 1939).

Jun Nie & Glenn Grigsby

We discussed Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, two Pop Artists who both came to fame during the twilight of the "Modern Period."

Pop art originated from the economic prosperity of the United States after the second world war, the rampant rise of manufacturing industry, technological innovation and the popularization of new media such as television gave rise to a widespread consumer culture and changed people's visual environment.

As a most influential and representative painter, Andy Warhol (b. 1928 PA, d. 1987 NY) has redefined art and the process of producing art. The interpretation of his paintings will help us further understand why he ranks top on the list of artists. So I try to analyze Andy Warhol's works from different angles to understand the value behind them.

First, he used industrial technology. At the beginning, he tried to imitate the effect of printing with hand drawing, and then he used techniques like silkscreening to make it more authentic and effective. Trying to save time and effort in art is a very controversial attempt, but it is so natural in an era when machine production replaces manual labor. The blending of different media effects in the works is the product of a special era, and the rough texture creates a unique mechanical effect, which can be read both as a celebration of popular culture and as a critique of the mass marketing practices.

Secondly, copy and reproduce in a limited space amplify the psychological feelings of people who immersed in the visual environment wrapped by various repeated commercial advertisements. At that time, the ubiquitous commercial advertisements helped the products to form a deep symbolic impression in people's mind, and these distinct feelings were also what he wanted to convey through the expression technique of "repetition". In addition, repetition represented the popularity and uniformity of the American commercial culture which was widely spread and occupied a mainstream position. In "Marilyn Monroe" (Screen print, 1967), Warhol used the image of the hapless Hollywood sex symbol as the basic element of the painting, which was repeated in rows. That color is simple, neat and drab one after another Monroe head, reflect the people in the modern commercial society helpless emptiness and bewilderment.

Thirdly, he put the things that everyone can consume, purchase and experience in daily life into the field of art and into the framework, which to a large extent drives people to constantly reflect on the profound meaning behind his works. People's Daily life is worth focusing on, everyone is equal, and they can enjoy the same quality products produced by the machine.

 This is a kind of progress of The Times. Just like the cultural and educational functions of the museum itself to the public, the art works of Warhol placed in the museum manifest the zeitgeist of social democracy and people's equality together with the content itself and the carrier of the museum.

Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923 NY, d. 1997 NY) was a Pop Artist who produced his most influential work at the tail-end of the "Modern period," connecting the Abstract Expressionist movement of which he was a relatively minor artist to the Pop Art movement that he of which he was a major progenitor. His first—and perhaps, most famous—work in this vein is Look Mickey (Oil on Canvas, 1961) which is displayed in the NGA's East Building.

The large piece depicts a single panel adapted from the 1960 children's book Donald Duck: Lost and Found. Though the piece is surface-level innocent, even charming, there is something dark and vulgar about seeing Donald and Mickey hanging prominently in an art gallery divorced from their creator and corporate origins.

Lichtenstein was often criticized for "counterfeiting" commercial images and his artistic integrity was called into question by his prominent critics and the comic artists he quoted from; but, the fact was that he was working within established traditions and genres—essentially melding the Abstract Expressionism of his contemporaries with the Gallery Paintings that were popular well-over a century before his time—that maintain popularity to this day (just see the recent fascination with the 'Droste Effect'). But the potential problem with Lichtenstein is not exactly his chosen subject matter as there is something legitimately brilliant about his work. In fact, the problem with Lichtenstein may not even really be about Lichtenstein or his work at all, but rather, about the culture that surrounded the world of comics during his career and the "Comics Code Authority" that nearly destroyed the comics industry between the 1950s-1970s.

As Lichtenstein was gaining fame, critical recognition, and money, many of the artists he quoted from were fading into obscurity and financial ruination. This dichotomy earned him little-love from comics creators (in fact, I have not really found any who had a good thing to say about him). One artist in particular, Russ Heath, wrote a small biographical comic about his experience with Lichtenstein as a fundraiser for The Hero Initiative:

This small strip is fascinating, because it quotes Lichtenstein's diptych painting Whaam! (Oil On Canvas, 1963), which itself quotes Russ Heath's original panel made for DC Comics' All-American Men of War No. 89 (Feb. 1962):

The dialogue here between comic/oil on canvas highlights the dialogue that Lichtenstein participated in throughout his career as a Pop Artist—between the NYC comic producing community and the NYC fine art community. For instance, while Lichtenstein and Warhol had similar artistic philosophies (Lichtenstein said that he could create an original work of art only "by doing something completely unoriginal," a callback—intentional or not—to Warhol's desire to be a "machine") Lichtenstein's Art simply could not have existed without the NYC comic producing community and their place in American and global culture.

Bibliography

Prof. Irvine, "Framing an Interface for Modern Art and Modernism" (Introduction).

Laurie Schneider Adams,A History of Western Art. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Excerpts.

Kahn Academy: Art History Retrieved March 16, 2020, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history/art-1010/pop

Lichtenstein's Theft and the Artists Left Behind. (2014, November 7). Boing Boing. https://boingboing.net/2014/11/07/lichtensteins-theft-and-the.html

Reddit Has Become Weirdly Addicted to the 'Droste Effect," With Paintings Within Paintings                               Within Paintings Going Viral. (2019, January 22). Artnet News. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/reddit-painting-droste-effect-1445749

Roy Lichtenstein and the End of Abstract Expressionism. (2017, June 19). Woodshed Art                          Auctions. https://woodshedartauctions.com/roy-lichtenstein-end-abstract-expressionism/

Roy Lichtenstein, Look Mickey, 1961. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2020, from

https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/lichtenstein-look-mickey.html

by Junru (Cedric) Shi, Siyao (Skye) He and Ruoyang Sun

The artistic ideals of French post-impressionist artists vary from each other a lot, which originates from their different backgrounds of life that led to different styles. Though, when analyzing their works collectively within the significant and specific period of art history, some similarities appear. While learning about these artists' works, the obvious common ground is that they all take their own ways to record everyday lives of people. But even compared to earlier impressionists, their art works are way less representative of reality. These works include more personal comprehension within, absorb the ordinary scenes in real life and represent them with distinctive approaches. Here we want to understand post-impressionism from two world famous artists and look at the nuances of through tracing possible connections and relationship between them.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Ar We Going? 1897, oil on canvas, 139 × 375 cm

Using Paul Gauguin, who had a rather complicated and controversial life, as an example, the idea in his arts are still deeply rooted in the evolutionary waves of the art world. With his rich life experience in Tahiti starting from 1890, Gauguin developed a quite unique art style which includes vibrant colors, clear but incredibly thin edges, along with a rough but bold capture of objects' outlines and shapes.

Winter Landscape, 1879

Parau na te Varua ino (Words of the Devil), 1892

His work changed a lot after being fully touched by mother nature (his closeness with nature can be seen between the two paintings above). Meanwhile, he was attracted to the rustic native life, urged to discover and express the beauty behind those curious and artless people. He especially depicted the rough charm of native women, using full shapes to present their plump bodies. Although these paintings and sculptures are still a look at native females from the angle of European patriarchy, the experiment of art brought the western art closer to the original natural world. Moving away from traditional realism art didn't stop artists like him to observe nature and life, on the contrary, allowed them to use a whole new perspective to detect through the surface of objects.

Besides, Gauguin's art moved with the other post-impressionists even though he was far away in Tahiti for over 6 years. His art still contributed to the mainstream art and sold better than most of the other artists of his time. Gauguin's artistic shift steers towards respecting the life of the colors, while showing the steady shape and the inner values of the objects instead of simply capturing shifting lights and shadows, which deviates from the art style of earlier impressionism. The change stimulated himself and the other artists to advance in an audacious way focusing more on the core of objects. The plain, straightforward style that Gauguin developed can perfectly fit in the development of art history and explain the later expressionism. It also made a space for encouraging more artists to explore unique art belief like primitivism.

Another well-known artist from post-impressionism is Vincent van Gogh. Before he devoted himself fully into art as a painter, he worked as an art dealer and a lay preacher. He did not get much education on painting, and was "largely self-taught" (DK Publishing, 2015, p296). His brother Theo, who was an art dealer, helped him a lot, especially on the aspect of economy. After he went to Paris in 1886, he began to use bold and bright colors, which made his artwork very different from his former paintings. His painting style also changed. In the last 10 years of his life, he created about 2100 masterpieces, which includes about 860 oil paintings. During his lifetime, he suffered from poverty, mental illness, and was considered unsuccessful. He committed suicide at 37. "His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists" ("Vincent van Gogh", n.d.).

Vincent van Gogh: Self-Portrait with Bandages Ear 1889

One of his famous self-portraits is the Self- Portrait with Bandaged Ear. This is a painting that Vincent van Gogh created after his disagreement with Paul Gauguin, because of which he cut off his own ear. In the painting, he is standing in a room with green background. There is a Japanese painting on the wall. He is wearing a coat and a hat with black fur. His ear was covered with a bandage. He looks unhappy. From the painting, we can speculate that Japanese painting had a huge impact on his style.

Starry Night, 1889

Another well-known painting of him is Starry Night, which was painted in 1889. After he cut his ear, he sent himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum. The asylum offered Van Gogh not only a bedroom, but also a room he used as his studio. The Starry Night was painted during this period. Van Gogh painted this painting from the view from his bedroom window. When we look at this painting, the color blue, yellow, and black really catch our eyes. The blue is the color of the sky, as well as the background color. The black is cypress tree and the yellow represent stars and the moon. Under the blue sky, it is a village. Being popular in many different countries, The Starry Night is a painting influenced many artists and is now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

From their life experiences, we see two very different characters, one bold, experimentative and welcomed by his time, another isolated, depressed and wasn't recognized until after his death. They were also influenced by very different sentiments of nature and relation to other people. Interestingly, in the Nationally Gallery of Art, Van Gogh's paintings faced Gauguin's as they were of the same age and represented similar elements of groundbreaking technique and philosophy of post-impressionism. Indeed, Van Gogh and Gauguin were close friends at one point of their life. Van Gogh admired Gauguin but their closeness fell apart as Gauguin decided to leave which agitated Van Gogh to cut his ears and painted the painting stated above.

Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret), 1888

The Gauguin as seen on Van Gogh's canvas only shows the profile of his upper back with his head half raised and giving a serious and rejecting feeling. This is what Gauguin's renounce of friendship left Van Gogh with, a cold head turned away. Van Gogh's artistic life is one that is very distant and indulged in his own imagination and style. Gauguin's was a trigger and that made Van Gogh's later works. Nevertheless, the two still entertained some similar concepts towards artistic representation. Out of his adoration and desire to be accepted, Van Gogh developed a unique symbolic style, construing nature, space and color in his own way that later shook the art world and stood out in art history.

In essence, post-impressionism puts the artist's own perception of objects, personal reflection more in the foreground, we can see this respectively in Gauguin and Van Gogh's work. Their relationship to each other also gives an interesting perspective to understand the movement.

References:

Dk Publishing. (2015). Art that changed the world. Place of publication not identified.

Vincent van Gogh. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 16, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Why Did The Chauvet Painters Utilize Perspectival Drawing?

Source: https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/cctp-802-spring2020/category/group-projects/

Posted by: fernandezexedger.blogspot.com

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