The Vorticists: a short-lived 20th century avant garde art movement
"The vorticists did not have many members; nor did the movement last long, because of unfortunate timing - it formed in 1914 as Europe hurtled towards war. By 1918 there was not much appetite for dogmatic groups such as theirs.
Nevertheless, the group holds an important place in 20th-century British art history.
'They were the first abstract modernist group in Britain,' said Stephens. 'It inevitably comes out of the revolution of cubism, but then, so does everything in the 20th century.'
They were part of a maelstrom of new, aggressive art 'ism' movements, not least the one practised by the Italian futurists, who were, in Lewis's eyes, the bad guys.
Stephens said: 'Unlike the futurists, who celebrate the energy of the machine and actual war as a purging force, the vorticists were engaged in more universal ideas of identity, time and movement in a philosophical sense.'"
(Mark Brown, 13 June 2011, The Guardian)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Art Project: take a virtual (Google) tour of famous art museums
"Simply select a museum from the homepage and then either choose 'Explore the museum' or 'View Artwork'. Once you are in the main site use the drop-down menus or the side info bar to navigate between artworks and museums. Finally create and share your own collections online."
(Google, 2011)
Fig.1 Art Project - Visitor Guide, Google.
Fig.2 Art Project - Behind the Scenes, Google.
Fig.3 Portrait of Fedor Dostoyevsky, Vasily Perov
Fig.4 navigate the Uffizi Gallery via the Google Art Project
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Eadweard Muybridge: theory building through photographic experimentation
"Muybridge was the man who famously proved a horse can fly. Adapting the very latest technology to his ends, he proved his theory by getting a galloping horse to trigger the shutters of a bank of cameras. This experiment proved indisputably for the first time what no eye had previously seen - that a horse lifts all four hooves off the ground at one point in the action of running. Seeking a means of sharing his ground-breaking work, he invented the zoopraxiscope, a method of projecting animated versions of his photographs as short moving sequences, which anticipated subsequent developments in the history of cinema."
(Tate Britain, 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Many New Media artists have used the Internet as a tool to explore the construction and perception of identity
"Many New Media artists have used the Internet as a tool to explore the construction and perception of identity. The Internet makes it easy for an artist to create a fictive online persona merely by setting up a free e-mail account or home page. Race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and nationality can all be invented, undermining the notion that art works are authentic expressions of their makers' identities. Mouchette.org, a Net art project that claims to be the work of a thirteen-year-old girl named Mouchette (after the protagonist of 1967 film by Robert Bresson about an adolescent girl), demonstrates the pliability and uncertainty of online identity. As visitors explore the site, it becomes clear that Mouchette is a fictional invention. Yet the character's presence, the sense that there really is a girl named Mouchette behind the project, remains convincing. As of this writing, the true identity of the artist responsible for Mouchette has yet to be revealed.
Other New Media artists address issues of identity in more straightforward ways. Shu Lea Cheang's Brandon, for example, explores the true story of Teena Brandon, a young woman who was murdered for passing as a man. In Bindigirl (1999), Prema Murthy represents herself as an Indian pinup girl in a critique of the Internet pornography industry and the Orientalism found in Asian pornography. The artist group Mongrel has explored issues of identity, particularly race, in several projects, including Uncomfortable Proximity, (2000). In this work, Harwood, one of the group's members, altered images on the Web site of Tate Britain, one of England's leading art museums. Harwood combined portraits by British painters, including Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth, and Joshua Reynolds, with images of Harwood's friends and family to create his own version of art history and, through the process, conjure an alternative vision of British identity."
(Stewart Mader and Mark Tribe, Brown University)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
