“Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art” installation view at Akron Art Musuem.
Foreground: … [+] Joseph DeLappe, Taliban Hands, 2011, corrugated plastic, 28 x 14 x 40 in. Each, courtesy of the artist; background: Ueli Alder, Untitled Detonations #1–#8, 2011, inkjet prints, 37.8 x 31.5 in. each, collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell.
Mike Crupi Photography
In the same way artists of the Renaissance were influenced by the Bible they read every day and the Impressionists influenced by the rapidly modernizing Paris they observed every day, an increasing number of contemporary artists are being influenced by the video games they play every day. With more than 166 million American gamers according to a 2018 Entertainment Software Association survey, the Akron (Ohio) Art Museum examines the connection between gaming and visual art in “Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art.”
“Open World” presents the work of artists who use video games as a catalyst for making art. The term refers to open-world video games which allow a player to roam through a virtual world, freely selecting their objectives.
“Although all of the artists in ‘Open World’ are influenced by video games, the artwork they make is about more than gaming culture,” Curator of Exhibitions at the Akron Art Museum Theresa Bembnister said. “The artists tackle topics crucial to contemporary life including the role of consumer products in shaping personal identity and technology’s ability to create credible—yet false—imagery.”
Skawennati, Epiphany (featuring a digital representation of Cloudscape, an installation by Hannah … [+] Claus), from TimeTraveller™ 2008-13. Nine-episode machinima series. On view in “Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art.”
Courtesy of the artist
Video games have rarely been considered as a major influence on contemporary art previous to this exhibit.
Artworks in “Open World” reference a broad cross section of games ranging from early text adventure and arcade games through the Nintendo giants of the 1980s and 1990s including Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda to more recent releases such as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto.
In addition to traditional media like painting, drawing and sculpture, the exhibition also highlights textiles, prints, animation, video games, video game modifications and game-based performances and interventions by makers who self-identify as artists.
“For ‘Open World’ I really wanted to go beyond the question or whether or not games are art and to demonstrate the growing influence of games on the creation of visual art in a variety of digital and traditional media such as painting, quilting and drawing,” Bembnister said.
Bembnister began contemplating a museum exhibit exploring the influence of video games on contemporary art in the early 2000s. The more artists she met–primarily digital natives (people raised with a full immersion to digital technology, computers, smart phones, the Internet, etc.)–and the more she heard them reference gaming as an influence on their practice, the more convinced she became of the validity of her idea.
These artists were not necessarily working in digital media. They could be making traditional landscape paintings, but the aesthetics of the backgrounds of, Sonic the Hedgehog, shaped the way they depicted color and space through paint on a canvas. This was a phenomenon I rarely saw acknowledged or examined in museum exhibitions.
“Open World” can be seen at the Akron Art Museum through February 2 and will travel to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire (March 21–June 28), followed by the San José Museum of Art (September 10–January 10, 2021).
Meanwhile, in Boston, this same connection is highlighted as the city’s newest art museum, the MassArt Art Museum, opens its doors for the first time February 22. The non-collecting institution affiliated with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design presents “Game Changers: Video Games & Contemporary Art” as one of its inaugural exhibitions.
The Boston and Akron exhibits share in their displaying of virtual reality artwork.
“Virtual reality is becoming more and more prevalent in museum and gallery settings,” Bembnister said.
Her museum commissioned a new virtual reality work from artist Rachel Rossin specifically for “Open World.”
Joan Pamboukes, Morning from Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas, 2006. Archival pigment print 30 x 40 in. … [+]
Courtesy of the artist
As the audience for gaming continues growing–competitive college and professional e-sports teams and leagues are now well established with star players, million-dollar prize pools, fan-filled arenas and major global television distribution–expect art museums to continue mining the genre to find new audiences. The Akron Art Museum gave thought to the question of how to convert some portion of the enormous gamer community into art lovers, museum goers and art collectors when crafting its marketing plan for the exhibit.
“Both gamers and art lovers are drawn by the visual, on some level, so that’s an important jumping off point,” Akron Art Museum Deputy Director and Chief Experience Officer Seema Rao said. “I also think both groups have an inherent love of craft, if perhaps different types of craft; in the end, I think the overlap is that art people love thoughtful art and learn about games in this exhibitions, and game lovers have the games as their entry point.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
