Archive for the ‘concept art’ tag
Non è solo un gioco…
© Paul Sullivan
Domenico Quaranta, “Non è solo un gioco: creare mondi è quasi un’opera d’arte”, in L’Unità, June 2, 2009, pp. 40 – 41.
Esiste un settore della cultura contemporanea che meriterebbe più attenzione di quanta siamo generalmente disposti a concedergliene. Il suo indotto ha superato da anni quello del cinema, ma continuiamo a considerarlo un mercato di nicchia. Ha conquistato persone di tutte le età, ma continuiamo a pensarlo come intrattenimento per ragazzini. Richiede investimenti copiosi, il contributo creativo di intere squadre di professionisti e anni di lavoro, eppure non lo prendiamo troppo sul serio. I suoi prodotti li chiamiamo “videogiochi” e pensiamo che questo ci autorizzi a dimenticarci che hanno, spesso, l’articolazione narrativa di un romanzo, la ricchezza visiva di un quadro rinascimentale, la capacità di coinvolgimento di un film, scenari e colonna sonora degni di un blockbuster hollywoodiano.
Art and Videogames. Enclosures and border crossings
© Jim Murray 2005
Domenico Quaranta, “Art and Videogames. Enclosures and border crossings”, in Debora Ferrari, Luca Traini, The Art of Games. Nuove frontiere tra gioco e bellezza, exhibition catalogue, Aosta, Centro Saint Bénin, May 28 – November 8, 2009, pp. 99 – 117.
Prologue
1949: Andrew Warhola, the son of a factory worker of Rusyn origin in Pittsburgh, arrives in New York. He had studied art, and his blotted line drawings, which made an uncertain, wavering line on the paper, attracted the attention of the art director of Glamour, who commissioned a series of drawings of shoes for the magazine. In the space of a few years Andrew became “the most sought-after illustrator of women’s accessories in New York”, as Calvin Tomkins wrote1. He changed his name to Andy Warhol, met Truman Capote, had his nose redone, founded a company and started making a lot of money, yet he was not satisfied. The art world kept him on the margin, despite his various attempts to make inroads. Paradoxically, his refined blotted line drawings of food, shoes and other consumer items looked too personal, too subtle and too nonchalant to carve a niche in the avant-garde art scene of the day –divided as it was between the macho heroism of Abstract Expressionism, and the impersonality of Pop Art.2 It was attending Leo Castelli’s gallery, where he saw the work of Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, that Andy found the path that would lead him to success: instead of depicting consumer goods, he began serial reproductions, first using a cold, impersonal style of painting, then a mechanical process (silkscreen printing). From elegant shoes decorated with gold-leaf he passed to giant, brutal cans of Campbell’s soup. In 1963 he confessed: “[When I was doing advertising] I’d have to invent and now I don’t; those commercial drawings would have feelings, they would have a style… the attitude had feeling to it.”
What he did from that moment on changed the course of contemporary art. As for the drawings, they remained at the bottom of a drawer for years before being discovered. We now see them as engaging works of art: our idea of art has changed, making room for something that was not admitted in the past.
