• Cinematic artwork
• Theatrical artwork

Empire of the Sun artwork

Steampunk is the perfect marriage of the past and the future in full retrofied glory. Heavily influenced by Victorian-era aesthetics, an alternate history where a world that’s still powered by steam is able to create technologies that rival our futuristic imaginations https://voltagebets.org/.

While the psychedelic genre continued well into the 70s, the introduction of jazz, disco and funk – as well as the iconic Woodstock Festival – gave the 70s its groovy reputation. Dominated by mega famous musicians such as ABBA, The Bee Gees, and Pink Floyd, the 70s was a defining decade for music that continues to influence musicians to this day.

An era that brought us hair metal, synth-pop, hip-hop beats, and lovelorn ballads, there’s no question that the 80s were an incredibly diverse time for music. Gracing us with the likes of The Cure, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, and ACDC, the 80s decade was a big turning point for the development of digital music.

Cinematic artwork

With their minimalism, geometrical stripped-down simplicity, and heightened steeliness, Edward Hopper’s paintings have served as palettes for filmmakers multiple times. Wenders, one of the countless filmmakers to have been influenced by Hopper, hosts heavy Hopper-esque imagery in numerous works, from his very first US production Hammett in 1982 to The American Friend (1977); Paris, Texas (1984); and Don’t Come Knocking (2006); among others. In The End of Violence (1997), Wenders included an extended recreation of Nighthawks, sequencing out the painting in multiple shots to augment the storyline, not just the frame.

Although set in significantly different contexts, spatially and temporally, Herbert Ross’s anachronistic usage of the paintings–Hudson Bay Fur Company and 20 Cent Movie by Reginald Marsh, as well as New York Movie and Nighthawks by Edward Hopper–only augmented the mythology of the film. Edward Hopper’s seminal 1942 painting Nighthawks, a small assortment of lonely individuals, perceived from an intriguing distance and an almost voyeur-like gaze, depicts urban solitude like no other. In Pennies From Heaven, the uncanny emotionality present in the painting is evoked in the respective scene built on it, where Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters are featured sitting at the diner. The verisimilitude in the cinematic parallel renders it instantly recognizable.

As cinema evolved, several key techniques emerged that had a significant impact on visual storytelling, influencing not only filmmakers but also painters. One of the most important of these techniques is composition and framing. Early filmmakers like D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein developed sophisticated methods for framing their shots to enhance narrative and emotional impact. The use of close-ups, wide shots, and carefully composed frames allowed filmmakers to guide the viewer’s attention and create a sense of depth and perspective that was previously unattainable in traditional painting.

Cinematic symbolism and metaphor are powerful tools for conveying deeper meanings and adding layers of complexity to a narrative. Painters have adopted these techniques to imbue their works with symbolic significance, often using visual metaphors to represent abstract concepts or themes.

The blog will also discuss the impact of this fusion on contemporary art, exploring how the blurring of boundaries between film and painting influences current artistic practices and future trends. We will conclude by reflecting on the significance of this interdisciplinary approach and encouraging readers to explore paintings with cinematic qualities, deepening their appreciation for the intricate relationship between these two powerful forms of art.

Theatrical artwork

Modern live theatre productions often incorporate advanced technology for set design, lighting, and sound, differentiating them from historical productions. They also tend to explore contemporary themes and may offer more diverse representations on stage, reflecting current societal values.

It was in a bid to capture these celebrities at work that a new artistic genre took off: the theatrical painting. A fine early example is William Hogarth’s 1745 picture of Garrick as Shakespeare’s Richard III (above), the role with which the actor made his name. He is seen in his tent on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, having woken from a dream in which he is rebuked by the ghosts of his murder victims.

If one includes spectacles such as ballet, opera and pantomime alongside drama, England had around 300 places of regular theatrical entertainment in 1805: more than 10 times the number that had existed a century earlier.

The Old Woman Cooking Eggs is a more mundane example of theatricality within artwork, but one that is essential to completing the metaphor. Velazquez’s earlier work focused on depicting the more general aspects of daily peasant life, such as his Water Carrier piece, and The Old Woman Cooking Eggs is no exception to that. However, part of the charm of the piece in differing from Titian’s scene with Christ is that even without the blatant historical references and sheer magnitude of iconographical emotion it still possesses an equally compelling sense of theatrical narrative, regardless of how uninteresting the subject matter may seemingly be. The sharply contrasted figures are organic, and rendered precisely enough to be very believable within their setting. It is possible that this snapshot of daily life was almost more compelling to a casual viewer due to its basic relatability. The commission’s close ties to the working class suggest that this piece very intentionally references its subject matter in a natural, organic form, further increasing its ties to theatrical representation.

In a theatre production, the hierarchy of roles from the director to the stage manager orchestrates the ensemble of actors and actresses to breathe life into the performance. The theatre company encompasses a collection of individuals, each with specialized tasks, managed and unified by the director to achieve a coherent vision.

Another master of the genre was German-born Johann Zoffany, who captured the details of a performance with photographic accuracy. Among his finest pictures is that of Macklin as Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Painted in 1768, it depicts a distraught Shylock, reeling from the news that his daughter Jessica has eloped — and taken his money and jewels with her.