Facing Ourselves: The Changing Role of Portraiture

Portraiture has long played an important role in American art. From early Colonial times to the present, portraiture evolved from a purely documentary art form into a means of addressing complex social and cultural issues. By taking a visit to the New Britain Museum of American Art, one can trace the evolution of this popular [...]

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Photographer David Ottenstein Captures the “Disappearing America”

Lorenzo Webber House #1, 2006. David Ottenstein (b. 1960). Inkjet print. New Britain Museum of American Art, Gift of the artist, 2010.45. My photographs, first and foremost, are about beauty. In structures that most people agree are ugly, I see the opposite: surfaces rich in texture and patterns, bold forms molded by light. The translation [...]

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Gallery Tours: Late 20th Century Art

With no formal artistic training, Richard Pousette-Dart borrowed from the early efforts of the Abstract Expressionists during the 1940s and soon developed a painting technique that focused on the artist’s direct experience with materials and discouraged the use of preparatory sketches. The artist incorporated substances, such as sand, razor blades, and sandpaper, to alter the [...]

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Digital Art: The Skeptics and The Supporters

As we become a society increasingly engulfed in computer technology, there seem to be changes in the art world, specifically in regards to digitalization.  Since the 1970s, art produced digitally has risen into the fine arts realm.  For example, as opposed to manual photography which catches chemical changes on film, digital photography uses electronic sensors [...]

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Victorian Ideals in Pictorialist Photography: Gertrude Käsebier

The study of the female form has been a reccurring theme in artworks for millenia and many museum masterpieces focus on the exploration of a woman’s body . In the late 19th century, this theme was often explored either as the study of beauty or as a representation of motherhood. The Pictorialist photographers concentrated their attention on softly focused [...]

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Collection Highlights: Christo and Jeanne-Claude

  Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, born in 1935 in Gubrovo, Bulgaria is one of the most visible American artists of our time. Jeanne-Claude Marie de Guillebon was born in 1935 in Casablanca, Morocco to French parents. Their monumental conceptual works, although dramatic, are temporary, and are recorded solely by his sketches, photographs, movies, media images and [...]

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Reinterpreted Artworks: Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe by Edouard Manet

When reading our recent post on the NBMAA’s new acquisition of a work by William T. Wiley, one is reminded of another re-interpreted painting, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe by Edouard Manet. However, the Wiley and Manet are opposites. While the Wiley is a modern reinterpretation of a masterpiece by a Northern Renaissance master, the Manet is the [...]

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Different Themes in Linda McCartney’s Photography

“Photography was an interest at first, then a passion. By chance I was even able to make some money photographing musicians. But I always photographed for myself, and I’ve never stopped.” – Linda McCartney Linda McCartney started her career as a receptionist at Town and Country in 1966. Through this job she was able to [...]

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The Portrayal of Women in Art: 1962-2002

We have, more or less, as an audience become used to the idealized depiction of women. Often, particularly in classical styles, they were portrayed as reclining nudes who were there for the viewer’s pleasure. With averted eyes, they touched themselves sensually, typically innocent and oblivious that there is someone painting her for all to see. [...]

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One Photographer and his Dogs

Who doesn’t know the cute and humorous photographs by “the guy with the dogs,”  William Wegman ? Before Wegman started taking photographs of his dogs, he had been an accomplished conceptual artist. He earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in painting and only in the late sixties did he start creating photographs. In the seventies, [...]

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