Blue State Digital Creates Online Experience for AIC Roy Lichtenstein Exhibit
June 5, 2012 by Screenmag
Leveraging the iconic style of American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, digital marketing agency Blue State Digital has created an online experience ( http://roy.artic.edu/) that takes viewers into and behind the scenes of the most comprehensive exhibition ever curated of Lichtenstein’s body of work, now open to the public at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The website for the exhibition blends a mixture of Lichtenstein’s bright colored “dot” canvases, video displays and in-depth artist information. A special feature of the site is a “slide” effect that allows the viewer to see how Lichtenstein transformed source materials and preparatory drawings into his signature canvases populated by his hand-painted“Ben-day” dots. Viewers can see the outlines and initial sketches of the artworks and, by sliding a bar across the virtual canvas, watch its transformation with color and dots in the Lichtenstein style.
“With more than 160 pieces of work that explore Lichtenstein’s evolution as an artist this exhibition inspired our creative team to take a similar boldness to the design and concept of the online experience,” says Russ Fagaly, Senior Client Manager at Blue State Digital. “When you explore the site you feel that you are immersed in the exhibition itself. We’re very grateful for the collaboration with the Art Institute’s marketing and communications group. Working with them, we had access to so much material that we were able to bring Lichtenstein’s work to life.”
Another online highlight is a behind-the-scenes video with curator James Rondeau. The video illustrates how Mr. Rondeau uses a model of the gallery -- dollhouse style – to explore the placement of each work of art in order to bring the exhibition together. As Mr. Rondeau explains in the video, “there’s nothing like seeing [the works of art] with their intended neighbors – the pictures they were meant to be talking to.”
Bringing together never-before-seen drawings, paintings, and sculpture, Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, presents the deepest exploration of Lichtenstein's signature style and its myriad applications across one of the most prolific careers in 20th-century art. The result is a dazzling array of color and dynamism, traversing art historical movements, magazine advertisements and comics, nudes and heroes, sea and sky. The exhibition is open through September 3, 2012.