background preloader

Thematic Essay

Thematic Essay

Task 5 Ways to Support High-Density Retina Displays An interesting point was raised by Brendan Davis in my recent post “Responsive Web Design and Scrollbars: Is Chrome’s Implementation Better?”: are RWD breakpoints affected by high pixel-density screens? The short answer is: no — but we need to delve a little deeper and look at the problems they can cause. What is Retina? “Retina” is Apple’s brand name for double-density screens but other manufacturers are creating similar displays. For example, the MacBook Pro 15″ has a resolution of 2,880×1,800 or 220 pixels per inch. Therefore, the device reverts to a standard resolution of 1,440×900 but the additional pixels can be used to make fonts and graphics appear smoother. What’s the Problem? Standard-resolution bitmap images can look blocky on a Retina display. Real-World Usage If you look around the web, you’d be forgiven for thinking everyone has a Retina display. That said, Retina-like screens will eventually migrate to all devices. 1. You may also be able to replace some images entirely. 2.

cubism: Analytic and Synthetic Cubism In the analytic phase (1907–12) the cubist palette was severely limited, largely to black, browns, grays, and off-whites. In addition, forms were rigidly geometric and compositions subtle and intricate. Cubist abstraction as represented by the analytic works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris intended an appeal to the intellect. During the later, synthetic phase of cubism (1913 through the 1920s), paintings were composed of fewer and simpler forms based to a lesser extent on natural objects. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. More on cubism Analytic and Synthetic Cubism from Infoplease: cubism: Analytic and Synthetic Cubism - Analytic and Synthetic Cubism In the analytic phase (1907–12) the cubist palette was severely ... See more Encyclopedia articles on: European Art, 1600 to the Present

Cubism - the first abstract style of modern art The Influence of Cézanne PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906) 'Bibemus Quarry', 1895 (oil on canvas) Cézanne was not primarily interested in creating an illusion of depth in his painting and he abandoned the tradition of perspective drawing. Perspective, which had been used since the Early Renaissance, was a geometric formula that solved the problem of how to draw three-dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface. Cézanne felt that the illusionism of perspective denied the fact that a painting is a flat two-dimensional object. He liked to flatten the space in his paintings to place more emphasis on their surface - to stress the difference between a painting and reality. The Cubist Vision GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963) 'Viaduct at L'Estaque', 1908 (oil on canvas) The limitations of perspective were also seen as an obstacle to progress by the Cubists. When you look at an object your eye scans it, stopping to register on a certain detail before moving on to the next point of interest and so on.

Georges Braque Biography Georges Braque was a 20th century French painter best known for inventing Cubism with Pablo Picasso. Synopsis Georges Braque was a 20th century French painter who invented Cubism with Pablo Picasso. Early Life Georges Braque was a French painter born on May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil, France. Braque started his art career using an Impressionistic painting style. Career Success Braque's first solo show took place in 1908 at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's gallery. Braque's style changed after World War I, when his art became less structured and planned. Braque started to engrave plaster in 1931, and his first significant show took place two years later at the Kunsthalle Basel. The advent of World War II influenced Braque to paint more somber scenes. Personal Life In 1910 Braque met Marcelle Lapré, a model introduced to him by Pablo Picasso. In his elder years, his failing health prevented him from taking on large-scale commissioned projects.

African Influences in Modern Art | Thematic Essay During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art. In France, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and their School of Paris friends blended the highly stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with painting styles derived from the post-Impressionist works of Cézanne and Gauguin. The resulting pictorial flatness, vivid color palette, and fragmented Cubist shapes helped to define early modernism. While these artists knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and Central African sculptures they encountered, they instantly recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance. In The Autobiography of Alice B.

Creating Retina Images for Your Website July 6th, 2012 by Kyle Larson Apple’s newest devices feature the Retina Display, a screen that packs double as many pixels into the same space as older devices. For designers this immediately brings up the question, “What can I do to make my content look outstanding on these new iPads and iPhones?”. Things to Consider When Adding Retina Images The main issue with adding retina images is that the images are double as large and will take up extra bandwidth (this won’t be an issue for actual iOS apps, but this guide is covering web sites & web apps only). Simple Retina Images The basic concept of a Retina image is that your taking a larger image, with double the amount of pixels that your image will be displayed at (e.g 200 x 200 pixels), and setting the image to fill half of that space (100 x 100 pixels). If you’d like to do something more advanced keep reading below for how you can apply this technique using scripting. Creating Retina Icons for Your Website Retina Background Images

Exhibition | Kemper Art Museum Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–1945 offers the first detailed examination of Braque’s experiments with still lifes and interiors during the years leading up to and through World War II, an overlooked and transitional period in the career of this leading founder of Cubism. Braque employed the genre of the still life to conduct a lifelong investigation into the nature of perception through the tactile and transitory world of everyday objects. Attending to the cyclical nature of the artist’s work, the project examines the transformations in Braque’s creative process as he moved from painting small, intimate interiors in the late 1920s, to depicting bold, large-scale, tactile Cubist spaces in the 1930s, to creating personal renderings of daily life in the 1940s. The exhibition also considers his work in relation to contemporary aesthetic debates about politically engaged culture. Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–1945 is curated by Karen K. Exhibition support

Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Paris, June-July 1907 Publication Excerpt: The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 64 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is one of the most important works in the genesis of modern art. The painting depicts five naked prostitutes in a brothel; two of them push aside curtains around the space where the other women strike seductive and erotic poses—but their figures are composed of flat, splintered planes rather than rounded volumes, their eyes are lopsided or staring or asymmetrical, and the two women at the right have threatening masks for heads. The space, too, which should recede, comes forward in jagged shards, like broken glass. The faces of the figures at the right are influenced by African masks, which Picasso assumed had functioned as magical protectors against dangerous spirits: this work, he said later, was his "first exorcism painting." <h3>Gallery Text:</h3> Audio Program excerpt MoMA Audio: Collection

Game over, Bitcoin. Long live human-based currencies! While being a tremendous proof of concept, the distributed cryptocurrency Bitcoin is fundamentally flawed as an alternative money system, critics say. It is now time for truly radical monetarists to build on this technical experiment and move to the next level of the monetary revolution: a truly human-based digital monetary system. Since its launch in 2009, Bitcoin has turned from a crypto-anarchist project into a hype topic in the worldwide web community and beyond. From London’s squats to Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood: not everyone uses Bitcoin, but everyone is talking about it. Bitcoin can be described as a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, in other words a distributed monetary system that enables anonymous and relatively secure transactions without any centralized authority. Everyone agrees that Bitcoin is an amazing proof of concept from a technical standpoint, and has succeeded in raising much awareness for the current flaws of the monetary system. Which is bad, Felix Salmon says:

Related: