Image: Boulevard Arts’ Virtual Reality Experience: “Turner Contemporary: Helen Frankenthaler,” showing a recreation of the artist’s 1960s Upper East Side studio.
Today, 12-12-20, would have been American artist Helen Frankenthaler’s 93rd birthday. In looking for an image to post, I came across this shot showing the “studio” we created for a virtual reality experience of Frankenthaler’s paintings from a gallery of Turner Contemporary’s 2014 “Making Painting” exhibition. Boulevard captured 10 works, allowing users to look closely at and gain a deeper appreciation for Frankenthaler’s fearless artistic experimentation. Through immersive technology, we were able to archive part of a temporary show in England that won’t occur again, making it available to anyone, anywhere. That’s certainly a big plus of virtual reality. But, even more exciting, in some ways, was the fact that our team later added a special feature to the experience that just isn’t possible outside of virtual reality. Working with staff from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York, we extensively researched and recreated an approximation of the artist’s 1960s Upper East Side, New York studio, which no longer exists (It’s now a yoga studio!). Within VR, users can step “back in time” through a portal in the painting gallery into an environment containing Frankenthaler’s tacked and unstretched canvases, deep sink, paint-splattered floor, paint cans, sqeegees, sticks, other painting tools. VR allows users to “walk around” the space, get an accurate sense of scale and materials, and feel much closer to the artistic process. Today’s technologies allow for different types of enhanced engagement and discovery, and we should take full advantage of this. In other words, looking to the future can help us better picture and grasp the past.