Silicon Valley Art Museum Explores Links Between Art & Technology.

Further exploring the critical links between art and technology, the Silicon Valley Art Museum (www.SVAM.org) unveiled a new online exhibit of American paintings reflecting the social, cultural and technological forces that influenced the period between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII. “Between the Wars” features stunningly real photographic images of the paintings, captured through the digital photographic technology developed by Foveon, Inc. SVAM is the world’s first Internet-based art museum whose mission is to explore the interactions between art and technology of the past, present and future.

The “Between the Wars” exhibit can be seen at www.SVAM.org, the museum’s Website that was launched earlier this year. In addition to the Foveon photographic images of the nine oil paintings, the online exhibit includes extensive curatorial notes on the artists and the environment in which they worked. Long out of public view, the paintings are from a private collection.

“This exciting new exhibit reflects not only SVAM’s core belief in the links between art and technology, but also demonstrates how we are leveraging our Website to expose important works from private collections to a broader public worldwide,” said William Brickner, Ph.D., president of SVAM. “We are also very proud to be partnering with Foveon, Inc., whose world-class photographic technology is helping to bring these paintings to life for art lovers around the world.”

“We are very pleased to be joining with the SVAM to launch the historic ‘Between the Wars’ exhibit,” said Raymond H. DeMoulin, vice chairman of Foveon, Inc. “Foveon is committed to helping photographers achieve their artistic visions through breakthrough digital photographic technology and innovation.”

From Jazz Age to Great Depression

The artists featured in “Between the Wars” include leading proponents of “American Scene” painting and the “Ashcan School,” which were influential art movements in the early part of the 20th Century. The artists represented in “Between the Wars” are: Aaron Bohrod, Robert Brackman, Marion Greenwood, Joseph Hirsch, Bernard Karfiol, Peppino Mangravite, Fletcher Martin and Moses Soyer. Blending modernism and idealism with social consciousness and egalitarianism, these artists created a uniquely American art vernacular. Their collective work mirrored a pivotal period of American history that spanned the opulence and optimism of the Jazz Age, the despair of the Great Depression, and ultimately the outbreak of the second global war, WWII.

Ruth Waters, founder and chairman of the SVAM board of directors, said: “As innovators and experimenters, great artists have always gone beyond creativity, searching for different and better ways to communicate their images and messages to the world. In that spirit, artists have a long history of experimenting with tools and technologies to advance their ideas, which is the focus of the Silicon Valley Art Museum.”

A Foveon Studio Camera was used to create the images of the nine paintings in the “Between the Wars” exhibit. Through Foveon’s digital technology, each image was captured with a Foveon camera consisting of three 2K x 2K CMOS sensors attached to a color-separation prism for measuring red, green and blue information in registration with each other. Within Foveon’s imaging software, each photograph captured can be processed up to 48 Mbytes and reproduced up to at least 40×40″ print sizes.