Historical Context. Two stories, one art historical the other cultural and contextual.

The works in the Cone collection are distinguished in two ways, their merits as important works of art in an era of great change and their association with a strong and emblematic story of American industry, affluence, cultural transformation, suffrage and patronage.

The Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone began collecting art in the early 20th century and ultimately amassed approximately 3,000 objects, which were displayed throughout their Baltimore apartments at.

In 1898, Etta Cone initiated the sisters’ career in collecting with the purchase of five paintings by the American Impressionist Theodore Robinson for the family home at the behest of her brothers Moses and Caesar, proprietors of the successful Cone textile business, ultimately a major supplier of jean materials to the Levis Strauss Company.

Claribel and Etta traveled Europe to purchase art. They often visited Gertude and Leo Stein in Paris and were thus introduced to artists, musicians, and writers who would guide and influence their collecting.

Etta Cone met Matisse in 1906, and her initial purchase of several drawings marked the beginning of a life-long passion for his art. The Cone sisters were patronesses of Matisse’s work throughout his career and purchased a total of 42 oil paintings, 18 sculptures, 36 drawings, 155 prints, and seven illustrated books, as well as 250 drawings, prints, and copper plates from the artist’s first illustrated book, Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé. The acknowledged centerpiece of the collection is these 500 works by Matisse including Matisse’s Blue Nude (1907) and Large Reclining Nude (1935)

The sisters also collected works by Picasso, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, in addition to textiles, jewelry, furniture, and African and Eastern art. They collected 114 works by Picasso, including works from the artist’s early years in Barcelona to his Rose period in Paris (1905–1906.) and Picasso’s Mother and Child (1922). Highlights of the collection also include Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibémus Quarry (c. 1897), and Paul Gauguin’s Vahine no te vi (Woman of the Mango) (1892).

At Incorporated, it is our belief that the complex play of the multiple narratives of both the art and its context will make for a rich elevating exhibition, one that can be approached and enjoyed on many levels depending on the interest, taste and preferences of the spectator.

EON-Reality’s-ICube-system

EON-Reality’s-ICube-system

Immersive Experience. Installation design and immersive experience.

Theoretical discourse related to installation design has often gone beyond the confines of traditional museological strategies for inspiration in the development of engaging curatorial experiences. Technology, historical context, multi-media and interactive media have all become hallmarks of the modern installation design tool box.

At Incorporated we have become fascinated by the contemporary explosion of digital virtual experience and in the development digital gaming theory and are mining this arena as inspiration for our work.

In the hands of contemporary gaming designers and conceptualists such as Ernest Adams, Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen, the hallmarks of the immersive digital gaming experience have been reduced to several and often simultaneously mobilized categories that are interesting when considered in relation to engaging and multilayered installation design. These are tactical, cognitive, narrative, spatial, emotional and sensory immersions.

Tactical immersion is experienced when performing operations that involve skill. Players feel “in the zone” while perfecting actions that result in success.

Strategic or cognitive immersion is associated with mental challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when choosing a correct solution among a broad array of possibilities.

Narrative immersion occurs when players become invested in a linear narrative arc similar to what is experience of reading a book or watching a movie.

Spatial immersion occurs when the simulated world is perceptually convincing. The player feels that he or she is “there” and that a simulated world looks and feels “real” or has communicative spatial language that is coherent and understandable.

Emotional or psychological immersion occurs when a player identifies with or becomes emotionally connected to characters, environments or conflicts registered within the virtual environment.

The experience of entering into the three-dimensional environment becomes intellectually stimulating as the player experiences a symbolic language fuses with a cogent image medium, which affects impression and awareness.

In the well developed gaming experience most or all of the above are brought to bear allowing the gamer to plug-in to the game in a manner that suits the personality and interests of that gamer. Tactical, cognitive, narrative, spatial, emotional and sensory immersion described in this way, can be seen as a foundation of good installation design. This multivalent approach that allows the viewer to engage and, as it were, “design their own experience” by attaching to one or more of the “levels” of the immersive environment, is a strong model for the purely “real” and analog arena of installation design.

Louise Lawler, 1993, Metro Pictures

Physical Context. Art context and meaning.

In his description of Louise Lawler’s entry into the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Todd Alden focuses on Lawler’s attention to the context of art.

“Lawler puts a frame around the contexts that define art and the audience’s relationship to it. Aiming her self-reflexive lens primarily at art’s institutions—museums, galleries, auction houses, private collections, art fairs, art storage, and other post studio contexts”. He goes on to write that “her ‘pictures present information about the ‘reception’ of artworks’…….Lawler’s closely cropped photographs also frame specific ambiguities, too, including art’s relationship to the inchoate economies of desire, exchange, prestige, gender, and power.”

In this description Mr. Allen is zeroing in on the core of Lawler’s work. Her art is reveled in the depicting of the impact of the context in which art is found. Her art is about the context of art. At Incorporated we approach installation design in much the same way that Lawler approaches her art. Or rather we believe that the physical context in which art is presented can be as communicative as the art works presented.

Louise Lawler, 2008, Metro Pictures

An Approach. Context & Immersive Experience.

The Cone Collection is fertile ground for the exploration of the historical, physical and cultural context of the works and their collectors and for the development of an immersive curatorial experience that can illuminate the importance of the art objects.

Four Parallel Stories.
In the development of the Cone Collection installation, four parallel stories can be told to develop a rich and multivalent experience.
The Art
First and foremost the works themselves would be installed to delineate their formal importance as works of art both autonomously and in a hierarchical relationship to each other to shed light on their relative art historical impact. All this would be facilitated through “A” level text descriptions and documentary materials such as photographs and formal curatorial critique.

The Collection.
Secondly, the “story” of the context of the collection in the description of the sisters, their lives and their accumulation of the collection can be told through the inclusion of a “B” level text narrative supported by documentary materials such as photographs, letters and ephemera.

The Era.
Thirdly, the purely historical “story” an era of great change and an emblematic one of American industry, affluence, cultural transformation, suffrage and patronage can be described within a “C” level text.

The Context.
Finally, and no less importantly the physical context of the works as they moved from the private studios of the various artists, to the apartments of the sisters and then finally on to the Baltimore Museum can be evoked through the creation of spaces scaled to relate to these various artistic, domestic and institutional environments.

In the play of these four simultaneously tactical, cognitive, narrative, spatial, emotional and sensory immersions a rich and full picture will emerge of the Cone sisters, the world in which they lived and the art about which they were so passionate.•