The Archive

virtual gallery

Explore The Archive

Overview

The Archive is a virtual gallery designed for exploration in the Oculus Quest. With 4 time periods divided over the span of 7 centuries, 190+ of the most famous pieces of artwork have been put together with the purpose of encouraging thought about the evolution of art over time, and how it has influenced humanity.

Why do you, as an individual, value art? Why do we, as a society, value art? What genre of art do you prefer, and what type of art does society prefer?

The Archive is, for all intents and purposes, a place for self exploration. Delve deep into the emotions of the most brilliant artists in the course of modern human history, and perhaps you'll see your own thoughts and emotions reflected in their work.

Halls of the Archive

1300-1700

Dominant Movements: Renaissance, Dutch Golden Age, Baroque

Ambient Piece: Wahenta Meixsell - Allemande


Renaissance (1300-1600): Most often used to refer to the era in Europe in which a new style in painting, sculpture and architecture emerged after the Gothic, completing the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age. This period culminated in the High Renaissance, a brief phenomenon confined essentially to Italy in about the first two decades of the 16th century. Following this came that phase of the late Renaissance called 'Mannerism'.

Dutch Golden Age (1575-1675): A period in the history of the Netherlands in which Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first section is characterized by the Eighty Years' War, which ended in 1648. The Golden Age continued in peacetime during the Dutch Republic until the end of the century.

Baroque (1600-1725): The principal European style in the visual arts in the 17th century and the first half of the 18th. Usage of the term is often extended to the whole period 1600–1750 without qualifying restrictions, or improperly to mean a florid and elaborate style in art, architecture, music or literature, of any date from late antiquity to the early 20th century.

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus

Sandro Botticelli

The Creation of Adam

The Creation of Adam

Michelangelo

1700-1870

Dominant Movements: Rococo, Necclassicism, Romanticism

Ambient Piece: Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky - Waltz of the Flowers


Rococo (1730-1780): A decorative style of the early to mid-18th century, primarily influencing the ornamental arts in Europe, especially in France, southern Germany and Austria. The character of its formal idiom is marked by asymmetry and naturalism, displaying in particular a fascination with shell-like and watery forms.

Neoclassicism (1750-1860): Term coined in the 1880s to denote the last stage of the classical tradition in the arts. It formed an integral part of the enlightenment in its radical questioning of received notions of human endeavour. It was also deeply involved with the emergence of new historical attitudes towards the past that were stimulated by an unprecedented range of archaeological discoveries during the second half of the 18th century.

Romanticism (1770-1850): Romanticism caused a re-evaluation of the nature of art and the role of the artist in society. It involves placing emotion and intuition before (or at least equal to) reason, a belief that there are crucial areas of experience neglected by the rational mind, and a belief in the importance of the individual. In fact it embodies a critique of that faith in progress and rationality that had characterized the main trend of Western thought since the Renaissance.

Washington crossing the Deleware

Washington Crossing the Deleware

Sandro Botticelli

The Third of May 1808

The Third of May 1808

Emanuel Leutze

1870-1900

Dominant Movements: Impressionism, Realism, Post-Impressionalism

Ambient Piece: Satie - Gymnopedie No. 1


Impressionism (1860-1886): A movement in France in the late 19th century. It gave rise to such ancillaries as American Impressionism. The primary use of the term Impressionist is for a group of French painters who worked between around 1860 and 1900, including Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. The movement was anti-academic in its formal aspects and involved the establishment of venues other than the official Salon for showing and selling paintings.

Realism (1850-1915): Movement in mid- to late 19th-century art, in which an attempt was made to create objective representations of the external world based on the impartial observation of contemporary life. It was consciously democratic, including in its subject-matter and audience activities and social classes previously considered unworthy of representation in high art.

Post-Impressionism (1886-1905): The reaction against impressionism led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Post-Impressionism can be loosely defined as a rejection of the Impressionists’ concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour in favour of an emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content. It therefore includes neo-impressionism, symbolism, Cloisonnism, synthetism, and the later work of some Impressionists.

Paris Street, Rainy Day

Paris Street, Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat

1900-1970

Dominant Movements: Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism

Ambient Piece: Wahneta Meixsell - Gymnopedie No. 3


Fauvism (1905-1908): Movement in French painting characterized by a violence of colors, often applied unmixed from commercially produced tubes of paint in broad flat areas, by a spontaneity and even roughness of execution and by a bold sense of surface design. It was the first of a succession of avant-garde movements in 20th-century art and was influential on later trends such as Expressionism, Orphism and abstract art.

Expressionism (1905-1920): International movement that extended to literature, music, dance and theatre. Expressionism in the fine arts developed from the Symbolist and expressive trends in European art at the end of the 19th century. The movement should be understood as a form of ‘new Humanism’, which sought to communicate man’s spiritual life. It reflected the deep intellectual unrest about the destruction of the traditional relationship of trust between man and the world.

Cubism (1907-1921): Cubism cannot definitively be called either a style, the art of a specific group or even a movement. It embraces widely disparate work; it applies to artists in different milieux; and it produced no agreed manifesto. Yet, despite the difficulties of definition, it has been called the first and the most influential of all movements in 20th-century art.

Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow

Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow

Piet Mondrian

Nighthawks

The Third of May 1808

Edward Hopper

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