Category Archives: theatre

When Art Sells Art

Suppose you walk into a bookstore and are immediately beckoned by a brightly colored book cover that features an exquisite sunset over a stunningly surreal ocean. You pick up the book and turn it on its face. Unfortunately the description on the back doesn’t pique your interest nearly as much as the book’s enchanting cover. Nevertheless, you pull out your debit card and carry your newfound treasure to the cashier.

What just happened? Art sold art.

Art Sells Art

This happens all the time. Songs featured in movies become wildly popular; an art exhibition features the works of an unknown artist, which in turn makes him or her a household name overnight; expertly designed DVD covers allure consumers to buy; and theater posters sell theater tickets unassisted.

Erik Piepenburg of The New York Times declares, “Great theater posters…sell by design…the best posters convey the conceptual complexities of the plays they serve.”

Indeed, some of the most beautiful designs in the world can be found on the covers of theater posters.

Examples of Great Theater Poster Art

There are many remarkably crafted theater posters. Here are a couple posters that are impressive:

A Small Fire – Designed by Julia McNamara, A Small Fire’s show poster features two sets of hands, one red and the other white, on a solid black background. Speaking of the hands, McNamara says, “…I think of them as more feminine hands. They were always red, like fire. The color scheme really works. It makes it striking.”

Stage Kiss – Stage Kiss’s show poster, designed by Courtney Waddell Eckersley, displays hundreds of lipstick-laden kiss prints, all layered on top of one another. In reference to creating the graphic for the poster, Eckersley says, “I…picked up as many bright opaque and inexpensive lipstick shades as I could find.” Then, she and an intern “kissed the page a lot.” The piece appears abstract from a distance, but the lip prints are quite visible up close.

Art in all its forms often says more than words can ever express. Art is beauty. It entices, allures, and invites the beholder to come closer. There is no better way to sell art than by using another form of art to do so. This phenomenon takes place when an artful theater poster sells out a show.

Has a theater poster ever inspired you to purchase a theater ticket, simply because the poster was great? What are some of your favorite theater posters? When have you noticed art enticing you to purchase art?

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

Selling Your Art in a Strained Economy

Art Transforms Traditional Business Practices

Selling your art at outdoor art fairs

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Art that Sells Broadway

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Segmation - Art that Sells Broadway The versatility of art is not easy to define. Art is an umbrella term that encompasses different mediums, genres and styles. Each medium of art is attractive on its own, but when several types of art come together, a fresh, deep, enriched level of art is born. For instance, this is the case when music, dance, storytelling and graphic design collide. You may be wondering where these diverse art mediums intersect. On Broadway, of course.

Erick Pipenburg (@erikpiepenburg) has one of the most interesting jobs in America; he is the senior theatre editor at the New York Times. Recently his job has taken him away from Broadway stages and into the studios of graphic designers and photographers who create promotional posters for hit shows.

“Behind the Poster” is a category on the New York Times blog, Artsbeat. In this genre of his professional art medium, writing, Pipenburg interviews the talented visual artists who are on the front lines of theatre show productions. He has gone behind the curtains of shows like “The Visit,” starring Chita Rivera; “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” starring Neil Patrick Harris; and a new play, “Stage Kiss,” which is promoted by an abstract poster that is made up of lipstick kisses on paper. Each time, Pipenburg’s interview reveals a story that goes beyond the script and into the lives of all the artist who create and promote the play.

To better grasp what Pipenburg does, read the response from freelance illustrator Julie Furer Knutson, who created the poster for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” playing in Seattle, Washington:

“I wanted this to scream ’60s. That blue is very of that era. When I was a kid we had a couch that color. It seems everybody had that couch back then. I guess it was Danish-designed and had that very plain but textural fabric to it. The characters keep drinking to hide what’s going on in their lives. They are outward with their rage, but they are hiding behind the alcohol. I thought white for the title really exposes things.”

Here is the New York Times article that contains this poster review and five others: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/posters-the-fine-art-of-selling-theater.html.

Erick Pipenburg is revealing another element of art that goes into creating shows that grace Broadway stages each night. He is showcasing the tapestry of art mediums, styles, and genres that go into producing show-stopping productions. In a way, he is identifying the many parts of a fulfilling, multi-dimensional work of art.

Art is often made up of several pieces. No art program knows this better than Segmation. Paint-by-number has been allowing people to become artists for years. Now, Segmation is making paint-by-number a digital phenomenon, too. By putting together the pieces of artful imaging, you can be an artist. Have you tried SegPlay PC or SegPlay Mobile yet? Click here to learn more about the software that can transform you into an artist: http://segmation.com/. Piece by piece, you can, like Erick Pipenburg, expose a beautiful picture.

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

Paper Quilling – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Can Elephant Art Save the Species?

What Is True About The Color Blue?

Be an Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC (see more details here)

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When Art is Represented On Stage

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It is a beautiful thing when different forms of art collide. Dance and music create a wonderful combination, as do writing and graphic arts. Various art types compliment one another, and in some cases even depend on one another if full expression is to be had. But one combination that seems unlikely is theatre and 16th Century Italian art – there’s a mix you don’t hear about everyday.

Two individuals recently wrote a play called Divine Rivalry that integrates 16th Century Italian art into theatre. Divine Rivalry has a storyline that is true to its name, being about an “artistic duel” between Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo Da Vinci, two giants of the art world. Who in the play is responsible for this rivalry? None other than Niccolo Machiavelli. While the plot of Divine Rivalry sure sounds far-fetched, here is an interesting fact: it is based on true happenings.

1505 was the year that the painting duel actually happened between Michelangelo and Da Vinci, an idea that Machiavelli did indeed conceive of. What prompted Machiavelli to initiate this scenario? Probably the fact that Italy wanted to set itself apart from other countries around the year 1505. This is understandable when you consider that Spain boasted the recent finding of the New World during that time. Machiavelli thought that having two murals created to depict Italy’s “artistic brilliance and military prowess” would help raise and solidify the status of the country. Thus, the idea of having two famous artists paint together yet against one another was born.

While Da Vinci and Michelangelo were both commissioned to paint specific murals, neither artist finished the job assigned. It wasn’t until the 1560’s that the murals were painted over by another artist, Giorgio Vasari.

The individuals who penned Divine Rivalry, Michael Kramer and D.S. Moynihan, were excited to present this production to the public beginning in 2011 in Connecticut at the Hartford Stage. Moynihan commented that she had not encountered anyone who was familiar with the “paint-off” of 1505. Kramer admitted that he was thrilled to have done two years of research for the play. All in all, Divine Rivalry was a notch in the belts of Moynihan and Kramer. The success of Divine Rivalry proves that great things can happen when art is represented on stage.

http://www.nctimes.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/theatre/theater-feature-art-history-and-mystery-unite-in-globe-s/article_60fcb80d-e3c8-5bbc-81ca-f6d2aef013ad.html