- Industry: Art history
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English version of general German term for Performance art, but was specifically used for the name of the Vienna-based group Wiener Aktionismus founded in 1962. The principal members of the group were Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolph Schwarzkogler. Their 'actions' were intended to highlight the endemic violence of humanity and were deliberately shocking, including self-torture, and quasi-religious ceremonies using the blood and entrails of animals. Nitsch gave his ceremonies the general title of Orgies-Mysteries Theatre. In America Dennis Oppenheim, and in Britain Stuart Brisley, performed actions in a spirit that can be related to Wiener Aktionismus. A less violent but no less anguished Vienna action artist of the time was Arnulf Rainer.
Industry:Art history
A dispersion of pigments in a synthetic acrylic resin produced from acrylates and/or methacrylates. Acrylic paint dries as the liquid vehicle evaporates, and the resulting polymer-chains then deform and coalesce to form the paint film. While acrylic paints are generally thought to be very fast drying, thick applications may take months or even years to fully dry. Artist acrylic paints were first made in the 1950s using poly (n butyl methacrylate) resin dissolved in solvent (mineral spirits or turpentine) with pigments and other minor components. The next type developed in the 1960s was the acrylic emulsion paint that remains so popular today. These are thinned (and brushes cleaned) using water; however, once dry, the paint films are water-resistant.
Industry:Art history
The first art academies appeared in Italy at the time of the Renaissance. They were groupings of artists whose aim was to improve the social and professional standing of artists, as well as to provide teaching (see Ecole des Beaux Arts). To this end they sought where possible to have a royal or princely patron. Previously, painters and sculptors had been organised in guilds, and were considered mere artisans or craftsmen. Academies became widespread by the seventeenth century, when they also began to organise group exhibitions of their members' work. This was a crucial innovation, since for the first time it provided a market place, and began to some extent to free artists from the restrictions of direct royal, church, or private patronage. The most powerful of the academies was the French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, established in 1648 and housed in the Palais du Louvre in Paris. The Académie began holding exhibitions in 1663 and opened these to the public from 1673. After the French Revolution the name was changed to plain Académie des Beaux-Arts. The London Royal Academy was founded in 1768 with Joshua Reynolds (later Sir Joshua) as its first president. By the mid nineteenth century the academies had become highly conservative and by their monopoly of major exhibitions resisted the rising tide of innovation in Naturalism, Realism, Impressionism and their successors. The result was that alternative exhibiting societies were established and private commercial art galleries began to appear (see Salon). The academies were bypassed and the term academic art now has the pejorative connotation of conservative or old-fashioned.
Industry:Art history
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France, established in 1868 by Rodolphe Julian. It became a major alternative training centre to the official Ecole des beaux arts, especially for women who were not admitted to the Beaux arts until 1897. At the Julian women were also permitted to draw from the nude male model. In 1888-9 Pierre Bonnard and Eduard Vuillard were students there and together with some others formed the Symbolist group the Nabis. The Académie Julian was popular with foreign art students and many leading modern artists spent time there.
Industry:Art history
Art school in Paris, France, established in the nineteenth century as an alternative to the official Ecole des Beaux Arts. Comparable to and slightly less famous rival of the Académie Julian. Like the Julian, the Colarossi admitted women and allowed them to draw from the nude male model. Artists represented in the Tate Collection who attended include John Banting, William Gear, George Grosz, Elsie Henderson, Hans Hofmann, Samuel Peploe.
Industry:Art history
Art made according to the teachings of an art academy. In the nineteenth century the art academies of Europe became extremely conservative, resisting change and innovation. They came to be opposed to the avant-garde and to modern art generally. The term academic has thus come to mean conservative forms of art that ignore the innovations of modernism.
Industry:Art history
Association of abstract artists set up in Paris in 1931 with aim of promoting abstract art through group exhibitions. Rapidly acquired membership of around 400. Leaders were Herbin and Vantongerloo, but every major abstract painter took part including such figures as Gabo, Kandinsky and Mondrian. In Britain members of the modernist groupings the Seven and Five Society and Unit One, kept in close touch with Abstraction-Création. Their chief members were Hepworth, Moore, Nicholson, Nash and Piper. Abstraction-Création embraced the whole field of abstract art, but tended towards the more austere forms represented by Concrete art, Constructivism and Neo-Plasticism. Regular exhibitions were held until 1936 and five annual publications were issued.
Industry:Art history
Term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters in 1940s and 1950s. The Abstract Expressionists were mostly based in New York City, and also became known as the New York School. The name evokes their aim to make art that while abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the Surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind, and by the automatism of Miró. Within Abstract Expressionism were two broad groupings. These were the so-called action painters led by Pollock and De Kooning, and the colour-field painters, notably Rothko, Newman and Still. The action painters worked in a spontaneous improvisatory manner often using large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Pollock famously placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint direct from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way they directly placed their inner impulses on the canvas. The colour field painters were deeply interested in religion and myth. They created simple compositions with large areas of a single colour intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer.
Industry:Art history
The word abstract strictly speaking means to separate or withdraw something from something else. In that sense applies to art in which the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to arrive at a more or less simplified or schematised form. Term also applied to art using forms that have no source at all in external reality. These forms are often, but not necessarily, geometric. Some artists of this tendency have preferred terms such as Concrete art or non-objective art, but in practice the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is anyway not always obvious. A cluster of theoretical ideas lies behind abstract art. The idea of art for art's sake—that art should be purely about the creation of beautiful effects. The idea that art can or should be like music—that just as music is patterns of sound, art's effects should be created by pure patterns of form, colour and line. The idea, derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, that the highest form of beauty lies not in the forms of the real world but in geometry. The idea that abstract art, to the extent that it does not represent the material world, can be seen to represent the spiritual. In general abstract art is seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality. Pioneers of abstract painting were Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian from about 1910-20. A pioneer of abstract sculpture was the Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo. Since then abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art.
Industry:Art history
The abject is a complex psychological, philosophical and linguistic concept developed by Julia Kristeva in her 1980 book Powers of Horror. She was partly influenced by the earlier ideas of the French writer, thinker and dissident Surrealist, Georges Bataille. It can be said very simply that the abject consists of those elements, particularly of the body, that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety. Kristeva herself commented 'refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live'. In practice the abject covers all the bodily functions, or aspects of the body, that are deemed impure or inappropriate for public display or discussion. The abject has a strong feminist context, in that female bodily functions in particular are 'abjected' by a patriarchal social order. In the 1980s and 1990s many artists became aware of this theory and reflected it in their work. In 1993 the Whitney Museum, New York, staged an exhibition titled Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, which gave the term a wider currency in art. Cindy Sherman is seen as a key contributor to the abject in art, as well as many others including Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick, Paul McCarthy, Gilbert & George, Robert Gober, Carolee Schneemann, Kiki Smith and Jake and Dinos Chapman.
Industry:Art history
