- Industry: Art history
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A term first used in France in the eighteenth century to describe a type of paint made from pigments bound in water-soluble gum, like watercolour, but with the addition of a white pigment in order to make it opaque. Larger percentages of binder are used than with watercolour, and various amounts of inert pigments such as chalk are added to enhance the opacity. Gouache forms a thicker layer of paint on the paper surface and does not allow the paper to show through. It is often used to create highlights in watercolours. Today the term 'gouache' is often used loosely to describe any drawing made in body colour. Bodycolour is any type of opaque water-soluble pigment; used by artists from the late fifteenth century. Lead white was used until the introduction of zinc oxide, known as Chinese White, in the nineteenth century.
Industry:Art history
Graffiti art has its origins in 1970s New York, when young people began to use spray paint and other materials to create images on buildings and on the sides of Subway trains. Such graffiti can range from bright graphic images (wildstyle) to the stylised monogram (tag). Graffiti as such is rarely seen in galleries and museums, yet its aesthetic has been incorporated into artists' work. Early exponents of graffiti in art included the French artist Jean Dubuffet who incorporated tags and graphic motifs into his paintings, and the New York artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring who could be defined as Street art pioneers. More recently, graffiti artists such as Barry McGee and Banksy have been seen exhibited in commercial spaces.
Industry:Art history
English term for the highest style of art in academic theory. Given currency by Reynolds and extensively discussed in his Discourses on Art—fifteen lectures delivered to students at Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790. Reynolds argued that painters should not slavishly copy nature but seek a generalised and ideal form. This 'gives what is called the grand style to Invention, to Composition, to Expression, and even to Colouring and Drapery' (Fourth Discourse). In practice meant painting human figure in style drawing on ancient Greek and Roman (classical) art and the Italian Renaissance masters such as Raphael. Grand Style strictly used for History painting, but Reynolds adapted very successfully to portraiture, inventing the High Art portrait.
Industry:Art history
In eighteenth century became essential part of education for those who could afford it. Developed from enormous admiration for classical civilisation, especially that of Rome, for the Italian Renaissance, and to a lesser extent for the civilisation of France as exemplified by the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. Italy was seen as a vast museum of Western culture. Typical itinerary would be Paris, then the great art cities of Italy—Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples. Large quantities of art were brought home by Grand tourists, and British artists went to Italy if they could.
Industry:Art history
Graphite is a crystalline form of carbon and is useful as a writing and drawing tool, as only the slightest pressure is needed to leave a mark. However, as graphite is soft and brittle it requires some form of protective casing. The exact date and origin of the first graphite pencils is unknown but it is thought that the first graphite sticks encased in wood appeared around 1565, shortly after the discovery of natural graphite in Cumberland in Britain. Graphite also occurs naturally in Siberia, Bavaria in Germany, and in the United States of America. It can, however be made artificially by heating cokes at high temperatures, known as the Asheson process. Graphite has a greasy texture and is dull metallic grey in colour. Graphite is a stable and permanent material but can easily be removed using an eraser. Today graphite is referred to as 'pencil' or occasionally 'lead pencil'. This name came about because prior to the discovery of graphite, lead had been used since ancient times as a writing tool. Graphite was thought to be a form of lead until 1779, when KW Scheele, a Swedish chemist, discovered that the so-called lead used in pencils, was in fact a mineral form of carbon. It was named 'graphite' from the Greek word for writing. The term pencil derives from the Latin word for brush, 'penicillum'.
Industry:Art history
Short lived British group formed by Wyndham Lewis in 1920 to provide a continuing focus for avant-garde art in Britain following the First World War. It was an attempt to revive Lewis's pre-war Vorticist group. One group exhibition was held in 1922. Other artists associated with it included William Roberts, Cuthbert Hamilton and Edward McKnight Kauffer.
Industry:Art history
Italian group (origin group) founded in Rome in 1951 by Alberto Burri, Ettore Colla, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Mario Ballocco. Critical of what they saw as the increasingly decorative quality of abstract art at the time, they opposed a 'troubled' consciousness of the world to the progressivist utopia of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti neo-cubists and of the formalist abstraction of the Movimento Arte Concreta and Forma I groups. In their founding manifesto they called for a return to fundamentals: 'The Gruppo Origine intends to become the most morally valid point of reference of "non-figurative" expressive needs—By openly renouncing three-dimensional forms, by reducing colour to its simplest, peremptory and incisive expressive function, by evoking—pure and elemental images, the Group's artists express the necessity of a rigorous, coherent, energetic vision (which is) primarily antidecorative. ' They held a group exhibition in Rome at the Galleria Origine in 1951 and disbanded the same year.
Industry:Art history
A group of anonymous American female artists who, since their formation in New York in the mid 1980s, have sought to expose sexual and racial discrimination in the art world and the wider cultural arena. The group's members protect their identities by wearing gorilla masks in public and by assuming pseudonyms taken from deceased female figures.
Industry:Art history
Japanese avant-garde group. Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association) was formed in 1954 in Osaka by Yoshihara Jiro, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, Shiraga Kazuo, and Shimamoto Shozo. The word has been translated into English as 'embodiment' or 'concrete'. Yoshihara was an older artist around whom the group coalesced and who financed it. In their early public exhibitions in 1955 and 1956 Gutai artists created a series of striking works anticipating later Happenings and Performance and Conceptual art. Shiraga's Challenge to the Mud 1955, in which the artist rolled half naked in a pile of mud, remains the most celebrated event associated with the group. Also in 1955 Murakami created his reportedly stunning performance Laceration of Paper, in which he ran through a paper screen. At the second Gutai show in 1956, Shiraga used his feet to paint a large canvas sprawled across the floor. From about 1950 Shimamoto had been making paintings from layers of newspaper pasted together, painted and then pierced with holes, anticipating the pierced work of Lucio Fontana. In 1954 Murakami had made a series of paintings by throwing a ball soaked in ink at paper. In 1956 Shimamoto went on to make works called Throws of Colour by smashing glass jars filled with pigment onto canvases laid out on the floor. The art historian Yve-Alain Bois has said that 'the activities of the Gutai group in the mid 1950s constitute one of the most important moments of post-war Japanese culture'. Ashiya City Museum of Art and History in Japan holds a large collection of Gutai work and archives. The group dissolved in 1972 following the death of Yoshihara. There was a retrospective exhibition of their work at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1999.
Industry:Art history
Happenings were theatrical events created by artists, initially in America, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were the forerunners of Performance art and in turn emerged from the theatrical elements of Dada and Surrealism. The name was first used by the American artist Allan Kaprow in the title of his 1959 work 18 Happenings in 6 Parts which took place on six days, 4-10 October 1959 at the Reuben Gallery, New York. Happenings typically took place in an environment or installation created within the gallery and involved light, sound, slide projections and an element of spectator participation. Other notable creators of Happenings were Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms and Robert Whitman. Happenings proliferated through the 1960s but gave way to Performance art in which the focus was increasingly on the actions of the artist. A detailed account of early Happenings can be found in Michael Kirby's 1965 book, Happenings. Jim Dine's 1960 suite of prints The Crash relates to the drawings that were props for his 1960 Happening, The Car Crash.
Industry:Art history
