- Industry: Art history
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Can be seen as a subdivision of Post-Painterly Abstraction, which in turn emerged from Colour Field painting. The term was coined by the Californian critic Jules Langster in 1959 to describe those abstract painters, particularly on the West Coast, who in their reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms of Abstract Expressionism adopted a particularly impersonal paint application and delineated areas of colour with particular sharpness and clarity. This kind of approach to abstract painting became extremely widespread in the 1960s.
Industry:Art history
Sometimes known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was the flowering of black art, literature and music in the United States and in particular, Harlem, New York, in the 1920s. Its predominant idea was that through the production of art, literature and music, the 'New Negro' could challenge the pervading racism and stereotyping of the white community and therefore promote racial integration. Artists associated with the movement include Aaron Douglas and Lois Mailon Jones.
Industry:Art history
Term History introduced by French Royal Academy in seventeenth century to describe the most important of the types, or genres, of painting. The others in descending order were portrait; genre (scenes of everyday life), landscape, and still life. Term History in fact covered subject matter drawn from ancient Greek and Roman (classical) history; classical mythology, and the Bible. Towards end eighteenth century modern historical subjects were introduced, for example in Britain by West and Copley. Style of History painting should be Grand Style and the result was known overall as High Art.
Industry:Art history
The collective name given for a number of North American landscape painters active between the 1820s and 1870s who depicted scenes of natural beauty in areas that included the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains. Prominent artists associated with the school include Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. (See also Luminism)
Industry:Art history
Term that appeared in the early 1970s to describe a resurgence of particularly high fidelity realism in sculpture and painting at that time. Also called Super-Realism, and in painting is synonymous with Photo-Realism. In sculpture the outstanding practitioner was Duane Hanson, together with John de Andrea. More recently the work of Ron Mueck and some of that of Robert Gober could be seen as Hyper-Realist. Leading painters were Chuck Close, Robert Bechtle, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings.
Industry:Art history
The iconography of a painting is the imagery in it. The term comes from the Greek word ikon meaning image. An icon was originally a picture of Christ on a panel used as an object of devotion in the orthodox Greek Church from at least the seventh century on. Hence the term icon has come to be attached to any object or image that is outstanding or has a special meaning attached to it. An iconography is a particular range or system of types of image used by an artist or artists to convey particular meanings. For example in Christian religious painting there is an iconography of images such as the lamb which represents Christ, or the dove which represents the Holy Spirit. In the iconography of classical myth however, the presence of a dove would suggest that any woman also present would be the goddess Aphrodite or Venus, so the meanings of particular images can depend on context. In the eighteenth century William Blake invented a complex personal iconography to illustrate his vision of man and God, and much scholarship has been devoted to interpreting it. In the twentieth century the iconography of Picasso's work is mostly autobiographical, while Joseph Beuys developed an iconography of substances such as felt, fat and honey, to express his ideas about life and society. Iconography (or iconology) is also the academic discipline of the study of images in art and their meanings.
Industry:Art history
In Baroque art refers particularly to decorative schemes in buildings, especially ceiling paintings, in which the artist uses perspective and foreshortening to create, for example, the illusion that the ceiling is open sky populated by groups of figures such as saints, angels or whatever. Such effects are also sometimes referred to as trompe l'oeil, a French phrase meaning deceives the eye. More generally illusionism can refer to any painting which strives to achieve a high degree of mimesis, meaning imitation of reality. High levels of illusionism are typically found in seventeenth-century still life paintings. If the artist chooses subject matter that particularly lends itself to reproduction in paint on canvas (i. E. Is basically flat) the results can be exceptionally effective. An example is Edward Collier's A Trompe l'Oeil of Newspapers, Letters and Writing Implements on a Wooden Board. In modern art theory illusionism has been frowned upon on the grounds that it denies the basic truth of the flatness of the canvas. However, Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte have used it to great effect to evoke the alternative world of the unconscious mind.
Industry:Art history
A radical group of young artists within the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. The Independent Group, or IG, was first convened in the winter of 1952-3 and then again in 1953-4. It was responsible for the formulation, discussion and dissemination of many of the basic ideas of British Pop art and of much other new British art in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Leading artists involved were Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, John McHale, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull. The IG also included the critics Lawrence Alloway and Rayner Banham, and the architects Colin St John Wilson, and Alison and Peter Smithson (see Brutalism). In 1953 the IG staged the exhibition Parallel of Art and Life and in 1956 the ground-breaking This is Tomorrow. This exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London was an expression of the IG's pioneering interest in popular and commercial culture. As Alloway put it: 'movies, science fiction, advertising, Pop music. We felt none of the dislike of commercial culture standard among most intellectuals, but accepted it as fact, discussed it in detail, and consumed it enthusiastically'. This is Tomorrow consisted of a series of environments, and a juke box played continuously.
Industry:Art history
The design of mass-produced, machine-made goods. The word was first used in America in the 1920s to describe the work of specialist designers who worked on product design. Earlier, Henry Ford's introduction in 1913 of the production line to the motor car industry, and subsequently to the production of other merchandise, led to a move in the art world to attempt to weld art and technology together. Constructivism in Russia and the Bauhaus in Germany were inspired by the new machine age; putting emphasis on form following function they created design that had an abstract, geometric form.
Industry:Art history
An ancient writing and drawing medium, ink is still most commonly made of carbon and binders, but historically was also made from plant or animal sources such as iron gall and sepia. Inks are traditionally black or brown in colour, but can also contain coloured dyes or pigments. They are traditionally used with sable brushes or varieties of quill, reed or pen.
Industry:Art history
