- Industry: Art history
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Degenerate art is the English translation of the German phrase Entartete Kunst. In 1933 the National Socialist (Nazi) party under its leader Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany and began to bring art under its control. All modern art was labelled degenerate. Expressionism was particularly singled out. In 1937, German museums were purged of modern art by the government, a total of some 15,550 works being removed. A selection of these was then put on show in Munich in an exhibition titled Entartete Kunst. This was carefully staged so as to encourage the public to mock the work. At the same time an exhibition was held of traditionally painted and sculpted work which extolled the Nazi party and Hitler's view of the virtues of German life: 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche'—roughly, family, home and church. Ironically, this official Nazi art was a mirror image of the Socialist Realism of the hated Communists. Some of the Degenerate art was sold at auction in Switzerland in 1939 and more was disposed of through private dealers. About 5,000 items were secretly burned in Berlin later that year. The Sick Child by Edvard Munch now in the Tate Collection, was sold at the 1939 auction.
Industry:Art history
A form of criticism, which involves discovering, recognising and understanding the underlying—and unspoken and implicit—assumptions, ideas and frameworks of cultural forms such as works of art. First used by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1970s, deconstruction asserts that there is not one single intrinsic meaning to be found in a work, but rather many, and often they can be conflicting. In Derrida's book La Vérité en peinture (1978) he uses the example of Vincent van Gogh's painting Old Shoes with Laces, arguing that we can never be sure whose shoes are depicted in the work, making a concrete analysis of the painting difficult. Since Derrida's assertions in the 1970s, the notion of deconstruction has been a dominating influence on many writers and conceptual artists.
Industry:Art history
French word meaning literally to unstick. The term is generally associated with the Nouveau Réalisme (new realism) movement, although the first time it appeared in print was in the Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme in 1938. In the context of Nouveau Réalisme it meant making art works from posters ripped from walls, exhibiting them as aesthetic objects and social documents. The artists involved, such as Raymond Hains, often sought out sites with many layers of posters so that the process of décollage took on an archeological character and was seen as a means of uncovering historical information. From 1949 Hains made work from posters that he tore from the walls of Paris. In 1963 the German artist Wolf Vostell appropriated the term, staging a series of Happenings under the title Nein-9 Decollagen which involved television images which he had decollé —unstuck from the screen—and re-presented. In 1962 Vostell had founded Décollage: Bulletin Aktueller Ideen, a magazine devoted to the theoretical writings of artists involved in Happenings, Fluxus, Nouveau Réalisme and Pop art.
Industry:Art history
Phase or branch of Symbolism in 1880s and 1890s and many artists and writers seen as both. Term came into use 1880s e.g. French journal Le Décadent 1886. Generally refers to extreme manifestations of Symbolism emphasising the spiritual, the morbid and the erotic. Decadents inspired partly by disgust at corruption and rampant materialism of modern world, partly by concomitant desire to escape it into realms of aesthetic, fantastic, erotic, religious. In art key influence from Rossetti and then Burne-Jones. Key artists abroad Khnopff, Moreau, Rops; in Britain Beardsley, Simeon Solomon. Key books Huysmans A Rebours (Against Nature) and Wilde Dorian Gray.
Industry:Art history
Name of journal founded in 1917 in Holland by pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Means style in Dutch. The name De Stijl also came to refer to the circle of artists that gathered around the publication. De Stijl became a vehicle for Mondrian's ideas on art, and in a series of articles in the first year's issues he defined his aims and used, perhaps for the first time, the term Neo-Plasticism. This became the name for the type of abstract art he and the De Stijl circle practised. It was based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals. Other members of the group included Bart van der Leck, Vantongerloo and Vordemberge-Gildewart, as well as the architects Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Oud. Mondrian withdrew from De Stijl in 1923 following Van Doesburg's adoption of diagonal elements in his work. Van Doesburg continued the publication until 1931. De Stijl had a profound influence on the development both of abstract art and modern architecture and design.
Industry:Art history
A term used to describe the visual representation of information, often statistical. In the past this was usually in map or graph form, but computers make it possible to represent data in animated and interactive form. Artists use data visualisation as a way of revealing and exploring hidden aspects of society as manifested in new forms of social representation such as web logs. An example of this is The Dumpster, an online artwork devised by Golan Levin with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg, which uses data from web logs to plot the romantic lives of teenagers.
Industry:Art history
Museums and galleries typically employ numbers of curators who are concerned with staging temporary loan exhibitions, arranging displays of the museum's own collection and making acquisitions for that collection. In the past twenty years the role of the curator has evolved: now there are freelance or independent curators who are not attached to an institution and who have their own idiosyncratic ways of making exhibitions. Such curators are invited to curate, or themselves propose, exhibitions in a wide range of spaces, both within and outside the established gallery system, and online. The Swiss curator Harald Szeemann who was the director of the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2001 is a good example of an independent curator, as is the artist and curator Matthew Higgs who is known for his low budget, DIY exhibitions that have included the publication Imprint, an art exhibition that was posted to people rather than exhibited in a gallery space.
Industry:Art history
Refers to an episode in the history of the artists' colony in Britain at St Ives, Cornwall. From its foundation in 1927 the St Ives Society of Artists was the dominating exhibition society of St Ives. In 1939 Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo moved to St Ives forming the core of what became a strong modern group in the colony. From about 1943 the St Ives Society sought to integrate the modern artists into its exhibitions but in practice their work tended to be hung in the least prominent places in the former church used for the exhibitions. In 1947 the modern artists began to organise separate exhibitions most notably in the crypt of the church itself. They became known as the Crypt Group. There were two shows in 1947 and a third in 1948. The split between modern and more traditional St Ives artists was confirmed later in 1947, when the notoriously reactionary Sir Alfred Munnings was elected President of the Society. However, also in 1948, the members of the Crypt Group became founding members of the Penwith Society of Arts. This finally established a separate identity for the modern artists in St Ives and the Crypt Group had no further reason to exist. Principal members included Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, John Wells, Bryan Wynter.
Industry:Art history
Until modern times royal courts were a major focus of artistic patronage. Monarchs employed their own artists giving them titles such as King's Painter, but they are generally referred to as court painters. They could be among the most famous artists of the day: in Britain Henry VIII imported Holbein, and Charles I appointed Van Dyck 'Principalle Paynter in ordinary to their majesties'. Elizabeth I nurtured the first native-born genius of British art, Hilliard. Charles I built one of the greatest royal art collections and lavishly patronised the arts in general.
Industry:Art history
Informal group portrait, usually small in scale, showing people, often families, sometimes groups of friends, in domestic interior or garden settings. Sitters are shown interacting with each other or with pets, taking tea, playing games. Contrast with court or grand style portrait. Seems to have evolved early eighteenth century to meet demand from new middle classes, although also gained aristocratic and royal patrons. Probably introduced in Britain by Mercier about 1725, popularised by Hogarth, then Devis and became highly fashionable with Zoffany.
Industry:Art history
