- Industry: Art history
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Refers to a social structure in which many small groups maintain their unique cultural identity within a broader culture. In an art context, pluralism refers to the late 1960s and 1970s when art, politics and culture merged as artists began to believe in a more socially and politically responsive form of art. The art historian Rosalind Krauss characterised this period as 'diversified, split and factionalised. Unlike the art of the last several decades, its energy does not seem to flow through a single channel for which a synthetic term, like Abstract Expressionism, or Minimalism, might be found. In defiance of the notion of collective effort that operates behind the very idea of an artistic 'movement', 70s art is proud of its own dispersal. '
Industry:Art history
A painting made up of more than three panels. Paintings of three panels are triptychs and of two, diptychs. (See Altarpiece. )
Industry:Art history
The coastal town in north-west France which Paul Gauguin frequented between 1886 and 1894. With a group that included Emile Bernard and Paul Sérusier he developed a Synthetic style of painting that emphasised, through bold outline and simplified structure, a symbolic and emotional response to the Breton people and landscape. (See also Synthetism)
Industry:Art history
Name given to British and American versions of art that drew inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture. These sources included Hollywood movies, advertising, packaging, pop music and comic books. In Europe a similar movement was called Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism). Pop began in the mid 1950s and reached its peak in the 1960s. It was a revolt against prevailing orthodoxies in art and life and can be seen as one of the first manifestations of Postmodernism. Modernist critics were horrified by the Pop artists' use of such low subject matter and by their apparently uncritical treatment of it. In fact Pop both took art into new areas of subject matter and developed new ways of presenting it in art. Chief artists in America were Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Warhol; in Britain, Blake, Caulfield, Hamilton, Hockney, Jones, Self.
Industry:Art history
A group of prints, often though not necessarily, by the same artist and presented as group, often based on a related theme. Sometimes they will be considered as a set or series of images. The term also applies to the physical folder in which such series may be held.
Industry:Art history
A portrait is a representation of a particular person. Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt, where it flourished from about 5,000 years ago. Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the appearance of someone. But portraits have always been more than just a record. They have been used to show the power, importance, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning or other qualities of the sitter. Portraits have almost always been flattering, and painters who refused to flatter, such as William Hogarth, tended to find their work rejected. A notable exception was Francisco Goya in his apparently bluntly truthful portraits of the Spanish royal family. Artists' self-portraits are an interesting sub-group of portraiture and can often be highly self-revelatory. Those of Rembrandt are particularly famous. Among leading modern artists portrait painting on commission, that is to order, became increasingly rare. Instead artists painted their friends and lovers in whatever way they pleased. Most of Picasso's pictures of women, for example, however bizarre, can be identified as portraits of his lovers. At the same time, photography became the most important medium of traditional portraiture, bringing what was formerly an expensive luxury product within the purse of almost everyone. Since the 1990s artists have also used video to create living portraits. But portrait painting continues to flourish. (See also Conversation Piece; Miniature; Genres. )
Industry:Art history
Art produced in response to the aftermath of colonial rule, frequently addressing issues of national and cultural identity, race and ethnicity. Frantz Fanon provided a theoretical framework for interpreting the oppression of the individual under imperialism—a significant element of much postcolonial art—and initiated the investigation of diversity and hierarchy in postcolonial cultures undertaken by writers such as Edward Said, Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha.
Industry:Art history
Umbrella term to describe changes in Impressionism from about 1886, date of last Impressionist group show in Paris. Best confined to the four major figures who developed and extended Impressionism in distinctly different directions. Cézanne retained fundamental doctrine of painting from nature but with added rigour, famously saying 'I want to re-do Poussin from nature'. (Poussin being notoriously intellectual pioneer of French landscape. ) Seurat put Impressionist painting of light and colour on scientific basis (Neo-Impressionism, Divisionism). Gauguin retained intense light and colour but rejected painting from nature and reintroduced imaginative subject matter. Van Gogh painted from nature but developed highly personal use of colour and brushwork directly expressing emotional response to subject and his inner world.
Industry:Art history
Term used from about 1970 to describe changes seen to take place in Western society and culture from the 1960s on. These changes arose from anti-authoritarian challenges to the prevailing orthodoxies across the board. In art, postmodernism was specifically a reaction against modernism. It may be said to begin with Pop art and to embrace much of what followed including Conceptual art, Neo-Expressionism, Feminist art, and the Young British Artists of the 1990s. Some outstanding characteristics of postmodernism are that it collapses the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture; that it tends to efface the boundary between art and everyday life; and that it refuses to recognise the authority of any single style or definition of what art should be.
Industry:Art history
Secret society of young artists (and one writer) founded in London in 1848. Name Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood referred to their opposition to Royal Academy's promotion of Renaissance master Raphael as ideal artist. In revolt also against triviality of immensely popular genre painting of time. Principal members William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Inspired by theories of John Ruskin who urged artists to 'go to nature'. Believed in an art of serious subjects treated with maximum realism. Principal themes initially religious, then subjects from literature and poetry mostly dealing with love and death. Also explored modern social problems. After initial heavy opposition became highly influential, with second phase around Rossetti from about 1860 making major contribution to Symbolism.
Industry:Art history
