- Industry: Art history
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In general, the term formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form, that is, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects, rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world. In painting therefore, a formalist critic would focus exclusively on the qualities of colour, brushwork, form, line and composition. Formalism as a critical stance came into being in response to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (especially the painting of Cézanne) in which unprecedented emphasis was placed on the purely visual aspects of the work. In 1890 the Post-Impressionist painter and writer on art, Maurice Denis, published a manifesto titled Definition of Neo-Traditionism. The opening sentence of this is one of the most widely quoted texts in the history of modern art: 'Remember, that a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colours arranged in a certain order. ' Denis emphasised that aesthetic pleasure was to be found in the painting itself not its subject. In Britain formalist art theory was developed by the Bloomsbury painter and critic Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury writer Clive Bell. In his 1914 book Art, Bell formulated the notion of significant form, that form itself can convey feeling. All this led quickly to abstract art, an art of pure form. Formalism dominated the development of modern art until the 1960s when it reached its peak in the so-called New Criticism of the American critic Clement Greenberg and others, particularly in their writings on Colour Field painting and Post Painterly Abstraction. It was precisely at that time that formalism began to be challenged by Postmodernism.
Industry:Art history
Format is traditionally used to describe the shape or proportions of the support, for example the canvas, of a painting or other essentially flat work of art such as a relief. The two commonest traditional formats for paintings are the horizontal rectangle often referred to as landscape format and the upright rectangle known as portrait. Another traditional but less common format is the circular one known as the tondo. Square formats have sometimes been used, notably for example by JMW Turner and in the twentieth century Ad Reinhardt. The abstract painter Piet Mondrian occasionally used a square canvas hung by one corner as a diamond. From the 1960s on a much freer approach to format became evident in some of the work of artists such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly and the shape of the canvas became an important element in the composition of the work.
Industry:Art history
A mural painting technique developed in Italy from about the thirteenth century and perfected at the time of the Renaissance. Two coats of plaster are applied to a wall and allowed to dry. On the second the design is drawn in outline. To make the painting, an area of the wall corresponding to a day's work is freshly plastered and the design retraced joining up with the uncovered parts. This area is then painted on while still wet, using water-based paint. The paint is absorbed into the wet plaster becoming an integral part of it, thus making it a durable mural technique. Some touching up can be done when the plaster is dry but a whole fresco painted on dry plaster is liable to flake off.
Industry:Art history
Surrealist automatist technique developed by Max Ernst in drawings made from 1925. Frottage is the French word for rubbing. Ernst was inspired by an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing. The patterns of the graining suggested strange images to him. He captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil. The results suggest mysterious forests peopled with bird-like creatures and Ernst published a collection of these drawings in 1926 titled Histoire Naturelle (natural history). He went on to use a wide range of textured surfaces and quickly adapted the technique to oil painting, calling it grattage (scraping). In grattage the canvas is prepared with a layer or more of paint then laid over the textured object which is then scraped over. In Ernst's Forest and Dove the trees appear to have been created by scraping over the backbone of a fish.
Industry:Art history
Art movement launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. On 20 February he published his Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Among modernist movements Futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past. This was because in Italy the weight of past culture was felt as particularly oppressive. In the Manifesto, Marinetti asserted that 'we will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries'. What the Futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology: 'We declare—a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing motor car—is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. ' (A celebrated ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre museum in Paris. ) Futurist painting used elements of Neo-Impressionism and Cubism to create compositions that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of modern life. Chief artists were Balla, Boccioni, Severini. Boccioni was a major sculptor as well as painter.
Industry:Art history
Paintings of subjects from everyday life, usually small in scale. Developed particularly in Holland in seventeenth century, most typically with scenes of peasant life or drinking in taverns. In Britain Hogarth's Modern Moral Subjects were a special kind of genre, in their frankness and often biting social satire. Simpler genre painting emerged in later eighteenth century in for example G Morland, H Morland, and Wheatley. Became hugely popular in Victorian age following success of brilliantly skilled but deeply sentimental work of Wilkie. Genre painting is one of the five genres, or types of painting, established in the seventeenth century.
Industry:Art history
The genres, or types of painting, were codified in the seventeenth century by the French Royal Academy. In descending order of importance the genres were History, Portrait, Genre, Landscape, and Still life. This league table, known as the hierarchy of the genres, was based on the notion of man the measure of all things—landscape and still life were the lowest because they did not involve human subject matter. History was highest because it dealt with the noblest events of human history and with religion.
Industry:Art history
Blanket term applied to the styles prevalent through the reigns of the four King Georges in Britain from 1714 to 1830. Usually refers to architecture, furniture, silver and the like, rather than painting. Unifying characteristic, if it has one, a certain classical restraint and harmony.
Industry:Art history
Glasgow School usually refers to the circle of artists and designers around Mackintosh in Glasgow from the mid 1890s to about 1910. Most notable were the Macdonald sisters and Herbert MacNair and with Mackintosh they were known as The Four. They made a distinctive and highly influential contribution to international Art Nouveau and are sometimes referred to as the Spook School. The Glasgow Boys introduced forms of Impressionism to Scotland in the 1880s and 1890s, developing their own individual interpretations of it, often highly coloured. As well as painting in Glasgow and its environs they sought scenes of rural life and character in other parts of Scotland. Principal members of the group included Joseph Crawhall, Sir James Guthrie, George Henry, EA Hornel, Sir John Lavery and EA Walton.
Industry:Art history
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
