- Industry: Art history
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A German term for a public art space that mounts temporary exhibitions. In Germany they are often supported by the local Kunstverein, or art association. It has come to be used internationally as term for a publicly funded art space usually devoted to contemporary art.
Industry:Art history
Referring to the thought of the prominent French psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan, who postulated a distinction between experience that is 'imaginary'—associated with the 'gaze' of an active spectator, characterised as being motivated by desire—and 'symbolic' - an area of experience that is approached through language. He had a strong influence on Postmodernism.
Industry:Art history
Also known as Earth art. It can be seen as part of the wider Conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Land artists began working directly in the landscape, sculpting it into earthworks or making structures with rocks or twigs. Some of them used mechanical earth-moving equipment, but Richard Long simply walked up and down until he had made a mark in the earth. Land art was usually documented in artworks using photographs and maps which the artist could exhibit in a gallery. Land artists also made Land art in the gallery by bringing in material from the landscape and using it to create installations. The most famous land art work is Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty of 1970, an earthwork built out into the Great Salt Lake in the USA. Other Land artists include Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer and Dennis Oppenheim. Many others have made land art works.
Industry:Art history
One of the principal types or genres of Western art. However, the appreciation of nature for its own sake and its choice as a specific subject for art is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the seventeenth century landscape was confined to the background of paintings dealing principally with religious, mythological or historical subjects (History painting). In the work of the seventeenth-century painters Claude Lorraine and Nicholas Poussin, the landscape background began to dominate the history subjects that were the ostensible basis for the work. Their treatment of landscape however was highly stylised or artificial: they tried to evoke the landscape of classical Greece and Rome and their work became known as classical landscape. At the same time Dutch landscape painters such as Jacob van Ruysdael were developing a much more naturalistic form of landscape painting, based on what they saw around them. When, also in the seventeenth century, the French Academy classified the genres of art, it placed landscape fourth in order of importance out of five genres. Nevertheless, landscape painting became increasingly popular through the eighteenth century, although the classical idea predominated. The nineteenth century, however, saw a remarkable explosion of naturalistic landscape painting, partly driven it seems by the notion that nature is a direct manifestation of God, and partly by the increasing alienation of many people from nature by growing industrialisation and urbanisation. Britain produced two outstanding contributors to this phenomenon in John Constable and JMW Turner. The baton then passed to France where in the hands of the Impressionists landscape painting became the vehicle for a revolution in Western painting (modern art) and the traditional hierarchy of the genres collapsed.
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
Term used to describe mixed-media art works which occupy an entire room or gallery space and into which usually the spectator can enter. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. Installation art emerged from the earlier form of the Environment. One of the originators of Environments was the American artist Allan Kaprow in works made from about 1957 on. In an undated interview published in 1965 Kaprow said of his first Environment: 'I just simply filled the whole gallery up—When you opened the door you found yourself in the midst of an entire Environment—The materials were varied: sheets of plastic, crumpled up cellophane, tangles of Scotch tape, sections of slashed and daubed enamel and pieces of coloured cloth'. There were also lights hung within all this and 'five tape machines spread around the space played electronic sounds which I had composed'. Miscellaneous materials (mixed media), light and sound have remained fundamental to installation art. From that time on the creation of installations became a major strand in modern art, increasingly from about 1990, and many artists have made them. In 1961 in New York, Claes Oldenburg created an early Environment, The Store, from which his Counter and Plates with Potato and Ham comes. One of the outstanding creators of installations using light is James Turrell.
Industry:Art history
Also described as environments, the term is used to describe mixed-media constructions or assemblages usually designed for a specific place and for a temporary period of time. Works often occupy an entire room or gallery space that the spectator invariably has to walk through in order to engage fully with the work of art. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. Installation art emerged from the earlier form of the environment. One of the originators of environments was the American artist Allan Kaprow in works made from about 1957 onwards. In an undated interview published in 1965 Kaprow said of his first environment: 'I just simply filled the whole gallery up—When you opened the door you found yourself in the midst of an entire Environment—The materials were varied: sheets of plastic, crumpled up cellophane, tangles of Scotch tape, sections of slashed and daubed enamel and pieces of coloured cloth. ' There were also lights hung within all this and 'five tape machines spread around the space played electronic sounds which I had composed. ' Miscellaneous materials (mixed media), light and sound have remained fundamental to Installation art. From that time on the creation of installations became a major strand in modern art, increasingly from about 1990, and many artists have made them. In 1961 in New York, Claes Oldenburg created an early environment, The Store, from which his Counter and Plates with Potato and Ham comes. One of the outstanding creators of installations using light is James Turrell.
Industry:Art history
In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the first architectural exhibition featuring architects associated with the Modern Movement. International Style was the term coined by historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson for the catalogue. Most of the architects defined by International Style were European with a considerable German brigade emerging from the Bauhaus, namely Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Ernst May, Erich Mendelsohn, Mies van der Rohe and Hans Scharoun; other Europeans included France's Le Corbusier, Italy's Luigi Figini and Finland's Alvar Aalto. The majority of the buildings defined by International Style were similar in that they were rectilinear, undecorated, asymmetrical and white, although after the Second World War this was modified as a matter of economy in dealing with post-war reconstruction and later, with the introduction of industrial steel and glass. International Style is seen as single-handedly transforming the skylines of every major city in the world with its simple cubic forms.
Industry:Art history
Originally, a French term applied to the quiet domestic scenes of Bonnard and Vuillard. Since applied widely to any painting of such subject matter. An outstanding example is Gwen John.
Industry:Art history
