- Industry: Art history
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Flourished in Britain 1870s, 1880s. Important equally in fine and applied arts. Critic Walter Hamilton published book The Aesthetic Movement in England 1882. Cult of pure beauty in art and design. Rallying cry 'art for art's sake', meaning art foregrounding the purely visual and sensual, free of practical, moral or narrative considerations. In painting exemplified by Whistler and Albert Moore and certain works by Leighton. Important influence of Japan especially on Whistler and Aesthetic design. In applied arts part of revolution in design initiated by William Morris with foundation of Morris &Co in 1862. From 1875 commercialised by Liberty store in London, which later also popularised Art Nouveau.
Industry:Art history
A dispersion of pigments in a synthetic acrylic resin produced from acrylates and/or methacrylates. Acrylic paint dries as the liquid vehicle evaporates, and the resulting polymer-chains then deform and coalesce to form the paint film. While acrylic paints are generally thought to be very fast drying, thick applications may take months or even years to fully dry. Artist acrylic paints were first made in the 1950s using poly (n butyl methacrylate) resin dissolved in solvent (mineral spirits or turpentine) with pigments and other minor components. The next type developed in the 1960s was the acrylic emulsion paint that remains so popular today. These are thinned (and brushes cleaned) using water; however, once dry, the paint films are water-resistant.
Industry:Art history
The first art academies appeared in Italy at the time of the Renaissance. They were groupings of artists whose aim was to improve the social and professional standing of artists, as well as to provide teaching (see Ecole des Beaux Arts). To this end they sought where possible to have a royal or princely patron. Previously, painters and sculptors had been organised in guilds, and were considered mere artisans or craftsmen. Academies became widespread by the seventeenth century, when they also began to organise group exhibitions of their members' work. This was a crucial innovation, since for the first time it provided a market place, and began to some extent to free artists from the restrictions of direct royal, church, or private patronage. The most powerful of the academies was the French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, established in 1648 and housed in the Palais du Louvre in Paris. The Académie began holding exhibitions in 1663 and opened these to the public from 1673. After the French Revolution the name was changed to plain Académie des Beaux-Arts. The London Royal Academy was founded in 1768 with Joshua Reynolds (later Sir Joshua) as its first president. By the mid nineteenth century the academies had become highly conservative and by their monopoly of major exhibitions resisted the rising tide of innovation in Naturalism, Realism, Impressionism and their successors. The result was that alternative exhibiting societies were established and private commercial art galleries began to appear (see Salon). The academies were bypassed and the term academic art now has the pejorative connotation of conservative or old-fashioned.
Industry:Art history
Term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters in 1940s and 1950s. The Abstract Expressionists were mostly based in New York City, and also became known as the New York School. The name evokes their aim to make art that while abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the Surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind, and by the automatism of Miró. Within Abstract Expressionism were two broad groupings. These were the so-called action painters led by Pollock and De Kooning, and the colour-field painters, notably Rothko, Newman and Still. The action painters worked in a spontaneous improvisatory manner often using large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Pollock famously placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint direct from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way they directly placed their inner impulses on the canvas. The colour field painters were deeply interested in religion and myth. They created simple compositions with large areas of a single colour intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer.
Industry:Art history
The word abstract strictly speaking means to separate or withdraw something from something else. In that sense applies to art in which the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to arrive at a more or less simplified or schematised form. Term also applied to art using forms that have no source at all in external reality. These forms are often, but not necessarily, geometric. Some artists of this tendency have preferred terms such as Concrete art or non-objective art, but in practice the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is anyway not always obvious. A cluster of theoretical ideas lies behind abstract art. The idea of art for art's sake—that art should be purely about the creation of beautiful effects. The idea that art can or should be like music—that just as music is patterns of sound, art's effects should be created by pure patterns of form, colour and line. The idea, derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, that the highest form of beauty lies not in the forms of the real world but in geometry. The idea that abstract art, to the extent that it does not represent the material world, can be seen to represent the spiritual. In general abstract art is seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality. Pioneers of abstract painting were Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian from about 1910-20. A pioneer of abstract sculpture was the Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo. Since then abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art.
Industry:Art history
An intaglio technique which uses chemical action to produce incised lines in a metal printing plate. The plate, traditionally copper but now usually zinc, is prepared with an acid-resistant ground. Lines are drawn through the ground, exposing the metal. The plate is then immersed in acid and the exposed metal is 'bitten', producing incised lines. Stronger acid and longer exposure produce more deeply bitten lines. The resist is removed and ink applied to the sunken lines, but wiped from the surface. The plate is then placed against paper and passed through an intaglio press with great pressure to transfer the ink from the recessed lines. Sometimes ink may be left on the plate surface to provide a background tone. Etching was used for decorating metal from the fourteenth century, but was probably not used for printmaking much before the early sixteenth century. Since then many etching techniques have been developed, which are often used in conjunction with each other: soft-ground etching uses a non-drying resist or ground, to produce softer lines; spit bite involves painting or splashing acid onto the plate; open bite in which areas of the plate are exposed to acid with no resist; photo-etching (also called photogravure or heliogravue) is produced by coating the printing plate with a light sensitive acid-resist ground and then exposing this to light to reproduce a photographic image. Foul biting results from accidental or unintentional erosion of the acid resist.
Industry:Art history
Specifically, and with a capital letter, the term is associated with modern German art, particularly the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups, but in this narrow sense is best referred to as German Expressionism. Expressionism as a general term refers to art in which the image of reality is more or less heavily distorted in form and colour in order to make it expressive of the artists inner feelings or ideas about it. In expressionist art colour in particular can be highly intense and non-naturalistic, brushwork is typically free and paint application tends to be generous and highly textured. Expressionist art tends to be emotional and sometimes mystical. It can be seen as an extension of Romanticism. In its modern form it may be said to start with Van Gogh and then form a major stream of modern art embracing, among many others, Munch, Fauvism and Matisse, Rouault, the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups, Schiele, Kokoschka, Klee, Beckmann, most of Picasso, Moore, Sutherland, Bacon, Giacometti, Dubuffet, Baselitz, Kiefer, and the New Expressionism of the 1980s. It went abstract with Abstract Expressionism.
Industry:Art history
A fascination with fairies and the supernatural was a phenomenon of the Victorian age and resulted in a distinctive strand of art depicting fairy subjects drawn from myth and legend and particularly from Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Early, pre-Victorian examples are in Fuseli, Blake and Von Holst. Later Dadd created keynote paintings, but most consistent and compelling is Fitzgerald. Richard Doyle also produced notable fairy illustrations. Other contributions came from many painters including Landseer and even Turner. Reached final flowering in illustrated books of Rackham around 1900-14.
Industry:Art history
A fake or forgery is a copy of a work of art, or a work of art in the style of a particular artist, that has been produced with the intention to deceive. The most infamous forger of the twentieth century was the Dutch painter Han Van Meegren who made a number of paintings purporting to be by Jan Vermeer. (see also Replica)
Industry:Art history
Johann Muschik first used the term 'Phantastischer realismus' (Fantastic Realism) in the late 1950s to describe a group of painters working in Vienna who had met at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste after the Second World War. The group consisted of Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden and was inspired by their teacher Albert Paris Gütersloh, who painted pictures that combined the painterly precision of the old masters with an interest in modern art movements and psychoanalysis. The resulting images were dreamlike visions from the subconscious painted in a realistic manner. Much of the art was rooted in the traumatic experiences of the Second World War, from which the artists attempted to escape in their fantastic paintings.
Industry:Art history
