- Industry: Art history
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Term applied to the imaginative and often quite abstract landscape based painting of Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland and others in the late 1930s and 1940s. Their work often included figures, was generally sombre, reflecting the Second World War and its approach and aftermath, but rich, poetic and capable of a visionary intensity. It was partly inspired by the visionary landscapes of Samuel Palmer and the Ancients, partly by a more general emotional response to the British landscape and its history. Other major Neo-Romantics were Michael Ayrton, John Craxton, Ivon Hitchens, John Minton, John Piper, Keith Vaughan. The term sometimes embraces Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, and the early work of Lucian Freud. Also the graphic work of Henry Moore of the period, especially his drawings of war-time air-raid shelters. In the early 1920s in Paris a group of figurative painters emerged whose brooding often nostalgic work quickly became labelled Neo-Romantic. Chief among them were the Russian-born trio of Eugène Berman and his brother Leonid, and Pavel Tchelitchew.
Industry:Art history
Art made on and for the internet is called Net art. This is a term used to describe a process of making art using a computer in some form or other, whether to download imagery that is then exhibited online or build programs that create the artwork. Net art emerged in the 1990s when artists found that the Internet was a useful tool to promote their art uninhibited by political, social or cultural constraints. For this reason it has been heralded as subversive, deftly transcending geographical and cultural boundaries and defiantly targeting nepotism, materialism and aesthetic conformity. Sites like MySpace and YouTube have become forums for art, enabling artists to exhibit their work without the endorsement of an institution. Pioneers of Net art include Tilman Baumgarten, Jodi and Vuc Cosik.
Industry:Art history
This term seems to have come into use in the 1940s to describe the artists of the intensely creative and innovative New York art scene that was giving birth to the radical and world conquering new style of painting that in the early 1950s became known as Abstract Expressionism. The two terms are effectively interchangeable, that is the artists of the New York School are the Abstract Expressionists. New York School has echoes of School of Paris and may also be seen to reflect the notion that after the Second World War, New York took over from Paris as the world centre for innovation in modern art.
Industry:Art history
Following the extension of the Great Western Railway to West Cornwall in1877 the Cornish fishing towns of St Ives and Newlyn both began to attract artists, drawn by the beauty of the scenery, quality of light, simplicity of life and drama of the sea. . The artists known as the Newlyn School were led by Stanhope Forbes and Frank Bramley who settled there in the early 1880s. Newlyn painting combined the Impressionist derived doctrine of working directly from the subject, and where appropriate in the open air (plein-airism), with subject matter drawn from rural life, particularly the life of the fishermen. Forbes's The Health of the Bride and Bramley's A Hopeless Dawn are quintessential Newlyn masterpieces.
Industry:Art history
Major regional school of landscape painting formally dating from 1803 when, at his house in Norwich, John Crome and others formed the Norwich Society, initially as a self-help discussion group for 'an Enquiry into the Rise, Progress and present state of painting—with a view to point out the best methods of study to attain to Greater Perfection. ' In 1805 it became an exhibiting society and was joined by its other leading figure John Sell Cotman. Paintings were in a low-key realist manner inspired by Norfolk landscape and the life of the Norfolk Broads and rivers. Other members of the School included the sons of Crome and Cotman, Stannard, Stark and Vincent. Best seen in the large collection at Norwich Castle Museum.
Industry:Art history
A dispersion of pigments in a drying oil that forms a tough, coloured film on exposure to air. The drying oil is a vegetable oil, often made by crushing nuts or seeds. For paints, linseed oil is most commonly used, but poppy, sunflower, safflower, soya bean and walnut oils have also been used. Drying oils initially cure through oxidation leading to cross linking of the molecular chains; this is a slow process affected by film thickness and paint components. Artists have used turpentine or mineral spirits to dilute oil paint. A heavily diluted layer dries relatively quickly, being tack-free in a few days. Thicker layers, containing more oil, take longer. Oil paint continues to dry, getting harder with age over many decades. Pigments and extenders will also affect the rate of drying, so different colours may dry at different speeds.
Industry:Art history
Term often used to describe certain Victorian artists, notably Alma-Tadema, Leighton, Poynter and Watts, whose work emphasised the classical in both style and subject matter. In ancient Greek mythology Mount Olympus in Greece was the home of the ancient gods, and the name refers both to the classicism of these artists and their huge success and dominance of the art of their time. Leighton in particular achieved almost god-like status. He was hugely handsome and an athlete, but also an intellectual; he became president of the Royal Academy in 1879, was created a baronet in 1886, and was elevated to the peerage, becoming Lord Leighton, just before his death in 1896. Alma-Tadema and Poynter were knighted and Watts was awarded the Order of Merit. A crucial source of inspiration for the Olympians was the so-called Elgin Marbles—the ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens brought to London by the Earl of Elgin in 1807 and housed in the British Museum from 1816.
Industry:Art history
What we call art in all its forms—painting, sculpture, drawing and engraving—appeared in human groups all over the world in the period known as the Upper Paleolithic, which is roughly from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. In Europe, sophisticated and powerful paintings from this period have been discovered in caves such as Lascaux in France. In 1994 possibly even more astonishing works were found in the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche Valley, also in France. Cave paintings consist of pigments such as coloured earths rubbed onto the rock. In some cases they appear to have been mixed into a paste first. The paintings mostly represent animals but there are some human images. Since then painting has changed in essence very little. Supports evolved from rock faces, through the walls of buildings, to portable ones of paper, wood, and finally cloth, particularly canvas. The range of pigments expanded through a wide range of earths and minerals, to plant extracts and modern synthetic colours. Pigments have been mixed with water and gum to make a paint, but in the fifteenth century in Europe the innovation of using oil (linseed) produced a newly flexible and durable medium that played a major part in the explosion of creativity in Western painting at the Renaissance and after. At the same time subject matter expanded to embrace almost every aspect of life (Genres).
Industry:Art history
A smooth, flat surface on which artists set out and mix their colours before painting, which is often designed to be held in the hand. The term also refers to the range of colours habitually used by and characteristic of an artist. A palette in computer graphics is a chosen set of colours that are each assigned a number, and it is this number that determines the colour of the pixel.
Industry:Art history
Matted plant fibres made into sheet form either by hand (traditional) or machine (modern). Handmade paper was produced by drying pulp, produced from beating cotton or linen rags in water, on wire trays. The lines of thinner paper produced by these wires are visible in 'laid' paper. 'Wove' paper, developed in the mid eighteenth century, is made from trays with a tightly-woven wire mesh which leave a smoother surface and no visible lines. Artists use both handmade and machine made paper, although handmade is often used for printmaking. Paper is traditionally said to have been invented in China in the second century AD, but was not made in Europe until the twelfth century.
Industry:Art history
