- Industry: Art history
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A fine-grained marble-like variety of gypsum, alabaster is a soft stone often white or translucent.
Industry:Art history
The airbrush was invented in the late nineteenth century, but it was not until the mid twentieth century that it became a popular tool in painting. It is a small, hand-held instrument connected to a canister of compressed air that sprays paint in a controlled way. Pioneers of airbrushing were the graphic illustrators George Petty and Alberto Vargas (or Varga) in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, Pop artist James Rosenquist used it to evoke the qualities of advertising. In Britain, the artist Barrie Cook became one of the leading practioners to use airbrushing. Today, it is the sci-fi artist H. K. Giger who is most commonly associated with the medium. There is also an airbrushing computer program, invented in the early 1980s, which creates a similar effect in a digital format.
Industry:Art history
The term Agit-prop is a contraction of the Russian words 'agitatsiia' and 'propaganda' in the title of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda set up in 1920 by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. From then on it was an omnipresent activity in the Soviet Union. Intended to control and promote the ideological conditioning of the masses, it took many forms such as palaces of culture, Agit-prop trains and cars covered with slogans and posters, poster campaigns, and countless agitation centres, or 'agitpunkts'. Books and libraries also played an important role in the Agit-prop enterprise. In the early years avant-garde artists particularly those associated with the Constructivists contributed to Agit-prop manifestations, particularly poster designs. Today the term has come to refer to any cultural manifestation with an overtly political purpose.
Industry:Art history
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
English version of general German term for Performance art, but was specifically used for the name of the Vienna-based group Wiener Aktionismus founded in 1962. The principal members of the group were Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolph Schwarzkogler. Their 'actions' were intended to highlight the endemic violence of humanity and were deliberately shocking, including self-torture, and quasi-religious ceremonies using the blood and entrails of animals. Nitsch gave his ceremonies the general title of Orgies-Mysteries Theatre. In America Dennis Oppenheim, and in Britain Stuart Brisley, performed actions in a spirit that can be related to Wiener Aktionismus. A less violent but no less anguished Vienna action artist of the time was Arnulf Rainer.
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
Art made according to the teachings of an art academy. In the nineteenth century the art academies of Europe became extremely conservative, resisting change and innovation. They came to be opposed to the avant-garde and to modern art generally. The term academic has thus come to mean conservative forms of art that ignore the innovations of modernism.
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
