- Settore: Art history
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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
The act of critiquing an institution as artistic practice, the institution usually being a museum or an art gallery. Institutional criticism began in the late 1960s when artists began to create art in response to the institutions that bought and exhibited their work. In the 1960s the art institution was often perceived as a place of 'cultural confinement' and thus something to attack aesthetically, politically and theoretically. Hans Haacke is a leading exponent of Institutional critique, particularly targeting funding and donations given to museums and galleries. In 1971, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne rejected his work Manet-Projekt 74 from one of their shows. The work was related to the museums' recent acquisition of Edouard Manet's Bunch of Asparagus and detailed the provenance of the painting and Nazi background of the donor. During the 1990s it became a fashion for critical discussions to be held by curators and directors within art galleries and museums that centred on this very subject, thereby making the institution not only the problem but also the solution. This has changed the nature of Institutional critique, something that is reflected in the art of Carey Young, who considers this dilemma.
Industry:Art history
Any form of printmaking in which the image is produced by incising into the printing plate and where it is the incised line or area that holds the ink. Intaglio methods include etching, drypoint, engraving, and wood engraving.
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
Term used to describe the culture of the reign of James I (reigned 1603-25) particularly theatre (and even furniture) as well as painting. Great Elizabethan miniaturist Hilliard continues but succeeded in royal favour by Oliver. Similarly Gheeraerts flourished but overtaken by more sophisticated naturalism of Dutch-born Van Somer and then Mytens (pronounced mittens) from about 1616.
Industry:Art history
French term generally said to have been coined by the French critic Philippe Burty in the early 1870s. It described the craze for Japanese art and design that swept France and elsewhere after trade with Japan resumed in the 1850s, the country having been closed to the West since about 1600. The rediscovery of Japanese art and design had an almost incalculable effect on Western art. The development of modern painting from Impressionism on was profoundly affected by the flatness, brilliant colour, and high degree of stylisation, combined with Realist subject matter, of Japanese woodcut prints. Design was similarly affected in Aesthetic Movement and Art Nouveau. In Britain the chief artist transmitter was Whistler, but the designer Christopher Dresser and the architect William Godwin were also important.
Industry:Art history
Kinaesthesia is the sense that detects bodily position, weight or movement of the muscles, tendons and joints of the body. The term has come to be used in relation to art that deals with the body in movement. It was first associated with Futurism, which sought to champion the dynamism of the modern age by depicting people and things in motion. The performances of the American choreographer Merce Cunningham can also be described as kinaesthetic, because his dancers are concerned with the exploration of space through the body's movement. In 1973 Trisha Brown used the Manhattan skyline as a stage for her performance Roof Piece in which dancers transmitted movements to other dancers standing on rooftops across New York.
Industry:Art history
The word kinetic means relating to motion. Kinetic art is art that depends on motion for its effects. Since the early twentieth century artists have been incorporating movement into art. This has been partly to explore the possibilities of movement, partly to introduce the element of time, partly to reflect the importance of the machine and technology in the modern world, partly to explore the nature of vision. Movement has either been produced mechanically by motors or by exploiting the natural movement of air in a space. Works of this latter kind are called mobiles. A pioneer of Kinetic art was Naum Gabo with his motorised Standing Wave of 1919-20. Mobiles were pioneered by Alexander Calder from about 1930. Kinetic art became a major phenomenon of the late 1950s and the 1960s.
Industry:Art history
