- Settore: Art history
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Sculpture is three-dimensional art made by one of four basic processes. These are carving (in stone, wood, ivory or bone); modelling in clay; modelling (in clay or wax) and then casting the model in bronze; constructing (a twentieth-century development). The earliest known human artefacts recognisable as what we would call sculpture date from the period known as the Upper Paleolithic, which is roughly from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. These objects are small female figures with bulbous breasts and buttocks carved from stone or ivory, and are assumed to be fertility figures. The most famous of them is known as the Venus of Willendorf (the place in Austria where it was found in 1908). Sculpture flourished in ancient Egypt from about 5,000 years ago and in ancient Greece from some 2,000 years later. In Greece it reached what is considered to be a peak of perfection in the period from about 500-400 BC. At that time, as well as making carved sculpture, the Greeks brought the technique of casting sculpture in bronze to a high degree of sophistication. Following the fall of the Roman Empire the technique of bronze casting was almost lost but, together with carved sculpture, underwent a major revival at the Renaissance. In the twentieth century a new way of making sculpture emerged with the Cubist constructions of Picasso. These were still life subjects made from scrap (found) materials glued together. Constructed sculpture in various forms became a major stream in modern art. (Constructivism; Assemblage; Environment; Installation; Minimal art; New Generation Sculpture. ) Techniques used included welding metal, introduced by Julio González, who also taught it to Picasso. (See also for example David Smith; Reg Butler. )
Industry:Art history
School of Rome. Umbrella term for the artists based in Rome, or having close links with it, in the 1920s and 1930s. Like the School of Paris the term embraces a wide variety of types of art. However, a return to classicism was a dominant current (see also return to order). Major artists include De Chirico, Balla, Guttuso, Martini, Pirandello, Severini.
Industry:Art history
As a general term used to describe the breaking away of younger and more radical artists from an existing academy or art group, to form a new grouping. The word is originally German and its earliest appearance seems to be in the name of the Munich Secession group formed in 1892. In the same year this was followed by the Berliner Secession, led by Max Liebermann and later Lovis Corinth, and in 1913 by the Freie Secession in which Max Beckmann and Ernst Barlach were involved. The most famous secession group is the Vereinigung bildener Künstler Oesterreichs (Secession) founded in 1897 and generally known simply as the Vienna Secession. It was led by one of the greatest of all Symbolist painters, Gustav Klimt. In 1898 the Secession commissioned the architect Joseph Olbrich to build an exhibition hall. The result is a masterpiece of Art Nouveau architecture that remains one of the gems of Vienna. It also contains Klimt's great mural the Beethoven Frieze. Over following years the Vienna Secession held a series of exhibitions (several a year) that brought together a roll call of the international avant-garde. There was a particular emphasis on architecture and design, and the Vienna Secession played a major part in the broader Art Nouveau movement and the beginnings of modern design. In 1903 a design company was founded called the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement. Its products are now museum pieces. Later major artists associated with the Vienna Secession include Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka two of the great pioneers of Expressionism.
Industry:Art history
A term from Greek Platonic philosophy that meant a copy of a copy of an ideal form. In postmodernist thought, particularly through the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, the term has been revived in the context of arguments about the relationship between an original work of art and its replication. For Baudrillard the simulacrum takes precedence over the original, with the effect that the original is no longer relevant.
Industry:Art history
The term invented by Robert Delaunay to describe the abstract painting developed by him and his wife Sonia Delaunay from about 1910. Their work was also named Orphism by the poet and critic Apollinaire. The term is derived from the theories of M-E Chevreul whose book of colour theory De la loi du contraste simultanée des couleurs (On the law of the simultaneous contrast of colours) was published in Paris in 1839. It had an increasing impact on French painters from then on, particularly the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists generally, and especially the Neo-Impressionists. The Delaunays' paintings consisted of interlocking or overlapping patches, or planes, of contrasting (or complementary) colours. In Chevreul's theory, and in reality, contrasting colours brought together (i. E. Simultaneous) enhance each other, giving the painting greater intensity and vibrance of colour. The compositions were initially derived from architecture (e. G. R Delaunay's Windows series) but by 1912 he had begun to make paintings in totally abstract circular formats (Disques and Formes circulaires cosmiques series). These compositions were still ultimately based on nature however. In 1912 Delaunay wrote: 'Direct observation of the luminous essence of nature is for me indispensable'.
Industry:Art history
Refers to any Realist painting that also carries a clearly discernible social or political comment. In Britain can be found in eighteenth century in e. G. Hogarth, but became particularly widespread in nineteenth century. Important contributions by Pre-Raphaelites and by the more serious-minded genre painters such as Egg, Frith, Fildes and Holl. Not to be confused with Socialist Realism.
Industry:Art history
A form of modern realism imposed in Russia by Stalin following his rise to power after the death of Lenin in 1924. The doctrine was formally proclaimed by Maxim Gorky at the Soviet Writers Congress of 1934, although not precisely defined. In practice, in painting it meant using realist styles to create rigorously optimistic pictures of Soviet life. Any pessimistic or critical element was banned, and this is the crucial difference from social realism. It was quite simply propaganda art, and has an ironic resemblance to the Fascist realism imposed by Hitler in Germany (see Entartete Kunst). Outside the Soviet Union, socialist artists produced much freer interpretations of the genre.
Industry:Art history
In the 1960s, software programs were the digital tool with which artists could create art on computers. Since then, these programs have become so sophisticated that they can now be considered the work of art rather than just a facilitator. Software art is closely related to Net art because of its reliance of the World Wide Web as a tool for dissemination. Often Software art parodies or re-configures existing computer programs. Web Stalker, created by the art collective I/O/D was a radical re-interpretation of an internet browser and Adrian Shaw's Signwave parodied the computer program Adobe Photoshop. The rise of Software art has led to several international new media festivals, namely FILE (Electronic Language International Festival) held in São Paulo in Brazil and transmediale in Berlin. The rise of Software art has provoked questions about the de-materialisation of art and culture and how this has had an effect on the world of conceptual art. (See also Browser Art; Net Art)
Industry:Art history
Discovered accidentally by Man Ray and Lee Miller, solarisation is created by briefly exposing a partially developed photograph to light, before continuing processing. Man Ray quickly adopted solarisation as a means to 'escape from banality' and often applied the technique to photographs of female nudes, using the halo-like outlines around forms and areas of partially reversed tonality to emphasise the contours of the body.
Industry:Art history
