- Industry: Art history
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The genres, or types of painting, were codified in the seventeenth century by the French Royal Academy. In descending order of importance the genres were History, Portrait, Genre, Landscape, and Still life. This league table, known as the hierarchy of the genres, was based on the notion of man the measure of all things—landscape and still life were the lowest because they did not involve human subject matter. History was highest because it dealt with the noblest events of human history and with religion.
Industry:Art history
A term that originally came into use to describe the painting of the Abstract Expressionist artists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann and others. What they had in common was the application of paint in free sweeping gestures with the brush. In Pollock's case the brush might be a dried one, or a stick, dipped in the paint and trailed over the canvas. He also poured direct from the can. The idea was that the artist would physically act out his inner impulses, and that something of his emotion or state of mind would be read by the viewer in the resulting paint marks. De Kooning wrote: I paint this way because I can keep putting more and more things into it—drama, anger, pain, love—through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or an idea. ' Such an approach to painting has its origins in Expressionism and automatism (especially the painting of Joan Miró). In his 1970 history, Abstract Expressionism, Irvine Sandler distinguished two branches of the movement, the 'gesture painters' and the 'colour field' painters. The term gestural has come to be applied to any painting done in this way.
Industry:Art history
Glasgow School usually refers to the circle of artists and designers around Mackintosh in Glasgow from the mid 1890s to about 1910. Most notable were the Macdonald sisters and Herbert MacNair and with Mackintosh they were known as The Four. They made a distinctive and highly influential contribution to international Art Nouveau and are sometimes referred to as the Spook School. The Glasgow Boys introduced forms of Impressionism to Scotland in the 1880s and 1890s, developing their own individual interpretations of it, often highly coloured. As well as painting in Glasgow and its environs they sought scenes of rural life and character in other parts of Scotland. Principal members of the group included Joseph Crawhall, Sir James Guthrie, George Henry, EA Hornel, Sir John Lavery and EA Walton.
Industry:Art history
A term first used in France in the eighteenth century to describe a type of paint made from pigments bound in water-soluble gum, like watercolour, but with the addition of a white pigment in order to make it opaque. Larger percentages of binder are used than with watercolour, and various amounts of inert pigments such as chalk are added to enhance the opacity. Gouache forms a thicker layer of paint on the paper surface and does not allow the paper to show through. It is often used to create highlights in watercolours. Today the term 'gouache' is often used loosely to describe any drawing made in body colour. Bodycolour is any type of opaque water-soluble pigment; used by artists from the late fifteenth century. Lead white was used until the introduction of zinc oxide, known as Chinese White, in the nineteenth century.
Industry:Art history
Graffiti art has its origins in 1970s New York, when young people began to use spray paint and other materials to create images on buildings and on the sides of Subway trains. Such graffiti can range from bright graphic images (wildstyle) to the stylised monogram (tag). Graffiti as such is rarely seen in galleries and museums, yet its aesthetic has been incorporated into artists' work. Early exponents of graffiti in art included the French artist Jean Dubuffet who incorporated tags and graphic motifs into his paintings, and the New York artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring who could be defined as Street art pioneers. More recently, graffiti artists such as Barry McGee and Banksy have been seen exhibited in commercial spaces.
Industry:Art history
Graphite is a crystalline form of carbon and is useful as a writing and drawing tool, as only the slightest pressure is needed to leave a mark. However, as graphite is soft and brittle it requires some form of protective casing. The exact date and origin of the first graphite pencils is unknown but it is thought that the first graphite sticks encased in wood appeared around 1565, shortly after the discovery of natural graphite in Cumberland in Britain. Graphite also occurs naturally in Siberia, Bavaria in Germany, and in the United States of America. It can, however be made artificially by heating cokes at high temperatures, known as the Asheson process. Graphite has a greasy texture and is dull metallic grey in colour. Graphite is a stable and permanent material but can easily be removed using an eraser. Today graphite is referred to as 'pencil' or occasionally 'lead pencil'. This name came about because prior to the discovery of graphite, lead had been used since ancient times as a writing tool. Graphite was thought to be a form of lead until 1779, when KW Scheele, a Swedish chemist, discovered that the so-called lead used in pencils, was in fact a mineral form of carbon. It was named 'graphite' from the Greek word for writing. The term pencil derives from the Latin word for brush, 'penicillum'.
Industry:Art history
Short lived British group formed by Wyndham Lewis in 1920 to provide a continuing focus for avant-garde art in Britain following the First World War. It was an attempt to revive Lewis's pre-war Vorticist group. One group exhibition was held in 1922. Other artists associated with it included William Roberts, Cuthbert Hamilton and Edward McKnight Kauffer.
Industry:Art history
Happenings were theatrical events created by artists, initially in America, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were the forerunners of Performance art and in turn emerged from the theatrical elements of Dada and Surrealism. The name was first used by the American artist Allan Kaprow in the title of his 1959 work 18 Happenings in 6 Parts which took place on six days, 4-10 October 1959 at the Reuben Gallery, New York. Happenings typically took place in an environment or installation created within the gallery and involved light, sound, slide projections and an element of spectator participation. Other notable creators of Happenings were Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms and Robert Whitman. Happenings proliferated through the 1960s but gave way to Performance art in which the focus was increasingly on the actions of the artist. A detailed account of early Happenings can be found in Michael Kirby's 1965 book, Happenings. Jim Dine's 1960 suite of prints The Crash relates to the drawings that were props for his 1960 Happening, The Car Crash.
Industry:Art history
Name of a style of abstract art developed by a group of British artists in 1933. An exhibition titled Objective Abstraction was held in 1934 at the Zwemmer Gallery in London. The artists involved included Graham Bell, William Coldstream, Rodrigo Moynihan, and Geoffrey Tibble, and the exhibition was organised by Moynihan. Not included in this show but an important practitioner, was Edgar Hubert. On the other hand, works by non Objective Abstraction artists Ivon Hitchens, Victor Pasmore, and Ceri Richards, were added to the show by the gallery's director. Objective Abstraction was a non-geometric form of abstract art in which the painting evolved in an improvisatory way from freely applied brushstrokes. Moynihan was inspired by the brushwork in the late paintings of Turner and Monet. Objective Abstraction was part of the general ferment of exploration of abstraction in Britain in the early 1930s and was short-lived. A few years later many of these artists became members of the realist Euston Road School.
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
