- Branche: Art history
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Minimalism or Minimal art is an extreme form of abstract art that developed in the USA in the second half of the 1960s. It can be seen as extending the abstract idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing. It picked up too on the Constructivist idea that art should be made of modern, industrial materials. Minimal artists typically made works in very simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle. Many Minimal works explore the properties of their materials. Minimal art was mostly three-dimensional but the painter Frank Stella was an important Minimalist. The other principal artists were Andre, Flavin, Judd, Lewitt, Morris, and Serra. There are strong links between Minimal and Conceptual art. Aesthetically, Minimal art offers a highly purified form of beauty. It can also be seen as representing such qualities as truth (because it does not pretend to be anything other than what it is), order, simplicity, harmony.
Industry:Art history
A term used to describe works composed of different media. The use of mixed media began around 1912 with the Cubist collages and constructions of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and has become widespread as artists developed increasingly open attitudes to the media of art. Essentially art can be made of anything or any combination of things. (See Assemblage; Installation; YBAs. )
Industry:Art history
A type of painting invented by Hogarth. Typically a series of canvases vividly evoking and satirising the manners and morals of Hogarth's day. Hogarth made engraved copies of the paintings which sold widely. The first series, A Harlot's Progress 1732, is six scenes showing a country vicar's daughter arriving in London, being corrupted and eventually dying in misery. Unsurprisingly it was a smash hit. Other major series are A Rake's Progress and Marriage à la Mode. The idea appears first in A Scene from 'The Beggar's Opera'.
Industry:Art history
In the nineteenth century Realism had a special meaning as an art term. Since the rise of modern art, realism, or realist, or realistic, has come to be primarily a stylistic description, referring to painting or sculpture that continues to represent things in a way that more or less pre-dates Post-Impressionism and the succession of modern styles that followed. It is also true however, that much of the best modern realist art has the edginess of subject matter that was the essential characteristic of nineteenth-century Realism. In the twentieth century, realism saw an upsurge in the 1920s when the shock of the First World War brought a reaction, known as the return to order, to the avant-garde experimentation of the pre-war period. In Germany this led to the Neue Sachlichkeit movement (Otto Dix, Christian Schad) and Magic Realism. In France, Derain, previously a Fauve painter, became a central figure in what was called traditionisme. In the USA there was the phenomenon of Regionalism, and the great realist Edward Hopper. In Britain there was the Euston Road School and the painter Meredith Frampton. The British Kitchen Sink artists could be included, but they used essentially modern styles to paint Realist subjects. Among other major modern realist painters are Balthus, Freud, Hockney (in his portraits), Gwen John, Morandi, Spencer.
Industry:Art history
In the field of art the broad movement in Western art, architecture and design which self-consciously rejected the past as a model for the art of the present. Hence the term modernist or modern art. Modernism gathered pace from about 1850. Modernism proposes new forms of art on the grounds that these are more appropriate to the present time. It is thus characterised by constant innovation. But modern art has often been driven too by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress. The terms modernism and modern art are generally used to describe the succession of art movements that critics and historians have identified since the Realism of Courbet, culminating in abstract art and its developments up to the 1960s. By that time modernism had become a dominant idea of art, and a particularly narrow theory of modernist painting had been formulated by the highly influential American critic Clement Greenberg. A reaction then took place which was quickly identified as Postmodernism.
Industry:Art history
Monochrome means one colour. For centuries artists used different shades (tones) of brown or black ink to create monochrome pictures on paper. The ink would simply be more or less diluted to achieve the required shades. Shades of grey oil paint were used to create monochrome paintings, a technique known as grisaille, from the French word gris meaning grey. In such work the play of light and dark (chiaroscuro) enabled the artist to define form and create a picture. In the twentieth century, with the rise of abstract art many artists experimented with making monochrome painting. Among the first was Kasimir Malevich who about 1917-18 created a series of white on white paintings (see Suprematism). In Britain, Ben Nicholson created a notable series of white reliefs in the mid 1930s. Monochrome painting became particularly widespread in the second half of the century with the appearance of Colour Field painting and Minimal art. The French artist Yves Klein became so famous for his all-blue paintings that he became known as Yves the monochrome.
Industry:Art history
Essentially a unique variant of a conventional print. An impression is printed from a reprintable block, such as an etched plate or woodblock, but in such a way that only one of its kind exists, for example by incorporating unique hand-colouring or collage. The term can also refer to etchings which are inked and wiped in an expressive, not precisely repeatable manner; to prints made from a variety of printing elements that change from one impression to the next; or to prints that are painted or otherwise reworked by hand either before or after printing.
Industry:Art history
A unique image printed from a polished plate, such as glass, metal, painted with ink but not a permanent printing matrix. A monotype impression is generally unique, though a second, lighter impression from the painted printing element can sometimes be made.
Industry:Art history
An assembly of images that relate to each other in some way to create a single work or part of a work of art. A montage is more formal than a collage and is usually based on a theme. It is also used to describe experimentation in photography and film, in particular the works of Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy who made a series of short movies and photographic montages in the 1930s. (See also Photomontage)
Industry:Art history
A recurring fragment, theme or pattern that appears in a work of art. In the past this was commonly associated with Islamic designs, but it also alludes to a theme or symbol that returns time and again, like the noose and the cigarette in the paintings of American figurative painter Philip Guston, or a pattern, like the abstract drawings of the mid-twentieth-century abstract painter Victor Pasmore. The video artist Bill Viola often uses the motif of water to represent birth and death, as exemplified in his multi-video installation Five Angels for the Millennium. Motif can also refer to the subject of the artwork. The phrase 'to paint from the motif' arose in the context of Impressionism, meaning to paint on the spot.
Industry:Art history
