- Branche: Art history
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Major regional school of landscape painting formally dating from 1803 when, at his house in Norwich, John Crome and others formed the Norwich Society, initially as a self-help discussion group for 'an Enquiry into the Rise, Progress and present state of painting—with a view to point out the best methods of study to attain to Greater Perfection. ' In 1805 it became an exhibiting society and was joined by its other leading figure John Sell Cotman. Paintings were in a low-key realist manner inspired by Norfolk landscape and the life of the Norfolk Broads and rivers. Other members of the School included the sons of Crome and Cotman, Stannard, Stark and Vincent. Best seen in the large collection at Norwich Castle Museum.
Industry:Art history
French movement (meaning new realism) founded in 1960 by the critic Pierre Restany. It was the focus for developments which can be seen as the European counterpart to Pop art. As well as painting, Nouveau Réalistes made extensive use of collage and assemblage, using real objects incorporated directly into the work and acknowledging a debt to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. The leading exponents of this aspect were Arman, César, Christo, Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri. Raymond Hains, Mimmo Rotella, Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé and Wolf Vostell developed the décollage, or torn poster technique, making striking works from accumulated layers of posters they removed from advertising hoardings. Among the painters were Valerio Adami, Alain Jacquet, Martial Raysse (who also made notable installations) and the German, Gerhard Richter, who named his work Capitalist Realism. One of the most significant artists associated with Nouveau Réalisme was Yves Klein who died prematurely in 1962. He was enormously inventive in his short career, staging Happenings and carrying out early examples of Performance art using his own body, and anticipating Conceptual art as well as making remarkable paintings.
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
Term often used to describe certain Victorian artists, notably Alma-Tadema, Leighton, Poynter and Watts, whose work emphasised the classical in both style and subject matter. In ancient Greek mythology Mount Olympus in Greece was the home of the ancient gods, and the name refers both to the classicism of these artists and their huge success and dominance of the art of their time. Leighton in particular achieved almost god-like status. He was hugely handsome and an athlete, but also an intellectual; he became president of the Royal Academy in 1879, was created a baronet in 1886, and was elevated to the peerage, becoming Lord Leighton, just before his death in 1896. Alma-Tadema and Poynter were knighted and Watts was awarded the Order of Merit. A crucial source of inspiration for the Olympians was the so-called Elgin Marbles—the ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens brought to London by the Earl of Elgin in 1807 and housed in the British Museum from 1816.
Industry:Art history
Founded in 1913 by the painter and art critic Roger Fry, Omega Workshops was an English applied arts company based in London, which lasted until 1919. The company produced ceramics, furniture, carpets and textiles designed by Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, who belonged to the circle of writers and artists known as Bloomsbury, and Henri Doucet, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Winifred Gill and Nina Hamnett. The name Omega Workshops is thought to have been intended to suggest the last word in design, omega (the Workshops' trademark) being the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
Industry:Art history
A major development in the 1960s of painting that created optical effects for the spectator. These effects ranged from the subtle, to the disturbing and disorienting. Op painting used a framework of purely geometric forms as the basis for its effects and also drew on colour theory and the physiology and psychology of perception. Leading figures were Bridget Riley, Jesus Raphael Soto, and Victor Vasarely. Vasarely was one of the originators of Op art. Soto's work often involves mobile elements and points up the close connection between Kinetic and Op art.
Industry:Art history
The accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 coincided with the beginning of the great age of rail and steamship travel. Artists from Britain were soon spreading across the world in search of new and exotic subjects. Those who went to the Middle East became known as Orientalists. Lead figure was John Frederick Lewis who spent thirteen years there from 1838, followed by David Roberts, William Muller and David Wilkie. Later contributors include the Pre-Raphaelites, Holman Hunt and Thomas Seddon, who travelled together to Palestine 1854-6, Hunt returning 1869-72, 1875-8, 1892.
Industry:Art history
Sometimes called Orphic Cubism. The term was coined about 1912-13 by the French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. He used it to describe the Cubist influenced work of Robert Delaunay and his wife Sonia, and to distinguish their very abstract and colourful work from Cubism generally. The name comes from the legendary ancient Greek poet and musician Orpheus. Its use by Apollinaire relates to the idea that painting should be like music, which was an important element in the development of abstract art. In the Delaunays' work patches of subtle and beautiful colour are brought together to create harmonious compositions. Delaunay himself used the term Simultanism to describe his work.
Industry:Art history
Sometimes called Art Brut, Outsider art is used to describe art that has a naïve quality, often produced by people who have not trained as artists or commonly associated with the production of art. Children, psychiatric patients and prisoners fall into this category. In 1964 the French artist artist Jean Dubuffet started to collect artworks he considered to be free from societal constraints. This was termed Art Brut (raw art) and in 1948 he founded the Compagnie de L'Art Brut with André Breton. The artist Ben Nicholson discovered the naïve painter Alfred Wallis in St Ives in the 1920s. A retired fisherman, Wallis painted pictures of ships and the town harbour on pieces of driftwood and cardboard.
Industry:Art history
