- Branche: Art history
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First used in relation to the cultural phenomenon of the 1960s and early 1970s, exemplified in what was called the underground press, magazines like Oz, International Times, East Village Otherand The San Francisco Oracle and in the comix of West Coast America. Its precursors were the Beat Generation and the Paris Existentialists, groups that were perceived to exist outside or on the fringes of popular culture. These days the term Underground art is used to describe a subculture of art, like Graffiti art or Comic Strip art. Since the late 1990s the Internet has become a forum for underground art thanks to its ability to communicate with a wide audience for free and without the support of an art establishment. (See Net art)
Industry:Art history
British group formed by Paul Nash in 1933 to promote modern art, architecture and design. At this point the two major currents in modern art were seen as being abstract art on the one hand and Surrealism on the other. Unit One embraced the full spectrum, Nash himself making both abstract and Surrealist work in the mid 1930s and played a major part in organising the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 (British Surrealism). The launch of the group was announced in a letter from Nash to The Times newspaper, in which he wrote that Unit One was 'to stand for the expression of a truly contemporary spirit, for that thing which is recognised as peculiarly of today in painting, sculpture and architecture'. The first and only group exhibition was held in 1934 accompanied by a book Unit One, subtitled The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture. It consisted of statements by all the artists in the group, photographs of their work, and an introduction by the critic and poet Herbert Read, who was an important champion of modernism in Britain. The other artists involved were Armstrong, Bigge, Burra, Hepworth, Moore, Nicholson, Wadsworth and the architects Welles Coates and Colin Lucas.
Industry:Art history
Vellum and parchment are made from the skins of calves, goats and sheep. While there is no sharp distinction between the two, vellum is generally a finer quality than parchment, since it is made from younger hides and so is smoother and has fewer or finer hair follicles. Parchment, made from the skins of older animals, tends to be coarser.
Industry:Art history
From Italian term verismo, meaning realism in its sense of gritty subject matter. Was originally applied around 1900 to the violent melodramatic operas of Puccini and Mascagni. In painting also has come to mean realism in its modern sense of representing objects with a high degree of truth to appearances. See realism, modern realism, naturalism.
Industry:Art history
Blanket term referring to almost every aspect of British life and culture during Queen Victoria's long reign from 1837 to 1901. In relation to social behaviour, art and design however, it carries connotations of stuffiness, repressiveness and rigid devotion to tradition. In art specifically the term is perhaps exemplified in the genre painting which provides an extraordinary panorama of the life of the period, including Rural Naturalism and Social Realism, but Victorian genre perhaps particularly associated with the sentimental and reassuring work of Wilkie and his followers.
Industry:Art history
The introduction of video in the 1960s radically altered the progress of art. The most important aspect of video was that it was cheap and easy to make, enabling artists to record and document their performances easily. This put less pressure on where their art was situated giving them freedom outside the gallery. One of the early pioneers of video art was Bruce Nauman who used video to reveal the hidden creative processes of the artist by filming himself in his studio. As video technology became more sophisticated, the art evolved from real-time, grainy, black and white recordings to the present day emphasis on large-scale installations in colour. Bill Viola's multi-screened works are theatrical and often have a narrative; and Gillian Wearing uses a documentary style to make art about the hidden aspects of society.
Industry:Art history
The computer scientist Jaron Lanier popularised the term virtual reality in the early 1980s to describe a technology that enables a person to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it based on a real or an imagined place. Virtual reality environments are usually visual experiences, displayed on computer screens or through special stereoscopic displays. Some simulations include additional sensory information such as sound through speakers or headphones. Explorations into virtual reality by artists began in a relatively modest way; in 2002 the duo Langlands and Bell created a virtual reality tour of Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Afghanistan and audiences were invited to navigate the building using a joystick. With the introduction of Second Life on the internet, artists are now installing galleries and staging virtual exhibitions in the alternative virtual world. The Dutch team Art Tower stage exhibitions and sell art in Second Life and Cao Fei, who represented China at the 2007 Venice Biennale reproduced her exhibition in the Chinese pavilion in Second Life.
Industry:Art history
A large, glazed cabinet used for displaying art objects. Often used in museums, the vitrine was appropriated by artists like Joseph Cornell in the 1950s and Joseph Beuys in the mid 1960s to display unusual materials they invested with spiritual or personal significance. Other artists who have used vitrines in their work include the American artist Jeff Koons and the British sculptor Rebecca Warren.
Industry:Art history
The Vorticists were a British avant-garde group formed in London in 1914 by the artist, writer and polemicist, Wyndham Lewis. Their only group exhibition was held in London the following year. Vorticism was launched with the first issue (of two) of the magazine Blast which contained among other material two aggressive manifestos by Lewis 'blasting' what he considered to be the effeteness of British art and culture and proclaiming the Vorticist aesthetic: 'The New Vortex plunges to the heart of the Present' we produce a New Living Abstraction'. Vorticist painting combines Cubist fragmentation of reality with hard-edged imagery derived from the machine and the urban environment, to create a highly effective expression of the Vorticists sense of the dynamism of the modern world. It was in effect a British equivalent to Futurism, although with doctrinal differences, and Lewis was deeply hostile to the Futurists. Other artists were Lawrence Atkinson, Jessica Dismorr, Cuthbert Hamilton, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Edward Wadsworth, and the sculptors Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. David Bomberg was not formally a member of the group but produced major work in a similar style. The First World War brought Vorticism to an end, although in 1920 Lewis made a brief attempt to revive it with Group X.
Industry:Art history
In Britain official schemes were established for artists to record both the First and Second World Wars. During the First World War, two main streams of activity produced official art. The Imperial War Museum, established by Act of Parliament in 1917, was charged with collecting all kinds of material documenting the war, including art. Meanwhile, the government was also commissioning and purchasing art to create a record of and a memorial to the war through paintings commissioned from the best and, on occasion, the most avant-garde, British artists of the day. These included Percy Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash, CRW Nevinson, John Singer Sargent, Stanley Spencer and Sir William Orpen. At the end of the war, these collections were combined at the Imperial War Museum. During the Second World War a more structured approach to official picture collecting was taken, when the War Artists Advisory Committee, chaired by Sir Kenneth Clark, was established. As in the previous war, the pictures collected were exhibited in London and in shows touring nationally and internationally. In 1946 one third of the collection was allocated to the Imperial War Museum and the rest was distributed to museums and galleries across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Over 300 artists were involved, including John Piper, Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer on the home front, and Anthony Gross, Edward Bawden and Edward Ardizzone overseas. Much of the work produced went beyond documentation into the realm of art and the Imperial War Museum art gallery is well worth a visit. The Museum continues to commission war artists to record wars in which Britain is involved.
Industry:Art history
