- Branche: Art history
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The British Surrealist group was founded in 1936. Its chief organising figures were the poet and critic Herbert Read, the poet and artist David Gascoyne, the artist Paul Nash, and the artist and collector Roland Penrose. In the same year they organised the First International Surrealist Exhibition in London which attracted huge public attention. At the opening Salvador Dalí gave a lecture from inside a deep-sea diving suit. Nash probably made the most significant artistic contribution to British Surrealism, and there are powerful Surrealist elements in the work of Henry Moore at that time. Other artists, in addition to Penrose, include Agar, Armstrong, Banting, Ithell Colquhoun, Conroy Maddox, Mesens, Trevelyan. In 1947 the British group merged with the French one.
Industry:Art history
Modernist ideas associated with what was to become known as French Impressionism were introduced to Britain by Whistler from 1863 when he settled in London. Forms of Impressionism were then developed by his pupils Sickert and Steer and promoted by the New English Art Club founded in 1886. In 1889 Sickert and Steer organised the exhibition London Impressionists with the more advanced members of NEAC. Meanwhile in 1885 Sargent arrived from France, where he knew the great French Impressionist, Monet, and settled in London. In the next few years he made a major contribution to Impressionism in Britain with paintings such as Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose which was painted entirely out of doors.
Industry:Art history
Artists associated with Bristol in early 1800s inspired by local scenery especially River Avon and Avon Gorge. Principal figures were Francis Danby during the roughly ten years he spent there before moving to London 1824, and JB Pyne. Both had pupils and followers notably Samuel Colman who made highly personal contribution to genre of biblical and landscape fantasy Danby later became known for (in rivalry with John Martin), and the prolific landscapist WJ Müller known for his Orientalist scenes as well as Avon studies.
Industry:Art history
The best translation of the French word bricolage is do-it-yourself and the creative core of bricolage in an art context is an ability to make art out of any materials that come to hand. This approach became popular in the early twentieth century when resources were scarce and aspects of Surrealism, Dada and Cubism have a bricolage character. But it was not until the early 1960s, with the formation of the Italian movement Arte Povera, that bricolage took on a political aspect and it was used by artists to bypass the commercialism of the art world. Arte Povera artists constructed sculptures out of rubbish in an attempt to devalue the art object and assert the value of the ordinary and everyday. Since then, artists have continued to make art out of detritus; Tomoko Takahashi constructs vast sculptures of junk found on the streets as a comment on the disposable nature of our culture and society.
Industry:Art history
Term used to describe art in which the body, often that of the artist is the principal medium and focus. It covers a wide range of art from about 1960 on, encompassing a variety of different approaches. It includes much Performance art, where the artist is directly concerned with the body in the form of improvised or choreographed actions, happenings and staged events. However, the term body art is also used for explorations of the body in a variety of other media including painting, sculpture, photography, film and video. Body art has frequently been concerned with issues of gender and personal identity. A major theme has been the relationship of body and mind, explored in work consisting of feats of physical endurance designed to test the limits of the body and the ability of the mind to suffer pain. Body art has often highlighted the visceral or abject aspects of the body, focusing on bodily substances or the theme of nourishment. It has also highlighted contrasts such as those between clothed and nude, internal and external, parts of the body and the whole. In some work, the body is seen as the vehicle for language. In 1998 the art historian Amelia Jones published a survey titled Body Art. (See also Conceptual art, Feminist art. )
Industry:Art history
A district of quiet squares near central London. Its name is commonly used to identify a circle of intellectuals and artists who lived there in the period 1904-40. The intellectuals included the biographer Lytton Strachey, the economist Maynard Keynes, the novelist Virginia Woolf and the art critic Clive Bell. The principal artists were Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, who was also a highly influential critic, and Duncan Grant. Bloomsbury was in revolt against everything Victorian and played a key role in introducing many modern ideas into Britain. In 1910 Fry organised in London the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists which brought modern French art to the attention of the British public. Visitors to the show were duly scandalised by the many works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso. The Bloomsbury painters created their own distinctive brand of Post-Impressionism and around 1914 experimented with abstract art. Fry also founded the design firm Omega Workshops for which the Bloomsbury artists designed pottery, furniture, fabrics and interiors. Note that Bloomsbury resisted being categorised as a group.
Industry:Art history
Highly influential college founded at Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA, in 1933. Its progressive principles were based on the educational theories of John Rice, its founder. In the curriculum, drama, music and fine art were given equal status to all other academic subjects. Teaching was informal and stress was laid on communal living and outdoor activities. Most of the work of running the college and maintaining the buildings was done by students and faculty. Among its first teachers of art was Josef Albers, who had fled Nazi Germany after the closure of the Bauhaus that same year. Black Mountain quickly became an extraordinary powerhouse of modern culture in America. Its board of advisers included Albert Einstein and among its teachers at one time or another were some of the greatest luminaries of modern American culture including the founder of the Bauhaus, the architect Walter Gropius, the Abstract Expressionist painters Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell the composer John Cage and the dancer Merce Cunningham. In 1949 Albers and others left as a result of internal divisions. The College was reconstituted under the poet Charles Olson but eventually closed in 1953. Among its most notable artist students were Kenneth Noland and Robert Rauschenberg.
Industry:Art history
A naturally-occurring, non-drying, tarry substance used in paint mixtures, especially to enrich the appearance of dark tones. Bitumen became very popular as a paint additive in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth. However, because it does not dry it eventually causes often severe darkening and cracking of the paint. This can be seen in the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, and Sir Thomas Lawrence for example.
Industry:Art history
In painting and sculpture biomorphic forms or images are ones that, while abstract, nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living forms such as plants and the human body. The term comes from combining the Greek words bios, meaning life, and morphe, meaning form. Biomorphic seems to have come into use around the 1930s to describe the imagery in the more abstract types of Surrealist painting and sculpture particularly in the work of Joan Miró and Jean Arp (see automatism). Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth also produced some superb biomorphs at that time, and later so did Louise Bourgeois.
Industry:Art history
Bio art uses biotechnology as its medium. The creations of Bio art become part of evolution and, provided they are capable of reproduction, can last as long as life exists on earth. They raise questions about the future of life, evolution, society and art. Currently the dominant aspect of Bio art is Genetic art, as represented by the Brazilian-born artist Eduardo Kac, who genetically engineered a green fluorescent rabbit in 2000. As scientists continue their pioneering work into biotechnology, artists are also experimenting with cell and tissue cultures and neurophysiology. An example of this is the Australian-based duo Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr who have attempted to grow a quarter scale replica of an artist's ear.
Industry:Art history
