- Branche: Art history
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In a general sense any piece of music or writing, or any painting or sculpture, can be referred to as a composition. More specifically, the term refers to the way in which an artist has arranged the elements of the work so as to bring them into a relationship satisfactory to the artist and, it is hoped, the viewer. In art in the classical tradition, triangular or pyramidal compositions were used because they created a sense of balance and harmony by arranging the figures into a stable overall geometric structure. This can be seen for example in the roughly conical grouping of the animals in George Stubbs's Mares and Foals. The idea of composition as the adjustment of the relationships of the elements of the work within the border of the canvas, remained unchallenged through the upheavals of the early modern movements such as Cubism and abstract art. Then in the late 1940s the American Abstract Expressionist painter, Jackson Pollock, introduced what came to be called allover composition, and the traditional concept became known as relational composition. However, Pollock still generally seems to be composing within the canvas. But at the same time, the Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman began making paintings in which large blocks of colour ran from top to bottom of the canvas. These were relational to the extent that the proportions of the colours were adjusted against each other, but they were compositionally radical in that the blocks of colour simply ran off the top and bottom edges of the canvas, which Newman deliberately left unframed. It was Frank Stella in the late 1950s who achieved a composition that was both allover and broke out of the confines of the canvas.
Industry:Art history
Complementary colours are colours which complete each other - hence the name. The effect of this completing is to enhance the colours—they look stronger when placed together. This is because they contrast with each other more than with any other colours, and we can only see colour by contrast with other colours. The more contrast the more colour. If you stay in a room entirely painted one colour, after about ten minutes it will fade to grey. The complementary colours are the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow, and their secondaries. Secondary colours are the colours obtained by mixing the primaries in all their combinations of pairs. So the three secondary colours are green, orange and violet. The complementary pairs are red-green, blue-orange and yellow-violet. Artists began to become particularly aware of the significance of complementary colours after the development of scientific colour theory in the nineteenth century. This theory played an important part in the development of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism as well as Fauvism and much modern painting thereafter. The Impressionists were the first to note that shadows are not neutral but are the complementary colour of the light that throws them. So yellow sunlight throws a violet shadow. This can be seen very well in Monet's Woman Seated on a Bench in the crease of her arm and the pool of shadow at her feet.
Industry:Art history
The notion of Community art evolved in the post Second World War era out of the concept of cultural democracy - the term used to describe practices in which culture and artistic expression are generated by individuals and communities rather than by institutions of central power. Although there had been earlier tentative experiments in what became known as Community art, including by the nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, it was not until the late 1940s that the concept of Community art emerged and began to be seen as a way of empowering people. Inititatives included putting visual artists, actors and musicians to work within communities to create public murals, plays and compositions. In the 1960s, when social change was seen as possible, Community art was seen as a way of giving a voice to society's disenfranchised.
Industry:Art history
The terms classic or classical came into use in the seventeenth century to describe the arts and culture of the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. Classicism in art is to make reference in later work to the ancient classic styles. For example the classicism of Reynolds. Classical mythology consists of the various myths and legends of the ancient Greek and Roman gods and heroes. From the Renaissance on this became a major source of subject matter for History painting. Also from Renaissance, classicism was all-pervasive in Western art and went through myriad transformations.
Industry:Art history
The English Civil War broke out in 1641 bringing to an end the great artistic flowering that took place under Charles I (Stuart), exemplified in the art of his court painter Van Dyck, who died that year. During the war, Van Dyck's place was filled by his English follower William Dobson. Following Charles's defeat by Parliamentary forces led by Cromwell, and his execution in 1649, the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished and England was declared 'a Commonwealth or free state'. From then to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the Commonwealth was in effect ruled by Cromwell. Period also known as interregnum (between reigns). Chief painter Lely.
Industry:Art history
Italian term used in that form in English. It translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade in a painting or drawing. Chiaroscuro is generally only remarked upon when it is a particularly prominent feature of the work, usually when the artist is using extreme contrasts of light and shade.
Industry:Art history
One of the most basic drawing materials, known since antiquity. It is usually made of thin peeled willow twigs which are heated without the presence of oxygen. This produces black crumbly sticks, which leave microscopic sharp-edged particles in the paper or textile fibres, producing a line denser at the pressure point, but more diffuse at the edges. The overall result is less precise than hard graphite pencils, suited to freer studies. Charcoal smudges easily and is often protected with a sprayed fixative. It is used to make both sketches and finished works, and as under-drawing for paintings. In the twentieth century a processed version was developed, called compressed charcoal.
Industry:Art history
White or off-white inorganic material composed of calcium carbonate. Naturally occurring, although also produced industrially throughout the twentieth century.
Industry:Art history
A form created by pouring liquid material, such as plaster or molten metal, into a mould.
Industry:Art history
A caricature is a painting, or more usually drawing, of a person or thing in which the features and form have been distorted and exaggerated in order to mock or satirise the subject. The term is originally Italian, caricatura, and caricature appeared in Italian art about 1600 in the work of Annibale Carracci. The word caricature is first recorded in English in 1748, the year, as it happens, that William Hogarth painted his great anti-French satire O the Roast Beef of Old England which includes caricatures of a French monk and French soldiers. Hogarth made extensive use of caricature and it became widespread in Britain thereafter. A practitioner of genius in the later eighteenth century and early nineteenth century was James Gillray, who used it for political cartooning, a form of caricature which continues to appear every day in our newspapers. Equally gifted was his contemporary Thomas Rowlandson who produced brilliant caricatures of the manners and morals of the time. Max Beerbohm was an outstanding caricaturist in the nineteenth century, and Gerald Scarfe is one of the most powerful working today.
Industry:Art history
