- Industry: Art history
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In 1976, at the height of Minimal art and Conceptual art, the American painter R. B. Kitaj, then based in London, Britain, organised at the Hayward Gallery in London an exhibition titled The Human Clay. It exclusively consisted of figurative drawing and painting and proved highly controversial. In his catalogue text, Kitaj used the term School of London loosely to describe the artists he had brought together. The name has stuck to refer to painters at that time who were doggedly pursuing forms of figurative painting in the face of the prevailing avant-garde forms. The chief artists associated with the idea of the School of London, in addition to Kitaj himself, were Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney (although living in the USA), Howard Hodgkin, and Leon Kossoff. The work of these artists was brought into fresh focus and given renewed impetus by the revival of interest in figurative painting by a younger generation that took place in the late 1970s and the 1980s (see Neo-Expressionism and New Spirit painting).
Industry:Art history
During the nineteenth century Paris, France, became the centre of a powerful national school of painting and sculpture, culminating in the dazzling innovations of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. As a result, in the early years of the twentieth century Paris became a magnet for artists from all over the world and the focus of the principal innovations of modern art, notably Fauvism, Cubism, abstract art and Surrealism. The term School of Paris grew up to describe this phenomenon. The twin chiefs (chefs d'école) were Pablo Picasso who settled in Paris from his native Spain in 1904, and the Frenchman Henri Matisse. Also in 1904, the pioneer modern sculptor Constantin Brancusi arrived in Paris from Romania, and in 1906 the painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani from Italy. Chaïm Soutine arrived from Russia in 1911. The Russian painter Marc Chagall lived in Paris from 1910-14 and then again from 1923-39 and 1947-9, after which he moved to the South of France. The Dutch pioneer of pure abstract painting, Piet Mondrian, settled in Paris in 1920 and Wassily Kandinsky in 1933. The heyday of the School of Paris was ended by the Second World War, although the term continued to be used to describe the artists of Paris. However, from about 1950 its dominance ceded to the rise of the New York School.
Industry:Art history
Group of four Scottish artists, Cadell, Fergusson, Hunter, Peploe who were among the first to introduce the intense colour of the French Fauve movement into Britain. Leading figure was Fergusson who visited Paris regularly from 1890s on and then lived there from 1907-14. The experience of that close contact with the avant-garde art scene in Paris stayed with him all his life.
Industry:Art history
A variety of stencil printing, using a screen made from fabric (silk or synthetic) stretched tightly over a frame. The non-printing areas on the fabric are blocked out by a stencil which can be created by painting on glue or lacquer, by applying adhesive film or paper, or painting a light-sensitive resist onto the screen which is then developed as a photograph (photo-screenprint). Ink or paint is forced through the open fabric with a rubber blade, known as a squeegee, onto the paper. Screenprinting has been used commercially since the 1920s and by artists since the 1950s. When it was taken up by artists in 1930s America the term 'serigraph' was used to denote an artist's print, as opposed to commercial work. The term 'silkscreen' (silk was originally used for the mesh) was and still is used, particularly in America.
Industry:Art history
Sculpture is three-dimensional art made by one of four basic processes. These are carving (in stone, wood, ivory or bone); modelling in clay; modelling (in clay or wax) and then casting the model in bronze; constructing (a twentieth-century development). The earliest known human artefacts recognisable as what we would call sculpture date from the period known as the Upper Paleolithic, which is roughly from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. These objects are small female figures with bulbous breasts and buttocks carved from stone or ivory, and are assumed to be fertility figures. The most famous of them is known as the Venus of Willendorf (the place in Austria where it was found in 1908). Sculpture flourished in ancient Egypt from about 5,000 years ago and in ancient Greece from some 2,000 years later. In Greece it reached what is considered to be a peak of perfection in the period from about 500-400 BC. At that time, as well as making carved sculpture, the Greeks brought the technique of casting sculpture in bronze to a high degree of sophistication. Following the fall of the Roman Empire the technique of bronze casting was almost lost but, together with carved sculpture, underwent a major revival at the Renaissance. In the twentieth century a new way of making sculpture emerged with the Cubist constructions of Picasso. These were still life subjects made from scrap (found) materials glued together. Constructed sculpture in various forms became a major stream in modern art. (Constructivism; Assemblage; Environment; Installation; Minimal art; New Generation Sculpture. ) Techniques used included welding metal, introduced by Julio González, who also taught it to Picasso. (See also for example David Smith; Reg Butler. )
Industry:Art history
As a general term used to describe the breaking away of younger and more radical artists from an existing academy or art group, to form a new grouping. The word is originally German and its earliest appearance seems to be in the name of the Munich Secession group formed in 1892. In the same year this was followed by the Berliner Secession, led by Max Liebermann and later Lovis Corinth, and in 1913 by the Freie Secession in which Max Beckmann and Ernst Barlach were involved. The most famous secession group is the Vereinigung bildener Künstler Oesterreichs (Secession) founded in 1897 and generally known simply as the Vienna Secession. It was led by one of the greatest of all Symbolist painters, Gustav Klimt. In 1898 the Secession commissioned the architect Joseph Olbrich to build an exhibition hall. The result is a masterpiece of Art Nouveau architecture that remains one of the gems of Vienna. It also contains Klimt's great mural the Beethoven Frieze. Over following years the Vienna Secession held a series of exhibitions (several a year) that brought together a roll call of the international avant-garde. There was a particular emphasis on architecture and design, and the Vienna Secession played a major part in the broader Art Nouveau movement and the beginnings of modern design. In 1903 a design company was founded called the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement. Its products are now museum pieces. Later major artists associated with the Vienna Secession include Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka two of the great pioneers of Expressionism.
Industry:Art history
The Seven and Five Society was formed in London in 1919 and held its first exhibition the following year. Initially it was a conservative group and can be seen as a British manifestation of the return to order that followed the First World War. The first exhibition catalogue explained that the society was not formed 'to advertise a new "ism"—(we) feel that there has of late been too much pioneering along too many lines in altogether too much of a hurry. ' This perfectly encapsulates the 'return to order' attitude. However, in 1924 Ben Nicholson, one of the pioneers of abstract art in Britain, joined the Seven and Five. He was followed by other modernists including Hepworth, Moore and later, Piper. They effectively hijacked the group, expelling the non-modernists. In 1935 they renamed it the Seven and Five Abstract Group and held the first all abstract exhibition in Britain at the Zwemmer Gallery in London.
Industry:Art history
A term from Greek Platonic philosophy that meant a copy of a copy of an ideal form. In postmodernist thought, particularly through the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, the term has been revived in the context of arguments about the relationship between an original work of art and its replication. For Baudrillard the simulacrum takes precedence over the original, with the effect that the original is no longer relevant.
Industry:Art history
Refers to a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location. If removed from the location it would lose all or a substantial part of its meaning. Site-specific is often used of installation works, as in site-specific installation, and Land art is site-specific almost by definition.
Industry:Art history
