- Industry: Art history
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A group of North American artists who used realist techniques to depict social deprivation and injustice in the American urban environment of the early twentieth century. Artists included Robert Henri, regarded as the founder of the Ashcan School, and John Sloan.
Industry:Art history
Movement in design emerging from Pre-Raphaelite circle and initiated by William Morris in 1861 when he founded design firm Morris and Co in London. He recruited Rossetti, Madox Brown and Burne-Jones as artist-designers and key principle was to raise design to level of art. Also to make good design available to widest possible audience. Seen as leading to modern design e.g. By Pevsner in book Pioneers of Modern Design: William Morris to Walter Gropius first published 1936. Morris emphasised simple functional design without the excess ornament and imitation of past typical of Victorian styles. Wallpapers or fabrics were based on natural motifs particularly plant forms treated as flat pattern. Key influence on Aesthetic Movement and Art Nouveau as well as later modern design.
Industry:Art history
An exhibiting society founded in London in 1933 and active until 1971. It was principally a left-of-centre political organisation and it embraced all styles of art both modernist and traditional. Its aim was the 'Unity of Artists for Peace, Democracy and Cultural Development'. It held a series of large group exhibitions on political and social themes beginning in 1935 with the exhibition Artists Against Fascism and War. The AIA supported the left-wing Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) through exhibitions and other fund-raising activities. It tried to promote wider access to art through travelling exhibitions and public mural paintings. In 1940 it published a series of art lithographs titled Everyman Prints in large and therefore cheap editions.
Industry:Art history
Organisation founded in 1966 by Barbara Steveni with her husband John Latham. Its purpose was to place artists in government, commercial and industrial organisations. APG emerged from the idea that artists are a human resource underused by society. Artists are isolated from the public by the gallery system, and in the ghetto of the art world are shielded from the mundane realities of industry commerce and government. The idea was that artists, designated Incidental Persons by Latham, would bring completely alternative ways of seeing and thinking to bear on the organisations they were placed in. APG would thus recognise the artist's outsider status and turn it to positive social advantage. In 1966 Steveni and Latham were joined by Jeffrey Shaw and Barry Flanagan, soon followed by Stuart Brisley, David Hall and Ian MacDonald Munro. Among the placements made by APG was one in 1975-6 of Latham himself at the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. This resulted in radical proposals for the future of the huge industrial spoil tips, known as bings, found in the region. Latham proposed retaining them as works of art and marking them with beacons. APG staged a major exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1971. It continued until 1989 when it was reconstituted as O+I (Organisation and Imagination).
Industry:Art history
The term Arte Povera was introduced by the Italian art critic and curator, Germano Celant, in 1967. His pioneering texts and a series of key exhibitions provided a collective identity for a number of young Italian artists based in Turin, Milan, Genoa and Rome. Arte Povera emerged from within a network of urban cultural activity in these cities, as the Italian economic miracle of the immediate post-war years collapsed into a chaos of economic and political instability. The name means literally 'poor art' but the word poor here refers to the movement's signature exploration of a wide range of materials beyond the quasi-precious traditional ones of oil paint on canvas, or bronze, or carved marble. Arte Povera therefore denotes not an impoverished art, but an art made without restraints, a laboratory situation in which any theoretical basis was rejected in favour of a complete openness towards materials and processes. Leading artists were Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Piero Gilardi, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini and Gilberto Zorio. The heyday of the movement was from 1967-1972, but its influence on later art has been enduring. Can also be seen as Italian contribution to Conceptual art.
Industry:Art history
Refers to the work of the Movimento d'Arte Nucleare, founded by the Italian artist Enrico Baj together with Sergio Dangelo and Gianni Bertini, in Milan in 1951. Gianni Dova was a later member. Their first manifesto was issued the following year and another in 1959. The name might be translated as art for the nuclear age, since the group specifically set out to make art in relation to this. Their manifestos warned of the dangers of the misapplication of nuclear technology. They declared opposition to geometric abstract art and proposed instead the use of automatic techniques. They were thus closely aligned with Art Informel. In the early 1950s Baj was making paintings with suggestions of mushroom clouds and devastated landscapes. In his later painting and collage works he gave the name 'heavy water' to the enamel paint and distilled water emulsion he used. These works include a sardonic series of army officers of which Fire! Fire! is one. Several exhibitions were held but the movement petered out around 1960.
Industry:Art history
A group of activists, including Carl Andre, Lucy Lippard and Robert Smithson, who came together in 1969, in New York, to promote artists' rights and to challenge the art establishment to take political positions against discrimination and inequality.
Industry:Art history
Complex international style in architecture and design, parallel to Symbolism in fine art. Developed through 1890s and brought to wide audience by 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Characterised by sinuous linearity and flowing organic shapes based on plant forms. In Britain, Mackintosh contained these qualities within severe but eccentric geometry. Style exemplified by Paris Metro station entrances by Guimard, Tiffany glass, Mackintosh chairs and his Glasgow School of Art, and book designs of Beardsley, Charles Ricketts and followers such as Arthur Rackham. Flourished until killed off by First World War.
Industry:Art history
French term describing a wide swathe of related types of abstract painting highly prevalent, even dominant, in the 1940s and 1950s, including tendencies such as Tachism, Matter Painting, and Lyrical Abstraction. Mainly refers to European art, but embraces American Abstract Expressionism. The term was used by the French critic Michel Tapié in his 1952 book Un Art Autre to describe types of art which had in common that they were based on highly improvisatory (i.e. Informal) procedures and were often highly gestural. Tapié saw this art as 'other' because it appeared to him as a complete break with tradition. An important source of this kind of painting was the Surrealist doctrine of automatism. An exhibition titled Un Art Autre was organised in Paris the same year as Tapié's book and included Appel, Burri, De Kooning, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Mathieu, Riopelle, Wols. Other key figures were Henri Michaux, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. The term Art Autre, from the title of Tapié's book, is also used for this art, but Art Informel seems to have emerged as the preferred name.
Industry:Art history
Design style of 1920s and 1930s in furniture, pottery, textiles, jewellery, glass etc. It was also a notable style of cinema and hotel architecture. Named after the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925. Can be seen as successor to and a reaction against Art Nouveau. Chief difference from Art Nouveau is influence of Cubism giving Art Deco design generally a more fragmented, geometric character. However, imagery based on plant forms, and sinuous curves remained in some Art Deco design, for example that of Clarice Cliff in Britain. Art Deco was in fact highly varied, showing influences from ancient Egyptian art, Aztec and other ancient Central American art, and the design of modern ships, trains and motor cars. Art Deco also drew on the modern architecture and design of the Bauhaus, and of architects such as Le Corbusier and Mies van de Rohe.
Industry:Art history
