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definition |
| Abstract Expressionism |
The Consciously American Style of art which emerged in New York
during the 1940s and remained dominant until the late 1950s. It was essentially an amalgam of ideas borrowed from Surrealism (most of whose leaders lived in exile in the US during WWII) and more strictly American concepts about the importance of the pioneering individual, particularly in the liberation of art from tradition. Abstract Expressionism was neither fully Abstract nor wholly Expressionist. It borrowed the Surrealist technique of Automatism and at the same time explored Cubist ideas about 'shallow spaces'. Abstract Expressionism was influential to artists in Latin America, such as Fernando de Szyszlo (Peruvian, 1925) who were working against the influence of formalist works, and the overtly political influence of Indigenismo.
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| Abstract Illusionism |
A tendency in American Abstract painting of the late 1960s and 1970s in which forms and brush-strokes, normally experienced by the spectator as things lying flat on the canvas, are separated from it by various illusory devices (cast shadows, etc.) so that they seem "to float I front" of the Picture-Plane.
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| Abstraction |
Imagery, which departs from representational accuracy, to a variable range of possible degrees, for some reason other than verisimilitude. Abstract artists select and then exaggerate or simplify the forms suggested by the world around them. The paintings of Pablo Picasso (b.Spain,1881;d.1973) and Georges Braque (b.France,1882;d.1963) as well as the sculptures of Henry Moore (b.London,1898;d.1987), Barbara Hepworth (b.London,1903;d.1975), and Jacques Lipchitz (Russian-American,1891;d.1973) are examples of abstract art. Wassily Kandinsky, (b.Russia, 1866; d.1944), was one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. After successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider; 1911-1914), when his paintings became completely abstract. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic.
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| Accession |
An object acquired by a museum or any other collector as part of its permanent collection, or the act of recording and processing an addition to the permanent collection. The opposite of accession is deaccession.
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| Accidental Light |
In painting, any source of light that is not sunlight, e.g. candle light, moonlight.
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| Acquisitions |
In museums or public collections, objects acquired for the museum for the collection through gift, bequest, field expedition, or purchase.
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| Acrylic flow improver |
A medium used with acrylic paints designed to improve their flow without diminishing the strength of its color.
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| Acrylic paints |
Synthetic paints, with pigments dispersed in a synthetic vehicle made from polymerized acrylic acid testers, the most important of which is polymethyl methacrylate. First used by artists in the late 1940s, their use has grown in popularity because of their versatility. They can be used on nearly any surface, in transparent washes or heavy impasto, with matte or glossy finishes. Acrylic paints dry quickly, do not yellow, are easily removed with mineral spirits or turpentine and can clean up with soap and water. Acrylic flow improver can be used with acrylic paints designed to improve their flow without diminishing the strength of its color.
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| Actual |
Avant-garde newspaper first published in Mexico in 1921. The first issue proposition, penned by Manuel Maples Arce adopted a highly provocative Dada-Futurist tone, attacking bourgeois society and its consumer habits, its corrupt political system, and its culture of publicity. It states: "I affirm my position at the explosive apex of my unique modernity, as definite as it is revolutionary."
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| Airbrushing |
Painting by means of a small, highly controllable mechanical paint- sprayer. The method was first used in the graphic and commercial arts to achieve a smooth, polished finish, and was later adopted by certain practitioners of the fine arts, especially those affiliated to "POP" Art.
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| All over Painting |
Paintings, usually Abstract, and dating from the years since the Second World War, which have no central focus or dominant area of interest.
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| Allegory |
The literal content or story of a work that stands for abstract ideas, suggesting a parallel, deeper, symbolic sense.
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| Altarpiece |
Any of a variety of decorated panels-often gilded in gold leaf- screens or shrines rising behind an altar to signify its importance and authority, to tell an associated legend and so on. The most common type of altarpiece is a painting spread over several panels hung together like folding screens. A simple type consists of a central panel with two flanking half-sized doors to close over it. A three-part painting of this sort is called a triptych. Paintings with more complicated arrangements, are called polyptychs. Altarpieces often have a decorated panel at the bottom called a predella. Some Baroque altarpieces are highly emotional flights of fancy, with painting, sculpture, and architectural accompaniments skillfully interwoven for theatrical effect. Altarpieces are sometime called reredos or retablos.
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| Amauta |
A Peruvian editorial launched in Lima in 1926-30. Amauta, which means 'wise man' or 'teacher' in Quechua, was edited by the writer José Mariátegui, who founded the Peruvian Socialist Party. Amauta was a review, which linked the artistic and literary avant-garde to revolutionary politics. It states: "This magazine does not represent an intellectual group. It represents a movement, a spirit. For some time now there has been an increasingly vigorous and determined trend towards new ideas in Peru. Those responsible for this new spirit are called the avant-garde, socialists, revolutionaries etc."
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| Analytic Cubism |
The first phase of Cubism, from about 1907 to 1912. Analytic cubists reduced natural forms to their basic geometric parts and then tried to reconcile these essentially three-dimensional parts with the two-dimensional picture plane. Color was greatly subdued, and paintings were nearly monochromatic. The leading cubists, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) initiated the movement when they followed the advice of Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906), who in 1904 said artists should treat nature "in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone." Within just a few years, cubism as a method of investigation lost its intellectual rigor and became decorative and thus stylized. Nonetheless, its influence on the development of painting in the 20th century was enormous.
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| Anthropophagite Manifesto |
A Brazilian social and artistic manifesto written by Oswald de Andrade in 1928.
Six years earlier Andrade wrote Pau-Brasil Poetry, that contains the early ideas of hybridity, colonization, and the questions of nationalism and identity. The Anthropophagite Manifesto intensified these ideas and marked an important change of consciousness in the Brazilian upper-class, as well as in the Modernist group of Europeanized intellectuals. Andrade embraced the contradictions of the Latin American experience: modern/primitive; center/periphery; nature/culture. The manifesto was published in the first issue of the Revista de Antropofagia, illustrated with drawings by Tarsila do Amaral. It states: "Truth was revealed by clothing, that waterproofing separating the interior from the exterior world. The reaction against the dressed man. The American cimena will inform you. Children of the sun, the mother of mortals, Found and loved ferociously, with all the hypocrisy of nostalgia, by the immigrants, slaves and tourists. In the country of the giant snake."
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| Aquatint |
An intaglio, etching, and tonal printing process in which a porous ground allows acid to penetrate to form a network of small dots in the plate, as well as the prints made by this process. The parts that are to appear completely white are stopped out with varnish. The plate is immersed in an acid bath, and the microscopic holes in the untreated areas allow the acid to bite into the copper. An aquatint can often resemble a wash drawing
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| Architecture |
The art of designing and constructing buildings (structures), and other environmental features.
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| Arte Concreto Invención |
Argentine art movement based in Buenos Aires in the 1940's and led by the Argentine artist Gyula Košice and the Uruguayan artists Carmelo Ardin Quin (b. 1913) and Rhod Rothuss (b. 1920). Together with Edgar Bayley (b. 1914) and Joaquín Torres Garcia, they were responsible for the publication in early 1944 of a single issue of Arturo. This publication heralded the development of the Constructivist movement in Argentina and elsewhere and called for the creation of a concrete art, geometric and non-figurative. Tomás Maldonado and Lidy Prati (b.1921), who were responsible for most of the vignettes, soon dissociated themselves from the group to help set up the Asociación Arte Concreto Invención Exhibitions.
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| Arte Generativo |
Style of Argentine painting named by Eduardo Macentyre and Miguel Angel Vidal in 1959. Their work generated optical sequences by circular, vertical and horizontal displacement while extolling the beauty and perfection of geometry through line and color. Much of their work was based on the studies of Georges Vantongerloo, and built on the developments of the Asociación Arte Concreto Invención and Arte Madí.
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| Arte Madí |
Gyula Košice's Manifesto Madí of February 1947, which refers to drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, theatre, novels stories and dance, was followed by the journal Arte Madí Universal, published from 1947 until June 1954. It was composed of many of the original Arte Concreto Invención group, including Košice, Rothfuss, Quin, Martin Blaszko, Diyi Laañ and Eitler took the name Madí to distinguish itself from Maldonado's Asociación Arte Concreto Invención.
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| Arturo |
Argentine art magazine published as a single issue in Buenos Aires in early 1944. It's importance lies in that it brought together the Conatructivist artists and poets that would shortly form the Arte Madí and Asociación Arte Concreto Invención. It states: "Abstract art, as past of a global whole, will guarentee a multi-disciplinary harmony, without the need for psychological adaption."
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| Assemblage |
This technique derives originally from collage and is essentially the use of three-dimensional found material to create art objects. It was widely popular towards the end of the 1950's, as part of the Dada revival
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| Avant-garde |
French for vanguard. Artists and their work which stand in the forefront of new ideas, often in opposition to established ideas and traditions; art that's ahead of its time, innovative, experimental. The modern era has invariably had a flourishing avant-garde, but many have said it is no longer possible in a postmodern era. The bourgeoisie, once alienated by the avant-garde, rarely question any longer the presentation of any avant-garde's productions by their public institutions.
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