- Industry: Art history
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Theory of art put forward by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757. He defined the Sublime as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling and wrote 'whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the Sublime'. In landscape the Sublime is exemplified by Turner's sea storms and mountain scenes and in History painting by the violent dramas of Fuseli. The notion that a legitimate function of art can be to produce upsetting or disturbing effects was an important element in Romantic art and remains fundamental to art today.
Industry:Art history
The name given by the Russian artist Kasimir Malevich to the abstract art he developed from 1913. The first actual exhibition of Suprematist paintings was in December 1915 in St Petersburg, at an exhibition called O. 10. The exhibition included thirty-five abstract paintings by Malevich, among them the famous black square on a white ground (Russian Museum, St Petersburg) which headed the list of his works in the catalogue. In 1927 Malevich published his book The Non-Objective World, one of the most important theoretical documents of abstract art. In it he wrote: 'In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the square. ' Out of the 'Suprematist square' as he called it, Malevich developed a whole range of forms including rectangles, triangles and circles often in intense and beautiful colours. These forms are floated against a usually white ground, and the feeling of colour in space in Suprematist painting is a crucial aspect of it. Suprematism was one of the key movements of modern art in Russia and was particularly closely associated with the Revolution. After the rise of Stalin from 1924 and the imposition of Socialist Realism, Malevich's career languished. In his last years before his death in 1935 he painted realist pictures. In 1919 the Russian artist El Lissitsky met Malevich and was strongly influenced by Suprematism, as was the Hungarian born Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Industry:Art history
Movement launched in Paris in 1924 by French poet André Breton with publication of his Manifesto of Surrealism. Breton was strongly influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud identified a deep layer of the human mind where memories and our most basic instincts are stored. He called this the unconscious, since most of the time we are not aware of it. The aim of Surrealism was to reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with rational life. The Surrealists did this in literarature as well as art. Surrealism also aimed at social and political revolution and for a time was affiliated to the Communist party. There was no single style of Surrealist art but two broad types can be seen. These are the oneiric (dream-like) work of Dalí, early Ernst, and Magritte, and the automatism of later Ernst and Miró. Freud believed that dreams revealed the workings of the unconscious, and his famous book The Interpretation of Dreams was central to Surrealism. Automatism was the Surrealist term for Freud's technique of free association, which he also used to reveal the unconscious mind of his patients. Surrealism had a huge influence on art, literature and the cinema as well as on social attitudes and behaviour.
Industry:Art history
Term Symbolism coined 1886 by French critic Jean Moréas to describe poetry of Mallarmé and Verlaine. Soon applied to art where describes continuation, in face of Impressionism, Realism, Naturalism, of traditional mythological, religious and literary subject matter, but fuelled by new psychological content, particularly erotic and mystical. Complex international phenomenon but especially French (Moreau, Redon, Gauguin), Belgian (Khnopff, Delville), and British (Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Watts, Beardsley).
Industry:Art history
A term associated with the style of symbolic representation of observed reality favoured by Paul Gauguin and his followers at Pont-Aven in the 1880s, whereby the artwork, rather than offering naturalistic representation, synthesises the subject-matter with the emotions of the artist and aesthetic concerns. An exhibition of 'Synthétisme' was mounted by the Pont-Aven artists in 1889 and the 'Groupe Synthétiste', including Gauguin and Emile Bernard, was founded in 1891. Another follower of the movement, Paul Sérusier, founded the Nabis group.
Industry:Art history
Loosely describes a group of artists who radically re-thought the object of art in the late 1960s early 1970s. They sought to connect with the political developments of the decade and make their art more responsive to the world around them. Building on the structures of Minimal art and Conceptual art, they reacted against art's traditional focus on the object by adopting experimental aesthetic systems across a variety of media including photography, dance, performance, painting, installation, video and film. Examples of Systems art include Richard Long who imposed rigid structures to his walks across the landscape.
Industry:Art history
French term for the improvisatory non-geometric abstract art that developed in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s and was the European equivalent to Abstract Expressionism in America. Tachisme is virtually synonymous with Art Informel (see that for list of artists). The name derives from the French word tache, meaning a stain or splash (e.g. Of paint). The introduction of the term to describe these post-war developments is usually credited to the critic Pierre Guéguen in 1951. However, it was used in 1889 by the critic Félix Fénéon to describe the Impressionist technique, and again in 1909 by the artist Maurice Denis referring to the Fauve painters.
Industry:Art history
Refers to a re-awakening of social, political and media activism brought on by access to cheap forms of communication, in particular, the Internet (see Net art). The phrase is thought to have come from the French philosopher Michel de Certeau, who suggested in his 1974 essay 'The Practice of Everyday Life' that as consumers were arguably the producers within our society, it was up to us to infiltrate the structures of power in a creative manner which would ultimately undermine them. Actions have included Flash-mob events, in which hundreds of people descend on a designated place at a particular time, clever manipulation of funding applications and rogue websites that purport to be official domains. Groups like Critical Art Ensemble print manuals on how to hack into classified websites, and the annual self-publishing event Publish and be Damned promotes fanzines, novels and comics bypassing the usual official channels.
Industry:Art history
Alain Minc and Simon Nora first used the term Telematic in the late 1970s to describe the way computers transmit information. In the early 1990s, the British artist and theorist Roy Ascott coined the term Telematic art to describe art that uses the internet and other digital means of communication, like email and mobile phones, in order to make a more interactive form of art. Much of the writing surrounding Telematic art focuses on the human aspect of the medium; the desire to communicate with another, even in the virtual world, and how this is central to the creation of the medium. (see Browser art; Digital art; Net art; Software art)
Industry:Art history
The technique of painting with pigments bound in a water-soluble emulsion, such as water and egg yolk, or an oil-in-water emulsion such as oil and a whole egg. Some tempera paints are made with an artificial emulsion using gum or glue. Traditionally applied to a rigid support such as a wood panel, the paint dries to a hard film.
Industry:Art history
