Wednesday, 9 December 2015
Bastide - Oxford Definition
A medieval fortified town built for the colonization or pacification of an area, particularly associated with the south of France; also in modern usage in Provence to describe a small country house.
Bas-Relief (or Basso-Rilievo) - Oxford Definition
‘Low relief’, that is relief sculpture in which the figures never project more than half their true depth from the background.
Basketry - Oxford Definition
The process of making containers out of a mesh of vegetable fibres in a technique similar to weaving. It is one of the oldest crafts and the earliest examples date from c.5000 BC in Iraq. Basketry probably preceded both textile weaving and pottery.
Basilica - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek basilik, ‘royal’] a church with aisles and a nave higher than the aisles. The nave was usually lit by the windows of a clerestory. Such churches first came into being in the Early Christian era and were modelled on Roman basilicas (large meeting places or halls of justice). With its longtitudinal axis, usually terminating with an apse at one end of the nave, the basilica plan was later adapted for Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals.
Base - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek basis, ‘that on which one stands’] the lower portion of any structure or architectural feature. Also the lower part of an heraldic shield. See CHIEF.
Basanite - Oxford Definition
A type of greywacke (conglomerate rock formed as a by-product of the decomposition of basaltic rock). It was highly prized and first used for sculpture by the ancient Egyptians who, until the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great c.332 BC, reserved it for statues of the gods. Varying in colour from very dark green to dark rusty brown, it was known to the Egyptians as the ‘stone of Bekhan’ and extracted, with considerable difficulty, from Mount Uadi Hammmt. In the 18th century Josiah Wedgwood invented and sold an imitation of basanite known as black basalt.
Basalt - Oxford Definition
A dark, hard (and therefore durable) igneous rock used for sculpture, for example in ancient Egypt and in parts of the southern Indian subcontinent. It is sometimes confused with the softer basanite.
Barrel Vault (or Tunnel Vault) - Oxford Definition
The simplest form of vault, consisting of a continuous vault of semi-circular or pointed section, unbroken in its length by cross vaults. Developed by the Romans, barrel vaults were used in Christian churches until the invention of rib-vaulting around 1100.
Baroque Revival - Oxford Definition
An architectural style adopted for many major public and institutional buildings in Great Britain and the British Empire between 1885 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Known at the time as the English Renaissance style, it adopted many of its motifs such as domes and cupolas from what is now regarded as the English Baroque style of Wren, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, and Gibbs. One of many notable examples of the Baroque Revival style is the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Courts), London, of 1900–6 with its central dome modelled after Wren's Royal Hospital at Greenwich.
Baroque - Oxford Definition
A term now generally used to describe art in Europe between c.1600 and c.1750. It is broadly accepted today that ‘Baroque’ implies dynamism and movement (particularly in architecture and sculpture), and a theatricality dependent on a mastery of space and geometry. The illusionism of Baroque painting is, nevertheless, founded on the ability to depict reality. All Baroque art, however outwardly dissimilar it may appear, is indebted to the technical achievements of the Renaissance. The term itself originated in the mid-18th century when used by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) in a derogatory sense, to describe the allegedly excessive art of the preceding era. The word ‘Baroque’ was claimed to derive from the Portuguese barroco meaning a ‘pearl or tooth of unequal size’. It therefore implied imbalance and ugliness, as opposed to the ideal beauty and perfection sought by Winckelmann through the imitation of ancient, more particularly Greek, art. It was not until the later 19th century that ‘Baroque’, through the writings of a series of distinguished German art historians, lost its pejorative connotations and was considered as an art that was vital and distinct from that of the hallowed Renaissance. The Baroque was originally associated with post-Counter-Reformation Italy and with the concept of the unity of the arts, best exemplified in the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), architect, sculptor, theatre set designer, and painter and the presiding artistic genius of 17th-century Rome. Essentially a Catholic art, the Baroque spread from Italy to Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, and later to southern Germany, numbering among its many masters such diverse figures as Borromini, Pietro da Cortona, and Rubens.
Barium Yellow (or Lemon Yellow)
A pale green-yellow pigment made by mixing solutions of neutral potassium chromate and barium chloride.
Barbizon School - Oxford Definition
A group of French landscape painters who worked in the forest of Fontainebleau south-east of Paris c.1830–70 and were based in the village of Barbizon on the western edge of the forest. The most important members were Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau, Charles Jacque, Jules Dupré, Narcisse Diaz, and Constant Troyon; also associated with them were Camille Corot and Charles Daubigny. Much of their forest imagery of ancient oaks and desolate heaths, sometimes populated by the local peasants and their livestock, was inspired by Dutch 17th-century art. Their choice of imagery represented a reaction to the rapid urban growth of Paris and answered an increasing demand from bourgeois patrons for paintings of rural landscape, often imbued with a melancholy Romanticism. The term ‘Barbizon School’ was not actually coined until 1890 when the Scottish dealer David Croal Thomson published his book The Barbizon School of Painters. By that time the so-called Barbizon artists were widely collected in Britain (especially Scotland), Europe, and the United States. Despite claims made for Barbizon as a forerunner of Impressionism, its aims, its rural setting, and the techniques it employed were really very different to those of that later Paris-based movement.
Barbican - Oxford Definition
An outwork, such as a watchtower, defending the entrance to a castle, fortress, or town.
Baptistery - Oxford Definition
Part of a church used for the rites of baptism. Sometimes found in an apse of the main building, more often a separate structure, usually circular or polygonal. Early baptisteries had large pools for total immersion, but it became more normal for symbolic baptism to be from a font.
Banquette - Oxford Definition
A French term used to describe a small bench without a back, usually upholstered.
Banding - Oxford Definition
An ornamental border used on furniture, made of contrasting woods, such as satinwood with mahogany.
Banded Column - Oxford Definition
A column whose shaft is broken up by the addition of bands or blocks of stonework. Such columns are a common feature of Mannerist and Baroque architecture.
Bamboo Furniture - Oxford Definition
Furniture made from the wood of the bamboo plant, mainly of the simple, household type, in use in Europe from the 19th century. The term is also used for furniture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries carved and painted to look like bamboo.
Bamboccianti - Oxford Definition
A group of painters in 17th-century Rome who worked in the style of Pieter van Laer (il Bamboccio or ‘clumsy little one’) from whom the name derives. They specialized in bambocciate (the singular is bambocciata or ‘childishness’), small genre scenes of everyday Italian life. Most of the artists in the group were of north European origin, though there were also some Italians such as Michelangelo Cerquozzi. Van Laer returned to his native Haarlem in 1639. See SCHILDERSBENT.
Balustrade - Oxford Definitino
The ensemble of rail or coping supported by balusters forming a railing.
Baluster - Oxford Definition
A short pillar or post supporting a rail or coping and forming part of a balustrade. Alternatively, a ceramic or glass vase or vessel, of elongated pear shape, derived from the architectural term.
Ballflower - Oxford Definition
The most distinctive ornament of English Decorated architecture in the early 14th century, particularly in Hereford and Gloucester cathedrals, it consists of a globular shaped carving, usually of three stylized leaves clutching a small ball. Ballflower (or ‘bellflower’) is an antiquarian term, suggesting analogies with a flower bud, or possibly small bells, as on an animal collar.
Thursday, 26 November 2015
Ballets Russes - Oxford Definition
A ballet and opera company founded in 1909 by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev; its combining the arts of visual design, music, choreography, and scenario derived from 19th-century theories of correspondence and Gesamtkunstwerk. It performed in Paris and toured Europe and the Americas: in 1922 it established a permanent base in Monte Carlo until it was disbanded on Diaghilev's death in 1929. Among the visual artists who designed costumes and sets for the company were Léon Bakst, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, and Picasso. The choreographers included Mikhail Fokine and Vaslav Nijinsky, and among the many famous dancers were Ninette de Valois, Anton Dolin, and Alicia Markova. The distinguished composers from whom Diaghilev commissioned work included Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Satie. The Ballets Russes was at the forefront in reforms in stage design and public taste and acted as an intermediary between the public and the avant-garde.
Baldacchino - Oxford Definition
A canopy over an altar, tomb, or throne. The original meaning of ‘baldachin’ is a silk cloth from Baghdad (baldacco in Italian). A baldacchino is supported by columns and can be portable or fixed, the most famous example of the latter being Bernini's great structure, built 1624–33, for the interior of St Peter's, Rome and placed, as a symbol of the enduring power of the Catholic Church, over the tomb of Christ's earthly successor, St Peter. See CIBORIUM.
Balcony - Oxford Definition
A platform projecting from the surface of the wall of a building, normally placed before windows or openings and protected by a railing or balustrade. Also an upper floor projecting into an auditorium.
Bakelite - Oxford Definition
An early plastic, invented in 1907 by Leo Hendrik Baekeland, a Belgian who had emigrated to the United States. Formally defined as ‘a condensation product of the reaction between phenol and formaldehyde’, bakelite had far greater properties of durability and resistance than its predecessor celluloid. Dubbed by Baekeland ‘The Material of a Thousand Uses’, bakelite was used for the manufacture of a wide range of products—fountain pens, radios, combs, cameras, costume jewellery, furniture, tableware and some of the vital components of cars, planes, and industrial machinery. Although eventually superseded by more advanced plastics, bakelite enjoyed a revival of popularity in the style-conscious 1980s.
Bailey - Oxford Definition
Originally used to describe the walls round a castle, but more specifically the outer space between the outer circuits of the castle and the keep.
‘Bad’ Painting - Oxford Definition
Takes its name from the title of an exhibition held at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York in 1978. More an approach than a movement, it was characterized by figurative subject-matter which was often eccentric, narrative, and crudely painted. It was the deliberate opposite of the emotionally detached Conceptualism and Minimalism, then held in many circles to be the ‘good’ art of the day.
Badigeon - Oxford Definition
A mixture (of plaster and ground stone) used to repair statuary or carving; also applied to a mixture of sawdust and strong glue used to repair blemishes in timber.
Backsteingotik - Oxford Definition
The later medieval brick (Backstein) architecture of northern Germany, particularly the great cathedrals (such as Lübeck), churches, and town-halls of the Hanseatic ports.
Backing - Oxford Definition
Protection, such as relining or a sheet of board or wood, placed at the back of a picture to save it from physical or atmospheric damage.
Back Frame - Oxford Definition
The structural part of a picture frame to which decorative carved mouldings may be attached. It is often made of wood inferior in quality to that of the carved mouldings as it forms an unseen part of the frame.
Azurite - Oxford Definition
Also known as blue malachite or chessylite, azurite is a deep-blue, crystalline mineral. It was used from at least early Roman times in powdered form as a paint pigment. Although unsuitable for use in oil paint, it worked well in tempera and watercolour until it was replaced by cheaper blues such as smalt.
Axminster Carpets - Oxford Definition
Carpets made in the small town in Devon where Thomas Whitty founded the Axminster carpet factory in 1755, the most important centre for hand-knotted carpet weaving in Britain. Its products were intended for the luxury market. In 1835 the factory closed and its equipment was relocated to Wilton.
Aventurine - Oxford Definition
Gold flecks in dark brown glass, made by mixing copper crystals with the molten glass, a technique discovered accidentally at Murano, near Venice, in the 16th century. A similar effect was also achieved on lacquer by sprinkling minute clippings of gold wire over the surface.
Automatism - Oxford Definition
A method of painting or drawing in which conscious control is suppressed, allowing the subconscious to take over. André Breton wrote in the Surrealist manifesto of 1924 of ‘pure psychic automatism’, of art being produced in the state of a dream. Although artists such as Arp and the Zurich Dadaists had shown an interest in such artistic phenomena a few years earlier, it was really the Surrealists who developed them and, through their later links, transmitted such an interest to the United States where it was taken up by Jackson Pollock and certain of the Abstract Expressionists.
Automata - Oxford Definition
Figures animated by clockwork or other mechanism, first made by the Greeks and Arabs, but particularly popular during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Early examples usually formed part of large clocks but they were also used as elaborate table decorations. By the 16th century a wide range of fantastic ornaments with miniature mechanisms were made in Switzerland, France, and England. From the 19th century onwards automata were made mainly as amusements for children.
Auto-Destructive Art - Oxford Definition
Art which is deliberately intended to self-destruct. The concept was developed in the 1950s, most notably by Gustav Metzger who originated the term and wrote several manifestos. An example of his auto-destructive art was his painting patterns in acid on nylon until the nylon was eventually destroyed. Another major exponent was Jean Tinguely, whose giant motorized junk assemblage Homage to New York self-destructed in front of a distinguished audience in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1960.
Auricular - Oxford Definition
A term used to describe ornament that is curved like the forms found in the human ear. More specifically, it is applied to a particular style of Dutch 17th-century silverware, derived from Dutch Mannerist engravings and German silver, in which the curving forms resemble the interior of a shell or the lobes of an ear. Auricular motifs also occurred on carved ornament in 17th-century Dutch and German furniture. The auricular style can be viewed as a transitional phase between Mannerism and Baroque.
Aureole - Oxford Definition
Light shown as encircling the head or body of a sacred personage (for example Christ, the Virgin, or saints).
Aulaeum - Oxford Definition
[Latin, ‘curtain’] generally used to describe a hanging in a home such as a curtain or tapestry. In antiquity it denoted the curtain, usually decorated pictorially, that was lowered as a backdrop to a play or performance; it was also the curtain that was hung in a temple to veil the statue of a deity.
Auditory - Oxford Definition
The section of an ancient church (in fact the nave) where the audience stood to hear the Gospel.
Auditorium - Oxford Definition
The main room or hall of a theatre or concert-hall where the audience assembles to listen and view the performance. In antiquity it denoted the place where orators could recite to an audience.
Aubusson Tapestries - Oxford Definition
Tapestries and carpets made at Aubusson in central France. The workshops, established in the early 16th century, were granted the status of Royal Manufactory by Louis XIV in 1665. Its finest period was the second half of the 18th century when it created hangings and furniture covers depicting scenes from the fables of La Fontaine and designs derived from contemporary prints, by artists such as François Boucher and Nicolas Lancret. Smooth-faced tapestry-woven carpets were produced there in the 19th century in large quantities.
Attributed To - Oxford Definition
An art-historical qualification found in collection and auction house catalogues implying that the attribution of a work to a particular artist carries some degree of uncertainty.
Attribute - Oxford Definition
A symbolic or decorative object conventionally associated with a given individual or activity. For example, in Roman mythology the peacock is the traditional attribute of Juno, the chief goddess of Olympus. The classical author Ovid (Metamorphoses) relates how Argus of the hundred eyes, set by Juno to watch over Io, was murdered by Mercury. In memory of Argus, Juno took his eyes and set them in the tail of her peacock.
Attic - Oxford Definition
A room inside or partly inside the roof of a building. The architectural term originated in the late 17th century, meaning a small Order (column or entablature) above a taller one. When spelt with a capital ‘A’ it describes anything relating to Attica, the region of eastern Greece in which Athens is situated, and often, by extension, to classical Greece in general.
Atrium - Oxford Definition
The inner court, roofed but with the centre open to the sky, in Roman domestic buildings; in Early Christian and medieval architecture it denoted an open courtyard in front of a church and was often in the form of a colonnaded quadrangle. The term is also used to describe large, top-lit spaces rising through several floors in modern buildings.
Atlantes - Oxford Definition
Sculptures of male figures, nude or scantily clad, supporting entablatures, balconies, or other decorative elements. The term derives from Atlas, the Titan condemned by Zeus to support the vault of heaven on his shoulders.
Athenaeum - Oxford Definition
A school founded by Hadrian (Roman emperor AD 117–38) in Athens, then considered the intellectual centre of the Graeco-Roman world, and dedicated to Athene, daughter of Zeus, patroness of the city and a benevolent and civilizing influence.
Astragal - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek, literally ‘knuckle-bone’] the term generally implies decorative enrichment of architectural features with bead and reel moulding, semi-circular in section. It is properly only applied to the ring that separates the capital from the shaft in a classical column. ‘Astragals’ is also a term used, particularly in Scotland, to denote glazing bars in windows.
Assyrian Revival - Oxford Definition
A style of the second half of the 19th century and early 20th which was inspired by Assyrian works of art, most specifically sculpture, of the 9th to 7th centuries BC. These had been brought to public attention in Britain and France by excavations at Khorsabad and Nimrud in the 1840s. Although its influence was far more limited than, for example, that of the Gothic Revival, the Assyrian Revival manifested itself both in the decorative arts, in the form of the ‘Assyrian style’ jewellery produced in England, and in the fine arts in the paintings of a number of later 19th century French Salon painters. Assyrian motifs were also incorporated in a fairly wide range of buildings in the early 20th century, particularly in the United States.
Ashlar - Oxford Definition
Blocks of masonry cut to even faces and square edges, laid in horizontal courses and used on the fronts of buildings (as opposed to the uncut stone or rubble often deployed on rear walls, unseen by most viewers).
Ashcan School - Oxford Definition
A term later applied in the 1930s to a disparate American school of realistic painting formed in the first decade of the 20th century and known as The Eight. Its members concentrated on scenes of everyday life derived from sketches made rapidly on the spot. Four of them, of whom the most famous was John Sloan, had been artist-reporters on the Philadelphia Press and had joined Robert Henri, generally credited as the founder of the Ashcan School, at his Philadelphia studio.
Arts and Crafts Movement - Oxford Definition
The name given to the movement begun in England during the second half of the Victorian period, which revived handicrafts and raised the standards of design. It was inspired by the writings and teachings of William Morris (1834–96) and John Ruskin (1819–1900), who both deplored the effects of mass-production and mechanization on design and harked back to the standards of craftsmanship of the Middle Ages. Morris set out to re-create a hand-crafted industry with his hand-produced textiles, wallpaper, book-designs, and furniture. His ideas and methods had a great influence on many craftsmen and designers of the period, such as C. R. Ashbee, Walter Crane, and A. H. Mackmurdo, and led to the foundation of a number of guilds, including the Guild of Handicraft and the Art Workers Guild. Designs, which usually incorporated naturalistic and plant forms, broke away from traditional Victorian fashions and, through exhibitions, had an influence on the developing Art Nouveau style. The difficulty of producing hand-crafted pieces for a mass market led to the decline of the movement, but it left a legacy of studio potters, weavers, and silversmiths in the 20th century who chose traditional methods over industrial mass-production.
Art Nouveau - Oxford Definition
A style which originated in the 1880s and lasted until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, encompassing the decorative arts, design, and architecture. Its characteristics were the use of flowing, expressive lines and whiplash curves, flower and leaf motifs, and female figures with long, undulating hair. The style developed in Britain from the Arts and Crafts Movement, but influences also included Japanese art, Rococo, and Celtic art. From Britain it spread rapidly across Europe and North America. Designs could be seen in The Studio and Jugend magazines, at large international exhibitions, such as in Paris in 1900, and in department stores, such as Liberty in London. The style took its name from a shop, La Maison de l'Art Nouveau, opened in Paris in 1895 by Siegfried Bing, although in Italy it was known as ‘Stile Liberty’ and in Germany and Scandinavia as ‘Jugendstil’. Art Nouveau could be seen throughout Europe in the architecture of Antonio Gaudi (Barcelona) and Victor Horta (Brussels), the interior designs of Henry van der Velde, the glass of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Émile Gallé, the jewellery of René Lalique, the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, and the posters of Alphonse Mucha. In Scotland, Charles Rennie Mackintosh developed a more rectilinear version in his architecture and furniture, which influenced artists of the Vienna Sezession and led the way to progressive industrial design in the 20th century.
Artists' Books - Oxford Definition
In the later 1960s and through the 1970s artists frequently turned to the book as a form suited to expressing ideas too complex for a single painting or sculpture. Dianne Vanderlip, to whom the term is credited, organized the exhibition Artists Books at the Moore College of Art, Philadelphia in 1967. International in scope, it consisted of works by major contemporary artists. Books could assume sculptural form as a pop-up book, or they might be investigations of the very nature of the book itself.
Art Informel - Oxford Definition
A term devised by the French critic Michel Tapié in 1952. A Parisian counterpart of Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel emphasized intuition and spontaneity over the Cubist tradition which had dominated École de Paris painting. The artists of Art Informel, such as Pierre Soulages, rejected the discipline and structure of geometric abstraction in favour of a less cerebral approach.
Art Informel - Oxford Definition
A term devised by the French critic Michel Tapié in 1952. A Parisian counterpart of Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel emphasized intuition and spontaneity over the Cubist tradition which had dominated École de Paris painting. The artists of Art Informel, such as Pierre Soulages, rejected the discipline and structure of geometric abstraction in favour of a less cerebral approach.
Art History - Oxford Definition
An academic discipline which, as its name implies, is concerned with the historical study of art in all its manifestations throughout the ages to the present day. Its origins can be traced back to the 1st century AD in the writings of Pliny the Elder who, in his Natural History, gave an account of the evolution of Greek sculpture and painting. In the Renaissance the Italian artist Giorgio Vasari, in his celebrated Lives of the Artists 1550, chronicled the rise to pre-eminence of Italian artists. His essentially biographical approach was followed by a number of writers in Italy and northern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Art history really took root in western thought and culture in the 19th century, particularly in the German-speaking countries where chairs of art history were established at various universities. Many of the major public museums and galleries were also established around this time. A further intellectual impetus came about in the 1930s, its unfortunate cause being the enforced diaspora of many German and Central European Jewish intellectuals under the persecution of the Nazi regime. Among the many unintentional beneficiaries of this were the Universities of London (with its specialized art-historical institutes) and Princeton. At the heart of the modern conception of art history lies an apparent contradiction between object-based research and a desire to endow the subject with every conceivable degree of intellectual respectability and nuance. The latter has led, particularly since the Second World War, to the ever more frenzied incorporation of aspects of social history, Marxism, structuralism, feminism, semiotics, etc., and to the adoption, in the worst cases, of an almost impenetrable jargon which serves to obfuscate rather than clarify understanding and appreciation of the visual arts.
‘Art for Art's Sake’ - Oxford Definition
A concept which originated in literary circles in France (‘l'art pour l'art’) in the earlier 19th century and transferred to art criticism in discussions of Manet and his circle. It was first used in print in English in 1868 and became associated with the Aesthetic Movement and the belief that the formal qualities of a work of art were more important than its subject-matter.
Arte Povera - Oxford Definition
A term coined in 1967 by Germano Celant, ‘Poor Art’ was made from everyday materials such as cement, twigs, or newspapers, in deliberate contrast to traditional sculptural materials such as stone and metal. Its often metaphorical imagery was taken from nature, history, or contemporary life. Arte Povera was a phenomenon of the later 1960s and 1970s and is primarily associated with artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto and Giulio Paolini, though it can also accurately be applied to non-Italian figures such as Joseph Beuys.
Art Deco - Oxford Definition
The decorative style of the 1920s and 1930s. The name was derived from the first major exhibition of decorative arts after the Great War, ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes’, held in Paris in 1925. The characteristic shapes of Art Deco were geometric or stylized, derived from the modernist forms of Art Nouveau. The style could be seen in the glass of René Lalique and Daum Frères, silver by Georg Jensen, and ceramics by Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper. Elements of the style, including bright colours, sunbursts, and Egyptian motifs, could be found in many mass-produced objects, furniture, wireless sets, and ceramics and in architecture such as cinema buildings.
Art Brut - Oxford Definition
[‘Raw art’] the term used by the French painter Jean Dubuffet (1901–85) to describe the kind of art he discerned in the work of psychotics, children, and amateur painters and of which he formed a large collection (now in a museum in Lausanne). In 1948 Dubuffet founded a company, the Compagnie de l'art brut, to promote Art Brut, but it folded in 1951. Dubuffet's own paintings were strongly influenced by such art, which he perceived as refreshingly direct and emerging spontaneously from the unconscious mind.
Arretine Ware - Oxford Definition
Red glossy pottery of the Roman period which often had decoration imitating repoussé metalwork. Its name derives from Arretium (Arezzo), which in the 1st century BC was the prime centre of production of such pottery, although it came to be produced throughout Europe. It was also known as Samian ware or terra sigillata.
Arras - Oxford Definition
The Old English name for a tapestry, called after the town of Arras in north-eastern France which exported many hangings to England.
Armorial - Oxford Definition
A coat of arms used as a decorative motif, especially on 18th-century Chinese export porcelain, where pieces were decorated in China with European coats of arms for export to Europe.
Armoire - Oxford Definition
A large cupboard with one or two doors, originating in France in the 16th century
Armature - Oxford Definition
An internal support or framework for a sculpture modelled in a soft material such as clay or wax. Armatures are usually made of iron or wood. They can also be inserted into casts of clay or plaster, or into a core before it hardens.
Architrave - Oxford Definition
The lowest of the three main parts of an entablature that rests on the abacus of a column. The term is used more loosely to describe the moulded frame that surrounds a door or window. It can also be applied to the ornamental mouldings round the exterior curve of an arch.
Archaic - Oxford Definition
Greek art of the period c.700–480 BC, preceding the Classical period, in which statues are characterized by a particular smiling expression (see KOUROS). Vase painting changed from black-figure to red-figure during this period. The term is also used to describe art which appears old-fashioned for its time.
Wednesday, 25 November 2015
Arch - Oxford Definition
A construction of a block of materials in a curved form used as a support, for example of a bridge, floor, or roof. The simplest arches are semicircular. Pointed arches appeared in Moorish and Gothic architecture. The following are the most commonly encountered types of arch: a basket or three-centred arch (French anse de panier) has a curve that resembles the handle of a basket, and is formed by a segment of a large circle continued left and right by two segments of much smaller circles; a drop arch is pointed with a span greater than its radii; an elliptical arch is a half ellipse with its centre on the springing line; a false arch is formed by progressively cantilevering or corbelling from the two sides with horizontal joints; a four-centred or depressed arch is a late medieval form—a pointed arch of four arcs springing from centres on the springing line; a horseshoe arch is often found in Islamic buildings and can be either a pointed or round horseshoe; a lancet arch is pointed, with radii much larger than the span; an ogee arch is pointed and usually of four arcs, the centres of two inside the arch, the other two outside, this produces a compound curve of two parts, one concave and the other convex, introduced c.1300 it was popular throughout the late Middle Ages, especially in England in the early 14th century; a relieving or discharging arch is a strengthening device placed in the wall above an arch or any opening to protect it from much of the weight that would otherwise fall on it; a shouldered arch consists of a lintel connected with the jambs of a doorway by corbels; a stilted arch is one with its springing line raised by vertical piers above the impost level; a strainer arch is one inserted across a nave or an aisle to prevent the walls from leaning; a Tudor arch is a late medieval pointed arch.
Arcanum - Oxford Definition
[From the Latin arcanum, ‘mystery’] the name given in the early 18th century to the formula for making true porcelain. An arcanist was someone in possession of this secret.
Arcade - Oxford Definition
A series of arches carried on piers, columns, or pilasters, either free-standing or attached to a wall (a ‘blind arcade’). The term is also used to denote a covered avenue with shops on one or both sides, for example Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly, London.
Arboretum - Oxford Definition
[From the Latin arbor, ‘a tree’] a garden in which trees are cultivated for display, study, or propagation.
Arabesque Style - Oxford Definition
The style of decoration epitomized by the use of interlaced patterns or arabesques. The term came into use in the 16th century when Europeans began to take an interest in the Arab world, and the style can be seen in the flowing lines intertwined with fruit and flowers used by Renaissance decorators.
Arabesque - Oxford Definition
Fanciful and intricate surface decoration based on geometrical patterns, found from classical art onwards and not necessarily of Arab origin. Unlike grotesque ornament it does not contain human figures.
Aqueduct - Oxford Definition
An artificial channel for carrying water, invented by the Romans, often raised on brick or stone piers carrying arches, above which the duct or casing was built to prevent evaporation or pollution.
Aquatint - Oxford Definition
A tonal method of printmaking that is used in conjunction with linear etching. The technique was invented by Jean Baptiste Le Prince (1734–81). As in etching, the copper plate is bitten by the action of immersion in acid. Granules of acid-resist laid on the plate result in a fine, reticulated patterning when the plate is inked and printed from, thus producing an effect not unlike a wash. For that reason, aquatint was particularly used in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain for the reproduction of watercolours and topographical views, for example in the prints of Paul Sandby and Thomas Girtin. There are two distinct methods of aquatint. In the first a dust-box is used to blow particles of resin onto the copper plate. In the second the resin is dissolved in alcohol which is brushed over the plate; as the alcohol evaporates, particles of resin are left on the plate. The artist can vary the tones of different parts of his aquatint by subjecting them to bitings in the acid-bath of differing duration. The parts he wishes to print relatively light in tone can be protected by coating with stopping-out varnish, resistant to acid; those that are to print darker can be rebitten.
Aquamanile - Oxford Definition
[From the Latin aqua, ‘water’, and manus, ‘hand’] a vessel to hold water for washing hands, either of the priest before the celebration of Mass or, more generally, of diners at meals. Aquamanilia were fashionable throughout Europe from the 13th to the 16th centuries. Many were in the form of strange beasts or animals, particularly lions, with the tail arched across the back to form the handle, filled with liquid through an opening in the back and poured through the mouth. They were usually cast in bronze and referred to in medieval texts as auricalcum because they resembled gold when polished—a few examples were actually made of gold or silver. In England in the 14th century they were also made of lead-glazed earthenware and in Italy of maiolica.
Apse - Oxford Definition
Usually a circular or multi-angular termination of a church at its eastern end, first found in Roman basilicas, with a rounded vault above. The apse was mainly a Continental development, whereas English Gothic churches tended to have square terminations. However, in the increasingly subtle and complex spatial development of later Gothic architecture apses are found in chancel-aisles or even as chapels on the east sides of transepts (Lincoln Cathedral).
Apron - Oxford Definition
An ornamental structure beneath the seat rail of a chair or settee, or between the legs of a commode.
Appliqué - Oxford Definition
A technique in which one fabric is applied on top of another, usually of contrasting colour or texture, creating a surface decoration. It was used, for example, in the Bayeux Tapestry in the 11th century.
Applied Art - Oxford Definition
Art that is created for useful objects and remains subservient to the functions of those objects. The broad range of the applied arts includes ceramics, furniture, glass, leather, metalwork, textiles, arms and armour, clocks, and jewellery.
Antwerp Mannerism - Oxford Definition
A term coined by the art historian Max Friedländer in 1915 to describe the style of painting practised by artists in Antwerp from c.1500 to 1530. It was essentially a late Gothic style and depicted religious subjects, though in its depiction of architecture it also displayed borrowings from the Italian Renaissance. Its most celebrated practitioner was Jan de Beer.
Antique - Oxford Definition
The physical remains of the Greek and Roman world, especially sculpture. The antique proved an inspiration for artists through the ages and, for many, a canon of perfection. Although traces of the antique are found throughout medieval art, it was in the early Renaissance of the 15th century that there was a strong revival of interest, with artists such as the sculptors Ghiberti and Donatello attesting to their admiration of antique statuary. Famous collections of antique art were formed, such as that of Lorenzo de' Medici in the gardens of San Marco, Florence, where the young Michelangelo first encountered the antique in any quantity. Vasari claimed that the perfection achieved by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael was due in large measure to their study of the classical statues in the Vatican collection, especially the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoon. By the mid-16th century the study of the antique was firmly established in the curriculum of many artists. In the following century it was famously defended by G. P. Bellori, collector, theorist, and friend of Poussin, in his essay Idea in which he claimed for classical statuary the embodiment of an absolute beauty. Further statues joined the academic canon such as the Farnese Hercules and the Medici Venus. After the perceived frivolities of the Rococo in the first half of the 18th century, the antique was seen as a necessary corrective, extolled in the writings of Winckelmann and manifested in Neoclassical art. The perception of classical art was radically altered in the late 18th century by the discoveries of travellers to Greece and the growing realization that many Roman works of art were actually copies of Greek originals. By extension, ‘antique’ can generally be used to refer to anything that is vaguely old. Thus an ‘antiques shop’ can sell a whole variety of fine and decorative art that ranges in ‘antiquity’ from a few decades to (much more rarely) thousands of years.
Antiphonary (or Antiphonal) - Oxford Definition
A type of choir book, used for the singing of the antiphons, the responses for the Divine Office. Although antiphonaries had been in common use since Early Christian times, they only began to be illustrated from around AD 1000. In the Middle Ages rich pictorial cycles were preferred, but from the 14th century word and music took precedence over pictures, the latter confined to historiated initials and grotesques in the margins.
Antimony - Oxford Definition
A metallic element, grey in colour, used especially in alloys, commonly with lead.
Anti-Macassar - Oxford Definition
A protective covering for the back of chairs and sofas, used to prevent macassar hair oil staining upholstery. It originated in the early 19th century with the introduction of hair oil in place of powdered wigs for men. Anti-macassars were made in a wide variety of materials, such as embroidered cloth, white crochet-work, Berlin woolwork, and patchwork. Popular until the end of the century, anti-macassars were also widespread in America, where they were known as ‘tidies’.
Antic - Oxford Definition
A term used to denote the fantastic, bizarre, or distorted nature of a particular piece of sculpture or decoration.
Anti-Art - Oxford Definition
A loosely used term associated with art which debunks the traditional categories or concepts of art. It was supposedly coined by Marcel Duchamp in 1914. Dada was considered the first anti-art movement.
Anthemion - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek anth, ‘flower, blossom’] it describes a band of architectural decoration consisting of alternating palmettes and lotus motifs or two types of palmette (one open, the other closed). Normally applied to a cornice or the necking of an Ionic capital, this type of ornament was much used in the late 18th century.
Antependium - Oxford Definition
The finish or covering for the front of an altar, often of elaborately woven fabric, or of metal. Also known as an altar-front or altar-facing.
Antechamber - Oxford Definition
An apartment through which access is gained to the main room beyond it.
Anneal - Oxford Definition
A toughening process in firing an object by exposure to a heat that is only slowly reduced. Normally applied to glass that would otherwise be too brittle, it is also sometimes used for metals, pottery, and porcelain.
Animation - Oxford Definition
A technique used in motion pictures or video production, produced frame by frame, in which inanimate objects, such as cartoon drawings or puppets, appear to move of their own accord.
Animal Style - Oxford Definition
A term applied to a style of ornamental decoration on portable goods which first appeared in the 7th century BC and which was spread eastwards by nomadic peoples from Europe to Asia. It did not become well known until the 18th and 19th centuries when the barrows (grave-mounds) of southern Russia were first excavated.
Anglo-Saxon - Oxford Definition
Art produced in England during the period between the Germanic invasions of the later 5th century and the Norman Conquest of 1066. The invading Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and possibly Frisians settled all over lowland England, pushing the native British into Wales and the far south-west. Paganism replaced the Christianity that had survived from late Roman times and little of artistic interest survives from these years. However, missions of the 6th and 7th centuries encouraged a conversion to Christianity which led to the construction of stone buildings and crosses and the production of liturgical books, vessels, and vestments. At the same time a strong Celtic influence from the outlying parts of Britain ensured a rich mixture of traditions. This was severely disrupted, however, by the Viking invasions beginning in the mid-9th century. The main artistic impact of Viking art was in the field of metalwork. Under the church reforms of the late 10th century there was a renewed flowering of art and architecture.
Andiron - Oxford Definition
A metal object to hold burning logs above the level of the hearth. Normally made of iron, finer examples were made of bronze, brass, or even silver.
Anastasis - Oxford Definition
[Greek, ‘raising or setting up again’] the Easter picture of the Orthodox Church, it depicts the ‘Harrowing of Hell’ with Adam and Eve rising from their graves and stretching out their hands to Christ.
Anamorphosis - Oxford Definiton
[From the Greek anamorphsis, ‘transformation’] a visual trick consisting of a deliberate distortion (such as elongation) of an object represented in a painting or drawing which, if viewed from a certain point or reflected in a curved mirror, appears normal again. Famous examples include the skull in Holbein's painting of The Ambassadors of 1533 (National Gallery, London) or the portrait of Edward VI (National Portrait Gallery, London).
Analytical Cubism - Oxford Definition
A term used to describe the first phase (1909–11) of the mature Cubism of Picasso and Braque. During this period of cerebral analysis and near-abstraction in their paintings they visually took objects apart and then reassembled them on the canvas in a different order, using a very shallow projection of space and a minimum of colour. Typical examples are Braque's The Portuguese (Kunstmuseum, Basel) and Picasso's The Accordionist (Guggenheim Museum, New York), both of 1911.
Amphora - Oxford Definition
An ancient Greek jar, of two-handled form, with flared neck, used for the storage of oil or wine.
Amphitheatre - Oxford Definition
An elliptical or circular space, surrounded by rising tiers of seats, used by the Romans for large-scale spectacles and gladiatorial contests. The best-known example is probably the Colosseum in Rome.
Amorino - Oxford Definition
[Italian, ‘little cupid’] a chubby, naked winged boy used in European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards. The type derives from Greek and Roman representations of the love-god Eros/Cupid but is reinterpreted in Christian art as a child-angel.
Amethyst - Oxford Definition
A gemstone which is a type of quartz, purple or violet in colour. It used to be the favourite gemstone of high officials of the Christian Church. The finest crystalline amethyst occurs in gas cavities in volcanic rocks in India, Uruguay, and Brazil.
American Scene Painting - Oxford Definition
A movement in American painting, beginning in the mid-1920s and culminating in the 1930s, which concentrated on realistic art with a social content. It was nationalistic and small-town in spirit, anti-modernist and anti-international, and was symptomatic of the isolationism of parts of America in the period following the First World War. Its first major painters were Charles Burchfield and Edward Hopper.
American Colonial - Oxford Definition
A style of architecture and furniture developed by settlers in America between 1620 and 1775 and deriving broadly from English styles. Perhaps the most notable achievements were the clapboard (weather-boarded) timber frame houses with posts and beams and sometimes a verandah. These were broadly based on the Georgian style and in the 18th century a simplified form of Palladianism was developed. Gradually distinctive regional variations evolved in centres such as Albany, Boston, and Philadelphia.
Abulatory - Oxford Definition
A covered place in which to walk, such as a cloister. It is more specifically used to describe the aisle, used for processions, enclosing a sanctuary and joining two chancel-aisles behind the high altar—as in an ambulatory church.
Ambrotype - Oxford Definition
An early photographic process, which involved bleaching a glass negative and laying it on a black background, the ambrotype was a cheaper and easier alternative to the daguerrotype. It became a popular portrait medium in the 1850s.
Amboyna - Oxford Definition
A richly coloured, tightly grained wood, commonly used during the 18th century and Regency period, usually as a veneer.
Ambient Light - Oxford Definition
A term used to describe general, even illumination of a scene from no apparent direction, as opposed to directional or localized illumination.
Amber - Oxford Definition
A fossil resin found most extensively in East Prussia on the shores of the Baltic Sea, it was often fashioned into beads and ornaments and used for the decoration of furniture. Medieval writers frequently refer to it in their recipes as a binding agent, but it is extremely hard and therefore not particularly soluble: they may have confused it with other softer resins.
Amateur - Oxford Definition
Of French origin, ‘amateur’ originally denoted a lover of art and, by implication, often a collector. French sale catalogues of the 18th century were frequently of the collections of ‘un grand amateur’. By the end of that century, however, the word had taken on a different meaning in English, describing someone who practised art for pleasure and interest, but not for money, i.e. professionally. Amateur artists usually worked in the graphic media—drawing and watercolour—in which they received instruction from drawing-masters or drawing manuals.
Altarpiece - Oxford Definition
A picture, sculpture, screen, or decorated wall standing on or behind an altar in a Christian church. There are two main types: the reredos, which rises from the ground behind the altar; and the retable, which stands either on the back of the altar or on a pedestal behind it.
Altar - Oxford Definition
Originally the elevated table or podium on which sacrificial offerings to the deities were placed. In Christian churches the altar is consecrated for the celebration of the Sacrament. The principal or high altar is at the east end of the church, other altars devoted to particular saints may be in the side chapels. From the 6th century onwards altars were of stone and often enclosed relics in the altar-slab. The Reformation encouraged the use of wooden Communion tables instead.
Thursday, 19 November 2015
Almshouse - Oxford Definition
A house for the shelter of the poor or old persons. Almshouses were privately endowed and in England the majority came into being to fill the gap in such care after the Dissolution of the Monasteries completed by Henry VIII 1539–40. Almshouses often comprise ranges of houses round a courtyard with a hall and a chapel, though in their humbler form they can consist of just a few houses.
Almonry - Oxford Definition
A building near the church in an abbey provided with offices for the distribution of alms and accommodation for the almoner.
Alloy - Oxford Definition
A metal made by combining two or more metallic elements to give greater strength, for example tin mixed with copper creates the alloy bronze, widely used for sculpture since ancient times.
All-Over Painting - Oxford Definition
A term first applied to the Abstract Expressionist drip paintings of Jackson Pollock which appeared to have no top or bottom and implied extension beyond the canvas. Later the term was applied to the works of other artists which had an overall design of almost identical elements or a nearly uniform colour-field, both of which, by implication, could extend beyond the confines of the canvas.
Allied Artists' Association - Oxford Definition
Formed in London in 1908, it was a group of progressive, pro-French artists which was led by Walter Sickert. Their models were Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh and their first exhibition was held in 1908. The Camden Town Group evolved from the Association in 1911.
Alliance of Youth - Oxford Definition
An artists' association formed in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1909, it was pro-western and particularly pro-Munich (where artists such as Kandinsky, Jawlensky, and Münter had settled). It held exhibitions 1910–13.
Allegory - Oxford Definition
The representation of an abstract quality or idea through a series of symbols or persons given symbolic meaning. Allegories were particularly popular in Renaissance and Baroque art. For example, Rubens's famous Allegory of War and Peace (National Gallery, London) of 1629–30, the political sub-text of which was the desired peace between England and Spain, is enacted by Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, driving away Mars, God of War, in order to protect the fulsome figure of Pax (Peace).
Alla Prima - Oxford Definition
[From the Italian, ‘at first’] used to describe painting directly on to the canvas without preliminary underdrawing or underpainting (i.e. building up successive layers of paint). Synonymous terms are ‘wet on wet’, ‘direct painting’, and the French au premier coup.
All'Antica - Oxford Definitino
[From the Italian, ‘after the antique’] denotes a work of art based on a classical model.
Alentours - Oxford Definition
[From the French, ‘surroundings’] denotes a type of border for tapestries, first produced at the Gobelins factory for a set illustrating Don Quixote in 1714. Whereas earlier tapestry surrounds had simulated a picture frame, alentours consisted of trompe l'oeil garlands of flowers, ribbons, birds, etc. which filled the greater part of each composition with a figurative scene, often in a simulated picture-frame, placed in the centre.
Albumen Print - Oxford Definition
Photographic prints made from glass negatives on paper coated with albumen (white of egg) containing salt and sensitized before use with silver salts. The method came into widespread use in the 1850s and its popularity lasted until the 1890s.
Album - Oxford Definition
A bound and mounted collection of drawings, prints, or photographs. The word is sometimes included in the nomenclature for an otherwise unidentified artist who is associated with a particular album, for example the so-called Master of the Egmont Albums (active in the second half of the 16th century), so named after the albums put together in the early 18th century by the first Earl of Egmont.
À La Reine - Oxford Definition
A term used to describe chairs without arms and with slightly inclined flat backs.
À La Polonaise - Oxford Definition
A term used to describe an elaborate canopy over a bed, heavily draped and culminating in a peaked, tent-like structure.
Alabaster - Oxford Definition
A form of gypsum or limestone, alabaster is a soft and easily carved stone which has been particularly used for sculpture that is not exposed to the elements. It is found, for example, in the wall reliefs of ancient Assyrian palaces and in the tomb effigies of medieval European churches. It was much used in late medieval and early Renaissance sculpture in northern Europe, with Malines being a notable centre of excellence. More specifically, in England it was frequently used from the mid-14th century until the Reformation for small carvings of religious scenes. A particular centre of manufacture was Nottingham. Since its revival as a popular medium in late 18th-century Italy for ornamental objects such as vases, pedestals, and clock-cases, it has continued to be used for such purposes to the present day.
Aisle - Oxford Definition
The lateral divisions of a basilica or church parallel to the nave, choir, or transept, from which they are divided by piers, columns, or, more rarely, by screen walls. Normally the aisles are lower than the central part of the building, but in German hall churches they are the same height as the nave.
Airtwist - Oxford Definition
Spiral patterns drawn from air bubbles enclosed in the stem of a wine glass, used as a form of decoration in the 18th century. White or coloured threads in spiral patterns were known as ‘opaque twist’.
Airbrush - Oxford Definition
An instrument, looking rather like an outsize fountain pen, which sprays paint or varnish by means of compressed air. It was first developed in the earlier 20th century in the fields of the graphic and commercial arts. Later it was adopted by various artists in movements such as Pop art and Superrealism who wished to give a smooth finish to their works, often in conscious imitation of the airbrush's association with the world of advertising.
Agréé - Oxford Definition
[French, ‘accepted’] denoted a French artist who, on the strength of winning the Prix de Rome, had been awarded a travelling scholarship to study at the French Academy in Rome, at the end of which period he was expected to submit a morceau de réception (‘reception piece’) to the main Academy back in Paris, on the acceptance of which he would be reçu (‘received’) into full membership of the Academy.
Agrafe - Oxford Definition
A French term for a curved, convex relief ornament whose sinuous form is suggestive of shells, soft marine creatures, and cartouches. They were often used as window keystones in the first half of the 18th century.
Agora - Oxford Definition
An open space in an ancient Greek city which served as a market-place and general place of rendezvous. It was usually surrounded by colonnades.
Agate Ware - Oxford Definition
Pottery made to resemble agate. Different coloured clays were combined to imitate the veining of the hard stone. It was made by the Romans and revived in the 18th century in Staffordshire.
Agate - Oxford Definition
A fine-grained, banded chalcedony which can come in all colours in a variety of strengths. It is often an opaque grey which can be sliced and polished to bring out the concentric patterns. It can also be dyed to strengthen the colour, an art known to the Romans. By the 16th century the most important deposits were in the Rhineland and a local industry sprang up at Idar-Oberstein, creating gemstones from locally mined agate. In the mid-19th century there were 153 polishing shops in the area and agate had to be imported from Brazil. Agate was used for a wide variety of decorative objects. The Egyptians used it for cylinder seals, ring stones, and small vessels. Later it was employed as a layer stone from which cameos were cut and mounted into jewellery, as well as other small items such as handles for knives and forks, manicure sets, and pill boxes. The main sources of good agate today are in Brazil and Uruguay.
After-Cast - Oxford Definition
A cast, normally in metal, made from a mould taken from a finished piece of sculpture. Because metal shrinks on cooling, the after-cast is smaller than the original. Its details are also usually less precise.
After - Oxford Definition
When used before an artist's name in descriptions of a work of art, for example ‘after Rubens’, it denotes that the design or painting is of a later date and made in direct imitation of a known work by Rubens. In the context of reproductive printmaking, ‘after’ preceding an artist's name denotes the original design was by him but the print was made by another, i.e. a specialist printmaker.
Aesthetics - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek aisthtika, ‘perceptible things’] the philosophy of the beautiful in art and taste. The term was first used around the middle of the 18th century by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.
Aesthetic Movement - Oxford Definition
A movement in the fine and decorative arts and architecture of the 1870s and 1880s, which manifested itself first in Great Britain and subsequently in the United States. Its defining beliefs were in the supremacy of the beautiful and the autonomy of a work of art, adapted from the French concept of ‘art for art's sake’. The artist who most closely approached these ideals was the American James McNeill Whistler, most famously in the Peacock Room he decorated for F. R. Leyland (now in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington, DC). In addition to the peacock, the sunflower was also a popular motif of the Aesthetic Movement, and featured, for example, in the tiles and vases designed by William de Morgan. Among critics, the movement found its most eloquent supporters in Walter Pater, Algernon Swinburne, and Oscar Wilde.
Aeropittura - Oxford Definition
A later manifestation of Futurism, concerned with the sensations induced by the technical phenomena of modern life, especially flying. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the manifesto Aeropittura in 1929 and exhibitions of the same name were held in 1931, 1932, and 1934, the last in Berlin, where the artists enjoyed the patronage of Goebbels.
Aerial Perspective - Oxford Definition
The illusion of distance in the landscape in a painting achieved by making objects paler and bluer the further they are from the viewer. The term was invented by Leonardo da Vinci, though aerial perspective had been known since antique mural painting. Among its most famous later exponents were the landscape painters Claude Lorrain and Turner. The French Neoclassical landscape painter P.-H. de Valenciennes, in his fundamental treatise of 1800, Élémens de perspective…, described aerial perspective as ‘the effect of vaporous or ambient air between different objects’. For perspective achieved by linear means, see PERSPECTIVE.
Aedicule - Oxford Definition
[From the Latin aedicula, ‘a small building/temple’] originally a shrine set in a temple containing a statue framed by columns supporting an entablature and a pediment. The term is used generally to describe the architectural framing of doors, windows, or other openings with columns or pilasters supporting gables, pediments, lintels, etc.
Aedicular Frame - Oxford Definition
The architectural, sometimes free-standing type of picture frame which evolved in Italy in the 14th century and was used in the Renaissance for altarpieces and devotional images. In structure it drew on both classical and ecclesiastical architecture and reflected regional styles. In its simplified, less ambitious, form it was also known as a ‘tabernacle frame’
Adobe - Oxford Definition
Unburned brick dried in the sun, most commonly used for building in Spain and Latin America.
Adam Style - Oxford Definition
An architectural style based on the works of the Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728–92) and his brothers John and James. Essentially a picturesque version of Neoclassicism and particularly concerned with decoration, it dominated British taste between 1760 and 1780 and greatly influenced interior and furniture design. It was characterized by clarity of form, subtle detail, and, in architectural decoration, by unified schemes of clear colouring, often set against relatively shallow and elegant stucco work. Fine examples of Adam's decorative style can be seen at Syon House, Middlesex (1762–4) and Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire (1761).
Actions (or Aktionismus) - Oxford Definition
Proceeding from the notion of the artist as actor and from an interest in the nature of the creative process, Actions was a catch-all term for live works presented inside art galleries or on city streets in the late 1950s and the 1960s by artists such as Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni. Around 1960 Klein started to make paintings with ‘living’ brushes—nude women covered in paint and ‘blotted’ onto canvas. Manzoni's ‘living sculptures’ consisted of individuals signed by the artist. ‘Aktionismus’ was a group of Viennese artists who created thematically related Actions beginning around 1960. They explored Freudian themes of erotic violence using bodily materials such as blood, meat, and semen in specially staged events. Their investigation of the dark side of the psyche was partly a reaction against the interest in creative abstraction which had characterized the 1950s. Actions and Aktionismus both anticipated the body art which followed in the later 1960s and 1970s.
Action Painting - Oxford Definition
A technique of painting in which paint is dribbled, splashed, and poured over the canvas. Its most famous exponent was the American painter Jackson Pollock (1912–56). The term was first used in 1952 by the critic Harold Rosenberg in his affirmation of the then current belief that a painting should reflect the actions of its creation. See ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM.
Acrylic Colour - Oxford Definition
An emulsion paint employing a synthetic medium (acrylic resin), first used in the 1940s. It has proved a serious rival to oil paint with many modern artists, most famously with David Hockney. It is soluble in water, quick-drying, and can be used on a variety of surfaces. Acrylic colours do not yellow and can be easily removed with mineral spirits or turpentine. For these reasons they are often used in conservation work.
Acroterion - Oxford Definition
The plinth or pedestal at the apex and lower extremity of a pediment, it can support statuary or be left empty.
Acropolis - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek, literally a ‘high city’] the citadel of a Greek city, placed at its highest point and containing the chief temples and buildings, as at Athens.
Acrolithic - Oxford Definition
[From the Greek, literally ‘stone-ended’] originally used to describe ancient Greek figure sculpture in which the extremities were made of stone or marble. The main body was of wood (often painted and gilded) or limestone, with head and arms and feet of marble. In a development from Greek acrolithic sculpture, many Roman sculptures were made from a combination of materials such as porphyry, bronze, and marble.
Acanthus - Oxford Definition
A plant found on the shores of the Mediterranean and particularly admired by the Greeks and Romans for the elegance of its leaves. The acanthus was widely used in classical architecture as a decorative feature, possibly the earliest instances being on the Parthenon and the Erechtheion in Athens. It was often employed to decorate the lower part of the capitals of the Corinthian and Composite Orders.
Academy Board - Oxford Definition
An inexpensive board, made of cardboard, used as a surface for oil painting since the early 19th century, primarily for small paintings and sketches. Its cheapness made it particularly popular with amateurs.
Academy - Oxford Definition
[From the ancient Greek akadma, a gymnasium near Athens where Plato taught his pupils philosophy] an association or school of artists, scholars, etc. arranged in a professional institution. In recent times the term was first used in Italy in the early 15th century to describe meetings of literati. By the 16th century it had been adopted to describe artists' corporations which included the teaching of subjects such as drawing after antique statuary and the live model, and also the study of anatomy, geometry, perspective, history, etc. Thus painting was raised from the status of a mere craft, as had been the case with medieval artists' guilds, to that of a liberal art. Around 1600 the concept of the artists' academy spread from Italy to Spain and the Netherlands, but took particularly powerful root in Louis XIV's France with the establishment in 1648 of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Its teaching methods remained current in most art schools, such as the English Royal Academy (founded in 1768), until the mid-20th century.
Académie - Oxford Definition
A drawing of a human figure, usually a nude or partially clothed model, executed as a practice study or for purposes of instruction. So called because such studies were particularly associated with the courses of instruction given at the French Académie, both in Paris and Rome, where many fine chalk (usually red chalk) drawings were produced by the major artists of that national school, particularly in the 18th century.
Abutment - Oxford Definiton
A solid architectural block, usually of masonry, designed to counteract the lateral thrust of a vault or arch. Abutments were typically used in massive, round-arched Romanesque buildings.
Abstraction-Création - Oxford Definition
The name taken by a group of abstract painters and sculptors formed in Paris in 1931 in the wake of the first international exhibition of abstract art held there in 1930. The association, whose membership at one time rose to 400, was a loose one embracing a wide range of non-figurative art including Constructivism (Gabo, Pevsner, and Lissitzky), Neo-Plasticism (Mondrian), the expressive abstraction of Kandinsky, and some forms of abstract Surrealism. Founded as a successor to the Cercle et Carré, it was intended, as its name implies, to encourage ‘creative’ abstraction. It arranged group exhibitions and published an illustrated annual Abstraction-Création: Art non-figuratif 1932–6. The emphasis increasingly fell on geometrical rather than expressive or lyrical abstraction due to the predominance of the Constructivists and the supporters of De Stijl. After c.1936 the activities of the association dwindled as some of the leading Constructivists moved from France to England.
Abstract Expressionism - Oxford Definition
A description generally applied to aspects of modern American painting in the late 1940s and early 1950s which were concerned both with the various forms of abstraction and with psychic self-expression. Abstract Expressionism was more of an attitude than a style, drew on many historical sources from Van Gogh to Matisse and Kandinsky, and embraced a wide variety of paintings ranging from the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock to the intensely coloured floating shapes of Mark Rothko. Although the term had been known since the 1920s, when it was used to describe Kandinsky's abstract paintings, it was first employed to describe contemporary painting in 1946, by Robert Coates in the New Yorker magazine. Championed by the critics Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg (who in 1948 declared that the future of western art depended on this phase in American painting), Abstract Expressionism gained widespread acceptance in the 1950s, at first in America and then internationally (the first American movement to do so), the European variant being Art Informel, a term coined by Michel Tapié in 1952.
Abstract Art - Oxford Definition
A term which can generally be applied to any non-representational art (most decorative art, for example), but which is more specifically used, from the early 20th century onwards, to describe painting and sculpture which are deliberately non-representational. Implicit to abstract art is the notion that the work of art exists in its own right, and not necessarily as a mirror of reality. The Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) is generally credited with producing the first abstract painting c.1910. In the decade 1910–20 a number of movements such as Cubism, Suprematism, and De Stijl either developed or embraced abstraction. In its many forms abstraction has been one of the main preoccupations of much modern art.
Abrasion - Oxford Definition
A damaged area of paint in a painting, resulting from the scraping, rubbing down, or grinding away of the upper paint layers.
Abbey - Oxford Definition
The buildings occupied by a religious community, partially or wholly secluded from the world, of monks or nuns under the jurisdiction of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys frequently competed with each other as centres of pilgrimage and were often richly endowed with relics, furnishings, and libraries of great importance. During the Middle Ages abbeys were major centres of architecture and painting. For a discussion of the architecture, see MONASTERY.
Abacus - Oxford Definition
The slab at the top of a capital which supports the entablature above. In the classical Orders the Greek Doric abacus is a thick square slab; in Greek Ionic, Tuscan, Roman Doric and Ionic it is square with a moulded lower edge; and in the Corinthian and Composite it has concave sides with the corners cut off.
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