UNIT 3: KEY TERMS
Action Painting
Nonrepresentational painting in which the physical act of applying paint to a support in bold, spontaneous gestures supplies the expressive content. First used to describe the work of certain Abstract Expressionist painters. (22.1)
Minoans
Of the Minoan culture, based on the island of Crete at the southern end of the Aegean; Centered on the great city of Knossos, Minoan culture can be traced to about 3000 B.C.E. We take the name from a legendary king called Minos, who supposedly ruled at Knossos and whose queen gave birth to the dreaded creature, half-human, half-bull, known as the Minotaur. The palace at Knossos features post-and-lintel construction with painted columns topped by pillow-like capitals. Numerous frescoes survive at Knossos-some fragmentary, some restored-and from these we have formed an impression of a lighthearted. cheerful people devoted to games and sport. The fresco seen here pictures a charging bull in a landscape. Many graceful curves- the bull's back and horns, the rolling hills-reinforce our experience of motion, captured to the split second. Other murals feature acrobats leaping over bulls, servants carrying wine vessels, sea life, dancers, and landscapes. ( The Aegean, Ch. 14)
Ziggurat
the largest structure built by the Sumerians. In ancient Mesopotamian architecture, a monumental stepped structure symbolically understood as a mountain and serving as a platform for one or more temples. (Pictured: Nanna Ziggurat ca 2100-2050 BCE) (Mesopotamia Ch.14)
Baroque
1600-1750 The period of European history from the 17th through the early 18th century, and the styles of art that flourished during it. Originating in Rome and associated at first with the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, the dominant style of Baroque art was characterized by dramatic use of light, bold colors and value contrasts, emotionalism, a tendency to push into the viewer's space, and an overall theatricality. Pictorial composition often emphasized a diagonal axis, and sculpture, painting, and architecture were often combined to create ornate and impressive settings.
French Revolution
1789 Neoclassicism- "new classicism," a Western movement in painting, sculpture, and architecture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that looked to the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. Neoclassical artists worked in a variety of individual styles, but in general, like any art labeled Classical, Neoclassical art emphasized order, clarity, and restraint. Along with the stern "Roman family values" promoted by Neoclassicism, the late 18th century was under the spell of a new taste for simplicity and naturalness. One of the people most taken by the new informality was Louis XVI's queen, Marie-Antoinette. Another advocate of all that was unaffected was the queen's favorite portrait painter, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun. Inspired in part by the spareness of Classical costume (note the women in David's painting) and in part by an ideal of the "innocent country girl." Vigée-Lebrun coaxed her highborn models into posing in airy white muslin dresses, their hair falling loosely about their shoulders, a straw bonnet tied with a satin ribbon on their head, and a flower or two in their hands. In an attempt to repair the queen's reputation with the public as both frivolous and flirtatious, however, Vigee-Lebrun was asked to paint a different sort of portrait of the queen-Marie-Antoinette and Her ChildrenThe portrait came too late; far too much damage had already been done for a single painting to repair. The nation was teetering on the brink of financial disaster. Popular opinion blamed the deficit on the queen's extravagant ways and also suspected her of shocking personal vices. Vigée-Lebrun herself recorded that when the frame for the large canvas was carried into the Salon, where the painting was to be shown to the public for the first time, voices were heard saying, "There is the deficit." Although Vigée-Lebrun later made several copies of her own portraits of the queen, she never again painted Marie-Antoinette from life. Within two years, revolution had swept the country, ultimately destroying the monarchy and the aristocracy. The artist fled and took refuge outside France. The queen died by the guillotine.
Cubism
A movement developed during the early 20th century by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In its most severe "analytical" phase, Cubism abstracted the forms of the visible world into fragments or facets drawn from multiple points of view, then constructed an image from them which had its own internal logic. A severely restricted palette (black, white, brown) and a painting technique of short, distinct "touches" allowed shards of figure and ground to interpenetrate in a shallow, shifting space. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoisselles d'Avignon (21.19)
Impressionalism
A movement in painting originating in the 1860s in France. Impressionism arose in opposition to the academic art of the day. In subject matter, Impressionism followed Realism in portraying daily life, especially the leisure activities of the middle class. Landscape was also a favorite subject, encouraged by the new practice of painting outdoors. In technique, Impressionists painters favored alla prima painting, which was put into the service of recording fleeting effects of nature and the rapidly changing urban scene
Surrealism
A movement of the early 20th century that emphasized imagery from dreams and fantasies. A distinctive contribution of Surrealism to art was the poetic object-not a sculpture as it had traditionally been understood, but a thing. Surrealist objects often juxtapose incongruous elements to provoke a shiver of strangeness or disorientation. Possibly the most famous of all Surrealist works is Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory (21.25), a small painting that many people call simply "the melted watches." Dali's art, especially here, offers a fascinating paradox: His rendering of forms is precise and meticulous-we might say super-realistic-yet the forms could not possibly be real. The Persistence of Memory shows a bleak, arid, decayed landscape populated by an odd, fetal-type creature (some think representative of the artist) and several limp watches-time not only stopped but also melting away. Perhaps in this work Dali's fantasy, his dream, is to triumph once and for all over time.
Rococo
A style of art popular in Europe in the first three-quarters of the 18th century. Rococo architecture and furnishings emphasized ornate but small-scale decoration, curvilinear forms, and pastel colors. Rococo painting, also tending toward the use of pastels, has a playful, lighthearted, romantic quality and often pictures the aristocracy at leisure. Like the Baroque, Rococo is an extravagant, ornate style, but there are several points of contrast. Baroque, especially in the south, was an art of cathedrals and palaces; Rococo was more intimate, suitable for the aristocratic home and the drawing room. Baroque colors are intense; Rococo leans more toward the gentle pastels. Baroque is large in scale, massive, dramatic; Rococo has a smaller scale and a lighthearted, playful quality. The Rococo style of architecture originated in France but was soon exported. We find some of the most developed examples in Germany, especially in Bavaria.
Post-Impressionism
A term applied to the work of several artists—French or living in France—from about 1885 to 1905. Although all painted in highly personal styles, the Post-Impressionists were united in rejecting the relative absence of form characteristic of Impressionism. The group included Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat
Process Art
A trend in Postminimalism in which the subject of a work of art was what it was made of (materials) and how it was made (processes). In Process art, the meaning of a work embraced what it was made of and how it was made. Process artists were attracted to unconventional materials. They were willing to surrender complete control to embrace chance and unpredictability, and to create ephemeral or temporary works.
Neolithic
Aka the New Stone Age. The period of the Stone Age is associated with the ancient Agricultural Revolution. It follows the Paleolithic period, beginning around 9000 BCE, and continues for the next 4000 years. The Neolithic is named for new types of stone tools that were developed, but these tools were only one aspect of what in fact was a completely new way of life. Instead of gathering wild crops as they could find them, Neolithic people learned to cultivate fruits and grains. Farming was born. (The Oldest Art, Ch. 14)
Abstract Expressionism
An American art movement of the mid-20th century, characterized by large ("heroic") scale and nonrepresentational imagery. An outgrowth of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism emphasized the artist's spontaneous expression as it flowed from the subconscious, which in turn was believed to draw on primal energies. See also action painting. (22.1) Painters associated with the first major postwar art movement are commonly referred to as the New York School. Not a school in the sense of an institution or of instruction, the New York School was a convenient label under which to lump together a group of painters also known as the Abstract Expressionists; Primary among them were Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Abstract Expressionism had many sources, but the most direct influence was Surrealism, with its emphasis on the creative powers of the unconscious and its technique of automatism as a way to tap into them. The painters of the New York School developed highly individual and recognizable styles, but one element their paintings had in common was scale: Abstract Expressionist paintings are generally quite large, and this is important to their effect. Viewers are meant to be engulfed, to be swept into the world of the painting the way we may be swept into a film by sitting so close that the screen fills our entire field of vision. The quintessential Abstract Expressionist was Jackson Pollock, who by the late 1940s had perfected his "drip technique." To create such works as Number I, 1949
Pop Art
An art style of the 1960s, deriving its imagery from popular, mass-produced culture. Deliberately mundane, Pop art focused on the overfamiliar objects of daily life to give them new meanings as visual emblems. Even the name is breezy: "pop," for popular. The artists of Pop found a gold mine of visual material in the mundane, mass-produced objects and images of America's popular culture: comic books, advertising, billboards, and packaging; the ever-expanding world of home appliances and other commodities; and photographic images from cinema, television, and newspapers. Like Neo-Dada, Pop drew art closer to life, but life as it had already been transformed into images by advertising and the media. An example is Andy Warhol's Gold Marilyn Monroe. (21.10)
Postminimalism
An umbrella term for the diverse trends that followed in the wake of Minimalism, including Process art, Body art, Performance art, Installation, Land art, and Conceptual art. Postminimalism was prevalent from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s In a variety of interrelated trends, artists variously reacted against aspects of it or developed possibilities that it suggested. Collectively, these trends are known as Postminimalism, which unfolded from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s. Neither styles nor movements in the traditional sense, the diverse trends of Postminimalism dramatically expanded-permanently, it seems--the ways in which art could be made, the materials it could be made from, and the kinds of objects and activities that could be offered and interpreted as art.
Conceptual Art
Art created according to the belief that the essence of art resides in a motivating idea, and that any physical realization or recording of this idea is secondary. Conceptual art arose during the 1960s as artists tried to move away from producing objects that could be bought and sold. Conceptual works are often realized physically in materials that have little or no inherent value, such as a series of photographs or texts that document an activity. They are often ephemeral. Arising in the mid-1960s as yet another echo of Dada, Conceptual art is especially indebted to Marcel Duchamp, whose self-proclaimed goal was to eliminate what he called the "retinal aspect" of art-its appeal solely to the eye-in favor of an engagement with ideas. His ready-mades, such as Fountain (see 2.2), can be considered Conceptual works, although they made their appearance before the term was invented. In itself, Fountain has no particular visual interest. But the shift brought about by calling a urinal Fountain and exhibiting it as art is food for thought. Conceptualism is not a style but a way of thinking about art, and artists have put it to many different uses. Many Conceptual artists worked with language, for words, when written, take on a double life as image and idea.
Cycladic
Between the Greek peninsula and the continent of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea known as the Aegean. Greek culture arose on the lands bordering this small "sea within a sea," but the Greeks were preceded in the region by several fascinating cultures that thrived on the islands that are so plentiful there. The artistic cultures of the Aegean parallel in time those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, for the earliest begins about 3000 B.C.E. There were three major Aegean cultures: the Cycladic, centered on a group of small islands in the Aegean. Cycladic art is a puzzle because we know almost nothing about the people who made it. It consists almost exclusively of nude female figures such as the one illustrated here (2400 BCE) -simplified, abstract, composed of geometric lines and shapes and projections. The figures vary in size from the roughly 1½-foot height of our example to approximately life-size, but they are much alike in style. Most of the figures have been found in burial settings. This, together with the standardized iconography, suggests some sort of ritual use. It seems likely that the figures were associated with ideas about fertility; they may well represent a female deity. To modern eyes, the Cycladic figurines seem astonishingly sophisticated in their sleek abstraction of the human figure. ( The Aegean, Ch. 14)
Abstract (non-representational)
Descriptive of art in which the forms of the visual world are purposefully simplified, fragmented, or otherwise distorted.
Mannerism
From the Italian maniera, meaning "style" or "stylishness," a trend in 16th-century Italian art. Mannerist artists cultivated a variety of elegant, refined, virtuosic, and highly artificial styles, often featuring elongated figures, sinuous contours, bizarre effects of scale and lighting, shallow pictorial space, and intense colors. Scholars generally date the end of the High Renaissance in Italy to the death of Raphael in 1520. The next generation of artists came of age in the shadow of this great period and with two of its most venerated artists, Titian and Michelangelo, still going strong. Of the various artistic trends that emerged, the one that has interested art historians most is known as Mannerism The word Mannerism was originally used to suggest that these painters practiced an art of grace and sophistication. Later critics characterized Mannerism as a decadent reaction against the order and balance of the High Renaissance. Today, however, most scholars agree that Mannerism actually grew out of possibilities suggested by the work of High Renaissance artists, especially Michelangelo, whose influence on the next generation was enormous. His own late work also changed to reflect new ideas.
Northern Renaissance
In the northern countries of Western Europe-Switzerland, Germany, northern France, and the Netherlands-the Renaissance did not happen with the sudden drama that it did in Italy, nor were its concerns quite the same. Northern artists did not live among the ruins of Rome, nor did they share the Italians' sense of a personal link to the creators of the Classical past. Instead of the exciting series of discoveries that make the Italian Renaissance such a good story, the Northern Renaissance style evolved gradually out of the late Middle Ages, as artists became increasingly entranced with the myriad details of the visible world, and better at capturing them.
Acropolis
Like many Greek cities, Athens had been built around a high hill, or acropolis. Ancient temples on the Acropolis had crumbled or been destroyed in the wars. In about 449 B.C.E, Athens' great general Perikles came to power as head of state, and set about rebuilding. He soon embarked on a massive construction program, meant not only to restore the past glory of Athens but also to raise it to a previously undreamed-of splendor. Perikles friend the sculptor Phidias was given the job of overseeing all architectural and sculptural projects on the Acropolis. The work would continue for several decades, but it took an amazingly short time given the ambitious nature of the scheme. By the end of the century, the Acropolis probably looked much like the reconstruction shown here. The large, columned building at lower right in the photo is the Propylaea, the ceremonial gateway to the Acropolis through which processions winding up the hill would pass. At left in the photo, the building with columned porches is the Erechtheum, placed where Erechtheus, legendary founder of the city, supposedly lived.
Renaissance
The period in Europe broadly spanning from 1400 to 1600, characterized by a renewed interest in Classical art, architecture, literature, and philosophy. The Renaissance began in Italy and gradually spread to the rest of Europe. In art, it is most closely associated with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. centuries that painting, sculpture, and architecture began to earn their privileged positions in Western thought. The word renaissance means "rebirth," and it refers to the revival of interest in ancient Greek and Roman culture that is one of the key characteristics of the period. Scholars of the day worked to recover and study as many Greek and Latin texts as possible. Referring to themselves as humanists, they believed that a sound education should include not only the teachings of the Church and the study of early Christian writers but also the study of the liberal arts-grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, politics, and moral philosophy-about which the pre-Christian world had much to teach. The implications of these ideas for art were tremendous. Artists became newly interested in observing the natural world, and they worked to reproduce it as accurately as possible. Studying the effects of light, they developed the technique of chiaroscuro; noting that distant objects appeared smaller than near ones, they developed the system of linear perspective; seeing how detail and color blurred with distance, they developed the principles of atmospheric perspective.
High Renaissance
The period known as the High Renaissance was a brief but glorious time in the history of art. In barely twenty-five years, from shortly before 1500 to about 1520, some of the most celebrated works of Western art were produced. Many artists participated in this brilliant creative endeavor, but the outstanding figures among them were unquestionably Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The term "Renaissance man" is applied to someone who is very well informed about, or very good at doing, many different, often quite unrelated, things. It originated in the fact that several of the leading figures of the Renaissance were artistic jacks-of-all-trades. Michelangelo was a painter, sculptor, poet, architect-incomparably gifted at all. Leonardo was a painter, inventor, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist, musician, and all-round intellectual. In our age of specialization, those accomplishments seem staggering, but during the heady years of the Renaissance nothing was impossible. Leonardo is the artist who most embodies the term "Renaissance man"; many people consider him to have been the greatest genius who ever lived. He was possessed of a brilliant and inquiring mind that accepted no limits. Throughout his long life. he remained absorbed by the problem of how things work, and how they might work.
Mesopotamia
The region known to the ancient world as Mesopotamia occupied a large area roughly equivalent to the present-day nation of Iraq. Fertile soil watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers made Mesopotamia highly desirable, but a lack of natural boundaries made it easy to invade and difficult to defend. The first cities of Mesopotamia arose in the southernmost area, a region called Sumer. By about 3400 B.C.E, some dozen Sumerian city-states-cities that ruled over their surrounding territories had emerged. The Sumerians were the first people to leave behind them not just artifacts but also words: The wedge-shaped marks that they pressed into damp clay to keep track of inventories and accounts developed over time into a writing system capable of recording language. Called cuneiform (Latin for "wedge-shaped"), it served as the writing system of Mesopotamia for the next three thousand years. (Mesopotamia, Ch. 14)
Jaques Louise David
Thee leaders of the French Revolution continued to evoke the example of Rome and to admire Roman civic virtues. Neoclassicism became the official style of the Revolution and Jacques-Louis David its official artist. David served the Revolution as propaganda minister and director of festivals. As a deputy to the National Convention of 1792, he was among those who voted to send his former patron Louis XVI to the guillotine. One of the events orchestrated by David was the funeral of the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. David staged the exhibition of Marat's embalmed cadaver to the public, and he memorialized the leader's death in what has become his most famous painting The Death of Marat.
Body Art
a practice in which artists made art using their own body as a material or medium. A trend in Postminimalism in which the artist's body was used as a medium or material. Body art is a variety of Performance art.
Fauvism
a style of painting with vivid expressionistic and nonnaturalistic use of color that flourished in Paris from 1905 and, although short-lived, had an important influence on subsequent artists, especially the German expressionists. Matisse was regarded as the movement's leading figure. A short-lived but influential art movement in France in the early 20th century that emphasized bold, arbitrary, expressive color.
Industrial Revolution
an economic and social upheaval. Many would argue that the Industrial Revolution, which began slowly in the last half of the 18th century, is still going on. It is difficult to overestimate the impact-social, economic, and ultimately political-of the change from labor done by hand to labor done by machine. Within a few decades, the machine drastically altered a way of life that had prevailed for millennia. People who had formerly worked in their homes or on farms suddenly were herded together in factories, creating a new social class-the industrial worker. Fortunes were made virtually overnight by members of another new class-the manufacturers. Naturally, all this upheaval was reflected in art. At the beginning of the 19th century, then, Western civilization faced a totally new world.
American Revolution
ending just six years before the French. During the relatively brief period covered by this chapter, the American colonists had progressed from the "starving time" of Jamestown to a nation of people capable of independence and self-government. The American colonies' war against British rule was led by George Washington, who became the new nation's first president. The American artist Charles Willson Peale painted Washington's portrait ( 17.21) while the war still raged. The painting captures an image of an American leader. The flags of the military units Washington defeated at the Battle of Princeton lie at his feet as the vanquished soldiers are led from the battlefield by his troops. On the right side of the painting is an assembly of symbols of the general's military might. The new American flag flies above an obedient page leading a well-trained horse. Both direct their attention toward their leader, who leans against the cannon that secured his victories. Washington dominates the composition, a pillar of strength silhouetted against a stormy sky that clears in his wake. We may compare his confident, casual pose and direct gaze to Louis XIV's formality and haughty superiority (see 17.9). Unlike the godlike absolute monarch, however, Washington appears to us in Peale's painting as both a hero and a compassionate and thoughtful human being.
Dada
group of artists waiting out the war in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, banded together as a protest art movement called Dada. What did Dada protest? Everything. Dada was anti. Anti art, anti middle-class society, anti politicians, anti good manners, anti business-as-usual, anti all that had brought about the war. In that sense, Dada was a big no. But Dada was also a big yes. Yes to creativity, to life, to silliness, to spontaneity. Dada was provocative and absurd. Above all, it refused to make sense or to be pinned down More an attitude than a coherent movement, Dada embraced as many kinds of art as there were artists. In Germany, Dada developed a biting political edge in the work of Hannah Höch and others (see 3 9. 10). In France, its absurd and philosophical aspects came to the fore, especially in the work of Marcel Duchamp, whose "ready-mades" such as Fountain (see 2.2) probed the border between art and life in a way that later generations have returned to again and again.
Performance Art
in which the artist appears "live and in person." Performance had been a recurring presence in 20th-century art, beginning with events staged by Futurist and Dada artists in the first decades of the century and continuing through Kaprow's happenings (see 22.8). During the Postminimal years, such actions, events, and happenings became more formalized and the name Performance art came into general use. Much of the Performance art of the 1970s concerned the relationship between artist and spectator. Body art is a variety of Performance art.
Mycenaeans
n the mainland of Greece. Mycenaean culture, so called because it formed around the city of Mycenae, flourished on the south coast of the Greek mainland from about 1600 to 1100 B.C.E. Like the Minoans, the Mycenaeans built palaces and temples, but they are also noted for their elaborate burial customs and tombs-a taste acquired from the Egyptians, with whom they had contact. It seems probable that Egypt or Nubia was also the source of the Mycenaeans' great supplies of gold, for they alone among the Aegean cultures were master goldsmiths. Burial places in and around Mycenae have yielded large quantities of exquisite gold objects, such as a rhyton, or drinking cup, in the shape of a lion's head. The craftsmanship of this vessel is wonderful, contrasting smooth planar sections on the sides of the face with the more detailed snout and mane. ( The Aegean, Ch. 14)
Expressionism
refers to art that is a result of the artist's inner or personal vision and flows from feeling. An art movement of the early 20th century, especially prevalent in Germany, which claimed the right to distort visual appearances to express psychological or emotional states, especially the artist's own personal feelings. More generally, and with a lowercase e, any art style that raises subjective feeling above objective observation, using distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect.
Prehistoric
the time or period before recorded or written history, also known as the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age era. This period focuses on the region around the Mediterranean Sea. Here in Africa, the Near East, and Europe, the story of Western art begins. In these lands, beginning around 3000 BCE, ancient civilizations. (The Oldest Art, Ch. 14)
Minimalsim
to rid art of representation and personal expression once and for all, and to allow viewers to see "the whole idea without any confusion." Critics tried to categorize their work in many ways-Primary Structures, Reductive art, and Literalism-but the label that stuck, despite the artists' objections, was Minimalism.
Avant-garde
was originally a military term, referring to the detachment of soldiers that went first into battle. By the 1880s, younger artists began to refer to themselves as the avant-garde. They were the boldest artists, going first into uncharted territory and waiting for others to catch up. Their "battle" was to advance the progress of art against the resistance of conservative forces. Newness and change became artistic ideals. Each generation, even each group, believed it was their duty to go further than the one before. As the 20th century began, the idea of the avant-garde was firmly in place, and two of art's basic building blocks, color and form, were the focus of great innovation.