This Section presents most of the conventional & widely accepted schools & groupings that are used by art historians & when painting is being discussed. Consequently they cannot be ignored. However, this does not mean that they are being endorsed or should be regarded as a useful way of making sense of the artistic terrain. One obvious weakness of the customary groupings is that there are a bewildering number. See Section 9 for an alternative attempt at classification.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
AMERICAN ABSTRACT ARTISTS (AAA):
It was formed in 1936 to promote members’ work etc. It held exhibitions from 1937. Balcomb Greene was the first president & early members included Albers, Bolotowsky, de Kooning, Pollock & David Smith. In 1940 members picketed MoMA demanding that American art be shown. After the was abstraction received recognition & its activities dwindled OxDicMod
AMERICAN SCENE PAINTING:
The term probably came from Henry James’ collection of essays & impressions The American Scene, 1907, published after his 21 years abroad. By 1920 the term was beginning to be used by writers & artists who desired an aesthetic & spiritual renewal of modern America technological society inspired by native sources & traditions. In general, American scene painting was characterised by a descriptive realist style & by a hostility to French influence, the avant-garde, to modernism which had dominated American art from the 1920s, & also to abstraction. In 1929 Waldo Frank’s book The Rediscovery of America provided an analysis of American life, & the boundaries of American subject matter were broadened to include & to celebrate the everyday lives & experience of average Americans. In the 1930s the term was closely linked to the art of the Regionalists for which See Regionalism. The growing climate of isolationism was the context within which American scene painting emerged OxDicMod, Grove 1 pp 272-73. Another important factor was the Great Depression which led to a reassessment of what it was to be an American. The 1930s witnessed a confused, partisan & sometimes embittered debate between those who wanted an art based on traditional native values, which involved realism, & those who thought that abstraction had now become [or should become] a universal international language Barter p14. Representative & important American Scene painters include Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, Reginald Marsh & Thomas Hart Benton
ANCIENTS:
Term: This was first use in Palmer’s letter of 1827 to George Richmond. They were a group who met at Blake’s London house & stayed with Palmer in Shoreham. They held monthly meetings in London during the 1830s TurnerRtoI pp 3-4
Characteristics: They admired Blake & the grand old men of the Renaissance, especially Durer & Michelangelo, but not the naturalistic landscapists that were then current; they valued imagination & visionary experience highly; their pictures were mainly small & elaborately worked, with the use of archaic media & in a linear style; their subjects were drawn from the Bible or from a vision of a golden age of pastoral innocence & abundance. They were mostly intensely religious, though of different persuasions TurnerRtoI pp 3-5
Artists: Calvert; Finch; Giles (Palmer’s cousin); Palmer; George Richmond; Sherman; Henry Walter; Arthur & Frederick Tatham, with Linnell as an associate TurnerRtoI p4
The ANGRY PENGUINS
An Australian art & literary avant-garde journal, 1921-46, launched by the poet & critic John Reed, 1901-81, & his wife. It was the focus for a group of Expressionist-like painters who to create authentic Australian art. They include Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval & Albert Tucker, & were opposed by a group of Social Realists. The rivalry helped to make Melbourne, the place of publication, a lively artistic centre in the early 1940s OxDicMod
ANTI-ART:
Term: It came into use in the 1950s for works or activities that reject & debunk the accepted values & purposes of art & was supposedly coined by Duchamp in 1914. Dada was the first such movement & it was with reference to this, & to Duchamp’s ready-mades, that the label became popular. It is a loose term which has been extended to Conceptual & Perfomance art [& must embrace Funk Art] L&L, OxDicMod. OxDicTerms
ART ABSTRACT;
History: It was an exhibition society formed in Belgium in 1952 as a successor to Jeune Peinture Belge by Jean Milo, Jo Delahunt, Pol Bury, Georges Carrey, Leopold Plomteux , George Collignon & Jan Saverys to promote abstract art. There was no unifying style & their work differed widely TurnerEtoPM p41
ART DECO:
This was a decorative style of the 1920s & 30s OxDicTerms. The term was not coined until the 1960s but comes from the Exposition Internationale de Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925. Art Deco owed something to the bold colour of Fauvism, the geometry of Cubism, & the machine forms of Constructivism & Futurism. The style is characterised by sleek geometrical or stylised forms & bright, sometimes garish colours. Although the term is seldom applied to painting it is reflected in the streamlined forms of de Lempicka etc OxDicMod [Degut entry in Grove]
ART INFORMEL, Art Autre, Lyrical Abstraction & Tachism:
Meaning: Art Informel was a term coined in 1950 by the French critic Michel Tapie. It is also referred to as Art Autre, Lyrical Abstraction & Tachism. These terms embrace an abstract art movement in Europe, & especially in France, parallel to Abstract Expressionism in America. In Art Informel expressive impulses not only took precedence over form but the painted marks (tache) were often virtually unpremeditated. Hence it was diametrically opposed to the cool rationalism of geometric abstraction TurnerEtoPM pp 52-3, OxDicMod, L&L
Development: Art Informel began in the mid-1940s, & flourished during the 1950s, but was to some extent anticipated by Kandinsky, Dubuffet, Masson & especially Hans Hartung. The movement was initiated in two exhibitions organised by Georges Mathiew in 1947-8, & Art Informel quickly gained a high profile in Parisian cultural life TurnerEtoPM pp 52-4, 389. Its popularity owed much to its perception as an expression of artistic freedom & a break with the authoritarianism that had led to the War. By the early 1960s Art Informel was forcefully challenged by Nouveau Realism & Pop art which rejected its preoccupation with personal expression & wanted more engagement with everyday life TurnerEtoPM p55
Painters:
(a) French purists: Apelle; Atlan; Bezaine; Bissiere; Bryen; Burri; Corneille; Davie; de Stael; Dubuffet; Esteve; Fautrier; Hartung; Jorn; Lapicque; Manessier; Mathieu; Michaux; Riopelle; Soulanges; Wols TurnerEtoPM pp 52-3, 389-90; Everitt.
(b) Those who are more controlled & less spontaneous: Bezaine, Manessier, Polakoff TurnerEtoPM p390.
(c) Other Europeans: Cuixart, Millares, Saura & Tapies in Spain; Burri, Corpora & Vedova in Italy; Baumeister, Bissier, Dahmen, Gotz, Emil Schumacher & Theodor Werner in Germany; Alan Davie, Patrick Herron, & William Scott in Britain; & Guiette, Lataster, van Lindt & Jean Milo in the Low Countries TurnerEtoPM p54 [There must be more to read & say]
ARTISTIC FORUM & MANES UNION OF ARTISTS (Czech Republic):
The Forum was established in 1863 to establish a unified national programme with which artists in different fields would be associated. Josef Mannes was the first president of its Artists Group. Participation in the National Reawakening climaxed in the early 1880s when it was involved in the in the building & decoration of the National Theatre in Prague. After the Forum had become conservative a Manes Union of Artists was established in 1887 with the aim of developing the Bohemian artistic traditions he had embodied. The Union, which in the mid-1890s comprised almost the entire generation of younger artists, associated itself with the Secessionist movement in central Europe Grove2 p546 & 20 p254
ARTISTS INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION (AIA):
Development: It was founded in 1933 to promote the class struggle & in 1934 held an exhibition The Social Theme. In 1935 it became a Popular Front group & was re-entitled Association. Its chief spokesman was Francis Klingender who argued that aesthetic values will differ so long as there are different classes Spalding1986 p122. In 1935 there was an exhibition Artists Against War and Fascism. By 1936 there were over 600 members. Those who belonged to AIA, or lent their names & paintings to AIA exhibitions included Augustus John, Stanley Spencer, Laura Knight, Muirhead Bone, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Dodd Procter, & Algernon Newton, Moore, Nash, Burra & Eric Gill. The English Surrealist group joined in 1936. The AIA brought together both older established painters & a group of younger realist artists including James Boswell, James Fitton, Paul Hogarth, Victor Passmore, Cliff Rowe, Carel Weight & Percy Horton Harrison p252, M&R pp 2, 15, TurnerEtoPM p57, Spalding1986 pp 124-5.
During the late 1940s a battle developed over how the Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia should be viewed, & between those who supported the Communist Peace Movement & wanted to retain the [vaguely worded but activist] Political Clause in the AIA constitution & those who did not. At an early stage Sir Edward Marsh, Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant resigned. Those who in 1950 wanted the AIA to take an active part in the peace movement & which meant supporting the Communist backed British Peace Committee included Joseph Heerman, John Minton & Victor Passmore. Three observers were sent to its conference in 1949 but at a general meeting of the AIA a motion to support the Committee in every possible way was defeated & one deploring its failure to protest against Communist aggression in Korea was passed. Finally, in 1953 the Political Clause was replaced. The AIA continued as an exhibiting society until 1971 M&R pp 3, 79-82, 91, TurnerEtoPM p57.
Characteristics: Realism, though there was no stylistic unity Spalding1986 p124. Its leading members came from the applied arts, & were not painters, sculptors or architects, unlike Unit One Harrison p252
The ASSOCIATION OF REVOLUTIONARY ARTISTS OF GERMANY (ARBKD or ASSO):
This was a Communist Party organisation founded in March 1928. It aimed to produce art that was politically effective & a tool for revolution. Prominent members included Otto Griebel, Alix, Lex—Nerlinger, & Laszlo Weisz/Peter Peri Wikip
Australian Impressionism. See Impressionism, Australian in Section 9
ART NOUVEAU, JURGENSTIL
It was also known as Sezessionstil in Austria, Lo Stile Liberty in Italy, Arte Joven in Spain, & Modern Style in Russia. The movement s was a development largely in design & the applied arts after 1880. It evolved in Britain from the Arts & Crafts Movement & then spread rapidly. The principal distinguishing feature of Art Nouveau is the emphasis on the decorative elements in art instead of the previous priority accorded to formal, representational & emotional values. It was characterised by flowing & expressive lines, long sinuous tendril-like (“whiplash”) curves, & shapes & patterns derived from organic structures & simple geometrical forms. Much Art Nouveau design was rich, sensuous & [erotic], & aimed at the well-to-do. However, Charles Rennie Mackintosh & Joseph Hoffman appealed to a wider public. There was a reaction against Art Nouveau from 1914. The graphic art of Aubrey Beardsley, & the posters & paintings of Alphonse Mucha, belong to Art Nouveau L&L, OxDicTerms, Masini p12.
ARTS & CRAFTS MOVEMENT:
[This was a movement that began during the latter part of the 19th century with the aim of improving architecture & design. As such it is largely irrelevant so far as painting is concerned. However, it may be observed in passing that] a co-founder of the Art Workers Guild, a leading Arts & Crafts institution, was the painter & illustrator Walter Crane Farr p137. This was by no means the only intersection between painting & Arts & Crafts. Its Scottish champion was Patrick Geddes, 1854-1932. He viewed society as an organism which could be sick or healthy with art being necessary for its healthy functioning, & he promoted murals in Edinburgh, particularly by Phoebe Traquair who was the most successful Arts & Crafts exponent in Scotland Macmillan pp 20-23. Moreover, it is notable that Socialism was a common faith among those who belonged to the Arts & Crafts movement & anti-capitalism was an important element in the development of Modernism for which see Modernism in Context in Section 7 & in particular the box entitled Anti-Capitalism, 1885-1910 Farr pp 179 –80
ASSOCIATION OF THE ELEVEN or VEREINIGUNG DER XI
This was founded by Liebermann & Ludwig Von Hofmann primarily as a progressive exhibition society in opposition to the Academy & Wilhelm II. It was wound up when the Session took place RA1900 p391, Wikip
Les AUTOMATISTES:
This was a radical group of Canadian abstract painters active in Montreal from 1946 to about 1954. The dominant figure was Paul-Emile Borduas & the other six original members were Marcel Barbeau, 1925-2016; Roger Fauteux, 1920-2021 ; Pierre Gauvreau, 1922-2011 ; Fernand Leduc, 1916-2014 ; Paul Mousseay, 1927-1991 ; & Jean-Paul Riopelle (Jeab), 1923-2002. In 1947 they all participated in the first exhibition of abstraction in Canada & in 1949 a manifesto attacking various aspects of Canadian life & culture including the Church. It caused outrange. Group exhibitions were held in 1951 & 1954. OxDicMod.
BAD PAINTING:
Concept: In 1978 there was an exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Arts New York that flouted the modern notion of progress towards a goal in the name of freedom & opposed emotionally detached Minimalism. The pictures were characterised by figuration, the rejection of traditional draftsmanship, crude painting, deformation of the figure, scorn for the standards of good taste, cheery optimism & a mixture of Classical & popular art sources. Only two of the artists have a continuing reputation OxDicMod, OxDicTerms, Exhibition Press Release
Verdict: Bad Painting was “lumpen-post-modernism” Hughes1991 p393
Painters: Neil Jenny, William Wegman OxDicMod
The BAMBOCCIANTI:
Term/Nature: It was a group of painters in Rome, who from about 1625 worked in the manner of Pieter van Laer, nicknamed il bambocciante, & who strictly speaking, were in his immediate circle. They specialised in low-life genre. All were from northern Europe except for Michelangelo Cerquozzi. The fact that so few were Italians indicates that popular Realism was unable to compete with the deep-rooted grand style in Italy TurnerRtoI pp 78, 31, Waterhouse1962 p62, H&P p86
Background: Italy was a cultivated society that looked on the Roman poor with extreme dictate, the Arcadian sentiment being purely literary Haskell p133
Influences: Caravaggio’s low life painting; Breughel & early Low Country genre Waterhouse1962 p62, H&P p86
Development: Bamboccianti work sold well but it was attacked from the start by writers & artists. Criticism was particularly bitter in late 1640s & 50s when the market was depressed. However aristocratic patronage provides Cerquossi etc with an escape route Haskell pp 137, 140-1
Characteristics: Works were small & depicted trivial & base contemporary life subjects. Nevertheless, they presented a whitewashed & poetic view of what was a truly violent & poverty-stricken society. They portrayed the safe poor who were painted unthreateningly small against increasingly large backgrounds that reduced them to the picturesque. Their subjects included taverns, street vendors, carnivals, charlatans, travellers attacked by brigands TurnerRto I p31, Haskell pp 133-4, Brigstocke
Innovations: The objective yet sympathetic depiction of the proletariat as seen in the shadows & dim light of an urban setting H&P p86
Patronage: Its concentration in theocratic hands in Rome may have led to the fizzling out of the Bamboccianti’s Realism & its degeneration into picturesque sentimentality. The Barberinis commissioned paintings of pseudo-medieval jousts & ceremonies Haskell pp 55-6, 384. Nevertheless, there was a ready market for popular genre in Rome & their pictures of a contented peasantry were popular with noble Italian collectors Haskell pp 55-6, 384, Waterhouse1962 p62, Brigstocke.
Reception: Bamboccianti work was excoriated by Albani, Passeri, Reni, Rosa, Saachi: classicizing artists who deeply resented the popularity of such low subjects TurnerRtoV p188, Haskell p141, Brigstocke
Painters: Andries & Jan Both; Bourdon (early); Cerquossi; Dujardin; Goubau; Helmbreker; Lingelbach; Miel; Sweerts; Pieter & Roeland van Laer; van Staveren; Reuter Wijck TurnerRtoI p31; Briganti
Legacy: Bamboccianti work gave rise to the term bambocciate meaning trifles & it profoundly influenced Dutch & Italian 18th century low-life painting. Ceruti painted the rural dregs in the 18th century although there was no direct link Turner RtoI p31, Waterhouse1962 p150
BARBIZON SCHOOL:
Development: It was a a recognisable school of artists from the early 1830s to the 1870s. They mostly painted landscape & were associated with the village of Barbizon on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleu, which is near Paris. The school has been seen as the first group of French landscape painters to focus truly on nature & to ignore the classical conventions of Claude & Poussin TurnerRtoI p33, OxDicArt
| Were the Barbizon Painters Innovatory?. This is not universally accepted. It has been argued by Novotny that the romantic, idealistic elements in the work of the Barbizon masters were far stronger than the naturalistic, & that, because of their artistic heritage, their landscapes were characterised by a tranquil, harmonious cohesion in which all elements gave unity to the picture. The demand for unity of tone meant that a grey, cloudy sky, brown soil & varieties of green were combined to form a whole. Although there were signs of a freer use of colour, & the Fontainbleau painters discovered a real native landscape, it was not until Impressionism that an idealised conception of nature was abandoned Novotny pp 177-80. This view of Barbizon & of Impressionism involves issues that are discussed elsewhere See in particular Tone & Tonal, Light & Dark, Progress in Art ? |
Background: This was anticipated by Georges Michel Vaughan1978 p208
Influences: Barbizon was inspired partly by Dutch 17th century landscape & partly by English painting, especially by Constable & Bonnington TurnerRtoI p33, OxDicArt. Constable’s Hay Wain had been exhibited at the Salon of 1824 & had caused a sensation Langmuir pp 268, 276
Links: In the later 1840s Rousseau, Millet (1849), etc settled at Barbizon OxDicArt. Rousseau, Dupre & Millet were close friends TurnerRtoI p34
Subjects/style: They shared a Romantic desire to break with convention escape drab urbanism but they also had a Realist preference for humble down-to-earth landscape or peasant genre scenes, though Millet was more poetic. They had a broad, painterly & rough technique & favoured greens & earth colours. Their style & subject matter were almost unchanging. Although they made plain air studies, they almost always painted in the studio TurnerRtoI p33, OxDicArt. They did not succeed in giving equal value to light & the thing lit &, however fervidly they devoted themselves to studying light, objects always come first Novotny p183. Their painting was an idyll of nature, man & beast unpolluted by the grim facts of modern city life R&J p180.
Contrast with the Hague School: The latter does not have Barbizon’s oppressive pathos. Its romanticism takes the form of oppressive stillness & a melancholy dreaminess. They generally lack Barbizon’s lively movement Novotny p299
Painters: Daubigny; Diaz; Jules Dupre; Charles-Emile Jacque; Millet; Theodore Rousseau, who was its leader; & Constant Troyon TurnerRtoI p33, OxDicArt
Les BARBUS/PRIMITIFS:
It was a group of artists from David’s studio. Formed in 1797 & with a fluctuating membership, it lost its coherence around 1803. There were tensions in David’s studio while he was working on the Intervention of the Sabine Women & the Primatifs considered that he was not carrying his new Greek style with its emphasis on simplicity & beauty, & its rejection of non-aesthetic aims, far enough. The group was led by the charismatic Pierre-Maurice Quay, c1770-1803. He & his followers wanted to establish their independence. Besides wearing beards, they adopted exotic, distinctive clothing all types, even rags, & became vegetarians. These were only externals; they were perfectly serious & sought an artistic apotheosis in work uncorrupted by civilisation, as represented by the stylized linear design on recently discovered Greek vases. Inspired by David’s Greek ideal, they were soon disillusioned by his practice, abused his work as no better than rococo, & were expelled from his studio. So other worldly was their concept of art that they ended by producing nothing which has come to light Roberts pp 119-21, Friedlaender1930 p47-8
It would be wrong to conclude that the Barbus lack significance. They were an early part of an important grouping which attached overwhelming importance to the regeneration of art through the simplest visual & expressive statements simplicity characterised by flatness, linearity geometric stylization. It began in earnest with Flaxman’s outline illustrations, was taken up by Ingres in his early Venus Wounded by Diamonds, 1803, & culminated in modern abstraction Rosenblum 1967 pp 167-78, & 1990 p15
BAROCHETTO / BAROOCHETTO
Term: Baroque-Rococo mix in the early 18th century NGArt1986 p450. It is an Italian architectural & sculptural term for art that is light hearted, elegant & decorative Getty on web
Painters: Charles Antoine Coypel; Franceschini; Lemoyne NGArt1986 p450
BATIGNOLES GROUP:
This was referred to by Zola in his journalism by the early 1868. Batignoles was a Parisian district with relatively cheap rents where Manet lived. On Thursday evenings he presided over a gathering of progressive artists & critics at the Cafe Guerbois. This started around 1866 & they were attended regularly by Bazille, Degas & Renoir, & less frequently by Cezanne, Sisley, Monet & Pissarro, together with the critics Zola, Silvestre, Duranty & Zola Reyburn p48, Turner RtoI p164. Although Berthe Morisot was a friend of Manet & by 1870 knew most of the other men in this group by she could not participate because of her class & sex A&G p29. It was in the discussions at the Café that the many of the principles of Impressionism were forged Reyburn p48.
The BAYOU SCHOOL:
After the Civil War the New Orleans-based artists Richard Clague, Marshall Smith Jr, & William Buck, painted similar subject manner in a similar style. So also did Joseph Rusling Meeker, 1827-89, although his studio was in St Louis. Their landscapes are extraordinary calm, serene & poetic depictions of the low-lying countryside & waterways, often at twilight & featuring fisherman’s or trappers’ shacks. The style of these paintings was of a romantic classical type Grove23 p32, New Orleans Museum of Art Collection, Wikip
BELGIAN COLOURISTS:
During 1830-40 they reacted against Neoclassicism & sought to infuse their paintings with the rich colour of Rubens, Van Dyke etc. Wappers pioneered the movement & achieved acclaim with his Burgomaster van der Werff, 1830. They had a wide international influence & the exhibition of works by Gallait & Biefve in Munich in 1843 helped establish the Piloty school of German Colourists. Ford Madox Brown studied with Wappers Norman1977
The BEURON SCHOOL:
It was active from 1868 to the early 1900s, consisted of painters, decorators & mosaicists, & was established at the Benedictine abbey of Beuron in southern Baden-Wurttemberg. The key founder-member was Peter Lenz (Pater Desideratus), 1832-1928. Hitherto the Benedictines had been attracted by the Baroque but Lenz thought that Christian art had made a wrong turn in the Middle Ages & called for works that were not sensual (Gothic), soft (Fra Angelico), perspectival, ;or derived from nature & therefore unholy because God was superior to nature. Lenz was inspired by Egyptian art because of its religious sense & its simplicity. What Lenz demanded was an art produced for God & composed of basic shapes of a geometric & aesthetic nature: those supposedly used by God in the creation of the universe, not an art aimed at conversion or an emotional response. Lenz’s views did not go unchallenged but are reflected in the art of Beuron & in the monastic art of the world until his death Grove3 p890, Chasse pp 83, 111-2.
The school’s projects included the decoration of St Maurus-Kapelle at Beuron using plans initiated by Lenz, 1868-70; paintings in the Konrad kapelle in Konstanz Cathedral; decorations in the Klosterkirche St Gabriel, Prague, 1888-90; & 1895-7; the mosaics in the under chapel of the abbey of Montecasino, Italy, 1900-13 Grove3 p890.
BIEDERMEIER:
See also Romantic-Classical-Realism
Term: It is derived from the German word bieder which means plain, solid & unpretentious. Biedermier artists painted genre, landscape & portraits of this during its key period between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 & the revolutions of 1848. Their realist works formed part of the larger Romantic movement which flourished around this time Grove4 p39, Norman1987 pp 10, 21
Historiography: Gottlieb Biedermeier was a humorous pseudonym under which Ludwig Eichrodt & Adolf Kussmaul published poetry during 1854-7. In the late 19th century, the term Biedermeier was adopted for the cultural epoch 1815-48. There was a reassessment of Biedermeier art at the 1906 Berlin Exhibition with Gemütlichkeit, which means cosy, snug, genial, & pleasant, being nostalgically identified as pivotal Norman1987 p8
Location: There is no agreement about the geographical extent of Biedermeier painting. According to different authorities the area is limited to central Europe or extends to Copenhagen Lucie-S1975, Norman1987 pp 82-103. [However, the Danish art of the period is better regarded as belonging to the Danish Golden Age, for which See Denmark in Section 9]
Influences: Baroque composition & elegance spilled over from the 18th to the 19th century. Some art historians have even drawn a distinction between Baroque Biedermeier –soft, rounded & picturesque- & Neoclassical Biedermeier, which is more astringent & graphic. In flower painting the Baroque tradition survived almost unchanged. Other important influences were Johann Krafft & Josef Danhauser, who fathered Viennese genre painting, & Dutch 17th century painting Norman1987 pp 18, 26, 32, Waissenberger p163,
Characteristics: Realism, meaning the faithful & objective depiction, was the essence of Biedermeier painting. Even landscape was carefully finished with brushstrokes that are almost invisible. The capture of atmospheric effects by means of quick, approximate brushwork in the manner of Constable & Barbizon was exceptional Norman1987 p8. Biedermeier paintings were characterised by separate, clear tones. The most popular subjects were portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, & still-life. However, these categories overlapped because figures were shown in detailed interiors or garden settings. Portrait groups were popular. Characterisation stressed an individual’s interests but there was little attempt at deeper psychological exploration. Flower paintings were also popular. TurnerDtoI p51, Norman1987 pp 46, 50. Paintings tended to be small because the new middle-class patrons wanted pictures they could hang on their walls. However larger paintings depicting current historical events were executed for royal or aristocratic clients. Norman1987 pp 10, 110-1.
Background:
(a) Economic: The Napoleonic Wars destroyed Germany’s economy & after they ended the fledgling industries, which had exported to France & the Netherlands during the Continental Blockade, faced fierce competition from Britain & Belgium. This was also the case in Austria & it was not until around 1830 that production in Austria & Germany began to rise again. By 1848 the larger Austrian towns headed by Vienna were growing apace, industrialisation had resumed, railway construction had started & there was a powerful new financial & entrepreneurial class. In Germany there was a sharp rise in the use of steam power in the Prussian territories, the great coal-fields were under development, the 1834 a customs union pioneered by Prussia had abolished internal tariffs over some three-quarters of Germany, the first railway was opened in 1840, & by 1837 Berlin had over 250,000 inhabitants. It is none the less important to realise how primitive Germany had been in 1815 & how far it lagged behind Britain, Belgium & even France Norman1987 p13, NCMH 9 pp 51-3, 403, 406, Clapham 1936 pp 82, 87-91, 152,
(b) Political: For the German speaking world the period from 1815 to 1848 has been called the Age of Metternich. This refers to the absolutist monarchical system that prevailed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Metternich was Chancellor, & to the kingdom of Prussia, which had just acquired the Rhineland Fisher pp 868, 929. In 1819 the Diet of the new German Confederation, which was dominated by Austria & Prussia, voted for the Carlsbad Decrees Norman1987 p13, NCMH 9 pp 8, 393. These established press censorship & commissions to investigate universities & dismiss staff & students. Under Metternich & his chief of police Sedlnitzky control of the press was intensified. However, outside Austria & Prussia the political situation was more relaxed, e.g., in Bavaria which had a narrow franchise & civil rights, & in Saxony NCMH 9 pp 16, 404. With political reaction the middle classes turned inwards to home & family life Norman1987 p13.
It must not be assumed that authoritarian rule was deeply unpopular. After the sufferings & depredations of the war years there was a longing for peace & quietness throughout the German speaking lands, & indeed for a time throughout Europe NCMH 9 p393, ThomsonD pp 110 -11. In the Austrian Empire a substantial part of the middle classes derived their livelihoods from serving the monarchy. Only the intellectual German professional & entrepreneurial classes, together with German-speaking Jews, fretted against the dead hand of bureaucracy & came to desire reform. This was particularly the case in Vienna NCMH 9 p411. Hence, during the period after 1815, the Austrian & Bohemian lands were remarkably tranquil NCMH 9 p404. In Germany a handful of German nationalists were active & vocal after 1815 but from 1820 until 1840 there was a long period of what historians have described as the “quiet years” Taylor1945 pp 47-52.
Painters:
(a) Vienna: Jacob Alt; Fredrich von Amerling; Josef Danhauser; Peter Fendi; Friedrich Gauermann; Johann Krafft; Johann Neder; Joseph Nigg: Ferdinand Olivier; Franz Petter; Carl Schindler; Adalbert Stifter; Johann Treml; Ferdinand Waldmuller Norman1987 pp 26-61
(b) Munich: Albrecht Adam; Johann Dillis; Wilhelm Kobell; Domenico & Lorenzo Quaglio; Carl Rottman; Moritz von Schwind; Erwin Speckter; Carl Spitzweg; Joseph Stieleer Norman1987 pp 104-27
(c) Dresden: Carl Carus; Johann Dahl; Caspar David Friedrich; Georg Kersting Ferdinand von Rayski; Ludwig Richter Norman1987 pp 146-63.
(d) Berlin: Karl Begas the Elder; Karl Blechen; Johann Gaertner; Johann Hummel; Franz Kruger; Karl Schinkel; Julius Schoppe Norman 1987 pp 62-81
(d) Dusseldorf: Andreas Achenbach; Johann Hader clever; Wilhelm Heine; Cln Hubner; Alfed Rethel; Friedrich von Schadow; Johann Schirmer; Peter Schwinger Norman1987 pp 128-46
CUBISM:
Term: The term Cubism was derived from a reference to “geometric schemas & cubes” by the critic Louis Vauxcelles in describing paintings by Braque in 1908. It now embraces widely disparate work but originally covered work by Braque, Picasso & other painters between the late 1910s & early 1920s. It was the first & most influential movement in 20th century art TurnerEtoPM pp 116-7, OxDicTerms
Groups: The Cubists divide into:
(a) The initial group of Picasso & Braque together with their circle of poets & art critics, who were centred initially on the Bateau Lavoir, where Gris also had a studio, & they exhibited with Kahnweiler. Their favourite subjects were still-lifes, fruit bowls, landscapes & portraits. Their work was a response to previous painting & modern world objects do not occur A&L pp18-9, Grove13 p668, Lynton p66.
| The Bateau Lavoir (Washboat) was a rambling building on the slopes of Montmartre where Picasso, Salmon & Gris had studios. Puteaux was a town on the outskirts of Paris where the Salon Cubists & Marcel Duchamp lived A&L p18 |
(b) There were also the group who frequently met at Puteaux on the outskirts of Paris. They are known as the Salon Cubists because their works were shown Salon des Independents & Salon d’Automne. They included Gleizes, Metzinger, Le Fauconnier, La Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp, the Duchamp-Villon brothers, Leger & Robert Delaunay. The tended to specialise in large multi-figure compositions . Some works were allegorical & others were concerned with modern life & mechanisation [& those of Delaunay do not fit because they were not geometrical] A&L pp18-9, ShearerW1996 p571, OxDicMod p165.
In art history Cubism is assumed to include Delaunay who was part of the grouping [although his work was, due to its lyricism, very different.] However, Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Vorticism & Orphism are treated as if they were other movements, [despite having much in common with Cubism or the work of Delaunay OxDicMod, TurnerEtoPM. This is yet another case where personal connections & propinquity have been prioritised instead of common characteristics.]
Development: Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, is a proto-Cubist work because of the markedly different viewpoints involved. The head of the bottom right nude is viewed from a different position from the body from which it appears to have swivelled away TurnerEto PM p119. Braque saw Les Demoiselles in Picaso’s studio & began experimenting with fragmented & dislocated form in his Grand Nu OxDicMod
(a) Analytic/Hermetic Cubism, c1908-12: Here real objects are analysed [& broken down] into their component parts ShearerW1996. Braque’s Houses at L’Estaque, 1908, has justifiably been taken to be the first Cubist work if only because of Vauxcelles’ reference to cubes A&L p57. Early works of this type, are characterised by multiple viewpoints & a pattern of flat surfaces in subdued colour. Hence the instantaneous perception that characterised Impressionism [& previous painting] no longer prevails & the artwork can be regarded as conceptual rather than perceptual TurnerEtoPM p119. By 1911 the works of Braque & Picasso had as a result of the progressive dismemberment of images become utterly baffling with the viewer completely unable to reassemble the original objects, e.g., the guitarists as non-depicted in Braque’s The Portuguese & Picasso’s Ma Julie Hughes1991 pp 29-31. [There was however an intermediate stage in which substantial sections of an object were scattered around the painting.]
(b) Synthetic Cubism, from around 1912. Analytic Cubism had almost reached a dead end & the next stage appeared to be abstract art & the shedding of all clues to the real world. This was a step which neither Braque nor Picasso were prepared to take. Instead, following Picasso’s lead, they preserved their contact with the real world by resorting to collage in which cloth or paper was pasted to canvas Hughes1991 p32. [As attention was focused on the attached object what happened was that Picasso & Braque more or less gave up painting. This might have been of greater concern to Picasso but for his preoccupation with] a new form of sculpture ShearerW1996, Hughes1991 pp29, 32-3.
(c) Simultaneity: Whereas Picasso & Braque painted as if objects can be viewed FROM different positions at the same time the Salon Cubists painted as if objects can be seen at the same time IN different positions. This was due to the concept of simultaneity in which successive phases of movement of the same object are represented on the same canvas. This practice came from a conviction, derived from Bergson, that the division of space & time should be comprehensively challenged. Leger’s painting The Wedding & Delaunay’s City of Paris, which were both shown at the Salon des Independents in 1912 demonstrate simultaneity Lucie-S1984, TurnerEtoPM p123.
The Driving Force of Cubism: The Cubist revolution was a response to & reaction against Impressionism. Like other artists of the post-Impressionist era, the Cubists regarded Impressionism merely charming & a superficial attempt to capture fugitive light effects. Picasso said that Impressionist paintings merely showed what the weather was like. The Cubists were inspired by Cezanne whose work was shown in a great retrospective exhibition during 1907. His work was regarded as primitive & Cubist painting was driven by the desire to escape from the decadence of Western art & return to the vitality & emotion which they supposed they saw in African Carving See Post-Impressionism in this Section, Burgess p404, Penrose p160, Clark1949 p222, 235, Grove6 p375, A&L p29.
It is tempting to regard Cubism as motivated by a desire for discovery & innovation. The progressive disintegration of might have been explained by the belief that the retreat from intelligibility would lead to greater & greater vitality. However, this is surely the wrong way of regarding its evolution. As Picasso later explained in 1923 when the Cubist revolution was over, he had not been engaged in a process of research but was presenting what he had found: “Among the several sins that I have been accused of committing, none is falser than the one that I have, as the principal objective of my work, the spirit of research. When I paint my object is to show what I have found & not what I am looking for”. The history of Cubist is a story of evolution, of one idea leading to another, & not as a process of deliberate search. Evolution only came to an end when it became evident that the next stage was to proceed from disintegration to abstraction, a step which, as we have seen, neither Picasso not Braque, was prepared to take Barr p270
The Cubist Revolution: The traditional distinction between solid form & surrounding space in which objects had a precise location, as determined by perspective, was replaced by an unstable structure of planes in indeterminate spatial positions. The work of art was no longer related to reality. According to the [great & usually perceptive] art historian Robert Rosenblum, “Cubism proposed that the work of art was itself a reality that represented the very process by which nature is transformed into art”. He did not clearly explain what this claim meant but suggested that henceforth the external world must be seen as indeterminate, ambiguous, fluctuating & contradictory. This new insight was to be explained by some unspecified aspect of 20th century experience Rosenblum1976 pp 13-4, See Box for Rosenblum’s exact words.
| Textual Material in Support of Non-flattering References to Cubism: Readers will have noticed the absence of the eulogies & celebration by art historians & critics that have become customary when Cubism & Picasso are under discussion. Hence there may be a need not only to cite references but also to quote the relevant passages of supporting, justificatory text. According to Robert Rosenblum, “In the new world of Cubism, no fact of vision remained absolute . A dense, opaque shape could suddenly become a weightless transparency; a sharp, firm outline could abruptly dissolve into a vibrant texture; a plane that defined the remoteness of the background could be perceived simultaneously in the immediate foreground. Even the identity of objects was not exempt from these visual contradictions . In a Cubist work, a book could be metamorphosed into a table, a hand into a musical instrument . For a century that questioned the very concept of absolute truth or value Cubism created an artistic language of intentional ambiguity. In front of a Cubist work of art, the spectator was to realize that no single interpretation of the fluctuating shapes, textures, spaces, & objects could be complete in itself. And in expressing this awareness of the paradoxical nature of reality & the need for describing it in multiple & even contradictory ways, Cubism offered a visual equivalent of a fundamental aspect of twentieth-century experience” Rosenblum1976 pp13-4. Roland Penrose says that “The liberties that has taken with the human form might be held to be a sacrilege. The distortions had surpassed what could be considered as a legitimate means of expression They had gone beyond the not uncommon device of exaggerating the gestures by which emotion becomes manifest, & had become a declaration of rage against humanity itself, a vengeance in which the victim was hanged drawn & quartered. But the contrasts in Picasso’s work & in his nature were such that while perpetrating this violence he found it necessary to present us with a new anatomy of his own of his own invention constructed with ingenuity, grace & humour” Penrose p268. He did not explain why humour at the expense of his victims was a legitimate defence. [It might just as well be argued that that the distorted faces Jews in Nazi propaganda were justified on the ground that the graphic artists were only having fun]. |
Another consequence of Cubism was that it decisively established the avant-garde as a separate & elite enterprise of no conceivable interest to the conventional bourgeoise, to those whom the elite regarded as lesser artists outside the Pale, & to the common man. Cubist painting was also an ostensive denial of the belief that art was concerned with beauty. Indeed, the partisans of Cubism regard it as having rescued art from the pursuit of beauty. The American art critic Gelett Burgess, after visiting the studios of Cubist painters, concluded that he had entered a new artistic world, a universe of ugliness HiltonC1975 p91, Penrose p160, Burgess p401.
Picasso’s dismemberment & distortion of objects & humans during his initial Cubist period led on to the gross distortions which he later made in his images of the female body See the Dehumanisation of Art in Section 7. [Other later & deleterious consequences of Cubism were the way in which it encouraged painters to produce Surrealist & other work which cannot be read & has to be explained by the artist, albeit often in unintelligible jargon.
Even worse, the use of collage & the devaluation of paint must surely have contributed to a situation in which, for instance, the Tuner Prize is seldom awarded for painting.
It would however be quite wrong to conclude that Cubism was a wholly negative development, witness the lyrical & life enhancing painting of the Delaunay’s & also some of the greatest paintings of the 20th century, namely the war paintings of Paul Nash & Christopher Nevinson].
Contemporary Painters: Alexander Archipenko; [Thomas Hart Benton]; Maria Blanchard; Georges Braque; Patrick Bruce; John Covert; Robert & Sonia Turk Delaunay; Roger de la Fresnaye; Charles Demuth; Andre Derain; Arthur Dove; Marcel Duchamp; Pierre Dumont; Arthur Frost; Albert Gleizes; Jean Gris; Alice Halicka; Marsden Hartley; Henri Le Falconine; Fernand Leger; Marie Laurencin; Louis Marcousis; Alfred Maurer; Jean Metzinger; Amedee Ozenfant; Francis Picabia; Pablo Picasso; Man Ray; Morgan Russell; Charles Sheeler; Joseph Stella; Henry Taylor; Max Weber; Stanton Wright A&L pp 11, 14-7, 27, 34, 47, 61, 75, 77, 95, 96, 99, 115, 137, 152-4, 156; Rose pp 64, 68, 70-4, 76, 79-80, 82, 84
International Gothic. SEE International Gothic in Section 9
Medieval Painting. SEE Romanesque & Medieval Painting in Section 9
Romanesque Painting. SEE Romanesque & Medieval Painting in Section 9
BIRMINGHAM GROUP OF ARTIST-CRAFTSMEN:
Term: This flourished from the 1890s at least until 1914. The Group was greatly influenced by the early Italian primitives, John Ruskin, William Morris & Burne-Jones, the latter artists lectured & taught in Birmingham several times. The Group’s work was deliberately archaic & highly stylized, & Southall developed a modern method for tempera painting. Most of its members taught or studied at the Birmingham School of Art. The Group was associated with the Arts & Crafts Movement & a late provincial Pre-Raphaelite & Symbolist flowering. Membership overlapped with the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft & the Bromsgrove Guild, & some later became involved with the Birmingham Surrealist movement Farr p57, Artblogs.co.uk
Artists: Maxwell Armfield, Kate Bunce, Arthur Gaskin, Charles & Margaret Gere, Sidney Meteyard, Henry Payne, Francis Cayley Robinson, Joseph Southall, & latterly Alice Coats Farr p57
The BLACK ART MOVEMENT:
In the 1960s black artists feeling culturally invisible, & as Black not Negro, protested against museums that ignored black art. Spiral, the first black arts group since the New Negro era, was formed in 1963 & in 1967 The Studio Museum was established in Harlem to exhibit African American art. Black artists attacked the way in which African Americans were trapped by patriotic flag waving & demeaned by rational stereotyping. The context for this activity was the Civil Rights movement. With increasing radicalisation, reflected in the formation of the Black Panthers in 1966, black art of various forms conveyed the demand for black power. However, the Black Art Movement was not welcomed by some coloured artists who disliked being pigeon-holed as a Black painter. Spiral only held one exhibition [& impetus was lost] as more museums began collecting & exhibiting the work of black artists Doss pp 193-201.
BLAUE VIER (The Blue Four);
It comprised Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky & Klee, & was formed in 1924 at the instigation of the German art dealer Galka Scheyer. The artists had been associated with the Blaue Reiter & blue was a spiritual colour. Speyer immediately went to America to sell their works & staged several exhibitions at various places over the next decade OxDicMod
BLOOMSBURY GROUP:
Development: This consisted of relations, couples & friends who were mainly writers including Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell & Virginia Woolf, or artists. They lived in or near Bloomsbury in central London from 1904 until the late 1930s. Several of the men had been affected at Cambridge by G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethical, 1903. Here Moore had emphasised the value of personal relationships & the contemplation of beautiful objects. Bloomsbury was initially concerned with literature and philosophy. However, from 1910 there was a much greater interest in painting, & the promotion of Post-Impressionism. This was after the Group was joined by Roger Fry, who became a close friend of the Bells, the Woolfs & Duncan Grant. In 1910 & 1912 Fry was chiefly responsible for the important Post-Impressionist exhibitions that were held at the Grafton Galleries Grove4 p168.
The Omega Workshops were established by Fry in 1913 & in 1914 Clive Bell’s Art was published Grove4 p168, & 23 Grove TurnerEtoPM pp 79, 283. Omega, which lasted until 1919, produced ceramics, furniture, carpets & textiles designed & made by Fry, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant etc Grove 4 pp 168-69, & 23 pp437-38.
In 1917 Fry joined the London Group, to be followed by Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant. Bloomsbury now became the most influential element within the Group. Fry favoured those artists who imitated the French example & was criticised for lowering standards Grove19 pp222-23, Spalding1980 p 221
On the initiative of Keynes, & with financial help from his friend Samuel Courtauld, the London Artists’ Association was founded in 1925 with the aim of giving selected artists greater financial security. The choice of artists was more or less under Fry’s control &, once again, came under criticism for favouritism Spalding1980 p237
Oeuvre: As a result of the Post-Impressionist exhibitions & under the influence of Cezanne, Matisse etc there was a transformation in the paintings produced by Bell, Grant & Fry. They were among the most innovative artists in England from about 1912 to 1920 & turned briefly to abstraction during 1914-15. However, between the Wars Bell & Grant were no longer in the forefront of ideas. They developed a richly coloured style of unemphatic & fluent realism Grove4 pp 168-69, OxDicMod
Painters: Dora Carrington; Venessa Bell; Duncan Grant; together with those associated with Bloomsbury: Bernard Adeney; George Barnes; Keith Baynes; Raymond Coxon; Gertler; Henry Lamb, Meninsky; R. V. Pitchforth; Frederick Porter; Mathew Smith; Edward Woolf Spalding1980 pp 221, 237, OxDicMod.
Comment: Virginia Woolf remarked about the Second Post Impressionist Exhibition that artists were “an abominable race”, odiously excited over their green & blue canvases Wullschlager FT 26/7/2014Feature: The core members came together through the elitist Cambridge University group, the Apostles & many, perhaps most, of those who belonged or were associated with the Bloomsbury set were intellectual snobs, such as Roger Fry who worshiped French art & disregarded German painting. Clive Bell scorned Frith’s work because, although he recognised its artistic merits & the pleasure which it afforded, he said it did not provoke “aesthetic rapture” & hence qualify as a work of art Brigstocke, Bell pp 17-18, etc.
However, the arch Bloomsbury snob was Virginia Woolf. Although she was of course primarily a novelist she had an important impact on the way in which art is classified & evaluated. She drew a sharp distinction between the highbrow & the middlebrow. The highbrow is a person of “thoroughbred intelligence “ who pursues ideas relentlessly, whereas middlebrow work is shallow, superficial, & motivated by money & fame rather than a commitment to art & life itself. She even declared that she would physically harm anybody who called her middlebrow Google
The BLUE ROSE GROUP:
It consisted of second-generation Russian Symbolists active in Moscow, 1904-8 TurnerEtoPM p80
Development: In 1904 Pavel Kusnetsov & Pytor Utkin organised an exhibition in Saratov & in 1907 the Blue Rose which included works by Mikhail Vrubel, & Borisov-Musatov by whom they were inspired. The group was supported by the wealthy banker, patron & artist Nikolay Ryabushinsky. After the 1907 exhibition there was a feeling that Symbolism Symbolism was passe & the group disintegrated TurnerEtoPM pp 80-1, Gray p72, OxDicMod.
Influences: The Symbolist poets Andrey Bely & Aleksandr Blok TurnerEtoPM p81
Aim/Characteristics: Aiming at transcending reality & communicating with the beyond, the group had a common symbolism including pregnancy, foetal life & flowing water. Kuznetsov’s Blue Fountain, 1905, features cool blue, grey & green tones, indistinct outlines & distorted, overlapping human forms which produce a disturbing, melancholy effect TurnerEto PM p81.
Painters also included Anatoly Arapov, Nikolay Krymov, Nikolai & Vasily Milioti, Nikolay Sapunov, Martiros Saryan & Sergey Sapunov TurnerEtoPM p80, Gray p72, OxDicMod.
BOHEMIAN SCHOOL:
Term: Art produced in Bohemia in the second half of the 14th century & particularly under Charles IV of Bohemia who became Holy Roman Emperor. This art featured panel painting & fresco which combined Sienese & French influences & were an element in International Gothic for which see Section 9 OxDicTerms
BOSTON SCHOOL/TARBELLITES:
Guy Pene Du Bois in articles during 1915 contrasted the Impressionism of artists working in Pennsylvania & Boston. The latter were seen as aristocratic, concerned with beauty, & perhaps timid, while those in Pennsylvania artists were viewed as democratic, unconcerned about aesthetic matters & having more American virility. The leader of the Boston School was Edmund Tarbell, other members often being called Tarbellites. During the 1890s the Tarbellites, as they were often known, painted polished portraits & elegant, softly lit interiors of contemplative young women surrounded by beautiful objects. The group included Joseph De Camp, Philip Hale, William Paxton & Frank Benson, although the latter [primarily] painted outdoor scenes Gerdts 1980 pp 91, 92, & 1994 p169.
Tarbellites. See Boston School/Tarbellites
BRISTOL SCHOOL OF PAINTING:
This is said to refer to the landscape painters who came together during the earlier part of the 19th century. Hitherto despite its wealth & fine views Bristol had not produced any notable painters except Sir Thomas Lawrence who left when a child, & around 1800 Edward Bird was the only professional artist of any talent. He now became the centre of a small group, largely composed of amateurs, who met together & went out sketching. In 1824 the first exhibition of Bristol artists was held at the newly opened Bristol Literary & Philosophical Institution Grove4 p823, Greenacre1973 pp10-11. The work of the Bristol School, & indeed of the individual artists, was extremely diverse & included landscape, townscape, seascape, history paintings, genre & portraits Greeacre1973.
Painters: Edward Bird; Nathan Bran white; Samuel Colman; George Cumberland; Edward Francis, James & Thomas Danby; Rev John Eagles; Samuel Jackson; James Johnson; Robert Hancock; William Muller; Hugh O’Neill, Paul Poole; Edward Rippingille James Pyne; Rolinda Sharples; William West Greenacre1973
British & Irish Impressionism. See Impressionism British & Irish in Section 9
BROTHERHOOD OF RURALISTS
A group of seven British painters founded in 1975 & comprising those who had moved from towns. They first exhibited as a group at the RA Summer Exhibition in 1983 & finally in 1976 at Blake’s Tate retrospective. Sharing ideals rather than style, many critics found their works insufferably twee & self-conscious, & Ovenden’s paintings of prepubescent girls were attacked as pornographic OxDicMod
Painters: Ann Arnold & her husband Graham, Peter Blake & his wife Jann Haworth , David Inshaw & her husband Graham Ovenden OxDicMod
CAMDEN TOWN, CUMBERLAND MARKET & FITZROY STREET GROUPS:
Historiography: Camden Town has been seen as a late & temperate Impressionist flowering TurnerEtoPM p88. Or more perceptively it has been described as a combination of Post-Impressionist style & realist subject matter See Harrison pp 38-41
Developments: In 1907 Sickert, who had returned from Diepe in 1905, began holding informal Saturday afternoon gatherings at his studio in Fitzroy Street, Bloomsbury. Here Lucian Pissaro, Gore, Gilman, Bevan, the Rothensteins, Walter Russell, Nan Hudson & Ethel Sands (the so-called Fitzroy Street Group) discussed & displayed their work. Paintings were admitted by the NEAC but, after its critical reaction to the Post-Impressionist exhibition, it was feared that they would be rejected, & it was decided to establish an exhibition society with 16 members called the Camden Town Group. There were no women on Gilman’ s insistence. Two exhibitions were held at the Carfax Gallery in 1911 & another in 1912 TurnerEtoPM pp 88-90, OxDicMod, Spalding 1986 pp 33, 42-3
In 1913 members of the group & others decided to form a new exhibiting society called (from 1914) the London Group. Camden Town, after sponsoring what was in effect a London Group exhibition in Brighton, petered out. Another exhibition was held at the Goupil Gallery in early 1914 TurnerEtoPM pp 90, 235, OxDicMod.
In late 1914 yet another body the Cumberland Market Group was established by Bevan, Ginner & Gilman, following gatherings which Bevan had held at his studio TurnerEtoPM p131
Characteristics: Camden Town paintings were usually small. Typical subjects were nudes on a bed or at their toilet, informal portraits in shabby bed-sits, still-lifes of cluttered mantelpieces, & landscapes of commonplace London streets, squares & gardens. The pretentious, the pompous, the tasteful & the idealised nude were shunned. The relationship between figures, objects & settings was treated with dispassionate, though selective, objectivity. Paint was typically applied in a broken manner, although the extent & duration of such handling varied from artist to artist Baron pp 15-18.
The closely related Cumberland Market Group had a more rigorous attention to facts than Camden Town TurnerEtoPM p131
Camden Town Painters: Bayes; Bevan; Drummond; Gilman; Ginner; Gore; Innes; Augustus John; Lamb; Lewis; Pissaro; Lightfoot; Manson; Ratcliffe; Sickert; Dorman Turner TurnerEtoPM p89
CARAVAGGISTI, UTRECHT CARRAVAGGISTI, CARAVAGGISM & TENEBRISM:
Term: The latter is from the Italian tenebroso, meaning dark, obscure, gloomy L&L. The use of chiaroscuro by the Caravaggisti etc was emphatic & dramatic OxCompArt, L&L. Bellori in 1672 termed the Caravaggisti “naturalists” in the first use of the word for a School because they faithfully copied nature whether ugly or beautiful OxDicArt. Kitson regarded the Caravaggisti -together with Dutch 17th century painting & Spanish polychrome sculpture- as Realist Kitson1966 pp 99-100, 103.
Background: Lorraine, which was not annexed by France until 1630, escaped the relgious wars which took place at the end of the 16th century’s end. Hence around 1600 it was richer & more sophisticated than France Allen p43
Development: In 1579 El Mudo used strong chiaroscuro in his Burial of S. Lawrence OxCompArt. In 1610 Finsonius introduced Carravaggism to France in 1610 Blunt1954 p134, L&L, Wikip. The Utrecht painters (Van Barburen, Van Bijlert, Van Honthorst, ter Brugghen) went to Rome & converted to Caravaggism NGUtrecht p32. While in Italy Van Honthorst modified Carravaggio by depicting artificial light as in his Christ Before the High Priest, c1617 L&L, OxDicArt; NGW. Manfredi popularised tavern & guard-room scenes, which had not been painted by Caravaggio OxDicArt. During 1620-30 Caravaggism flourished in UtrechtTurnerRtoI p357. Between 1606 & about 1633 it also flourished in Naples under Battistello & then Ribera L&L, BrownJ pp 148-53. Caravaggism went out of favour in Rome during the 1620s but lingered until 1650s in Sicily, Utrecht & Lorraine OxDicArt
Characteristics:
(a) General: Emphatic chiaroscuro & dramatic realism, OxDicArt; usually with little or no depth [& with the main figures on or very near the picture plane. The absence of depth is enhanced by frequent plain backgrounds.] OxDicArt, NGExhib 2016-7;
(b) In Utrecht there were life sized history scenes & genre, including shepherds, procuresses, merrymakers. Works were powerfully composed with only a few figures who are abruptly cropped & appear close up. Saints were depicted as ordinary people TurnerRtoI p357
Speciality: [Shadowed hands in front of candles with narrow strips of striking illumination along fingers etc (Stom, van der Viliet, van Honhorst). Also dark objects in front of candle (de Coster)] NGExhib 2016-7
Contrasts: de Ribera’s work had a baroquish plasticity & breadth of handling whereas de la Tour’s work was of a classical nature Kitson1966 p42. The Roman Caravaggesti never formed a homogenous group & Caravaggio’s idiom was like a transitory ferment Waterhouse1962 p73
Painters (with Utrecht Caravaggisti = UC): Baeck (UC); Battistelo/Caracciolo; Bor (UC); Cotan; de la Tour; de Espinosa; de Veer (UC); El Mundo; Finsonius; the Gentilesschis; Manfredi; Moreelse (UC); Ribera; Velazquez; Zuberan; Bloemaert (UC); Maino; Orrente; Portengen (UC); [Rembrandt]; Seghers; Ribalta; ter Brugghen (UC); Van Baburen (UC); van Bijlert; Jan & Jonannes Van Bronchurst (UC); Van Hornhurst (UC); Van Kuijll (UC); Wtewael? (UC) OxDicArt, OxCompArt, Kitson1966 p101; TurnerRtoI p357; Brown pp 87-98, Vlieghe p77
Influenced by Utrecht Caravaggisti: de Veer; Hals; Lievens; & Vermeer’s early workTurnerRtoI p357
CAROLINGIAN ART:
Term: This strictly speaking is art associated with Charlemagne, king of the Franks & with his successors from the late 8th century to the beginning of the 10th. Their territories comprised parts of France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria & Italy, & had great cultural & artistic unity in the 9th century. The term was first used by Kugler in 1837, the first scholar to characterise it style Grove5 p792.
CERCLE ET CARRE (Circle & Square):
This was a discussion & exhibition Society formed 1929 in Paris by Garcia & Seuphor (sculptor) who wanted to promote Geometric Abstraction; although it was open to all Abstract artists. Its 1930 exhibition at Galerie 23 was the first solely devoted to Abstract art. Cercle et Carre was superseded by Abstraction-Creation OxDicMod
The CHICAGO IMAGISTS & the Hairy Who:
They were figurative artists who influenced emerged around 1965 using vibrant colour & bold lines to produce to produce grossly distorted & highly stylised images of the human form, etc. The Imagists included Roger Brown, Sarah Canright, James Falconer, Ed Flood, Art Green, Philip Hanson, Robert Lostutter, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg, Suellen Rocca, Barbara Rossi, Karl Wirsum & Ray Yoshida . They exhibited together at the Hyde Park Centre, & their work can be seen at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin. The Hairy Who, underlined, were a sub-group who exhibited together during 1966-69. They depicted the body as fragmented, elongated & exaggerated often featuring mutilations & skin diseases. Their work reflects the political upheaval of the Vietnam War & the civil rights movement. It contrasts with the cool, ironic work of Andy Warhol & Roy Lichtenstein web
The CLIQUE, not to be confuses with the St John’s Wood Clique:
This was a sketching club of young artists around 1840, which was modelled on the Sketching Society. They met one evening a week & worked on a subject generally from Byron or Shakespeare prior to a meal of bread, cheese & beer. It included Frith, Richard Dadd, Augustus Egg, Henry O’Neil & John Phillip. They attempted to form a rival exhibiting society to the RA Norman1977
COBRA:
This was formed in 1952 in Paris with the name signifying the capital cities of the countries from which the founders came: Copenhagen, Brussels & Amsterdam. They were inspired by Marxism & saw themselves as a red international of artists who would lead the way to a new people’s art. They rejected western culture, Surrealism of the illusionistic variety, geometric abstraction & Socialist Realism. Inspired by children’s drawings, by primitive & folk art, & by the work of Klee & Miro, they wanted an art based on spontaneity & expression. Their work was to begin with characterised by fantastic beings & vivid colours. However, after 1951 the work of the continuing Cobra inspired artists, in particular Appel, Jorn & Alechinsky, gradually developed into a single, violently agitated mass of paint which resembled Abstract Expressionism. The group held exhibitions from 1948 (Copenhagen) to 1951 (Liege), published the journal Cobra, but dissolved in 1951 TurnerEtoPM pp 98-100, OxDicMod
COLLA DEL SAFRA:
This was a group of young Barcelona artist which was founded in 1893 & lasted until 1896. They anarchic beliefs & an interest in plein air painting. The name derives from the yellowish saffron colour they used. The group was founded by Isidre Nonill & other members were Joaquim Trinxet, Ricard Cals, Ramon Pichot Juli Vallmitjana & Adria Gual Wikip
The COLOGNE SCHOOL:
Painting produced in Cologne from the late 14th century to the early 16th. At that time Cologne was a centre for Gothic panel painting, attracting artists from a wide range of countries & backgrounds. There was no clear local style but in the early 19th century, when romantically inclined collectors began to look for old German pictures, many came from the Cologne area & the gothic Cathedral became a symbol for the spirit of the Middle Ages. During the early 15th century painting in Cologne painting was characterised by the soft style of International Gothic & was still employed by Stephan Lochner in the mid-15th century. There were many anonymous masters of whom the Master of the Life of the Virgin is perhaps the most attractive OxDicArt, Grove7 p583.
COLOUR FIELD PAINTING:
This is a type of abstract art which consists solely of big works with large expanses of virtually unmodulated colour without strong contrasts of tone or colour, or obvious focus . It was a development from Pollock’s painting & pioneered around 1950 by Newman & Rothco. It was seen by Clement Greenberg as the consummation of a modernist tendency to apply colour in large areas. From 1952 Frankenthaler developed Colour Stain Paining in which an unprimmed canvas is treated with dilute paint so that it becomes integral & not superimposed. During the 1960s & 70s works became semi-geometric when Louis painted stripes & Noland chevrons. Colour Field Painting led onto Minimal art OxDicMod, OxDicTerms, TurnerEtoPM p101.
Painters: Ellsworth Kelly, Jules Olitski, Clyfford Still, Frank Stella, Morris Louis OxDicMod
CONSTRUCTIVISM, International & Russian:
Term: Its meaning is far from clear & it divides into the Russian movement, which is sometimes known as Soviet or Russian Constructivism, & the movement elsewhere, which is called European or International Constructivism). Russian Constructivism emerged around 1914 & spread to the West in the 1920s. Constuctivism typically features the use of glass, pastic, standardised metal parts & other industrial materials which are arranged in clear formal relationships OxDicMod.
Since 1945 the term has been used very broadly, sometimes as a rough equivalent to geometric abstraction. In Britain the word often refers to reliefs & free standing constructs made of industrial materials. These became popular in the 1950s & 60s under the influence of Charles Biedermann. The British group which included the former painters Robert Adams, Adrian Heath, Anthony Hill, Kenneth & Mary Martin & Victor Passmore exhibited together at the British Abstract art Exhibition at the gallery of the Artists International Association in 1951 OxDicMod
Centres: Germany in the 1920s, & Paris & London in the 1930s after the rise of Hitler & Stalin TurnerEtoPM pp 112, 114
Development: After visiting Paris in 1914 & being influenced by Picasso, Vladimir Tatlin began making abstract relief constructions out of sheet metal, wood, wire, etc. After the Revolution, his friend Rodchenko made three dimensional structures, some of which developed into hanging sculptures OxDicMod. In 1921 the majority at Inkhuk, the Institute of Artistic Culture, condemned studio painting as outmoded & useless & endorsed industrial art, & Constructivism as its only expression TurnerEtoPM p219. There was a ferment of enthusiasm for a better society to which machine production & industrial materials would contribute OxDicMod.
In 1922 the International Faction of Constructivists was launched by Van Doesburg, Lissitzky etc TurnerEtoPM p112. In 1939 the international Constructivist movement came to an end TurnerEtoPM p114
Beliefs: “Technology & industry have confronted art with the problem of construction not as contemplative representation, but as an active function” (Stepanova), TurnerEtoPM p219. Gabo & Lissitzky opposed the denial of an independent role for art by the Russain ConstructivistsTurnerEtoPM p113.
COPLEY SOCIETY OF ART:
Founded in 1879, & named after the painter John singleton Copley, it is America’s oldest non-profit art association. The gallery hosts 15-20 exhibitions each year & the Society’ has a diverse membership Wikip
CORRENTE:
This was an anti-Fascist association of young artists that was founded in Milan in 1938. Guttuso was a founder member & Afro joined later. It had no fixed programme but was opposed to Novecentro & stood for modern art at a time when the Nazi campaign against degenerate art was spreading to Italy. It held exhibitions in Milan in 1939, & it published a journal OxDicMod
COUNTER-MANIERA:
The term was invented by Sydney Freedberg in 1971 to describe painting from which the artificialities of Maniera art had been purged in order to produce a more devout art but without the discovery of how to make a direct appeal to worshipers’ emotions. As much of the previous style was retained it was not so much anti-Maniera as chastened Maniera. The term was subsequently extended to Michelangelo’s frescos in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican Hall1999 p xiv. Counter-Maniera differed from Florentine Reform painting because, unlike the latter, it was not naturalistic Freedberg p428
COVENT GARDEN Group:
Term: This was authoritatively used in 1976 by Joseph Burke to describe a group who painting low-life genre scenes of Covent Garden etc in London during the first half of the 18th century Burke pp 118-9
Characteristics: Their work featured piles of fruit & vegetables prominently displayed. The group had a cosmopolitan membership (France, Spain, Austria) & they represented different traditions Burke pp 118-9
Painters: Angellis; Ferg; Nebot; Van Aken Burke pp 118-9
Patrons: They were probably not exalted. Walpole said that genre was then in vogue with waggish collectors Burke p119
CRANBROOK COLONY:
Term: The name was attached in the early 1860s to an informal group of genre painters who worked during the summer in Cranbrook in Kent between about 1855 & 1900 TurnerRtoI p69
Influences: 17th century Dutch genre & David Wilkie TurnerRtoI p69, Wood1999 p313
Characteristics: They painted a rosy version of village life: spacious & clean cottages & well behaved children Treuherz p123
Links: These were of a friendship, family & professional nature TurnerRtoI p69
Painters: These comprised those who settled George & Frederick Hardy, J. C. Horsley, Bernard O’Neill, Thomas Webster; & also the frequent visitors Boughton & Augustus Mulready TurnerRtoI p69
Influence: The Cranbrook style was enormously popular & had many imitators Wood1999 p313
CUBO-FUTURISM:
The term was used by Malevich to works he showed at the Donkey’s Tail & Target exhibitions, 1912 & 1913. They combined Cubist fragmented form & the sense of dynamism & mechanistic movement from Futurism. His Knife Grinder, 1912, is an example. The movement was very short-lived, & the term is often used vaguely to refer to other aspects of Russian art, including literature, during this period OxDicMod, ShearerW1996. Other painters who have been regarded as Cubo-Futurists include David Burlyuk, Alexandra Exter, Goncharova, Ivan Klyun, Mikhail Larionov, Popova, Ol’ga Rozanova TurnerEtoPM pp130-1
DANUBE SCHOOL:
Term & Historiography: In 1892 Theodore von Frimmel identified a Danube style in which painting around Regensburg, Passau & Linz had common characteristics. Then the works of Cranach the Elder were recognised as being anticipatory. The term School was criticised on the ground that linkages were weak. However, Wolf Huber & Albrecht Altdorfer were acquainted & influenced each other Grove8 p513, Benesch pp 125-6.
Influences & Background: The School was had roots in Late Gothic Bavarian & Austrian art, especially that of Jan Polck & Jorg Breu. Artists produced prints en spec for the new class of educated collectors prepared to buy inexpensive works of an unconventional type Grove8 pp 513-4, Langmuir p35.
Characteristics: The Danube School landscapes of around 1500-50 show the dynamic power & exuberance of nature by means of forest growth, explosively radiant heavens & mountains seemingly in motion. Nature is a powerful, & dynamic force & its depiction provides the artist with an opportunity for painting of an emotional nature Some of these works feature forest scenery in which trees & vegetation occupy almost all the available space in an all-over, claustrophobic manner, as in Altdorfer’s St George & the Dragon, 1510 Grove8 p513, Langmuir p37. etc
Innovations: The first independent landscapes as painted by Albrecht Altdorfer WoodC p9.
Painters: Albrecht & Erhard Altdorfer, Huber, Master of Muhldorf/Wilhelm Beinholt, Hans Leu the Younger, Michael Ostendorfer Grove8 pp 513-4, Benesch pp129-33
Successors: The forest interiors of Jan Bruegel the Elder, Jacques Savery. Lucas van Valckenborch, & Gillis van Conixloo; together with the fantasy trees of Roelandt Savery, Hendrick Goltzius, & Jacques de Gheyn II WoodC p12
DADA & DADAISM
Term/Concept: An international art movement from about 1915 to 1922 which lacked coherence & encompassed contradictory viewpoints but reflected disillusionment engendered by the Great War. It was a protest against bourgeois cultural taste & concern with market values OxDicMod, L&L. Some Dadaists (Picabia) were intent on destroying them by public mockery, whereas others (Arp, Richter, Janco) were privately searching for an elementary & abstract art. Arp made simple geometric collages & embroideries & wanting art to be anonymous & collective R&S. pp 112-3.
It is ironic that if Dadaists etc destroyed a society & its art they would liquidate themselves R&S p111
Development: Dada & Surrealism were anticipated by Les Incoherent. This was a group of writers & artists created by the writer Jules Levy. They questioned convention, distrusted rationality & promoted the absurd. From 1882 they held they held annual exhibitions. At one a rectangular white board was entitled First Communion of Anemic Young Girls in the Snow Denvir p136. The Dada movement arose independently but almost simultaneously in Zurich & New York. The main Zurich centre was the Cabaret Voltaire which started March 1916 where to deafening music poets bellowed their often crazy nonsense. Though it was primarily a literary movement it included the artists Arp, Janco & Richter. After due to protests activity transferred to Gallery Dada.
The initial New York group (Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia) which was associated with Alfred Stiglitz’s 291 Gallery was characterized by extreme anti-bourgeois individualism, ironic detachment, a desire to shock, & a fascination with mass-produced objects, as reflected in Duchamp’s ready-mades. By the end of the war the movement had spread to Germany, especially Cologne (Arp/Ernst), Hanover (Schwitters) & Berlin. Here the movement was politically orientated & neo-Communist as shown by Grosz’s social satire & the photo-montages by Hausmann, Hoch & Heartfield). In 1919 Picabia introduced the movement, which was mainly literary, into Paris. During 1922 there was an international Dada exhibition in Paris but the movement was flagging & at a meeting in Weimar Tzara delivered a funeral oration OxDicMod
Influence & Legacy: Surrealism & Neue Sachlichkeit. Dada established an anti-art vein in in modern culture which continued in junk sculpture, Pop art & Conceptualism OxDicMod
DAU AL SET (The Seven-Spotted Dice):
It was an association of Spanish artists & others founded in Barcelona in 1948 & active until 1953. They opposed the official academic line & promoted Catalan identity. Influenced by Klee & Miro, they used imagery related to magic & the occult. Painters included Modesto Cuixart, Joan Ponc, Antoni Tapies, & Joan Josep Tharrats. They edited its journal until 1966. It reflected existentialism & Marxism OxDicMod
DELFT SCHOOL:
Term: A group of painters who worked there in the second half of the 17th century OxDicTerms
Background: In 17th century the town was comparatively small by Dutch standards & economically stagnant. It’s quiet & calm atmosphere may explain the meditative mood of the leading painters Price p166
Characteristics: Some artists concentrated on church interiors etc & others on genre. In most of the interiors the vanishing point is to one side thereby creating a more natural effect than previously. The Delft painters not only made expert use of perspective but were also sensitive to atmosphere & light effects. They typically used the camera obscura to achieve realistic perfection OxDicTerms, Grove8 p669.
Painters: De Hooch, Emanuel de Witte, Carel Fabritiys, Gerritt Houckgeest, van der Ast, Hendrick van Vliet, Vermeer Price p166, NGUtrecht p59, OxDicTerms
DEUTSCH-ROMER/German Romans:
The term applies to both the German artists who worked in Rome in the early 19th century (Koch, von Carolsfeld etc) & also to Feuerbach & Bocklin etc much later in the century Novotny pp 318, 427
DIE PATHETIKER
This was a group of avant-garde artists founded in 1912. The members were Ludwig Meidner, Jacob Steinhardt & Richard Janthur. It was committed to works of Nietzschean pathos & drama. There was a major group exhibition in 1912 at Herwarth Walden’s Galerie Der Sturmm. The group broke up after the exhibition not least because of Meidner’s overwhelming success Hess, JRS p492
DRESDEN SCHOOL/DIE ELBIER
This appears to refer to the art movement that emerged in Dresden as a result of plein air painting, realism & impressionism from around 1895. Impressionist works were painted by the Paris trained artist Gerhardt Kuehl, 1850-1915, who played a leading role in promoting plein air painting & establishing Impressionism, & also by Eugen Bracht, 1842-1921, Emanuel Hagenbarth, 1868-1923, & Osmar Schindler, 1867-1927. All were professors at the Academy. The great German & International art exhibitions organised by Kuehl between 1897 & 1912 brought Dresden back into the international limelight Focus Albertinum Renewal & Reform DE/EN, Grove9 p239.
In 1900 the Association of Fine Artists Dresden (Sezession) was dissolved & in 1902 Kuehl formed Die Elber (The Elbians) as a successor body. It held exhibitions in Dresden & other places from that year onwards. In 1909 it joined forces with the group Die Zunft (guild) & the merged organisation dissolved in 1918 by which time Expressionism had long been dominant in Dresden Wikip, Grove9 p230.
Energism. This is an alternative term for Neo-Expressionism for which See Neo-Expressionism et al in Section 9
DUTCH CLASSICISM:
Term: It is the title of an exhibition of Dutch 17th century history painting held during 1999-2000. This covered a previously neglected area which arose around 1600 as a reaction against Mannerism & later about 1630 to Carravaggism. Regarded as extreme & eccentric these styles were rejected in favour of art of a more moderate type that was inspired by ancient sculpture & the art of the High Renaissance. Dutch Classicists focused in the most beautiful aspects of nature, especially the nude & their work, which aimed at clarity & sublimity, featured orderly structure, an even illumination, & meticulous paintwork. The new movement was initiated by the former Mannerist Hendrick Goltzius, who after a trip to Italy in 1590-1, made prints of a Classical type & from around 1600 paintings MB pp13-5, 64, L&L. In Flanders the history painting was Baroque. Here the aim was vigorous movement & spectacular effects, & a wider brush stroke was favoured MB p27.
Painters: Jacob Backer, Jan & Solomon de Braij, Van Everdingen, Govaert Flink, Hendrick Goltzius, Gerard de Lairesse, Van der Werff L&L, MB
DUTCH ITALIANATES:
Term: This is a slippery category which has been used in various ways to cover Dutch landscape painters during the 17th . To further confuse matters these artists were not the first northern artists who visited Italy, & the term Romanism is used to cover painters from the Low Countries who travelled to Rome in the previous century & were influenced thereby. There were also the Bamboccianti who were active in Rome from 1625 to 1639 Grove9 pp462-3 & 26 p728. Romanism & the Bamboccianti are discussed elsewhere in this Section.
Development: The movement began with the Fleming Paul Bril who after 1600 turned from Mannerism to naturalistic landscapes which feature clear southern light, Roman ruins, imaginary, & shepherds & flocks. The first generation of Dutch Italianates worked in Rome from about 1617 to 1630 & then returned home. A second wave visited between 1640 & 1650 but only for a year or so &, unlike their predecessors, continued to evolve. A third generation who went to Rome after 1650 were, except for Gaspar van Wittel, Poussinists Haak p144, Grove9 p462
Leading Painters: Cornelis van Poelenburgh & Bartholemeus Breebergh in the first generation, followed by Jan Both, Albert Cuyp, Jan Asselijn, Claes Berchem & Jan Weenix, Adam Pynacher & Carel du Jardin Haak pp 144, 146, Fuchs p136
Characteristics: Their painting was meticulous. Poelenburgh & Breenberg produced Arcadain landscapes with clear bright colour in a limpid light featuring ruins & small figures. The second generation painters differed but employed the same subject matter, which included trees & plants of a recognizable type, & also, to some extent composition: high ruins, rocks, stands of trees providing a strong vertical element. Contemporary buildings now appeared & mythological subjects were increasingly replaced by low life scenes Haak pp 143-4, 146, Grove9 p462.
NB: [Although the Dutch Italianates have been singled out by art historians this does not mean that their landscapes were unique. Elsheimer was together with Brill a non-Dutch pioneer of Italianate painting [& Joos De Momper painted pictures that are not unlike the Italianate work of Nicolaes Berchem. Antoni Goubau was another Fleming who produced Italianate landscapes Vlieghe p177, Grove13 p221 & 21 p829, Fuchs p139.
The DUVENECK BOYS:
They were a group of artists centred on the Cincinatti painter Frank Duveneck. He gathered many American art students around him first in Munich where they were studying at the Academy & then in the late 1870s in Italy where he took them to Florence & Venice. They included Chase, J. Frank Curier & Walter Shirlaw who were instrumental in founding the progressive Society of American Artists in New York, 1977 Gerdts1980 p24.
ECOLE DE PARIS:
The term was originally applied to artists who worked in Paris after the First World War & painted in a figurative style that was poetic & expressionist. They had non-French origins & were predominantly Jewish. Painters included Chagall, Foujita, Kisling, Modigliani, Pascin, & Soutine. However, the term was soon extended to all foreign artists who had settled in Paris since 1900, & then to virtually all progressive Parisian art during the 20th century OxDicMod
EDINBURGH GROUP:
This was an exhibhition society formed around 1914 by a number of younger artists several of whom had been pupils of John Duncan. Its most notable members were Eric Robertson, Alick Sturrock & Cecile Walton. It was revived in 1919 & had two further shows Macmillan1994 pp 50-1
The EIGHT:
There were three groups so named:
(i) American artists who exhibited together in 1908. See Ashcan School/The Eight. See Ashcan School in Section 9
The Ashington Group. See Pitmen Painters
(ii) Czech artists who were essentially Expressionist. The group was formed in Prague in 1906, held exhibitions in 1907 & 1908. These were poorly received, & the group then ceased to function OxDicMod
(iii) The first avant-garde group in Hungary which came together in 1909. Under the influence of Cezanne they were opposed to Impressionism & desired art with greater order & structure. Exhibitions were held in 1909, 1911 & 1912. The group was followed by the Activists OxDicMod
ELEMANTARISTS /ELEMENTARISM:
In the early 1920s a manifesto in DeStijl proclaimed that elemantarist art was built up solely of its own elements. It was signed by Hausmann, Arp, Mohly-Nagy & Ivan Puni. In an article in 1923 Van Doesburg distinguished between primary means & secondary means, which were the previously dominant but now outdated illusionistic effects & descriptive subject matter. Doesberg also used the term for his modified form of Neo-Plasticism in which right angle forms are retained but verticals are now permitted. It was propounded by Van Doesberg in the mid 1920s & led to Mondrian’s departure from De Stijl L&L, OxDicArt, TurnerEtoPM p155
EL PASO:
This was an association of Spanish artists & writers. The name was meant to suggest movement or renewal. The group was inspired by Dau al Set & established expressive abstraction or Art Informel in Spain. It managed to hold exhibitions until 1960. The painter members included Canogar, Luis Feito, Millares, Manuel Rivera, Saura & Manuel Viola OxDicMod
English Cubists. See Vorticists/English Cubists
Energism. This is an alternative term for Neo-Expressionism for which See Neo-Expressionism et al in Section 9
ENGLISH SPORTING SCHOOL:
It began in the early 19th century with James Seymour, a naive painter, & culminated with Stubbs. During the 19th century it flourished with several families becoming specialists. They included the Alkens, Ferneleys, Herrings & Pollards together with Benjamin Marshall. Sporting prints made after their paintings made it a lucrative genre Norman1977
ETRUSCAN SCHOOL:
Nature: It consisted of English & Italian landscapists who painted & exhibited together from the 1860s. Under Costa’s influence there was a revived tradition of landscape deriving from Lorraine, Poussin, Jones, Valenciennes & Corot Turner RtoI p96
Background: During 1852-3 there were aesthetic discussions between Costa, Leighton & Mason. Costa believed that landscapes should reflect artists’ emotions & affections for their native lands, with sentiment as a picture’s vital element Turner RtoIp96
Painters: Edgar Barclay; Eugene Benson; Edith & Matthew Corbet; Costa; Walter Crane; Arthur Ditchfield; Arthur Brown Donaldson; Henry Holiday; Howard (Lord Carlisle); Walter James (Lord Northbourne); Leighton; Arthur Lemon; George Heming Mason; Maclaren; John Collingham Moore; Parisani; Pazzini; William Blake Richmond; Vannicola; & Watts Turner RtoI p96; Newall1989 pp 70-4
Characteristics: Paintings with horizontal formats & a preference for poetic sunsets & dawns Treuherz p189. Other features were panoramic distances, subdued tonalities & breadth of handling TurnerRtoI p96
Galleries: Their paintings were exhibited at the Grosvenor and (1888-1909) & the New GalleryTurnerRtoI p96
EUSTON ROAD SCHOOL, including Camberwell School of Arts & the Slade:
Term: It was given by Clive Bell to a group of painters associated with the School of Drawing & Painting that had been established in 1937 by Coldstream, Rogers & Passmore. However, the term was quickly extended &, although the school itself ended at the outbreak of War, it continued for a decade or more to be applied to work in a style similar to that of the founders. Coldstream, who taught at Camberwell School of Arts in 1945-6 & was professor at the Slade, 1949-75, was the chief upholder of the tradition OxDicMod, G&S p111
Background/Influences: The School drew its inspiration from Sickert’s subjects & sober realism, Degas’ brushwork, & Cezanne’s analysis Spalding1986 p119. A direct connection with Sickert was provided by the talk that he gave to the School in the summer of 1938 Shone1988 p92. The Euston Road painters were critical of Modernism & particularly of Surrealism & abstraction & felt that art should be more socially committed. In 1938 Coldstream & Graham Bell painted in Bolton in association with Mass Observation TurnerEtoPM p163
Teachers: Passmore, Coldstream, Rogers, & Graham Bell Spalding1986 p118
Pupils: Gowing, Stokes Spalding1986 p119
Characteristics: Euston Road teaching was opposed to bombast & display. Measurement & observation were stressed & were used to encourage a deliberately unrhetorical & objective form of painting. According to Spalding this gave rise to works that were reticent yet poetic & particularly English Spalding1986 pp 118-9.
A Paradox: It might be expected that those connected with the School would have largely painted Social Realist works as they wanted art to have greater social relevance & were left-wing Shone1977 p30. However, they appear to have produced remarkably few.
Verdict: According to Herbert Read the Euston Road painters were, “the effete products of the Bloomsbury school of needlework” OxDicMod
EXPRESSIONISM & AFTER:
Term: The first modern usage was in 1911. In the catalogue of the Berlin Secession of it was used to cover recent French painting of the Fauves, Picasso etc, & was extended to German artists L&L, Dube p18. In the first monograph on Expressionism which was by Paul Fechter in 1914, the term was used in a modern manner to cover the German counter-movement against Impressionism & the work of the Die Brucke & Blau Reiter artists, & also Oskar Kokoschka. He asssociated Expressionism with the anti-intellectual, the emotional & the spiritual Dube p19, Behr p8. Expressionism is distortion & exaggeration for emotional effect. When used broadly, expressionism describes art that relects the artist’s state of mind rather than images of the external world. Hence the paintings by Grunewald & El Greco, which convey intense religious emotion through distorted forms, are examples of expressionism in this sense. When used more narrowly, it describes modern art in which there are strong non-naturalistic colours, or distorted & abbreviated forms which are employed to project inner feelings. In its narrowest sense it denotes the art movement which was mainly located in Germany & arose in Germany during the early 20th century, & which is now under discussion OxDicMod. [It was however anticipated by Munch, Van Gogh & Modersohn-Becker who have been included in the Movement, together with Max Beckmann who painted exprssionist works during the inter-war period.] [The post Second World War revival of Expressionism has been termed Neoexpressionism et al & has been treated as a separtate movement.]
Influences: These included Van Gogh who exaggerated natural appearances; Gauguin who simplified & flattened forms, & whose colour was sometimes unrealistic; Munch who used violent colour & linear distortion to express basic emotions; the revival of the woodcut with its expressive potential; & Ensor who employed carnival masks to depict human baseness OxDicMod.
Characteristics: The social & natural scene, as viewed by the German Expressionists & their immediate predecessors, appears from their works to have contained much that was repulsive & loathsome as well as a little that was innocent & desirable. Groups of plumed & attenuated prostitutes, sometimes with potential clients, were an advrse aspect of the modern world as pictured in Kirchner’s work up to & including 1914 Dube pp 45, 51, Sadowsky pp 10. 14, Behr p51, JRS Pl 7,8. These are only part of a much larger repertoire of work that show what is ugly or sinister, or which portray those who are unhappy, distresed, sefish or evil Dube pp 48-9, 60-3, 73, 84, 159, 166, 181, 193, JRS Pl 107, 115, 118-9, 121; & Hodin for Munch pp 23, 41, 51-3, 56, 59, 63, 68, 72, 84, 86-7, 89-90, 92=3, 95-97, 109, 111, 118-9, 124. However Expressionism was bipolar & many works, probably the majority, present a very different picture.
These portray happy young adults, innocent nudes, some religious works, portraits of a neutral variety & also pleasamt town & landscpes etc Dube pp 47, 50, 52-3, 55-9, 62, 65-7, 72, 75, 78-83, 87-8, 91-3, 98-101, 103, 107, 109-11, 113, 115-8, 120-3, 129, 138-40, 143, 146-7, 151, 153, 173-5, 181-5, 187-91, 194-5, 198-9, 200 [Revise & extend.] Both aspects of Expressionism were associated with a belief in the revitalisation of art by means of primitivism. It was at the time widely believed that it was possible to gain access to the very sources of creativity by rejecting 19th Realism [& other tired forms of painting] by embracing art produced by tribal peoples, children & the insane Rhodes pp 21, 133, See also Primativism in Section 7. This helps to explain much of the work of Egon Schiele who was fascinated by the insane, & also such paintings as Autumn Evening, 1924, by Emil Nolde, who rejected the urban enviroment & her painted the unspoilt primaeval landscape of Schleswig-Hostein Rhodes p139. [On the other hand, it also helps explain Kirchner’s Figures Walking into the Sea, 1912, which depicts an innocent & uninhibited young couple who have not been weighed down by civilisation.]
A related theme in Expressionist painting was the celebration of nature. Franz Marc was from 1908 preoccupied by animals which appeared to him purer & less corrupt than man Grove20 pp 380-1, JRS Pl 38-9, 42-3. However, later he came to see & paint animals as belonging to an existence of flaming suffering Behr p58. The most striking visions of nature as apocalyptic catastropehe were painted by Ludwig Meidener prior to the First World War in 1912-3 JRS Pl 75-8.
Other more obvious features of Expressionist paintings, & those that are mentioned by art historian, are its strong assertive forms, often violently distorted, symbolic colours, & suggestive lines, Turner p165. Colour & form were completey unrestrained in contrast to the Fauve’s harmonious design & semi-decorative colouring OxDicMod.
Centres: German Expresisonism was not a unified movement. There were three main centres:
(a) Dresden where a group of young artistrs formed Die Brucke (The Bridge) in 1905 Dube p23. The name was inspired by a statement by Nietzsche whom the painters admired. It indicated their faith in a happier & more creative future. Leading Expressionists in Dresden comprised Kirchner, Heckel, Schmitt-Rotluff, Nolde, Pechtein & Mueller OxDicMod, Dube pp 36-93. Expressionism in Dresden [more or less came to an end] in 1910 when the Neue Sezesion was founded in Berlin. The old Berlin Secession under Liebermann rejected the work of Nolde, Pechtein & others for its exhibition. This led to the foundation of the new body with Pechtein as president Dube pp 33, 158. Over the next few years many of the leading Dresdenites moved to Berlin & paintings showing the stress & depravity of city life became increaingly important Dube pp 42, 209, OxDicMod.
(b) Munich where the Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen (New Artists’ Alliance) was formed in 1909 Dube p95 . In 1911 the Alliance split & the Blaue Ritter (Blue Rider) group came into existence Dube p101. The principal Expressionists in Munich were Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Munter, Marc, Macke, Klee, Campendonc & Kubin Dube pp 105-55. Although these artists did not have a common style their work tended more towards the spiritual than that of the more earthy concerns of the the die Brucke OxDicMod.
(c) Berlin where the Neue Sezession was established in 1910 Dube p158. The princicipal Expressionists in Berlin were Beckmann, Feininger, Barlach, Meidner, & Kokoschka Dube pp 161-95.
[Include Rhineland painters]
(d) Elsewhere: Other cenrtres of Expressionist art were in the Rhineland & Vienna where Egon Schiele & Kokoschka painted, although the latter lived in Berlin during 1910-11 Dube pp 189-201, 209
Painters:
(a) Proto: Paula Moderson-Becker Munch, Van Gogh Dube p13, OxDicMod
(b) Germany: Barlach, Beckmann, Campendonc, Feininger, Heckel, Jawlensky, Kandinsky (briefly) Kirchner, Klee, Kubin, Macke, Marc, Meidner, Morgner, Mueller, Munter, Nauen, Nolde, Pechtein, Rohlfs, Schmitt-Rotluff
(c) Vienna: Kokoschka, Schiele
FAUVES (Wild Beasts):
Term: The critic Louis Vauxcelles so described their work when he saw it at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. They were a group of French artists who worked together from about 1905 to 1907 L&L, OxDicArt. Their ‘scapes’ were characterised by extremely intense colour used arbitrarily for emotional & decorative effect OxDicMod. Moreover brushstrokes might be used in an apparently haphazard way, breaking up colour area & what was being represented L&L. One of the hallmarks of Fauvism is the abolition of the conventional sense of distance between the canvas & the spectator. Matisse often had the sensation of being in the picture Whitfield p67
Influences: Cezanne, van Gogh, Gauguin & the Neo-Impressionists OxDicMod. Many of the Fauves had studied under Moreau (Matisse, Roualt, Camoin, Marquet & Manguin) TurnerEtoPM p173.
Development: In 1900-1 Derain & Vlaminck who shared a studio where they investigated whether space & states of mind could be expressed through colour TurnerEtoPM p174. Matisse, who already used vividly contrasting colour, realised that colour could be used non-descriptively when he painted in bright sunshine with Cross & Signac at St Tropez in 1904, & with Derain at Collioure in 1905 OxDicMod. Here they were, according to Matisse, like children in the face of nature, who let their temperaments speak, even painting from imagination where necessary Whitfield p62. Fauvism ended after 1907 when Vlaminck ceased using bright primary colours, Derain turned to Cubism, & the work of Matisse became more harmonious TurnerEtoPM p177.
Aim: This Matisse said was “to free the picture from any imitative or conventional contact” Whitfield p62.
Legacy: Fauvism had a considerable impact on German Expressionism OxDicArt. The Fauvist message was that modern painting would & be barbarous. The Expressionist Blue Rider group considered themselves to be part of a radical anti-realist & Post-Impressionist movement which included the Fauves L&L, Rhodes p2
FAYUM/FAIYUM PORTRAITS:
Term/Development/Purpose: Portraits painted in this Egyptian oasis town which is around 60 miles south west of Cairo. They were produced when it was under Roman rule during the first century & remained customary until the third when the town & were attached on top of the wrappings of a person who was being mummified over the face. Both the Egyptians & the Greek-Romans believed in some form of afterlife with the mummy preserving the body in which the spirit dwelt, & the portrait eternalised their appearance. During the period when these portraits were painted the town enjoyed an economic revival Gattuso pp 6, 9, 11, 28, etc , wikip.
Production : Most of the portraits were painted on wood using encaustic, a mixture of beeswax & pigment, sometimes with oil & resin to vary the texture. The portrait was heated so that the mixture would blend which created subtle, lifelike graduations of skin tone, though some mixed animal glue with pigment to make tempera. Nine hundreds of these works are known Gattuso pp 7, 20-21.
Characteristics: These portraits are arresting & employ shading & realistic details to provide a convincing & lifelike image. The faces have large eyes & are staring boldly at the viewer. His or her attention is not diverted away from what is crucial & clothing is often sketched in using a broad-brush technique. However, the elite nature of the sitter is sometimes indicated by necklaces, diadems or a gold background as in Portrait of a Young Woman with a Gilded Wreath, c130.. In some works, the character of the sitter is indicated as in melancholic Portrait of an Elderly Lady with a Gold Wreath, c112. She has narrowed eyes & arched eyebrows Gattuso images pp 14, 16 (The Met both)
FIGURATION LIBRE:
This is sometimes bracketed with Neo expressionism OxDicMod. However the members’ work was not characterised by intense subjective feelings. This is shown by the Wikipedia images for Robert Combas, Remi Blanchard, Francois Boisrond & Herve de Rosa (the original 1981 group); together with those for Richard D. Rosa, Louis Jammes, Kenny Schaff, Keith Harring (the Americans who exhibited with them 1982-5) Wikip,TateTerms
The FLORENTINE REFORMERS:
Term: It was coined by Freedberg. They were inspired by High Reniassance painting & its naturalism, clear & logical structure, & legibility. They differed from the painters of the Counter-Maniera in their search for naturalism Freeberg p428.
Development: They were followers of Santi de Tito who decorated many of the side chapels of the church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi S. Giovannino, Florence Bailey p35. By 1574 Santi had broken with Mannerism & adopted a naturalism that was believable, consistent & complete as shown by his Supper at Emmaus Freedberg p429
Painters: Alessandro Allori,Andrea Boscoli, Francesco Curradi, Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli, Jacopo Ligozzi, Domenico Passignano, Lodovico Cigoli, Bernardino Poccetti, Santi Di Tito, Michele Tosini, & the Venetian Francesco Bassano NGArt1986 p238, Bailey p35, Hall1999 p252, Freedberg pp 431-5
FLUXUS:
A loose international group of avant-garde artists established in Germany in 1962, & lasting until the early 1970s. Like Dada it scorned artistic tradition & professionalism, members aiming to have non-artistic jobs. Its most famous artist was Joseph Beuys, though his commitment to art was exceptional. Participants were mainly concerned with Happenings, street art, etc. New York became the centre of activity & festivals were held in large European cities. According to its manifesto the aim was purge the world of bourgeois sickness & dead art OxDicMod, L&L
FORCES NOUVELLES:
Term: This was an association of artists formed in Paris in 1934. They wanted to promote strict draughtsmanship & craftsmanship & condemned avant-garde movements as too precious. In style their work ranged from the painterly to the expressive & their politics were mostly left-wing. They held exhibitions up to 1943 OxDicMod
Painters: Henri Heraut, Robert Humblot, Jean Lasne, Alfred Pellan, Georges Rohner, Pierre Tal-Coat Ateneum p13
FOURTEENTH STREET SCHOOL:
At the end of the 1920s the studio of Kenneth Hayes Miller on Union Square became the locus of a group of artists whose work, in its concern with city life, was almost a revival of the Ashcan School. It was the urban counterpart of American Scene ruralism. During the twenties Union Square was the poor man’s Fifth Avenue: a colourful focal point for radical groups & publications & a centre of artistic life where on the outskirts of Greenwich Village many artists had their studios. Important members of the School were Reginald Marsh, Morris Kantor & the Soyers. Miller himself was the most influential teacher since Henri but only turned to the city scene at the end of the twenties after moving to Union Square BrownM pp 182-3
FRENCH ACADEMY PAINTING IN THE 17TH CENTURY:
This does not appear to have been recognised as a artistic grouping but it is certainly regarded as painting of a distinctive type. After the death of Mazarin in 1661, Louis XIV made Colbert his chief minister. Under the latter the Academy became in 1663 the mechanism for furthering French power, unity & glory in the field of painting. Charles Lebrun was its director & virtual dictator from then until his death in 1790 Blunt1954 pp 225-8, 242, L&L.
FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM:
Proto-Impressionists: Boudin; Jongkind; Manet L&L Cunningham p7
Development/Phases: Manet & Degas were students together at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Renoir, Bazille, Monet & Sisley studied at the atelier of Charles Gleyre. Cezanne, Monet, Pissaro & Guillaumin worked at the Academie Suisse. In 1864 Bazille, Monet, Sisley & Renoir went to paint in the Forest of Fontainebleau. They now produced plain air landscapes and figures in landscapes, they eliminated earth tones & adopted lighter palettes, & their brushstrokes became smaller & more fragmented so as to suggest the play of light Turner RtoI p163.
From about 1866 there were regular meetings at the Cafe Guerbois, & from the mid-1870s at the Nouvelle-Athenes. These were attended regularly by Manet, Bazille, Degas & Renoir; & less frequently by Cezanne, Sisley, Monet & Pissarro. The cafe was also frequented by such critics as Duranty, Duret, Silvestre & Zola Turner RtoI p164.
In 1874 there was the first group exhibition & the coining of the term Impressionist Turner RtoI pp 161-2. The fourth exhibition in 1879 was relatively successful but in 1880 Monet followed Renoir’s example & submitted works to the Salon. Monet’s action ended the Impressionist group-identity & the ill-prepared fifth exhibition in 1880 only included six of the original exhibitors: Degas, Pissaro, Caillebotte, Guillaumin, Morisot & Rouart. Subsequently Monet organised his own one-man show. Although there were further Impressionist exhibitions in 1881, 1882 & 1886, the movement had fractured Reyburn p82, TurnerRtoI p167
The members now lived in different areas & there was a breach between the bourgeois Degas & the plein air painters who had been with Gleyre. However a more fundamental reason was a crisis of purpose & dissatisfaction with an art based on pure sensation. Pissaro had a near breakdown in the late 1870s & around 1883 Renoir felt he was at a dead end Reyburn p85. He made a study of earlier art which resulted in the depiction of nudes. Pissaro turned to painting peasants as seen close up, to rural market scenes, & later experimented with Pointillism. Monet now painted the remote seacoast & this, & especially his later works in the valley of the Creuse, had greater tonal contrasts. Sisley alone continued to paint in his old manner Reyburn p85, Turner RtoI pp167-8, Becker Cat 36-41, 43-5, 46-9, Kendall pp 101, 104, 120, 131, 135, 138-45. 156-9, 166-9.
During the 1890s & beyond there were further developments. Monet embarked on paintings which showed the same subject in different lights & weather conditions. [Those of Rouen Cathedral were particularly notable because here he seems to have been attempting not so much to show how an object looked at different times of the day but somehow to capture light itself. The object now seemed to be of little importance.] This is also true of many of his still later paintings of water lilies. Impressionism was being replaced by a synthesis of form & expression, of something between sensation & execution Reyburn p114,TurnerRtoI p168.
Characteristics: Here [for what they are worth] are the features of Impressionist paintings that have been identified by art historians etc. Tonal form is minimalised with heavy reliance on colour for modellng & depth. In the absence of colour [as in black & white reproductions] Impressionist paintings often become unstructured Sovek p14. There is an absence of the neutral tones & the dark shadows used in traditional modelling Gerdts1984 p11. Brushstrokes are juxtaposed & there is a lack of conventional perspective. The focus is on the momentary effects of light, atmosphere & movement. Colours are pure & intense. The sublime is avoided, eg sunsets & storms Turner RtoI pp 162, 163. Prismatic colours are laid directly onto the canvas Gerdts1984 p11. There is a distinctive surface texture which results from the use of the new square-ended brushes & stiff paints Grove23 p379.
Diversity: According to the authoritative Oxford History of Art the term Impressionism is all but useless Brettell p19. [When considered together as a group they had almost nothing in common. Among those who are customarily regarded as Impressionists it is possible to distinguish at least three sections:
(a) There was the inner core which comprised Monet, Renoir, Pissaro & Sisley. [They were plein air painters who confined themselves to modern life subjects & ‘scapes’. For many years they had a common style consisting of smallish dashes of high-keyed paint.]
(b) Degas & Cassatt were different. Although Degas employed much the same method of painting, he did not work en plein air. Indeed he seldom painted directly before the subject but preferred to use his memory & sketches Grove8 p620. [As a result his work appears more considered. It lacks the on-the-spot immediacy, of that produced by the core group.] Cassatt’s paintings, like those of Degas, have a psychological depth which is foreign to those of the core group See Mathews p115. They provoke the question what is taking place?
(c) Finally there was Cezanne. Even his membership of the Impressionist group was tenuous & unhappy, & the period during which he painted in a similar style to that of the core members only lasted from 1872 to 1882 or possibly earlier Kendall1988 p54, Grove6 pp 367-8, See Batignoles Group. Moreover he was never a really convinced or convincing exponent of their ideals & techniques. He was far more concerned with form & structure & used colour as a means of reinforcing them rather than to describe light & atmosphere Denvir p199.
Painters: Bazille; Caillebotte; Cassatt; Cezanne; Degas; Guillaumin; Monet; Morisot; Camille Pissaro; Sisley; Renoir Cunningham
Sub-groups: Manet, Degas & Morisot (who in 1874 married Eugene Manet) were from the upper bourgeoisie Turner RtoI pp 163-4. [So also was Cassatt]
Legacy: Impressionism, by transforming nature into a private & unformalized field for sensitive & shifting vision, made painting a freedom area. This attracted many that were unhappy with middle class jobs & morality Schapiro p192. [The Impressionists bequeathed a disregard] for inner meanings, design & the extent to which paintings were automonous objects, [though this did not go unchallenged. Indeed their prinpal legacy was the hostile reaction of Cezanne & the Cubists.] Denvir p194, See Cubism etc
FRONTE NUOVO DELLE ARTI & GRUPPO DEGLI OTTO PITTORI ITALIANI:
The Fronte was founded by Italian artists in 1946 to combat the pessimism of the post war world & to revitalise Italian art. Its members had very different styles & ideologies & it desintegrated due to a split between abstractionists & realists OxDicMod. The Gruppo was a short-lived body of artists opposed to both rigorous abstraction & realism Wikip
FUNK ART, SICK ART, HAIRY WHO:
Term/Concept: It covers the work by artists in the San Francisco area around 1960, being derived from funky which originally meant smelly. Pornographic, scatological or other tatty subjects were treated in a deliberately distasteful way. The first Funk works were paintings but they were typically three dimensional sculptures or assemblage using cheap or junk materials. The intension was to deflate & subvert everything held sacred including Abstract Expressionism & the good taste & hegemony of New York. The movement was influenced by Dada & Pop art. A grouping of Chicago artists founded in 1966 was of a similar type but their work was two rather than three dimensional. The movement was influenced by Dada & Pop art, & is a form of Anti-Art OxDicMod, L&L, OxDicTerms, Lucie-S2003; See Anti-Art in this Section.
Practitioners: Edward Kienholz, Robert Ameson, Bruce Connor & Paul; & for Hairy Who Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt & Karl Wirsum L&L.
FUTURISM:
Term/Development: In 1909 it was launched by the Italian writer Fillipo Marinetti with an article Le Futurisme in Le Figaro, the Parisian newspaper. Here in ringing tones, he glorified technology, speed as a form of beauty, aggression & the cleansing effect of war. He denounced any attachment to the past, including museums which he promised to destroy. In 1910 the painters Boccioni, Carra, Russolo & Severini, signed a manifesto & issued a pamphlet denouncing existing painting & the evil influence of museums. They demanded a new, young & living art. A second manifesto was less extreme & more constructive. It called for representation of a dynamic type which, because images persist on the retina, would depict multiple sightings of moving objects. Henceforth colour should sing out in triumphal fanfares. During 1912, after a study trip to Paris to view Cubist works, the first Futurist paintings began to emerge. The first Futurist exhibitions were held in Paris, London, & the Sturm Gallery in Berlin TurnerEtoPM pp 187-8, Lynton pp 87–8, Braun pp 49-50
Background/Influences: Italy was then afflicted with a stifling burden of past greatness. “I am nauseated by old walls & old palaces” Boccioni declared in 1907. Another influence was Bergson’s concept of fragmented experience which implied overlapping representations of distance, movement & time. The Futurists drew on the sequential photos taken in the 1880s by Eadweard Maybridge in England & Etienne Jukes Marey in France with their successive positions of a figure on one plate Lynton pp 87-8, Hughes1996 p44.
Paintings: Some of Balla’s works, like Dynamism of a Dog on a Leach, 1912, are almost literal transcriptions of photos by Maybridge & Marey. Although Futurist paintings display Cubist dislocation & dismemberment, the emotional temperature has soared, as typified by Severini’s Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin, 1912, which is filled with a kind of louche frenzy Hughes1996 pp 44, 46-7. [However, summary generalisations about Futurist works are to be distrusted.] Balla, for instance, appears to have moved around 1913 to a form of lyric abstraction employing harmonious, non-strident colouring TurnerEtoPM p192, Braun colour plates 10, 11, 13
Painters: Balla; Boccioni; Cangiullo; Carra; Depro; Martini; Morandi; Munari; Prampolini; Rosai; Russolo; Severini; Sironi TurnerEtoPM pp 188-93.
Legacy:
(a) Artistic: There was a direct impact on the Vorticists, though they opposed the Futurist emphasis on motion. [What was probably more important] was the influence of Marinetti & the Futurists on the entire European avant-garde due to the worship of the machine & the belief that technology was the solvent of all social ills, witness the Constructivists. Marinette was adept at packaging & presentation. He & his group advanced the idea that there was a new class of machine visionaries:. This led to a modernism which ended in performance pieces & happenings Lynton p94, Hughes1996 pp 41-3
(b) Political: After abandoning revolutionary Marxism during the World War, Mussolini had only a vague idea of Fascist principles. Initially Fascism was merely a technique for gaining power. Mussolini drew many of his ideas from the Futurists & Marinetti, including street violence, the use of force, a break with tradition, & the exaltation of youth. During 1915 Marinetti & Mussolini had been arrested during a demonstration in Rome & had become friends. In 1919 Marinetti stood beside Mussolini when he announced the birth of the Fascist movement & the first Fascist-Futurist clubs were founded Golomstock pp 9-10. Futurism led to a more headlong engagement of artists with politics & a new kind of artist; the performer Lynton p88.
GERMAN IMPRESSIONISM:
Development: A spontaneous approach to light & atmosphere had already been developed by Menzel OxDicMod. From 1898, primarily through the Gallerie Paul Cassire, French Impressionism found its way into museums & private collections & thus into public awareness. Although critics thought the German & French movements had shared features, they overlooked the way in which none of the most radical French innovations had been adopted. These included the organisation of space by colour alone & the dissolution of colour in light. Moreover, Liebermann Slevogt & Corinth were largely painters of literary, religious & mythological subjects, etc MET1981 p34
Painters: Corinth c1900-11; Liebermann; Slevogt; Trubener; Zugel; Uhde L&L, Roh p14
Movement: The so-called German Impressionists have been included under Impressionistic Painting & Corinth has been treated as an Expressionist from 1911
The GLASGOW BOYS:
Term: In 1890 critics identified several common features in the work of a group of Glasgow artist on show at the Grosvenor Gallery & called them the Glasgow School. They preferred the name Boys because it did not imply a close stylistic unity TurnerRtoI p120
Background:
(a) Prosperous Glasgow industrialists bought contemporary French & Dutch works & then the paintings of the Glasgow Boys Treuherz1993 p202. In particular there were the Gardiner brothers who founded a shipping company & throughout 1880s supported the Glasgow Boys by patronage & recommendation, & also some of their non-Scottish friends such as O’Meara Billcliffe p20.
(b) Edinburgh had the exclusive Royal Scottish Academy, which was virtually impossible to join unless one was a resident. As a result, Petti, Orchardson & other Scottish artists settled in London from 1850.
(c) The Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, which was established in 1861, was more open but selection was partly controlled by members of the prestigious & exclusive Glasgow Art Club. These so-called Gluepots used megilp which was a brown & heavy medium that gave pictures some body & a ready-made patina of age. Mackellar & Davidson painted story pictures including Cavalier episodes, the homes of the honest & pathetic poor etc Billcliffe pp 14-5, 29-30.
(d) Phoebe Traquair, the most successful Scots interpreter of the Arts & Crafts Movement, painted her first murals 1885-6 at the Sick Children’s Hospital; then in 1888-9 the S. Mary’s Song School murals which were her best work Macmillan pp 23-4
Influences: Whistler; French & Dutch Realists (Millet L’Hermitte, Breton, Israels); & above all Bastien-Lepage Billcliffe pp 31-3
Forerunners: The belief that Glasgow Boys represented an entirely new development is unfounded. They were anticipated by a group of late Victorian Scottish artists who made an earnest & unsentimental attempt to re-identify with the land. Sometimes they were so closely involved in description as to be almost co-operating with their field labourers Macmillan1990 pp 245-5
Development: Several groups of friends painted out of doors during the summer at various places in Scotland, England & France. During 1877-82 Patterson & Macgregor painted on the Scottish East coast. Between 1879 & 1882 Guthrie, Walton & Crawhall, & sometimes Henry, worked at Rosneth outside Glasgow, in the Trossachs, & at Crowland in Lincolnshire Treuherz p203, Billcliffe pp 39-45, 55. A third grouping comprised Lavery, Kennedy, Roch & Dow who were all Paris trained & painted at Grez-sur-Loing, 1882 Billcliffe pp 21, 23.
There was a turning point in the mid-1880s. In 1885 Lavery decided not to return to France but spent the whole of the year in the Glasgow area. Although he remained committed to plein-air methods his subject matter changed from rustic labourers to the daily life of middle-class families: a move that had already been anticipated by Walton & Nairn Billcliffe pp 176-80. From around 1885 the work of Hornel, Henry & Dow became more decorative, & they were followed by David Gauld & Stuart Park who were younger. The rustic naturalism of Bastien-Lepage was no longer in vogue but work with strong colour, pattern & line, & a vague yet overt symbolism. The new work featured dense, inward turned woodland scenes of an all-over type Billcliffe pp 193-5, 234-65, McConkey1989 p95.
From the late 1880s there was growing public recognition of Guthrie, Walton & Lavery. Admission was slowly gained to establishment institutions: the Royal Scottish Academy, the Glasgow Art Club’s Committee, & the council of the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts). However, the Boys’ work became less experimental with their growing family responsibilities & concern to project a correct image. They turned to portrait painting & produced crowd-pleasing pot-boilers, though this did not apply to Kennedy & Hornel rejected advances from the Royal Scottish Academy Bullcliffe pp 202, 233-4. The Glasgow Boys had never been artistic revolutionaries or politically motivated. What they wanted was the right to paint as they wished & to be judged on their merits by artistic institutions Billcliffe p300
Painters: Joseph Crawhall; Millie Dow; David Gauld; Sir James Guthrie; George Henry; Edward Atkinson Hornel; Sur John Lavery; William Yorke Macgregor; Alexander Mann; Arthur Melville; Stuart Park, James Paterson;Alexandr Roche; Edward Arthur Walton TurnerRtoI pp 120-1, Billcliffe p24 etc
Feature: Cabbage patches Billcliffe p46
Repute: There was recognition outside Glasgow with an 1880 display at the Grosvenor Gallery, but the Glasgow Boys were mostly ignored from about 1918 until 1968 when there was major exhibition of their work at the Glasgow Art Gallery Billcliffe pp 7-8, 15
GLASGOW FOUR:
Term: It applied to Mackintosh & his wife Margaret Macdonald & to Herbert McNair & his wife Frances Macdonald (Margaret’s sister) OxDicMod
Group: They were painters & designers who worked in Glasgow between around 1890 & 1910 & developed common Art Nouveau style, influenced by Celtic art & Symbolism. They were most appreciated on the Continent OxDicMod
GLASGOW SCHOOL:
Term: It has been applied variously to the Glasgow Boys & Glasgow Four (See separate entries), & later to a group of figurative painters (sometimes called the Glasgow pups) who worked in Glasgow from the 1980s OxDicMod
Development: The Pups all trained at the Glasgow School of Art under Sandy Moffat, who encouraged a return to figurative art after the Conceptualist 1970s OxDicMod
Characteristics: Dramatic & large scale works sometimes inspired by an alienated, post-industrial world Macmillan1994 pp 147-51
Painters: Steven Campbell; Ken Currie; Peter Howson; Adrian Wiszniewski OxDicMod
Influence: The group’s success contributed to Glasgow’s cultural renaissance OxDicMod
GLASGOW SOCIAL REALISTS:
This is my name for a group ofleft-wing Glasgow painters who were inspired by Herman & Adler. They included Millie Frood, George Hannah, Tom Macdonald, Bet Low & Joan Eardley Macmillan1994 pp 80-81
GROUP OF FIVE / GROUPA PIECIU:
This group of Polish painters was founded in 1905 & exhibited in various places including Cracow, Warsaw, berlin & Vienna between 1905 & 1908. They were inspired by Charles Baudelaire & believed in the community of the visual arts, literature & music. The group consisted of Vlastimil Hofman, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Leopold Gottlieb, Mieeczslaw Jakimowicz & Jan Rembowski Wikip
GROUP OF SEVEN
It consisted of Canadian painters based on Toronto. They were established in 1920 when they held their first official exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, although some of them had been working together since 1913. They painted in an Expresionist style & were the first national Canadian art movement OxDicTerms
Influences: Symbolism & Post-Impressionism TurnerEtoPM p204
Characterists: [These have been variously describned.] Iniitially their style was Impressionist but from around 1913 it was more styalised & Post-Impressionist with larger, flatter areas of unmodulated colour Brigstocke. Their forms have been said to be simplified in bold colouring with a mystical element TurnerEtoPM p204. Their style has also been regarded as Expressionist OxDicTerms
Painters:; A. J. Casson; Frank Carmichael; Lawren Harris; Edwin Holgate; A. Y. Jackson; Frank Johnson; Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald; Arthur Lismer Turner EtoPM p204
Guest Artists: Emily Carr; Randolph Hewton; Robert Pilot; Albert & Percy Robinson Silcox pp 34-5, 37
GROUP X:
This was a group of former members of the Vorticist movement & other British artists who, led by Wyndham Lewis, aimed to provide a focus for London’s avant-garde & an alternative exhibition venue to the London Group. Group X was formed in 1920 & held only one exhibition. Its members included Dismoor, Dobson, Etchells, Ginner, Kauffer, William Roberts & Wadsworth. The works exhibited were chiefly characterised by angular figuration OxDicMod, TurnerEtoPM p205
HAGUE SCHOOL & AMSTERDAM SCHOOL:
Term: This was coined in 1875, & refers to a group of Dutch artists who mainly worked in the town between 1860 & 1900 OxDicArt, TurnerRtoI p156. However, the term was later extended to cover artists in the Amsterdam School (or Amsterdam Impressionists) many of whom have little in common with the original grouping TurnerRtoI p157, B&B pp12-5
Speciality: Landscapes & beach scenes OxDicArt
Oeuvre: This also included street scenes, church interiors, genre & portraiture OxDicArt, L&L
Development & Characteristics: To begin with the School was partly a Romantic revival of the 17th century Dutch tradition, & this nostalgic strain distinguishes it from the Barbizon School & the Impressionists. It members aimed at rendering atmospheric effects through tonality & subdued colours, being nicknamed the Grey school OxDicArt, TurnerRtoI p157, L&L. Their handling involved an element of personal, poetic involvement L&L. Some younger artists continued in this intimate & restrained manner but others in the Amsterdam School (Arntzenius, Breitner, Isaac Israels) developed in a more outgoing direction TurnerRtoI p157. They were bolder in their choice of topics, more concerned with contemporary subject matter, such as ballerinas at the theatre, & were more internationally-orientated. Their palette was warmer & more intense B&B pp 14-5
Contrast with Barbizon School: The Dutchmen are without Barbizon’s oppressive pathos. Their romanticism takes the form of oppressive stillness & a melancholy dreaminess. They lack Barbizon’s lively movement, except perhaps for Mesdag Novotny p299
Painters: Arntzenius; Artz; Blommers; Bosboom; Bossom; Breitner, Willem de Zwart, Gabriel; Isaac & Jozef Israels; Jacob, Matthijs & Willem Maris; Mauve; Mesdeg; Neuhuys; Roelofs; Sadee; Tholen; Weissenbruch OxDicArt, TurnerRtoI pp 156-7
Patronage: Their work was widely exhibited & collected abroad, particularly in North America, & also in Scotland (James Staats Forbes, William Burrell) TurnerRtoI p157
Collections: Municipal & Mesdeg Museums, The Hague, Rijksmuseum
Influences: Van Gogh & Mondrian were dominated by the School in their early work, & it influenced English & American painting, especially The Glasgow Boys TurnerRtoI p157, L&L, Billcliffe pp 31-2
HARD-EDGED PAINTING:
This was a term coined in 1958 by Jules Lagsner & popularised by Lawrence Alloway. It covers works, mainly abstract, with areas of flat colour that have clearly defined edges. They were a reaction against the spontaneity & painterly handling of Abstract Expressionism. The term was originally applied to the West Cost painters Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley & John McLaughlin but was extended to include a wide range of artists such as Elsworth Kelly & Kenneth Noland OxDicTerms, OxDicMod, Lucie-S2003. [However, a much wider range of painting can be described as hard-edged. In particular it applies to much of the later work of the Canadian Grop of Seven, especially from 1923 that of Lawren Harris Silcox pp 331-9, See also Impresionism, Canadian in Section 9]
HARLEM RENAISSANCE:
After the first World War Harlem in upper Manhattan was almost exclusively Black, & became the national centre of African-American culture, including theatre, music & dance Abrams6 p147. Aaron Douglas was the best known of the artists associated with the Renaissance OxDicM
HEFTIGE MALERIE (Heavy Painting). This was the name of an exhibition in 1980 at the Haus am Walden, Berlin, at which Rainer Fetting & others who subsequently became known as the Neue Wilden took part. The description Heftige Malerie was then replaced by Neue Wilden Lampertz site, OxDicMod p234. See Neue Wilden, & also Neo-Expressionism in Section 9
New Fauvism. This is an alternative term for Neo-Expressionism for which See Neo-Expressionism et al in Section 9
Wild Painting. This is an alternative term for Neo-Expressionism for which See Neo-Expressionism et al in Section 9
HISPANO-SPANISH SCHOOL:
See Hispano-Spanish under Spain in Section 9
HOGARTH GROUP:
History: Before the Second World War this was the Communist Party artists’ organization M&R p23
Members: Rowe (Secretary); Nan Youngman; Gowing etc M&R p23
HOOSIER GROUP/SCHOOL:
See Impressionism American
HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL:
Term: This was in general use from the late 1870s & was originally perjorative Turner. They were a loosely organised group of American landscape painters based on New York & active in the mid-19th century. The name is somewhat misleading because its members painted elsewhere & lacked consistent principles RtoI p159
Background: The celebration of American scenery by William Cullen Bryant & Fenimor Cooper RtoI p159
Development: There was a great rise of interest in landscape painting in early 19th century America. Thomas Cole initiated the school with the success of the paintings that followed his sketching trip up the Hudson in 1825 TurnerRtoI p159. By the early 1840s Durand, Kensett, Cropsey, Church etc had, inspired by Cole’s example, taken up landscape, which they exhibited at the National Academy of Design & the American art-union in New York. Following Cole’s death (1848) Durand became the group’s principal spokesman & theorist TurnerRtoI p160.
Links: many members had painting rooms at the 10th Street Studio Building in New York TurnerRtoI p160
Characteristics: The use of meticulous preparatory sketches made on the spot lead to carefully conceived studio works that captured the majesty & distinctive characteristics of the American landscape. There is often an uneasy dichotomy in exhibition works between the subject matter & its conventionl handling Honour1979 pp 115-6. By the early 1860s Kensett, Gifford & Heade were concentrating on light effects & LuminismTurnerRtoI pp 160–1
Verdict: Few paintings depart very far from the established formulae for depicting sublime prospects Honour1979 p115
Patronage: Important New York collectors & businessmen TurnerRtoI p160
Painters: Bierstead; Church; Cole; Cropsey; Durand, Gifford; Heade; Kensett; Moran; Whittredge TurnerRtoI p160
Repute: The school led to a transformation in the status of painting in America. Hitherto artists had been regarded with suspicion nu Puiritans or as mere tradesmen. Landscape transformed the status of the American artist by making them promoters of national identity & priests who revealed God’s handiwork Hughes1997 pp 137-9. However, by the 1870s the school itself was considered old-fashioned. However, interest revived in the 1910s & with exhibitions in the 30s & 40s TurnerRtoI p161
Hyperrealism. See
The IDYLLISTS:
They were a group of English landscape painters who during the later Victorian era strove to emphasise poetry & imagination in conveying the beauty of the English countryside. They mainly worked in watercolour & although they were not a coherent group exhibited at the Grosvenor & Dudley Galleries. Their influence on landscape was very detectable during the 1870s & 80s. The Idyllists had themselves been influenced by the Aesthetic Movement [& this is where they fit] Wood1999 pp 292, 294, Treuyherz pp 187, 189
Painters: John North, Robert Macbeth, George Pinwell & also their heirs Cecil Lawson, Frederick Bridell although he mainly painted in & around Rome, & Lionel Smythe who also painted in France Wood1999 pp 294-5, Treuyherz pp 187, 189
IMPRESSIONISM, AUSTRALIAN, & THE HEIDELBERG SCHOOL
Term: Heidelberg School was coined in 1891 TurnerRtoI p158
Development: In 1885 Tom Roberts returned to Australia from Europe enthused by direct paint handling en plein air without elaborate finish. He established painting camps at various places outside Melbourne beginning at Housten’s Farm near Box Hill where he was joined by McCubbin. His work was then seen by Streeton & Conder. During 1888-90 Roberts, Conder & Streeton lived in a deserted farmhouse at Eaglemont near Heidelberg & painted incessantly.
In 1889 they, McCubbin & others exhibited at the legendary 9×5 show in Melbourne paintings that were intended to capture fleeting light effects Hughes1966 pp 53-6, TurnerRtoI p158. Roberts from 1890 also painted large & ambitious subject paintings of Australian rural life sometimes of an historical nature featuring bushrangers etc Hughes1966 pp 57-9, TurnerRtoI p158. By 1900 the group had broken up with many members leaving for Europe. However its vision of Australian life & landscape came to dominate early 20th century painting OxDicMod.
Links: Most Heidelbergers trained at the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Art in Melbourne TurnerRtoI p158.
Painters: Aby Alston; Conder; David Davies; Tom Humphrey; Artur Loureiro; McCubbin; John Mather; Charles Richardson; Tom Roberts; Clara Southern; Streeton; Jane Sutherland; Walter Withers TurnerRtoI p158
IMPRESSIONISM IN FRANCE:
Term/Grouping: The term was first used by Louis Leroy in a hostile description of the work a group of 39 artists who exhibited together in Paris during 1874. It was derived from Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise to draw attention to what was regarded as the unfinished nature of the works. A further seven Impressionist exhibitions were held, the last in 1886. Numerous artists took part & Pissaro, [a key figure in organising the exhibitions] was the only one who showed works at every exhibition. Other celebrated painters who participated included Pierre Renoir, Edgar Degas, Pierre Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paul Gauguin & Georges Seurat. The two latter artists are however regarded as Post-Impressionists, Degas did not regard himself as an Impressionist & Manet who refused to exhibit, was an associate Turner pp 161-7 L&L
Development: Renoir, Bazille, Monet & Sisley had studied together at the atelier of Charles Gleyre; & Cezanne, Monet, Pissaro & Guillaumin at the Academie Suisse. In 1864 Bazille, Monet, Sisley & Renoir went to paint in the Forest of Fontainebleau. They now produced plein air landscapes and figures in landscapes, they eliminated earth tones & adopted lighter palettes, & their brushstrokes became smaller & more fragmented so as to suggest the play of light Turner RtoI p161-3. From about 1866 there had been regular meetings at the Cafe Guerbois, & from the mid-1870s at the Nouvelle-Athenes. These were attended regularly by Manet, Bazille, Degas & Renoir; & less frequently by Cezanne, Sisley, Monet & Pissarro. The cafe was also frequented by such critics as Duranty, Duret, Silvestre & Zola Turner RtoI p164.
In 1874 there was the first group exhibition & the coining of the term Impressionist Turner RtoI pp 161-2. It was a commercial disaster. Degas & Morisot sold nothing & only Sisley appears to have done reasonably well Roe p131 the fourth exhibition in 1879 was relatively successful but in 1880 Monet followed Renoir’s example & submitted works to the Salon. Monet’s action ended the Impressionist group-identity & the ill-prepared fifth exhibition in 1880 only included six of the original exhibitors: Degas, Pissaro, Caillebotte, Guillaumin, Morisot & Rouart. Subsequently Monet organised his own one-man show. Although there were further Impressionist exhibitions in 1881, 1882 & 1886, the movement had fractured Reyburn p82, TurnerRtoI p167
The members now lived in different areas & there was a breach between the bourgeois Degas & the plein air painters who had been with Gleyre. However, a more fundamental reason was a crisis of purpose & dissatisfaction with an art based on pure sensation. Pissaro had a near breakdown in the late 1870s & around 1883 Renoir felt he was at a dead end Reyburn p85. He made a study of earlier art which resulted in the depiction of nudes. Pissaro turned to painting peasants as seen close up, to rural market scenes, & later experimented with Pointillism. Monet now painted the remote seacoast & this, & especially his later works in the valley of the Ceruse, had greater tonal contrasts. Sisley alone continued to paint in his old manner Reyburn p85, Turner RtoI pp167-8, Becker Cat 36-41, 43-5, 46-9, Kendall pp 101, 104, 120, 131, 135, 138-45. 156-9, 166-9.
During the 1890s & beyond there were further developments. Monet embarked on paintings which showed the same subject in different lights & weather conditions. [Those of Rouen Cathedral were particularly notable because here he seems to have been attempting not so much to show how an object looked at different times of the day but somehow to capture light itself. The object now seemed to be of little importance.] This is also true of many of his still later paintings of water lilies. Impressionism was being replaced by a synthesis of form & expression, of something between sensation & execution Reyburn p114,TurnerRtoI p168.
Characteristics: Here [for what they are worth] are the features of Impressionist paintings that have been identified [& which apply, if at all, to the early an early period]. Tonal form is minimalised with heavy reliance on colour for modelling & depth. In the absence of colour [as in black & white reproductions] Impressionist paintings often become unstructured Sovek p14. There is an absence of the neutral tones & the dark shadows used in traditional modelling Gerdts1984 p11. Brushstrokes are juxtaposed & there is a lack of conventional perspective. The focus is on the momentary effects of light, atmosphere & movement. Colours are pure & intense. The sublime is avoided, e.g., sunsets & storms Turner RtoI pp 162, 163. Prismatic colours are laid directly onto the canvas Gerdts1984 p11. There is a distinctive surface texture which results from the use of the new square-ended brushes & stiff paints Grove23 p379. It is notable that these supposed common characteristics do not include painting en plein air. Degas firmly refused to paint out of doors & so cannot strictly be considered an Impressionist Serullaz p12
Diversity: Among those who are customarily regarded as Impressionists it is possible to distinguish at least three sections. Moreover, the Impressionists were divided by social class & personal hostility:
(i) [There was the inner core which comprised Monet, Renoir, Pissaro & Sisley. They were plein air painters who confined themselves to modern life subjects & scapes. For many years they had a common style consisting of smallish dashes of high-keyed paint.]
(ii) Degas & Cassatt were different. Although Degas employed much the same method of painting, he did not work en plein air. Indeed, he seldom painted directly before the subject but preferred to use his memory & sketches Grove8 p620. [As a result, his paintings, as opposed to his on-the-spot sketches, appears more considered. They lack the immediacy of those produced by the core group.] Cassatt’s paintings, like those of Degas, have a psychological depth which is foreign to those of the core group & provoke the question what is going on Mathews p115, Pollock pp 129-31.
(iii) Finally, there was Cezanne. His membership of the Impressionist group was tenuous & unhappy, & the period during which he painted in a similar style to that of the core members only lasted from 1872 to 1882 or possibly earlier Kendall1988 p54, Grove6 pp 367-8. Moreover, he was never a really convinced or convincing exponent of their ideals & techniques. He was far more concerned with form & structure & used colour as a means of reinforcing them rather than to describe light & atmosphere Denvir p199.
(iv) Caillebotte, Cassatt, Degas, Manet & Morisot belonged to the upper bourgeoisie. In contrast Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Sisley & Pissarro, came from the merchant, trading & artisan classes. Although some of these artists had affluent backgrounds, they all, with the exception of Cezanne, experienced periods of acute poverty Grove5 p921, Turner RtoI pp 163-4, Mathews pp 109-11, Roe pp 10, 12, 16, 20, 22, 50, 57, 101, 179-80, 187-8, 190, 201, Shone1988 p14, Kendall1992 p9
(v) Although the Impressionists met together in the cafes Guerbois & Nouvelle-Athenes they were a far from united group. Degas loathed Manet & Pissaro (“that Israelite”) Denvir p11
Legacy: Impressionism transformed nature into a private & informalised field for sensitive vision, shifting with the spectator. As a result, painting became a liberating activity for those unhappy with middle class jobs & morality Schapiro p192. [The Impressionists bequeathed a disregard] for inner meanings, design & the extent to which paintings were autonomous objects, [though this did not go unchallenged. Indeed, its principal legacy was the hostile reaction of Cezanne & the Cubists.] Denvir p194, See Cubism etc
Verdict: According to the authoritative Oxford History of Art the term Impressionism is all but useless Brettell p19. It does not constitute a unified Movement & in Section 9 it is divided into constituent elements each with shared characteristics.
Painters not already mentioned Frederic Bazille; Marie Braquemard; Gustave Caillebotte; Eva Gonzales; Armand Guillaumin Cunningham, Garb
IMPRESSIONISM, GERMAN;
Development: A spontaneous approach to light & atmosphere had already been developed by Menzel OxDicMod. From 1898, primarily through the Gallerie Paul Cassire, French Impressionism found its way into museums & private collections & thus into public awareness. Although critics thought the German & French movements had shared features, they overlooked the way in which none of the most radical French innovations had been adopted. These included the organisation of space by colour alone & the dissolution of colour in light. Moreover, Liebermann, Slevogt & Corinth were largely painters of literary, religious & mythological subjects, etc MET1981 p34.
[Impressionism was not a strong movement in Germany.] Corinth, Liebermann & Uhde did not begin painting Impressionistic works until around 1895; & Slevogt not until about 1900 Grove7 p855, & 19 p334, & 31 p537, Norman1977.
Painters: Corinth, Liebermann, Slevogt & Uhde, although Trubner & Zugel have also been included C&C p64, Roh p14.
INTELLECTUAL PAINTING:
Term: This was used by Fritz Novotny to describe a group of painters in the latter part of the 19th century Novotny Ch 15. He believed there had been a continuing contrast between intellectual painting & realism, with Rembrandt representing the intellectual tendency in 17th century Holland. During the 19th century there were two groups of intellectual painters who had a programme that was fairly broad & consistent, namely the Pre-Raphaelites & some Swiss-German painters known as German-Romans Novotny p317
Characteristics: Unfortunately Novotny did not say what he meant by intellectual painting. However, it seems likely that he was referring to a type of work characterised by thought, care & deliberation. This was an art in which the painter, however skilled, did not employ brushwork that can properly be described as free, spontaneous & lyrical. Moreover although intellectual paintings were strongly atmospheric their emotional appeal was of a subdued nature. They were for the most part classical rather than Romantic painters.
Continental Painters: Bocklin, Feuerbach, Marees & with reservations Puvis de Chavannes, Fantin-Latour, Eugene Carriere, & possibly Odilon Redon Novotny Ch 15
INTIMISME/INTIMISTE:
Term: It was first used in the 1890s & denotes Impressionistic paintings that feature intimate domestic scenes; the term intimiste having been coined by Henri Le Sidaner to describe his own work. Colour is often exaggerated & distorted to express mood & convey the warmth & comfort of bourgeois domestic life. There is an emphasis on decoration & patterning of a flat type. The classic Intimists were Bonnard & Vuillard. However, paintings of this type go back to Vermeer & Chardin, [& there were numerous painters during the 20th century who are candidates for inclusion] OxDicMod, Grove15 p888, Lucie-S2003, ShearerW1996. They include, for instance, Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant M&D pp115, 122, 127, 132, 137, Tate site
JUSTE MILEAU:
Term: [This is not a recognized School but two loosely defined bodies of artists.] The term was first used in 1831 for French painters who steered a careful path between moribund Classicism & Romanticism. Louis-Philippe had announced his intention of a political just-milieu to avoid both the excess of both popular & royal power. In 1914 the art historian Leon Rosenthal said that the leading Juste Mireau artists were Paul Delaroche, Horace Vernet & Leon Cogniet who were highly popular during the 1830s & 40s. According to Rosenthal, the appeal of their works was their penetrability: the way in which the eye passes straight through the canvas to the scene or object represented. Thomas Couture has subsequently been added to Rosenthal’s list & Friedrich Lessing, a leading figure in the Dusseldorf School, has been seen as a parallel painter R&Z pp115-21, R&J pp 162-3.
Characteristics: Such work is documentary & has a camera-like neutrality R&J pp 163-4.
Development: The original concept has been extended by Albert Boime & Robert Jensen to include such highly successful painters as Sargent & Boldini who were located between the Impressionists & the academic pompiers. Their palette & technique were Impressionistic but their work had academic legibility See the Great Tradition in Section 9
KITCHEN SINK SCHOOL ET AL:
Term: It was coined by the critic David Sylvester in 1954 but its members rejected the label Spalding1986 p158, TurnerEtoPM p229
Background: Excavations where buildings had been blitzed provided marvellous subject matter for artists interested in texture, colour & men working. At that time young artists were eager to widen their horizons F50s p23
Influences: Sickert’s earlier work directly & through the teaching at the Royal College of Art. Although Kitchen Sink was locally inspired it belonged to a larger European move towards realism & the British artists were aware of the Italian social realists associated with the gallery La Colonna, Milan, & French realists F50s pp 18-9, Spalding1986 pp 159, 161.
Development: The group lasted from around 1947 until the latish 1950s. The core painters knew each other & exhibited at the Beaux Arts Gallery owned by Helen Lessore whose husband’s sister had married Sickert. Smith & Greaves grew up in the same Shefield Street &, like Middleditch, attended the Royal College of Art. What was particularly important was the support which the painters received from the Marxist John Berger who was art critic for the New Statesman & organised a series of exhibitions entitled Looking Forward for figurative realists of varying types at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1952, 1953 & 1956. The Kitchen Sink artists did not have a common aim. They were however in reaction against Neo-Romanticism & the elitism of abstraction & in favour of figurative social realism Turner EtoPM p229-30, Spalding 1986 pp 159-62, F50s pp 9, 19, etc
There was also a group of left-wing Glasgow painters, of whom the best known was Joan Eardley, whose work was similar to that of the Kitchen Sink artists. They were inspired by the arrival of the Polish artists Josef Herman & Jankel Adler in 1940-1 Macmillan pp 80-1, OxDicMod
Characteristics: They specialised in drab, dour working-class subjects including domestic life & labour, clutter & debris. Street scenes, industrial landscapes, back yards, children Their work was painted in a harsh, aggressive style using strong designs, thick paint & drab biscuit colours which were cheap, except for Bratby who used bright, strident colour. Hard work & dedication was another feature of Kitchen Sink artists OxDicMod, TurnerE to PM p229, Spalding1986 p158, F50s pp 8-9, 11, 14-5, 17, 19, 36-7
Painters:
(a) Core: John Bratby; Derrick Greaves; Edward Middlewich; & Jack Smith GroveEtoPM p229
(b) Others exhibiting at Looking Forward Exhibitions: Harry Baines; Morley Bury; Alfred Daniels; Peter de Francia; Josef Herman; Peter de Francia; Claude Rogers F50s pp 51, 55-6, 58, 61, 65
(c) Other neo-Kitchen Sink: John Berger; Peter Blake; Brian Bradshaw; Prunella Clough (early); Peter Coker; Leslie Duxbury; John Hoyland; Malcolm Hughes; John Minton, Peter Peri; Keith Vaughan; Anthony Wishaw F50s pp 13, 22. 27, 52, 57-8. 67-8, 73, 73, 77
(d) Left-wing Glasgow Joan Eardley, Milanlie Frood, George Hannah, Bet Low, Tom Macdonald Macmillan pp 80-81
LA RUCHE:
It was a Parisian building opened in 1902 as an artistic centre. Originally it had 24 cramped studios but a further 140 were erected. They were badly built, lacked water & gas, but were extremely cheap. They housed many foreign artists during their early careers (Archipenko, Chagall, Lipchitz, Modigliani & Soutine), together with some French painters (Delaunay, Laurens & Leger) & also poets & writers (Apollinaire etc) OxDicMod.
LEIBL CIRCLE/KRIES:
This was a group of artists in Munich led by Wilhelm Leibl from 1870. Their concerns paralleled those of the Parisian Realists. It was a loose body of friends who worked together, made excursions & met at restaurants. The members included Rudolf du Frenes, Karl Haider, Albert Lang, Ernst Sattler, Fritz Schider, Carl Schuch, Johann Sperl, Thoma & Trubner. The only members whose work had constant quality were Trubner & Schuch. Those in the circle painted portraits sometimes of each other, genre, rural scenes & landscapes, interiors & still-life Met1981 pp 227-33, 270, Brooklyn pp 56. 103-5, 107-15.
LEIDEN FINE PAINTERS (Finschilder):
This was active from about 1630 to 1660 but there were variations on its manner until the late 18th century. Paintings were small in a polished style; they were mainly genre & often in a niche format. This was developed by Dou in the 1640s & pictures a stone window framing an old woman or maidservant etc TurnerRtoI pp 178-9: The painters included de Moor; de Monti; Dou; Manton; Metsu; Naiveu; Snaphaen; Van dere Mij; Van der Sluis; Van Gaesbeeck; Van Lingerland; Frans Van Mieris the Elder and Younger; Jan & Willem Mieris; Van Slingerland; Van Spreeuwen; Van Staveren; Van Tol; Van Toorenvliet; Verkolje; together with Schalcken in Dordrecht Fuchs, TurnerRtoI pp 178-9, Price p222, Haak p423.
LITTLE MASTERS:
This covers an ill-defined group of northern artists who made small-format prints during the first half of the 16th century. They included Durer, the Beham brothers, Georg Pencz, Heinrich Aldegrever, & Albrecht Altdorfer. Their work was finely detailed & their subject matter was often erotic mythological & Old Testament topics, or genre peasant scenes Wikip, Grove19 p501
LIVERPOOL SCHOOL:
Term: It was coined in 1904 in a book about the city’s painters & now refers to a loose group of painters associated with Liverpool who were to a greater or lesser extent Pre-Raphaelite followers Newall2016 p87.
Development: During the 1850s Ford Maddox Brown, Holman Hunt & Millais became aware of the opportunities to exhibit & sell in the provinces. The city was particularly important because its Academy was the only official body that awarded prizes to Pre-Raphaelites. Their exhibits in the 1850s & 60s stimulated a form of Pre-Raphaelite painting in the city Grove19 p507, Newall2016 p87.
Oeuvre: Landscape & modern life Newall2016 p87.
Patron: John Miller who was a Liverpool merchant Grove4 pp 878-9
Painters: William Davis, John Lee, William Lindsay Windus, Daniel Williamson etc Newall2016
LOMBARD PAINTERS OF REALITY:
Historiography & Term: The belief that there was a Lombard school of painting characterised by naturalism has a long history. In 1648 the biographer Ridolphi said that Titian told a group departing for Bergamo that if they wanted portraits done from nature they should ask Moroni to paint them. About 1607-15 Giovanni Agucchi, a prominent man of letters active in Bologna & Rome. said that Corregio was the first Lombard to imitate nature Bayer p3. During the 19th century critics (Morelli & Berenson) had thought that Brescian art was largely inspired by Venice Bayer p24.
Professor Roberto Longhi identified the Lombard painters of reality in papers from 1917 & he helped to organise a groundbreaking Exhibition of their work in Milan during 1953. There have been subsequent Exhibitions on Lombard painters & painting. Longhi saw a line of descent from Foppa with his dark silver-grey tonalities, through Moretto & Moroni to Caravaggio Bayer pp vi, 24, 26, 105-6.
Location & Painters: The centers of this Lombardian painting were Brescia & Bergamo which were the western outposts of the Venetian empire which they joined around 1427. The principal Painters of Reality in Brescia were Foppa, Moretto, Savoldo, Romanino; & for Bergamo: Lotto (1513-25), Moroni, Cariani Bayer pp 105-6
Characteristics: Above all perhaps the close study & depiction of the unvarnished facts of everyday life including, for instance, hunks of bread, baskets of linen, blindness & brutality. There was a close observation of both the human figure & also of landscape. This dates back to Foppa’s Martyrdom of S. Peter Martyr, in the early 1460s. Renaissance diffuse light was rejected in favor of concentrated, directed light which is used to create form & the illusion of three dimensionality Bayer pp 107-8.
Innovations: Painting from the posed model, skilfully foreshortened arms, & hands reaching forward through space Bayer p109
LONDON GROUP (Confusable with the London Artists Association)
This was founded in November 1913 (although not named until 1914) by members of the old Camden Town Group, many of whose members it absorbed, & also by more radical elements, in particular Futurists & those who were soon to be known as Vorticists TurnerEtoPM pp 90, 235, OxDicMod. Among the founder members were Bomberg, Gilman (the first president), Ginner, Gore, Wyndham Lewis, Nash, Nevinson & Wadsworth, together with the non-painters Gaudier-Brzeska & Epstein. Sickert did not join, though he made a speech at its opening. The group’s members differed in style & it was an exhibiting society. However, the Vorticists dominated the Group’s show at the Goupil Galleries in March 1914.
During the War the Vorticists Lewis & Wadsworth left & the group became less aggressively avant-garde. In 1917 Fry joined, to be followed by Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant. Bloomsbury now became the most influential circle within the group. During the latter 1930s the Group was an important forum for the Euston Road School TurnerEtoPM p235, OxDicMod.
LUMINISM:
Term: This was coined c1950 by the art historian John Baur TurnerRtoI p184. Luminism has been seen as an American movement & the final phase of, &/or partial reaction against, the Hudson River School L&L. However, it has been convincingly argued that the Luminism was international in scope & that there are pictures from England, Germany, Denmark & Russia that cannot be distinguished from American work on formal & stylistic grounds Wilmerding especially pp 224, 233.
Place: America, mainly about 1850-75TurnerRtoI p184.
Background: Its crystalline pictures of the 1850s are manifestations of Jacksonian optimism while the apocalyptic storm & twilight scenes of the 1860s speak vividly of the turbulent Civil War years & the sense of loss that followed Wilmerding pp 11-12
Influences: Possibly Friedrich & Kobke, together with nuances of light & atmosphere that are suggested by photography. Another influence was Emerson & other Transcendentalists, who saw nature as the ultimate expression of God’s will TurnerRtoI pp 184-5. A great many contemporary European paintings were exhibited regularly in New York, Boston & elsewhere in America, including those of many artists who worked in a lumanist style Wilmerding pp 232-3
Predecessors: George Harvey & Robert Salmon’s work of 1830s &/or 40s TurnerRtoI pp 184-5
Development: During the 1870s the serenity of Luminism yielded to a more sober realism (Eastman Johnson, Winslow Homer & Thomas Eakins) & to the looser palette & fancies of impressionism (George Innes, Homer Martin & Whistler) Wilmerding p12
Characteristics: These included the absence of picturesque landscape details; a great sense of interior depth; the presence of few or no people; a broad horizontal format although not a panoramic vista; moonlight or sunlight shining through cloudless skies; crisply outlined forms; calm & glossy water; & typically the creation of a mood of magical or eerie stillness though sometimes with impending storms. The Lumanists usually depicted places in New England &, New Jersey & Long Island Turner RtoI p185.
Painters: Church; Bricher; Heade; Johnson; Lane; O’Brien; Silva TurnerRtoI p184 [Stebbins: Edward Cooke; William Dyce; Eckersberg?; Gurlitt; Inchbold; Kobke; Edward Lear; Lundbye; Melbye]
MACCHIAIOLI
Term: This means spot-makers & is from “macchia”, i.e., a spot, blob or daub. Macchia were used to provide approximative brushwork. It was coined in 1862 by a hostile critic but adopted by the group TurnerRtoI p186, Norman1977 p82.
Development: The years 1853-60 saw the formation of a group, composed of nationalist painters which frequented the Cafe Michelangelo in Florence. After 1860 they gathered, especially between 1861 & 1867, at Castletiglioncello, which was a Tuscan farm owned by Diego Martelli. He provided moral & material support. Costa was the group’s friend & adviser, 1859-69 TurnerRtoI p186
Characteristics: The fusion of figures & outdoor environment particularly in casual scenes: not backgrounds for figures or figures for backgrounds R&J pp 301-3. They eschewed half-tones claiming they used broad patches of colour with abrupt movement from dark to light; & mainly painted local landscape. Like the Impressionists they sought spontaneity & immediacy but whereas Impressionists did so at the expense of form & depth the Macciaioli used light & colour to create form & their colours, though bright, were more traditionally Romantic TurnerRtoI pp 186-7
Painters: Giuseppe Abbate; Banti; Boldini (early); Borrani; Cabianca; D’Ancona; De Tivoli; Fattori; Lega; Sernesi; Signorini OxDicArt, TurnerRtoI p185
Repute: They were not particularly successful or valued until the 20th century L&L
Collections: Pitti Palace
MANIERA DEVOTA STYLE:
Meaning: It was the style of Perugino, Francia, & Raphael with their atmospheric effects, sweet colourism & emotional content. There had been a new religious enthusiasm inspired by Savonarola, which had a marked effect on the late work of Botticelli. From 1510 a new religious enthusiasm emanated from the papal court & was evident at the Lateran Council of 1512, which had been summoned by Julius II. The reforming measures that were adopted were rather faint-hearted & were not taken seriously. However the maniera devota movement in art took Italy by storm. Raphael, then working at the Vatican, altered his style form classical restraint to visionary emotionalism & his lead was swiftly followed by Sebastiano del Piombo, Lorenzo Lotto, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Corregio & Titian Grove4 p493, NCMH1 pp 83, 86, 138-9.
Mexican Muralism. See under Mexico in Section 10:
MEDIEVAL PAINTING:
Despite its frequent use the term is not itemised in standard art dictionaries & has been extended back to 312-3 when the emperor Constantine recognised Christianity & forwards to cover such Northern Renaissance painters as Jan van Eyck! It has in Section 8 been included in the entry for Romanesque & Medieval Painting OxDicTerms, Lucie-S1975, Beckwith p9, Sekules p27, Pichard p58, Harbison p13.
MINIMALISM/MINIMAL ART:
Term: It was first used in 1929n by David Burkyuk in the catalogue for an exhibition of paintings by John Graham at the Dudensing Gallery in New York. He said that such painting employed the minimum of means & was purely realistic, the subject being the painting itself. In the 1960s it became an umbrella term which embraced Funk art, kinetic painting, & important Pop artists TurnerEto PM p246, Brigstocke.
Characteristics: Minimalist paintings were personal & geometric with either flat colour (Yves Klein) or contrasting monochromatic blocks (Ellsworth Kelly). The artists were in reaction against Abstract Expressionism & eliminated gestural facture by enamel paint applied with house painter’s tools (Frank Stella) or by staining un-primed canvases (Morris Louis & Helen Frankenthaler). Works were the product of pre-planning & Minimal Art is chiefly an art of ideas, whereas Abstract Expressionism was essentially painterly Brigstocke, R&S pp 246, 250
Painters: Helen Frankenthaler, Yves Klein, Brice Marden, Morris Louis, Klaes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Tom Wesselmann Brigstocke, TurnerEtoPM p246.
MOVEMENTO ARTE CONCRETA:
It was founded in 1948 in Milan. It had no manifesto or coherence, though geometric art did not flourish in Italy TurnerEtoPM p256.
MUNICH REALISTS / REALISM, 1865-75:
Development: First-hand reports of French Realism filtered into Munich during 1865-9, & in 1869 it hosted a great international exhibition which featured works by Courbet & Manet. Courbet himself arrived, having been invited by Munich painters, & praised Leibl’s Frau Gordon C&C p59.
Painters: Louis Eysen, Karl Hagemeister, Leibl, Carl Schuch, Thoma,Trubner C&C p59
MUNICH SCHOOL:
By 1870 Munich had replaced Dusseldorf as the art centre in Germany. Its Academy had numerous students attracted by Piloty, Kaulbach, Ramberg & Diez. Piloty who was the moving force painted grand history paintings. Diez produced colorful, picturesque & loosely painted works usually dealing with the Thirty-Years War Brooklyn p26. Genre scenes were painted by Defregger & Eduard Grutzner Grove 22 p304. Defregger & Grutzner had been trained by Hermann Dyke & then Hermann Anshutz at the Academy Grove8 p618, See Grutzner
NABIS, c1888-1900:
Term: Nabis derives from “neebin”, the Hebrew word for prophet & so indicates missionary zeal & interest in the occult & mystic. It relates to a group of painters who were active in Paris & were mainly French OxDicMod
Influences: Gauguin’s advice to paint in flat, pure colours Murrays1959. The early members were in reaction against their teachers Bouguereau & Lefebre TurnerRtoI p198
Development: The Nabis were a disaffected group of students at the Academie Julian who formed a secret brotherhood in 1888-9 TurnerRtoI p197. Serusier who had met Gauguin at Pont Aven in 1888 was the driving force &, with Denis, its main theorist. Group exhibitions were held between 1892 & 1899 after which the members gradually drifted apart. However, Denis, Serusier etc continued to paint Nabis work, though Bonnard & Vuillard with their Intimiste scenes did not TurnerRtoI p197, OxDicMod, OxDicArt
Characteristics: They adopted a primitivist style with simplified drawing, flattened forms, patches of colour & bold contours, together with arabesques & other patterning devices inspired by Japanese prints. Their work was frequently painted on cardboard & other unconventional supports L&L, TurnerRtoI p198
Oeuvre: Paintings, book illustration, & the design of posters, stained glass & theatrical decor OxDicMod
Painters: Ballin; Bonnard; Denis; Ibels; Maillol; Ranson; Rippli-Ronai (Hungary); Roussel; Serusier; Verkade (Netherlands); Vallotton (Switzerland); Vuillard TurnerRtoI pp 197-8, L&L
Associates: Toulouse-Lautrec & the composer Debussy OxDicArt, L&L
Grouping: With its religious & non-naturalistic work it forms part of the broad symbolist movement L&L
NEO-DADA:
A term by which various styles -including Pop Art, Junk Art, & the work of Jasper Johns- have sometimes been known in America. They were perceived as reviving the spirit of Dada OxDicMod, OxDicTerms. Johns & Robert Rauschenberg described their work as Neo-Dada Lucie-S2003
NEO-GREC:
Meaning: Either the Neo-Classical style in the decorative arts during the Second Empire or a group of Parisian Painters from around 1845 Turner RtoI pp 217-8. For who the latter were for See Academic Painting 19th Century in Section 9
NEO-GEO OR NEO-GEOMETRIC CONCEPTUALISM:
This was a reaction against Neoexpressionism’s emotionalism by a group of New York artists who employed a variety of media & were active around 1985. It was cool, impersonal & ironic, eg Jeff Koons’ stainless steel replicas of kitsch consumer objects. The painters included Peter Halley & Philip Taafffe OxDicTerms, OxDicMod
Neo-Humanism. See Neo-Romanticism in Section 9
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM:
Term: It was coined by the critic Felix Feneon in a review of the 1886 & last Impressionist Exhibition. Here paintings by the Pissaros, Seurat & Signac were exhibited in a separate room. Feneon associated Impressionism with instinct & spontaneity & Neo-Impressionism with reflection & permanence. The movement flourished until 1906 TurnerRtoI p218.
Aim: The Neo-Impressionists aimed to make depiction of light & colour more rational & scientific than the Impressionists by means of divisionism or pointillism, meaning the use of dots of pure colour which, when seen at a distance, provide maximum luminosity OxDicMod
Development: Neo-Impressionism was initiated by Seurat who used Divisionism by which colours are broken down into their component elements & Pointillism where pure pigment is applied in small dots. The crucial justification for the Neo-Impressionist dot was the way in which light from contiguous patches of colour fuses on the retina to form a new colour which was believed to be more luminous than their mixture on the palette Gage1990 p78 Seurat employed optical mixing after reading the newly published studies of Ogden Rood & Michel-Eugene Chevreul. Rood made artists aware that mixtures of coloured light differed from mixtures of coloured pigments. For instance, while the mixture of yellow & blue pigment produces green, the moisture of blue & yellow light produces a more or less pure white but never anything approaching green. Chevreul demonstrated that the mixture of coloured pigments did not produce the same result as the mixture of coloured lights. For example, mixtures of red & Green light form a bright yellow whereas mixtures of red & green pigment spun on a disk produce a dull olive. Although Chevreul had clearly explained this it was not understood & Pissaro, after four years of experimenting with Seurat’s technique, abandoned Neo-Impressionism Chevreul p15. Seurat did not but the optical mixing of juxtaposed pigmernts that occurs at a certain distance explains why his Grand Jatte is a melancholy green & purple whereas the smaller sketches have fresh tones. When the Fauves discovered that pointillism produced a greyish effect they painted colour in larger areas Clark1949 p212, Gage1999 p249.
Cross & Dubois met regularly at Signac’s studio with the Symbolist writers Feneon, Gustave Kahn & Henri de Regnier where they discussed art with an underlying structure & meaning. Both groups were acquainted with Kropotkin’s emphasis on the importance of art in everyday life, its contribution to revolution & the individuality of the artist. However the Neo-Impressionists were not militant Anarchists, although they provided anarchist publication with illustrations & some financial support. Neo-Impressionist works were exhibited in Brussels by Les XX during 1886 & 1888, & from 1887 its techniques were adopted by various Vingtistes, though after several seasons they abandoned the style. The the bold later work by Signac & Cross led to a Neo-Impressionist revival in France & semi-pointillist painting by Matisse & Derain TurnerRtoI pp 219-20, Gowing p44, Whitfield pp 68-9, 71, 79
Painters:
(a) France: Charles Angrand; Henri Edmond Cross; Albert Dubois; Leo Gausson; Louis Hayet; Maximilian Luce; & Hippolyte Petitjean TurnerRtoI p218
(b) Belgium: Anna Boch; Alfred Finch; Georges Lemmen; Jan Toorop; Henry Van de Velde; & Theo Van RysselbergheTurnerRtoI p219
(c) Netherlands: Joseph Aarts; Hendricus Bremmer; & Jan Vijlbrief TurnerRtoI pp 219-20
(d) Germany: Paul Baum & Christian Rohlfs TurnerRtoI p220
(e) Italy: Angelo Morbelli & Pinto Nomellini, both briefly TurnerRto I p220
Influenced: Delaunay; Gauguin; Jean Metzinger, Gino Severini; Van Gogh, & Toulouse-Lautrec OxDicTerms, TurnerRtoI p220
NEO-PLASTICISM:
The term was adopted by Piet Mondrian during 1917-19, for art that was totally abstract, limited to straight lines & rectangles with the latter in a strictly horizonal & vertical relationship to the frame, & colour restricted to blue, red & yellow, black, white & grey so as to achieve universal harmony OxDicMod, L&L, See also Abstraction Geometric, Linear & Objective together with Mondrian in Section 1
NEO-PRIMATIVES, BRITISH:
It was a modernist coterie at the Slade during 1911-12 which was headed by Mark Gertler & included Nevinson, Wadsworth, Stanley Spencer & Currie. They wore scarlet mufflers, & black jerseys & hats; & they roamed Soho looking for trouble. Other fellow students included Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, David Bomberg & William Roberts. This group furnished many of the new recruits to the modern movement Rothenstein p366, Harrison pp 65–6.
NEO-PRIMATIVISM, RUSSIAN, including Donkey’s Tail, Target, Rayonism:
Background: In 1910 the avant-garde Knave of Diamonds (from the markings on prisoners’ uniforms) was formed in Moscow. It held regular exhibitions from 1910 to 1917. However, in 1911 Goncharova, Larionov & Malevich disassociated themselves because they were against excessive foreign influence. They held the Donkey’s Tail exhibition in 1912. It also featured Tatlin & one Chagall. There was an outcry at religious works being part of such an exhibition. In 1913 Goncharova, Larionov & Malevich held the Target exhibition where the latter showed his Cubo-Futurist paintings. These works of around 1912-14 combined Cubism’s fragmented form & Futurism’s mechanistic movement. Goncharova & Larionov launched Rayonism. This embraced Cubism’s fragmented forms, Futurism’s dynamic movement & Orphist colours. There was also an obscure theory of invisible rays emitted from & received by close objects which the artist could bend & alter for expressive purposes. Subjects were initially broken into bundles of slanting lines but the later pictures were completely abstract OxDicArt, OxDicMod
Term: It was derived from the title of Aleksandr Shevchenko’s book, 1913. The term is now used to cover a wider aspiration towards primativism in the Russian avant-garde by alevich,Chagall, David Burlyuk, Pavel Filnov, etc TurnerEtoPM p263 OxDicMod.
Characteristics: It was a strongly nationalistic & distinctive Russian movement & was motivated by the belief that Russian art had been devalued since Peter the Great’s introduction of elegant European style. The movement was to some extent inspired by Expressionism & shared its admiration for niave art & its desire to rediscover national style. However it was an independent movement, & deliberately used crude features from peasant arts & crafts. The lubok, which were colourful & popular prints of a topsy-turvy hilarious world, played a crucial role. Icons were another influence. Works tended to be more daring & flamboyant than Expressionism due to the lubok influence as shown by Neo-Primitivism’s bright colour, decorative words & texts, & people & objects that floated arbitrarily in flattened & indeterminate space. There was also subtle colouring inspired by icons & inverted perspective & bold simplicity TurnerEtoPM p263
Painters: Abram Arkhiprov, Robert Falk, Pavel Filonov, Pavel Kaznetsov, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Nikolai Krymov, Alexander Kuprin, Boris Kustodiev, Mikhail Larionov, Ilya Mashkov, Natalia Goncharova, Martiros Saryan, Aleksandr Shevchenko, Sergei Sudeikin, Vladimir Tatlin, Konstantin Yuon Leek pp 97-9, 107, 135, 140-1, 144, 146-50, 155-6, 160-3 Petrova pp 128-9, 178-9, 186, 188-9 , Turner EtoPM p263
NEO-REALISM:
Term: It was adopted in 1913-4 by Gilman & Ginner when they exhibited together OxDicMod.
NEO-REALISME:
The term covers the work of various French painters of the the 1930s who repudiated avant-garde art & painted in poetic naturalist style & were to some extent linked by friendship OxDicMod
Painters: Jean Aujame, Jean-Louis Boussingault, Maurice Brianchon, Dunoyer de Segonzac, Raymond Legueult, Luc-Albert Moreau OxDicMod
Neo-Romanticism. See Section 9
NETHERLANDISH SCHOOL:
Term: This refers to artists from the southern & northern Netherlands who were working prior to the Union of Utrecht, 1579, by which the seven provinces of the north bound themselves to maintain their independence from the Spanish king OxDicTerms, Davies p206. The term Netherlandish appears to embrace work that is better & more exactly described as International Gothic, Northern Renaissance, Northern Realism & Fantasy for which See Section 9]
NEUE SACKLICHKEIT/New Objectivity
Term: It was coined in 1923 by Gustav Hartlaub who used it in a circular he sent after becoming the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim. He said he was contemplating an exhibition with this title, but it did not take place until 1925. This exhibition included Beckman, Dix, Grosz, Kanoldt, Schrimpf & 25 other German painters TurnerEtoPM p268, Hayward1979 p9, Lynton p156. It then went on tour & was followed by one at Karl Middendorf’s Berlin gallery in 1927 Willett p112. Franz Roh, a Munich art critic, who advised Hartlaub, favoured the label Magic Realism. However, the term Neue Sachlichkeit quickly caught on. Sachlichkeit is commonly translated as objectivity, but this is unhelpful because the term was used to cover disparate groups Willett pp 111-2, 270. There were those on Hartlaub’s Veristic left wing which included Beckman, Dix, Grosz, & Scholz, etc. On his right wing were the Neo-Classicists including some work by Picasso, Nebel, etc Hayward1979 pp 9-10.
Divisions:
Some critics have suggested that the overall grouping be divided into:
(a) Neue Sacklichkeit Proper which is Hartlaub’s left, Veristic wing. It was mainly located in Berlin, Dresden & Karlsruhe & included Dix, Grosz, Hubbuch, Schad, Schlichter, & possibly Beckmann Hayward1979 p10. The Verists engaged in social criticism by means of caricature because they saw themselves as moralists engaged in social criticism TurnerEtoPM p268, Lynton p156
(b) Magic Realism which corresponds to Hartlaub’s Neoclassicist right wing. This was concentrated in Munich & included Davringhausen, Kandolt, Schrimpf, etc. (Outside Germany – which did not figure in the 1926 exhibition – there were the Italians Carra, Cassorati, de Chirico, Funi, Morandi, Severini, & Sironi; & from France Derain, Gris, Herbin, Metzinger, & also Picasso because of his Ingres-like works around 1920.) Hayward1979 pp 9-10
(c) The Hanover Group which was particularly homogeneous. It shared a poetic approach but it was unsentimental, sober & contemporary in feeling & subject matter. They did not glorify the underprivileged, show their lives as consisting entirely of despair, or engage in propaganda but mainly painted allotments, back-yards, attics, cardplayers, ice-skaters, ice-cream & junk sellers, travelling salesmen, circus people, sailors & children. Their painting was a spare time activity. Prominent members included Jurgens, Mertens, Wegner & Ernst Thoms Hayward1979 pp 18, 20, 128.
(d) Proletarian Revolutionaries & highly politicized artists, often Communists & living mostly Berlin, Dresden & Karlsruhe (Arntz, Griebel, Grundig, Hoerle, Nagel, Seiwert, Querner) TurnerEtoPM pp 268-9, Hayward 1979 pp 9-10, 129.
Background:
(a) Political: [After Germany’s defeat, there were five main players involved in the government of the country. First, there was the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which was the original Marxist party that had now become very moderate. To begin with the SPD was the most important party & Ebert it leader was the first post-war Chancellor. Second, there was the Communist Party (KPD). Although this was not established until 1920 it effectively started with the Sparticists under Karl Liebknecht & Rosa Luxemburg. This was a revolutionary Marxist group which had been expelled from the SPD because they could not stomach the SPD’s backing for the war Taylor1945 p193. Third, there was the Centre Party, though this was only concerned with safeguarding the position of the Roman Catholic Church & lacked fixed political principles Taylor1945 p225. Fourthly, there was the People’s Party (DVP) which was a conservative grouping in which prominent industrialists soon played a prominent role. The party was led by Stresemann who was Chancellor from 1923 to 1929. Finally, there was the army whose generals mostly belonged to the Prussian Junker landowning class, & were determined to rearm. A provisional assembly had originally voted to replace the old military system by a popular militia under the command of the cabinet. However, when the Supreme Commander (Groener) told Ebert that he would withdraw his support, Ebert capitulated Craig pp 404-6, NCMH12 pp 468-70
In late 1919 the regular army had very few reliable units &, with the encouragement of the high command, right wing volunteer forces, the Free Corps, started to mobilize. Recruitment proved easy because of they were joined by demobilized lieutenants & NCOs, & also by students, patriots & drifters who responded to the call to prevent internal revolution & foreign invasion. In January 1919 the government ordered the free corps to crush a left wing rising in Berlin by the Sparticists. There were relatively few deaths but the Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht & Rosa Luxemburg were murdered. This act was to doom the German republic because it could not survive without a united Socialist movement & its left-wing never forgave its right-wing Craig pp 407-9, Taylor1945 p210.
When the government tried to disband part of the Free Corps, it responded by taking control in the Kapp patch. This was met by a general strike, Kapp & his followers were persuaded to withdraw from Berlin , & when the workers demanded a purge of the army the Free Corps was sent against them Taylor1945 pp 223-4. [There is no need to go into further detail. Suffice it to say that] the French occupied the Ruhr, the great inflation of wiped out the savings of the middle class, & this was followed by a short lived economic boom until 1929. The great depression then paved the way for Hitler’s take over in 1933.
(b) Intellectual: A notable feature of cultural life was the antipathy of its leaders towards the political & social system. This was true not only of those associated with the KPD, & of right-wing intellectuals, but also of university professors actual & aspiring. With few exceptions they were solidly against a regime that periodically sought to limit their privileges & whose economic policies had drastically reduction the real value of their emoluments. Before the great inflation a professor’s salary was seven times that of an unskilled worker but afterwards little more than twice as great Craig pp479-80. There was moreover a general disdain among intellectuals for politics & a society which seemed under Stresemann to have given a new lease of life to authoritarian bureaucracy, the old military cast, & bourgeois ethical & moral standards. There was a retreat into innerlichkeit. For the writers associated with Neue Sacklichkeit this took the form of total irony: they regarded their task simply as the exposure of the weaknesses, injustice & the hypocrisies of the time Craig pp 481-3
(c) The cult of Impersonality: The Great War & the subsequent defeat of revolution had a sobering effect & gave rise to a cool & unsentimental view of reality TurnerEtoPM p268. Freud’s 1919 essay The Uncanny (unheimlich) says its distinctive feature is strangeness despite familiarity Prendeville pp 55-6
Influences: These varied but of particular note were de Chirico’s Pittura metaphysic paintings of 1910-17 which reflected the anguish, isolation & disorientation of modern man Hayward1979 pp 11-2
Characteristics: Despite their differences the Neue Sacchlichkeit painters were in general against patriotism, grand gestures, Expressionist subjectivism & irrationality, Cubism’s barren formalism, old master techniques, smooth surfaced paintings & linearity TurnerEtoPM pp 268-70. Pictures were often constructed from heterogeneous details, collage-like without a unified perspective & a single light source. Neue Sachlichkeit painters inhabited a world whose interconnections they did not understand & whose motion the did not control. Here Things represented a last unambiguous element of certainty Hayward1979 pp 12-13. It is also claimed that Neu Sacklichkeit is characterized by a “largely emotionless way of seeing” (Wieland Schmied), by “cold” as against the warmth of Expressionism (Franz Roh) & by the elimination of signs of the painting process (Schmied & Roh) Hayward1979 p13, Roh p113. However, it is conceded that painters sometimes display sympathy or dislike for those portrayed & that Beckman & Dix reveal marked Expressionist tendencies Hayward1979 pp 7, 23, 29, Willet p117
Subject Matter: There was a virtual absence of landscapes certainly in Dix & Gross, except as a background to violence or jaunts by city-dwellers Willett p191. Pictures are predominantly city scenes, both indoor and out, (Dix, Gross, Grossberg, Wunderwald), or portraits. The latter were especially popular as they could be realistically heightened & showed the human harsh fate Whitford, Karcher, Willett p101; Hayward pp 47, 58, TurnerEtoPM p269. [Although they painted city & modern life scenes of all types, they focused on War cripples, prostitution, cafe society, sexual encounters, dancing, night clubs, brothels; bleak modern & decrepit buildings.] Pls in Hayward1979, Karchner, Whitford.
Comment: The social commitment of Dix & Beckman is difficult to reconcile with the concept of objectivity Willett p117. [The same applies to] Grosz, Schlichter & Scholz who belonged to the Neue Saclichkeit socio-political wing, while other artists, like Schlemmer, who is not counted as a Neue Sachlichkeit painter, displayed the colour, balance & mechanical hardness characteristic of most Neue Sacklichkeit work Hayward1979 p129, Willett pp 116-7. [It is wrong to suggest that Neue Sacklichkeit painting is emotionally cold in view of its socio-political wing’s evident display of both bitter contempt & wry amusement, or that all Neue Sachlichkeit eliminates signs of the painting process Hayward p39, Dix p78 etc, etc. It must be concluded that Neue Sacklichkeit cannot be regarded as a legitimate & meaningful artistic category, merely a titular designation for opposed tendencies.]
Painters: Aerobe; Beckman; Davringhausen; De Lempicka; Dix; Fritsch; Grossbereg; Grosz; Herbin; Hoerle; Hubbuch; Jurgens; Kanoldt; Metzingwe; Raderscheidt; Radziwill; Schad; Schlichter; Schrimpf; Scholz; Thoms; Wegner Hayward1979 (full Pl or interesting mention)
NEUE WILDEN (New Savages):
Term: It was coined c1980 by Wolgang Becker to describe an exhibition of work at Neue Gallery Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen. It replaced an earlier term Heftige Malerei (heavy painting), & drew attention to the savagery of the artists themselves. The term was then applied to loosely organised groups of young artists formed in Berlin, the Rhineland, Hamberg & Austria ArtDicWeb. In 1977 Rainer Fetinger & Salome founded the Gallerie am Moritz Platz in a Berlin factory building where they lived. During 1980 they & other Berliners (Helmut Middendorf, Bernd Zimmer) participated in a Heftier Maler exhibition at the Haus am Walesdsee, Berlin OxDicMod, ArtDicWeb. The Neue Wilden’s were against minimalist art of all types (abstract art, conceptual art, Baselitz, etc) & in favour of intensely subjective & emotionally expressive painting, characterized by emphatic brushwork & strong colours. By 1982 they were internationally renowned & their works were in hot demand; but fairly soon the movement was forgotten with only a few painters remaining influential ArtDicWeb
NEW CLASSICISM
Term: This, along with “the classical revival” & “the return (or call) to order”, has been used to denote the revival of the spirit of classicism among avant-garde artists, most notably in the early part of the 20th century. However, this movement is often described as Neo-Classicism, which is extremely confusing as this term usually refers to the classicist revival that followed the Rococo OxDicMod. [Hence the term New Classicism is to be preferred when referring to the 20th century movement].
Development: The first stirrings of such New Classicism were the late paintings of Renoir & certain works by Matisse & even Picasso (The Painter & his Model, 1914) OxDicMod. There was also a New Classicist, or as it was then called Neo-Romanticist, movement in Russia, as represented by Yakovlev, Vasily Shukhayev & Zinaida Serebriankova. Their subjects were present-day but their drawing was slightly stylized G&Y p102. However, most of the leading artists were from the Mediterranean countries &, like Picasso, spent time on the Riviera. During the early 1920s, his massively grand nudes, & figures in timeless draperies, were among the movement’s most impressive works. Other contemporary movements that adopted the classical ideals of clarity & order were the Purists & Novecento Italiano. These developments have seen as part of a wider political conservatism, or as a craving for stability & tranquility after the First World War OxDicMod
NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB (NEAC)
Founder Members: Fred Brown, Clausen, East, Stanhope Forbes, Goodall, Gotch, Hood, Langley, Mann, Shannon, Solomon Joseph Solomon, Steer, Edward Stott, Tuke Laidlay p206
Early History: This British exhibiting society was founded in 1886 by painters who were linked to new French art, especially the work of Bastien-Lepage & plein air painting, & opposed to the stuffy RA. Many of its L&L, Brigstock p428. Stanhope Forbes & Gotch joined up the Newlynites & Alexander Mann led in the Glasgow Boys. Following Hood, the Whistlerites also joined. Its first exhibition had no common style but there was some use of the square brush technique (LaThangue, Greiffenhagen, & the Newlynites). Subject matter was diverse but there were many peasant girls & atmospheric landscapes, together with some nudes in modern day settings at early the exhibitions, including Roussel’s controversial Reading Girl Robins pp 1-3.
A clique formed around Sickert, who had joined in 1887. He plotted a takeover & made biting criticism of Newlyn in his reviews in the New York Herald. This led to the resignation of the Newlynites in 1890. The NEAC was now dominated by the London Impressionists & the Glasgow Boys. There were significant pastel exhibitions around1890 (Starr, Roussel, Maitland, Clausen) Robins pp 4-5. NEAC was championed by MacColl, who was the Spectator’s art critic, & by George Moore in The Speaker. There was a furious controversy over the exhibition of Degas’ L’Absinthe at the Gafton Galleries in 1893 which was defended by MacColl & in which NEAC seen as a champion of non-academic painting Thornton pp 7-9. After Brown became the Slade Professor in 1892 a new generation of artists joined Thornton p10.
NEAC’s reputation reached a high point in the Edwardian era, not far behind that of the Academy, & many of its members exhibited at both. However, the society served as a nursery for a number of secessionist groups including Fitzroy Street, the Bloomsbury painters, the Vorticist & English Surrealists. During the inter-war period those who exhibited at NEAC included Stanley Spencer, Edward Wadsworth, Paul Nash & such little impawn but talented painters as Percy Horton Spalding1986 p20, TurnerEtoPM p273, McConkey2006 pp 160,163. NEAC has been seen as having lost its avant-garde role L&L. Maybe, but what this ignores is that new subject matter is always cropping up [& the value of having an organisation for mutual support among those who continued to delight in manipulating paint at a time when this was out of favour & painting itself might even be dying] See McConkey pp 180, 217.
NEW FIGURATION:
This is a very broad term, probably coined in 1961, for the revival of figurative painting following abstraction OxDicMod
NEW IMAGE PAINTING:
This was the title of a 1978 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It including Jennifer Bartlett, Neil Jenny, Robert Moskowitz, Susan Rothenberg & Joe Zucker. They employed a strident figurative style, often with cartoon-like images. The painters sought strange & jarring images & were probably influenced by Guston’s late figurative work. The Witney catalogue claimed that it, like Minimal & Conceptual Art, was visually sparse & that although it used vernacular images like Pop Art New Image Painters concentrated on the strange & jarring. The term has been extended to the Glasgow School painters of the 1980s OxDicMod.
The NEW NEGRO MOVEMENT:
Term: It was coined by Alain Locke, a philosophy professor at Howard University, & was the title of his influential book The New Negro, 1925. This was a key text in an interdisciplinary movement which aimed to promote racial pride, self-respect & achievement: the contribution of African Americans to modern American culture from jazz to art. Its background was the Great Migration from the rural south to Harlem in New York & the South Side in Chicago, etc. An important resource for black painters was the Harmon Foundation which was a charity set up by a white real estate developer. It sponsored exhibitions of African American art from 1926 & provided financial side to non-white artists. Paintings of especial note & of highly diverse type were produced by Jacob Lawrence in The Migration of the Negro series, 1940-1, by Aaron Douglas, & by Archibold Motley Jr Doss pp 15, 91-5.
Other Painters: Palmer Haydon, Malvin & William Johnson, Hale Woodruff Doss pp 91-3
The NEWLYN SCHOOL & AFTER:
The School: During the 1880s a community of youngish painters established themselves at Newlyn, which was then a Cornish fishing village. The School, as it was widely known from the 1890s, was but one of the string of artistic colonies that were formed around this time throughout Europe & in North America. Newlyn was attractive because of its mild climate suitable for plein air painting & its picturesque houses & fishing activity; & also because of the low cost of living. Another feature was the area’s similarity to the coast of Brittany where several of the painters had worked. Many of them had been trained in Paris & the School was to begin with seen as being under French influence. Its members were in moderate revolt against the artistic establishment &, like other critics of the RA, joined the New English Art Club. However, they were before long forced out & acceptance at the RA’s summer exhibition was keenly sought. In 1892 Stanhope Forbes, the leading artist in Newlyn, became an Associate of the Academy, & later a full member. The members of the school painted in a similar style & mostly adopted similar subject matter. They, together with the Glasgow Boys, belonged to the Naturalist Movement & were inspired by Bastien-Lepage. One distinctive feature of their work was that many of their interior scenes were painted against the light because of the way in which it fell on the south-west facing cottages; another is the use of the square brush technique F&G pp 11, 12, 15-6, 27-8, 41, 62-3, Brigstocke, Pryke pp 63-5, 67, Weisberg1992 pp 124-34, See New English Art Club, etc.
Development: Walter Langley was the first member of the School to settle in 1882 & Forbes arrived in 1884. The period 1885-95 saw the School’s best work Fox&G pp 12-13, Fox p 9. When the demand for finishing village genre appeared to wane all the Newlyners except Langley diversified into landscape (Forbes), into decorative pictures, often of children in pseudo-medieval dress (Gotch & Elizabeth Forbes), into scenes of upper-class life (Taylor), or into costume & story paintings (Garstin) Pryke pp 100-103, 134-5, Fox p14. By 1900 many members had left, though the Forbes’, Garstin, Gotch & Langley stayed. However, there were new arrivals, in particular Lamorna Birch around 1889 & the Knights in 1907. The popular Newlyn School of Painting was founded by the Forbes’ in 1899; & this led to further arrivals, including the Procter’s (not then married) in 1907 Fox pp 9-10, 79, 97. The new generation did not, like the first, paint fishing village scenes but landscape, middle class interiors, fairs, races, & gypsies Fox pp 14-16
Repute: The Newlyn School painters went into an oblivion from which they have even now fully emerged. None of its members are itemised in the Yale Dictionary. [Messums, the Cork Street art dealers, deserve much of the credit for rediscovering the School.]
Painters:
(a) Pre 1900: Bourdillon; Bramley; Elizabeth Forbes; Fortesque; Stanhope Forbes; Norman Garstin; Gotch; Hall; Harris; Langley; Rheam; Suthers; Tuke Fox&G
(b) Post 1900: Lamorna Birch; Frank Dobson; Alathea Garstin; Harold Harvey; Harold & Laura Knight; Cedric Morris; Alfred Munnings; Dodd & Ernest Procter; Charles Simpson Fox1985 pp 45-148
NON-OBJECTIVE PAINTING:
This does not attempt to represent or depict recognisable objects, figures or scenes from the external natural world but focuses on formal elements such as colour, line, shape & texture. The pioneers of non-objective painting were Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich & Naum Gabo. See in particular Malevich in Section 1 Google
NORWICH SCHOOL:
Term: It was first used in 1818 by the Norwich Mercury & was a group of painters who largely produced landscape & mainly worked there during the first half of the 19th century Grove23 pp248, MooreA p9
Background: Norwich was a regional capital & had a vigourous network of philanthropic & special-interest societies MooreA p11,
Development: The School included artists who were closely associated with Old Crome, John Sell Cotman, & the Norwich Society of Artists. This included both professional & amateur painters. It held evening meetings, sketching parties & annual exhibitions between 1805-25 & 1828-33, & was the first provincial group to follow the example of the Royal Academy. It collapsed due to the lack of local patronage which failed in the 1820s as a result of agricultural recession. However the Norwich artists found an alternative market in in the new industrial centres. Although artistic activity did not stop it did gradually cease to be distinctive MooreA pp 9, 11-2, 15, Hemingway p8.
Characteristics: Predominantly tranquil rural scenes usually of landscape in Norfolk MooreA p9. [An unexpected feature of Norwich School painting] is the absence of works with big skies. Those in which the sky appears to occupy significantly more than half the painting are exceptional. The tone & colour of the paintings ranges from fresh & night to mellow Hemingway, MooreA.
Painters: Henry Bright, John Joseph Cotman, Jo Sell Cotman, Miles Edmund Cotman, John Crome/Old Crome, John Berney Crome, William Henry Cromer, Edward Thomas Daniel, Robert Dixon, William Joy, Robert Ladbroke, Thomas Lound, John Middleton, Alfred Priest, James Sillett, James Stark; Emily Stannard, Joseph Stannard, George Vincent, John Thistle MooreA, Hemingway (All painters with a painting in colour).
NOVEAU REALISME:
This was a group of European artists, working in a variety of media, who were in reaction against Lyrical Abstraction & Art Informal. They showed little interest in painting & Klein was the only painter
TurnerEtoPM p276
NOVECENTRO ITALIANO:
This was a movement that grew out of an association by seven artists in Milan. They rejected avant-garde art, were part of the European post-War “call to order” movement, & wanted an Italian art that was renewed yet traditional. Their first exhibition was held in 1923 at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan. Mussolini gave the inaugural speech but said he did not favour State art.
However, the leader of the group was Margherita Sarfatti, who was writer & art critic for Mussolini’ s paper Popolo d’Italia, as well as being his mistress. A series if major exhibitions were held at home & abroad to promote Italian art.
Despite their success Novecentro attracted so many artists that it lacked coherence & it became associated with Fascist propaganda. Sarfatti now managed with an iron hand rejecting a masterpiece by Cagnaccio di San Pietro (After the Orgy) from the 1928 Venice Biennale. Novecentro disbanded in 1943 TurnerEtoPM pp 279-80, OxDicMod, Prendeville p55, Ateneum p59
Its principal painters were Carra, Achile Funi, Ubaldo Oppi, & Mario Sironi TurnerEtoPM p279, C&M
NOVEMBERGRUPPE:
They were German artists whose group was named after the revolution of November 1918 & were active between 1918 & 32. The group was founded on the initiative of Pechstein, Cesar Klein & other Expressionists to unite all radical, creative artists. The aim was to participate in all public activities important to artists, so promoting socialism & social progress. Chapters were formed in many cities & joined by artists of all types. There was a decline in its political & artistic radicalism with the group becoming merely an exhibition society. Dix & Grosz then attacked it for betraying revolution goals TurnerEtoPM p281
OBJECTIVE ABSTRACTIONISTS:
They were a group of British painters who exhibited at the Zwemmer Gallery, London, in 1934. The participants were Thomas Carr, Ivon Hitchens, Ceri Richard, Victor Passmore, Graham Bell, Rodrigo Moynihan, & Geoffrey Tribble. Only the last three were full abstractionists but they shared the aim of starting from nature but then letting the painting develop according to its own logic. Their works were freely painted & it has been claimed that they anticipated Abstract Expressionism OxDicMod.
OOSTERBEEK SCHOOL:
Oosterbeek is a town near Arnhem which was frequented by Dutch painters between 1841 & 1870. It (wrongly) became known as the birthplace of Dutch Impressionism. Those who painted there included Bilders, Gabriel, Koekkoek, Mauve, the Marris brothers, Mesdag & Roelofs Wikip
OP ART:
Term/Concept: An abbreviation of Optical Art which first appeared in Time magazine in 1964. It refers to art which stimulates the retina by means of patterns & contrasts of form, tone & hue so that the work seems to flicker. Such art mainly flourished in the 1960 & by 1970 the movement had fizzled out though some artists went on working L&L, OxDicArt
Forerunners: [Popova’s Design for the Cover of the Artistic & Cinema Magazine, 1922 (Greek State Museum of Contemporary Art) with its concentric blue circle on which it is difficult to focus.] Op Art drew upon illustrations in textbooks on perceptual textbooks & the works & theories of Giacomo Balla, Josef Albers, &b the Roto-Reliefs of Marcel Duchamp L&L, OxDicMod.
Painters: Richard Anuszliewicz, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Briget Riley, Jesus de Soto, Victor Vasarely L&L
ORPHISM & SYNCHROMISM:
Term: The name Orphism was coined by Apollinaire who first used the term in print in 1913. It derives from Orpheus the Greek mythological singer & poet, & alludes to the desire to impart lyricism & colour into austere Cubist art. Synchromism was an alternative term that was used to describe a group of American painters who, under the influence of Robert Dealaunay, produced work that was very similar. Orphist & Sychromist work was shown together in Salle 45 of the Salon des Independants in 1913 OxDicMod, R&S p89.
Characteristics: Orphist works have a lyrical & painterly quality which derives from the use of colour in order to generate emotion. Orphism therefore differs sharply from Cubism, although it was an offshoot, as most Cubist works were geometric & painted in subdued colour See L&L, OxDicMod, & Cubism in this Section.
Development: Robert Delaunay appears to have produced the first Orphist paintings in 1911 when he began to dissolve lines & edges, & to intensify colour R&S p89.
Painters: the Orphists Robert Delaunay, Sonia Terk, Kupka, Leger, Picabia; & the Americans Patrick Bruce, A. B. Frost, Stanton Macdonald Wright & Morgan Russell L&L, R&S p89
PAINTERS ELEVEN:
It was a group of Canadian abstractionists in Toronto during 1953-1960, of whom the most important was William Ronald. Abstraction apart, they had little in common but wanted to promote their work in an environment unfavorable to abstract art. They had considerable success, especially after exhibiting with American Abstract Artists in New York, 1953 OxDicMod.
PARNASSIANS:
A group of French poets, headed by Leconte de Lisle, who reacted against the emotional extravagancies of Romanticism & its passionate concern with the self. They sought restraint, precision & objectivity. From Gautier they took the doctrine of art for art’s sake &, like him, they regarded the bourgeoisie with contempt. Leconte de Lisle considered that great success by a writer was a sign of intellectual inferiority. The name derives from three collections of their poetry called Le Parnasse Contemporain, published between 1866 & 1876 OxCompEng, Cobban Vol2 p256, Plekhanov pp 173-5
The PASTORAL OR IDYLLIC SCHOOL:
This is how a group of English Victorian landscape cum genre painters, who were centred around Miles Birket Foster, are generally known. They painted pretty, summer pictures featuring cottage gardens etc. During the 1860s & 70s Foster had innumerable followers including William Affleck, Helen Allingham, Ethel Hughes, Henry Johnstone, & Arthur Strachan Wood1988 pp 29-30, 131 etc
PERCEPTUAL ABSTRACTION
This is a broad term which embraced Hard-Edge Painting, Minimal art & Op art. It was a reaction against the painterlyness of Abstract Expressionism with a new emphasis on clarity & precision OxDicMod
PERSIAN CARPET SCHOOL:
The preoccupation with pattern colour & design by the Glasgow Boys was so described by several London critics in the 1890s. [They must have been referring to Hornel & Henry.] Billcliffe pp 192-4
PHOTOREALISM, SUPERREALISM, HYPERREALISM, including Spanish Realists:
Term: Photorealism (or Photographic Realism) are more or less synonymous with Superrealism (or Hyperrealism). However some critics restrict Photorealim to works directly painted from photographs OxDicMod pp 551, 686
Forerunner: ScheelerTurnerEtoPM p305
Motivation:
(a) It was a reaction against abstraction, Pop Art & Minimalism L&L.
(b) And it was an offshoot of Pop-art with its deadpan imagery of mass produced objects & suburban life & shared a cool detachment with Minimalism TurnerEtoPM p305. Dealers & critics who were looking for alternative artforms presented US painters already using the style as a new movement L&L
Development: It began in the mid-1960s TurnerEtoPM p305. However it lost its appeal during the 1970s when photos & video gained acceptance as art L&L
Characteristics: It is cool & impersonal with detailing which paradoxically produced a sense of unreality. The subject matter was often technically challenging OxDicMod. However the subjects were unimportant, as Morley himself claims. They were often cars, shops, & consumer products TurnerEtoPM p305, Lynton p267. There was an exclusive reliance on photos which were precisely reproduced using projectors or, like Morley, a grid & painting upside down so as to aviod being influenced by the meaning of colour & tonal changes Read1959 p318, TurnerEtoPM p305, Lynton p302
Reception: The banal subjects which lacked centres of interest were seen as a commentary on society, viz its hollowness, though this was frequently denied by the artists, except for the sculptor Hanson TurnerEtoPM pp 305-6
Clientele: Once packaged & labelled it was a phenomenal commercial, success Read1959 p319. A prominent collector was Peter Ludwig who had a chocolate business etc OxDicMod
Painters: Close; Eddy; Estes; Malcolm Morley; Ramos; Salt OxDicMod
Verdict: Photorealism has [surprisingly] been seen as a valid art form because of the “wealth of artistic decisions made consciously & unconsciously” Lynton p303
Painters:
(a) USA: Chuck Close; Robert Cottingham; Don Eddy; Richard Estes; Audry Flack; Howard Kannovitz & standing apart because of an imaginative element Jack Beale, Alfred Leslie, Philip Pearlstein;
(b) Great Britain: Michael English; David Hepher; Diane Ibbotson; Michael Leonard; John Salt;
(c) Other: Claude Yvel (France); Gerhard Richter (Germany) OxDicMod
PITTURA COLTA:
This flourished from the 1980s especially in Italy. Here artists painted mythological or semi-mythological scenes, & Classical landscapes, in a gaudy, sleek & stagey reworking of Old Master conventions OxDicMod
Pinters: Alberte Abate; Bruno d’Arcevia; Antonella Cappucio; Gerard Garouste; David Ligare; Vittorio Scialoja OxDicMod
PITTURA/ARTE METAFISICA:
Term & Development: It was Apollinaire who first called de Chirico’s art metaphysical in 1913. In 1917 de Chirico & Carra chanced to meet in a military hospital, formed an immediate alliance, & began painting there. The Roman journal Valori Plastici, which supported Pittura Metafisica, began appearing from 1918. In 1919 Carra published Pittura Metafisica but this understated de Chirico’s importance & led to acrimony OxDicTerms, L&L.
Influences: Nietzche’s circularity of time, together with Schopenhauer & Otto Weininger. The Symbolists & Bocklin influenced de Chirico while Carra was impacted by the simplicity & monumentality of Giotto & Uccello, about whom he had written in 1915. Another factor was the melancholic personality of de Chirico & his brother the writer & composer Alberto SavinioTurnerEtoPM pp 309-10
Characteristics: de Chirico & Carra tried to explore the imagined inner life & secret dialogue between familiar objects, as represented out of their explanatory contexts. Perspective was subverted by rapidly rising floors etc L&L,TurnerEtoPM p309
Beliefs: True reality is hidden behind appearances TurnerEtoPM p309. According to Carra the simplicity of ordinary things “points to a higher, more hidden state of being” L&L
Influences: The Valori Plastici travelling exhibitions in 1921 & 1924 had a considerable impact in Germany. Max Ernst was effected most profoundly & featureless mannequins began papering in the Grosz, Schlichter Oskar Schlemmer. The Surrealists Dali, Magritte & Delvaux all had periods of stylistic debt to de Chirico. The style was carried on by Novecentro Italiano & Magic Realism in GermanyTurnerEtoPM p311.
Painters: Carra, De Chirico, Morandi, Mario Sironi TurnerEtoPM pp 310-11, L&L
Pittura Colta. See Postmodernist Painting
POP ART, including American Neo-Dada:
Concept: The term first appeared in print in 1957. It was a movement that emerged quite suddenly in British & American painting & graphics at the beginning of the 1960s. Its source material was the imagery of mass culture & its practitioners viewed high culture with scepticism. Pop Art was seen as a descendant of Dada & is sometimes called Neo-Dada because it mocked high art & used or reproduced comic strips & soup tins etc in a manner that recalled Duchamp’s ready-mades. Like Dada it sought to expand the boundaries of art & challenged accepted taste L&L, OxDicMod, Spalding1986 pp 193-4.
Forerunners: Stuart Davis, Gerald Murphy, Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Rivers Hughes1997 p433, TurnerEtoPM pp 313-4
Background/Causes
Pop Art was a reaction against the seriousness & angst of Abstract Expressionism. Larry Rivers, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg were all reacting in various ways against what they regarded as its high art pretentions, restrictive view of what could be painted, & heart-on-sleeve rhetoric Hughers pp 509-10, 515-6, L&L p356.
By 1960 the political & economic situation had become much brighter. In 1953 hostilities in Korea ceased & in 1954 Senator McCarthy was denounced by President Eisenhower, & then censured by the Senate JenkinsP pp 236, 240. From 1953 guerrilla activity increased in South Vietnam but it was not until early 1965 that the first regular American ground troops arrived & that the bombing of targets in the North began JenkinsP pp 236, 240, 260. Above all, there was almost uninterrupted economic expansion in the United States & from 1947 in Europe when Marshall Aid was launched JenkinsP p132.
Around 1960 there was a sharp change in the artistic mood. The post-war gloom that had hung over so many artists now lifted Bowness pp 170-1. Artists & intellectuals had faced the problem that, unlike the Abstract Expressionists, they now wanted to be part of the American way of life. Although this was celebrated in the 1950s as never before they did not want to relinquish their outsider ship & nonconformity, & there were some darker, political images as in Rosenquist’s F-111 Hughes1997 pp 506, 509, MOMAH p236. Whereas British Pop artists often celebrated or satirised consumer culture, the attitude of American artists was more ambiguous, witness the mixture of glamour & pathos in Warhol’s silkscreen icons of Marilyn Munroe TurnerEtoPM p214.
Great Britain
In 1954-5 there were meetings of an Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, under John McHale & Lawrence Alloway its assistant director, & including Richard Hamilton. Here popular culture was discussed & seen as intriguing, not with the customary intellectual & anti-American disdain Lippard pp 31-2, Hughes1991 p342. Hamilton’ collage Just What Is It that Makes To-day’s Homes so Different, so Appealing,1956 (now at the Kunsthalle, Tubingen) reflects the Group’s preoccupations. It is an inventory of popular culture, including a muscle man & a breast nude OxDicMod, Hughes1991 p40. The term Pop Art originated in the discussions of the Independent & only later appeared in print OxDicMod
United States
During the mid-1950s Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg began to make an impact on the New York art scene & to develop new subject matter. There were Johns’ paintings of flags, targets & numbers, & his sculptures of beer cans; & Rauschenberg’s collages & combine painting with Coke bottles, stuffed birds & photos from magazines & newspapers OxDicMod. American Pop Art emerged suddenly in the early 1960s when several New York artists hit upon a common style more or less simultaneously & independently, & in ignorance of British work TurnerEtoPM p314, Lippard p10.. American Pop Art was seen by its practitioners as specifically American & its aggressiveness appealed to those impatient with Europe R&S pp 225-6.
According to Lucie-Smith, once fashion involved the elaboration of hand–made objects, beginning in elite circles & then percolating downwards, with the object becoming less elaborate & stylish. However mass production made fashion instantly available & its hallmark changed to novel & impact. Objects now ceased to be valued for their own sake. This attitude, as shown by Pop, Op, Kinetic Art, & Happenings, has affected works of art, which are becoming temporary performances & functions, instead of things, R&S. pp 231-2
Characteristics: Pop Art was from its outset shot through with irony & was [certainly in Britain] playful & ambiguous. Hamilton defined it in 1957 as: “Popular (designed for a mass audience) Transient (short term solution); Expendable (easily forgotten); Low Cost; Mass Produced; Young (aimed at Youth); Witty; Sexy; Gimmicky; Glamorous; & Big Business Hughes 1997 p 509, Spalding1986 p191, Turner EtoPM p313. In their work pop-artists favoured commercial techniques, including silkscreen reproduction (Warhol), & paintings resembling comic strips (Lichtenstein), brash pin-ups (Ramos) & billboards (Rosenquest) OxDicMod. There was a reluctance to use visual experience first-hand & a preference for pre-digested images R&S p252. When questioned Pop artists nearly always talked about ways of looking rather than what is actually seen LucieS1975 p163].
Influence: In Britain a group of Pop artists emerged at the Royal College of Art between 1959 & 1962 which included David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Derek Boshier, Peter Cauldfield & American-born R. B. Kitaj. Although some quickly rejected the Pop label, they had a detached & ironic attitude towards the appropriation of style & source materialTurnerEtoPM p313. Pop Art was the progenitor of Superrealism, & Malcolm Morley & Mel Ramos belonged to both movements OxDicMod p686
Legacy: [Pop Art was a celebration & endorsement of that which was ephemeral, repetitive & borrowed. It was virtual rejection of painting as a manifestation of first-hand personal experience or as a creative activity.]
Painters
(a) USA: Richard Artschwager; Billy Al Bengston; Allan D’Arcangelo; Jim Dine; Oyvind Fahlstrom; Joe Goode; Robert Indiana; Ray Johnson; Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein; Mel Ramos; Robert Rauschenberg; Larry Rivers; James Rosenquist; Edward Ruscha; Wayne Thiebaud; Andy Warhol; John Wesley; Tom Wesselmann TurnerEtoPM p314, Hughes1997 pp 509-10
(b) Britain: Sir Peter Blake; Derek Boshier; Boty; Richard Hamilton, David Hockney; Allen Jones; Kitaj; Peter Phillips; Richard Smith; Joe Tilson Spalding1986 p195, OxDicMod
POST-IMPRESSIONISM:
Term: It was coined in 1910 by Roger Fry as the title of an exhibition, Manet & the Post-Impressionists, which he organised at the Grafton Galleries, London. The exhibition was dominated by the work of Cezanne, Gauguin & Van Gogh. Fry organised a second exhibition in 1912 which included more recent work including several Cubist works. The exhibits did not have any consistent style & the term was only adopted because nobody could think of anything better &, as Fry remarked, they were all painted after Impressionism. Though even this begged the question of whether the late work of Monet & Renoir was true Impressionism OxDicMod, Dunlop pp 135, 137. [Nevertheless, the term has survived because of its convenience].
Moreover, there was during the post-impressionist period a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction with the Impressionists. They clung to the ideal of truth to observed nature & Impressionism was merely a passive response to the external world. It had no intellectual weight, which what was Cezanne though, and it did not generate an adequate emotional response, the criticism made by Gauguin & Van Gogh Reyburn pp 94-6, 99, 101, OxDicMod p568. Hence the post-impressionists did have one common feature, albeit of a negative variety!
POST-PAINTERLY ABSTRACTION:
Term: Greenberg coined it in 1964 as the title of an exhibition he organised. This featured the abstract works of artists who had reacted against the gestural, & often impassioned, nature of Abstract Expresionist painting to produce work that was calmer & more designed, with broad areas of unmodulated colour, but including looser & more lyrical works as well as those of an epic nature. It embraces both Colour Field & Hard-Edge Painting. The word painterly was borrowed from Heinrich Wolfflin OxDicMod, L&L.
Painters: Helen Frankenthaler, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella OxDicMod
PRECISIONISM:
Term: It was coined by Sheeler mainly to denote his own work Hughes1997 p382. It was then used from the 1920s TurnerEtoPM p320. Alternative designations were Cubist-Realism, the Immaculates & Sterilists OxDicMod. In some ways Precissionism is analogous to Purism TurnerEtoPM p320
Influences: Precisionism was based on Cubism with its reductivist, formal ethic of clarity, geometry & orderTurnerEtoPM p320
Development: It originated around 1915 & flourished during the inter-War period, particularly the 1920s OxDicMod
Background: The celebration of American capitalism & big businessmen during 1920s. President Coolidge said, “the man who builds a factory builds a temple…the man who works there worships there” Schlessinger Chs 8-11. This was echoed by Sheeler who observed, “Our factories are our substitutes for religious expression” Doss p82
Characteristics: The depiction of urban, especially industrial scenes; a smooth & precise technique; clear & sharp definition; & brilliantly clear light (though Ault painted night scenes) OxDicMod. The subjects glorified modern American technology & depicted typical US architecture: skyscrapers, bridges, docks chimney stacks, & barns. Geometric forms & flat planes were used to show an idealized, highly structured & ordered world. This was usually without figures & avoided atmospheric effects, painterly surfaces & sensual colours (though O’Keefe’s colours were more sensual & Lozowick’s cities were loney & desolate) TurnerEtoPM p320
Connections: There was no formal group, although there were some joint exhibitions OxDicMod. The painters had often been trained by Chase (Demuth; O’Keefe; Sheeler; Stella) Hughes1997 p261
Painters: Ault; Ralston Crawford; Demuth; Guglielmi; Preston Dickinson; Driggs; Stefan Hirsch; Lewandowski; Georgia O’Keefe; Sheeler; Niles Spencer; Joseph StellaTurnerEtoPM p320-1, OxDicMod
Influenced: American Magic Realism & Pop art OxDicMod
The PRE-RAPHAELITES:
The term Pre-Raphaelite was first used by the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: a society established in 1848 by Holman Hunt, Millais & Dante Gabriel Rossetti who were students at the RA Schools. The following year their works at the RA exhibition were inscribed PRB. In 1850 its meaning was revealed & the exhibits were denounced as crude, though Ruskin soon sprang to the group’s defence. By the end of 1854 the PRB broken up due to resignation (James Collinson), emigration (Thomas Woolner), & Hunt’s departure for Palestine. Moreover, Millais had started to abandon the laborious techniques which gave Pre-Raphaelite paintings their dazzling effect Grove25 p534. What at the beginning the Pre-Raphaelites had in common
apart from youthful impatience, was hostility to Raphael, & a desire to rejuvenate British painting by seeking inspiration from early Italian art. They were critical of Raphael, & in particular his Transfiguration, for disregarding simplicity & truth Grove25 p 554, Barringer pp 33-4. [However, after a brief initial period the Pre-Raphaelites must be regarded as a grouping but not a coherent Movement].
Context & Consequences: The Pre-Raphaelites were not an isolated phenomenon but part of an idealistic & symbolic tendency in British art which started with Blake & continued with the Ancients. There was also an intimate connection with the Nazarenes, which was another brotherhood, through Dyce, & also Ford Maddox Brown, although he never formally joined the Pre-Raphaelites. They were the latest manifestation of a wider Primitivism: the desire to cleanse art of what was seen as current triviality by returning to the authentic & honest art of a past age. There was a desire to be true to nature which gave rise to an obsessive sharp-focus rendering of every detail LucieS1972 pp 33-6, R&J pp 255-7, Norman 1977, Andrews pp 78-81, See Primitivism in Section 7.
The colouring of early Pre-Raphaelite paintings was highly distinctive & its brilliance owed much to the researches of the colourman George Field. In an attempt to achieve total realism, the Pre-Raphaelites [tried to match the intensity of local colour], rejecting what they regarded as dishonest harmony. They glazed thin coats of barely mixed colour onto bright, zinc white grounds to obtain maximum luminosity. All manner of new pigments were mixed to capture verdant nature. [At least in the case of their smaller works] the Pre-Raphaelites also painting landscape en plein air. The resulting works are strikingly vivid [& life-enhancing but disharmonious & unrealistic]. Hunt later said of an uncompromising work that it was painted at a time of revolution & through Rossetti the Pre-Raphaelites had contact with the Italian revolutionary movement Gage2006 pp 115-7, R&J pp 256-7, Barringer pp 33-5. Ball pp 152, 166-7, Grove25 p255.
The Second Generation, 1853-mid1880s:
The movement which united the principal members of the Brotherhood did not last beyond 1856. However coloured works of the first generation of Pre-Raphaelites. They began with a painting of 1853 by Inchbold & in 1858 John Brett painted an arresting scene. At much the same time the second phase circle was joined by Burne-Jones, by then a second, younger group of Pre-Raphaelites had begun painting in a style that emulated the intense, vividly Arthur Hughes, Val Price & Spencer Stanhope who helped Rossetti with the Arthurian frescoes at the Oxford Union. But its Burne-Jones who emerged as the leading Pre-Raphaelite painter Subsequently Millais was to turn away from classic Pre-Raphaelite colour in a series of poetic, tonal landscapes LucieS1972 p36, Barrington pp 71-6, 82-3, Grove25 p555.
The Last Phase, from mid-1880s:
There was a revival of brightly coloured & sharply focused style after the Millais & Hunt retrospectives in 1886. It was particularly associated with the Birmingham School of Art. The painters included Eleanor Fortesque-Brickdale, Payne, John Byam Shaw, & Joseph Southall. Their work had a fairly-tale mood [& Waterhouse with his glowing mythological & literary scenes was the last great Pre-Raphaelite, unless Herbert Draper is worthy of that accolade] Treuherz 1993 p154.
Subject Matter: The Pre-Raphaelites, Ford Madox Brown & Dyce began by painting historical dealing with historical, religious & literary subjects. However, by 1851 they had begun painting modern life subjects & in 1853 Holman Hunt’s The Awakening Conscience was exhibited at the RA Barringer pp 30-1, 37-45, Wikip. [This was a piece of realism to rival anything ever produced by Courbet.] By the mid-1860s Rossetti women were dangerously alluring: their clothing was scanty & they gazed into mirrors & combed their flowing hair. His late works from around 1868, are largely concerned with ill-fated passion depicting cruel or unhappy women & contrast heavenly & earthly love. The femme fatale had now clearly arrived in Pre-Raphaelite painting & not long after she became a leitmotif for Burne-Jones See Rossetti & Burne-Jones in Section1.
The dangerous temptress also appears in the last stage of Pre-Raphaelite painting, the era of Waterhouse. In some of his works such as Ulysses & the Sirens, 1891, female malevolence is evident but in other paintings, in particular Hylas & the Nymphs, the situation is less clear cut. It is evident that he is seduced by the beauty of the nymphs & illustrates the danger of the mutual gaze. But are the nymphs to blame for his impending death? He is not being dragged down & it may be, as in his other works, that the sad nymphs, cannot help themselves. Is Hylas in the pursuit of pleasure abandoning this world for what could be immortal bliss? In the source fable by Ovid the body of Hylas was never found Trippi pp 106-9, 145-9, WoodC1999 p238, OxClasDic. .
Patronage: Initially there was a small group of collectors: Thomas Combe, an Oxford University Press superintendent & Tracterian; B. G. Windus, a Tottenham coach-maker; together with a group of northern businessmen: Francis McCracken, a Belfast millowner; Thomas Plint, a Leeds stockbroker & evangelical; Thomas Fairbairn, a Manchester industrialist; & then in the later 1850s James Leathart, a Newcastle lead manufacturer; & John Miller, a Liverpool tobacco merchant; Frederick Leyland, a Liverpool shipowner; & William Graham, a Glasgow jute manufacturer Treuherz1993 pp 82-3, 155, Grove25 p555
Repute: After the Great War the Pre-Raphaelites, previously at the height of their fame, fell out of favour. In the 1960s & beyond art historians were still condemning the Pre-Raphaelites for lack of lack of taste & pictorial intelligence. Not until dealers took an interest in selling their works & a series of exhibitions was held was there a sustained re-appraisal of their work culminating in a 1984 show at the Tate Grove25 p556, Hbook p222, Reynolds1987 pp 61, 63-4
PRE-REMBRANTISTS:
Term: They were a group of Amsterdam history painters, including some who worked contemporaneously with Rembrandt. Their significance was first recognised in the 1930s Grove25 p556.
Influences: Venetian & Roman painting, Elsheimer Grove25 p557.
Characteristics: Apart from Moeyaert, their works were almost entirely histories including Biblical & mythological subjects. Many of the subjects had previously only been treated in graphic art & it was Lastman who favoured scenes featuring conversations, meetings & miracles who elevated them into oil paintings. Most of the group had visited Italy Grove25 p557, Haak p190.
Painters: Pieter Lastman (the most important), Claes Moeyaert, Jan & Jacob Pynas, Jan Tengnagel & Francois Venant Grove25 p556
PUEBLA SCHOOL:
After Mexican independence & from around 1830 a major centre of painting developed at Puebla. Its speciality was National Romantic landscape & genre depicting local people & customs which contrasted with works of a Neo-classicist type. The major artists were Jose Manzo who was Director of the Academia de Dibujo in Pueblo from its foundation in 1814, & Agustin Arrieta who trained there & was its most representative member in the mid-19th century Grove 2 p498, 20 p351, & 21 p385.
PURISM:
It was a movement between 1918 & 1925 founded by its sole exponents Le Corbusier & Ozenfant. Between 1920 & 1925 they edited the journal L’Esprit nouveau which expounded their theories. They campaigned for “healthy art”, inspired by the precision of machinery, & from which emotion & expressiveness were excluded, apart from the beauty of functional efficiency. This was a call to order for a post-war world in need of purification & they pursued their aims with missionary fervor. They wanted [& produced] works that were static & generalized, & in which colour was subordinated to form OxDicMod, C&M p198.
PURISMO:
The term was first applied to the visual arts in 1833 by Antonio Bianchini to describe those who rejected Neoclassicism & who advocated a return to the spiritual values & expressivity of 14th & 15th century Italian painters, particularly Giotto, Fra Angelico & early Raphael. The leading practitioner was Tomasso Minardi, Bianchini’s teacher who had been inspired by the Nazarenes. In 1842-3 the principles of Purismo were codified in a manifesto (Del purismo nelle arti) signed by Bianchini, Minardi, Tenerani & Overbeck. The Puristi favoured religious & mystic subjects painted in a precise & strongly linear style. Another & rather different Puristi was Luigi MussiniTurnerRtoI pp 264-5. Ingres, whom Mussini followed, was regarded as a Purist Norman1977 p172
QUADRIGA:
This was a loose grouping of German painters founded in 1952 at Frankfurt am Main & active until 1954. Its members Karl Gotz, Otto Greis, Heinz Kreutz & Bernard Schultze exhibited together at Frankfurt in 1952 under the label of neo-Expressionism. However, the significance of the group was that it pioneered Art Informel in Germany TurnerEtoPM p328
REGIONALISM, American:
Term: This was originally applied to novels of Southern everyday life by John Ransom & Robert Penn Warren. It was then extended to paintings of American life that were both realistic & positive.TurnerEtoPM p334
Background: During the Depression there was a yearning for a rural American Eden Hughes1997 p439
Origin: In 1933 Maynard Walker, a journalist turned art dealer, put on a show at the Kansas City Art Institute, American Painting Since Whistler. Walker said his exhibits were real American art in contrast to the over-sophisticated Parisian rubbish imported before 1929. Subsequently, Time magazine hyped Curry, Benton & Wood, the three principal artists, in its Xmas 1934 issue. They were seen as earthy Midwesterners who were restoring American values which was in tune with the belief of its publisher, Henry’s Luce, in the American Century. In fact, no regional movement then existed: Wood alone lived in the Midwest, the three scarcely knew each other, & they did not fit their parts. Wood was a timid & foreign influenced homosexual Hughes1997 pp 437-40.
Development: The Federal Art Project, which was a New Deal agency, had a bias towards art of a Regionalist type because it was assumed that the American public would want recognisable images of its own place & folk Hughes1997 p453. It would, however, be wrong to give the impression that this was the only type of work that was sponsored. Modernist artists were supported & so also were Social Realists Doss p100, Bjelajac p324
Parallels: The idealised images of farmers were akin to those in Socialist Realist & Nazi art Hughes1997 p445
Painters: Benton; Curry; [Rockwell]; Grant Wood Hughes 1997 p453.
REBEL ART CENTRE/CUBIST CENTRE:
This was founded & managed by Wyndham Lewis who had recently quarrelled with Roger Fry, & its original members included others who had recently resigned from the Omega Workshops (Etchells, Cuthbert Hamilton, Wadsworth). It was intended to be a place where Cubists, Futurists & Expressionists could meet, work, exhibit & attend lectures. With financial backing from Kate Latchmere it had brightly coloured premises in Great Ormond Street. However it was only open from March to the summer of 1914 & turned out to be little more than a meeting place for the radical artists who became VorticistsTurnerEtoPM pp 332-3, OxDicMod
RED GROUP See Rote Gruppe
Rocky Mountain School. See Wild West & Rocky Mountain School
ROMANESQUE & MEDIEVAL PAINTING:
ROMANISM:
Term: It refers to painters from the Low Countries who went to Rome in the 16th century & were influenced by classical remains, & Italian artists, particularly Michelangelo & Raphael & his students. Later Venice, Florence & Parmigianino were influential Grove26 p728.
Impact: Romanism led to religious & mythological paintings in which the nude body was anatomically correct & often to begin with in a complicated pose Grove26 p728
Romanists: Jan Gossart, Jan Van Scorel, MarMaarten van Heemkerck, Lambert Lombard, Frans Floris, Bartholomaus Spranger, etc Grove26 p728
ROSE & CROWN CLUB / ROSENCRONIANS:
It was formed in 1704, survived until 1745, & was an important club for artists & connoisseurs. It met weekly in the Rose & Crown pub & was reportedly a bawdy assembly of younger artists & cognoscenti. Its members included Gerhard Bockman, Michael Dahl, Gawen Hamilton, William Hogarth, William Kent, Marcellus Laroon the Younger, Bernard Lens III, John Rysbrack, Peter Tillemans, John Vandebank, George Vertue & Christian Zincke. It was well connected with the older-established & more prestigious Virtuosi of St Luke, 1689-1743, which consisted of gentlemen patrons & artists, met in taverns & was most active during the London season Wikip
Virtuosi of St Luke. See Rose & Crown Club / Resynchronises
ROTE GRUPPE:
The Red Gruppe, Union of Communist Artists of Germany was founded in 1924. It embraced painters & graphic artists who belonging to the KPD, the German Communist Party). Its formation was probably an aspect of the bureaucratisation & centralisation of the KPD under the pro-Stalin leaders (Ruth Fischer & Arkadi Maslow) which followed the power struggle between the Stalin & Trotsky factions in Moscow. Rote Gruppe members declared themselves to be primarily good communists dedicating their skills to the class war. Its leaders were Grosz (Chairman), Karl Witte, John Heartfield, Rudolf Schlichter, & Erwin Piscator Lewis p115. Dix, Otto Nagel & Otto Griebel were members Willett p83
SALZBURG SCHOOL:
Term: The school included a number of disparate landscape artists who painted there & roamed around its environs in the Austrian Salzkzkammergut & Berchtesgaden areas during the first half of the 19th century Novotny pp 127-30
Development: About 1800 two Swiss engravers (Wilhelm Schlotterbeck & Johann Strudt) popularised the area with their etchings & coloured aquatints Novotny p127
SCAPIGLIATURA:
This was a group of Bohemian artists & writers (scapigliatura meaning dishevelled) in Milan around 1865-75. They painted figures & landscapes out of a mist of quick brightly coloured brushstrokes. Their impetus came from Faruffini but the movement was led by Cremona, Ranzoni & the sculptor Grandi Norman1977
SCHOOL OF CHATOU:
Maurice de Vlaminck & Andre Derain shared a studio on the island in the Seine in 1900 & their art with its bright colours & bold brushstrokes anticipated Fauvism web
SCHOOL OF LONDON:
Term: It was coined by Kitaj in 1976 & popularised through a British Council exhibition of work by Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Freud, Kitaj & Leon Kossof, which toured Europe in 1987. It is the title of a book by Alistair Hicks, which also covers Gillian Ayers, Howard Hodgkin, etc OxDicMod.
Meaning: There was no common style, only shared sympathies & consciousness of having unorthodox artistic values Hughes1991 p415
Links: Andrews, Auerbach, Bacon, Burra, Craxton, Freud, Minton & Vaughan used to meet at the Colony Room, which was a private club in Dean Street presided over by Muriel Belcher Spalding1986 pp 143-5
SCHOOL OF LYONS:
An Ecole des Beaux-Arts was founded in Lyons in the early 19th century & from 1807 to 1818 Pierre Revoil taught there. His influence contributed to the birth of the school & its emergence during the 1820s Turner DtoI p352. Its religious work, which was idealistic & mystical, was inspired by the Nazarenes & later the Pre-Raphaelites. Leading painters associated with the school were Hypolyte Flandrin & Louis Janmot who [like its other members] was devoutly Catholic TurnerDtoI pp 161, 279. [It seems likely that the school played an important part in the development of a distinctive type of popular Catholic art characterised by extreme religiosity & an absence of talent] See Leymarie p92
SCHOOL OF NANCY:
Its leading figures were Jacques Callot, Jacques Bellange & Claude Deruet Lucie-S1971 p49
School of Paris. See Ecole de Paris
School of Resina. See Scuola da Resina.
SCHOOL OF RESINA:
An Italian Realist grouping that was cantered on De Nittis. When he settled in Resina after 1863 De Nittis was joined by De Gregorio & F. Rossano Norman1977
SCHOOL OF SEVILLE:
This refers to the new naturalistic style in the early 17th century OxDicArt p236
Painters: Herrera the Elder (following his Mannerist phase) Brown1991 p131.
SCOTTISH COLOURISTS:
Term: It was coined in Honeyman’s book on Cadell, Hunter & Peploe in 1950, & extended to Ferguson, who stands apart because he returned to live in France after the first World War OxDicMod
Development: Between about 1900 & 1914 they each spent some time in France where they were strongly influenced by the powerful colouring & bold handling of the Fauves. They knew each other & in 1924 exhibited together (Les Peintres de’Ecosse Moderne) at the Gallerie Berbanges in Paris OxDicMod
Characteristics: They painted Scotish landscapes in daringly pure colour learnt in France with what is described as an honest texture using unworked & exuberant colour that heightens the sense of atmosphere TurnerEtoM pp 342-3
Painters: Cadell; J. D. Ferguson, Leslie Hunter; Peploe TurnerEtoPM p342
SCUOLA DI POSILLIPO:
They were landscape painters who worked from about 1820 to 1850 in reaction against the academicism of late 18th century Neapolitan landscapists. In 1820 Pitloo established an informal studio at Posillipo, a hilltop village near Naples, which attracted young artists who were often vedutisti. Pitloo’s approach was more spontaneous, he used a lighter palette & painted en plein air, as did his followers. Turner’s intermittent presence in Naples during 1819-29 was also influential & there was also contact with Bonington & Corot.
In 1825 Cigante the most innovative painter in the group joined the studio. He used pure patches of watercolour to create form & his larger oils & unromanticised depictions of nature & influenced other group members (Vianelli, Carelli, Smargiassi, Duclere & Palizzi). The School had an important influence on the development of Romantic & Realistic landscape painting, including the Macchiaioli Grove28 p317, Norman1977 p169.
SCUOLA DI RESINA:
This was a Realist grouping based on Naples which established studios in the royal palace of Portici immediately after Italy was unified in 1861. It sought an anti-academic renewal of painting in opposition to that of Morelli & was under the influenced of Palizzi & Cecioni, who was a link with the Macchiaioli. The founder De Gregorio was joined by Rossano & in 1864 De Nittis. Resina paintings in contrast to those of Morelli had abrupt transitions from light to dark with the elimination of half-tones & they featured coarse yet dignified peasants, bleak & muddy landscapes, & the streets of poor villages. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin in southern Italy may have influenced their subject matter. Around 1870 Rossano moved to France, where he began painting landscapes in silvery tones, & De Nittis settled in Paris. Only De Gregorio continued the Resina style Grove28 pp317-8, Norman1977.
SCUOLA DI RIVARA:
This was a loose group of plein air landscape painters who worked in Canavese area of the Piedmont. Their paintings had forceful colouring with bright patches of sunlight on grass. The group was founded in the early 1860s by Carlo Pittara, 1836-90, & named after thye villa of his brother-in-law where visiting artists were welcome. Although connectred with the Macchiaioli the group was less interested in nationalist ideals & more influenced by medievalist Romanticism. After the death of Ernesto Raper in 1873 the group fractured Grove28 p318.
SCUOLA DI STAGGIA:
The name derives from a village in the hilly region near Sienna where in 1853 Karoly Marko the younger first painted. He was soon joined by other Florentine painters including his brother Andras & Carlo Ademollo, known for his patriotic subjects. Two Neapolitan artists also belonged. Scenes were romanticised & they tended to depict picturesque places in the Tuscan countryside in a highly finished manner. Some members were strongly influenced by Barbizon & the Macchiaioli were greatly influenced by the practice of painting together Grove28 pp318-9.
SCUOLA LABRONICA:
A group of 18 Italian artists born in or around Livorno. It was founded in 1920 though its members had met regularly at the Caffe Bardi since 1908. Giovanni Fattori who died in 1908 was the most important influence, most of them knowing him as a friend & teacher. Gino Romiti (1881-1967) remained true to his example. Another influence was the Italian Divisionist movement but there was no unifying style. Their aim was to depict the everyday life of their city Grove28 p319, Norman1977.
SCUOLA ROMANA/ECOLE DE ROME/ROMAN SCHOOL
This was a loose group of artists active between 1927 & 1940. It originated with a group of students at the Academia delle Arti & was recognised by Roberto Longhi, albeit under a different name. Apart from the fantasy painter Scipione, the group painted in a lyrical expressionist manner largely inspired by the Ecole de Paris & differing from the Novecentro classicism. After Scipioni’s death the group’s paintings were characterised by vibrant surfaces & stilled atmospheres created by the juxtaposition of closely related hues. In 1933 the French critic Waldemar George coined the term Ecole de Rome. Its painters included Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphael, Fausto Pirandello; & later Corrado Cagli, Emanuele Cavalli, Giuseppe Copogrossi, Roberto Meli & Alberto Ziveri TurnerEtoPM p 343.
SECTION D’OR:
French painters who worked in loose association from 1912 until 1914 & held one exhibition (1912). This was organised by the Puteaux Group & Section d’Or included Delaunay, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Gleizes, Gris, Leger, Metzinger, Picabia & Villon. Their common stylistic feature was a debt to Cubism. Section d’Or also refers to an attempt by Gleizes, Villon & others to form a group of abstract artists who believed in a return to classical order & were opposed to Dadaism OxDicMod, TurnerEtoPM p350.
SEVEN & FIVE SOCIETY (7+5):
This was an association of progressive British artists (originally 7 painters & 5 sculptors) OxDicMod. It was founded in 1919 by ex-servicemen who had been art students when the War started. The first exhibition was held in 1920 at Walker’s Galleries, London.
In 1926 Ben Nicholson became Chairman & was henceforth dominant. Hitchens was the one original member of note but during 1925-29 it was joined by Winifred Nicholson, Wood, David Jones & Frances Hodgkins. The Society’s work was still-life & landscape of moderate modernism in fresh colour & a touch semi-primitive in style.
During the early 1930s the Society became increasingly avant garde & Hepworth & Moore joined TurnerEtoPM p353. In 1934 Nicholson proposed that the 1935 show be wholly Abstract, which led to a successfully purge. The 1935 exhibition at Zwemmers was the first all-Abstract show in England but was the end of the Society Spalding1986 p10, OxDicMod. It foundered once the interests of its strongest members had been satisfied TurnerEtoPM p353
SOCIAL REALISM, AMERICAN IN THE 1930s:
Term/Grouping: This phase of Social Realism was distinguished by Robert Hughes in his history of American painting & by David Shapiro in his study of the movement. It was the dominant form of art in the 1930s Hughes1997 pp446-7, ShapiroD p4
Background: There was a Social Realist tradition, in particular the Ashcan School. In the Saco & Vanzetti case two Italian anarchist immigrants were finally executed in 1927 for murder, after a long campaign in their favour & a final adverse verdict by a manifestly biased judge. This was a traumatic & disillusioning experience for American liberalism Schlesinger1957 pp 144-6. It was soon to be followed by the stock market crash of 1929 & the Great Depression. There is no need to detail its progress & consequences, suffice it to say that with unemployment rising to almost 25% in 1933 they were catastrophic, & had a dire effect on the art market. That year saw the beginning of federal support for artists as part of the New Deal.
However, artists disliked the paupers’ oath that had to be signed by indigenous artists to qualify for employment under the Works Progress Administration ; the inadequate facilities in which to work; the rules, regulations & supervision; & the summary firing of artists who in 1933 organised an Artists’ Union Puth p368, Woods pp 91-2, ShapiroD pp 4, 11-2, 16-7; See Works Progress Administration in Section 6. particularly on the art market. That year saw the beginning of federal support for artists as part of the New Deal. However, artists disliked the paupers’ oath that had to be signed by indigenous artists to qualify for employment under the Works Progress Administration; the inadequate facilities in which to work; the rules, regulations & supervision; & the summary firing of artists who in 1933 organised an Artists’ Union Puth p368, ShapiroD pp 4, 11-2, 16-7; See Works Progress Administration in Section 6.
Many intellectuals & artists thought the slump was proof positive that capitalism had failed & must be replaced by Communism. The old democratic Socialist party of Norman Thomas appeared tepid & effete. As Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, explained the Party had one ultimate appeal, “In place of desperation, it set the word hope”. Foreign correspondents minimised the totalitarian aspects of Soviet Communism, but in any case, the ruthless determination of the Party & its leaders was seen as necessary or even desirable when faced by the crisis of history & Fascism Schlesinger1960 pp 180-8, Chambers pp 191-6.
| The American Communist Party: it is difficult to understand American Social Realism without knowing about the Party’s nature & tactics during the 1930s. Two groups of Communists broke away from the Socialist Party in 1919 & then merged to become the Communist Party USA. Its membership was small until the depression but reached 66,000 in 1939. Communist candidates won around 100,000 votes in elections during the 1930s & in 1935 the Party claimed that if front organisations etc were included it had a mass following of about 600, 000 University of Washington Mapping American Social Movements on web, Schlesinger1960 pp 198, 567. The front & Communist dominated organisations to which painters typically belonged were the John Reed Clubs, the American Artist’s Congress, & American League Against War & Fascism. However, in 1934 the Clubs were disbanded because their sectarian spirit did not fit a new emphasis on anti-fascist unity Whiting p39, etc. |
History: John Reed Clubs were branches of & initiated by the Communist International Union of Writers & Artists which met at Kharkov in 1929. However, there were internal division as to whether friendly non-revolutionary intellectuals were admissible. With the advent of the Popular Front in 1935 they were made welcome & the Clubs were replaced by the American Artists’ Congress (& Writers’ League) ShapiroD pp 18, 19, Whiting p37. The list of sponsors of the first Congress in 1936 reads like a Who’s Who of American art & the movement obtained huge publicity. Many & perhaps the majority of painters embraced Social Realism ShapiroD pp 22-3. Numerous exhibitions were held by the Congress, the Artists’ Union, & other galleries ShapiroD pp 25-6. Many & perhaps the majority of American painters now embraced Social Realism ShapiroD pp 14-15. In 1940 Stuart Davis, national secretary & chairman, resigned in protest at Russia’s invasion of Finland & the Congress broke up OxDicMod, Whiting p90.
Inspirations: Daumier, Goya, Nolde, & Roualt, together with George Grosz & Kathe Kollwitz who contributed to the 1933 John Reed Club exhibition & the Mexican muralists ShapiroD pp 16, 79-80
Characteristics:
(a) Background: The left-wing artists of the 1930s were generally white males from the lower middle-class or sometimes working class white, with a few, like George Biddle, from wealthy & illustrious families. Their parents or grandparents were mostly from Europe & many were from uncultured families & had been poorly educated. They generally encountered Socialism at art school or on arrival at big city to work as an artist. There was a significant Jewish contingent ShapiroD pp 20-1, 146.
(b) Content: They painted genre showing significant & dramatic moments of lives of ordinary people in slums, factory districts & sometimes farms. There was almost always an implicit or explicit critique of capitalism with a satirical, derisive treatment of the rich.
Landscapes, nudes & still-life paintings were infrequent. In contrast to the forced optimism of Socialist Realism their work displayed pathos, & featured underdogs & victims Hughes1997 p447, ShapiroD pp 14-5. 79
(c) Stylistic: There were no shared formal elements & the painters used line, colour & space in different ways. [However, there was a strong tendency especially in the pre-Popular Front period to caricature & exaggeration. The work of the American social realists was not Realism in the strict sense] ShapiroD pp 146, 182-3, 212-3, 246-7, 276-7, 310-11.
(d) Class Enemies & Fascism: It had been laid down at the Kharkov conference that capitalism in decay led to fascism & the Communist Party bitterly attacked the New Deal. In 1935 the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International called for a Popular Front, a broad alliance to fight fascism. A distinction was now drawn by the Party between political control by the capitalist class & the complete destruction of democracy Schlesinger1960 p191, Whiting pp 37-8.
Nevertheless, the intolerance of some members of the American Artists Congress is striking. In 1935 Stuart Davis disparaged the Regionalists figurative style & nationalistic subject matter & attacked Thomas Benton, who had exhibited at a Reed Club in 1933, on the ground that, not only was he a poor painter, but would “have no trouble selling his wares to any Fascist or semi-Fascist government”. Benton later produced some striking anti-fascist & patriotic paintings SchapiroD pp 79, 104, Whiting pp 98, 115-23.
With this change in political direction there was a marked shift in the nature of propagandistic anti-fascist art. During the 1920s it scarcely existed & until 1935 largely consisted of unsophisticated illustrations in Party & left-wing publications by William Groper & other artists Whiting pp 8-18, 26-30. Under the Popular Front artwork partly changed from woodcuts & line drawings to oils, from the ephemeral to the exhibition works in oils, from militancy & certain victory to doubt & resolution, from scorn to emotion, & from conformity to diversity Whiting pp 35-7, 41, 48-50.
Painters: A. Aissen; Peter Blume; Jacob Burck; Jerry Doyle; Fred Ellis; Philip Evergood; William Gropper; George Harrison; Joe Jones; Jacob Lawrence; Jack Levine; Anton Refregier; William Siegel; Georges Schreiber; Ben Shahn; William Siegel; Moses & Raphael Soyer; Art Young Hughes 1997 p447, ShapiroD pp 113, 145, 176-7; Whiting pp 9, 12, 42, 60,110
The SOCIAL REALIST GROUPING
The Term: According to the conventional definition, Social Realism is a very broad category that covers the arts in general. It relates to painting of a realistic nature but of no particular style. At its widest Social Realism pictures are said to be those which deal with significant social issues. This broad definition is then qualified & Social Realism is said to relate particularly to work focused on the everyday conditions of the working classes & poor OxDicMod, L&L.
The movement is traced back to Daumier, Courbet & Millet & is regarded as embracing the Wanderers in Russia; the late Victorian paintings of Fildes, Herkomer & Holl in Britain; the American Ashcan School in the early years of the 20th century; the Mexican muralists after the Revolution of 1910; much art of the Depression era in Britain & the USA; & the Kitchen Sink School TurnerEtoPM p357, Murrays1959. Moreover other possible candidates for inclusion include Walter Sickert; German Expressionists such as Kirchner; & Neue Sachlichkeit, as represented by Dix & Beckman Corbett2011 p47, TurnerEtoPM p357. It is often an art of protest & is produced by those critical of these conditions & of the social structures that maintain them. Such painters were usually of a left-wing or liberal persuasion L&L, TurnerEtoPM pp 356-7.
Comment: [Social Realism as just described is at once too broad & too narrow to be regarded as a useful & coherent category. It is too wide because a great swathe of painting deals with significant social issues. Paintings by Tissot & Orchardson come to mind but they depict the upper class. They are merely realism about society. Moreover the work of those who painted peasants & fisher folk – like the Glasgow Boys, La Thangue & the Newlyn School – would appear to qualify, although here there is an important element of escapism & nostalgia. Social Realism must surely be confined to modern, urban industrial society. Otherwise genre painting in the Low Countries during the 17th century would have to be included.
Social Realism of the type previously envisaged is also too wide because it embraces many Neue Sachlichkeit & other painters who painted in a cool manner & are better regarded as Magic Realists. Moreover social criticism can be a misleading indicator if only because social realist pictures may, for instance, simply depict working class life which had pleasures as well as pains.
Art works that are intended as political propaganda are unlikely to qualify as Social Realism. Many of them are not sufficiently realistic because they resort to strident caricature, as they often do when they feature those who do not belong to the working class. The works of Grosz, Dix & other German Communists & fellow travellers during the 1920s are a case in point. The members of the bestial bourgeois & bizarre officer class may be good propaganda but are not real human beings. Moreover to be regarded as Social Realism a painting must at least permit the viewer to sympathise with the non-bourgeois participants. This means, for instance, that hostile depictions of prostitutes & other supposed lackeys of the ruling class do not qualify.
What is required, & what has been provided elsewhere, is a separate category for works that do not allow scope for genuine empathy but only for anger, even if it is being sought on behalf of the poor & downtrodden See Political Art/Tendenzkunst in Section 9. What is also needed is another category for those paintings that discourage a sympathetic response because those depicted do not appear fully human. This may be due to their complete lack of emotion & impenetrability, or because paradoxical elements or strange juxtapositions, convey a feeling of unreality. Such paintings are dealt with in the section on Magic Realism See Section 8.
Social realist pictures are to be identified through their content & subject matter & not their style. However, they do have common stylistic features. In particular they are not works where the artist has obviously been at pains to achieve a polished finish. Nor is this an accident because they were not Art for Art’s Sake & were produced by those who disdained work of this type. They were often produced by graphic artists or painters who often worked for popular magazines.]
Development: Paintings devoted to the working class inhabitants of big cities were rare during the early & mid-Victorian era. When they do occur they may well feature a seamstress, an occupation that had gained notoriety due to Hood’s Song of the Shirt. What are even less common are depictions of actual working class poverty & consequent distress. However, from the mid-1870s the situation changed & Luke Fildes’ Application for Admission to a Casual Ward, 1874, inaugurated a wave of Social Realist painting in Britain Treuherz1987 pp 14-15, 24-8, 30-1. Fildes & other Social Realists began by producing illustrations for the Graphic which was a new & large circulation magazine. Their scenes of working class life included street markets, gin places, factories, soup kitchens & workhouses Treuherz1993 p180. They then went on to produce oil paintings which, like Fildes’ picture, were sometimes derived from their illustrationsTreuherz1993 pp 180-2.
From 1881 the painters who had worked for the Graphic abandoned Social Realism. The market for this type of painting, & also for landscapes, had declined. This was due to a general slackening of demand as economic conditions deteriorated for the picture buying classes; to a switch in taste which favoured portraits & the work of the Aesthetic Movement; & to a related desire to cease cluttering up walls Gillett pp 100-111.
The shift in demand coincided with a desire by the Social Realist artists for an affluent life style. They wanted in particular to build grand & expensive houses. Fildes & Holl had houses designed by Norman Shaw (1877 & 1881), & Herkomer’s was designed around 1882 by Henry Hobson Richardson Gillett pp 111-2. [Both Fildes & Herkomer seem to have been exceptionally avaricious.] The latter gleefully totted up all the money he was earning by painting portraits. Fildes complained that he could probably have made more money if he had painting portraits instead of working on The Doctor which was greeted with acclaim & for which he received a fat fee. Moreover he refused to be considered for the presidency of the RA in 1896 because of the loss of earnings Gillett pp 112, 115-6, 120.
[The next wave of Social Realist painting was given impetus by Degas] with his paintings of tired laundresses & unglamorous prostitutes. Sickert, inspired by Degas who was his friend, went on to paint a series of paintings including music hall scenes & nude women in seedy bedrooms, which are dark in colour & emotion. Many of Sickert’s followers in the Fitzroy Street & Camden Town groups qualify as Social Realists. In the United States there was, at much the same time, a separate part of the movement, namely the Ashcan School For this & for other developments in the 20th century See The Ashcan School & After & Social Realism 1910-60 in Section 10. See also Modern Life Painting in the Victorian Era in Section 9.
Painters with groups in date order:
(a) Late Victorian Social Realists:
(b) Camden Town etc: Bevan; Drummond; Gilman; Ginner; Gore; Manson; Sickert
(c) The American Ashcan School
(d) The German Verists; Beckman; Dix, Grosz; Schlichter; Scholz; Arntz; Griebel; Grundig; Hoerle; Nagel; Seiwert; QuernerTurnerEtoPM pp 268-9, Hayward 1979 pp 9-10, 129. [NB Schlichter & Hoerle also appear in my Magic Realism grouping!!]
(e) American Social Realists of the 1930s: Benton; Curry; Evergood; Gropper; Jacob Lawrence; Levine; [Norman Rockwell]; Moses & Raphael Soyer; Shahn Hughes1997 p447, ShapiroD p145 [Think about Benton, Curry & especially Rockwell]
(f) British Social Realism in the 1930s: Hilda Carline, Harry Epworth Allen, Bernard Fleetwood-Walker, Lancelot Glasson, Percy Shakespeare, Harold Williamson Wilcox2006 pp100-5. [Very incomplete]
(g) Kitchen Sink School: Clive Branson; Bratby; Derrick Greaves; Edward Middleditch; Jack Smith; Cliff Rowe; Alfred Daniels; Herman; Peter de Francia; Harry Baines; Morley Bury; Claude Rogers; Berger; Peter Blake; Brian Bradshaw; Prunella Clough (early); Peter Coker; Duxbury; Eardley; Derek Hill; Hoyland; Malcolm Hughes; Helen Lessore; Peri; Keith Vaughan; Anthony Wishaw Spalding1986 pp 122-4, 157-9, F50s [Check that they can all be described as Kitchen Sink]
(h) Scottish left-wing Glasgow painters who were inspired by Joseph Herman & Jankel Adler (Milanlie Frood, George Hannah, Tom Macdonald, Bet Low, Joan Eardley) Macmillan1994 pp 80-81.
Sporting School, English See English Sporting School
SOCIETY OF INDEPENDENT ARTISTS:
This was formed in 1916 to succeed the Association of American Painters which had mounted the Armoury Show. The aim was to enable progressive artists to show their work in annual exhibitions simply by paying a modest fee. The first show (at which Duchamp’s urinal was rejected) was held in 1917 & the last in 1944 but there had been a rapid decline in quantity & quality. Glackens was the first president but Sloan held the post from 1918 to 1951 OxDicMod
ST IVES SCHOOL:
Term: The St Ives School was a loosely structured avant-garde group which had its heyday from the late 1940s to early 1960s OxDicMod
Background/Development: St Ives had long been popular with artists. During the winter of 1883-4 Whistler & Sickert painted there, & so did Anders Zorn & Helene Schjerfbeck in 1887-8. The St Ives Art Club was founded in 1888 & St Ives Society of Artists, which had its own sales gallery, in 1927. However, St Ives was of no great importance as a painting centre with the exception of the naïve painter Alfred Wallis until the Modernists Ben Nicholson, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth & Naum Gabo moved there in 1939 but left in 1946. By the end of the World War II, they had been joined by Adrian Stokes, Margaret Mellis, & Wilhelmina Barnes Graham. They in turn attracted Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, & Peter Lanyon who had been born there OxDicMod, L&L, WestS1996.
Many avant-gardists joined the St Ives Society of Artists, although between 1946 & 1948 the modernists showed their work separately (the Crypt Group). In 1949 the Penwith Society was formed to try to reconcile traditional & abstract artists, but it had modernist leanings with Herbert Read its first president. It organised the first post-War abstract exhibitions. The St Ives artists had close ties with American abstraction & held 14 group exhibitions in New York between 1956 & 66. The Tate Modern opened in 1993 OxDicMod, L&L, WestS1996
Characteristics: The School had little in common although the painters [mostly] worked in an abstract style. It is claimed that having gleaned inspiration from landscape [which is in itself a weak assertion] they were trying to convey their experience & sensations. However even this generalisation does not apply in the case of Patrick Heron whose work was largely geometric Spalding 1966 p171, OxDicArt, WestS1996, Webimages.
Verdict: Some of the work, which was inspired by what Frost described as “delight in front of nature”, was, like that of Peter Lanyon, precise & powerful but much was tepid, over-tasteful & too much concerned with registering a narrational response to nature Shone1977 p36. .
Painters in St Ives & the Surrounding Area: Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham; Trevor Bell; Sandra Blow (visitor); Alan Davie (visitor); Terry Frost; Heath (visitor); Patrick Heron (visitor till 1955); Roger Hilton (visitor till 1965); Peter Lanyon; Bob Law (visitor); Margaret Mellis; Ben Nicholson; Victor Passmore (visitor); William Scott; Adrian Stokes; Joe Tilson (Visitor); John Wells; Karl Weschke; Bryan Wynter Spalding1986 pp 171-2, Cross p135
STAMNING:
This is a Swedish word for atmosphere or mood Wicip. It is used to describe the work of some Nordic painters whose work was predominant in the 1890s & into the 1900s. They used light & nature to express a feeling of loneliness, isolation & ephemerality. Artists had earlier used obvious symbolism to convey meaning, but in stamning more subtle means were employed. These were in the main gentle & poetic works often of a mystic, pantheistic type. Stamning painters included Nordstrom, Prince Eugen & surely Hammershoi. A pantheistic theme papers most famously in Knut Hamsun’s Norwegian novel Pan but also in much other literature of the time Kent pp 9, 152.
ST JOHN’S WOOD CLIQUE, not to be confused with The Clique:
Development: These were young & ambitious artists who in 1860s mostly lived in that area. They met every Saturday to sketch & then mutually criticise. The members mostly shared an interest in Historical Genre subjects TurnerRtoI p324. These were everday incidents from British history rather than the great events which earlier in the century neoclassical painters had selected for their importance or moral significance. Palgrave said that the group’s characteristic subject matter was “the lost pages of history” ie events which might have occurred but were too trivial to be recorded in detail M&M pp 7, 19. The group was also social in nature & the engaged in singing & reciting mock sermons etc. George Du Maurier & other literary men were invited to their parties TurnerRtoI p324. Many of the group’s members had been trained on the Continent (Calderon, Marks, Storey, Yeames) & continental influences probably enabled members to escape from Pre-Raphaelite influence M&M pp 5-7. Most of the painters became RAs. The early deaths of Wynfield & Walker broke up the group & by the 1890s many of artists had moved out of the area TurnerRtoI p324.
Repute: The Clique first attracted attention in the reviews of the RA by W. M. Rossetti & F.T. Palgrave, 1863-5. The two critics described the artists as highly competent in telling their story & in arranging their figures, not flashy, serious minded & with but, according to Rossetti, they lacked inspirationM&M pp 6-7
Verdict: According to Thackeray it was ,“a gentle sentiment, an agreeable, quiet incident, a tea-table tragedy or a bread-&-butter idyll” Treuherz1993 p21
Painters: Calderon; J. E. Hodgson; G. D. Leslie; Henry Stacy Marks; Val Princep; G. A. Storey; Fred Walker; William Frederick Yeames; & D. W. Wynfield TurnerRtoI p324
STIMMUNGSLANDSCHAFT:
The term, which literally means landscape of mood, describes the German school which developed under Barbizon influence. However, the German painters were not content to paint nature as it is but sought its poetry, music & mood. Munich was the centre of the movement with Schleich & the influential teach Lier as pioneers but it was Thoma who was the so-called father of Stimmungslandschaft . He influenced Frohlicher & Stabl & Trubner & Haider had strong links to the school Norman1977
Synchchromists/Synchromists. See Orphism in this Section.
SUICIDE, INSANITY & HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG PAINTERS:
General: Artists are prone to suicide: working alone & consequent self-doubt. Hazlitt thought they broke up at c40 due to disappointed hopes & then starvation or drink HookP pp 87-8. The psychologist Andrew Steptoe analysed the biographical details of 83 Renaissance painters, & 40 sculptors & architects, who appeared in Vasari. He found that depressive tendencies & eccentricities were relatively uncommon. The most common traits were studiousness & courtesy. Among those artists whom Vasari judged to be truly great the initial pattern was even more pronounced. However, a survey of 36 British & Irish poets born between 1705 & 1805 found that there was a strikingly high rate of mood disorders, suicide & institutionalisation. Less than a quarter were symptom free Robinson pp 58-61. [Although there appears to be no corresponding study of painters, there were many notable cases of extreme behaviour during the Romantic era & 19th century.] They included Carstens, Gros, Hayden, Gericault, Landseer, Wilkie, Rethel, Dadd, Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, Van Gogh & Whistler L&L
(a) Suicide: Abbot; da Volpedo; Dora Carrington; John Currie; Faruffini; Vivian Forbes; Gerstl; Gertler; Godward; Gros; Carl Ludwig Hackert; Haydon; Jongkind; Kitaj; Lightfoot; Alfred Maurer; Constance Mayer; Bernard Meninsky; Minton; Louis Robert; Sage; Sir Charles Sage; Ernst Stohr; Cornelis Van Cleve, Van Gogh; Testa; Henry Tilson; Keith Vaughan; Christopher Wood; Woodville. Suicide attempts were made by Kubin & Rossetti Here & following See Section 1 above, also W&M p180, Baron p91, Grove14 p16, ImperialWM
(b) Insanity/Mental Illness: Blechen; John Robert Cozens; Ciurlionis; Dadd; de Hooch; Fedotov; Gericault; Kirchner; Landseer; Marilhat; Meyron; Rethel; Van Gogh; Jacob Solomonsz Van Ruydael; Vrubel HookP p55 etc
(c) Seriously Mentally Disturbed , including depression: Ernst; George Hunter, Josephson; Masson; Pollock; Schuch; Wright of Derby
(d) Breakdowns: Hilda Carline; Kuhn (died in an asylum); Nevinson; Wilkie, E. M. Ward who may have committed suicide
(d) Homosexuality: Bacon; Rosa Bonheur; Jessica Dismoor; Rainer Fetting; Vivian Forbes; Gluck; Duncan Grant; Michelangelo; Minton; Reni; Glyn Philpot; Salome; Sodema; Simeon Solomon; Vaughan
(e) Siphilis: Toulouse-Lautrec
(f) Illegitimate children: Lucian Freud; & Klimt with 14 or more
SYNTHETISM:
Term: It derives from the synthetiser, to synthesise, & is based on the idea that art should synthesise the appearance, the artist’s feelings, & aesthetic considerations: line, colour & form. The term was coined in 1889 Gauguin & Emile Schuffenecker’s L’Exposition de Peinutures du groupe impressioniste et synthetiste. In 1890 Maurice Denis summarised the goals of Synthetism when he declared that a picture was essentially a flat surface covered with colours in order, though he preferred the label Symbolism.
Characteristics include a limited range of colours with little or no modulation, their harmonious & rhythmical repetition, strongly defined forms through outlining or juxtaposition, & the suppression of depth.
Development: Synthetism was developed in Pont-Aven in 1888 when, after making sketches or relying on memory, they edited out that was unnecessary to the translation of their feelings about the subject.
Legacy: The next generation eliminated tangible subject natter Grove30 pp 173-4.
The TAOS SIX/SOCIETY OF ARTISTS:
The artist Henry Poore was an early arrival in 1888 but it was not until Bert Phillips & Ernest Blumenschein came, & then publicised Taos in an article in 1898, that the art colony began. They together with Joseph Sharp, W. Herbert Dunton, E. Irving Couse & Oscar Berninghaus formed the Taos Society of Artists. Its early members were mainly French trained & portrayed the local Indians in a literal & illustrative manner. In 1917 Mabel Dodge settled in Taos, married a Pueblo native & then called herself Mabel Dodge Luhan. For decades she ran a solon & invited artist & writers including Georgia O’Keeffe, who initially spent the summers painting & then settled, & D.H. Lawrence who stayed for a period & did some painting Jacobs1985 p171, Wikip.
TEN AMERICAN PAINTERS OR THE TEN. See Impresionism, American. Ten American Painters are not to be confused with The Eight or Group X
Ten American Painters were New York & Boston artists who exhibited together from 1898 to 1918 after leaving the Society of American Artists. They were organised by Twachtman, Weir & Hassam. The others were Benson, De Camp, Dewing, Metcalf, Metcalf, Robert Reid, Simmons, & Tarbell together with Chase after Twachman’s death. They wanted to improve the quality of their exhibitions, decryed overcrowding & desired smaller & more harmonious shows inspiring quiet contemplation following Whistler. They were mostly Impressionists Grove30 p452.
A subsequentTen exhibited together from 1935 to 1939. They were mostly Expresionists but a few belonged to American Abstract Artists. Gottlieb & Rothco were the best known of the Ten OxDicMod
Tenebrism. See Caraviggisti, Caravaggesque & Tenebrism
THAMES ESTUARY SCHOOL:
This was a group of British painters (first recognised by the art historian Hilda Finberg) who, during the 18th century, painted views of the Thames & its shipping. They were inspired by Willem van de Velde the Elder & followed the example of Willem the Younger. Their work had a topographical bias together with an insistence on accurate detail in the portrayal of ships. The School included Monamy & Scott Burke p115, Waterhouse1953 pp 152-3.
TONALISM:
Term: The term was used by the American painter & art historian & critic Samuel Isham in 1905 to describe a style in American painting Grove 31 p141, OxDicMod
Characteristics: Its features are soft, diffused light, muted tones & hazily outlined objects, which together produce a strong sense of mood. Landscape is presented as serene or mysterious, never as disquieting or dramatic Grove 31 p141
Period: From about 1880 to 1920 Grove 31 p141
Painters: Thomas Dewing; George Innes; Edward Steichen; Dwight Tryon; & in England Whistler, Paul Maitland, & also some of Sir William Nicholson’s landscapes Grove 31 p141, Gerdts1980 p22, webimages
TRANSAVANTGUARDIA
This is the Italian for beyond the avant-garde. The term was coined Achille Oliva in 1979. It originally covered the Italian Neo-Expressionistrs such as Clemente & Chia, but it was later extended by Oliva to include Americans such as Schnabel & Koons so as to become virtually synonymous with Postmodernism OxDicMod
TRANSCENDENTALISM/TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT:
This was a philosophical, spiritual & literary movement from the late 1820s in New England. It was closely related to Unitarianism & a Transcental Club was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1836. It included Ralph Waldo Emerson & Henry Thoreau. The movement drew on the transcental philosophy of Immanuel Kant, German idealism & the thinking of Johann Gottfried Herder, etc Wikip
Transandentalists rejected modern materialism & believed that nature conveyed a message of a higher spiritual truth. They believed that organised religion, political parties, etc have a corrupting effect & that people are at their best when self-reliant & independent. There is according to Emerson a Platonic “Over-Soul” which is a divine element which unites all people as one being, & to the universe as a whole. He declared that, when in contact with nature, “The current of the Universal Being circulates through me” Mautner p570, Wikip re Transcendalism, web. The transendalist belief in a divine presence was embodied in Luminist paintings suffused as they were with a light divine Wilmerding p17, See Luminism in this Section
Unanimisme/Unanimism:
This is a French literary movement which began in the early 1900s by Jules Romaines. He & other poets joined with the future Cubist Albert Gleizes in founding the Abbaye de Creteil, 1906-8, which was a Utopian community near Paris. In 1903 Romaines conceived the idea of a communal spirit and joint psychic life in which the individual could directly experience the thoughts & feelings of others. This notion was connected with the philosopher Bergson whom Romaines greatly admired & who believed that through intuition we are able to discern both our own inner being & that of others. Romaine’s poetry with its theme of interconnection in the city seems to have inspired Leger’s paintings of smoke in his panoramic views of Paris such as Les Fumees sur les Toits, 1911. Prior to the War the Unanimists had argued that the multinational makeup of modern cities, & cross-cultural communication due to modeern technology, would lead to European harmony. The War’s outbreak led to protest by Unanimists & Gleizes celebrated international trade & cultural communication in his work In Port, 1917 A&L pp 92-3, 202-3, OxDicMod, Wikip
The UMBRIAN SCHOOL:
Once up a time this school of painting was authoritatively recognised in the Oxford Companion to Art but it has now more or less disappeared from view, although the existence of an important contemporaneous local school of painting in Perugia has been observed OxCompArt p1173, Grove24 p520
Development: When the papacy annexed Perugia in 1540 the school ceased to exist OxCompArt p1173
Characteristics: Works with a calm but rather mannered grace featuring fair haired women & ethereal angels. The pictures are clearly drawn in bright clear colour Michelin Italy p171, webimages.
Feature: The painters often collaborated on projects & sometimes on paintings. As a result, they are stylistically very similar as shown way the way in which not a few works have been mis-attributed
Painters: Benedetto Bonfigli, Bartolomeo & Giovan Caporali, Sante d’ Apollonio; Fiorenzo Di Lorenzo, Bernardino Pinturicchio, Purugino, & briefly Raphael who established himself in Perugia, before moving to Florence & then Rome 1500-04 Grove24 p520, & 25 p899
Collection: Galleria Nazionale dell ’Umbria
UNION OF RUSSIAN ARTISTS
It lasted from 1903 to 1923 having been founded by former Wanderers & World of Art members mainly from Moscow who exhibited together in 1901 & therafter. They mainly painted landscapes & genre with the distinctive features of Russian life. Their works had sometimes tended towards impressionism. Prominent members included Arkhipov, Vasnetsov, Vinogradov, Ivanov, Korovin, Maliutin, Rylov, Iuon & Benois Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition
VALORI PLASTICI:
This was an art periodical published in Rome from 1918 to 1921 in Italian & French editions. The editor & publisher was Mario Broglio, 1891-1948. His outlook was conservative & in the first issue Carra, de Chirico & Savinio presented the ieals of Metaphysical Painting. Although there were articles on Cubism & De Stijl, the article generally favoured a return to the Italian classical tradition & fine craftsmanship, & was critical of avant garde movements. This coincided closely with much of the forthcoming official art under Fascism OxDicMod
VERISMO:
It was a movement in painting & sculpture primarily in Naples & Tuscany from about 1850 to 1900. Under the influence of Neoclassicism an interest in representing the real world had hitherto been confined to landscape & portraiture. Although they were anticipated by artists who observed nature systematically, the Macchiaioli were the first Italian group with an overriding interest in the effects of light on form & on contemporary subjects, whether battle scenes (Cammarono) or intimate interiors (Cecioni, Borrani). Towards the end of the century the desire to capture the essence of contemporary life, & especially its regional variations, became dominant in literature & art. Here Mancini who portrayed ordinary Neapolitans with a new & profound empathy was an important figure, along with Michetti & Toma. However Mancini diverted Verismo towards sentimentality & over dramatisation Grove32 pp256-7.
LES VINGT/LES XX/GRUPPE DES XX/THE TWENTY/LA LIBRE ESTHETIQUE:
This was an association of twenty artists formed in Brussels in 1883. They exhibited together from 1884 to 1893. It was mainly composed of Symbolist painters, including Ensor & Toorop, & Henry van de Velde. It also showed the work of non-Belgians including Cezanne & Gauguin & Seurat. It spread Neo & Post-Impressionist ideas & was the main Belgian forum for Symbolism & Art Nouveau. La Libre Esthetique, which was formed as a successor body in 1894, continued until 1914 OxDicMod p406, OxDicArt
VORTICISM/ENGLISH CUBISTS:
Development: The term Vorticism was coined early in 1914 by Ezra Pound. It was a British avant garde artistic & literary movement, founded in 1914 by Wyndham Lewis & members of the Rebel Art Centre. It was announced with gusto in a manifesto in Blast which Lewis edited. This attacked the stultifying legacy of the past. Vorticists were seen as “Primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World”. They wanted to place the machine age at the very centre of their work, producing art full of the forms of machinery, factories, & new & vast buildings.
The Futurists were criticised for making their buildings too picturesque. The Vorticists, more familiar with the results of industrialism than Marinetti, were aware of its darker side. Lewis saw the machine-age metropolis as an “iron jungle” where city dwellers were dehumanised TurnerEtoPM pp 406-7, OxDicMod
The Vorticists held only one exhibition at the Dore Gallery, 1915, but the War effectively ended the movement TurnerEtoPM p407, OxDicMod
Influences: Cubism with its fragmentation of forms & Marinetti for realising the need for an art that interpreted a rapidly changing world OxDicMod, TurnerEtoPM p406
Characteristics: Subjects that were reduced to a harsh geometric patterning, forming energetic compositions out of conflicting lines & shapes Spalding1986 p49. Unlike Futurist paintings, which often involved the blurring of forms to suggest speed, Vorticist works were aggressively linear OxDicMod. It should be noted that the works themselves were not necessarily aggressive although the Vorticists shunned nudes, still-life, domestic interiors & landscapes & preferred action, even if the sources were classical or biblical L&L, Spalding1986 p51
Patrons: The American collector John Quinn who was persuaded to buy Vorticist works by Pound OxDicMod
Principal Painters: Atkinson, Bomberg, Dismoor, Etchells, Hamilton, Kramer, Wyndham Lewis, Nevinson, Roberts, Saunders, Wadsworth Spalding1986 p49; TurnerEtoPM pp 406-7
The WANDERERS / ITINERANTS / PEREDVIZHNIKI
Development:
(a) Intellectuals: In 1855 Chernyshevsky in his Aesthetic Relations of Art & Reality stressed artists’ moral & social accountability & called for art that was not limited to beauty but embraced all reality Elliott p8. Vasilii Stasov, who was the most important art critic in second half 19th century, said that foreign influences were corrupting. Russian art must be nationalistic & realistic depictiin the life of the people. Otherwise it would be aimless & insignificant Golomstock pp 161-2;
(b) Wanderers early: In 1863 the Artists Co-operative Society was founded by Kramskoy etc, opposed to St Petersburg Academy of Arts’ traditional style & subjects; 1870 the Wanderers, or Peredvizhniki, were founded by Kramskoy etc to hold travelling exhibitions & take art to the people. They were inspired by Stasov & Chernyshevsky who advocated didactic art. During their initial Realist & critical period they exposed social, political & ecclesiastical evils, produced landscapes showing a new appreciation of Russia scenery, & painted portraits of Russia’s outstanding creative figures. They were in general opposed to Impressionism TurnerRtoI pp 361-2. The Wanderers were mostly lowish class Golomstock p161.
(c) Wanderers later: With the rise of nationalism & pan-Slavism during the 1880s they began painting more historical subjects (Perov, Repin, Surikov, & above all Vasnetsov) & also even more lyrical visions of the Russian landscape (Levitan)TurnerRtoI p362, 50Rus pp 110, 158. [Nevertheless paintings of the lower classes were still very much in evidence, although peasants were no loger the focus of interest, eg Kasatkin, Korovin, Makovsky, Orolov, Yaroshenko Lebedev Pls 16-18, 22, 44-8, 56, 109. In 1886 Alexander III was invited to visit the Wanderers’ exhibition. He now became their patron & made the Academy review its attitude to the movement. During the 1890s Repin, etc joined the Academy & the Wanderers now saught to protect Russian art from foreign influences Golomstock pp 162-3. After 1900 some members reconsidered their views & this sometimes, but not always, led to thematic trivialisation & a lack of critical power. Fewer outstanding works were produced Lebedev p18.
Distinguishing Features: Unlike earlier artists who came from lowish social strata. Unlike Ivanov, Schedrin, & Briullov they did not spend long periods in Italy & Perov who in 1862 went to France at the expense of the Academy of Arts begged to be allowed to return saying that he could not produce good work in a society so alien. The Wanderers received bourgeois patronage from Pavel Tretyakov who for instance bought Perov’s A Village Easter Procession, 1861, after it had been banned Golomstock p161, 50Rus p107. Genre crowd compositions were an innovation by Wanderers. Here the crowd is itself becomes the hero as in the paintings of Savitsky, Prianishnikov, Maximov, Miasoyedov & above all Repin Lebedev p11
Political Impact & Legacy: The Wanderers’ work was highly regarded by the Revolutionaries. They included Lenin, Vera Figner, Nikolai Morozov, & Vladimir Bonch-Bruywvich, who was spellbound when he saw their pictures at the Tretyakov Lebedev pp 16-7, 19. After the Revolution the Wanderers became a stepping stone in the move towards Socialist Realism See Socialist Realism & Impressionism in Section 9.
Members: Antokolsky (sculptor); Arkhipov; Bogdanov-Belsky; Ge; Kasatkin; Kramskoy; Kuinji; Kuznetsov; Levitan; Myasoyedov; Nesterov; Perov; Polenov; Repin; Savrasov; Shishkin; Surikov; Yaroshenko TurnerRtoI pp 361-2, King pp 50, 54, 57, Gray p12; Lebedev (if two Pls)
WEICHER STIL/SOFT STYLE:
Between about 1380 & 1430 this soft & graceful style was developed in Salzburg, Vienna & Styria, etc, by the Masters of the Vienna Adoration, St Lambert Votive Altarpiece; & the London Throne of Mercy, c1420, now in the NG. The Master of the Albrecht Altar was active in the transition to a greater realism Grove2 p792
WELTLANDSCHAFT/WORLD LANDSCAPE PAINTERS & FRANKENTHAL SCHOOL:
As created by Patinir around 1520, Weltlandschaft is a bird’s eye view of a vast & sweeping panorama: a richly detailed landscape containing such features as winding rivers which lead towards mountains in the background, distant seas & jagged rocks. They are paintings that create a sense of awe. This type of work was continued by de Bles, Cornelis Massys, Lucas Gassel, Matthijs Cock &, above all, Peter Brugel the Elder in The Seasons, 1565 Grove18 p706.
Somewhat later than Patinir a very similar type of panoramic landscape was painted by Gillis van Conixloo III as in Landscape with the Judgement of Midas, 1588 Grove 7 p710. Conixloo belonged to the Frankenthal School. Frankenthal is a German town where in 1562 the Elector Palatine Frederick III established a refuge for Protestant refugees Grove 7 p710 & 14 p731. However. later Conixloo abandoned the panoramic landscape of Patinir & Bruegel & painted luxuriant forest scenes at eye level L&L
WORLD OF ART / MIR ISKUSSTVA:
A group of Russian avant-garde artists & writers active between 1898 & 1906, which was revived as an exhibition society during 1910-24. Its first exhibition took place in 1899 & its journal was Mir Iskusstva, 1898-1904. Serge Diaghilev, the group’s driving force, was editor & Leon Bakst & Alexandre Benois were collaborators. They aimed at a renaissance of Russian art with an interchange with Western art but without narrow nationalism. It focused on Art Nouveau, Aestheticism & Symbolism. Although the group only had a limited stylistic coherence its members were committed to vigour, elegance, individualism, decoration, & an interaction of the arts. The latter preoccupation found expression in design work for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe, 1909. Nikolai Roerich & others were also interested in evoking the spirit of ancient Russia.
The group’s core members & early exhibitors included Bakst, Benois, Ivan Bilibin, Aleksandr Golovin, Alexi Jawlensky, Konstantin Korovin, Yevgeny Lanseria, Mikhail Larionov, Isak Levitan, Filipp Malyavin, Sergey Malyutin, Nikolay Milioti, Mikhail Nesterov, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedova, Nikolai Roerich, Serov, Konstantin Somov, Mikhail Vrubel, Mariya Yakunchikova TurnerEtoPM pp 411-2, OxDicMod.
YOUNG BRITISH ARTISTS (confusable with Young Contemporaries):
This was a highly publicised group, active from the late 1980s, & well known for their glamorous lifestyles & often their provocative work. It was diverse but ties of friendship linked many. They were chiefly supported by Charles Saatchi at whose gallery their work was exhibited in 1992-6. An exhibition organized by Damien Hirst first gave them prominence. Other artists include the Chapman brothers, Tracy Emin, Chris Ofili, Sarah Lucas, Mark Quinn, together with the painters Gary Hume & Chris Ofili OxDicMod