Art Styles:
Abstract
Art
An abstract work of art;
artistic content depends on internal form rather
than pictorial representation. In its pure form,
it can be interpreted as any art in which the
depiction of real objects has been entirely
discarded and its aesthetic content expressed in
a formal pattern or structure of shapes, lines
and colors. When the representation of real
objects is completely absent, such art may be
called non-objective.
Abstract
Expressionism
A school of painting
that flourished after World War II until the
early 1960s, characterized by the view that art
is nonrepresentational and chiefly
improvisational. New York has been its main
center. Leading abstract expressionists:
Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, Rothko, Motherwell,
Gottlieb, Gorky…
Sculptors: David Smith,
Lassaw
American Genre
Painting
Usually paintings of the
rural Midwest and west during the 1920s and
30s.
Art Deco
A
decorative and architectural style of the period
1925-1940, characterized by geometric designs,
bold colors, and the use of plastic and glass.
Art deco, influenced by art nouveau, the Russian
ballet, and Egyptian and Aztec styles,
emphasized grace, the exotic and elegant
chic.
Art Nouveau
(Jugendstil)
A style of decoration
and architecture of the late 19 th and early 20
th centuries, characterized particularly by the
depiction of leaves and flowers in flowing,
sinuous lines. It was a European movement in the
visual arts that spread to America and affected
architecture and every kind of design.
Outstanding exponent of this style is Gustav
Klimt.
Aschan
School
A group of
U.S. painters of the early 20 th century who
painted realistic scenes of everyday urban life.
The work depicted such subjects as the streets
and inhabitants of big cities with a vigorous
sense of realism.
Barbizon
School
A 19 th
century group of landscape painters in France ,
among them Corot, Daubigny, Millet, and
Rousseau.
Bauhaus
A
style characteristic of a 20 th century German
school of design, the aesthetic of which was
influenced by and derived from techniques and
materials employed especially in industrial
fabrication and manufacture. Artists include
Klee, Kandinsky, Feininger.
Caravaggisti
Artists
influenced by "Caravaggio", Michelangelo Merisi
(1571-1610), his dramatically contrasting
dark-light effects. Painters of "night pictures"
in the "dark manner", a manner known as
tenebrism.
Contemporary
Art
The art of late 20 th century
and early 21 st century, both an outgrowth and a
rejection of modern art. As the force and vigor
of abstract expressionism diminished, new
artistic movements and styles arose during the
1960s and 1970s to challenge and displace
modernism in painting, sculpture, and other
media. To be able to identify a contemporary
painting as a valuable object, it is necessary
to have fantasy, exhilaration and vision into
the future.
Cubism
A
school of painting and sculpture developed in
Paris in the early 20 th century, tending
through the geometrical reduction of natural
forms to establish the work itself as a plastic
fact independent of all imitative or
representational intention. Leading figures:
Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.
Dadaism
A
western European artistic and literary movement
(1916-1923) having as its program the discovery
of authentic reality through the abolition of
traditional cultural and aesthetic forms by a
technique of comic derisions in which
irrationality, chance and intuition were the
guiding principle. Jean Arp, Max Ernst.
Eclectic
Used
to describe a work or method of production that
draws from a variety of traditions, styles or
techniques.
Expressionism
A
movement in the fine arts during the latter part
of 19 th and early part of 20 th centuries. It
originated in Europe and emphasized the
objective expression of artist's inner
experience through the use of conventional
characters and symbols, the use of violent
distortions and exaggerations in the service of
heightened emotional expressiveness. It became
very important in Germany , therefore, the term
German expressionism. Expressionist painters:
Edvard Munch, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Kubin,
Jean Arp, Feiniger, Kandinsky, Lehmbruck,
Barlach.
Fauvism
Movement
in French expressionist painting at the
beginning of 20 th century. The term
"Fauve"(wild beast) had particular reference to
the brilliant, arbitrary, intense color and the
direct, violent brushwork of the paintings. It
had been the first explosion of the 20 th
century art and it established a precedent for
the whole series of revolutions in art that
followed. Leading figure Henri Matisse.
Figurative
Art
Art in which recognizable
figures or objects are portrayed.
Futurism
Artistic
and literary movement originating in Italy
around 1910 and marked by an attempt to depict
vividly the energetic and dynamic quality of
contemporary life influenced by the motion and
force of modern machinery. Giacomo Balla,
Umberto Boccioni.
Genre
A
category of art distinguished by a definite
style, form or content; especially a style of
painting concerned with depicting scenes and
subjects of common everyday life.
Impressionism
Impressionism
was the most important movement in art in the 19
th century. Traditional linear forms of
representation were abandoned and the nature of
color and light thoroughly explored. Originating
and developed in France during the 1870s, it is
characterized chiefly by concentration on the
general impression produced by a scene or an
object and by the use of unmixed primary colors
and small strokes to simulate actual reflected
light, the concept of "pure painting". The
Impressionists had been influenced by Japanese
art. Leading figures: Manet, Degas, Monet,
Renoir, Pissaro, Cézanne, Sickert, Mancini.
Naïve
Art
The style of naïve painting is
characterized by a careful, simplifying
approach, non-scientific perspective, bright
colors, and often, an enchantingly literal
depiction of imaginary scenes. Although not
following any particular movement or aesthetic,
naïve painters have works produced by artists
who had no formal training. Some trained
artists, however, have deliberately affected a
naïve style.
Non-Objective
Art
Artworks having no recognizable
subject matter (not recognizable as such things
as houses, trees, people, etc.) Also known as
non-representational art.
Pointillism (also
called Neo-Impressionism,
Divisionism)
A method of painting
developed in France in the 1880s in which tiny
dots of color are applied to the canvas. When
viewed from a distance, the points of color
appear to blend together to make colors and to
form shapes and outlines. Leading figure is
Georges Seurat.
Pop Art
A
form of art that depicts objects from everyday
life and employs techniques of commercial art
and popular illustration. A style derived and
characterized by larger than life replicas of
items from mass culture. This style evolved in
the late 1950s and was characterized in the
1960s by such artists as Jasper Johns, Andy
Warhol, Claus Oldenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry
Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg, George Segal, and
Robert Indiana.
Post-Impressionism
Evolved
from impressionism, it embraced new formalist
and expressionist concerns: flat, abstract
planes, clearly defined linear contours, and
intense colors. The period saw new modes of
expressing meaning through symbolic devices,
such as suggestion, allusion, and analogy.
Influenced by Oriental sources: Japanese,
Persian, Egyptian, Oceanic art. Leading figures:
Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh.
Rayonism
A
type of abstract or semi-abstract painting
characterized by the fragmentation of forms into
masses of slanting lines. It was practiced from
1912-1914 by some Russian painters.
Realism
The
accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of
nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects
imaginative idealization in favor of a close
observation of outward appearances. Leading
figure is Gustave Courbet who is generally
regarded as the father of modern painting.
Retinal
Art
Art
whose appeal is mainly or exclusively to the eye
rather than to the mind.
Rubenism
The
doctrine that color, rather than form, was the
most important element in painting. A movement
in 17 th century France which highly valued the
coloristic brilliance and painterly style of
Peter Paul Rubens, in reaction to Poussinisme,
which highly valued the prominence of drawing
and the linear style of Nicolas Poussin.
Structuralism
A
school of art or of art criticism that advocates
and employs a method of analyzing phenomena
chiefly by contrasting the elemental structures
in a system of binary opposition.
Surrealism
A
20 th century literary and artistic movement
that attempts to express the workings of the
subconscious by fantastic imagery and
incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.
Leading figures: Salvador Dali, Joan Mirò, Max
Ernst, Jean Arp…
Symbolism
As a
post-impressionist current, symbolism was an
attempt to find a more intense means of artistic
expression, a method of evoking the hidden side
of life. Art was used to suggest eternal truths
instead of representing everyday realities.
Symbolists expressed their ideas and emotions
indirectly through symbols, trying to suggest
the nuances of the inner life. Painters most
closely associated with symbolism: Odilon Redon,
Gustave Moreau, Ferdinand Hodler, Gabriel
Rossetti.
The
Nabis
The Nabis, or Prophets, a
group of very young French painters, who were
very interested in the applied and useful arts,
and in particular made theater designs and
posters. Bonnard,
Toulouse-Lautrec.
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