TAKSU KL: Adobo Country Returns, a group exhibition by 11 Filipino artists

TAKSU Kuala Lumpur is honored to present Adobo Country Returns, a group exhibition by 11 Filipino artists; Argie Bandoy, At Maculangan, Gerardo Tan, Jojo Serrano, Juni Salvador, Kiko Escora, Nolet Soliven, Norberto Roldan, Pardo De Leon, Raul Rodriguez and Ronald Achacoso. Previously exhibited in Taksu Singapore as Adobo Country and Abstraction: Lost and Found, these artists are back to represent the contemporary art scene from the Philippines.

 

Adobo, a popular Filipino dish, as well as a marinating process, which despite its history of mixed origin, is a quintessential part of Philippine culture. The Philippines, having been under two Western colonies, and its close contact with many of its Asian neighbors, has made this country an interesting study of cultural adoption. The parallelism between each work, in spite of disparities in their forms as a whole, may be a study in contrast which may lead to a sentience of a quiet murmur, or a simmering dish.

Along with the reflection of external influences that are reformulated to fit local conditions, comes the practice of manipulating the earthly medium of paint wherein the elements, pigments and essences become alchemical substances that transmogrify these objects into vessels of contemplative resonance. The artists of Abstraction: Lost and Found, strive to breathe new life into the ‘obsolete’ medium of paint but loosely incorporate elements from photography, sculpture, film, and literature as mode to navigate through the labyrinthine self-entrapment of contemporary culture.

Opening reception on Thursday, 13 June 2013, 7.30 – 10.30pm.
RSVP at kl@taksu.com by 12 June 2013

TAKSU Kuala Lumpur
17 Jalan Pawang
54000 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
T: +603 4251 4396
F: +603 4251 4331
E: kl@taksu.com
www.taksu.com

Gallery Hours:
Mon – Sat: 10am – 7pm
Closed on Sundays or by appointment only

Writings Without Borders

Group Exhibition
Writings Without Borders
curated by Hervé Mikaeloff
21 May - 20 July 2013
Opening Reception: Tuesday, 21 May, 6-9 PM

 

Hong Kong, 8 May 2013—Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong is pleased to announce that renowned international curator Hervé Mikaeloff has organized a dynamic group show featuring a selection of Eastern and Western contemporary artists exploring notions of language. The show, entitled Writings Without Borders, will highlight a wide variety of artistic styles, ranging from painting, drawing, photography, embroidery, and neon, by Tracey Emin, Teresita Fernández, He An, Shirazeh Houshiary, Idris Khan, Barbara Kruger, Eko Nugroho, Pak Sheung Chuen, Robin Rhode, Tsang Kin-wah, and Zheng Guogu.

To write could be defined as the action of transferring a word, a thought, an idea, a story, a dream from an undefined state to the fixity of a graphic sign. Writing can be the expression of a gesture (drawing, painting, dripping…), a way to keep a trace of the past (history and memory), an intimate biographical testimony, or a public announcement. It is also the place of several types of contradictions: civilization of sign and that of the image, mystery and clarity, the indecipherable and the revealed, symbolism and meaning. Writing as language is also a central question in the relationships between different cultures and civilizations, particularly Eastern and Western.

Both in the East and West, artists play with their respective alphabets, words and phrases, using writings, imprints, signs and traces. For some of them, art is simply language. Traditionally in China, there is also an idea of equivalence between art and writing. Drawing and painting belong to Chinese language and writing. During the 20th century, the heritage of calligraphy almost disappeared and finally reemerged as a strong artistic expression more than 25 years ago, whether it is used for formal exploration or for social and political criticism.

In Writings Without Borders, artists from very different countries and origins come together with their own approach to writing and the universal themes that relate to it. In many cultures such as Arabic or Chinese, calligraphy is used as a path to meditation and poetry like in Shirazeh Houshiary’s practice of painting, in which she layers calligraphic script until it effectively dissolves into abstraction. Idris Khan also refers to this tradition with his monochrome works stamped repeatedly with words resulting in almost indecipherable layers, fading like traces in our memory.

In her “Night Writing” series, Teresita Fernández references “Ecriture Nocturne,” an early type of encoded writing similar to Braille invented in the early 19th century to help soldiers to communicate in the dark. Engraving the gallery wall with the word ‘moon,’ Hong Kong artist Pak Sheung Chuen reveals the potential of sign as a visual language to reveal unexpected connections when translated from English to Chinese.

Two other artists from the same region share this conceptual approach to writing: Tsang Kin-wah and Zheng Guogu. Using decorative qualities of calligraphy, Tsang Kin-wah combines the beauty of floral ornamentation with crude words spelling out the physical, sexual, and material obsessions of our contemporary world. This concern is echoed in a painting by Zheng Guogu showing scripts of various logos and advertisements with Hong Kong’s famous Pedder Street in the background. The confrontation of words and images is represented in the work of another major artist, Barbara Kruger, who utilizes both to criticize consumer culture and our fascination for mass media.

From the public to the intimate, Indonesian artist Eko Nugroho has based his snapshot embroideries series on the photographs he takes from the streets of a foreign city or at home in his studio as a documentation of his every day life like a personal dairy. The relation between public and private is also tested by Tracey Emin and He An, both of whom use neon writings as a visual poetry to express their emotions. Another form of poetry from the street is present in the works of South African artist Robin Rhode who brings together body and sign in a choreographic gesture.

Poetic Everyman Project

Pameran hasil proyek bersama yang diinisiasi dan dikurasi oleh seniman yang terlibat di dalam;

Exploring Mythology in the Contemporary Context

Part 1 : MICRO-Cosmos/MACRO-Cosmos
Pembukaan : Sabtu, 18 Mei 2013
Pukul : 19.30 wib

Live Performance oleh Dyah Purwitasari pukul 15.00 wib setiap :
Jumat, 26 Mei (diikuti oleh diskusi)
Sabtu, 27 Mei
di SANGKRING ART PROJECT
Jl. Nitiprayan 88, Ngestiharjo Kasihan Bantul
YOGYAKARTA

Artist:

Amina McConvell (AUS)
Briony Galligan (AUS)
Dyah Purwitasari (INA)
Jumaadi (INA based in Sydney AUS)
Lashita Situmorang (INA)
Rachel Hill (UK)
Raffaella McDonald (AUS)

"...Secara singkat, konsep proyek pameran ini adalah mengumpulkan respon seniman yang terlibat terhadap tema Micro-cosmos/ Macro-cosmos, yang diambil dari filosofi Kejawen. Dalam filosofi Kejawen, konsep micro-cosmos/macro-cosmos mempunyai arti bagaimana kita sebagai manusia (dalam hal ini badan yang mewakili micro-cosmos), yang menempati sebuah fisikalitas dan mempunyai jiwa dan raga, dan hubungannya dengan alam raya (macro-cosmos). Dalam konsep Kejawen, perihal micro-cosmos dan macro-cosmos merupakan sebuah kesatuan yang nyata di alam sadar maupun bawah sadar. Karena para seniman yang terlibat mempunyai kultur dan latar belakang artistik yang berbeda-beda, penting halnya dalam pameran ini para seniman mendapatkan kebebasan dalam menginterpretasikan tema pameran ini.

Penelitian kolaboratif pameran ini melalui proses, kegiatan diskusi informal dengan topik yang bervariasi sekitar spiritualitas, mitologi, dan agama di Yogyakarta, dengan tetap berfokus pada tema pameran kami, Micro-cosmos/ Macro-cosmos. Kami memulai pendekatan ini melalui interaksi dengan pihak-pihak yang berkepentingan di dalam komunitas ini, para informan di dalamnya termasuk penasihat ndalem Keraton, penyembuh spiritual, praktisi pengobatan tradisional, penjual makanan di jalan, teologis, para teoris kebudayaan, pemilik kios-kios di jalan, dan akademisi. Kami bertanya jika mereka berkenan untuk berbagai mengenai kepercayaan spiritual atau mitologisnya kepada kelompok kami. Melalui percakapan yang terjadi, kami mulai mendapatkan rasa yang profan, sakral, dan ide-ide dengan bawaan alami yang diekspresikan kepada kami melalui para informan.

Tujuan dari riset yang kami lakukan ini adalah menyediakan sumber-sumber materi bagi para seniman dan juga untuk membumikannya dalam sebuah proyek, serta dengan komunitas masyarakat sebagai konteks dan aspek kolaboratif. Melalui pertukaran serta kebebasan berbagi ide-ide, terbentuklah sebuah pertemanan dan kemitraan intelektual yang kuat di antara kami. Sebagai sebuah kelompok, kami melihat proyek ini sebagai sebuah cara untuk menggali beberapa nuansa kultur tersembunyi yang humoris, dan kuat, yang dapat menjadi dasar sebuah pertukaran kebudayaan yang menarik. Dari proses kolaboratif itulah masing-masing seniman dapat membangun interpretasi pribadinya untuk menanggapi tema pameran melalui proses berkarya di studio "
Amina McConvell

ALIGNMENT

ALIGNMENT - A GROUP CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION
Date Opening: 6.30pm 18th MAY – 18th JUNE 2013.
Venue: Bidadari Art Gallery
Owner: I Made Sudiana
Jl. Raya Mas 47, Gianyar

Curated by: Richard Horstman
Artists:
1. I Gede Made Surya Darma (Indonesia)
2. I Putu Wirantawan (Indonesia)
3. Pras (Indonesia)
4. Niccolò Italo Maria Bernasconi (Italy)
5. I Kadek Dedy Sumantra Yasa (Indonesia)
6. Sanjiwani (Indonesia)
7. Vony Dewi (Indonesia)

Curator’s Brief.

Alignment
The human body is a ‘vehicle’ of phenomenal, yet often misunderstood dexterity and intelligence. Its capacity for restoration and renewal often defies the so-called medical experts. Through simple, noninvasive stimulation of the senses our body’s innate abilities to regenerate, and in essence create “new life”, are easily initiated.

The exhibition Alignment presents the work of seven contemporary artists via the mediums of sketching, painting, installation, performance and film.

What defines Alignment from other exhibitions is its intention to communicate beyond the “general aesthetic experience” and to provide insights and explanations as to how the human body and mind interact with art on deeper levels.

Via the visual, audio and energetic “tools” utilized by the artists their works project information that is decoded by the mind and the auric field, and that arouse intelligent responses and induce adjustments within the body’s self regulating systems.

Alignment is an invitation from the artists to audience to increase their awareness and bring greater understanding to what occurs on the conscious, subconscious and metaphysical levels, while engaging with the works of art.

REPLAY Art Exhibition

Re-Play is Solo exhibition program who supported by OFCA (Office For Contemporary Art)

at this time the exhibition artist is JUMALDY ALFI

opening on friday, may 10, 2013

Re-Play merupakan program serial pameran tunggal oleh Office For Contemporary Art (OFCA) International yang secara intensif bekerjasama dengan PartNER sebagai penyelenggara acara di Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Program ini dirancang berdasarkan pada pemikiran bahwa karya seni adalah sebuah hasil dari proses produksi intelektual; sesuatu yang hidup dan terus berkembang. Acara ini mengutamakan penampilan kembali karya seni yang telah dihadirkan kepada publik dengan tujuan untuk dapat mengamati dan membaca lagi pikiran-pikiran seniman lebih mendalam, sebagai suatu pengalaman yang konkrit. Terkait dengan kata “Re-Play”, konsep kuratorial dan penyeleksian karya berpijak pada unsur-unsur “main” dalam arti yang seluas-luasnya.

Re-Play#3 mempresentasikan satu bagian dari proses berkesenian seniman Jumaldi Alfi berjudul “Coverboy”, 2000-2003. Bagian dari proses yang dimaksud merupakan sekumpulan lukisan yang diproduksi untuk digunakan sebagai ilustrasi sampul-sampul buku oleh beberapa penerbit di Yogyakarta dengan perkiraan buku sebanyak 125 judul. Namun, pada pameran ini ditampilkan kembali 2 lukisan, 15 objek buku dalam bingkai kaca dan 45 buku yang ditata di atas meja kaca serta satu video sebagai pembacaan ulang terhadap proses tersebut. Karya-karya ini di antaranya pernah dipamerkan pada tahun 2003 dalam pameran tunggal Coverboy di Centre Culturel Francais dan pameran Membaca Ruang-Ruang di Rumah Seni Muara di Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Pameran dibuka: Jumat 10 Mei 2013, jam 16.00 wib

WHMH FEST VOL 2

One more exhibition and musical art will be held on Rossi Music Fatmawati JAKARTA, indonesia.

WHMH FEST VOL 2
AT ROSSI MUSIK FATMAWATI
FRIDAY, 10 MAY 2013

LIVE ACT (Artist) :

TERSANJUNG 13
VAARALLINEN (SNG)
WICKED SUFFER (JGJ)
GHAUST
OATH (BDG)
DURGA (Cipanas)
PROLETAR
KONTRADIKSI (BDG)
TRIGGER ATTACK (BALI)
BUSUK (DPK)
BAR BAR
SONATA
EXECUTED
DUCT TAPE SURGERY
WOUND (JGJ)
RAINCOAT
PECAH KEPALA
BORED

EXHIBITION BY:
GILANG MERDEKA, ZULFIKAR AHMAD SUNDADJAJA (BDG), MAMAT AHEE (JGJ), PARASHINA (Palembang), FIQI BARKAH AND TORO ELMAR.

TAKSU Singapore

 

TAKSU Singapore and Art Angel Company are pleased to co-organize the contemporary Korean art exhibition, New Waves, Korea in Singapore from 9th to 29th May in 2013. The works of New Waves, Korea contains the inner voice of modern people who seek for something that has been lost or missing. The exhibition features works of three contemporary Korean artists, Kim Kun Ju, Sang Taek Oh and Sung Chul Hong. They are the significant artists in Korea with innovative work process and profound concepts. Each of the artists’ works brings out the fundamental issues of the modern society through the different mediums and materials.

Venue: 43 Jalan Merah Saga, #01-72 Workloft at Chip Bee, Singapore 278115

Dates: 9 – 29 May 2013

Opening Reception: 9 May 2013, 6:30–10pm

Business Card Design

In this Article we want to share about 10 thing that must be avoid when we want to design  the business card for your professional business:

1. A business card is not a storage unit you cram all of your stuff into any which way it will fit. Leave some white space so that the essential information stands out clearly and with confidence. Too much information and you look desperate, as if you're using anything you can think of to convince everyone that you know what you're doing. If you need to include additional information, print that on the back. so avoid the Clutter design

2. Tiny Print. Make people squint, and they aren't going to bother. They might even feel old and nobody wants to feel old. Don't let your card induce bad feelings of any kind or you'll be associated with those feelings as well. You want people to look at your card and feel warm and curious and thinking about how they could really use your services.

3. Cheap Paper. Choose card stock that has some weight to it, that feels good to the touch. You want to make a significant impression. Cheap paper leaves the impression you aren't worth much yourself.

4. Font Confusion. A business card is not the place to experiment with funky fonts. Pick an easy-to-read font that represents the tone of your business. Do not mix too many font types or sizes. For example, "matisse" may look enticing, but may not be the best choice for a professional card.

5. Color Overdose. Pick two or three colors that match your other business materials, such as your logo, website, and stationery. You're trying to create a brand that is consistent and easy-to-recognize. Don't let your message or information be lost in a whirlwind of color or images. Be sure your print is dark enough to read easily and isn't overshadowed by surrounding images.

6. Shapes and Sizes. Stick with the standard 31/2 x 2-inch card. Some people insert their cards into binders that depend on standard sizing. What if your card were thrown out just because it didn't fit in a plastic sleeve? There are ways to jazz it up within the limits. Consider getting rounded corners, for example, or orienting the print vertically instead of horizontally.

7. Mixed Messages. If you own a landscaping service, flowers on your business cards could work. If you're a lawyer, not so much. No one will take you seriously. The card needs to capture the nature and tone of your business, not your favorite cartoon character or favorite animal print. That being said, if you manage a costume shop or perform at children's birthday parties, go as full-out wacky as you'd like.

8. Creative Within Limits. The possibilities are endless when it comes to how creative you can get with business cards. They can be three-dimensional or even have moveable parts. But before you order a business card that pops apart and fits together to make a paper airplane, think of the cost of each card. You don't want your cards to cost so much that you're hesitant to pass them out. Secondly, creativity is a good thing, but sometimes less is more. Instead of going overboard, maybe putting only minimal information with a striking color contrast makes a stronger statement. You want to intrigue the recipients of your card, not shock them.

9. Be Memorable.Even though simple will always trump over-the-top, you need to make a memorable impression and leave the recipient of your card wanting to know more. A friend of mine runs an online retail clothing company. His business card follows all of the rules above, but it looks like a clothing tag. As soon as I see that card, I visualize not only my friend, but his company and what his company sells. Sometimes being creative within the limits is more creative than breaking all the rules.

10. Avoid the Poor grammar, spelling, or spacing reflects poorly on yourself and your company. If you don't take the time and care to make sure your own business card is accurate and of good quality, then potential clients will assume your products or services are given the same sloppy treatment. Treat your card the way you would treat your clients.

Photoshop Online

Designers and photographers have a number of options when it comes to photo editing. Of course, Photoshop is the most popular software.
What about The Photoshop online?

Adobe offers a free, online version of Photoshop with scaled down features that include those needed for basic photo editing. You can crop and re-size, apply basic touch ups, work with color, or edit the photo by adjusting the sharpness, focus and more.
it takes no time at all to make good photos look great and great photos look amazing—and then show them off via web galleries and favorite sharing sites. Plus, you can keep your photos well-organized and safely backed up.
Photoshop online offers:
1. Photoshop Express Editor
Crop, straighten, adjust color, and touch up imperfections. You can Try a Soft Focus or Sketch filter, a Pop Color or distortion effect, some text, a frame... the list of enhancements goes on, and the Photoshop Express Editor never changes your original photo.
2. Photoshop Express Organizer
easy safekeeping, and quick sharing of all your photos and videos. The Organizer lets you keep Albums private, share them with select folks, or open them up for the world to enjoy. Invite friends to contribute to Group Albums based on events, photography themes. And post photos to your Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and Photobucket pages with a few clicks.
3. Photoshop Express Slideshows
its Easily turn shared Albums into interactive slideshows for showing off your landscape photography, highlighting special events like birthdays,Party, and everything in between.
If you Curious about the photoshop online tools, try it, its free Photoshop.com

Symbolism

Symbolism
Key Dates: 1885-1910

Symbolism began as a reaction to the literal representation of subjects preferring to create more suggestive and evocative works. It had its roots in literature with poets such as Baudelaire believing ideas and emotions could be conveyed not only through the meaning of words but also in their sound and rhythm.
The styles of the Symbolist painters varied considerably, but they shared many of the same themes particularly a fascination with the mystical and the visionary. The erotic, the perverse, death and debauchery were also regular interests for the Symbolists. The leading figures of the movement included the two French men, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin, but Symbolism was not limited to France with other practitioners including the Norwegian Edvard Munch, the Austrian Gustav Klimt and the British Aubrey Beardsley.

The movement also known as Synthetism flourished from around 1885 and continued until 1910. It was an important move away from the naturalism of the Impressionists and showed a preference for feeling over intellectualism. A number of sculptors were also involved including the Belgian Georg Minne and the Norwegian Gustav Vigeland. In Symbolism’s faith in the power of expressivity possible in a colour or a line, the movement is crucial in understanding the development of the abstract arts in the 20th century.
Representative Artists:
Gustave Moreau
Odilon Redon
Gustav Klimt

Surrealism

Surrealism
Key Dates: 1920-1930

A literary and art movement, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. Surrealism inherited its anti-rationalist sensibility from Dada, but was lighter in spirit than that movement. Like Dada, it was shaped by emerging theories on our perception of reality, the most obvious influence being Freud’s model of the subconscious.

Founded in Paris in 1924 by André Breton with his Manifesto of Surrealism, the movement’s principal aim was ‘to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality’. Its roots can be traced back to French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire and Lautreamont, the latter providing the famous line that summed up the Surrealists’ love of the incongruous; “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.”

The major artists of the movement were Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, René Magritte and Joan Miró. Surrealism’s impact on popular culture can still be felt today, most visibly in advertising.

Representative Artists:
Marcel Duchamp
Georgia O’Keeffe
Max Ernst
Sir Henry Moore
Rene Magritte
Joan Miro
Salvador Dali
Pablo Picasso
Man Ray
Dorothea Tanning
MC Escher

Suprematism

Suprematism
Key Dates: 1913-

Russian art movement founded (1913) by Casimir Malevich in Moscow, parallel to constructivism. Malevich drew Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitsky (1890-1947) to his revolutionary, nonobjective art.
In Malevich’s words, suprematism sought “to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world. It consisted of geometrical shapes flatly painted on the pure canvas surface.
Malevich’s white square on a white ground (Mus. of Modern Art, New York City) embodied the movement’s principles. Suprematism, through its dissemination by the Bauhaus, deeply influenced the development of modern European art, architecture, and industrial design.

Situationism

Situationism
Key Dates: 1957-1972

They originated in a small band of avante-garde artists and intellectuals influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Lettrism. The post-war Lettrist International, which sought to fuse poetry and music and transform the urban landscape, was a direct forerunner of the group who founded the magazine ‘Situationiste Internationale’ in 1957. At first, they were principally concerned with the “suppression of art”, that is to say, they wished like the Dadaists and the Surrealists before them to supersede the categorization of art and culture as separate activities and to transform them into part of everyday life.
At first, the movement was mainly made up of artists, of whom Asger Jorn was the most prominent. From 1962, the Situationists increasingly applied their critique not only in culture but to all aspects of capitalist society. Guy Debord emerged as the most important figure.

The Situationists rediscovered the history of the anarchist movement, particularly during the period of the First International, and drew inspiration from Spain, Kronstadt, and the Makhnovists.
They described the USSR as a capitalist bureaucracy, and advocated workers’ councils. But they were not entirely anarchist in orientation and retained elements of Marxism, especially through Henri Lefebvre’s critique of the alienation of everyday life. They believed that the revolutionary movement in advanced capitalist countries should be led by an “enlarged proletariat” which would include the majority of waged laborers.
In addition, although they claimed to want neither disciples nor a leadership, they remained an elitist vanguard group who dealt with differences by expelling the dissenting minority. They looked to a world-wide proletarian revolution to bring about the maximum pleasure.

Romanticism

Romanticism
Key Dates: 1800-1880

Romanticism was basically a reaction against Neoclassicism, it is a deeply-felt style which is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and emotionally wrought.
Although Romanticism and Neoclassicism were philosophically opposed, they were the dominant European styles for generations, and many artists were affected to a greater or lesser degree by both. Artists might work in both styles at different times or even mix the styles, creating an intellectually Romantic work using a Neoclassical visual style, for example.

Great artists closely associated with Romanticism include J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, and William Blake.

In the United States, the leading Romantic movement was the Hudson River School of dramatic landscape painting.
Obvious successors of Romanticism include the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the Symbolists. But Impressionism, and through it almost all of 20th century art, is also firmly rooted in the Romantic tradition.

Representative Artists:
George Stubbs
William Blake
John Martin
Francisco Goya
Sir Thomas Lawrence
John Constable
Eugene Delacroix
Sir Edwin landseer
Caspar David Friedrich
JMW Turner

Rococo

Rococo
Key Dates: 1700-

Throughout the 18th century in France, a new wealthy and influential middle-class was beginning to rise, even though the royalty and nobility continued to be patrons of the arts. Upon the death of Louis XIV and the abandonment of Versailles, the Paris high society became the purveyors of style. This style, primarily used in interior decoration, came to be called Rococo.
The term Rococo was derived from the French word “rocaille”, which means pebbles and refers to the stones and shells use to decorate the interiors of caves. Therefore, shell forms became the principal motif in Rococo. The society women competed for the best and most elaborate decorations for their houses. Hence the Rococo style was highly dominated by the feminine taste and influence.
Francois Boucher was the 18th century painter and engraver whose works are regarded as the perfect expression of French taste in the Rococo period. Trained by his father who was a lace designer, Boucher won fame with his sensuous and light-hearted mythological paintings and landscapes. He executed important works for both the Queen of France and Mme. de Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress, who was considered the most powerful woman in France at the time.
Boucher was Mme. de Pompadour’s favorite artist and was commissioned by her for numerous paintings and decorations. Boucher also became the principal designer for the royal porcelain factory and the director of the Gobelins tapestry factory. The Vulcan Presenting Venus with Arms for Aeneas is a template for a tapestry made by this factory.

Characterized by elegant and refined yet playful subject matters, Boucher’s style became the epitome of the court of Louis XV. His style consisted of delicate colors and gentle forms painted within a frivolous subject matter. His works typically utilized delightful and decorative designs to illustrate graceful stories with Arcadian shepherds, goddesses and cupids playing against a pink and blue sky.
These works mirrored the frolicsome, artificial and ornamented decadence of the French aristocracy of the time.
The Rococo is sometimes considered a final phase of the Baroque period.
Representative Artists:
Francois Boucher
William Hogarth
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Angelica Kauffmann
Giovanni Antonio Canaletto

Renaissance

Renaissance
Key Dates: 1300-


This movement began in Italy in the 14th century and the term, literally meaning rebirth, describes the revival of interest in the artistic achievements of the Classical world. Initially in a literary revival Renaissance was determined to move away from the religion-dominated Middle Ages and to turn its attention to the plight of the individual man in society. It was a time when individual expression and worldly experience became two of the main themes of Renaissance art.


The movement owed a lot to the increasing sophistication of society, characterised by political stability, economic growth and cosmopolitanism. Education blossomed at this time, with libraries and academies allowing more thorough research to be conducted into the culture of the antique world.


In addition, the arts benefited from the patronage of such influential groups as the Medici family of Florence, the Sforza family of Milan and Popes Julius II and Leo X. The works of Petrarch first displayed the new interest in the intellectual values of the Classical world in the early 14th century and the romance of this era as rediscovered in the Renaissance period can be seen expressed by Boccaccio.


Leonardo da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man representing the humanistic values of the period in his art, science and writing. Michelangelo and Raphael were also vital figures in this movement, producing works regarded for centuries as embodying the classical notion of perfection. Renaissance architects included Alberti, Brunelleschi and Bramante.


Many of these artists came from Florence and it remained an important centre for the Renaissance into the 16th century eventually to be overtaken by Rome and Venice. Some of the ideas of the Italian Renaissance did spread to other parts of Europe, for example to the German artist Albrecht Dürer of the ‘Northern Renaissance’. But by the 1500s Mannerism had overtaken the Renaissance and it was this style that caught on in Europe.


Representative Artists:
Leonardo da Vinci
Sandro Botticelli
Raphael
Titian
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Realism

Realism
Key Dates: 1830-1870

Realism, also known as the Realist school, was a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects. Daumier, Millet and Courbet were realists.

Representative Artists:
Gustave Courbet
Jean-Francois Millet
Honore Daumier
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
J A MacNeil Whistler
John Singer Sargeant

Pre-Raphaelites

Pre-Raphaelites
Key Dates: 1848-1920

This movement was originally founded in 1848 by Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. The name was decided upon as the group aimed to rediscover the painting styles of artists working earlier than the time of Raphael. The group, initially comprising Rossetti, his brother William, James Collinson, the sculptor Thomas Woolner as well as Hunt and Millais, specialised in detailed studies of medieval scenes strong on elaborate symbolism and noble themes.

Controversy tainted the group early on with commentators believing their name implied that they were superior artists to Raphael, but the influential critic John Ruskin supported them and ensured their success. However, after Millais’ ‘Ophelia’ (1850-1851) was exhibited to great acclaim at the Academy Exhibition the group dissolved.

Rossetti, together with William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones formed an alternative Brotherhood based in Oxford, specialising in the depiction of pale, ethereal beauties, while Millais and Hunt went their separate ways but continued working according to the original ideas of the movement.

Pre-Raphaelitism was highly successful during the Victorian era and continued into the early 20th century with artists such as Maxwell Armfield and Frank Cadogan Cowper before becoming out-moded in the 1920s.

Representative Artists:
Ford Maddox Brown
Sir John Everett Millais
William Holman Hunt
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
William Morris
Edward Burne-Jones
John William Waterhouse

Post-Modernism

Post-Modernism
Key Dates: 1960-present

The name given to a wide range of cultural phenomena, to characterise a move away from the ‘highbrow’ seriousness of modernism, preferring a more eclectic and populist approach to creativity.

The term came into common use in the 1970s. It is used both as a ‘stylistic’ term and also as a period designation.
Paintings that have been described as Postmodernist include the work of Stephen McKenna and Carlo Maria Mariani, also selected works by Peter Blake and David Hockney.
Representative Artists:
Bridget Riley (Op Art)
Joseph Beuys

Post Impressionism

Post Impressionism
Key Dates: 1880-1920

Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style’s inherent limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned the style, however, to form his own highly personal art.

Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.

The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial group, they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in isolation at Aix-en-Provence in southern France; his solitude was matched by that of Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 took up residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh, who painted in the countryside at Arles. Both Gauguin and van Gogh rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favour of a more personal, spiritual expression. After exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of naturalism.”

With the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning away from the sophisticated, urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values. Copying the pure, flat colour, heavy outline, and decorative quality of medieval stained glass and manuscript illumination, the two artists explored the expressive potential of pure colour and line, Gauguin especially using exotic and sensuous colour harmonies to create poetic images of the Tahitians among whom he would eventually live.

Arriving in Paris in 1886, the Dutch painter van Gogh quickly adapted Impressionist techniques and colour to express his acutely felt emotions. He transformed the contrasting short brushstrokes of Impressionism into curving, vibrant lines of colour, exaggerated even beyond Impressionist brilliance, that convey his emotionally charged and ecstatic responses to the natural landscape.

In general, Post-Impressionism led away from a naturalistic approach and toward the two major movements of early 20th-century art that superseded it: Cubism and Fauvism, which sought to evoke emotion through colour and line.

Representative Artists:
Paul Cézanne
Georges Seurat
Paul Gauguin
Vincent van Gogh
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Paul Signac
Auguste Rodin
Amedeo Modigliani

Pop Art

Pop Art
Key Dates: 1950-1960

This movement was marked by a fascination with popular culture reflecting the affluence in post-war society. It was most prominent in American art but soon spread to Britain. In celebrating everyday objects such as soup cans, washing powder, comic strips and soda pop bottles, the movement turned the commonplace into icons.

Pop Art is a direct descendant of Dadaism in the way it mocks the established art world by appropriating images from the street, the supermarket, the mass media, and presents it as art in itself.

Artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg took familiar objects such as flags and beer bottles as subjects for their paintings, while British artist Richard Hamilton used magazine imagery. The latter’s definition of Pop Art – “popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business” – stressed its everyday, commonplace values.

It was Andy Warhol, however, who really brought Pop Art to the public eye. His screen prints of Coke bottles, Campbell’s soup tins and film stars are part of the iconography of the 20th century. Pop Art owed much to dada in the way it mocked the established art world. By embracing commercial techniques, and creating slick, machine-produced art, the Pop artists were setting themselves apart from the painterly, inward-looking tendencies of the Abstract Expressionist movement that immediately preceded them. The leading artists in Pop were Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Roy Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg.

Representative Artists:
Richard Hamilton
Roy Lichtenstein
Robert Rauschenberg
Andy Warhol
David Hockney
Jeff Koons
Claes Oldenburg
Tom Wesselmann

Pointilism

Pointilism
Key Dates: 1890-1900

This movement developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy when seen from a distance. The equal size dots never quite merge in the viewer’s perception resulting in a shimmering effect like one experiences on a hot and sunny day. One of the leading exponents was Seurat to whom the term was first applied in regard to his painting ‘La Grand Jette’ (1886).

Seurat was part of the Neo-Impressionist movement which included Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac. The word Divisionism describes the theory they followed while the actual process was known as pointillism.The effects of this technique, if used well, were often far more striking than the conventional approach of mixing colours together.

The Neo-Impressionist movement was brief yet influential. The term Divisionism was also the name of an Italian version of Neo-Impressionism in the 1890s and early 1900s, and one can trace a line to Futurism which was founded in 1909.

Photorealism

Photorealism
Key Dates: 1960-1970

A figurative movement that emerged in the United States and Britain in the late 1960s and 1970s. The subject matter, usually everyday scenes, is portrayed in an extremely detailed, exacting style. It is also called superrealism, especially when referring to sculpture.

Op Art

Op Art
Key Dates: 1960-

Op Art or Optical Art is the term used to describe paintings or sculptures which seem to swell and vibrate through their use of optical effects. The movement’s leading figures were Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely who used patterns and colours in their paintings to achieve a disorientating effect on the viewer.

The sculptors Eric Olsen and Francisco Sobrino used layers of different coloured perspex to create a similar illusion of distortion. The artists used established ideas on perceptive psychology but needed to use maximum precision to gain the results they intended.

Op Art is a form of abstract art and is closely connected to the Kinetic and Constructivist Art movements.
It was fashionable in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s but was greeted with a certain degree of scepticism by the critics.

After ‘The Responsive Eye’ exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965 the term became a household name and the style was soon appropriated by fashion designers and high street stores.

Representative Artists:
Bridget Riley
Heinz Mack
Victor Vasarely

Neo-Expressionism

Neo-Expressionism
Key Dates: 1980-

A diverse art movement that dominated the art market in Europe and the United States during the early and mid-1980s. Neo-Expressionism comprised a varied assemblage of young artists who had returned to portraying the human body and other recognizable objects, in reaction to the remote, introverted, highly intellectualized abstract art production of the 1970s. The movement was linked to and in part generated by new and aggressive methods of salesmanship, media promotion, and marketing on the part of dealers and galleries.

Neo-Expressionist paintings themselves, though diverse in appearance, presented certain common traits. Among these were: a rejection of traditional standards of composition and design; an ambivalent and often brittle emotional tone that reflected contemporary urban life and values; a general lack of concern for pictorial idealization; the use of vivid but jarringly banal colour harmonies; and a simultaneously tense and playful presentation of objects in a primitivist manner that communicates a sense of inner disturbance, tension, alienation, and ambiguity (hence the term Neo-Expressionist to describe this approach).
Among the principal artists of the movement were the Americans Julian Schnabel and David Salle, the Italians Sandro Chia and Francesco Clemente, and the Germans Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. Neo-Expressionism was controversial both in the quality of its art products and in the highly commercialized aspects of its presentation to the art-buying public.

Representative Artists:
Julian Schnabel
David Salle
Francesco Clemente
Sandro Chia
Anselm Kiefer
Georg Baselitz

Neo-Classical

Neo-Classical
Key Dates: 1750-1880

A nineteenth century French art style and movement that originated as a reaction to the Baroque. It sought to revive the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic artists used classical forms to express their ideas about courage, sacrifice, and love of country. David and Canova are examples of neo-classicists.

Representative Artists:
Jacques-Louis David
Sir Henry Raeburn
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Thomas Gainsborough
Antonio Canova
Arnold Bocklin

Naive Art

Naive Art

Artwork, usually paintings, characterized by a simplified style, nonscientific perspective, and bold colors. The artists are generally not professionally trained. Henri Rousseau and Grandma Moses worked in this style.

Representative Artists:
Henri Rousseau
Grandma Moses

Nabis

Nabis
Key Dates: 1888-1899

A Parisian group of Post-Impressionist artists and illustrators who became very influential within the field of graphic art.

Their emphasis on design was shared by the parallel Art Nouveau movement. Both groups also had close ties to the Symbolists.

The core of Les Nabis was Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Ker Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton, and Édouard Vuillard.

Representative Artists:
Pierre Bonnard
Edouard Vuillard
Felix Vallotton
Ker-Xavier Roussel
Maurice Denis
Paul Sérusier

Modernism

Modernism
Key Dates: 1890-1940

Modernism was characterised by the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century.
Modernism refers to this period’s interest in new types of paints and other materials, in expressing feelings and ideas, in creating abstractions and fantasies, rather than representing what is real. This kind of art requires its audience to observe carefully in order to get some facts about the artist, his intentions, and his environment, before forming judgments about the work. Paul Cézanne is often called the ‘Father of Modernism’.

Representative Artists:
Paul Cezanne
Edouard Manet

Minimalism

Minimalism
Key Dates: 1962-

Minimal Art emerged as a movement in the 1950s and continued through the Sixties and Seventies. It is a term used to describe paintings and sculpture that thrive on simplicity in both content and form, and seek to remove any sign of personal expressivity. The aim of Minimalism is to allow the viewer to experience the work more intensely without the distractions of composition, theme and so on.

There are examples of the Minimalist theory being exercised as early as the 18th century when Goethe constructed an Altar of Good Fortune made simply of a stone sphere and cube. But the 20th century sees the movement come into its own. From the 1920s artists such as Malevich and Duchamp produced works in the Minimalist vein but the movement is known chiefly by its American exponents such as Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd who reacted against Abstract Expressionism in their stark canvases, sculptures and installations.

Minimal Art is related to a number of other movements such as Conceptual Art in the way the finished work exists merely to convey a theory, Pop Art in their shared fascination with the impersonal and Land Art in the construction of simple shapes. Minimal Art proved highly successful and has been enormously influential on the development of art in the 20th century.

Representative Artists:
Frank Stella
Ellsworth Kelly

Medieval & Gothic

Medieval & Gothic
Key Dates: 400AD-

Medieval – A highly religious art beginning in the 5th Century in Western Europe. It was characterised by iconographic paintings illustrating scenes from the bible.

Gothic – This style prevailed between the 12th century and the 16th century in Europe. Mainly an architectural movement, Gothic was characterised by its detailed ornamentation most noticeably the pointed archways and elaborate rib vaulting.

First developed in France, Gothic was intended as a solution to the inadequacies of Romanesque architecture. It allowed for cathedrals to be built with thinner walls and it became possible to introduce stained glass windows instead of traditional mosaic decorations. Some of the finest examples of the style include the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims and Amiens. The term was also used to describe sculpture and painting that demonstrated a greater degree of naturalism.

Massurrealism

Massurrealism
Key Dates: 1992-

Coined by the American Artist James Seehafer in 1992 the expression Massurrealism stands for a fusion of the dream like visions of surrealism, pop art and New Media Technology – as well as for an expression of the Hyper-real.

Starting as a grass roots art style it started to generate interest very soon in the New York Area first, then spreading to L.A. and beyond the American borders to Mexico, Russia and Europe.

Massusrrealism also is influenced by the postmodern time mass-media communications where examples of surreal imagery is present in form of print media, movies and music videos without the conscious notice of the observer that he is looking at a surreal image/scene.

The ideology behind Massurrealism is rather oriented on the writings and theories of Marshall Mc Luhan, Jean Baudrillard, Cecil Touchon than on Freud or Breton. To explain massurrealism in words is rather difficult, and might be done best by example, as the visual expressions are in continuous progress.

Representative Artists: James Seehafer, Salvatore Lodico, F. Michael Morris, Bayardo Carrillo, Jr, Marketta Leino, Ginnie Gardiner, Domenic Ali, Caplyn Dor, Alex Filipchenko, Peter Steinlechner, Cecil Touchon

Mannerism

Mannerism
Key Dates: 1520-1600

Artists of the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance developed their characteristic styles from the observation of nature and the formulation of a pictorial science. When Mannerism matured after 1520(The year Raphael died), all the representational problems had been solved.
A body of knowledge was there to be learned. Instead of nature as their teacher, Mannerist artists took art. While Renaissance artists sought nature to find their style, the Mannerists looked first for a style and found a manner.

In Mannerist paintings, compositions can have no focal point, space can be ambiguous, figures can be characterized by an athletic bending and twisting with distortions, exaggerations, an elastic elongation of the limbs, bizarre posturing on one hand, graceful posturing on the other hand, and a rendering of the heads as uniformly small and oval.
The composition is jammed by clashing colors, which is unlike what we’ve seen in the balanced, natural, and dramatic colors of the High Renaissance.
Mannerist artwork seeks instability and restlessness. There is also a fondness for allegories that have lascivious undertones.

Representative Artists:
Andrea del Sarto
Jacopo da Pontormo
Correggio

Indian River School

Indian River School
Key Dates: 1950-

Influenced in the late fifties and early sixties by the great Florida naturalist, A.E. “Beanie” Backus, the black artists, along with others, used canvasboard, upson board, masonite and canvas to paint on creating dramatically powerful, yet serene, “Florida scapes”.

This artwork was sold by the artists themselves while traveling up and down the highways, primarily along the eastern seaboard, during the last forty years.

Impressionism

Impressionism
Key Dates: 1867-1886

A French 19th century art movement which marked a momentous break from tradition in European painting. The Impressionists incorporated new scientific research into the physics of colour to achieve a more exact representation of colour and tone.

The sudden change in the look of these paintings was brought about by a change in methodology: applying paint in small touches of pure colour rather than broader strokes, and painting out of doors to catch a particular fleeting impression of colour and light. The result was to emphasise the artist’s perception of the subject matter as much as the subject itself.

Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. They paint the pictures with a lot of color and most of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant. The artists like to capture their images without detail but with bold colors. Some of the greatest impressionist artists were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir.

Manet influenced the development of impressionism. He painted everyday objects. Pissaro and Sisley painted the French countryside and river scenes. Degas enjoyed painting ballet dancers and horse races. Morisot painted women doing everyday things. Renoir loved to show the effect of sunlight on flowers and figures. Monet was interested in subtle changes in the atmosphere.

While the term Impressionist covers much of the art of this time, there were smaller movements within it, such as Pointillism, Art Nouveau and Fauvism.

Pointilism was developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy when seen from a distance. The equal size dots never quite merge in the viewer’s perception resulting in a shimmering effect like one experiences on a hot and sunny day. One of the leading exponents was Seurat to whom the term was first applied in regard to his painting ‘La Grand Jette’ (1886).
Seurat was part of the Neo-Impressionist movement which included Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac. The word Divisionism describes the theory they followed while the actual process was known as pointillism.The effects of this technique, if used well, were often far more striking than the conventional approach of mixing colours together.

The Neo-Impressionist movement was brief yet influential. The term Divisionism was also the name of an Italian version of Neo-Impressionism in the 1890s and early 1900s, and one can trace a line to Futurism which was founded in 1909.

Representative Artists:
Edouard Manet
Eugene Boudin
Frederic Bazille
Alfred Sisley
Edgar Degas
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Mary Cassatt
Camille Pissarro
Claude Monet
Walter Richard Sickert
Berthe Morisot

Hudson River School

Hudson River School
Key Dates: 1825-1875

The name given to a number of American landscape painters working between 1825-1875, inspired by their pride in the beauty of their homeland. The three founders, and probably the most important figures were Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty and Asher B Durand.
The patriotic spirit of the painters of The Hudson River School won them great popularity in the middle of 19th Century.

Representative Artists:
Thomas Cole
Thomas Doughty
Asher B Durand

Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance
Key Dates: 1920-1930

From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among African-Americans occurred in all fields of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as “The New Negro Movement” and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become “The New Negro,” a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke.

One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as “something like a spiritual emancipation.”
Black urban migration, combined with trends in American society as a whole toward experimentation during the 1920s, and the rise of radical black intellectuals — including Locke, Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of The Crisis magazine — all contributed to the particular styles and unprecedented success of black artists during the Harlem Renaissance period.

Group of Seven

Group of Seven
Key Dates: 1911-1931

The Group of Seven Artists began in the early 1900s when several Canadian Artists began noticing a similarity in style. Canadian Painters Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Frank Johnston and Franklin Carmichael were often believed to have socialised together through common interests and mutual employment. One particular venue, the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, served as a common meeting place for the artists.

A. Y. Jackson later joined them around 1913. About the same time, Dr. James MacCallum and another artist by the name of Lawren S. Harris came into the picture and money was raised to build the historic Studio Building for Canadian Art in Toronto. During the spring of 1917, tragedy struck the group as Tom Thomson drowned in Algonquin Park’s Canoe Lake. This tragedy shocked the Group, and questions were raised about the suspicious circumstances surrounding the drowning. The first World War had also interrupted the group’s focus on art.

In 1920, the group put on their first exhibit and formerly called themselves the Group of Seven. The artists included were J.E.H. MacDonald, Franklin Carmichael, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, Lawren S. Harris, Frederick Varley and A.Y. Jackson.

During the 1920s, the group established itself as uniquely Canadian in style. As their popularity grew, the group began travelling across Canada, a task not taken to lightly in those early days. They are historically recognized as the first group of European descent to capture the feel of the Arctic on canvas.
The Group’s final joint exhibition was in December 1931. In 1932, MacDonald died and the group disbanded. In their wake rose a new group called the Canadian Group of Artists, of which Group of Seven members included painters Harris, Casson, Lismer, Jackson, and Carmichael. The C. G. P. held their first formal exhibit in November 1933.
The Canadian Group of Painters are historically recognized as having a significant impact on the Canadian Art movement and forever changed the style and spirit of Canadian Art, as did the Group of Seven.

Graffiti Art

Graffiti Art
Key Dates: 1980-

This was a movement which achieved an enormous amount of success in New York in the 1980s. It was named after the spray-can vandalism common in most cities and most associated with the New York subway system.

The two most successful figures of this movement were Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. The New York art scene embraced Graffiti Art, with several galleries specialising in the genre and a Museum of American Graffiti opening in 1989.

The genre was big business with artists in the field selling their work for huge amounts. The two most prominent figures died young, however, and the style soon went out of fashion.

Gothic

Gothic
Key Dates: 1200-1600
This style prevailed between the 12th century and the 16th century in Europe. Mainly an architectural movement, Gothic was characterised by its detailed ornamentation most noticeably the pointed archways and elaborate rib vaulting.

First developed in France, Gothic was intended as a solution to the inadequacies of Romanesque architecture. It allowed for cathedrals to be built with thinner walls and it became possible to introduce stained glass windows instead of traditional mosaic decorations. Some of the finest examples of the style include the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims and Amiens.
The term was also used to describe sculpture and painting that demonstrated a greater degree of naturalism.

Futurism

Futurism
Key Dates: 1909-1944
An Italian avant-garde art movement that took speed, technology and modernity as its inspiration, Futurism portrayed the dynamic character of 20th century life, glorified war and the machine age, and favoured the growth of Fascism.
The movement was at its strongest from 1909, when Filippo Marinetti’s first manifesto of Futurism appeared, until the end of World War One. Futurism was unique in that it was a self-invented art movement.

The idea of Futurism came first, followed by a fanfare of publicity; it was only afterwards that artists could find a means to express it. Marinetti’s manifesto, printed on the front page of Le Figaro, was bombastic and inflammatory in tone – “set fire to the library shelves… flood the museums” – suggesting that he was more interested in shocking the public than exploring Futurism’s themes.

Painters in the movement did have a serious intent beyond Marinetti’s bombast, however. Their aim was to portray sensations as a “synthesis of what one remembers and of what one sees”, and to capture what they called the ‘force lines’ of objects.
The futurists’ representation of forms in motion influenced many painters, including Marcel Duchamp and Robert Delaunay, and such movements as Cubism and Russian Constructivism.

Representative Artists:
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Giacomo Balla
Umberto Boccioni
Carlo Carrà
Gino Severini

Folk Art

Folk Art
Works of a culturally homogeneous people without formal training, generally according to regional traditions and involving crafts.

Fluxus

Fluxus
Key Dates: 1960-1965
The Fluxus movement emerged in New York in the 60's, moving to Europe, and eventually to Japan. The movement encompassed a new aesthetic that had already appeared on three continents. That aesthetic encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion. Fluxus presaged avant-garde developments over the last 40 years.
Fluxus objects and performances are characterized by minimalist but often expansive gestures based in scientific, philosophical, sociological, or other extra-artistic ideas and leavened with burlesque.

Yoko Ono is the best-known individual associated with Fluxus, but many artists have associated themselves with Fluxus since its emergence. In the ’60s, when the Fluxus movement was most active, artists all over the globe worked in concert with a spontaneously generated but carefully maintained Fluxus network.
Since then, Fluxus has endured not so much as a movement but as a sensibility–a way of fusing certain radical social attitudes with ever–evolving aesthetic practices. Initially received as little more than an international network of pranksters, the admittedly playful artists of Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical visionaries who have sought to change political and social, as well as aesthetic, perception.
Representative Artists:
Joseph Beuys
Robert Filliou
Dick Higgins
Yoko Ono

Flemish School

Flemish School
Key Dates: 1500-1600

Characterised by idealism and experimentation with perspective, Flemish Art thrived in the 15th century with artists such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and Dirk Bouts. They specialised in portrait painting with religious themes and complicated iconography.
In the 16th century travel to Italy became easier resulting in many of the Flemish artists beginning to display techniques learnt from the Renaissance artists and architects. Key figures at this time included Patenier, Elsheimer and Massys.

Fauvism

Fauvism
Key Dates: 1905-1908

The first of the major avant-garde movements in European 20th century art, Fauvism was characterised by paintings that used intensely vivid, non-naturalistic and exuberant colours.

The style was essentially expressionist, and generally featured landscapes in which forms were distorted. The Fauves first exhibited together in 1905 in Paris. They found their name when a critic pointed to a renaissance-like sculpture in the middle of the same gallery as the exhibition and exclaimed derisively ‘Donatello au milieu des fauves!’ (‘Donatello among the wild beasts!’). The name caught on, and was gleefully accepted by the artists themselves.

The movement was subjected to more mockery and abuse as it developed, but began to gain respect when major art buyers, such as Gertrude Stein, took an interest. The leading artists involved were Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck, Braque and Dufy. Although short-lived (1905-8), Fauvism was extremely influential in the evolution of 20th century art.

Representative Artists:
Andre Derain
Henri Matisse
Raoul Dufy
Maurice de Vlaminck

Expressionism

Expressionism
Key Dates: 1905-1925

A term used to denote the use of distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect, which first surfaced in the art literature of the early twentieth century. When applied in a stylistic sense, with reference in particular to the use of intense colour, agitated brushstrokes, and disjointed space. Rather than a single style, it was a climate that affected not only the fine arts but also dance, cinema, literature and the theatre.

Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist attempts to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him. He accomplishes his aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements.

Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to reproduce the impression suggested by the surrounding world, but to strongly impose the artist’s own sensibility to the world’s representation. The expressionist artist substitutes to the visual object reality his own image of this object, which he feels as an accurate representation of its real meaning. The search of harmony and forms is not as important as trying to achieve the highest expression intensity, both from the aesthetic point of view and according to idea and human critics.

Expressionism assessed itself mostly in Germany, in 1910. As an international movement, expressionism has also been thought of as inheriting from certain medieval artforms and, more directly, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and the fauvism movement.

The most well known German expressionists are Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lionel Feininger, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein; the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, the Czech Alfred Kubin and the Norvegian Edvard Munch are also related to this movement. During his stay in Germany, the Russian Kandinsky was also an expressionism addict.

Representative Artists:
Georges Rouault
Oskar Kokoschka
Egon Schiele
Franz Marc
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Edvard Munch
Marc Chagall

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter
Key Dates: 1911-

Formed in response to the increasing conservatism of the Neue Künstlervereinigung (NKV), the Blaue Reiter’s aim was simply to ensure exhibition space for artist’s dedicated to unrestricted freedom of expression. The name derived from a drawing by Wassily Kandinsky that appeared on the cover of the Almanac featuring a blue horseman; blue happened also to be Franz Marc’s favourite colour and, along with Kandinsky, the horse was a particularly favoured subject.

Established in December 1911 by Kandinsky, Marc and Gabriele Münter their first show was entitled ‘First Exhibition by the Editorial Board of the Blue Rider’ and was launched to coincide with the last show by the NKV in the same gallery in Munich. It featured some 43 artists including Albert Bloch, Robert Delaunay, Elizabeth Epstein, August Macke and Henri Rousseau. The second exhibition opened in 1912 again in Munich but this time was on a grander scale, showing 315 works by 31 artists, among whom were Picasso, Braque, Klee and Goncharova.

Although only two exhibitions took place under the Blaue Reiter name, Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and Klee went on to exhibit together at the influential ‘First German Salon d’Automne’ in Berlin at the Sturm Gallery in 1913. Although short-lived, the Blaue Reiter represented the pinnacle of German Expressionist painting. It also served to promote individual expression and to break free from any artistic restraints. These words from Nietzsche sum up the group’s modus operandi, “Who wishes to be creative must first blast and destroy accepted values.”

Representative Artists:
Franz Marc
Wassily Kandinsky

De Stijl

De Stijl
Key Dates: 1917-1931

An art movement advocating pure abstraction and simplicity– form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, and colour to the primary colours, along with black and white.

Piet Mondrian (Netherlandish, 1872-1944) was the group’s leading figure. He published a manifesto titled Neo-Plasticism in 1920. Another member, painter Theo van Doesberg (Netherlandish, 1883-1931) had started a journal named De Stijl in 1917, which continued publication until 1928, spreading the theories of the group, which also included the painter George Vantongerloo (Belgian,1886-1965), along with the architects J.J.P. Oud (1890-1963) and Gerrit Rietveld (Netherlandish, 1888-1965). Their work exerted tremendous influence on the Bauhaus and the International Style.

Representative Artists:
Piet Mondrian

Dada

Dada
Key Dates: 1916-1920

An international movement among European artists and writers between 1915 and 1922, characterised by a spirit of anarchic revolt. Dada revelled in absurdity, and emphasised the role of the unpredictable in artistic creation.
It began in Zürich with the French poet Tristan Tzara thrusting a penknife into the pages of a dictionary to randomly find a name for the movement. This act in itself displays the importance of chance in Dada art. Irreverence was another key feature: in one of Dada’s most notorious exhibitions, organised by Max Ernst, axes were provided for visitors to smash the works on show.

While perhaps seeming flippant on the surface, the Dada artists were actually fuelled by disillusionment and moral outrage at the unprecedented carnage of World War One, and the ultimate aim of the movement was to shock people out of complacency.

Among the leading Dadaists were Marcel Duchamp (whose Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee is a Dada classic), George Grosz, Otto Dix, Hans Richter and Jean Arp. The movement had a strong influence on Pop Art, which was sometimes called neo-Dada.

Representative Artists:
Hans Arp
Johannes Baader
Hugo Ball
Andre Breton
Marcel Duchamp
Paul Eluard
Max Ernst
George Grosz
Raoul Hausmann
John Heartfield
Hans Richter
Kurt Schwitters

Cubism

Cubism
Key Dates: 1908-1914

The Cubist art movement began in Paris around 1907. Led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the Cubists broke from centuries of tradition in their painting by rejecting the single viewpoint. Instead they used an analytical system in which three-dimensional subjects were fragmented and redefined from several different points of view simultaneously.

The movement was conceived as ‘a new way of representing the world’, and assimilated outside influences, such as African art, as well as new theories on the nature of reality, such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Cubism is often divided into two phases – the Analytic phase (1907-12), and the Synthetic phase (1913 through the 1920s). The initial phase attempted to show objects as the mind, not the eye, perceives them.

The Synthetic phase featured works that were composed of fewer and simpler forms, in brighter colours. Other major exponents of Cubism included Robert Delaunay, Francis Picabia, Jean Metzinger, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger.

Representative Artists:
Georges Braque
Pablo Picasso
Fernand Leger
Piet Mondrian
Sir Jacob Epstein
Juan Gris

Constructivism

Constructivism
Key Dates: 1915-1940

Constructivism was an invention of the Russian avant-garde that found adherents across the continent. Germany was the site of the most Constructivist activity outside of the Soviet Union (especially as home to Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus, a progressive art and design school sympathetic to the movement) but Constructivist ideas were also carried to other art centers, like Paris, London, and eventually the United States.

The international character of the movement was proven by the various origins of its artists. Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, and El Lissitzky brought Constructivism from the Soviet Union to the West. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy came to Germany from Hungary, Theo van Doesburg from the Netherlands. Ben Nicholson was the most prominent English Constructivist. Josef Albers and Hans Richter encountered the movement in their native Germany but were also instrumental in its international dissemination.

Constructivist art is marked by a commitment to total abstraction and a wholehearted acceptance of modernity. Often very geometric, it is usually experimental, rarely emotional. Objective forms which were thought to have universal meaning were preferred over the subjective or the individual. The art is often very reductive as well, paring the artwork down to its basic elements. New media were often used. Again, the context is crucial: the Constructivists sought an art of order, which would reject the past (the old order which had culminated in World War I) and lead to a world of more understanding, unity, and peace. This utopian undercurrent is often missing from more recent abstract art that might be otherwise tied to Constructivism.

Representative Artists:
Vladimir Tatlin
Kasimir Malevich
Alexandra Exter
Wassily Kandinsky
Alexander Rodchenko
Robert Adams
El Lissitzky
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Conceptual Art

Conceptual Art
Key Dates: 1960-1970

A movement of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized the artistic idea over the art object. It attempted to free art from the confines of the gallery and the pedestal.

Colour Field

Colour Field
Key Dates: 1950-

A technique in abstract painting developed in the 1950s. It focuses on the lyrical effects of large areas of color, often poured or stained onto the canvas. Newman, Rothko, and Frankenthaler painted in this manner.

Bloomsbury Group

Bloomsbury Group
Key Dates: 1904-

The Bloomsbury group was basically a group of like minded friends with a ‘common attitude to life’, many of whom had first met at Trinity College, Cambridge at the turn of the century.

From 1904 onwards they met regularly at the Gordon Square home of Thoby Stephen in Bloomsbury, London. Thoby and his sisters, Vanessa and Virginia, (later to become Bell and Woolf), and brother Adrian hosted ‘at homes’ when they and their friends indulged in free conversations about art, literature and philosophy.

‘Bloomsbury’ has become synonymous with both literary and artistic styles, as well as with economic theory and psychology. The group included Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Desmond McCarthy, Leonard Woolf and Saxon Sydney Turner. Bloomsbury writers included some of the great names of the 20th century; E.M.Forster, the critic and biographer Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf.

The Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant were greatly influenced by the Post Impressionists and their painting celebrates the sensuous beauty of everyday domestic surroundings.

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College
Key Dates: 1933-1950

In the middle of the 20th Century a small town in North Carolina became a hub of American cultural production. The town was Black Mountain and the reason was Black Mountain College. Founded in 1933, the school was a reaction to the more traditional schools of the time. At its core was the assumption that a strong liberal and fine arts education must happen simultaneously inside and outside the classroom. Combining communal living with an informal class structure, Black Mountain created an environment conducive to the interdisciplinary work that was to revolutionize the arts and sciences of its time.

Among Black Mountain’s first professors were the artists Josef and Anni Albers, who had fled Nazi Germany after the closing of the Bauhaus. It was their progressive work in painting and textiles that first attracted students from around the country. Once there, however, students and faculty alike realized that Black Mountain College was one of the few schools sincerely dedicated to educational and artistic experimentation.

By the forties, Black Mountain’s faculty included some of the greatest artists and thinkers of its time: Walter Gropius, Jacob Lawrence, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Alfred Kazin, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Goodman. Students found themselves at the locus of such wide ranging innovations as Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome, Charles Olson’s Projective Verse, and some of the first performance art in the U.S.

By the late 40s, word of what was happening in North Carolina had started to spread throughout the country. With a Board of Directors that included William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein and impressive programs in poetry and photography, Black Mountain had become the ideal of American experimental education. Its concentration on cross-genre arts education would influence the programs of many major American institutions.

In 1953, as many of the students and faculty left for San Francisco and New York, those still at Black Mountain saw the shift in interest and knew the school had run its course. Black Mountain had existed on its own terms, and on its own terms had succeeded in expanding the possibilities of American education. Realizing that they had essentially achieved their goals, they closed their doors forever. Black Mountain’s legacy continued however, with former students such as painter Robert Rauschenberg, publisher Jonathan Williams, and poet John Wieners bringing the revolutionary spirit of their alma mater to the forefront of a number of other cultural movements and institutions.

Bauhaus

Bauhaus
Key Dates: 1919-1930

A school of art, design and architecture founded in Germany in 1919. Bauhaus style is characterized by its severely economic, geometric design and by its respect for materials.

The Bauhaus school was created when Walter Gropius was appointed head of two art schools in Weimar and united them in one. He coined the term Bauhaus as an inversion of ‘Hausbau’ – house construction.

Teaching at the school concentrated on functional craftsmanship and students were encouraged to design with mass-produced goods in mind. Enormously controversial and unpopular with right wingers in Weimar, the school moved in 1925 to Dessau.

The Bauhaus moved again to Berlin in 1932 and was closed by the Nazis in 1933. The school had some illustrious names among it’s teachers, including Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer. Its influence in design of architecture, furniture, typography and weaving has lasted to this day – the look of the modern environment is almost unthinkable without it.

Representative Artists:
Walter Gropius
Lyonel Feininger
Johannes Itten
Franz Marc
Georg Muche
Paul Klee
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Oskar Schlemmer
Wassily Kandinsky

Baroque

Baroque
Key Dates: 1600-

Baroque Art emerged in Europe around 1600, as an reaction against the intricate and formulaic Mannerist style which dominated the Late Renaissance. Baroque Art is less complex, more realistic and more emotionally affecting than Mannerism.

This movement was encouraged by the Catholic Church, the most important patron of the arts at that time, as a return to tradition and spirituality.

One of the great periods of art history, Baroque Art was developed by Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, and Gianlorenzo Bernini, among others. This was also the age of Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Vermeer.

In the 18th century, Baroque Art was replaced by the more elegant and elaborate Rococo style.

Representative Artists:
Caravaggio
Annibale Carracci
Gianlorenzo Bernini
Rubens
Rembrandt
Nicolas Poussin
Velázquez
Vermeer

Ashcan School

Ashcan School
Key Dates: 1891-1918

A group of urban realist painters in America creating work around the early part of 20th century. The group, founded by the artist and teacher Robert Henri, began its activities in Philadelphia around 1891. Henri attracted a gathering of newspaper illustrators–George Luks, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Everett Shinn–and led them in a new artistic movement.

The Ash Can School was more revolutionary in its subject matter rather than its style. The Ash Can school artists sought to paint “real life” and urban reality. These artists believed what was real and true in life was what was beautiful and what constituted “art.” They painted gritty urban scenes and the poor and disenfranchised in America.

Ash Can School paintings have a loose and spontaneous style, very different from the polished techniques taught in the American art academies of the period. A slap-dash, rapid handling of the paint left individual brushstrokes and the paint was applied thickly. Ash Can painters used a dark, subdued palette–a result of Robert Henri’s trip to Europe, where he became captivated with Goya, Velazquez, Hals and Manet.

The “Eight” included the core Ash Can group + three more artists under Henri’s thrall: Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson and Maurice Prendergast. In 1908, as a protest against prevailing restrictive academic exhibition procedures the “Eight” organized a history-making exhibition that became a symbol of rebellion in American and modern art. The show was revolutionary in that it was the first exhibit that was self-organized and self-selected by a group of related artists, without a jury and prizes. This type of non-juried exhibition became the model for one of the most famous exhibits in the history of Modern Art: The Armory Show of 1914.

Representative Artists:
Robert Henri
William J. Glackens
George Luks
Everett Shinn
John Sloan

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau
Key Dates: 1800-

This describes a decorative style popular from the last decade of the 19th century to the beginning of the First World War. It was characterised by an elaborate ornamental style based on asymmetrical lines, frequently depicting flowers, leaves or tendrils, or in the flowing hair of a female. It can be seen most effectively in the decorative arts, for example interior design, glasswork and jewellery. However, it was also seen in posters and illustration as well as certain paintings and sculptures of the period.

The movement took its name from La Maison de l’Art Nouveau in Paris, a shop keen to promote modern ideas in art. It was influenced by the Symbolists most obviously in their shared preference for exotic detail, as well as by Celtic and Japanese art. Art Nouveau flourished in Britain with its progressive Arts and Crafts movement, but was highly successful all around the world.

The leading exponents included the illustrators Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Crane in England; the architects Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta in Belgium; the jewellery designer René Lalique in France; the painter Gustav Klimt in Austria; the architect Antonio Gaudí in Spain; and the glassware designer Louis C. Tiffany and the architect Louis Sullivan in the United States. Its most common themes were symbolic and frequently erotic and the movement, despite not lasting beyond 1914 was important in terms of the development of abstract art.

Representative Artists:
Gustav Klimt
Alphonse Mucha
Aubrey Beardsley
Antonio Gaudí
Hector Guimard
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Art Deco

Art Deco
Key Dates: 1920-1930

An art movement involving a mix of modern decorative art styles, largely of the 1920s and 1930s, whose main characteristics were derived from various avant-garde painting styles of the early twentieth century.

Art deco works exhibit aspects of Cubism, Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism- with abstraction, distortion, and simplification, particularly geometric shapes and highly intense colors- celebrating the rise of commerce, technology, and speed.

The growing impact of the machine can be seen in repeating and overlapping images from 1925; and in the 1930s, in streamlined forms derived from the principles of aerodynamics.

The name came from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes, held in Paris, which celebrated living in the modern world.

It was popularly considered to be an elegant style of cool sophistication in architecture and applied arts which range from luxurious objects made from exotic material to mass produced, streamlined items available to a growing middle class.

Art & Crafts Movement

Art & Crafts Movement
Key Dates: –1850

The Victorian style of heavily ornamented interiors displaying many pieces of furniture, collections of small ornamental objects, and surfaces covered with fringed cloths prevailed in middle-class homes in England and America during the latter half of the 19th century.

In both countries, techniques of mass production promoted the use of reproductions in many different styles. William Morris, the British poet, artist and architect rejected this opulence in favor of simplicity, good craftsmanship, and good design. The Arts & Crafts Movement was born.

To the proponents of Arts & Crafts, the Industrial Revolution separated humans from their own creativity and individualism; the worker was a cog in the wheel of progress, living in an environment of shoddy machine-made goods, based more on ostentation than function.

These proponents sought to reestablish the ties between beautiful work and the worker, returning to an honesty in design not to be found in mass-produced items. Architecture, furniture, and the decorative arts became the focus of the movement.

Representative Artists:
Walter Crane
John Ruskin
William Morris
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gustav Stickley
Elbert Hubbard
Frank Lloyd Wright
Dirk Van Erp
Charles & Henry Greene

Ancient & Classical Art

Ancient & Classical Art
Key Dates: 15000BC-450AD

Ancient – There are few remaining examples with early art often favouring drawing over colour. Work has been found recently in tombs, Egyptian frescoes, pottery and metalwork.

Classical – Relating to or from ancient Roman or Greek architecture and art. Mainly concerned with geometry and symmetry rather than individual expression.

Byzantine – A religious art characterised by large domes, rounded arches and mosaics from the eastern Roman Empire in the 4th Century.

Action Art

Action Art
This term, first coined by Harold Rosenberg, refers to the dribbling, splashing or otherwise unconventional techniques of applying paint to a canvas. Connected to the Abstract Expressionist movement, but more precise in its meaning, Action Painting believes in the expressive power held in the actual act of painting as much as in the finished product. Rosenberg defined the notion of the canvas as seen by the artists in this movement as being ‘not a picture but an event’.

Jackson Pollock was the leading figure of the movement, employing the ‘drip’ technique to create his vast paint splattered canvases. There is some debate as to how much he left to chance and how much the finished product reflected his original intentions, but the power of his works lies in their energy and sheer drama.

Other artists produced Action Paintings often employing quite unconventional techniques. The British painter William Green, for example, rode a bicycle over his canvas, while one of the Gutai Group in Japan painted with his feet as he hung from a rope.

Critics were divided over the worth and purpose of this movement as for every Pollock there were numerous examples of over-indulgence and derisive imitations. In retrospect, however, it stands as an important aspect of Abstract Expressionism and it can be seen as a precursor to many later techniques such as Spin Art.

Representative Artists:
Jackson Pollock
William Green

Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism
Key Dates: 1940-1960

Emerging in the 1940s in New York City and flourishing in the Fifties, Abstract Expressionism is regarded by many as the golden age of American art. The movement is marked by its use of brushstrokes and texture, the embracing of chance and the frequently massive canvases, all employed to convey powerful emotions through the glorification of the act of painting itself.

Some of the key figures of the movement were Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Although their works vary greatly in style, for example the sprawling pieces of Pollock at one end of the spectrum and the brooding works of Rothko at the other, yet they all share the same outlook which is one of freedom of individual expression.

The term was originally used to describe the work of Kandinsky but was adopted by writers in the Fifties as a way of defining the American movement, although the practitioners, disliking being pigeonholed, preferred the term New York School.

The movement was enormously successful both critically and commercially. The result was such that New York came to replace Paris as the centre for contemporary art and the repercussions of this extraordinarily influential movement can still be felt thirty years after its heyday.

Representative Artists:
Jackson Pollock
Willem de Kooning
Franz Kline
Robert Motherwell
Arshile Gorky
Josef Hoffmann
Mark Rothko
Clyfford Still
William Baziotes
Adolph Gottlieb
Barnett Newman

Classicism

Classicism
Key Dates: Late 1800-1900

This is a movement that can be defined by its attention to traditional forms concentrating on elegance and symmetry. It takes the art of the Greeks and Romans as its idea of perfection.

Developing in Rome in the late 15th century, the classical style was widespread particularly among the Renaissance artists. Their aim was to capture the precision of the antique age which for them represented the possibility of attaining absolute beauty in their art. Using examples such as the ‘Belvedere Torso’ and the ‘Medici Venus’, the artists rejected emotionalism in favour of attention to form and detail.

The style’s main exponents included Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio and Mantegna. The classical style was revived in the late 18th and early 19th century in Neoclassicism a movement that arose in reaction to the flamboyant Rococo style and which included artists such as Anton Raffael Mengs and Johan Joachim Winckelman.

Representative Artists:
Michelangelo
Raphael
Correggio
Mantegna
Anton Raffael Mengs
Johan Joachim Winckelman