Dante Gabriel Rossetti

British painter and poet, son of an Italian Dante scholar who was professor of English in London University and of his Italian, highly literate wife, and brother of the poel Christina Rossetti. At the age of 13 he began to study art, first at Sass’s art school in London, then in the Royal Academy

Decorum

An aesthetic concept first developed in Antiquity and elaborated into a formal code during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The constituent parts of a work of art should be mutually congruent and the style and execution appropriate to the subject. Breaches of such rules constituted social neglect. The works of Italian artist RAPHAEL (1483-1520)

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De stijl

Name of a movement and periodical founded by Dutch artist THEO van DOESBURG (1883-1931) in Holland; its other leading protagonist was fellow Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). In the first edition, van Doesburg outlined the new aesthetic, or ‘neo-Plasticism’, as a rejection of expression and individuality in order to create work which is universal, abstract and

Die brucke

A name (German for ‘the Bridge’) adopted by a group of artists in Dresden with links to the Munich group blaue reiter. Members included ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER (1880-1938), ERICH HECKEL (1883-1970), KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF (1884-1976) and F BLEYL, joined in 1906 by MAX PECHSTEIN (1881-1951) and EMIL NOLDE (1867-1956). Their art was analagous to that of

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Divisionism

A name first used by French artist PAUL SIGNAC (1863-1935) for a method of painting with pure color which later developed into scientific pointillism. Signac proposed that to achieve the brightest and purest color, all those of the spectrum should be used, applied in small daubs or dots of unmixed pigment which vary according to

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Earth works

Related to environment art and land art, this concept was conceived in the exhibition ‘Earth Art’ at Cornell University (1968). Rejecting the over-sophistication of minimalism, as well as technological culture, art is created using the land as the environment and conveyed to the gallery/museum space through photographic documentation. Construction Earthworks (archaeology), human-made constructions that modify the land contour

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Ecological art

The critic Herb Aach was probably the first to use this term in 1968. Its origins lying in the work of French artists MARCEL DUCHAMP (1887-1968) and YVES KLEIN (1928-1962), ecological art aims to harness the forces of nature (its physical, biological and chemical processes) with the intention of revealing these by the construction

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Eduardo Paolozzi

British sculptor and print-maker, born in Edinburgh of Italian parents. He attended evening classes in Edinburgh in order to become a commercial artist; in 1945-7 be studied sculpture at the Slade School of Art (then in Oxford), and in 1947 had his first one-man show. He was in Paris between 1947 and 1949, absorbing

Electronic art

Related to kinetic art, this is a technique whereby the artist develops abstract patterns on screens using cathode rays or oscilloscopes. The American artist BEN F LAPOSKY has worked in this area since the 1950s, and the method has also been exploited by the Korean artist NAM JUNE PAIK in his use of several television

El Lissitzky

Russian painter and designer, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, trained as architect in Darmstadt and Moscow in 1909-14. His first art work was illustrating Jewish Passover stories in an idiom close To Chagall’s. In 1918, he was appointed to the art panel of the new Commissariat of Enlightenment. In 1919, Chagall invited him to teach

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Environment art

The origins of this movement are attributed to American artist ALLAN KAPROW (1927- ) who also championed the happening. Its roots lie in the Merzbau (1925), assemblages and kinetic lightshows of German poet and painter KURT SCHWITTERS (1887-1948). The environment is the three-dimensional context in which content, sensory sensations, kinetic stimuli and imagination are synthesized

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Equilibrium

The balance of a composition’s components. This is achieved through the careful distribution of elements, the varied lines of the design and the balanced use of color. List of types of equilibrium, the condition of a system in which all competing influences are balanced, in a wide variety of contexts. Equilibrium may also refer to:

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Event-structure

Theory proposed by the British artist JOHN LATHAM which stresses the importance of process over product: structures in events (through time) are more valid than structure in art objects (in space). In 1967 Latham’s ideas were adopted by THEO BOTSCHIVER, JEFFREY SHAW and SEAN WELLESLEY-MILLER who formed the Event-structure Research Group (ERG) in Amsterdam.

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Expressionism

Name applied to early 20th-century art (mainly northern European) where the artist’s state of mind is paramount when depicting the real world, which is thus often depicted in distorted forms. More a tendency than a style, it was based on the increasingly acceptable belief by the 1900s that expression is of primary importance and

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Fauvism

From the French word fauves, meaning ‘wild beasts’, this name refers to a small group of painters who in Paris exhibited works notable for the bold and expressive use of pure color. In this they were influenced by the arbitrary application of color for emotional effect by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). The most prominent

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Feminist aesthetics

Belief that oppressive social conditions have blurred the idea of ‘women’s art’ throughout the history of European culture. Recent feminist art aims to put forward a specifically female consciousness. Favored media are non-traditional, such as ready mades, collages and performances. Feminist aesthetics first emerged in the 1970s[1] and refers not to a particular aesthetic or style but to

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Formalism

A concept associated with modernism, especially by the British critics CLIVE BELL (1881-1964) and ROGER FRY (1886-1934), and the American CLEMENT GREENBERG. In response to a developing interest in non-European art in the first decades of the 20th century, Fry and Bell attempted to formulate a semi-scientific system in which visual analysis of the formal

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Francis Picabia

French painter, born in Paris (his father was Cuban), and trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and under Pissarro. He worked successfully as an impressionist but was then involved in cubism, associating particularly with Duchamp and becoming a founding member of Section d ‘Or in 1911. By 1909, he was painting abstract color compositions, and in 1912, he was

Freudian aesthetics

Psychoanalytical methods and theories of the unconscious formulated by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) were fundamental to the development of aesthetic theory in the early 20th century. Freud’s principle contribution was to highlight the importance of the unconscious in the production and appreciation of art; to relate daydreams and dreams to art and creativity; and to

Fundamental art

E de WILDE coined this phrase to describe abstract paintings by a group of American and European artists. Characterized by some critics as post-conceptual art, its concentration on procedure and the physical nature of materials brings it close to minimalism; emphasizing the means rather than the result. Anyone that takes their art education seriously will