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Tate - Glossary - New British Sculpture
Category: Arts > Sculptures
Date & country: 18/12/2007, UK
Words: 270

New Spirit Painting
This term is virtually synonymous with Neo-Expressionism and its sub groups of Neue Wilden and Transavanguardia. A New Spirit in Painting was the title of a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1981. It attempted to sum up the state of painting at that point. It was an early response to the new currents that appeared in both painting â€¦

New Sculpture
Name given to work of group of sculptors identified by critic Edmund Gosse in 1876 article in Art Journal titled 'The New Sculpture'. Distinguishing qualities were a new dynamism and energy as well as physical realism, mythological or exotic subject matter and use of symbolism, as opposed to prevailing style of frozen Neo-Classicism. Can be conside â€¦

New Generation Sculpture
New Generation was the title used for a series of exhibitions of painting and sculpture by young British artists held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in the early 1960s. The 1965 show was devoted to sculpture and brought to wide public attention the work of Phillip King, together with David Annesley, Michael Bolus, Tim Scott, William Tucker an â€¦

New English Art Club
Founded in London in 1886 as an exhibiting society by artists influenced by Impressionism and whose work was rejected by the conservative Royal Academy. Key early members were Whistler (although he soon resigned) Sickert and Steer. Others in the first show included Clausen, Stanhope Forbes and Sargent. Initially avant-garde the NEAC quickly became â€¦

New British Sculpture
Around 1980 there can be seen to have been a general reaction in western art to the predominance of Minimal and Conceptual art in the previous decade. In painting this reaction took the form of Neo-Expressionism and related phenomena. In sculpture there was a notable return to the use of a wide range of techniques of fabrication and even the use of â€¦

Neue Wilden
Term used in Germany for Neo-Expressionism. The Neue Wilden (ie new Fauves) included two artists who became major international figures, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer.

Neue Sachlichkeit
Usually translated as New Objectivity. German modern realist movement of the 1920s, taking its name from the exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit held in Mannheim in 1923. Part of the phenomenon of the return to order following the First World War. Described by the organiser of the exhibition, GF Hartlaub, as 'new realism bearing a socialist flavour'. The â€¦

Neoclassicism
Term applied to particularly pure form of classicism that emerged from about 1750 following discovery of Roman ruins of Pompeii and publication 1764 of highly influential history of ancient art by German scholar Winckelmann. In Britain found in paintings by Reynolds, West and Barry and in sculpture and especially illustrations to Homer's Odyssey, o â€¦

Neo-Romanticism
Term applied to the imaginative and often quite abstract landscape based painting of Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland and others in the late 1930s and 1940s. Their work often included figures, was generally sombre, reflecting the Second World War and its approach and aftermath, but rich, poetic and capable of a visionary intensity. It was partly inspir â€¦

Neo-Plasticism
Term adopted by the Dutch pioneer of abstract art, Mondrian, for his own type of abstract painting. From Dutch de nieuwe beelding. Basically means new art (painting and sculpture are plastic arts). Also applied to the work of De Stijl circle of artists, at least up to Mondrian's secession from the group in 1923. In first eleven issues of the journa â€¦

Neo-Impressionism
Neo-Impressionism is the specific name given to the Post-Impressionist work of Seurat and Signac and their followers. Both Camille and Lucien Pissarro had a Neo-Impressionist phase and their work continued to bear strong traces of the style. Neo-Impressionism is characterised by the use of the Divisionist technique (often popularly but incorrectly â€¦

Neo-Geo
Short for Neo-Geometric Conceptualism. This term came into use in the early 1980s in America to describe the work of Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons and others. Halley in particular was strongly influenced by the French thinker Jean Baudrillard. Their work aimed at a being a critique of the mechanisation and commercialisation of the mode â€¦

Neo-Expressionism
This term came into use about 1980 to describe the international phenomenon of a major revival of painting in an Expressionist manner. It was seen as a reaction to the Minimalism and Conceptual art that had dominated the 1970s. In the USA leading figures were Philip Guston and Julian Schnabel, and in Britain Christopher Le Brun and Paula Rego. Ther â€¦

Neo-Dada
Term sometimes applied to the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in New York in the late 1950s because of their use of collage, assemblage and found materials, and their apparently anti-aesthetic agenda (see Dada). At the time there were also strong echoes of Dada in Environments and Happenings. The term has some justification due to the â€¦

Nazarenes
Group of German artists founded 1809 by Overbeck and Pforr, later joined by Cornelius. Originally called Brotherhood of St Luke (patron saint of artists) but came to be known as Nazarenes (ie inhabitants of Nazareth, Christ's home town) because of their religious devotion. Aim was to regenerate German painting by returning to purity of early Renais â€¦

Naturalism
Until the early nineteenth century both landscape and the human figure in art tended to be idealised or stylised according to conventions derived from the classical tradition. Naturalism was the broad movement to represent things closer to the way we see them. In Britain pioneered by Constable who famously said 'there is room enough for a natural p â€¦

Narrative
A narrative is simply a story. Narrative art is art that tells a story. Much of Western art has been narrative, depicting stories from religion, myth and legend, history and literature (see History painting). Audiences were assumed to be familiar with the stories in question. From about the seventeenth century genre painting showed scenes and narra â€¦

Naïve
The word naïve means simple, unaffected, unsophisticated. As an art term it specifically refers to artists who also have had no formal training in an art school or academy. Naïve art is characterised by childlike simplicity of execution and vision. As such it has been valued by modernists seeking to get away from what they see as the insincere soph â€¦

Multiple
Casting sculpture in bronze, and the various techniques of printmaking, have for many centuries made it possible to make multiple examples of a work of art. Each example of an edition of a print or a bronze is an authentic work of the artist, although there may be technical variations which might affect the value. The number produced is usually str â€¦

Monotype
A unique image printed from a polished plate, such as glass, metal, painted with ink but not a permanent printing matrix. A monotype impression is generally unique, though a second, lighter impression from the painted printing element can sometimes be made.

Monoprint
Essentially a unique variant of a conventional print. An impression is printed from a reprintable block, such as an etched plate or woodblock, but in such a way that only one of its kind exists, for example by incorporating unique hand-colouring or collage. The term can also refer to etchings which are inked and wiped in an expressive, not precisel â€¦

Monochrome
Monochrome means one colour. For centuries artists used different shades (tones) of brown or black ink to create monochrome pictures on paper. The ink would simply be more or less diluted to achieve the required shades. Shades of grey oil paint were used to create monochrome paintings, a technique known as grisaille, from the French word gris meani â€¦

Modernism
In the field of art the broad movement in Western art, architecture and design which self-consciously rejected the past as a model for the art of the present. Hence the term modernist or modern art. Modernism gathered pace from about 1850. Modernism proposes new forms of art on the grounds that these are more appropriate to the present time. It is â€¦

Modern Realism
In the nineteenth century Realism had a special meaning as an art term. Since the rise of modern art, realism, or realist, or realistic, has come to be primarily a stylistic description, referring to painting or sculpture that continues to represent things in a way that more or less pre-dates Post-Impressionism and the succession of modern styles t â€¦

Modern Moral Subject
A type of painting invented by Hogarth. Typically a series of canvases vividly evoking and satirising the manners and morals of Hogarth's day. Hogarth made engraved copies of the paintings which sold widely. The first series, A Harlot's Progress 1732, is six scenes showing a country vicar's daughter arriving in London, being corrupted and eventuall â€¦

Mixed Media
A term used to describe works composed of different media. The use of mixed media began around 1912 with the Cubist collages and constructions of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and has become widespread as artists developed increasingly open attitudes to the media of art. Essentially art can be made of anything or any combination of things. (See â€¦

Minimalism
Minimalism or Minimal art is an extreme form of abstract art that developed in the USA in the second half of the 1960s. It can be seen as extending the abstract idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing. It picked up too on the Constructivist idea that art should be made of modern, industrial materials. M â€¦

Miniature
A miniature is a small painting, usually a portrait. Miniatures range from about three centimetres in height to as much as twenty-five centimetres and are painted in watercolour or gouache on vellum, enamel, ivory or, often, a playing card. In the West miniature painting emerged at the time of the Renaissance from the medieval practice of illuminat â€¦

Mezzotint
A form of engraving where the metal printing plate is indented by rocking a toothed metal tool across the surface. Each pit holds ink, and if printed at this stage the image would be solid black. The printmaker works from dark to light by gradually rubbing down or burnishing the rough surface to various degrees of smoothness to reduce the ink-holdi â€¦

Mexican Muralism
Term describing the revival of large scale mural painting in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. The three principal artists were José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Rivera is usually considered the chief figure. All three were committed to left-wing ideas in the politically turbulent Mexico of the period and their painting r â€¦

Metaphysical art
Italian art movement, Pittura Metafisica. Created by Giorgio de Chirico and the former Futurist, Carlo Carra, in the north Italian city of Ferrara. Using a realist style, they painted dream-like views of the arcaded squares typical of such Italian cities. The squares are unnaturally empty, and in them objects and statues are brought together in str â€¦

Metal
There are two families of metals: Ferrous and non ferrous. All ferrous metals contain iron. Non ferrous metals include aluminium, zinc and copper and its alloys, for example bronze. The use of bronze for making cast sculpture is very ancient. From the early twentieth century artists such as Pablo Picasso and the Russian Constructivists began to ex â€¦

Merz
Nonsense word invented by the German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters to describe his collage and assemblage works based on scavenged scrap materials. He made large numbers of small collages, and more substantial assemblages, in this medium. He is said to have extracted the word Merz from the name Commerz Bank which appeared on a piece of paper in one o â€¦

Memento Mori
Latin phrase meaning remember you must die. A memento mori painting or sculpture is one designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the brevity and fragility of human life in the face of God and nature. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguishe â€¦

Medium
In relation to art this term has two principal overlapping, even slightly confusing meanings. Painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, are all media of art in the sense of a type of art. However, the term can also refer to the materials of the work. For example a sculpture in the medium of bronze or marble; a painting in the medium of oil paint o â€¦

Maquette
A model for a larger piece of sculpture. Often fascinating works in their own right, conveying the immediacy of the artist's first realisation of an idea.

Mannerist
Mannerism is the name given to the style of followers of Raphael and Michelangelo in Italy from about 1520-1600. It is characterised by artificiality, elegance, sensuous distortion of the human figure and often outright sensuality. (Bronzino Venus Cupid Folly and Time, National Gallery, London.) Mannerism spread all over Europe, and in Britain the â€¦

Magic Realism
Term invented by German photographer, art historian and art critic Franz Roh in 1925 in his book Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus (After Expressionism: Magic Realism). Describes modern realist paintings with fantasy or dream-like subjects. In Central Europe Magic Realism was part of the reaction against modern or avant-garde art, known as â€¦

Luminism
Term meaning roughly, painting of light. Applied specifically to American landscape painters of the Hudson River School from about 1830-70. Many of their paintings were dominated by intense and often dramatic light effects. In British art a form of Luminism underlies Whistler's 'Nocturnes'. Sometimes applied to Neo-Impressionist paintings in which â€¦

London Group
In 1913 took over from the Camden Town group the function of organising modern art exhibitions in Britain. Its stated aim was 'to advance public awareness of contemporary visual art by holding exhibitions annually'. Its first president was Harold Gilman, one of the leading Camden Town painters. As an exhibiting society the London Group was specific â€¦

Lithography
A printing process based on the antipathy of grease and water. The image is applied to a grained surface (traditionally stone but now usually aluminium) using a greasy medium: greasy ink (tusche), crayon, pencils, lacquer, or synthetic materials. Photochemical or transfer processes can be used. A solution of gum arabic and nitric acid is then appli â€¦

Lightbox
A box fitted with an internal light source, commonly a fluorescent tube or small incandescent bulbs, and a translucent white surface. Normally used for examining transparencies and negatives and tracing works made with a variety of techniques and materials. However since the late twentieth century artists have made works in which large scale photog â€¦

Landscape
One of the principal types or genres of Western art. However, the appreciation of nature for its own sake and its choice as a specific subject for art is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the seventeenth century landscape was confined to the background of paintings dealing principally with religious, mythological or historical subjects (History â€¦

Land art
Also known as Earth art. It can be seen as part of the wider Conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Land artists began working directly in the landscape, sculpting it into earthworks or making structures with rocks or twigs. Some of them used mechanical earth-moving equipment, but Richard Long simply walked up and down until he had made a â€¦

Kitsch
Kitsch is the German word for trash. Sometime in the 1920s it came into use in English to describe particularly cheap, vulgar and sentimental forms of popular and commercial culture. In 1939, the American art critic Clement Greenberg published a famous essay titled 'Avant-Garde and Kitsch'. In it he defined kitsch and examined its relationship to t â€¦

Kitchen Sink art
Term originally used as the title of an article by the critic David Sylvester in the December 1954 issue of the journal Encounter. The article discussed the work of the realist artists known as the Beaux Arts Quartet, John Bratby, Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith. Sylvester wrote that their work 'takes us back from the studio to t â€¦

Kinetic art
The word kinetic means relating to motion. Kinetic art is art that depends on motion for its effects. Since the early twentieth century artists have been incorporating movement into art. This has been partly to explore the possibilities of movement, partly to introduce the element of time, partly to reflect the importance of the machine and technol â€¦

Japonisme
French term generally said to have been coined by the French critic Philippe Burty in the early 1870s. It described the craze for Japanese art and design that swept France and elsewhere after trade with Japan resumed in the 1850s, the country having been closed to the West since about 1600. The rediscovery of Japanese art and design had an almost i â€¦

Intimism
Originally, a French term applied to the quiet domestic scenes of Bonnard and Vuillard. Since applied widely to any painting of such subject matter. An outstanding example is Gwen John.

Jacobean
Term used to describe the culture of the reign of James I (reigned 1603-25) particularly theatre (and even furniture) as well as painting. Great Elizabethan miniaturist Hilliard continues but succeeded in royal favour by Oliver. Similarly Gheeraerts flourished but overtaken by more sophisticated naturalism of Dutch born Van Somer and then Mytens (p â€¦

Intaglio
Any form of printmaking in which the image is produced by incising into the printing plate and where it is the incised line or area that holds the ink. Intaglio methods include etching, drypoint, engraving, and wood engraving.

Installation
Term used to describe mixed-media art works which occupy an entire room or gallery space and into which usually the spectator can enter. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. Installation art emerged from the earlier â€¦

Ink
An ancient writing and drawing medium, ink is still most commonly made of carbon and binders, but historically was also made from plant or animal sources such as iron gall and sepia. Inks are traditionally black or brown in colour, but can also contain coloured dyes or pigments. They are traditionally used with sable brushes or varieties of quill, â€¦

Independent Group
A radical group of young artists within the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. The Independent Group, or IG, was first convened in the winter of 1952-3 and then again in 1953-4. It was responsible for the formulation, discussion and dissemination of many of the basic ideas of British Pop art and of much other new British art in the lat â€¦

Impressionism
New way of painting landscape and scenes of everyday life developed in France by Monet and others from early 1860s. Based on practice of painting finished pictures out of doors, as opposed to simply making sketches (actually pioneered in Britain by Constable around 1813-17). Result was greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern â€¦

Impasto
An area of thick paint, or texture, in a painting. First noticeable in Venetian Renaissance painters Titian and Tintoretto, then in Baroque painting, for example Rubens. Increasingly notable in nineteenth-century landscape, Naturalist and Romantic painting. Use of impasto became more or less compulsory in modern art as the view took hold that the s â€¦

Illusionism
In Baroque art refers particularly to decorative schemes in buildings, especially ceiling paintings, in which the artist uses perspective and foreshortening to create, for example, the illusion that the ceiling is open sky populated by groups of figures such as saints, angels or whatever. Such effects are also sometimes referred to as trompe l'oeil â€¦

Iconography
The iconography of a painting is the imagery in it. The term comes from the Greek word ikon meaning image. An icon was originally a picture of Christ on a panel used as an object of devotion in the orthodox Greek Church from at least the seventh century on. Hence the term icon has come to be attached to any object or image that is outstanding or ha â€¦

Hyper-Realism
Term that appeared in the early 1970s to describe a resurgence of particularly high fidelity realism in sculpture and painting at that time. Also called Super-Realism, and in painting is synonymous with Photo-Realism. In sculpture the outstanding practitioner was Duane Hanson, together with John de Andrea. More recently the work of Ron Mueck and so â€¦

History painting
Term History introduced by French Royal Academy in seventeenth century to describe the most important of the types, or genres, of painting. The others in descending order were portrait; genre (scenes of everyday life), landscape, and still life. Term History in fact covered subject matter drawn from ancient Greek and Roman (classical) history; clas â€¦

Hard Edge Painting
Can be seen as a subdivision of Post-Painterly Abstraction, which in turn emerged from Colour Field painting. The term was coined by the Californian critic Jules Langster in 1959 to describe those abstract painters, particularly on the West Coast, who in their reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms of Abstract Expressionism adopted a part â€¦

Happenings
Happenings were theatrical events created by artists, initially in America, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were the forerunners of Performance art and in turn emerged from the theatrical elements of Dada and Surrealism. The name was first used by the American artist Allan Kaprow in the title of his 1959 work 18 Happenings in 6 Parts which â€¦

Gutai
Japanese avant-garde group. Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association) was formed in 1954 in Osaka by Yoshihara Jiro, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, Shiraga Kazuo, and Shimamoto Shozo. The word has been translated into English as 'embodiment' or 'concrete'. Yoshihara was an older artist around whom the group coalesced and who financed it. In the â€¦

Gruppo Origine
Italian group (origin group) founded in Rome in 1951 by Alberto Burri, Ettore Colla, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Mario Ballocco. Critical of what they saw as the increasingly decorative quality of abstract art at the time, they opposed a 'troubled' consciousness of the world to the progressivist utopia of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti neo-cubists and of â€¦

Group X
Short lived British group formed by Wyndham Lewis in 1920 to provide a continuing focus for avant-garde art in Britain following the First World War. It was an attempt to revive Lewis's pre-war Vorticist group. One group exhibition was held in 1922. Other artists associated with it included William Roberts, Cuthbert Hamilton and Edward McKnight Kau â€¦

Graphite
Graphite is a crystalline form of carbon and is useful as a writing and drawing tool, as only the slightest pressure is needed to leave a mark. However, as graphite is soft and brittle it requires some form of protective casing. The exact date and origin of the first graphite pencils is unknown but it is thought that the first graphite sticks encas â€¦

Grand Tour
In eighteenth century became essential part of education for those who could afford it. Developed from enormous admiration for classical civilisation, especially that of Rome, for the Italian Renaissance, and to a lesser extent for the civilisation of France as exemplified by the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. Italy was seen as a vast museum of â€¦

Grand Manner
English term for the highest style of art in academic theory. Given currency by Reynolds and extensively discussed in his Discourses on Art - fifteen lectures delivered to students at Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790. Reynolds argued that painters should not slavishly copy nature but seek a generalised and ideal form. This 'gives what is called â€¦

Gouache
A term first used in France in the eighteenth century to describe a type of paint made from pigments bound in water-soluble gum, like watercolour, but with the addition of a white pigment in order to make it opaque. Larger percentages of binder are used than with watercolour, and various amounts of inert pigments such as chalk are added to enhance â€¦

Glasgow School
Glasgow School usually refers to the circle of artists and designers around Mackintosh in Glasgow from the mid-1890s to about 1910. Most notable were the Macdonald sisters and Herbert MacNair and with Mackintosh they were known as The Four. They made a distinctive and highly influential contribution to international Art Nouveau and are sometimes re â€¦

Gestural
A term that originally came into use to describe the painting of the Abstract Expressionist artists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann and others. What they had in common was the application of paint in free sweeping gestures with the brush. In Pollock's case the brush might be a dried one, or a stick, â€¦

Georgian
Blanket term applied to the styles prevalent through the reigns of the four King Georges in Britain from 1714 to 1830. Usually refers to architecture, furniture, silver and the like, rather than painting. Unifying characteristic, if it has one, a certain classical restraint and harmony.

Geometry of Fear
Term coined by the British critic and poet Herbert Read in 1952. He used the phrase in a review of the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale of that year. The British contribution was an exhibition of the work of the group of young sculptors that had emerged immediately after the Second World War in the wake of the older Henry Moore. Their work, â€¦

Genres
The genres, or types of painting, were codified in the seventeenth century by the French Royal Academy. In descending order of importance the genres were History, Portrait, Genre, Landscape, and Still life. This league table, known as the hierarchy of the genres, was based on the notion of man the measure of all things - landscape and still life we â€¦

Genre Painting
Paintings of subjects from everyday life, usually small in scale. Developed particularly in Holland in seventeenth century, most typically with scenes of peasant life or drinking in taverns. In Britain Hogarth's Modern Moral Subjects were a special kind of genre, in their frankness and often biting social satire. Simpler genre painting emerged in l â€¦

Futurism
Art movement launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. On 20 February he published his Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Among modernist movements Futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past. This was because in Italy the weight of past culture was felt as particu â€¦

Frottage
Surrealist automatist technique developed by Max Ernst in drawings made from 1925. Frottage is the French word for rubbing. Ernst was inspired by an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing. The patterns of the graining suggested strange images to him. He captured these by laying sheets of p â€¦

Fresco
A mural painting technique developed in Italy from about the thirteenth century and perfected at the time of the Renaissance. Two coats of plaster are applied to a wall and allowed to dry. On the second the design is drawn in outline. To make the painting, an area of the wall corresponding to a day's work is freshly plastered and the design retrace â€¦

Found object
A natural or man-made object (or fragment of an object) found (or sometimes bought) by an artist and kept because of some intrinsic interest the artist sees in it. Found objects may be put on a shelf and treated as works of art in themselves, as well as providing inspiration for the artist. The sculptor Henry Moore for example collected bones and f â€¦

Formalism
In general, the term formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form, that is, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects, rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world. In painting therefore, a formalist critic would focus exclusively on the qualities of colou â€¦

Form
In relation to art the term form has two meanings. First it refers to the overall form taken by the work - its physical nature. Secondly, within a work of art form refers to the element of shape among the various elements that make up a work. Painting for example consists of the elements of line, colour, texture, space, scale, and format as well as â€¦

Foreshortening
Term used to describe the treatment of an object or human body in a picture seen in perspective from close to the viewpoint and at right angles to the picture surface. For example a body viewed from either the feet or the top of the head.

Fluxus
An international avant-garde group or collective founded and given its name in 1960 by the Lithuanian/American artist George Maciunas; originally for an eponymous magazine featuring the work of a group of artists and composers centred around John Cage. The Latin name means flowing. In English a flux is a flowing out. Maciunas said that the purpose â€¦

Fin de siècle
French phrase meaning end of century. As historical term applies specifically to end of nineteenth century and even more specifically to decade of 1890s. Umbrella term embracing Symbolism, Decadence and all related phenomena (eg Art Nouveau) which reached a peak in that decade. Almost synonymous with terms the Eighteen-Nineties, the Mauve Decade, t â€¦

Figurative
Since the arrival of abstract art the term figurative has been used to refer to any form of modern art that retains strong references to the real world and particularly to the human figure. In a general sense figurative also applies retrospectively to all art before abstract art. Modern figurative art can be seen as distinct from modern realism in â€¦

Feminist art
May be defined as art by women artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory since about 1970. In 1971 the art historian Linda Nochlin published a groundbreaking essay 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?'. In it she investigated the social and economic factors that had prevented talented women from achieving â€¦

Federal Art Project
Stands for (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project. An American government programme to give work to unemployed artists during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was one of a succession of art programmes set up under the American President Roosevelt's New Deal policy to combat the Depression. In 1933 he set up the Public Works of Art â€¦

Fauvism
Name given to the painting of Matisse, Derain and their circle from 1905 to about 1910. They were called les fauves - the wild beasts - because of their use of strident colour and apparently wild brushwork. Their subjects were highly simplified so their work was also quite abstract. Fauvism can be seen as an extreme extension of the Post-Impression â€¦

Fancy Picture
Term 'Fancies' first used 1737 by art chronicler George Vertue to describe paintings by Mercier of scenes of everyday life, but with elements of imagination, invention or storytelling. Typical titles were Venetian Girl at a Window or series The Five Senses. Popularised through engraved copies. Name 'fancy pictures' given by Reynolds to the supreme â€¦

Fairy Painting
A fascination with fairies and the supernatural was a phenomenon of the Victorian age and resulted in a distinctive strand of art depicting fairy subjects drawn from myth and legend and particularly from Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Early, pre-Victorian examples are in Fuseli, Blake and Von Holst. Later Dadd created keynote paintin â€¦

Expressionism
Specifically, and with a capital letter, the term is associated with modern German art, particularly the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups, but in this narrow sense is best referred to as German Expressionism. Expressionism as a general term refers to art in which the image of reality is more or less heavily distorted in form and colour in order to ma â€¦

Euston Road School
British Modern realist group formed in 1938 of artists all of whom either taught or studied at the School of Painting and Drawing at 316 Euston Road in London. They were in conscious reaction against avant-garde styles. Instead they asserted the importance of painting traditional subjects in a realist manner. This attitude was based on a political â€¦

Etching
An intaglio technique which uses chemical action to produce incised lines in a metal printing plate. The plate, traditionally copper but now usually zinc, is prepared with an acid-resistant ground. Lines are drawn through the ground, exposing the metal. The plate is then immersed in acid and the exposed metal is 'bitten', producing incised lines. S â€¦

Environmental art
From about the late 1960s the term Environmental Art became applied specifically to art - often but not necessarily in the form of Installation - that addressed social and political issues relating to the natural and urban environment. One of the pioneers of this was the German artist Joseph Beuys and a notable more recent practitioner is Lothar Ba â€¦

Engraving
An intaglio technique in which a metal plate is manually incised with a burin, an engraving tool like a very fine chisel with a lozenge-shaped tip. The burin makes incisions into the metal at various angles and with varying pressure which dictates the quantity of ink the line can hold -hence variations in width and darkness when printed. The techni â€¦

Embossed
In printmaking any process used to create a raised or depressed surface. It is sometimes used to create false plate-marks in lithographs or screenprints.

Elizabethan
The age of Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603) saw a flowering of the arts in Britain not least in the plays of Shakespeare. Painting flourished too, although principally in the form of portraiture. The Queen herself took a keen interest in her portraits, guiding artists such as Hilliard and Gheeraerts in the creation of stylised images of immens â€¦

Edwardian
King Edward VII of Britain was the son of Queen Victoria whose longevity meant that he did not accede to the throne until 1901, when he was sixty. Initiated the Entente cordiale which in 1904 marked new era of good relations with France. He died in 1910. As Prince of Wales he had been notorious for his love of good living and his reign, and the ter â€¦

Drypoint
An intaglio process in which incised lines are drawn on a plate with a sharp, pointed needle-like instrument (not the engraving burin). Drypoint is usually done on copper plates as the softer metal lends itself to this technique. The process of incising creates a slightly raised ragged rough edge to the lines, known as the burr. Both the incised li â€¦

Drawing
Essentially, drawing is a technique in which images are depicted on a flat surface by making lines, though drawings can also contain tonal areas, washes and other non-linear marks. Ink, pencil, crayon, charcoal and chalk are the most commonly used materials, but drawings can be made with or in combination with paint and any other wet or dry media. â€¦

Copy of `Tate - Glossary - New British Sculpture`

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