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

Direct carving
A new approach to making carved sculpture introduced by Brancusi from about 1906. Before that carved sculpture had always been based on a carefully worked out preliminary model. Often it was then actually carved by craftsmen employed by the artist. The marble sculptures of Rodin were made in this way. In direct carving there is no model and the fin …

Diptych
Painting in two panels (see Altarpiece)

Der Blaue Reiter
German Expressionist group. In English, The Blue Rider. Originated in 1909 in the city of Munich, where the Neue Kunstler Vereiningung, or New Artist Association (N.K.V.) was founded by a number of avant-garde artists. The most important of these were the Russian born Wassily Kandinsky and the German, Franz Marc. In 1911 Kandinsky and Marc broke wi …

Degenerate art
Degenerate art is the English translation of the German phrase Entartete Kunst. In 1933 the National Socialist (Nazi) party under its leader Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany and began to bring art under its control. All modern art was labelled degenerate. Expressionism was particularly singled out. In 1937, German museums were purged of moder …

Decadence
Phase or branch of Symbolism in 1880s and 1890s and many artists and writers seen as both. Term came into use 1880s eg French journal Le Décadent 1886. Generally refers to extreme manifestations of Symbolism emphasising the spiritual, the morbid and the erotic. Decadents inspired partly by disgust at corruption and rampant materialism of modern wor …

De Stijl
Name of journal founded in 1917 in Holland by pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. Means style in Dutch. The name De Stijl also came to refer to the circle of artists that gathered around the publication. De Stijl became a vehicle for Mondrian's ideas on art, and in a series of articles in the first year's issues he define …

Dada
The Dada movement began in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, during the First World War. It can be seen as a reaction by artists to what they saw as the unprecedented horror and folly of the war. They felt it called into question every aspect, including its art, of the society capable of starting and then prolonging it. Their aim was to destroy tradi …

Cubism
Cubism was a new way of representing reality in art invented by Picasso and Braque from1907-8. A third core Cubist was Juan Gris. The generally agreed beginning of Cubism was Picasso's celebrated Demoiselles D'Avignon of 1907. The name seems to have derived from the comment of the critic Louis Vauxcelles that some of Braque's paintings exhibited in …

Crypt Group
Refers to an episode in the history of the artists' colony in Britain at St Ives, Cornwall. From its foundation in 1927 the St Ives Society of Artists was the dominating exhibition society of St Ives. In 1939 Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo moved to St Ives forming the core of what became a strong modern group in the colony. From abou …

Court
Until modern times royal courts were a major focus of artistic patronage. Monarchs employed their own artists giving them titles such as King's Painter, but they are generally referred to as court painters. They could be among the most famous artists of the day: in Britain Henry VIII imported Holbein, and Charles I appointed Van Dyck 'Principalle P …

Conversation piece
Informal group portrait, usually small in scale, showing people, often families, sometimes groups of friends, in domestic interior or garden settings. Sitters are shown interacting with each other or with pets, taking tea, playing games. Contrast with court or grand style portrait. Seems to have evolved early eighteenth century to meet demand from …

Constructivism
Particularly austere branch of abstract art founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko in Russia around 1915. The constructivists believed art should directly reflect the modern industrial world. Tatlin was crucially influenced by Picasso's Cubist constructions (Construction 1914) which he saw in Picasso's studio in Paris in 1913. These wer …

Constructionism
An extension of Constructivism in Britain from about 1950 in the work of Victor Pasmore, Kenneth Martin, Mary Martin and Anthony Hill. Naturally occuring proportional systems and rhythms underpinned their geometrical art. They were inspired by the theories of the American artist Charles Biederman and explored the legacy of the 'Constructive art' ma …

Concrete art
Term introduced by Van Doesburg in 1930 'Manifesto of Concrete Art' published in the first and only issue of magazine Art Concret. He called for a type of abstract art that would be entirely free of any basis in observed reality and that would have no symbolic implications. He stated that there was nothing more concrete or more real than a line, a …

Conceptual art
This term came into use in the late 1960s to describe a wide range of types of art that no longer took the form of a conventional art object. In 1973 a pioneering record of the early years of the movement appeared in the form of a book, Six Years, by the American critic Lucy Lippard. The ‘six years` were 1966-72. The long subtitle of the book refer …

Composition
In a general sense any piece of music or writing, or any painting or sculpture, can be referred to as a composition. More specifically, the term refers to the way in which an artist has arranged the elements of the work so as to bring them into a relationship satisfactory to the artist and, it is hoped, the viewer. In art in the classical tradition …

Complementary colours
Complementary colours are colours which complete each other - hence the name. The effect of this completing is to enhance the colours - they look stronger when placed together. This is because they contrast with each other more than with any other colours, and we can only see colour by contrast with other colours. The more contrast the more colour. …

Colour Field Painting
Term originally used to describe the work from about 1950 of the Abstract Expressionist painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, which was characterised by large areas of a more or less flat single colour. 'The Colour Field Painters' was the title of the chapter dealing with these artists in the American scholar Irvine Sandler's gro …

Collage
Collage is a term used to describe both the technique and the resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down to a supporting surface. Collage can also include other media such as painting and drawing, and contain three-dimensional elements. The term collage derives from the French …

Cobra
Group formed in 1948 by artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam and taking its name from the first letters of those cities. However, they welcomed the coincidental reference to the snake, since animal imagery was common in Cobra painting. They were also interested in the art of children. Leading members of Cobra were Karel Appel, Asger Jorn …

Classicism
The terms classic or classical came into use in the seventeenth century to describe the arts and culture of the ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome. Classicism in art is to make reference in later work to the ancient classic styles. For example the classicism of Reynolds. Classical mythology consists of the various myths and legends of the anc …

Civil War and Commonwealth
The English Civil War broke out in 1641 bringing to an end the great artistic flowering that took place under Charles I (Stuart), exemplified in the art of his court painter Van Dyck, who died that year. During the war, Van Dyck's place was filled by his English follower William Dobson. Following Charles's defeat by Parliamentary forces led by Crom …

Chiaroscuro
Italian term used in that form in English. It translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade in a painting or drawing. Chiaroscuro is generally only remarked upon when it is a particularly prominent feature of the work, usually when the artist is using extreme contrasts of light and shade.

Charcoal
One of the most basic drawing materials, known since antiquity. It is usually made of thin peeled willow twigs which are heated without the presence of oxygen. This produces black crumbly sticks, which leave microscopic sharp-edged particles in the paper or textile fibres, producing a line denser at the pressure point, but more diffuse at the edges …

Chalk
White or off-white inorganic material composed of calcium carbonate. Naturally occurring, although also produced industrially throughout the twentieth century.

Cast
A form created by pouring liquid material, such as plaster or molten metal, into a mould.

Caricature
A caricature is a painting, or more usually drawing, of a person or thing in which the features and form have been distorted and exaggerated in order to mock or satirise the subject. The term is originally Italian, caricatura, and caricature appeared in Italian art about 1600 in the work of Annibale Carracci. The word caricature is first recorded i …

Canvas
Strong, woven cloth traditionally used for artists` supports. Commonly made of either linen or cotton thread, but also manufactured from man-made materials such as polyester.

Camden Town Group
British Post-Impressionist group founded by Sickert in London in 1911. Other members were Bevan, Gore, Gilman, Ginner. Painted realist scenes of city life and some landscape in a range of Post-Impressionist styles. Named after the seedy district of north London where Sickert had lived in the 1890s and again from 1907. His series of Camden Town nude …

Brücke
German Expressionist group founded in Dresden in 1905. Name means bridge and may have been intended to convey the idea of a bridge between the artist seen as a special person and society at large. Also, Brücke recruited members who were not artists but patrons, paying a subscription entitling them to an annual portfolio of prints. One of these was …

Brutalism
Term coined by the British architectural critic Reyner Banham to describe the approach to building particularly associated with the architects Peter and Alison Smithson in the 1950s and 1960s. The term originates from the use by the pioneer modern architect and painter Le Corbusier of 'beton brut' - raw concrete in French. Banham gave the French wo …

British Impressionism
Modernist ideas associated with what was to become known as French Impressionism were introduced to Britain by Whistler from 1863 when he settled in London. Forms of Impressionism were then developed by his pupils Sickert and Steer and promoted by the New English Art Club founded in 1886. In 1889 Sickert and Steer organised the exhibition London Im …

Bristol School
Artists associated with Bristol in early 1800s inspired by local scenery especially River Avon and Avon Gorge. Principal figures were Francis Danby during the roughly ten years he spent there before moving to London 1824, and JB Pyne. Both had pupils and followers notably Samuel Colman who made highly personal contribution to genre of biblical and …

Body art
Term used to describe art in which the body, often that of the artist is the principal medium and focus. It covers a wide range of art from about 1960 on, encompassing a variety of different approaches. It includes much Performance art, where the artist is directly concerned with the body in the form of improvised or choreographed actions, happenin …

Bloomsbury
A district of quiet squares near central London. Its name is commonly used to identify a circle of intellectuals and artists who lived there in the period 1904-40. The intellectuals included the biographer Lytton Strachey, the economist Maynard Keynes, the novelist Virginia Woolf and the art critic Clive Bell. The principal artists were Vanessa Bel …

Black Mountain College
Highly influential college founded at Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA, in 1933. Its progressive principles were based on the educational theories of John Rice, its founder. In the curriculum, drama, music and fine art were given equal status to all other academic subjects. Teaching was informal and stress was laid on communal living and outdoor …

Bitumen
A naturally-occurring, non-drying, tarry substance used in paint mixtures, especially to enrich the appearance of dark tones. Bitumen became very popular as a paint additive in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth. However, because it does not dry it eventually causes often severe darkening and cracking of the paint. This can be seen in …

Biomorphic
In painting and sculpture biomorphic forms or images are ones that, while abstract, nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living forms such as plants and the human body. The term comes from combining the Greek words bios, meaning life, and morphe, meaning form. Biomorphic seems to have come into use around the 1930s to describe the imagery in the more a …

Beaux Arts Quartet
The Beaux Arts Gallery in London was run by the painter Helen Lessore from 1951-65. (There is no connection with the present London gallery of the same name.) She made it a major venue for contemporary realist painting. From 1952-4 she gave solo exhibitions to four young realist painters John Bratby, Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smi …

Bauhaus
Revolutionary school of art, architecture and design established by the pioneer modern architect Walter Gropius at Weimar in Germany in 1919. Its teaching method replaced the traditional pupil-teacher relationship with the idea of a community of artists working together. Its aim was to bring art back into contact with everyday life, and design was …

Baroque
Highly emotional style in architecture, painting and sculpture, at height from c.1630-80 in Rome but influential across Europe. Greatest exponents: sculptor and architect Bernini in Rome, and in northern Europe, Rubens, whose ceiling decorations done for Charles I (Stuart) in the Banqueting Hall in London are still in place. Rubens's great pupil Va …

Avant-garde
Originally a French term, meaning in English, vanguard or advance guard (the part of an army that goes forward ahead of the rest). Applied to art, means that which is in the forefront, is innovatory, which introduces and explores new forms and in some cases new subject matter. In this sense the term first appeared in France in the first half of the …

Auto-Destructive art
Term invented by the artist Gustav Metzger in the early 1960s and put into circulation by his article 'Machine, Auto-creative and Auto-destructive Art' in the summer 1962 issue of the journal Ark. From 1959 he had made work by spraying acid onto sheets of nylon as a protest against nuclear weapons. The procedure produced rapidly changing shapes bef …

Attribute
Has different meanings as a noun and a verb. In art an attribute (noun) is an object or animal associated with a particular personage. The most common attributes are those of the ancient Greek gods. For example doves, birds associated with love, are attributes of the goddess of love, Aphrodite or Venus. So a female nude with a dove or doves may be …

Assemblage
Art made by assembling disparate elements often scavenged by the artist, sometimes bought specially. The practice goes back to Picasso's Cubist constructions, the three dimensional works he began to make from 1912. An early example is his Still Life 1914 which is made from scraps of wood and a length of tablecloth fringing, glued together and paint …

Arts and Crafts Movement
Movement in design emerging from Pre-Raphaelite circle and initiated by William Morris in 1861 when he founded design firm Morris and Co in London. He recruited Rossetti, Madox Brown and Burne-Jones as artist-designers and key principle was to raise design to level of art. Also to make good design available to widest possible audience. Seen as lead …

Artists International Association
An exhibiting society founded in London in 1933 and active until 1971. It was principally a left of centre political organisation and it embraced all styles of art both modernist and traditional. Its aim was the 'Unity of Artists for Peace, Democracy and Cultural Development'. It held a series of large group exhibitions on political and social them …

Artist Placement Group
Organisation founded in 1966 by Barbara Steveni with her husband John Latham. Its purpose was to place artists in government, commercial and industrial organisations. APG emerged from the idea that artists are a human resource underused by society. Artists are isolated from the public by the gallery system, and in the ghetto of the art world are sh …

Arte Povera
The term Arte Povera was introduced by the Italian art critic and curator, Germano Celant, in 1967. His pioneering texts and a series of key exhibitions provided a collective identity for a number of young Italian artists based in Turin, Milan, Genoa and Rome. Arte Povera emerged from within a network of urban cultural activity in these cities, as …

Arte Nucleare
Refers to the work of the Movimento d'Arte Nucleare, founded by the Italian artist Enrico Baj together with Sergio Dangelo and Gianni Bertini, in Milan in 1951. Gianni Dova was a later member. Their first manifesto was issued the following year and another in 1959. The name might be translated as art for the nuclear age, since the group specificall …

Art Nouveau
Complex international style in architecture and design, parallel to Symbolism in fine art. Developed through 1890s and brought to wide audience by 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Characterised by sinuous linearity and flowing organic shapes based on plant forms. In Britain, Mackintosh contained these qualities within severe but eccentric geom …

Art Informel
French term describing a wide swathe of related types of abstract painting highly prevalent, even dominant, in the 1940s and 1950s, including tendencies such as Tachism, Matter Painting, and Lyrical Abstraction. Mainly refers to European art, but embraces American Abstract Expressionism. The term was used by the French critic Michel Tapié in his 19 …

Art Deco
Design style of 1920s and 1930s in furniture, pottery, textiles, jewellery, glass etc. It was also a notable style of cinema and hotel architecture. Named after the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925. Can be seen as successor to and a reaction against Art Nouveau. Chief difference from Art Nouvea …

Art Brut
French term translating as 'raw art'. Term invented by the French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art made outside the tradition of fine art, dominated by academic training, which he referred to as 'art culturel' - cultural art. Art Brut included graffiti, and the work of the insane, prisoners, children, and naïve or primitive artists. What Dubuff …

Art & Language
A pioneering Conceptual art group founded in Coventry, England, in 1968. The four founder members were Michael Baldwin, David Bainbridge, Terry Atkinson and Harold Hurrell. The critic and art historian Charles Harrison and the artist Mel Ramsden both became associated in 1970. In A Provisional History of Art & Language, Charles Harrison and Fred Or …

Aquatint
An intaglio printmaking technique, used to create tonal effects rather than lines. Fine particles of acid-resistant material, such as powdered rosin, are attached to a printing plate by heating. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath, just like etching. The acid eats into the metal around the particles to produce a granular pattern of tiny inde …

Appropriation
As a term in art history and criticism refers to the more or less direct taking over into a work of art of a real object or even an existing work of art. The practice can be tracked back to the Cubist collages and constructions of Picasso and Georges Braque made from 1912 on, in which real objects such as newspapers were included to represent thems …

Angry Penguins
Title of Australian modernist literary journal founded 1940 at University of Adelaide by four poets: DB Kerr, MH Harris, PG Pfeiffer, G Dutton. At this time the University of Adelaide was a focus of modernist writing and debate under the influence of the poet playwright and teacher CR Jury, who acted as patron to the magazine. The name became that …

Altarpiece
Painting placed on or behind the altar of a Christian church as a focus for worship. Usually depicts scenes from the life of Christ, especially the Crucifixion, or from the life of the Virgin Mary. Altarpieces are often in two or three panels (diptychs and triptychs) with the panels showing separate but related scenes. Modern artists have sometimes …

Allegory
In art, a composition in which all the elements are designed to symbolise or illustrate some general idea such as life, death, love, virtue, faith, justice, prudence and so on.

Alabaster
A fine-grained marble-like variety of gypsum, alabaster is a soft stone often white or translucent.

Agit-prop
The term Agit-Prop is a contraction of the Russian words 'agitatsiia' and 'propaganda' in the title of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda set up in 1920 by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. From then on it was an omni-present activity in the Soviet Union. Intended to control and promote the ideological conditioning of the …

Aesthetic Movement
Flourished in Britain 1870s, 1880s. Important equally in fine and applied arts. Critic Walter Hamilton published book The Aesthetic Movement in England 1882. Cult of pure beauty in art and design. Rallying cry 'art for art's sake', meaning art foregrounding the purely visual and sensual, free of practical, moral or narrative considerations. In pain …

Actionism
English version of general German term for Performance art, but was specifically used for the name of the Vienna based group Wiener Aktionismus founded in 1962. The principal members of the group were Gunter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolph Schwarzkogler. Their 'actions' were intended to highlight the endemic violence of humanity and were deliberat …

Academy
The first art academies appeared in Italy at the time of the Renaissance. They were groupings of artists whose aim was to improve the social and professional standing of artists, as well as to provide teaching (see Ecole des Beaux Arts). To this end they sought where possible to have a royal or princely patron. Previously, painters and sculptors ha …

Academic art
Art made according to the teachings of an art academy. In the nineteenth century the art academies of Europe became extremely conservative, resisting change and innovation. They came to be opposed to the avant-garde and to modern art generally. The term academic has thus come to mean conservative forms of art that ignore the innovations of modernis …

Abstraction-Création
Association of abstract artists set up in Paris in 1931 with aim of promoting abstract art through group exhibitions. Rapidly acquired membership of around 400. Leaders were Herbin and Vantongerloo, but every major abstract painter took part including such figures as Gabo, Kandinsky and Mondrian. In Britain members of the modernist groupings the Se …

Abstract Expressionism
Term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters in 1940s and 1950s. The Abstract Expressionists were mostly based in New York City, and also became known as the New York School. The name evokes their aim to make art that while abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the Surrealist idea …

Abstract art
The word abstract strictly speaking means to separate or withdraw something from something else. In that sense applies to art in which the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to arrive at a more or less simplified or schematised form. Term also applied to art using forms that have no source at all in external …

Abject art
The abject is a complex psychological, philosophical and linguistic concept developed by Julia Kristeva in her 1980 book Powers of Horror. She was partly influenced by the earlier ideas of the French writer, thinker and dissident Surrealist, Georges Bataille. It can be said very simply that the abject consists of those elements, particularly of the …