Tag Archives: art/architecture/design

Folk Art

Posted on March 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Folk Art: The arts of peasant societies, both past and present. Characterized by naïve subject matter and a vivacious style, folk art both perpetuates very ancient decorative traditions and draws selectively from art forms of sophisticated cultural traditions, e.g. the adaptation of 18th-century Rococo motifs in European folk art. Paintings, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, costume, needlework, implements and tools all may be folk art. See NAÏVE and OUTSIDER ART.”

 Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Site Specific

Posted on March 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Site Specific: Artwork created, designed, or selected for a specific indoor or outdoor site. It may take shape as publicly displayed monumental sculpture commissioned by either city arts agencies or private corporations, or as earth art, often located away from urban centers. Beverly Pepper’s Fallen Sky, located in Barcelona, merges park with sculpture. This undulating earthen mound covered in multi-colored tiles is a recent tribute to Gaudi and the city’s art nouveau heritage. See also INSTALLATION, PUBLIC ART.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Louise Bourgeois

Posted on March 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Louise Bourgeois: (1911-2010) Franco-American painter and sculptor, Bourgeois was born in Paris to a family that operated an art gallery specializing in historic tapestries. Dissatisfied with the conservatism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, she pursued her education at a number of independent academies and in the studios of modernist painters Fernand Leger, Andre Lhote, and others. Her early paintings are notable for their feminist content. In 1949, Bourgeois gave up painting and began experimenting with new sculptural materials that ranged from concrete to marble. Later, Bourgeois focused on naturalistic and amorphous forms. By the seventies, her engagement with feminism had led her to a more assertive depiction of women and further exploration of sexual themes. Her works vary in scale and media, but most often evoke bodies, or parts of them, in order to call into question how the human body is perceived.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Impressionism

Posted on March 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Impressionism: The 19th-century movement, well developed by the time of the first impressionist exhibition in 1874, that is now regarded as the culmination of realism. The impressionist painters analyzed natural effects with devoted intensity. They devised the spectrum palette and relied on optical mixing to capture the impression of light at a given moment. The most important of them include Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Hudson River School

Posted on March 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Hudson River School: Group of American realist landscape painters active between about 1820 to 1880 whose favorite subjects were scenes of the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains. Famous members were Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Church.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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WPA: Works Progress Administration

Posted on March 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

“WPA: Works Progress Administration: (later renamed Works Projects Administration) This federal agency (1935-1943) established by the U.S. government provided depression-era relief to the unemployed by commissioning public works. More than 5,000 artists produced works ranging from monumental murals (Willem de Kooning) to documentary photographs (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans).”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Tenebrists

Posted on March 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

Tenebrists: Michelangelo de Caravaggio and the 17th-century painters influenced by him who painted interior scenes, often lighted by candles or torches, having sharp contrasts of light and shade. Georges de La Tour (French) and Jose de Ribera (Spaniard in Naples) are considered Tenebrists. The words tenebrist and tenebrism were coined by later critics. See CHIAROSCURO.

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Socialist Realism

Posted on March 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Socialist Realism: By 1934 this official Soviet style had resulted in staged idealizations of the working class. Derived from figurative and narrative tendencies, these heavy-handed artworks toed the Communist party line and were meant to be accessible to all viewers. In architecture, anti-modernism resulted in a return to heavy classical motifs sometimes known as “Stalinist gothic.” (Not to be confused with Social Realism.) See FASCIST AESTHETIC.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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School

Posted on March 20, 2020 | Leave a comment

“School: A group of artists working under the same influence—whether a single master, a local style, or a regional style—whose work shows a general stylistic similarity, e.g. Rubens school, Barbizon school, Tuscan school.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Systemic Painting

Posted on March 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Systemic Painting: Described as a branch of Minimal Art and sometimes expanded to incorporate Color-Field Painting, it is a special form of abstract painting based on an organization—or system—of images, e.g., a painting which is a pure, single field of color, or a series of such paintings; or a painting based on the repetition of a single visual motif, such as a circle, chevron, etc. The term describes certain works by Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella. Closely related to, but not identical with, Serial Art.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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