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Proportion is the relationship of one part of a whole to other parts. In art it has usually meant a preoccupation of artists with finding a mathematical formula for the perfect human body. At the time of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer attempted to find a formula that would enable the body to be exactly inscribed in a square or a circle. Their system seems to have been to first make the height the same as the full width of the outstretched arms, and then to add to the height so that the total height was equal to eight heads. Renaissance researches into proportion were inspired by the ancient Roman writer of a treatise on architecture, Vitruvius. A more general formula for perfect proportion is the Golden Section or Golden Mean. This is defined as a line divided so that the smaller part is to the larger part as the larger part is to the whole. It works out at roughly 8:13 or a bit over one third to two thirds. In one way or another the Golden Section can be detected in most works of art. It so named because it was considered to have some special aesthetic virtue in itself.
Industry:Art history
The provenance of a work of art is the history of its ownership. The word comes from the French verb provenir, to come from. Provenance is essential in identifying with certainty the authorship of a work of art. When the chips are down, no amount of connoisseurship can beat a good provenance. The ideal provenance would consist of a history of ownership traceable right back to the artist's studio. Another important aspect of the history of an artwork is the exhibitions it has been in. The importance of provenance has not escaped the attention of forgers. In the 1990s a forger inserted fake references to forged paintings into material such as exhibition catalogues in museum archives. This convinced buyers even when the quality of the forgery was not especially good. The works illustrated each have an interesting provenance. The Hone was discovered in Brazil; the Malevich was sold off by the Soviet government; the Martin is one of three panels of a once famous triptych that had been broken up in the 1930s. One panel was then acquired by Tate. The other two disappeared. They were later tracked down and reunited by a private collector and eventually bequeathed to Tate and brought together with the other panel. Please follow links to 'texts' from these works: Hone, Sketch for 'The Conjuror', (Short Text); Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism, (Full Catalogue); Martin, The Last Judgement, (Full Catalogue and Illustrated Companion).
Industry:Art history
Generally associated with the 1960s and the mind-expanding drug LSD. There are many earlier examples of artists taking drugs in order to heighten their awareness and enlarge their mental vision, but it was the hallucinatory effects of LSD that had such a powerful effect on artists. Day-glo and anti-naturalistic in colour, Psychedelic art often contained swirling patterns, erotic imagery and hidden messages, all aiming to refer to the changing states of consciousness while under the influence of the drug. Much of the art grew out of the hippy community in San Francisco, in particular the artists Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin and Alton Kelley who were commissioned by the rock promoter Bill Graham to produce posters for the bands The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and The Big Brother Holding Company.
Industry:Art history
Movement founded by Edouard Jeanneret (better known as the modern architect Le Corbusier) and Amédée Ozenfant. They set out the theory of Purism in their book Après le Cubisme (After Cubism) published in 1918. They criticised the fragmentation of the object in Cubism and the way in which Cubism had become, in their view, decorative by that time. Instead they proposed a kind of painting in which objects were represented as powerful basic forms stripped of detail. A crucial element of Purism was its embrace of technology and the machine and it aimed to give mechanical and industrial subject matter a timeless, classical quality. References to ancient Greek architecture can be seen in the fluting (like a Greek column) on the bottles in Ozenfant's still life compositions. The most important other artist associated with Purism was Fernand Léger. Purism reached a climax in Le Corbusier's Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau (Pavilion of the New Spirit), built in 1925 for the International Exposition of Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. This was hung with work by the three principals and also included the Cubists, Gris and Lipschitz. After this the key relationship between Ozenfant and Le Corbusier broke up.
Industry:Art history
Readymade is the term used by the French artist Marcel Duchamp to describe works of art he made from manufactured objects. His earliest readymades included Bicycle Wheel of 1913, a wheel mounted on a wooden stool, and In Advance of the Broken Arm of 1915, a snow shovel inscribed with that title. In 1917 in New York, Duchamp made his most notorious readymade, Fountain, a men's urinal signed by the artist with a false name and exhibited placed on its back. Later readymades could be more elaborate and were referred to by Duchamp as assisted readymades. The theory behind the readymade was explained in an article, anonymous but almost certainly by Duchamp himself, in the May 1917 issue of the avant-garde magazine The Blind Man run by Duchamp and two friends: 'Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object. ' There are three important points here: first, that the choice of object is itself a creative act. Secondly, that by cancelling the 'useful' function of an object it becomes art. Thirdly, that the presentation and addition of a title to the object have given it 'a new thought', a new meaning. Duchamp's readymades also asserted the principle that what is art is defined by the artist. Duchamp was an influential figure in Dada and Surrealism, an important influence on Pop art, environments, assemblage, installation art, Conceptual art and much art of the 1990s such as YBA. (See also Postmodernism. )
Industry:Art history
Until the nineteenth century Western art was dominated by the academic theory of History painting and High art (see also Grand manner). Then, the development of Naturalism began to go hand in hand with increasing emphasis on realism of subject, meaning subjects outside the high art tradition. The term Realism was coined by the French novelist Champfleury in the 1840s and in art was exemplified in the work of his friend the painter Courbet. In practice Realist subject matter meant scenes of peasant and working class life, the life of the city streets, cafes and popular entertainments, and an increasing frankness in the treatment of the body and sexual subjects. The term generally implies a certain grittiness of choice of subject. Such subject matter combined with the new naturalism of treatment caused shock among the predominantly upper and middle class audiences for art. Realism is also applied as a stylistic term to forms of sharply focused almost photographic painting irrespective of subject matter, e. G. Early Pre-Raphaelite work such as Millais' Ophelia. (See also Modern Realism).
Industry:Art history
The Reformation was the reform of the Christian Church initiated by Martin Luther in Germany from about 1520 (when he was excommunicated) and resulting in the split of the church into Catholic and Protestant sects. In Britain the Reformation was brought about by Henry VIII. Protestantism was vehemently against all religious imagery and church decoration, and under Henry, and particularly his son Edward VI, the Reformation was followed by a comprehensive destruction, known as iconoclasm, of the rich medieval art and architecture of Britain. From then until the middle of the eighteenth century, art in Britain consisted almost exclusively of the purely secular form of portraiture. There were some exceptions (Post-Reformation).
Industry:Art history
The notoriously pleasure-loving Prince George, the future George IV, became Prince Regent in 1811 and then reigned from 1820 to 1830. The term Regency tends to be applied to the style of furniture and decorative art prevalent during the whole of this period. It is characterised by elements of classicism combined with Egyptian, Chinese and French Rococo influences. In architecture the range of the style is exemplified by Nash in the classicism of his terraced houses in Regents Park, London, and the oriental fantasy of his Brighton Pavilion built for the Prince. The great painter of the Regency (but not of the period overall, when Constable, Blake and Turner were all at their height) was Lawrence, Painter to the King from 1792, knighted 1815, who produced glittering but often technically deficient portraits of the leading figures of the day. More pungent views of the time found in cartoons and caricatures of Gillray, and Rowlandson, who also made erotic drawings for the Prince.
Industry:Art history
A relief is a wall-mounted sculpture in which the three-dimensional elements are raised from a flat base. Any three-dimensional element attached to a basically flat wall mounted work of art is said to be in relief or a relief element.
Industry:Art history
French word meaning rebirth, now used in English to describe the great revival of art that took place in Italy from about 1400 under the influence of the rediscovery of classical art and culture. In Italian, Rinascimento. Renaissance reached its peak (High Renaissance) in short period from about 1500-1530 in the work of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael. The work of Raphael may be seen as representing the purest form of the Renaissance style and he was held up as prime model in the art academies until mid nineteenth century when revolt began with e. G. Pre-Raphaelites, Realism, Naturalism, Impressionism. Up to then the Renaissance style underwent myriad successive transformations as in Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classicism, Romantic movement.
Industry:Art history
