Public art. At the turn of the millennium, public art was an established global art genre with its own professional and critical discourse, as well as constituencies of interest and patronage independent of mainstream contemporary art.
Art criticism has been prodigious regarding public art’s role in the ‘beautification’ of otherwise neglected social space or in influencing urban development. Op art. De Stijl. Ukiyo-e. Post-Impressionism. Italian Renaissance. Neoclassicism. Term coined in the 1880s to denote the last stage of the classical tradition in architecture, sculpture, painting and the decorative arts.
Conceptual art. Term applied to work produced from the mid-1960s that either markedly de-emphasized or entirely eliminated a perceptual encounter with unique objects in favour of an engagement with ideas.
Although Henry Flynt of the fluxus group had designated his performance pieces ‘concept art’ as early as 1961 and Edward Kienholz had begun to devise ‘concept tableaux’ in 1963, the term first achieved public prominence in defining a distinct art form in an article published by Sol LeWitt in 1967. Only loosely definable as a movement, it emerged more or less simultaneously in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia and had repercussions on more conventional spheres of artistic production spawning artists’ books as a separate category and contributing substantially to the acceptance of photographs, musical scores, architectural drawings, and performance art on an equal footing with painting and sculpture.
Rococo. Geometric abstraction. Abstract expressionism. Term applied to a movement in American painting that flourished in the 1940s and 1950s, sometimes referred to as the New York School or, very narrowly, as action planning, although it was first coined in relation to the work of Vasily Kandinsky in 1929.
The works of the generation of artists active in New York from the 1940s and regarded as Abstract Expressionists resist definition as a cohesive style; they range from Barnett Newman’’s unbroken fields of colour to Willem de Kooning’s violent handling of the figure. They were linked by a concern with varying degrees of abstraction used to convey strong emotional or expressive content. Futurism. Pop art. International movement in painting, sculpture and printmaking.
The term originated in the mid-1950s at the ICA, London, in the discussions held by the Independent Group concerning the artefacts of popular culture. This small group included the artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi as well as architects and critics. Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990), the critic who first used the term in print in 1958, conceived of Pop art as the lower end of a popular-art to fine-art continuum, encompassing such forms as advertising, science-fiction illustration and automobile styling. Hamilton defined Pop in 1957 as: ‘Popular (designed for a mass audience); Transient (short term solution); Expendable (easily forgotten); Low Cost; Mass Produced; Young (aimed at Youth); Witty; Sexy; Gimmicky; Glamorous; and Big Business’.
Classicism. Term referring to a web of ideas, attitudes and traditions derived from but not wholly dependent on a respect for and a close study of the literary and/or artistic activities of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The aim of classicism, in all media, has been to construct an ideal vision and version of human experience that should inspire and instruct by its nobility, authority, rationality and truth (of which beauty may be considered a visible manifestation), and to provide convincing models for imitation. Romanesque art. Street art. Art Deco. Folk art. Term used broadly to describe those arts that exist outside the received canons of taste established by or on behalf of the leaders of a given society.
Implicit in such a definition is the existence of a society that is sufficiently complex to permit more than one level of cultural activity to thrive. The art of the élite may be dominant, but it is usually a minority aesthetic. In countries or regions that have at some time formed part of larger political entities, the élite culture may have dwindled while the folk culture has developed as a symbol of nationalism. Folk art exists in clearly defined geographical regions among peoples with shared characteristics such as language or religion.
Tradition usually provides some component, not only in terms of content, subject-matter or use but also in structure, craft techniques, tools and materials. Expressionism. International movement in art and architecture, which flourished between c. 1905 and c. 1920, especially in Germany.
It also extended to literature, music, dance and theatre. The term was originally applied more widely to various avant-garde movements: for example it was adopted as an alternative to the use of ‘Post-Impressionism’ by Roger Fry in exhibitions in London in 1910 and 1912. It was also used contemporaneously in Scandinavia and Germany, being gradually confined to the specific groups of artists and architects to which it is now applied. Art Nouveau. Cubism. Romanticism. Baroque. Impressionism. Surrealism. Contemporary art. Modern art.