- Industry: Art history
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From Italian term verismo, meaning realism in its sense of gritty subject matter. Was originally applied around 1900 to the violent melodramatic operas of Puccini and Mascagni. In painting also has come to mean realism in its modern sense of representing objects with a high degree of truth to appearances. See realism, modern realism, naturalism.
Industry:Art history
Blanket term referring to almost every aspect of British life and culture during Queen Victoria's long reign from 1837 to 1901. In relation to social behaviour, art and design however, it carries connotations of stuffiness, repressiveness and rigid devotion to tradition. In art specifically the term is perhaps exemplified in the genre painting which provides an extraordinary panorama of the life of the period, including Rural Naturalism and Social Realism, but Victorian genre perhaps particularly associated with the sentimental and reassuring work of Wilkie and his followers.
Industry:Art history
The introduction of video in the 1960s radically altered the progress of art. The most important aspect of video was that it was cheap and easy to make, enabling artists to record and document their performances easily. This put less pressure on where their art was situated giving them freedom outside the gallery. One of the early pioneers of video art was Bruce Nauman who used video to reveal the hidden creative processes of the artist by filming himself in his studio. As video technology became more sophisticated, the art evolved from real-time, grainy, black and white recordings to the present day emphasis on large-scale installations in colour. Bill Viola's multi-screened works are theatrical and often have a narrative; and Gillian Wearing uses a documentary style to make art about the hidden aspects of society.
Industry:Art history
The computer scientist Jaron Lanier popularised the term virtual reality in the early 1980s to describe a technology that enables a person to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it based on a real or an imagined place. Virtual reality environments are usually visual experiences, displayed on computer screens or through special stereoscopic displays. Some simulations include additional sensory information such as sound through speakers or headphones. Explorations into virtual reality by artists began in a relatively modest way; in 2002 the duo Langlands and Bell created a virtual reality tour of Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Afghanistan and audiences were invited to navigate the building using a joystick. With the introduction of Second Life on the internet, artists are now installing galleries and staging virtual exhibitions in the alternative virtual world. The Dutch team Art Tower stage exhibitions and sell art in Second Life and Cao Fei, who represented China at the 2007 Venice Biennale reproduced her exhibition in the Chinese pavilion in Second Life.
Industry:Art history
A large, glazed cabinet used for displaying art objects. Often used in museums, the vitrine was appropriated by artists like Joseph Cornell in the 1950s and Joseph Beuys in the mid 1960s to display unusual materials they invested with spiritual or personal significance. Other artists who have used vitrines in their work include the American artist Jeff Koons and the British sculptor Rebecca Warren.
Industry:Art history
In Britain official schemes were established for artists to record both the First and Second World Wars. During the First World War, two main streams of activity produced official art. The Imperial War Museum, established by Act of Parliament in 1917, was charged with collecting all kinds of material documenting the war, including art. Meanwhile, the government was also commissioning and purchasing art to create a record of and a memorial to the war through paintings commissioned from the best and, on occasion, the most avant-garde, British artists of the day. These included Percy Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash, CRW Nevinson, John Singer Sargent, Stanley Spencer and Sir William Orpen. At the end of the war, these collections were combined at the Imperial War Museum. During the Second World War a more structured approach to official picture collecting was taken, when the War Artists Advisory Committee, chaired by Sir Kenneth Clark, was established. As in the previous war, the pictures collected were exhibited in London and in shows touring nationally and internationally. In 1946 one third of the collection was allocated to the Imperial War Museum and the rest was distributed to museums and galleries across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Over 300 artists were involved, including John Piper, Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer on the home front, and Anthony Gross, Edward Bawden and Edward Ardizzone overseas. Much of the work produced went beyond documentation into the realm of art and the Imperial War Museum art gallery is well worth a visit. The Museum continues to commission war artists to record wars in which Britain is involved.
Industry:Art history
Watercolour is a medium or work of art made with paint consisting of fine pigment particles suspended in an aqueous binder which usually consists of gum, glucose, glycerine and wetting agents, applied to paper. As watercolour is semi-transparent, the white of the paper give a natural luminosity to the washes of colour. White areas of the image often are merely left unpainted to expose the paper. Watercolours are sold as cakes of dry paint or as liquid in tubes, to which water is added. The paint can be applied in various techniques such as wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry to obtain different effects.
Industry:Art history
An image or mark in a sheet of paper visible when viewed by transmitted light. It is created using a pattern of wire sewn into the mould on which the sheet of pulp is dried; the paper which settles above the wires is thinner, and so more translucent. The image usually represents the papermaker's trademark design or logo, sometimes with a name, initials or date. Although more common in historical papers (handmade) modern specialist printmaking papers often contain a watermark.
Industry:Art history
The process of joining two pieces of metal by softening or melting both surfaces to be joined by the application of heat.
Industry:Art history
A printmaking method distinct from woodcut in that the line is incised into the woodblock, rather than the background being cut away to leave a line in relief. So it is an intaglio method. Wood engraving is usually done on the end grain of a block of boxwood, which is very hard, and so extremely fine detail is possible. Wood engraving became widely used in the nineteenth century as a method of reproducing pictures in books, newspapers and journals before the invention of photo-mechanical methods of reproduction, but was also occasionally used by artists, such as Edward Calvert, as an original printmaking medium.
Industry:Art history
