Dada shocked the world between the years 1916 and 1922. Dada was not an art movement in the normal sense. It was a storm that broke over the art scene of the time, as the war upon the peoples. They consciously staged anti-art events. According to Max Ernst, it was the 'outbreak of anger and zest for life' at the same time. The indignation about the monstrous genocide during World War I was great and equally at the 'civilization that had brought it about.' Dada was an international uprising. The war radically changed the art scene in the vibrant cities …
What is more common than a pair of shoes? In a world where shoes have become an object of mass consumption, these accessories are now rid of any significance. The industry has accomplished its duty: producing a large quantity at a low price. But there was a time when the shoe symbolised the strength of the Roman legion, the power of the Medieval lords or the oppression of the Chinese woman. Its history is both vast and enthralling, as revealed by the author Marie-Josèphe Bossan. Supporting her analysis with an outstanding iconography, the author gives these commonplace objects a universal …
William Hogarth wrote his Analysis of Beauty in 1753, during the Age of Enlightenment. Through this captivating text, he tends to define the notion of beauty in painting and states that it is linked, per se, to the use of the serpentine lines in pictorial compositions. He calls it the line of beauty . His essay is thus dedicated to the study of the composition of paintings, depending on the correct use of the pictorial lines, light, colour, and the figure's attitudes. These timeless concepts have been applied by several artists through the centuries. Paintings from every period have here …
To speak about art is to evoke the hand of the creator who produced the work. It is to confer to its gestures the importance of thoughts and to explore their point of convergence on the canvas or the stone. With this text, Henri Focillon delivers one of the most beautiful odes to the hand and, simultaneously, to the talent of artists, studying Hokusai, Cézanne, and even Rodin. What do artists such as Rembrandt, David, Gauguin, and Hokusai have in common? A virtuosity of the hand, replies Henri Focillon. The viewer often forgets that behind the works, it is first …
Over the course of history, many wars have changed the political and cultural landscape of our world. While these events are defined by their upheaval and violence, they frequently contribute to the formation of the identity of entire generations or groups of people, and thus have significant cultural effects. Despite the physical and emotional destruction that occurs during these turbulent periods, they have inspired prolific artistic creation. In the wake of traumatic events over the centuries, a myriad of artists have produced works that immortalise the most dramatic moments of these wars in order to establish them in history forever. …
In the arts, Neoclassicism is a historical tradition or aesthetic attitude based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. The movement started around the 18th-century, age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th-century The general credo associated with the aesthetic attitude of Classicism was that art had to be rational and therefore morally better. Neoclassicists also believed that art should be cerebral, not sensual and therefore characterised by clarity of form, sober colours and shallow space. It was a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and a desire to return to the perceived ""purity"" …
Greek art, at the very moment that it was breaking up in depth, was scattering over the whole material surface of Hellenic antiquity. After the movement of concentration that had brought to Athens all the forces of Hellenism, a movement of dispersal began, which was to carry from Athens to southern Italy, to Sicily, to Cyrenaica, Egypt, the Islands, and Asia Minor the passion and, unfortunately, the mania, for beautiful things—in default of creative genius. Dilettantism and the diffusion of taste multiply and at the same time weaken talent. It is the Hellenistic period, perhaps the richest in artists and …
Egyptian art is perhaps the most impersonal that exists. The artist effaces himself. But he has such an innate sense of life, a sense so directly moved and so limpid that everything of life which he describes seems defi ned by that sense, to issue from the natural gesture, from the exact attitude, in which one no longer sees stiffness. His impersonality resembles that of the trees bowing in the wind with a single movement and without resistance, or that of the water which wrinkles into equal circles all moving in the same direction. From afar, Egyptian art seems changeless …
Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, as shown by the diversity of his artistic interests as well as his awareness of the social and political events of this time. He developed a number of painting techniques which were afterwards used by several generations of artists. His somewhat mannered style and spending palette are easily recognized in numerous portraits of monarchs, cardinals, courtiers and their ladies, religious reformers, humanists and philosophers. A part of the Great Painters Collection, translated from the Russian by Paul Williams. 109 full color plates and numerous black and white and …
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Dürer became renowned for his mastery of various mediums, including painting, printmaking, and wood-cutting. Throughout his life, Dürer produced a vast array of works that demonstrated his technical skill and innovative vision. His art often incorporated religious and classical themes, and his use of perspective and realism helped to establish new standards in European art. Beyond his artistic achievements, Dürer was also a prolific writer and thinker. His treatises on geometry, human proportion, and the theory of perspective remain …
The 20th century was a revolutionary period in art history. In the span of a few short years, Modernism exploded into being, disrupting centuries of classical figurative tradition to create something entirely new. This astoundingly thorough survey of art's modern era showcases all of the key artistic movements of the 20th century, from Fauvism to Pop Art, featuring illustrative examples of some of the most renowned works of the era along with illuminating companion essays by expert critics and art historians. A vivid window into the collective psyche of the modern world's great artists, Art of the 20th Century is …
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