Art Knowledge Network

Art Terms - Background

The part of a picture or scene that appears to be farthest away from the viewer.

A sample Baroque-period painting

Art Terms - Baroque

The art style or art movement of the Counter-Reformation in the seventeenth century. Although some features appear in Dutch art, the Baroque style was limited mainly to Catholic countries. It is a style in which painters, sculptors, and architects sought emotion, movement, and variety in their works. Caravaggio is one of the best known artists of the Baroque period.

The following was shared by “rubenspaintings.com”…much appreciated! Readers, please remember we welcome and credit all contributions - this isn’t limited to members of the network only!

“Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577 into a family exiled from their native Antwerp due to the father’s Calvinist beliefs.

Following his father’s death the family was able to return to Antwerp, and after converting to Catholicism (along with the rest of the family) the 14 year old Rubens joined the household of a Flemish princess as a page. He there began studying art under a succession of teachers including Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Nort and Otto Venius.

Peter Paul Rubens proved to be a precocious talent, and at the young age of 21 was accepted at the rank of Master Painter into the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke.

Like many artists of his time Rubens went to Italy, the long-time center of the art world, where he drew inspiration from many of the famous works to be found there. He established himself as an artist in his own right, being commissioned to do a variety or work – unusual for a foreigner at the time – and remained in Italy until his mother’s death in 1608, when he returned to his native Antwerp.

The "Rubenesque" Andromeda

There, he was regarded as being the foremost Flanders painter and as a result was appointed court painter for the Austrian archduke  Albert and his Spanish wife Isabella. The high demand for Rubens artwork lead him to set up his own workshop where assistants did much of the work for him, with Rubens doing the initial sketch and finishing touches. (The Arteze opinion is that this is pure genius…”you do the work, I get the accolades and the money!”)

His fame continued to grow and he acted as an ambassador of sorts, traveling to France amongst other places. Only upon his marriage to Helene Fourment in 1630 did he settle permanently in Antwerp, living at Castle Steen, where he continued to accept commissions as well as produce paintings for himself. He died of gout on May 30, 1640, and was interned in Saint Jacob’s church.”

There is plenty more information over at their site. Some of you might remember that Rubens was in the news a few months back. From the Independent newspaper -

“Less than a month after Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents sold for a record £49.5m at Sotheby’s in London, questions have been raised about whether it is by the Flemish master after all.

Scientific dating of the picture suggests that it may have been painted years after the dates 1609 to 1611 ascribed to it by art historians in the auction house’s sales catalogue.

If this were the case, the painting’s attribution would be cast into doubt, as its purist classical style is radically different from the work Rubens is known to have been producing by 1615.” Interesting stuff!

Art Nouveau - Klimt Detail

Art Terms - Art Nouveau

French for “The New Art.” An international art movement and style of decoration and architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, characterized particularly by the curvilinear depiction of leaves and flowers, often in the form of vines. Gustav Klimt and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are two of the better known Art Nouveau artists.

Thanks for the contribution from our friends at Ocean’s Bridge!

A collection of Impressionist paintings

Art Terms - Art movement

An artistic style or tendency seen in the intentions or works of a number of artists, because there is a striking similarity among the techniques, philosophy or goals they have embraced, or in the attitudes which they espouse in a (more or less) organized effort. Examples include Impressionism, Realism, Expressionism, Renaissance and Surrealism (like much of Dali’s work).

For the love of God by Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst recently became the richest living artist on the planet. His piece For the Love of God, 2007 which is a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with diamonds recently sold for 50 million pounds to an investment consortium. This week he will be auctioning hundreds of new works at Sotheby’s, and… bypassing the galleries, Damien hopes his ‘greatest hits’ as he calls it, to raise somewhere in the vicinity of 65 million pounds. He remains adamant however that money takes second place to the art itself.

Much in the same way the famous Chinese artist Yue Minjun, whilst using political themes as the catalyst for his paintings (see ‘Execution’) also uses the compositions and themes from past classical artists such as Vermeer and Manet, Damien, uses his theme of death whilst, (as he confesses) recreating the modern works of Francis Bacon in his Sculptures. Is it then that contemporary art is lacking in new ideas or that the postmodern artist, by definition, is purely challenging what came before in a new form?

Firstly, if the artist was lacking in new ideas why pursue time and effort into creating superficial phony pieces of so called art? And if the latter, why are the artists’ own commentaries on their works of art so vague and uninformative. Perhaps as Jackson Pollock once said, ‘When looking at a bed of roses, do you try and wonder what it means, or do you simply enjoy the fact that it is there?’ Isn’t it just this point that enables the artist to create pretty much anything in the name of art? One might argue that what makes artists successful today is access to a good marketing team and publicists that can enable new works to be hyped into the public consciousness, thus creating a celebrity status of the artist in which everything they touch/create turns to gold with little explanation of the concepts behind the works needed. No wonder people remain skeptical. As art critic Richard Hughes suggests, ‘The works, are now like film stars, while the galleries have been reduced to the level of the limousines used to convey them to people’ Therefore, once art becomes a public spectacle the true meaning is lost.

Whatever your stance on today’s contemporary art, one must acknowledge that new art is created first then marketed, it particularly helps to have someone like Charles Saatchi on your side. The more controversial nature of today’s contemporary art only serves to fund more public interest into such pieces as for example Damien’s ‘For the Love of God, 2007’ and with such celebrity status in art comes perceived value in meaning, or cash or both…

(Thank you to contributor Dan Groves for the article. It’s also worth noting that on the September 16th auction Hirst’s collection of work sold for over 70 million pounds)

Art Terms - Avant-garde

French for vanguard. Artists and their work which stand in the forefront of a movement or of new ideas, often in opposition to established ideas and traditions.

Part of our series of articles on paintings that are regarded as being important. Here is one of our Arteze Art Knowledge Network contributors’ picks.

Edward Hopper- Nighthawks

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks

This most famous of Hopper’s pieces of work was apparently painted just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. A melancholic time, reflected in the depiction of an empty street. This painting has a very solitary and lonely feeling to it.

“Nighthawk” may be Hopper’s take on the term “Night Owl”, used to describe someone who stays up especially late. The scene was inspired by a diner (since demolished) in Greenwich Village, Hopper’s home neighborhood in Manhattan. The now-vacant lot is known as Mulry Square, at the intersection of Seventh Avenue South, Greenwich Avenue, and West 11th Street.

Sister Wendy, the nun and incongruous art critic, said of the piece: “Apparently, there was a period when every college dormitory in the country had on its walls a poster of Hopper’s Nighthawks; it had become an icon.”

Any two or more colors that are next to each other on the color wheel and are closely related. For example, blue, blue-green, and green all have the color blue in common.

From our friends over at Bierstadtpainting.com…cheers guys!

“Albert Bierstadt paintings came to be considered among of the most successful of American art out of his contemporaries, even though he was born abroad, near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1830, and not in the United States.  He did arrive in New Bedford, Massachusetts shortly after his birth, but returned to Germany in 1853 to begin his artistic training.  Four years later Albert Bierstadt oil paintings had developed a consistent style which was painstakingly detailed while simultaneously very light, and became an early example of the American Romantic movement in art.

The paintings of Bierstadt were very popular until roughly the 1880’s when tastes changed and his work began to be considered “old-fashioned”, and the Romantic style of Albert Bierstadt’s artwork began to fall out of favor.

The subject matter of the paintings of Albert Bierstadt was greatly influenced by the events occurring in America during the time he was beginning his career.  America’s westward expansion was at the forefront of many peoples’ minds, and the scenery that started to emerge in the oil paintings of Albert Bierstadt were images of the grandiose land formations and mountain ranges of what was then considered the greatly unexplored western frontier.  The majestic natural settings often overshadowed his mediocrity in portraying an intensity of emotion in his works.  Because he painted such incredible views of nature, many people ignored the fact that Bierstadt’s work was often uninspired, with the exception of his superb choice of subject.  Today’s art critics tend to agree that the early sketches of Albert Bierstadt are often the more accomplished in terms of artistic skill, despite the fact that at the height of his career, the large-scale canvas paintings were being sold for prices as high as $35,000.  The huge scale of some of the landscapes which depicted the American West became symbolic representations of manifest destiny, a prominent philosophy of the time that justified the taming of the “wild” west by settlers.

A classic example of Bierstadt's work

Some of the most famous paintings are the Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Sierra Nevada in California, Dogwood, Hetch Hetchie Canyon, and Nevada Falls.  Even today, many individuals hold a great interest in the artwork of Albert Bierstadt, one of the most famous being Atlanta’s Ted Turner, the Vice Chairman of Time Warner, Inc.  Currently, the artist’s work can be found in collections around the United States, the largest of which is located in Athens, Georgia at the University of Georgia.  However, the artwork of Albert Bierstadt can also be found in Boston, Massachesetts, Buffalo, New York, at Cornell University, and at the National Gallery among many other places primarily in the Eastern United States.”

Art Terms - Abstract Art

Imagery which departs from representational accuracy, to a variable range of possible degrees. A number of different art movements make use of abstract imagery.