- Industry: Art history
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During America's Great Depression of the 1930s and 1940s, photographers were employed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the rural poverty and exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant labourers in an attempt to garner support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The photographs were distributed free of charge to newspapers across the country and brought the plight of displaced farming communities to the public's attention. The most famous images were made by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, whose black-and-white stills of starving fruit-pickers in California became iconic symbols of the Great Depression.
Industry:Art history
An organisation founded in 1936 to promote the appreciation of abstract art in the United States. It held its first annual exhibition in April 1937. Early members included Josef Albers, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock and David Smith.
Industry:Art history
Coined by curator Nicolas Bourriaud on the occasion of the Tate Triennial 2009, Altermodern is an in-progress redefinition of modernity in the era of globalisation, which focuses on cultural translations and time-space crossings. Against cultural standardisation and massification but also opposed to nationalisms and cultural relativism, Altermodern artists position themselves within the world's cultural gaps. Cultural translation, mental nomadism and format crossing are the main principles of Altermodern art. Viewing time as a multiplicity rather than as a linear progress, the Altermodern artist navigates history as well as all the planetary time zones producing links between signs faraway from each other. Altermodern is 'docufictional' in that it explores the past and the present to create original paths where boundaries between fiction and documentary are blurred. Formally speaking, it favours processes and dynamic forms to one-dimensional single objects and trajectories to static masses.
Industry:Art history
Painting placed on or behind the altar of a Christian church as a focus for worship. Usually depicts scenes from the life of Christ, especially the Crucifixion, or from the life of the Virgin Mary. Altarpieces are often in two or three panels (diptychs and triptychs) with the panels showing separate but related scenes. Modern artists have sometimes adopted these formats for non-religious works, either for the increased narrative scope they offer or to add a sense of spiritual weight to subjects dealing with the major issues of human life, or both.
Industry:Art history
In art, a composition in which all the elements are designed to symbolise or illustrate some general idea such as life, death, love, virtue, faith, justice, prudence and so on.
Industry:Art history
A fine-grained marble-like variety of gypsum, alabaster is a soft stone often white or translucent.
Industry:Art history
The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, founded in Moscow in 1922, depicted everyday life among the working people of Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution in a realistic, documentary manner. Opposed to the non-realist innovations of the avant-garde, the association quickly became the most influential artistic group in Soviet Russia. In 1928 it was renamed the Association of Artists of the Revolution (AkhR) and in the following year established the journal Art of the Masses. Though abolished in 1932, the association was an influential precursor of Socialist Realism.
Industry:Art history
The airbrush was invented in the late nineteenth century, but it was not until the mid twentieth century that it became a popular tool in painting. It is a small, hand-held instrument connected to a canister of compressed air that sprays paint in a controlled way. Pioneers of airbrushing were the graphic illustrators George Petty and Alberto Vargas (or Varga) in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, Pop artist James Rosenquist used it to evoke the qualities of advertising. In Britain, the artist Barrie Cook became one of the leading practioners to use airbrushing. Today, it is the sci-fi artist H. K. Giger who is most commonly associated with the medium. There is also an airbrushing computer program, invented in the early 1980s, which creates a similar effect in a digital format.
Industry:Art history
The term Agit-prop is a contraction of the Russian words 'agitatsiia' and 'propaganda' in the title of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda set up in 1920 by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. From then on it was an omnipresent activity in the Soviet Union. Intended to control and promote the ideological conditioning of the masses, it took many forms such as palaces of culture, Agit-prop trains and cars covered with slogans and posters, poster campaigns, and countless agitation centres, or 'agitpunkts'. Books and libraries also played an important role in the Agit-prop enterprise. In the early years avant-garde artists particularly those associated with the Constructivists contributed to Agit-prop manifestations, particularly poster designs. Today the term has come to refer to any cultural manifestation with an overtly political purpose.
Industry:Art history
Flourished in Britain 1870s, 1880s. Important equally in fine and applied arts. Critic Walter Hamilton published book The Aesthetic Movement in England 1882. Cult of pure beauty in art and design. Rallying cry 'art for art's sake', meaning art foregrounding the purely visual and sensual, free of practical, moral or narrative considerations. In painting exemplified by Whistler and Albert Moore and certain works by Leighton. Important influence of Japan especially on Whistler and Aesthetic design. In applied arts part of revolution in design initiated by William Morris with foundation of Morris &Co in 1862. From 1875 commercialised by Liberty store in London, which later also popularised Art Nouveau.
Industry:Art history
