ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS:
From the second to the fifteenth century medieval illuminated manuscript art included Christian, Byzantine, Barbarian, Carolingian, Romanesque and Gothic types.
Stokstad, M. (1986). Medieval art (1st ed.). Harper & Row.
Medieval Illuminated manuscripts are the most common works of art that survived Medieval art.
Early illuminated manuscripts were decorated religious texts. Illuminated manuscripts during the Romanesque were produced in England and in France during the Gothic. Flanders produced illuminated manuscripts by the end of the fourteenth century.
Illumiated manuscripts produced religious, and secular texts such as: romance, literary, historical and student texts.
Their are only isolated examples of Christian and Byzantine illuminated manuscripts.The gold backgrounds in illuminated manuscripts was a Byzantine influence. The Barbarians prefered abstract art using color, line, gold, jewels, enamel, filigree, and geometric patterns into zoomorphic forms. Carlingian art developed a new script being their significant achievement. Romanesque illuminated manuscripts were strong, severe, somber, with hard drawing, deep colors such as dark brown, green, blue and purple. Gothic illuminated manuscripts worked the relationship of figures and narratives, used a reduced palette such as vermillion, carmine, azure, burnished gold, green and white and related the first initial to the spiky Gothic script extending letter corners into foliage bars, sharp, brittle, cusped shapes bearing a distinct relationship to the forms of nature that bined together text, ornament, initials and narrative illustration.
Illuminated manuscripts are the richest source about everyday life.
Weinstein, K. (1997). The art of medieval manuscripts. Laurel Glen Pub.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: MEDIEVAL ILLUMINATION ARTIST
The Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen by RENAISSANCE:
Renaissance art conveyed meaning through symbols such as objects and their meanings, emblems and abbreviations, color, light and shade, perspective, proportion, sacred geometry, communicating the where and why, interest in using and having knowledge of the old classical culture and civilization and the renaissance rebirth, using nature as an inspiration, body proportions and portraying emotions, gestures and body language, patronage, male and female, form and function, telling stories and making statements, layering of meaning, men and angels, saints, virtues and vices and gods and goddesses.
Stemp, R. (2006). The secret language of the renaissance : decoding the hidden symbolism of italian art. Duncan Baird.
MANNERISM:
Mannerism is a style that emerged immediately after the High Renaissance in Italy and lasted from about 1520 to 1580. It might best be thought of as both a reaction to, and an extension of, the perfection and repose of the High Renaissance style. Clarity of form, classical repose, and a balance of naturalism and idealism had reached a pitch that was hard to improve. A younger generation of artists began to make works that dramatized aspects of classicism in ways that were sometimes surprising and disturbing. Compositions became more disorganized, oppositions of forms and colors more strident, and certain exaggerations, such as the elongation of forms, came to the fore. The overall effect, in paintings by artists is somewhat enervated, frenetic, and uncomfortable. The style was developed into something more ornate and more literary as the century developed, with painters taking on more complex iconography to appeal to their educated clientele. Composition breaks away from the repose of High Renaissance models by introducing frenetic movement and sweeping lines. Figures are elongated unnaturally and postures are somewhat forced. Distortion of some of the figures is combined with highly finished modeling and unnatural gestures to give a curiously artificial quality to the image.
Parks, J. A. (2015). Universal principles of art : 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing, and practicing art. Rockport.
Universal principles of art : 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing, and practicing art by SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA:: LATE RENAISSANCE ARTIST
Sofonisba Anguissola: the First Great Woman Artists of the Renaissance by Ilya Sandra Perlingieri
ISBN: 9780847815449
Publication Date: 1992
Traces the life of the Italian artist who was an apprentice to Michelangelo and court painter to King Philip II of Spain, and discusses her major paintings. Anguissola was erased from the annals of art history for four centuries, but Perlingieri's exhaustive archival research reestablishes her as a force in the creation of 16th-century art. Her resurrection is cause for rejoicing, but it also forces us to consider the injustice of the loss of a master who painted for over 80 years. Born into nobility, the artist benefited from astute parenting and a comprehensive education that included study under Campi, Gatti, and, briefly, Michelangelo. Both Mannerist and High Renaissance influences penetrate her impressive body of work. Perlingieri unleashes the essential truth of a female painter who flourished despite antagonism from patriarchal society, thoroughly underscoring Anguissola's characteristic technique and style in rendering emotion and anatomy. The deft descriptions of period costumes mirror the accuracy and seriousness with which Anguissola painted.
LAVINIA FONTANA: MANNERIST ARIST
Lavinia Fontana's mythological paintings : art, beauty, and wisdom by BAROQUE:
Began in the 1580s and lasted until 1750 as an recoil from the stylizations of Mannerist art.
Decadent with emphasis on ornamentation. Rhetorical and theatrical appealing to the senses and invoking emotive responses from viewers. Transient moments were captured on canvas, emphasis on visual realism and psychological content, dissolution of the boundary of art from spectators, integrate the real and the fictive, and the use of light as both a tool for modeling the various forms and to indicate the presence of the supernatural became the main components of the Baroque visual vocabulary.
A rise in the status of subjects occurred, specifically portraiture, landscape, genre painting (scenes from everyday life), and still life.
Zirpolo, L. H. (2018). Historical dictionary of baroque art and architecture (Second, Ser. Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts). Rowman & Littlefield.
ROCOCO:
Between 1700 and 1789. Developed as a playful and interactive contrast to the Baroque grandeur and Classical solemnity
Distinguished by asymmetry, curving and sinuous line and a preponderance of natural motifs and a serious interest in pleasure as themes in art and qualities of artistic expression. Shifting away from narratives conveying heroic virtues to themes of love and leisure. Figure painting used painterly brushstrokes, softness of palette, and delicate color harmonies. Compositional space is often flattened out in paintings, with complex figural poses creating surface patterns in cooperation with stage-like landscape or architectural settings.
Fundamental qualities thirst for novelty, boundless capacity for free invention, and its inclination toward abstraction. Best understood as an inventive rebellion against received artistic conventions and a refusal to be limited by the authority of the past.
The success of art relied upon its appeal to sensation. The subjective reception of a work of art based upon the feeling and emotion claimed to be important as its objective relationship to narrative traditions of representation and rules of judgment. This challenge was not an outright rejection of classical sources and inherited traditions but rather generative, creative play with the conventional forms and themes of representation.
The viewer’s acknowledgement of the creative act and the artfulness of an image, object, or building and its decoration is a defining characteristic. Engagement with the manners and mores of its intended audiences. Although the majority of patrons and artists held on to the use of historical subject matter.
Milam, J. D. (2011). Historical dictionary of rococo art (Ser. Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts). Scarecrow Press.
NEOCLASSICISM:
Revival of classical art beginning in the 1750s and lingering through to the 1870s.
Simultaneously historical and modern, conservative and progressive, traditional and new.
Beginning in the middle of the 18th century, a series of events helped precipitate a new and fuller examination of classicism, which came to be viewed as a style and philosophy that could offer a sense of purpose and a dignity to art consistent with the new “enlightened” thinking of the era. Favored a linear approach to style. Politicized style of art with inspiring sentiments of high moral character and including political ideals as party loyalty, unity, truthfulness, and patriotism.
The French Académie des Beaux-Arts was the leader in the development of academic curriculum and aesthetics, and it was there that neoclassicism was born. Favored design over color, consistent with the style of neoclassicism. Students also had classes in geometry, perspective, anatomy, poetry, history, and geography. History painting was the “grand genre” due to its inclusion of both religious images and scenes that glorified the monarchy. Portraiture was next in importance because of its aristocratic associations, and then genre scenes such as domestic interiors, still-life paintings, and landscapes. This scale of values was governed by the idea that man was central in the world, and the quality most prized in art was imagination, a quality that have greater emphasis to the intellectual rather than to the manual aspects of the profession. Imagination was considered to be best expressed in historical painting because it required an understanding of history.
Palmer, A. L. (2011). Historical dictionary of neoclassical art and architecture (Ser. Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts, no. 48). Scarecrow Press.
ANTEMISIA GENTILESCH: BAROQUE ARTIST
Artemisia Gentileschi by 
I Know What I Am by JUDITH LEYSTER: BAROQUE ARTIST
Judith Leyster by ADELAIDE LABILLE-GUIARD: ROCOCO TO NEOCLASSICISM ARTIST
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard by ELISABETH LOUISE VIGEE-BEBRUN: HIGH ROCOCO AND NEOCLASSISM ARTIST
Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun by ROMANTICISM
Championed art driven by emotions and generated from the personality, feelings, and imagination of the artist. Interested in the heightened emotions to be experienced in the presence of untamed nature: fear, awe, and transcendental wonder. Opposed rules and measurement and embraced the free reign of the artist’s spirit. Prized originality and spontaneity and cultivated the notion of the artistic genius, The ideal of an artist working alone and producing extraordinary and revolutionary work.
Fluid and dynamic compositions favoring motion rather than repose. Direct brushing and fast execution generated from spontaneous energy. Powerful lighting, strong contrast, and active movements of figures.
Parks, J. A. (2015). Universal principles of art : 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing, and practicing art. Rockport.
MARIE ADELAIDE (ADELA) KINDT: ROMANTICISM ARTIST
Born in Brussels, Belgium.
Although trained as a neoclassicist, Adele Kindt produced work informed by Romanticism.
Her early works included many historical scenes. Her Épisode des journées de septembre 1830, portraying a scene from the Belgian Revolution of 1830, is considered her masterpiece and is on display in the Brussels city museum on the Grand-Place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A8le_Kindt
REALISM
Powerful antidote to the Romantic movement. Artwork presents a neutral and inclusive view of the world. Shows the world as it actually is. The advent of photography gave a new authority to the idea of a neutrally “real” image of the world.
Parks, J. A. (2015). Universal principles of art : 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing, and practicing art. Rockport.
ROSA BONHEUR: REALISM ARTIST
https://www.amazon.com/Rosa-Bonheur-Masterpieces-Colour-Crastre/dp/B000859NN2
Rosa Bonheur was inimitable in the art of seizing the expression on the face of an animal. From the time that she began to understand, she heard art and nothing else discussed around her; her first uncertain steps were taken in her father’s studio, and her first playthings were a brush and a palette laden with colours. A serious and determined young girl might be seen in the halls of the Louvre, copying with desperate energy the works of the great masters. She was a painter of animals. The critics saw in her far more than a conscientious and gifted artist; they regarded her as the inspired interpreter of rural life.
Crastre François. (2013). Rosa bonheur masterpieces in colour series (Ser. Project gutenberg, 41939). Project Gutenberg.
PRE-RAPHAELITE
Oil painted thinly onto canvases primed with white, keeping the paint thin and liquid to allow the brilliant white ground to make its effect through the translucent paint layers. The painting method was exacting, with minute oil paint strokes with a watercolor brush. Adapted the use of pure color as a result of new artists' materials becoming available through chemical and industrial research. Plein air painting was adopted to be 'truth to nature' and required hours and days of labor in all types of conditions. A new technique working on a wet white background intended to produce an even more brilliant color. Theses techniques produced pictures so vivid, empowering us to see more than we expect, more color, more detail, more light
Prettejohn, E. (2000). The art of the pre-raphaelites. Princeton University Press.
Anna Blunden, Rosa Brett, Anna Mary Howitt, Elizabeth Siddal, Rebecca Solomon and Marie Spartali Stillman are Pre Raphaelite women artists that worked in a "fine art" style. They had a style of painting that encouraged imagination and expression enjoying greater freedom than their Royal Academy-style counterparts. In the content of Pre-Raphaelite painting there was a new respect for landscape painting, an invigorated religious art and a modern literary pantheon. Pre-Raphaelite women artists used nature, religion and literature to adapt Pre-Raphaelite style to suit their own needs. They sought inspiration in literary sources such as Romantic poets, Medieval ballads and contemporary writers, prepared book illustrations, brought technical expertise and colorful botanical attention to minute detail to the landscape and brought non-conformist and alternative beliefs on religious subjects.
Taylor, H. N. (2011). “Too individual an artist to be a mere echo”: Female Pre-Raphaelite artists as independent professionals. The British Art Journal, 12(3), 52–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41615243
ELIZABETH SIDDAL: PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTIST
Siddal became an artist in her own right and was the only woman to exhibit at an 1857 Pre-Raphaelite exhibition.
Elizabeth Siddal, Lady Clare, 1857
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Siddal
IMPRESSIONISM
Represented a seen as it appeared to the eye. Everyday reality was foregrounded and was engaging and attractive, Preferred leisure activities rather than worktime. Appealing sides of the country, sea and sky. There were no unusual motifs and matched public taste and social class of the artist.
Interested in the dynamic aspects of the real, in anything that spoke of speedy flux. The sense of change and movement was critical, including the change and movement of color and light. Were for more light and brighter color, grasped what effect color contrasts has on a painting, color of a thing changes according to its surroundings and the condition of light and shadows are of different colors. A stronger or brighter impact can be achieved by a color of dabs of various unmixed colors applied adjacently on a canvas, mixing optically only when they are registers by the onlooker's eye.
The image was an excerpted section of space and time, to be recorded in rapid sketches, the reality of the image and its open form, prompted those who looked at them to look and feel for themselves and the entire meaning and cultural significance of a picture was that it was a picture rather than anything else.
Walther, I. F., Walther, I. F., Bismarck, B. von, Feist, P. H., Bismarck, B. von, & Feist, P. H. (1996). Impressionist art, 1860-1920. Benedikt Taschen.
MARY CASSATT: IMPRESSIONISM ARTIST
Study redefines Mary Cassatt's status in the Parisian avant-garde and in American art, placing her work in the wider context of nineteenth-century feminism and art theory. Admired by Degas, who invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1877, Cassatt brought a New Women's perspective to the theater, drawing room, garden, and studio. Cassatt's studied Old Masters and had an interest in Manet's work, and greatly influenced the creation of American collections of French modernism. Cassatt's experimentation with etching and pastels from the late 1880s enabled her to represent women and children without sentiment, but with a deepening awareness of a complex psychological charge.
Pollock, G., Cassatt, M., & Cassatt, M. (1998). Mary cassatt : painter of modern women (Ser. World of art). Thames & Hudson.
Born in 1844 in Allegheny City, now part of Pittsburg, Mary Cassatt reached maturity in an era when the options open to most women were limited to marriage. Her passion for art overwhelmed the mores of the time and she dedicated her life to painting-European.
Costantino, M. (1995). Mary cassatt. Barnes & Noble.
BERTHA MORISOT: IMPRESSIONISM ARTIST
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was one of only a handful of women who exhibited both at the famed Paris Salon. and with the French Impressionists. Her work depicts the world of the Parisian bourgeoisie: their clothes, their life-styles, their surroundings, and their relationships. Over one hundred full-color paintings, graphic works, watercolors, and pastels are reproduced in this volume, and are accompanied by original commentaries that follow the artist's career from her training with Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot to her final work. Included in the volume is an essay that Morisot wrote about her nephew-in-law Paul Valéry in 1948, a seminal text that has never been included in his collected works, as well as extensive correspondence and sketchbooks held at the Musée Marmottan Monet, which have rarely been accessible.
Mathieu, M., & Musée Marmottan. (2012). Berthe morisot : 1841-1895. Éditions Hazan.
NATURALISM:
Naturalism began in late 1870"s and subsided by early 1890's. Rooted in themes drawn from both rustic and city life, this tendency was based on an objective rendering of facts and a highly standardized, impersonal attitude, They selected themes drawn from daily occurrences to convey "a slice of life," freezing time for posterity like a photograph. The successful rustic or urban Naturalist veered away from socially upsetting themes or subjects charged with radical implications. Combined photography with drawings, oil sketches and finished oil studies. Created a style that could be read at a glance and were accurate, objective reflections of the real world. Paintings were precise in every detail. Provided a descriptive reality. Canvases were transcription of nature recomposed and transformed by artistic temperaments and awareness of technological innovations such as photography.
Weisberg, G. P. (1992). Beyond impressionism : the naturalist impulse. H.N. Abrams.
MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF: NATURALISM ARTIST
Best-known works are The Meeting and In the Studio, a portrait of her fellow artists at work.
As a naturalism painter turned to the urban scene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Bashkirtseff
POST IMPRESSIONISM:
Post-Impressionism has only one meaning: ‘after Impressionism’. Post-Impressionism is not an art movement, nor an art style; it is a brief period at the end of the nineteenth century. It was the time of lone painters; only a very small number of them got together, and then only rarely. They didn’t share the same opinion about art, nature or painting style. They were all very different, some were bold in their style and used intense colors. They created their own exhibitions. The new Salon was a solution for everyone, because there was no jury and nobody was selecting works for the exhibition. Each painter could show whatever he wanted. The Independents proclaimed what became the significant achievement of the Post-Impressionism era.
Brodskai︠a︡ N. V. (2018). Impressionism and post-impressionism. Parkstone International. Retrieved September 20, 2023
EMILY CARR: POST IMPRESSIONIST ARTIST
Painted in the post impressionist manner during one phase of her career which gave her a "fresh seeing." For the first time she understood the distinction between what the eye sees out there "in nature" and the different kinds of meaning shapes take on when translated to a flat picture plane. She began to use a palette of light and broken color, employing contrasts in hue rather than tone; she also began a direct and often vigorous use of the brush, displaying a feeling for the substance of pigment and for flat pattern. Because it treated subjects as colored sensation rather than carriers of meaning or feeling. An Indian theme came into her work through her interest in the people. Her themes of sea and beach, light woods and deep forests and jungle and clearing appeared when she turned away from the Indian theme.
Shadbolt, D., Carr, E. 1871-1945, & Carr, E. (1988). The art of emily carr (1st pbk.). University of Washington Press.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Emily-Carr-Doris-Shadbolt/dp/0888944411
NEO IMPRESSIONISM
Used the dot method technique. The aim is to substitute optical mixing of pigments. Science had found that colors reached the eye in the form of light of differing wavelengths and were mixed in the eye to establish the color that corresponded to the object seen. If a painter juxtaposed tiny dots of unmixed primary colors in the right way, the eye would perceive theme as the desired color tone when looking from a certain distance and that tone would appear lighter than if it had been mixed in the conventional way, on the palette or canvas. For instance, blue and yellow dots would produce green. Furthermore the intensity of colors would be greater if the eye perceived them through simultaneous contrast., together with a context of different color. This procedure was called chromoluminarism or divisionism. The term that gained currency, and by which the technique is still known today as pointillism. A more historically colored term is Neo Impressionism.
Brodskai︠a︡ N. V. (2018). Impressionism and post-impressionism. Parkstone International. Retrieved September 20, 2023
BLANCHE-AUGUSTINE CAMUS: NEO IMPRESSIONIST ARTIST
French neo-impressionist painter, associated with the style of divisionism. Noted for her luminous landscapes and gardens of the south of France, often combined with graceful outdoor portraits of her family and friends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche-Augustine_Camus
NAIVE:
Self-taught artists have no academic artistic training. Self-taught artists have been categorized as popular, primitive, naive, folk, outsider, visionary and self-taught.
Russell, C., & Russell, C. (2001). Self-taught art : the culture and aesthetics of american vernacular art. University Press of Mississippi.
GRANDMA MOSES NAIVE ARTIST:
Paintings first came to public attention in 1940, when she was 80 years old. Her folk art, down-home personality, and background as a farmer and homemaker charmed the American public. She had completed over 1600 works of art and had established an international reputation. Presents 87 of Moses' most important works.
Kallir, J., Moses, Moses, Cardinal, R., National Museum of Women in the Arts (U.S.), Cardinal, R., & National Museum of Women in the Arts (U.S.). (2001). Grandma moses in the 21st century. Art Services International.
SYMBOLISM:
ideas of Symbolism dominated minds and were present in works of painters who were very different in their creative styles. At the end of the nineteenth century painters tied their work in with ideas, symbols, graphic system and the plots of symbolist literature. Amongst the symbolists there were those who created and expressed in the brightest way the new art style. The symbolist poet and critic Albert Aurier tried to put together the basic laws of symbolist art. Five elements stood out, all typical in literature as well as in painting. Three of them (idealism, the symbolic nature and subjectivity) formed the basis of the symbolist perception of the world. The last two (synthesism on a general meaning; and in a decorative aspect) involved a direct means of expression. Aurier said a painter-symbolist must simplify the tracing of symbols. Symbolists proclaimed the subjectivity of art.
Brodskai︠a︡ N. V. (2018). Impressionism and post-impressionism. Parkstone International. Retrieved September 20, 2023
AGNES PELTON: SYMBOLISM ARTIST
A visionary symbolist who depicted the spiritual reality she experienced in moments of meditative stillness. Art for her was a discipline through which she gave form to her vision of a higher consciousness within the universe. Using an abstract vocabulary of curvilinear, biomorphic forms and delicate, shimmering veils of light, she portrayed her awareness of a world that lay behind physical appearances—a world of benevolent, disembodied energies animating and protecting life.
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/agnes-pelton
FAUVISM:
Wanted to show how they felt about what they were painting. Used color as a way to express their emotions. Because the painted spontaneously the were called "Les Fauves," meaning "the wild beasts."
Characteristics are: bold, unnatural colors, flat, unrealistic space, quick, aggressive brushstrokes and a rough, unfinished look.
Raczka, B. (2009). Name that style : all about isms in art (Ser. Bob raczka's art adventures). Millbrook Press.
EMILIE CHARMY FAUVISM ARTIST:
Influenced by other artists such as Matisse, she integrated Fauvism techniques into her paintings. experiments with color, thickly applied paint and crude brushwork she produced a series of bold and technically innovative paintings".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_Charmy
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/emilie-charmy/
EXPRESSIONISM:
Students dissatisfied with conventional academic art training, organized informal life-drawing sessions using a young model, with short poses that they were only able to capture in quick, decisive, “courageous” lines, liberating them from the academic practices of drawing meticulously from a model in stiff, eternal poses, working from dirty old plaster casts, or copying slavishly from the Old Masters.
In painting, there were differences between individual artists’ work, the early canvases are often characterized by intense, non-naturalistic coloring and loose, broken brushwork.
Searched for collective “origins”, going back to the elusive “essence” of human creativity. Many of the idealized notions of directness, instinctiveness and authenticity at the core of Expressionist ideology are related to the Expressionists’ interest in the traces of “primitive” cultures.
There is an intricate connection between Expressionism and the art of the Middle Ages. In some ways, the Expressionists’ “rediscovery” of the medieval Gothic was related to the wider primitivist project, the search for what they imagined as “pure”, authentic, vital art. For many, the art of the Middle Ages possessed a powerful integrity. Its handcraft traditions and expressive, non-naturalistic forms, resonant of profound piety, were understood as the product of an intuitive tradition.
Bassie, A. (2008). Expressionism (Ser. Art of century ser). Parkstone International.
PAULA MODERSOHN BECKER: EXPRESSIONIST ARTISTS
German Expressionist painter of the late 19th and early 20th century. She is noted for the many self-portraits She is considered one of the most important representatives of early expressionism, producing more than 700 paintings and over 1000 drawings during her active painting life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Modersohn-Becker
Inspired by Egyptian mummy portraits, she began a series of self-portraits representing herself with large eyes and an enraptured, almost
suggestive glance.
The local farms and children of the Worpswede village in Germany were her models and she sought to simplify the portrait form. Color, was more important than the depiction, embodying the character of these people, who were marked by work, poverty and rugged landscape. She modelled her farmers and children in the same paste-like paints, avoiding any smoothness in her color, showing them with angular features, monumental, with austere expressions, but full of sensuality. She reflected the view people had of themselves, their strength, their inner greatness and their dignity. She was able to express great sensitivity and emotional depth.
The motif of mother and child achieves a quality of love, tenderness, and intimacy. The sense of emotion appears unsentimental, austere, and sincere. She masterfully understood how to transfer the essential physical and emotional part of a person into the painting, freeing it from all the surrounding ornamentation. She sought simplicity of form. In her diary, She wanted to give the intoxicating, the complete, the exciting to color, the power.
Eimert, D. (2016). Art of the 20th century (Ser. Art of the 20th century). Parkstone International.
ART NOUVEAU
Makes the decorative elements autonomous within the work of art attempting to liberate pure visual appeal from the restraint of meaning. What emerges most strongly is the artist's use of line. There is a stress on the decorative values of floral motifs, arabesque and whiplash lines or complex linear rhythms. The treatment of the different types of linear ornament renders them independent within the work. It is the content of the work of art which follows the dictates of the line.
Style shows a rectilinear, tightly composed interplay of straight horizontal and vertical lines and the organic dynamism of curvilinear form.
As a source of inspiration they turned to nature. Fine art was not a mere first hand copying of nature, but an independent world of imaginative creation where nature only supplied the raw material.
Line became delicate or aggressive, flowing, curving, undulating, rippling, dynamic.
Once nature has been reduced to essential lines, the artist could use them to design literally anything. Stems, leaves and petals could be twisted, elongated and curving. The lily, iris, convolvulus and poppy were favorite plant motifs, but sometimes they were abstracted or distorted so much that the original source of inspiration is no longer recognizable. The swan and peacock were favorite birds, because of the sweeping curve of their bodies, while the femme-fleur could represent idealized beauty or the emancipated temptress.
The style is two-dimensional and well suited for the graphic arts, especially book illustration and lithography, because both of these arts exploit line and flat areas of color. Many artists applied their style and talent to designing posters.
Masini, L. V. (1995). Art nouveau. Promotional Reprint.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Art_Nouveau.html?id=yJnAAQAACAAJ
MARGARET AND FRANCES MACDONALD: ART NOUVEAU ARTISTS
Often worked together as a design team. The sisters created gesso panels in their distinctive style of looping lines, pale colors and delicate, abstracted figures as seen in Margaret's Kysterion's Garden and Frances' The Moonlit Garden.
Sternau, S. A. (1996). Art nouveau : spirit of the belle epoque. Todtri.
CUBISM:
A new view of reality through clear and rational lens without any aesthetic allusions. Shape of forms were fragmented into small cubes tasking the viewer, when standing before the canvas, to put this puzzle of various spatial views together into a whole. Colors were muted.
No longer painted an object viewed from one perspective, but rather layered views from many angles in order to capture the subject from all sides. Analyzed the object and brought it to the canvas as a fragmented picture. Shape and space melted into one another in one composition of enmeshed, intersected and dissected surfaces. Instead of creating volume, focused on revealing facets and constructing surfaces. The situation captured in the painting became far more indefinite. Some surfaces became transparent, weightless or suddenly transformed themselves into something recognizable. Colors were dominated by brown, grey and blue hues.
No longer painted in the open air, kept to their studios, where arsenal for their subjects was already at hand. Later, no longer arranged still life to paint from reality, created them out of imagination.
Apollinaire, G., Eimert, D., & Podoksik Anatoliĭ. (2010). Cubism (Ser. Art of century collection). Parkstone International.
MARIE VEROBIEFF OR MAREVNA CUBISM ARTIST:
Russian-born painter known for her work with Cubism and pointillism. internationally known for combining elements of cubism (called by her "Dimensionalism") with pointillism and through the use of the Golden Ratio for laying out paintings structure. She has been accredited with being the first female cubist painter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Vorobieff
https://www.wikiart.org/en/marevna-marie-vorobieff/port-of-stockholm-1962
FUTURISM:
Manly an Italian movement.
Celebrated the power and excitement of the machine age. The 1900's just began. Cities became more industrialized. Recently invented were the automobile and airplane.
Wanted to free themselves from the past and focus on everything that was new. Subjects included trains, cars, cities, crowds and people on the move. Characteristics were power, movement, visual noise and energy.
Raczka, B. (2009). Name that style : all about isms in art (Ser. Bob raczka's art adventures). Millbrook Press.
BENEDETTE CAPPA FUTURIST ARTIST:
An Italian futurist artist. The action and aesthetic of the machine age appears frequently in Cappa’s artwork.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedetta_Cappa
https://www.wikiart.org/en/benedetta/speeding-motorboat-1923
DADAISM:
Painted with scissors, adhesives, plaster, sacking, paper and other new tools and materials. Made collages and montages. Free use of typography, in which the compositor move over the page vertically, horizontally and diagonally, jumbles type faces and makes liberal use of stock pictorial blocks. A stone, a tram-ticket, the corner of a room could inspire pure and direct feeling. Art was brought into line with everyday life and individual experiences, exposing it to the same risks, the same unforeseeable laws of chance, the same interplay of living forces. No longer paints but creates directly in stone, wood or iron, rocks which are locomotive organisms capable of turning in any direction by the wind of momentary sensation.
Youthful enthusiasm, aggressive approach to the public and provocative. Dada had no program giving the movement its explosive power to unfold in all directions, free of aesthetic or social constraints. This absolute freedom from preconceptions was new in the history of art.
Richter, H., & Britt, D. (1997). Dada, art and anti-art. (D. Britt, Trans.) (Ser. World of art). Thames and Hudson.
HANNAH HOCH DADAISM ARTIST:
A German Dada artist. One of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch
A pioneer in the medium of photomontage, was the sole female member of the Berlin Dada movement and continued to produce innovative works well into the 1970s. In the decade and a half since her death, a new generation of scholars has focused its attention on her elegant dissection of the representation of women in the mass media during the Weimar era. Here, in the first comprehensive survey of her work by an American museum, authors Peter Boswell,Maria Makela, and Carolyn Lanchner survey the full scope of Hoch's half-century of experimentation in photomontage, from her politically charged early works and intimate psychological portraits of the Weimar era to her later forays into surrealism and abstraction. This beautifully designed catalogue presents more than l00 color plates and offers new insights into the life and career of this extraordinary artist.
Höch Hannah, Boswell, P. W., Boswell, P. W., Makela, M. M., Lanchner, C., Makholm, K., Walker Art Center, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Makela, M. M., Lanchner, C., Makholm, K., Walker, A. C., Museum of Modern Art (New York, N. Y., & Los, A. C. M. of A. (1996). The photomontages of hannah höch. Walker Art Center.
NEW OBJECTIVITY:
The representational art of Germany's Weimar era (I918 - 33). A mimesis style, a representation or imitation of the real world in art.
Its widespread appeal had to do with Germans' pervasive need to categorize and classify at a time of profound social and economic disorientation. A style that became increasingly representational.
Drawn to quotidian objects and secular subjects. Compositions were static and quiet. Palette were cool colors and their paint was thin. The well-made object was revived among the avant-garde. No longer was the mark of the brush or pencil equated with the very soul of the subjective artist. Rather, it was now understood as a metaphor of something more objective, something more "certain" and "durable" craft.
Favored the naturalistic style influenced by the art and craft of the Old Masters.
Artistic style and syntax that the masses would understand, art of the people, absolutely realistic picture of the real world, representational art, accessible to the masses.
Makela, M. (2002). “A Clear and Simple Style”: Tradition and Typology in New Objectivity. Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 28(1), 39–109. https://doi.org/10.2307/4113050
GRETHE JURGENS NEW OBJECTIVITY ARTIST:
German painter associated with the New Objectivity.
She described the group's artistic approach:
One paints a landscape, trees, houses, vehicles, and sees the world in a new way. Unemployed people, tramps, or beggars are painted, not because they are "interesting characters" or through a desire to appeal to the sympathy of society, but because one suddenly realizes that it is in these people that the most powerful expression of the present time is to be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grethe_J%C3%BCrgens
https://www.artnet.com/artists/grete-margarete-jurgens/marktszene-IsBhO26jeuYNAp-7Onh4rA2
PRECISIONISM:
The Industrial Revolution in America and Europe changed the ways the world produced its goods. It also changed our society from an agricultural society to one dominated by manufacturing, and it gave artists new subjects and a new art style.
A short-lived but powerful new American art movement called Precisionism, focusing on industrial and mechanical subjects. The Precisionists chose to depict the 20th century's new dependence on technology and the machine in a way that celebrated the efficiency and promise of industrial work: the style created clearly defined, even idealized images of industrial subject matter including factories, machinery, and the people who operated them.
McMullen, B. (2006). Precisionism: Art in the Industrial Age. Art Education, 59(2), 25-32.
ELSIE DRIGGS PRECISIONISM ARTIST:
American painter known for her contributions to Precisionism. She was the only female participant in the Precisionist movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Driggs
https://whitney.org/collection/works/125
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: PRECISIONISM ARTIST:
After having moved into a 30th floor apartment in the Shelton Hotel in 1925, O'Keeffe began a series of paintings of the New York skyscrapers and skyline. One of her most notable works, which demonstrates her skill at depicting the buildings in the Precisionist style, is the Radiator Building–Night, New York. Other examples are New York Street with Moon (1925), The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. (1926), and City Night (1926). She made a cityscape, East River from the Thirtieth Story of the Shelton Hotel in 1928, a painting of her view of the East River and smoke-emitting factories in Queens. The next year she made her final New York City skyline and skyscraper paintings and traveled to New Mexico, which became a source of inspiration for her work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O'Keeffe
One of the key figures who participated in the emancipation of modern art from its conventional forms and subjects. Known for her descriptions of nature: the delicacy of an autumn leaf, the subtle nuances of a flower petal, or the symmetry of an animal's head. We associate Georgia O'Keeffe with bright colours and the beauty of the New Mexican desert. Explores the personal journey of Georgia O'Keeffe, her process of creation and the legacy that she has left the art world. It not only explores the experiences that shaped Georgia O'Keeffe at the beginning of her life, but it also invites the reader to look at her later years, when she was just as vibrant and prolific an artist as in her youth.
Souter, J. (2010). Georgia o'keeffe (Ser. Great masters). Parkstone International.
ART DECO:
Deals with a definable range of subject matter: classical and allegorical themes, portraits, genre scenes depicting everyday life, landscapes and still life.
Impact on poster design. Important for book and fashion illustrations.
Use of silhouette, sharp-edged, restless, favoring flat bands and areas of color to be consciously refined and exquisite and figures were shown in mannered poses.
Some aspects of style appear academic and and other aspects seem dependent on non-academic art styles.
Thoroughly eclectic: a stylistic amalgam combining different and perhaps antagonistic tendencies.
Lucie-Smith, E. (1996). Art deco painting (1st pbk.). Phaidon.
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA ART DECO ARTIST:
Her paintings captured the glamour and decadence of the 1920's. Born in Warsaw in 1898.
Did portraits of the American and European elite. Pictures display neo-classical coloration and a manner that embraced the stylistic innovations of Cubism. Figures in her pictures are clearly outlined while the background is rendered in abstract Cubism fashion. The enamel-like gloss of her colors is very forceful.
Weidemann, C., Larass, P., Larass, P., Klier, M., & Klier, M. (2008). 50 Women artists you should know. Prestel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoportrait_(Tamara_in_a_Green_Bugatti)
BAUHAUS:
Strove to re-establish unity between the areas of artistic and technical production, which had been separated by emerging industrial production.
Based artistic training on the manual trades and a general artistic elementary education.
With increasing insistence on function with progressive technological advances in workshop production and intensive visual arts production now opposed each other at the Bauhaus. Building and fine arts finally went their separate ways in 1930, after the painters had been forced into the periphery. Nevertheless, the importance of fine artists at the Bauhaus was outstanding, despite all contradictions regarding their status. It was they who contributed the most to the formation of a new pedagogy for art, architecture and design by making a contribution to the elementary nature of the artistic potential of expression and the formation of a new space concept. Their work was often influenced in a special way by the programmatic orientation of the school. The teaching role furthermore gave these artists the opportunity to examine and state more precisely their own chosen path of artistic development.
It was mainly abstract art which contributed with its systematically employed analysis of the fact that artistic means were recognized and depicted in their own right, then made available for creative work. It was based on the conviction that abstract colors and forms had an autonomous expressive force and that they were immediately and universally legible.
If one attempts to obtain an overview of the fine art created at the Bauhaus, it is obvious that a uniform term for “Bauhaus art” is out of the question. Ernst Kállai, for a while the editor of the Bauhaus magazine and critical companion of Bauhaus work, noted at the end of the 1920s on the one hand the “objectivity solely determined by purpose and construction and standardized for mass production”, and on the other hand the metaphysics marked by “dream, vision, bare confessions of the soul or paradox magic.'
An abstract geometric art did not dominate over the objective factual renderings.
A pluralism of styles, as shown by the group’s approach, thus marked in contrast to the general idea the varied spectrum of the Bauhaus fine arts works often created as compensation for workshop production as well as in an act of creative, holistic finding of oneself. In this sector, too, variety and variability as well as the pursuit of different paths may be seen as an indicator of creative freedom and availability.
Siebenbrodt, M., & Schöbe Lutz. (2009). Bauhaus : 1919-1933, weimar-dessau-berlin (Ser. Temporis). Parkstone Press International.
ANNI ALBERS BAHAUS ARTIST:
German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anni_Albers
ABSRACTION:
Used no fixed viewpoint. Viewers gaze was liberated to roam across the height, breadth and depth of the picture. Things in the picture were freed up to be precisely what they were: geometric forms, pure colors, brushstrokes or even recognizable images. What made abstract, abstract art was not the absence of resemblance, but the destruction of the fixed view point. The ultimate goal of abstraction was freedom: a new freedom of expression for the artist, a new freedom of interpretation for the viewer.
Karmel, P. (2020). Abstract art : a global history. Thames & Hudson.
HILMA AF KLINT,EMMA KUNZ, AGNES MARTIN ABSTRACTION ARTISTS:
3x an Abstraction presents the extraordinary work of three women artists whose innovative ideas and approaches to drawing had a significant impact on the history of modern abstraction. Hilma af Klint, Sweden, Emma Kunz, Switzerland, and Agnes Martin, Canada, approached geometric abstraction not as formalism, but as a means of structuring philosophical, scientific, and spiritual ideas. Using line, geometry, and the grid, each of these artists created diagrammatic drawings of their exploration of complex belief systems and restorative practices. Noteworthy among the 150 illustrations in the volume are a large number of works by Hilma af Klint, reproduced here for the first time in a major publication; Emma Kunz drawings, exhibited in the United States for the first time in 2005, and approximately 20 early works by Agnes Martin.
Klint, H. af, Klint, H. af, Kunz, E., Martin, A., Zegher, M. C. de, Teicher, H., Drawing Center (New York, N.Y.), Santa Monica Museum of Art, Irish Museum of Modern Art (Kilmainham, Dublin, Ireland), Kunz, E., Martin, A., Zegher, M. C. de, Teicher, H., & Drawing Center (New York, N.Y.). (2005). 3 X abstraction : new methods of drawing by hilma af klint, emma kunz and agnes martin. Drawing Center.
SURREALISM:
The unconscious, nonrational mind was the appropriate guiding force in art.
Juxtaposition is the idea that unlikely combinations of images can yield meanings. A juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be the greater its emotional power and poetic reality.
Parks, J. A. (2015). Universal principles of art : 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing, and practicing art. Rockport.
Freud's concept of the unconscious was the key to Surrealists art forms and the Surrealists borrowed and developed many of Freud's techniques to create images that fused the unconscious dream state with conscious reality. The influence of Freudian psychology was crucial and it is imbedded in the basic understanding and work of the Surrealist movement.
Automatism which is the free flow of associations and the Surrealists equated automatic with the unconscious. Games were popular among the Surrealists for reasons of chance. One of their games was designed for group participation and relied on the chance encounter as a disruption of rationality. Each plaer would write a word on a section of paper, fold it so the next person could not see what had been created. the next player would add to it. The game began with word the adapted to images or combination of images and words.
Many Surrealist paintings were born from juxtaposition images, an entire aesthetic based on disjunction and displacement. The image seemingly makes no sense simply because it decontextualizes normal objects of the world. They relied on elements of disjunction and displacement. This led to the marvelous.
Surrealism defined as a resolution of the states of dream and reality into a sort of absolute reality or surreality. This state is called the marvelous. As Surrealists came to value more greatly internal necessity or compulsion over choice, the marvelous became a sate of possession. It visited you and you sensed its possession of another. The marvelous and beauty could now be restricted to that which was compulsive.
Leslie, R. (1997). Surrealism : the dream of revolution. Smithmark.
Wanted to create art that included the unconscious thoughts and dreams. Instead of thinking too much about what they were painting, the preferred to set their imagination free. The experimented with different ways of being spontaneous.
Characteristics are: the element of surprise, free association, uncensored thought, dreamlike subject matter, spontaneous techniques.
Raczka, B. (2009). Name that style : all about isms in art (Ser. Bob raczka's art adventures). Millbrook Press.
FRIEDA KAHLO SURREALISM ARTIST:
Described as a surrealist.
Even greater recognition followed when French Surrealist André Breton visited Rivera in April 1938. He was impressed by Kahlo, immediately claiming her as a surrealist and describing her work as "a ribbon around a bomb". He not only promised to arrange for her paintings to be exhibited in Paris but also wrote to his friend and art dealer, Julien Levy, who invited her to hold her first solo exhibition at his gallery on the East 57th Street in Manhattan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo
"What I depicted, was my reality." This book zooms right into this reality, presenting a general view and in selected details, it reveals the stories and creatures hidden in her self-portraits; it makes tangible the life-long physical and spiritual pain endured by the artist; and it illustrates painterly skills and techniques reminiscent of old European masters. Making visible what tends to escape one's notice in her seemingly familiar paintings on a discovery trip to the sensuousness, the beauty, and the abysses of her world. This monograph presents Frida Kahlo's life and work in pictures. Provides elaborate background information on each of the paintings.
Prignitz-Poda, H., & Prignitz-Poda, H. (2010). Frida kahlo : the painter and her work. Prestel Art.
REMEDIOS VARO SURREALISM ARTIST:
Content discusses: The early years, Toward surrealism: Paris and Barcelona, Among the surrealists: Paris and Marseilles, Artist in exile: Mexico and Venezuela, The artist and her public, Journey as metaphor, Transformations, Remembrance and remembering.
Kaplan, J. A., Varo, R. 1908-1963, & Varo, R. (1988). Unexpected journeys : the art and life of remedios varo (1st ed.). Abbeville Press.
MODERNISM:
Modern art is a response to the diverse political, economic and cultural pressures of modernity.
With industrialization came modernity. Cities grew, agricultural jobs dwindled and workers seeks manufacturing jobs. City population boomed leading to new businesses aimed at serving the needs of these citizens: restaurants, bars, theaters, music halls, boarding houses and inns. These businesses created new jobs while introducing new social habits and expectations. Rooted in urban culture, where leisure activities as well as daily necessities are available commercially, modernity refers to the condition of post-industrial, capitalist society. Modernism is the cultural expression of this form of social organization. New forms of entertainment along with the necessities of life plays a central role in one's daily activities. The advent of the department store and the idea of shopping as a leisure activity was a signal marker for the rise of modernism. Many welcomed technological advances and economic prosperity. Others noted capitalism's tendency was to exploit workers and contribute to deplorable living conditions.
Arnason, H. H., Mansfield, E., & Mansfield, E. (2010). History of modern art : painting, sculpture, architecture, photography (6th ed.). Pearson Prentice Hall.
FLORINE STETTHEIMER MODERISM ARTIST:
Paintings provide a social commentary on American culture of her period. It examines her youth, her life abroad, and her friendship with such influential figures as Marcel Duchamp, Charles Demuth and Alfred Stieglitz.
Bloemink, B. J., Stettheimer, F. 1871-1944, & Stettheimer, F. (1995). The life and art of florine stettheimer. Yale University Press.
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM:
Characteristics of abstract expressionism includes large canvasses, all areas of the painting are equally important, abstract, emphasizes the physical process of painting, loaded with emotion and is spontaneous.
Raczka, B. (2009). Name that style : all about isms in art (Ser. Bob raczka's art adventures). Millbrook Press.
JOAN MITCHELL ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM ARTIST:
La Grande Vallee resemble one another in spirit and palette and are clearly intended as a unified entity. The lush, organic quality and radiating light that that emanate from the Grande Vallee paintings can seem otherworldly. She wanted to capture the emotion that a landscape inspired in her. Her vision of the enchanted landscape drove her to paint and she ceased only when she fully exhausted all possibilities of the expression. Each of her strokes was consciously calculated at a distance before it was applied on the canvas.
Livingston, J., Mitchell, J., Mitchell, J., Nochlin, L., Lee, Y. Y., Whitney Museum of American Art, Nochlin, L., Lee, Y., & Whitney Museum of American Art. (2002). The paintings of joan mitchell. Whitney Museum.
POP ART:
An English word for the people as a mass is the "populace;" the "popular" thus has its roots in the traditions and habits of the people. It is what is loved by the masses. This points us to the origins of the term "Pop Art."
The subject matter of Pop Art is rooted in everyday life.
The intellectual, objectivistic components of Pop Art incorporated a quality which at that time was termed the "social relevance."
The accessories of everyday life and public interest in the consumer goods which make life more attractive and enjoyable tend to concentrate on particular stereotypes and brand names Certain consumer goods became the symbols of the era; they made history as components of a new mass culture. Lollies, ice-cream, cakes, Seven-up, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, toothpaste, soup cans, cigarettes and matchboxes.
Osterwold, T. (2007). Pop art ([25th anniversary special ed]). Taschen.
The success of this movement was due to the integral relationship between Pop Art and American consumer culture. Pop Art not only depicted this rampant consumption but also appropriated the mechanisms and strategies of corporate society, ensuring the effective marketing of this movement and its absorption into the matrix of consumer institutions.
Mamiya, C. J. (1992). Pop art and consumer culture : american super market (1st ed., Ser. American studies series). University of Texas Press.
YAYOI KUSAMA POP ARTIST:
Shows attributes of Pop Art.
In 1968, Kusama established Kusama Fashion Company Ltd, and began selling avantgarde fashion in the "Kusama Corner" at Bloomingdales. In 2009, Kusama designed a handbag-shaped cell phone.
In 2011, Kusama created artwork for six limited-edition lipglosses from Lancôme. That same year, she worked with Marc Jacobs on a line of Louis Vuitton products including leather goods, ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, watches, and jewelry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama
Turned her drawing of dots into pictures. She was devoted to her dots, for her they were a way of thinking about the world among the stars, as one dot among millions of others. They were a way of thinking about infinity.
When she at last was ready to show her work in public. When she arrived at the gallery in New York, a crowd was spilling out onto the sidewalk. Word about her artwork spread quickly. Now she began to show them in other cities all over the United States and Europe.
Suzuki, S. J. S., & Weinstein, E. (2017). Yayoi kusama : from here to infinity. Museum of Modern Art.
OP ART:
The word op is short for "optical." This style is based on optical illusions. Paintings are made up of abstract geometric patterns. Existing mainly to fool the eye. The idea behind Op Art is to explore how our eyes see. Some paintings are so vibrant and dynamic.
Characteristic are movement, vibration, warping, bulging and flashing.
Effects are achieved through the use of repeated geometric shapes and patterns, perspective, some parts look closer than others and contracting colors or black and white.
Raczka, B. (2009). Name that style : all about isms in art (Ser. Bob raczka's art adventures). Millbrook Press.
BRIDGET RILEY OP ARTIST:
Created optical illusions with simple lines and shapes. Certain shapes thicker and others thinner and made lines that were curved in just the right way. Painted so precisely pictures often seem to move and vibrate.
Pictures were black and white. Painted lines and shapes of many different colors and placed them close together. These colorful paintings seem to shine and flicker on the canvas.
Riley, B., MacGregor, N., MacGregor, N., Kudielka, R., & Kudielka, R. (1995). Bridget riley : dialogues on art. Zwemmer.
https://bridget-riley.publications.britishart.yale.edu/catalogue/1
ARTE POVERA:
Means 'poor art." Does not refer solely to a poorness of materials.
Concerned with the point at which art and life, nature and culture, intersect. Attempted to create a subjective understanding of matter and space allowing for an experience of the 'primary' energy present in all aspects of life as lived directly and not mediated through representation, ideology or codified languages.
The commonplace had entered the spere of art. The insignificant has begun to exist., it has imposed itself.
An art that rejected consumer society and saw the artist not as a 'producer' but as an individual dedicated to 'the free self-projection of human activity.' Concerned with contingency, events, ahistoricism, the present, an anthropological outlook, "real" man and the hope of discarding all visually univocal and coherent discourse.
Art and life are not oppositional. Anthropology examines relationship between nature and culture. Products of culture are not distinguished from natural products. Juxtaposition of manufactured materials: neon tubes, glass, cloth with natural materials or elements: vegetables, live animals, earth, fire, water. These provided a new alphabet for a non-mediated language of real experience, neither visually nor verbally representational, neither figurative nor abstract.
Christov-Bakargiev, C., & Christov-Bakargiev, C. (1999). Arte povera (Ser. Themes and movements). Phaidon.
MARSIA MERZ ARTE POVERA ARTIST:
Untitled (Living Sculpture), which was intended both for her home and to be presented in a gallery. There has never been any division between her life and work. Consisted of thin strips of aluminum, clipped and suspended from the ceiling, forming coils and spirals. Her practice integrated aspects of craft and practices traditionally associated with women, knitting and often employed mundane materials, such as copper, aluminum, waxed paper, and paraffin wax, which reflected her home environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marisa_Merz
MINIMALLISM:
Asserted the primacy of the object itself and the importance of the experience of the object for the viewer unmediated by the artist.
Use of simple geometric shapes or forms, primary colors, industrial or non-art materials, repetition of elements and use of techniques that do not
display the touch or hand of the individual artist.
Parks, J. A. (2015). Universal principles of art : 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing, and practicing art. Rockport.
CARMEN HERRERA MINIMALISM ARTIST:
Optical and minimalist approach was to illustrate the simplest of pictorial resolutions.
Uses measurements and tools to create orderly art in a chaotic world. Bold simplicity with sharply delineated blocks of color often energized by a strong diagonal line. In her own words, Thought about the line, the paper, about a lot of tiny things that get bigger and bigger and then a picture comes up. Less is more and painted with her brain rather than her heart. considered not only whether she liked a color, but also what it did to the other colors involved and whether she could reduce an aspect of her work to improve it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Herrera
PHOTOREALISM:
Art of painting from a photograph, instead of from life. The photo captured a singular moment in time. Simulated the reflections, complex geometry and tiny details shown in photographs.
Characteristics are: work from photographs, use slide projectors or grids to transfer images onto canvas, made direct copies of photographs, but usually larger, focused on cityscapes, portraits and still life and often used airbrush to hide brush marks.
Raczka, B. (2009). Name that style : all about isms in art (Ser. Bob raczka's art adventures). Millbrook Press.
AUDREY FLACK PHOTOREALISM ARTIST:
Flack, A., & Withers, J. (1980). Monumental Still Lives. Feminist Studies, 6(3), 524–529. https://doi.org/10.2307/3177480
Hauser, K. (2001). Audrey Flack’s Still Lifes: Between Femininity and Feminism. Woman’s Art Journal, 22(2), 26–1. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358899
Tannenbaum, B. (1982). [Review of Audrey Flack on Painting, by A. Flack]. Woman’s Art Journal, 3(1), 55–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/1357933
CONTEMPORARY ART:
Art historians designated the period since the 1945 conclusion of World War II as a single era as contemporary. The effects of war itself, along with changing material and political realities, prodded artists to rethink what they inherited from their modern predecessors. These post war artists' sense that much has changed brought the forms of art that we know now generally designate as contemporary.
Morgan, A. L. (2017). Historical dictionary of contemporary art (Ser. Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts). Rowman & Littlefield.
Contemporary Women Artists by JANET FISH CONTEMPORARY ARTIST:
Contemporary American realist artist.
Interested in painting light and "packaging", such as jars, cellophane, and wrappers.
Other subjects are everyday objects, various kinds of clear glassware, either empty or partially filled with liquids such as water, liquor, or vinegar. Examples range from glasses, bottles, goblets, and jars to a fishbowl filled with water and a goldfish. Other subjects include teacups, flower bouquets, textiles with interesting patterns, goldfish, vegetables, and mirrored surfaces.
Janet Fish by 
