Glossary

random stuff i found in my old email today...

Abstract Expressionism
The abstract expressionists—or New York School—were a loosely configured group who worked with different forms of abstraction, often on a heroic scale. Some maintained naturalistic references in their work, but most invented abstract vocabularies that referred only obliquely to the outside world. Some abstract expressionism was gestural; other works were based in color and reduced form. Disillusioned with ideology, these artists sought meaning in the individual, stressing psychological and spiritual content as opposed to conventional subject matter. Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still were among the abstract expressionists. The New York School was the first U.S. art
trend to have international influence.

Abstraction
Rather than render familiar objects and scenes, artists involved with abstraction transform traditional pictorial representation or renounce it completely in favor of a grammar of shapes, colors, lines, and compositional devices. Their work posits an alternative description of sensual experience or model of ideas or principles. Abstraction comes in many styles, some painterly and gestural, others simplified and hard-edged.

Artist's Books
Artist's books are a diverse form that encompasses books that mix visual and verbal elements to create an expressive and intellectual unity. In the 1960s and 1970s they appealed to artists interested in seriality and temporality, art that occurred over time. The form—inexpensive to make and buy and offering an alternative to the mainstream art distribution system—was well suited to a climate of social and political activism.

Composition
Composition entails the combining of parts to form a cohesive whole. In the visual arts it involves the balancing of one element against another in a painting, drawing, or sculpture. For artists during the postwar period who wanted to communicate aspects of art's essential character, traditional composition seemed an unacceptable compromise, a superficial ploy emphasizing style at the expense of meaning

Conceptual Art
By the mid-1960s certain artists, concerned more with ideas and process than with the finished artwork, began to highlight the intellectual components of art making and reception in their work. Eventually some of them questioned the necessity of the physical art object altogether, thus undermining established modes of exhibition and marketing. Their art took varied forms—ephemeral performances and installations, photo and video documentation, and typed text on paper among them.

Concrete Art
This term was coined by Dutch modernist Theo van Doesburg in the sole issue of Art concret (Paris, 1930). In contrast to "abstraction," which reinterprets things in the world, concrete art derives its meaning from the physical object itself or its pictorial elements—usually simple planes and colors—rather than its metaphorical content or relationship to the outside world. After Doesburg's death in 1931, Swiss artist Max Bill became the main proselytizer for this widely influential movement.

Constructivism, Constructivist
Identified with "pure abstraction"—work that was in no way representational—and with simple, hard-edged geometric shapes, constructivist art movements grew out of cubism in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. They provided a flexible methodology that could be used intuitively or systematically and could serve political, spiritual, or personal aims. Constructivism impacted painting, sculpture, architecture, design, crafts, fashion, theater, film, and photography, among other forms. It is associated predominantly with Russia (Russian constructivism), the Netherlands (neoplasticism and de Stijl), and Germany (the highly influential Bauhaus school for art and design).

Earthworks
Earthworks, or land art, which involved interventions in nature—sometimes including the actual excavation of land—attempted to free artists from the constraints of the museum, gallery, and art market. The realization of these often-enormous works could require huge amounts of money and time. Many of them were temporary or existed in remote locations. Consequently they are known largely through photo and video documentation.

Existentialism
Existentialism is a diverse nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophical and literary movement. Existentialists stressed the individual's existence, freedom, choice, and moral responsibility in the absence of universal, objective ethical standards. Philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre was the leading figure of a distinct and internationally influential existentialist movement in France after World War II. This emphasis on individualism is reflected in certain postwar art movements, notably abstract expressionism.

Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV)
The Parisian Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (1960-68) included among its six members François Morellet and Julio Le Parc. Aiming to merge identities into a collective entity that would be more than the sum of its parts, they integrated scientific and technical innovations into their work and frequently made objects that utilized light or movement. The group disbanded in part because of Le Parc's growing renown, which undermined its collective ethos.

Gruppo T
Milan-based Gruppo T (1959-62) included Gianni Colombo, Grazia Varisco, and others. The artists developed a largely kinetic art (involving actual or virtual movement) that addressed their concern with time (hence, the T in the group's name) and space. They mounted a series of twelve exhibitions called Miroriorama, a combination of Indian words meaning "thousands" and "images."

Installation (art)
In the 1960s artists began to create temporary pieces that were site-specific, that is, designed for a particular location. Works like those by Mel Bochner, Stanislaw Drózdz, and Douglas Wheeler included in Beyond Geometry, which exist for a brief period inside a gallery or museum and are remade each time they are shown, fit this rubric.

Kinetic Art
The kinetic art movement flourished from the mid-1950s through the 1960s. Included under this rubric are works that utilize actual movement (by motors or natural forces), virtual movement (through optical illusions), and human movement (in performance), as well as those that involve the movement of natural light over a monochrome white surface. Artists used motion because it made concrete the time required to experience a work and, in the most literal terms, provided
multiple perspectives on it.

Minimalism, Minimalist(s), Minimal art, Object(s)
Minimalism, emergent in New York around 1960, was neither a defined style nor a movement. It was a reluctant group of artists who rejected painting in favor of simple, often geometrical three-dimensional "objects." Objects were touted as a new form that resembled sculpture but was conceptually closer to recent painting. Freestanding works sat directly on the floor without pedestals. Artists associated with minimalism—Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and others—sometimes used strategies such as repetition and seriality in their work.

Modernism
Modernism refers to a wide variety of experimental trends in the arts and society that developed between the 1880s and 1970s. It dominated culture in the first half of the twentieth century. In art modernism is characterized by a deliberate departure from tradition, the development of abstraction, an emphasis on emotion, the rejection of naturalistic color, and a belief in progress and innovation.

Monochrome
Monochromes are single-color works. While early modernists experimented with monochrome painting, this form had particular currency in the 1950s and 1960s. Colors served varied symbolic and conceptual purposes in the hands of different artists. White monochrome painting—probably the most common variety—was closely connected to kinetic art, as it concerned the play of light across a surface.

Neoconcretism
Neoconcretism (1959-61), a distinctly Brazilian vanguard movement, evolved from Rio de Janeiro's freer brand of concrete art. Neoconcretists rejected serial form, optical effects, and the influence of science and technology. Retaining their foundation in
geometric abstraction, they nonetheless favored the sensual over the intellectual. Those associated with this movement eventually made works that required the viewer's physical intervention. Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Pape were among the neoconcretists.

Nul
The Dutch group Nul (1960-62) was named after its German counterpart, Zero. Jan Schoonhoven was among its artists. Nul was characterized by an aversion to expressionistic painting and sculpture, a predilection for the monochrome, and experiments with movement and light. In 1962 the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, organized a major exhibition entitled Nul, which included an international mix of artists.

One-Point Perspective
A mathematical system for representing three-dimensional objects and spaces two-dimensionally, in which all lines perpendicular to the surface of a painting, drawing, or print radiate from a single point, as if perceived by a viewer in a fixed position.

Op Art
Op art—a media-generated label that was applied to the work of artists who explored optical effects, such as Bridget Riley and Jesús Rafael Soto—was rejected by most of those identified with it. It gained currency following the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which focused on issues of perception, and the movement was hailed by critics as the successor to pop art.

Performance (art)
An interdisciplinary form used by artists, dancers, writers, and musicians, performance may address the nature of visual form and physical space or political issues; it may intervene in real social situations or take place on stage; it is associated with ritual as well as technology. Emphasizing process over product, it is usually live, but some performances are done exclusively for the camera.

Phenomenology, Phenomenologist
Phenomenology is a twentieth-century philosophical movement that attempts to describe experience as it presents itself to consciousness. French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed that previous theories of perception described thinking about seeing rather than seeing itself. In contrast, he saw phenomenology as akin to the visual arts, which he thought could elicit an immediate response that seemed almost to precede conscious thought.

Postminimalism
This term originally referred to U.S. art of the middle to late 1960s that used minimalist strategies and forms but consciously strayed from the minimalist camp in its emphasis on elements such as sensuality, process, or concept. Eventually the word took on a life of its own and came to represent much U.S. art of the 1970s.

Postmodernism
Postmodernism is characterized by a sense that it is impossible to make anything truly original, a disillusionment with "myths" of progress and mastery associated with modernism, and a rejection of the ideal of the unique, visionary artwork. Postmodernists self-consciously and overtly "appropriate" references from art history and popular culture, rather than seamlessly integrating them into a work. It is impossible to pinpoint the moment when postmodernism became dominant, but around 1980 a generation of artists emerged who manifested these traits to a new degree. Most of the work presented here combines modern and postmodern qualities.

Women's Movement
The contemporary women's movement coalesced in the United States around 1968, ushering in enormous social change. Women joined consciousness-raising groups, entered the workforce, protested inequality in the universities and the workplace, and fought against sexual harassment and for reproductive rights. Feminist artists deliberately employed techniques and motifs previously deprecated as "feminine" in order to create a visual language untainted by male-dominated culture.

Zero, Group Zero
Founded in Düsseldorf, Germany, Group Zero (1958-66) helped create an experimental art scene in postwar Germany. Members Otto Piene and Heinz Mack (later joined by Gunther Uecker) held one-night exhibitions in their studios and published a journal. They created monochrome paintings and works utilizing light and movement. More individualistic and freewheeling than some European groups of the time, they chose the name Zero because it had no nationalist associations and evoked a blank slate, the potential for a new beginning. The term also often identifies a broader-based trend in postwar European art