Category Archives: Society

Gründerzeit

Founders’ period (German: Gründerzeit) was the economic phase in 19th-century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. At this time in Central Europe the age of industrialisation was taking place, whose beginnings were found in the 1840s. No precise time for this period can be given, but in Austria the March Revolution of 1848 is generally accepted as the beginning for economic changes, in contrast to political reforms. In Germany, as a consequence of the large influx of capital resulting from French war reparations from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, and the subsequent German Unification, there followed an economic boom, giving rise to the description of these years as the “founders’ years”. These years in Central Europe were a time that citizens increasingly influenced cultural development. This was also the epoch of classical liberalism, even if the political demands of the time were only partially met,…

Vanitas

A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are vanitas still lifes, a common genre in Netherlandish art of the 16th and 17th centuries; they have also been created at other times and in other media and genres. Vanitas means ‘futility’ or ‘worthlessness’, that is, the pointlessness of earthly goods and pursuits, alluding to Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8 Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas, translated “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” in the King James Bible. Etymology The Latin noun vānĭtās (from the Latin adjective vanus ’empty’) means ’emptiness’, ‘futility’, or ‘worthlessness’, the traditional Christian view being that earthly goods and pursuits are transient and worthless. It alludes to Ecclesiastes 1:2; 12:8, where vanitas translates the Hebrew word hevel, which also includes the concept of transitoriness. Themes…

Visionary art

Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences. History The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, first established in 1946, is considered to be an important technical and philosophical catalyst in its strong influence upon contemporary visionary art. Its artists included Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner and Arik Brauer among others. Several artists who would later work in visionary art trained under Fuchs, including Mati Klarwein, Robert Venosa, Philip Rubinov Jacobson and De Es Schwertberger. Definition Visionary art often carries themes of spiritual, mystical or inner awareness. Despite this broad definition, there does seem to be emerging some definition to what constitutes the contemporary visionary art ‘scene’ and which artists can be considered especially influential. Symbolism, Cubism, Surrealism and Psychedelic art are also direct precursors to contemporary visionary art. Notable visionary…

Transgressive art

Transgressive art is art that aims to transgress; i.e. to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used in this sense by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985. Zedd used it to describe his legacy with underground film-makers like Paul Morrissey, John Waters, and Kenneth Anger, and the relationship they shared with Zedd and his New York City peers in the early 1980s. Definition From an academic perspective, many traces of transgression can be found in any art which by some is considered offensive because of its shock value; from the French Salon des Refusés artists to Dada and Surrealism. Philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin and Georges Bataille have published works on the nature of transgression. Probably the most thorough book on the early transgressive movement is Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression by Jack Sargeant. Transgressional works share some themes with art…

Sustainable art

The expression sustainable art has been promoted recently as an art term that can be distinguished from environmental art that is in harmony with the key principles of sustainability, which include ecology, social justice, non-violence and grassroots democracy. Sustainable art may also be understood as art that is produced with consideration for the wider impact of the work and its reception in relationship to its environments (social, economic, biophysical, historical and cultural). History According to the contemporary art historians and curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes, the origins of sustainable art can be traced to the conceptual art of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with its stress on dematerialisation and questioning of the functioning of the art system. They also connect the rise of the concept of sustainability to the ending of the Cold War in 1989 and the emergence of a new awareness of the global character of ecological…

Southern art

Art from Southern United States, or southern art, includes southern expressionism, folk art, and modernism. Residents of the American South created works of art starting in 1607, however it was not until the early 1960s that southern art became recognized as a distinct genre. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans houses the largest single collection of Southern art. In 1992, the Morris Museum of Art opened in Augusta, Georgia, with a focus on Mid-Twentieth Century American Southern art. History The core of the American South consists of the eleven states that formed the Confederate States of America: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Beyond these eleven states, there is some dispute as to which of the following six states should also be included: Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Of these six “border” states, Delaware and Oklahoma…

Remodernism

Remodernism revives aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, and follows postmodernism, to which it contrasts. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus. In 2000, Billy Childish and Charles Thomson, founders of the stuckism art movement instigated remodernism, with a manifesto, Remodernism in an attempt to introduce a period of new spirituality into art, culture and society to replace postmodernism, which they said was cynical and spiritually bankrupt. In 2002, a remodernism art show in Albuquerque was accompanied by an essay from University of California, Berkeley art professor, Kevin Radley, who said there was a renewal of artists working without the limitation of irony and cynicism, and that there was a renewal of the sense of beauty. In 2006, the Stedelijk Museum and the University of Amsterdam held a talk on remodernism with Daniel Birnbaum and Alison Gingeras; the introduction to this talked…

Protest art

Protest art is a broad term that refers to creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements. There are also contemporary and historical works and currents of thought that can be characterized in this way. Social movements produce such works as the signs, banners, posters, and other printed materials used to convey a particular cause or message. Often, such art is used as part of demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience. These works tend to be ephemeral, characterized by their portability and disposability, and are frequently not authored or owned by any one person. The various peace symbols, and the raised fist are two examples that highlight the democratic ownership of these signs. Protest art also includes (but is not limited to) performance, site-specific installations, graffiti and street art, and crosses the boundaries of art genres, media, and disciplines. While some protest art is associated with…

Yellow color in history and art

Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of visible light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 570–590 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the RGB color model, used to create colors on television and computer screens, yellow is a secondary color made by combining red and green at equal intensity. Carotenoids give the characteristic yellow color to autumn leaves, corn, canaries, daffodils, and lemons, as well as egg yolks, buttercups, and bananas. They absorb light energy and protect plants from photodamage. Sunlight has a slight yellowish hue, due to the surface temperature of the sun. Because it was widely available, yellow ochre pigment was one of the first colors used in art; the Lascaux cave in France has a painting of a yellow horse 17,000 years old. Ochre and orpiment…

Red color in history and art

Red is the color at the end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and the CMYK color model, and is the complementary color of cyan. Reds range from the brilliant yellow-tinged scarlet and vermillion to bluish-red crimson, and vary in shade from the pale red pink to the dark red burgundy. The red sky at sunset results from Rayleigh scattering, while the red color of the Grand Canyon and other geological features is caused by hematite or red ochre, both forms of iron oxide. Iron oxide also gives the red color to the planet Mars. The red colour of blood comes from protein hemoglobin, while ripe strawberries, red apples and reddish autumn leaves are colored by anthocyanins. Red pigment made from ochre was one of…

Blue colour in history and art

Blue is one of the three primary colours of pigments in painting and traditional colour theory, as well as in the RGB colour model. It lies between violet and green on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when observing light with a dominant wavelength between approximately 450 and 495 nanometres. Most blues contain a slight mixture of other colors; azure contains some green, while ultramarine contains some violet. The clear daytime sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. An optical effect called Tyndall scattering explains blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called atmospheric perspective. Blue has been an important colour in art and decoration since ancient times. The semi-precious stone lapis lazuli was used in ancient Egypt for jewellery and ornament and later, in the Renaissance, to make the pigment ultramarine, the…

Brown color in history and art

Brown is a composite color. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is made by combining red, black, and yellow, or red, yellow, and blue. In the RGB color model used to project colors onto television screens and computer monitors, brown is made by combining red and green, in specific proportions. The brown color is seen widely in nature, in wood, soil, human hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. Brown is the color of dark wood or rich soil. According to public opinion surveys in Europe and the United States, brown is the least favorite color of the public; the color is most often associated with plainness, the rustic and poverty. History and art Ancient history Brown has been used in art since prehistoric times. Paintings using umber, a natural clay pigment composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide, have been dated to 40,000 BC.…

White color in history and art

White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue), because it fully reflects and scatters all the visible wavelengths of light. It is the color of fresh snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore a white toga as a symbol of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity. It was the royal color of the Kings of France, and of the monarchist movement that opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). Greek and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of new churches, capitols and other government buildings, especially in the United States. It was also…

Gray Color in history and art

Gray is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is a color “without color.” It is the color of a cloud-covered sky, of ash and of lead. The first recorded use of grey as a color name in the English language was in AD 700. Grey is the dominant spelling in European and Commonwealth English, although gray remained in common usage in the UK until the second half of the 20th century. Gray has been the preferred American spelling since approximately 1825, although grey is an accepted variant. In Europe and the United States, surveys show that grey is the color most commonly associated with neutrality, conformity, boredom, uncertainty, old age, indifference, and modesty. Only one percent of respondents chose it as their favorite color. In history and art Antiquity through the Middle Ages In antiquity and the Middle…

Orange colour in history and art

Orange is the colour between yellow and red on the spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive orange when observing light with a dominant wavelength between roughly 585 and 620 nanometres. In painting and traditional colour theory, it is a secondary colour of pigments, created by mixing yellow and red. It is named after the fruit of the same name. The orange colour of carrots, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, oranges, and many other fruits and vegetables comes from carotenes, a type of photosynthetic pigment. These pigments convert the light energy that the plants absorb from the sun into chemical energy for the plants’ growth. Similarly the hues of autumn leaves are from the same pigment after chlorophyll is removed. In Europe and America, surveys show that orange is the colour most associated with amusement, the unconventional, extroverts, warmth, fire, energy, activity, danger, taste and aroma, Protestantism, the autumn and Allhallowtide seasons,…

Purple in history and art

Purple is a color intermediate between blue and red. It is similar to violet, but unlike violet, which is a spectral color with its own wavelength on the visible spectrum of light, purple is a composite color made by combining red and blue. According to surveys in Europe and the U.S., purple is the color most often associated with royalty, magic, mystery, and piety. When combined with pink, it is associated with eroticism, femininity, and seduction. Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates; it became the imperial color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, and later by Roman Catholic bishops. Similarly in Japan, the color is traditionally associated with the Emperor and aristocracy. The complementary color of purple is yellow. In art, history and fashion In prehistory and the ancient world: Tyrian purple Purple first appeared in prehistoric art during the Neolithic…

Pink color in history and art

Pink is a pale red color that is named after a flower of the same name. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, politeness, sensitivity, tenderness, sweetness, childhood, femininity and the romantic. It is associated with chastity and innocence when combined with white, but associated with eroticism and seduction when combined with purple or black. History, art and fashion From prehistory to post-classical history The color pink has been described in literature since ancient times. In the Odyssey, written in approximately 800 BCE, Homer wrote “Then, when the child of morning, rosy-fingered dawn appeared…” Roman poets also described the color. Roseus is the Latin word meaning “rosy” or “pink.” Lucretius used the word to describe the dawn in his epic poem On the Nature of Things…

Black color in history and art

Black is the darkest color, the result of the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, literally a color without hue, like white (its opposite) and gray. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness, while white represents light. Black ink is the most common color used for printing books, newspapers and documents, because it has the highest contrast with white paper and is the easiest to read. For the same reason, black text on a white screen is the most common format used on computer screens. In color printing it is used along with the subtractive primaries cyan, yellow, and magenta, in order to help produce the darkest shades. Black and white have often been used to describe opposites; particularly truth and ignorance, good and evil, the “Dark Ages” versus Age of Enlightenment. Since the Middle Ages black has been the symbolic…

Color analysis art

In the cosmetics and fashion industry, color analysis, also called skin tone color matching, personal color or seasonal color, is the process of finding colors of clothing and makeup to match a person’s skin complexion, eye color, and hair color. The goal is to determine the colors that best suit an individual’s natural coloring and the result is often used as an aid to wardrobe planning and style consulting. Color analysis was most popular in the early 1980s. There are a wide variety of approaches to analyzing personal coloring. The most well-known is “seasonal” color analysis, which places individual coloring into four general categories: Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. More complex systems subdivide the seasons into 12 or 16 categories. Many different versions of seasonal analysis have been developed and promoted by image and color consultants worldwide. Some color analysis systems classify an individual’s personal combination of hair color, eye…

Postdigital

Postdigital is a term which came into use in the discourse of digital artistic practice at the start of the twenty-first century. This term points significantly to our rapidly changed and changing relationships with digital technologies and art forms. It points to an attitude that is more concerned with being human, than with being digital. If one examines the textual paradigm of consensus, one is faced with a choice: either the “postdigital” society has intrinsic meaning, or it is contextualised into a paradigm of consensus that includes art as a totality. Either way, Roy Ascott has clearly demonstrated that the distinction between the digital and the “postdigital” is part of the economy of reality. Theory Giorgio Agamben (2002) describes paradigms as things what we think with, rather than things we think about. Like the computer age, the postdigital is also a paradigm, but as with post-humanism for example, an understanding…

Color symbolism

Color symbolism in art and anthropology refers to the use of color as a symbol in various cultures. There is great diversity in the use of colors and their associations between cultures and even within the same culture in different time periods. The same color may have very different associations within the same culture at any time. For example, red is often used for stop signs or danger. At the same time, red is also frequently used in association with romance, e.g. with Valentine’s Day. White variously signifies purity, innocence, wisdom or death. Blue has similarly diverse meanings. Diversity in color symbolism occurs because color meanings and symbolism occur on an individual, cultural and universal basis. Color symbolism is also context-dependent and influenced by changes over time. Symbolic representations of religious concepts or articles may include a specific color with which the concept or object is associated. There is evidence…

Perceptual art

Perceptual art is a form of art that can trace its roots to the art history concepts of perceptualism as well as to twentieth century inventions of conceptual art and performance art. Perceptual art delineates the aspects of art that need explaining: not just why it is attractive, but why fine execution and form.Perceptual art states certain constraints, and explain pleasure in contemplation, not value extracted from the object by activities other than contemplation. The theory is that aesthetic pleasure is a motivation for learning skills. Two forms of pleasure are postulated. The first accompanies the spontaneous activity necessary for learning a more or less universal basic level of skill. The second accompanies highly skilled activity. This second kind of pleasure is specific to art as such. Perceptualism The concept of perceptualism has been discussed in historical and philosophical explorations of art and psychology, thus it forms an innate relationship…

Abjection

The term abjection literally means “the state of being cast off.” The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts. Among the most popular interpretations of abjection is Julia Kristeva’s (pursued particularly in her work Powers of Horror). Kristeva describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences, or is confronted by (both mentally and as a body), what Kristeva terms one’s “corporeal reality”, or a breakdown in the distinction between what is self and what is Other. The concept of abjection is best described as the process by which, one separates one’s sense of self from that which, immediately threatens one’s sense of life. Abjection prevents the absolute realization of existence, completing the course of biological, social, physical, and spiritual cycles. The best representation of this concept can be imagined as one’s reaction to gazing at a human cadaver,…

Origomu

Origomu (Japanese: オリゴム) is a movement originated in New York City by Chilean artist Tatiana Pagés in 2009. It is the practice of recycling plastic waste into wearable art. Artwear that inspires both creative thought and a greater sense of stewardship toward our planet. Origomu comes from the Japanese ori, meaning “folding”, and gomu, meaning “rubber”. Every year, thousands pieces of plastic and debris threaten the lives of shore birds and marine animals, harming our environment. Origomu can make a difference – no matter how far you are from the nearest shore. The Origomu movement advise people to cherish the environment, transform waste into beautiful artwear. Origomu go beyond environmental awareness. We need to inspire people to create solutions, such as a biodegradable plastic, or one that could rapidly break down without harming the natural environment. For example of the 6-pack carrier, whose company put an end to the environmental…